Submission, The 1 "The names," Claire said. "What about the names?" "They''re a record, not a gesture," the sculptor replied. Ariana''s words brought nods from the other artists, the critic, and the two purveyors of public art arrayed along the dining table, united beneath her sway. She was the jury''s most famous figure, its dominant personality, Claire''s biggest problem. Ariana had seated herself at the head of the table, as if she were presiding. For the previous four months they had deliberated at a table that had no head, being round. It was in an office suite high above the gouged earth, and there the other jurors had deferred to the widow''s desire to sit with her back to the window, so that the charnel ground below was only a gray blur when Claire walked to her chair. But tonight the jury was gathered, for its last arguments, at Gracie Mansion''s long table.
Ariana, without consultation or, it appeared, compunction, had taken pride of place, giving notice of her intent to prevail. "The names of the dead are expected; required, in fact, by the competition rules," she continued. For such a scouring woman, her voice was honeyed. "In the right memorial, the names won''t be the source of the emotion." "They will for me," Claire said tightly, taking some satisfaction in the downcast eyes and guilty looks along the table. They''d all lost, of course--lost the sense that their nation was invulnerab≤ lost their city''s most recognizable icons; maybe lost friends or acquaintances. But only she had lost her husband. She wasn''t above reminding them of that tonight, when they would at last settle on the memorial.
They had winnowed five thousand entries, all anonymous, down to two. The final pruning should have beeneasy. But after three hours of talk, two rounds of voting, and too much wine from the mayor''s private reserve, the conversation had turned ragged, snappish, repetitive. The Garden was too beautiful, Ariana and the other artists kept saying of Claire''s choice. They saw for a living, yet when it came to the Garden they wouldn''t see what she saw. The concept was simple: a walled, rectangular garden guided by rigorous geometry. At the center would be a raised pavilion meant for contemplation. Two broad, perpendicular canals quartered the six-acre space.
Pathways within each quadrant imposed a grid on the trees, both living and steel, that were studded in orchard-like rows. A white perimeter wall, twenty-seven feet high, enclosed the entire space. The victims would be listed on the wall''s interior, their names patterned to mimic the geometric cladding of the destroyed buildings. The steel trees reincarnated the buildings even more literally: they would be made from their salvaged scraps. Four drawings showed the Garden across the seasons. Claire''s favorite was the chiaroscuro of winter. A snow shroud over the ground; leafless living trees gone to pewter; cast-steel trees glinting with the rose light of late afternoon; the onyx surfaces of the canals shining like crossed swords. Black letters scored on the white wall.
Beauty wasn''t a crime, but there was more than beauty here. Even Ariana conceded that the spartan steel trees were an unexpected touch--reminders that a garden, for all its reliance on nature, was man-made, perfect for a city in which plastic bags wafted along with birds and air-conditioner runoff mixed in with rain. Their forms would look organic, but they would resist a garden''s seasonal ebb and flow. "The Void is too dark for us," Claire said now, as she had before. Us: the families of the dead. Only she, on the jury, stood for Us. She loathed the Void, the other finalist, Ariana''s favorite, and Claire was sure the other families would, too. There was nothing void-like about it.
A towering black granite rectangle, some twelve stories high, centered in a huge oval pool, it came off in the drawings as a great gash against the sky. The names of the dead were to be carved onto its surface, which would reflect into the water below. It mimicked the Vietnam Veterans Memorial but, to Claire, missed the point. Such abstraction worked when humans could lay their hands on it, draw near enough to alter the scale. But the names on the Void couldn''t be reached or even seen properly. The only advantage the design had was height. Claire worried that some of thefamilies--so jingoistic, so literal-minded--might see the Garden as conceding territory to America''s enemies, even if that territory was air. "Gardens are fetishes of the European bourgeoisie," Ariana said, pointing to the dining-room walls, which were papered with a panorama of lush trees through which tiny, formally dressed men and women strolled.
Ariana herself was, as usual, dressed entirely in a shade of gruel that she had patented in homage to and ridicule of Yves Klein''s brilliant blue. The mockery of pretension, Claire decided, could also be pretentious. "Aristocratic fetishes," the jury''s lone historian corrected. "The bourgeoisie aping the aristocracy." "It''s French, the wallpaper," the mayor''s aide, his woman on the jury, piped up. "My point being," Ariana went on, "that gardens aren''t our vernacular. We have parks. Formal gardens aren''t our lineage.
" "Experiences matter more than lineages," Claire said. "No, lineages are experiences. We''re coded to have certain emotions in certain kinds of places." "Graveyards," Claire said, an old tenacity rising within her. "Why are they often the loveliest places in cities? There''s a poem--George Herbert--with the lines: ''Who would have thought my shrivel''d heart / Could have recover''d greennesse?''" A college friend had written the scrap of poetry in a condolence card. "The Garden," she continued, "will be a place where we--where the widows, their children, anyone--can stumble on joy. My husband ." she said, and everyone leaned in to listen.
She changed her mind and stopped speaking, but the words hung in the air like a trail of smoke. Which Ariana blew away. "I''m sorry, but a memorial isn''t a graveyard. It''s a national symbol, an historic signifier, a way to make sure anyone who visits--no matter how attenuated their link in time or geography to the attack--understands how it felt, what it meant. The Void is visceral, angry, dark, raw, because there was no joy on that day. You can''t tell if that slab is rising or falling, which is honest--it speaks exactly to this moment in history. It''s created destruction, which robs the real destruction of its power, dialectically speaking. The Garden speaks to a longing we have for healing.
It''s a very natural impulse, but maybe not our most sophisticated one." "You have something against healing?" Claire asked. "We disagree on the best way to bring it about," Ariana answered."I think you have to confront the pain, face it, even wallow in it, before you can move on." "I''ll take that under consideration," Claire retorted. Her hand clamped over her wineglass before the waiter could fill it. Paul could barely track who was saying what. His jurors had devoured the comfort food he had requested--fried chicken, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts with bacon--but the comfort was scant.
He prided himself on getting along with formidable women--was, after all, married to one--but Claire Burwell and Ariana Montagu together strained him, their opposing sureties clashing like electric fields, the room crackling with their animus. In her critique of the Garden''s beauty, of beauty itself, Paul sensed Ariana implying something about Claire. His mind wandered to the coming days, weeks, months. They would announce the winning design. Then he and Edith would visit the Zabar''s at their home in Menerbes, a respite for Paul between the months of deliberation and the fund-raising for the memorial that would begin on his return. It would be a major challenge, with the construction of each of the two finalists estimated at $100 million, minimum, but Paul enjoyed parting his friends from serious money. Countless ordinary Americans were sure to open their wallets, too. Then this chairmanship would lead to others, or so Edith assured him.
Unlike many of her friends, his wife did not collect Chanel suits or Harry Winston baubles, although she had quantities of both. Her eye was for prestigious positions, and so she imagined Paul as chairman of the public library, where he already sat on the board. It had more money than the Met, and Edith had pronounced Paul "literary," although Paul himself wasn''t sure he''d read a novel since The Bonfire of the Vanities . "Perhaps we should talk more about the local context," said Madeline, a community power broker from the neighborhood ringing the site. As if on cue, Ariana extracted from her bag a drawing she had made of the Void to show how well it would play against the cityscape. The Void''s "vertical properties," she said, echoed Manhattan''s. Claire arched her eyebrows at Paul. Ariana''s "sketch," as she called it, was better than the drawings accompanying the submission.
Claire had complained to Paul more than once that she suspected Ariana knew the Void''s designer--a student, a protégé?--because she seemed so eager to help italong. Maybe, although he didn''t think Ariana had done any more for her favorite than Claire had for hers. For all her poise, Claire couldn''t seem to handle not getting her way. Nor could Ariana, who was used to dominating juries without this one''s slippery quota of sentiment. The group retreated to the parlor, with its warm yellow walls, for dessert. Jorge, the chef at Gracie Mansion, wheeled in a cart laden with cakes and cookies. Then he unveiled,.