Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Nine: The Fifth Section

Ellie sent the fifth section on a Sunday evening in January.

Not the photograph of the sketchbook this time — a proper scan, the lines clear, the drawing at full resolution. She had written above the scan: I drew this alone. Tell me what is wrong with it.

He opened the scan on the screen and looked at it for a long time.

She had drawn the fifth section from the south edge — the way all the community centre sections had been drawn, the south face first, the building opening toward the field. He recognised the fourth section in it: the south window at forty centimetres and the weight-bearing room wider than it was tall and the December sun line crossing the floor and the kitchen in the south-east corner with the between-time window. The bones of the fourth section carried into the fifth.

But she had added things he had not told her to add.

She had drawn a bench at the south face — not inside the building, outside. A low bench built against the south face of the building, below the south window, the bench facing the field. He looked at it and thought about Frances's folding stool at the south edge of the three-generation site. He thought about the south edge as the place where the body wanted to be — not inside, not outside, at the edge between them.

He thought: Ellie has drawn the outside version of the recess.

He thought about the outside bench at the south face. He thought about the between-time as the time that sometimes needed to be outside — the summer between-time, the warm evening after the gathering when the people came out of the weight-bearing room and did not want to go home and the bench was there at the south face looking at the field. He thought about the winter between-time inside and the summer between-time outside, the community centre holding both.

He thought about the between-time bench as the section's summer — the way the Farrow platform gave the December light and the south edge gave the June sun and the section held both. He thought about the community centre holding the between-time in every season, the bench for the warm months and the weight-bearing room for the cold.

He thought: she has drawn the section's summer.

He had not told her about the between-time bench. She had arrived at it from the attending — from Raymond and the south edge and the December walk and the knowing of the between-time that the Saturday allotment had given her. He thought about the bench as the knowledge transferred in the visit — the between-time understood so completely that the section produced the outside version of itself without being told to.

He thought: the bench is from all the way in.

He looked at the rest of the fifth section. He looked at the children's corner and found a change — small, easy to miss. She had drawn the north window of the corner differently. In the fourth section he had drawn the corner's north window as the small opening, two hundred millimetres wide, the window he had specified for the year-one corner in the school. In the fifth section Ellie had drawn the window wider — four hundred millimetres. She had written in the margin beside it: the corner window should be wide enough for two children to look through together.

He held this thought.

He thought about two children looking through the corner window together. He thought about the window in the corner as the connection to the north — not the view, not the picture window, the north light window, the modest opening. He had drawn it as the single child's attending — the window for the held body in the held space. Ellie had drawn it for two bodies.

He thought about the in-between children in the in-between room with the east window to watch the last light go — the table for four, the gathering of the almost-grown. He thought about the younger children in the corner with the narrow window — the single body, the individual attending. And then he thought about Ellie widening the window for two.

He thought: the corner is not only for the solitary attending. The corner is also for the shared attending — the two children looking through the corner window together at the north light. The held space holding two bodies in their shared noticing.

He thought about the shared attending as the quality the commission had been finding since Raymond and Ellie at the south edge — the two people looking through the hedge at the December field without speaking. The shared attendance was not the conversation. It was the simultaneous quiet looking, two bodies in the same direction, the attending amplified by the company.

He thought: the four-hundred-millimetre window holds the shared attending.

He thought about the corner with the wider window and the bench and the two children side by side looking through the north opening at the steady north light. He thought about the adult and the child on the bench with the child's feet on the step — the shared attending of the generations, the same register as Frances and Ada on the platform recess.

He thought: Ellie has drawn the corner for the Frances-and-Ada condition. For two people attending to the same thing from the same held space.

He wrote to Ellie: The fifth section is from all the way in. Two things to tell you. First: the bench at the south face — you have drawn the section's summer. The between-time in warm weather. The outside version of the weight-bearing room's south window. This is correct. Second: the wider corner window — four hundred millimetres to hold two children. You have drawn the corner for the shared attending. The two children looked through it together. This is also correct.

He paused and then wrote: I cannot find what is wrong with it.

Ellie replied after a few minutes. She wrote: I can. The kitchen.

He went back to the scan and looked at the south-east kitchen.

He looked at the kitchen counter and the between-time window and the south-east view. He looked at it carefully, the way he had looked at the fourth section, attending to the drawing as the body in the room.

He saw it.

The counter was against the east wall. The window was above the counter looking south-east. The person at the counter faced the south-east window, the field in the peripheral view. He had drawn this in the fourth section and Ellie had confirmed it: the kitchen is right.

But in the fifth section Ellie had drawn the kitchen slightly differently — she had moved the counter two hundred millimetres toward the south, a small shift, barely visible. He measured it on the screen. Two hundred millimetres.

He thought about why she had moved it. He thought about the geometry — the south-east corner, the counter along the east wall, the window above. He thought about the two-hundred-millimetre shift toward the south and what it changed.

He thought about the person at the counter. He thought about the person standing at the counter in the fifth section, the body at the south-shifted counter, the window now slightly more south than south-east.

He thought: the shift gives the person more of the field.

He thought about more of the field in the wrong direction. He thought about Raymond saying: the field in the working eye. The peripheral view. Not the full view — the peripheral. He thought about the full south window belonging to the weight-bearing room, the gathering room, the room for the breathing. The kitchen was the between-time kitchen, the working kitchen, the room where the tea was made while remaining in the gathering. The kitchen should give the field peripherally, not primarily.

He wrote to Ellie: The kitchen counter. You have shifted it two hundred millimetres toward the south. This gives the person at the counter more of the field. But the kitchen should give the field peripherally, not primarily. The full south belongs to the weight-bearing room. Move the counter back. The between-time window should be the corner of the eye, not the front.

Ellie wrote back: I thought it would be better with more of the field. But you're right. The kitchen should give the field the way the weight-bearing room gives the village — not taken, given at the edge. I'll move it back.

He thought about Ellie saying: not taken, given at the edge. He thought about the distinction — the view taken by the kitchen from the weight-bearing room versus the view given at the edge of the working eye. He thought about the practice's understanding of the window as the giving rather than the taking — the honest window gave what the room needed without taking from the adjacent room.

He thought: she has named the principle from the correction.

He thought: the correction produces the vocabulary.

He thought about all the corrections — Frances's stool depth and Tom's narrowed window and Reuben's load bearing and Ellie's level entry. He thought about the corrections as the places where the vocabulary had been given — the principle named in the moment of the repair. He thought about the practice's vocabulary as the accumulated corrections, the words found at the edge of the wrong thing.

He thought: the practice learns from its errors.

He thought: the honest section improves because it is corrected.

He thought: the fifth section with the counter moved back will be more honest than the fifth section as drawn.

He thought: there will be a sixth section.

He thought: and the sixth will be more honest than the fifth.

He thought: the approaching does not end.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Nine