CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He signed her up on a Tuesday. 

On Wednesday, she learned about it when the cream-colored envelope with the crest of Harlow Institute, one of the top three fashion design schools in New York and by the way, the one she had marked in a magazine at seventeen, then folded and carefully kept in the last drawer without mentioning it to anyone, arrived at the penthouse. Adrian had silently put the envelope on the kitchen island, already dressed and leaving for work. She opened the envelope and read the letter twice. "You enrolled me, " she said. He stood in the doorway. "You said you wanted to go." "I said I had been thinking about it." "Yes, " he said. "And then I enrolled you." He looked at his watch. "Orientation is Friday. Marianna will have the car ready at eight." He left. Aria sat with the acceptance letter in her hands for quite a while, and something moved in her chest which she had no name for. It was not really gratitude - or perhaps it was, albeit masked by something quite different, the particular dizziness that comes from realizing that someone has been paying attention to you in a very specific and careful way that most people do not bother with. Jeffery had never even remembered a single thing she wanted. Not even one. About five months after the marriage, she told him that her secret dream was to study design, and he replied that it was wonderful and asked what was for dinner…and she never spoke about it again .

Adrian Morelli, communicating mostly with one-word answers and thinking that emotional dialogues are a mild kind of professional risk, had decided to send her to Harlow Institute, just because of a single line from a passage that was exchanged during a dinner with his parents. She went through the letter again for the third time. "That's what he does, " Marianna responded from behind the stove, without even looking. "He indeed listens. He just doesn't want anyone to know that he is, " Aria put the letter aside. "Why do you think he hasn't done it just to be on the safe side? Having a spouse attending a fashion school kinda shows a human side, relatable." Marianna confronted her with a look of absolute and calm tolerance. "Miss Aria. I have known that man for more than fourteen years, and I have never seen him do one single thing unnecessarily. If it was only a strategy, there are at least twenty other simpler ways of appearing relatable." Turning back to the stove, she added, "He simply recalled what you asked for. That is not a strategy. It is something else entirely." Carefully, Aria folded the letter along the original creases and placed it again inside the envelope. She did not utter a word. However, before setting it down she just held the envelope very long. She had seen everything she had imagined and even more she had not imagined, including the exact, surgical humiliation of seeing Cassandra Morelli standing in the atrium that first day. Cassandra was not a student. In fact, she was a guest lecturer in the advanced textiles program, a role she fulfilled with the casual authority of someone who has never needed to work for a room's attention.

Aria was seen by her the second Aria got inside, and her face changed from surprise to amusement in a blink of an eye, and then surprise to cold two more seconds later. By the time the orientation was half over, the whole room knew. It wasn't done clumsily. Cassandra is smart enough to be subtle. Just a little word, a little-raise of an eyebrow, the strategic giving of a just-between-us smile at the right people. In less than twenty minutes, Aria could really tell the change of mood in the room, the slight withdrawal of warmth from those who had been so friendly just five minutes ago, the way conversations stopped and went on differently when she was around. She had dealt with the same thing before. She was very familiar with this kind of social behavior. She was the first to get in the front row at every session. She asked the instructors sharp, well-thought-out questions. She took notes in the program margins with the kind of determination of a person who, having waited very long for this moment, is neither going to waste a single second nor be afraid of Cassandra Morelli or anyone like her. After the morning session finished, one of the instructors,a woman in her 40s with silver short hair and a looking-on-the-inside kind of look that comes from very many years of teaching,stopped her in the corridor. "Your questions were really good this morning, " she complimented her. "Especially the one about how the weight is distributed in a draped fabric. Most first-years do not think like that." "I've been thinking about it for a long time,” Aria said honestly.

Professor Delacroix observed her quiet moment and said, "I know who your husband is." She added, "However, you ought to understand that your husband doesn't matter in my classroom. Only what you create matters. Nothing else." It felt to Aria as though a knot she didn't even know was tight had been undone in her shoulders. "Thank you, " she whispered. "No need to thank me. Just do your work, " the professor answered. 

She was going to do that. Adrian came around at 12:30pm. She wasn't expecting him. Actually, she was busy in the studio area reserved for new students, deeply engrossed in a draping exercise on a dress form, her face scrunched up with the kind of concentration that a person who is also a little frustrated exudes when they are making a beautiful problem to submit to them. Suddenly a wave of attentiveness started in the room. 

That particular silence that is before the appearance of a person who just by entering the place changes its whole atmosphere. She looked around. He was standing right at the entrance of the studio with a dark coat on and a colder expression than usual, and Cassandra was with him or rather, having clearly intercepted him in the corridor, Cassandra had attached herself to his side with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing it since childhood. "Adrian, " Cassandra said with a broad smile and a voice raised enough to be heard by those present in the whole studio, "I was just telling some of the students about the Morelli Foundation. Perhaps you could speak to them about" "Why, " Adrian asked, "is my wife not at your session?" Cassandra hesitated. "Excuse me?" "She was assigned to your textiles seminar this afternoon. She is not there." He looked around the room.  Adrian spotted Aria at the dress form, and then he gestured to his sister. "Why isn't she there?" "The seminar is for advanced students, " Cassandra replied. "She has only recently " "Her orientation placement scores were high enough to put her in the advanced track, " Adrian explained. "I looked at them this morning. So if she isn't in the advanced seminar, it means that she has been administratively redirected by someone, and I want to know why." There was a pin-drop silence. After a very quick and very complicated face expression, Cassandra ultimately smiled. "I'm quite certain it was just a scheduling mistake, " she remarked. "I'll have it sorted out." "Today, " Adrian pressed. Cassandra nodded. Adrian went over to Aria. He glanced at the dress form, at the fabric she had chosen, at the drape that was pinned in its angles. He kept silent for a while. "What do you think?" he inquired. The tone of his voice was quite different from the one he had been using in the penthouse ,not necessarily more tender, but certainly less protected. As if big institutional spaces gave him a kind of invisibility that he deemed helpful. "Really, it's the most wonderful day I've had in a very long time, " she replied sincerely. His face changed slightly. It was a rapid, spontaneous expression that disappeared before she could identify it. "Excellent, " he said. Then he went away. Cassandra never returned. And when Aria showed up the next week for the advanced textiles seminar, there was a seat waiting for her in the first row.