Red Dress in Black and White

by Elliot Ackerman

  In front of Dolmabahçe Palace traffic congeals to a near standstill. A match between Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş has released a roiling mass of drunken fans into the late-afternoon darkness. Their bodies filter between car fenders, which lie against one another like so many bricks in an impenetrable wall of traffic. Clad in black and white, the Beşiktaş fans chant in one singsong cadence, while the navy-and-gold-clad Fenerbahçe fans rise up in another voice entirely. Peter asks the driver if he knows who has won the match. “Nobody win,” says the driver. Around the time of Peter’s first show at the Istanbul Modern, Murat had managed to refinance the construction of the new stadium through “unidentified sources” as the newspapers had reported it. Since its completion the year before, the games—popular as they are—have crippled the city’s transit system. “Nobody win,” repeats the driver, with a hint more vitriol.

  They pass directly in front of the stadium and the pulsing artificial lights from its exterior jumbotron cast shadows inside the taxi. Squinting upward, Peter catches dramatic replays from the match and then the final score: nil to nil. All of this commotion over nothing, he thinks. And then he eases back into his seat and shuts his eyes to the relentless light.

  A phalanx of security men in dark suits lingers at the entrance of the museum. In the spots where the temporary offices had once been, Mercedes, Bentleys and Audis are parked. Their sleek curving black chassis are menacing, like a pack of predatory cats. All except for one. Parked in a far corner, as if it must have been the first to arrive, is the white Chevy. Atop a marble flight of stairs with a crimson runner, a woman in a ball gown cradles an iPad. She checks Peter’s name against a list and then opens a glass door for him.

  The soft and pleasant sound of intelligent conversation, which in any language forms a universal melody, fills his ears. A waiter in a white waist jacket offers Peter a flute of champagne. As he takes it from the silver tray, he hears his name called from across the grand atrium, as if it were being called not only for his behalf, but also as an announcement to the entire party. With a wide heedless grin, Deniz approaches him, his arms outstretched as if he were pacing a high wire and might, at any moment, lose his balance and topple back to earth from the altitudes where he walks. He grabs Peter by the biceps and kisses each of his cheeks, causing a measure of champagne to splash across the bib of Peter’s tuxedo shirt, but Deniz takes no notice as he places his arm triumphantly around Peter’s shoulders and surveys the party with him. “You’re late,” says Deniz. “I was worried you might not come.”

  “I hit some traffic.”

  “Because of tonight’s match?”

  Peter nods.

  “Who won?”

  “Nil to nil.”

  “He’s printing money with that football stadium,” says Deniz. His eyes cast out over the teeming atrium, to its center, where beside an abstract stone and plaster sculpture Murat entertains an ever-widening circle of guests, the men in black tie with lithe, ornamental women affixed to their arms, the weighty hems of their gowns brushing the polished marble floors, and the patrons of the museum, women so bedecked with jewels that it seems as though their husbands serve no other purpose than to catch a necklace or bracelet if its clasp might fail. Catherine stands among them, next to her husband, and her forced smile seems to rise and fall as unconsciously and with as little joy as the tide against an abandoned beach. “I suppose we can’t complain about the traffic,” Deniz continues. “The stadium has, after all, paid for this.” He glances up at the museum’s vaulted ceiling and the glass walls which miraculously carry its burden, and then Deniz kicks the toe of one of his patent leather slippers at the floor. “Have you seen Kristin?” he asks.

  “Not yet,” says Peter. His eyes avoid the crowd where she likely lingers.

  “I imagine she’ll find you.”

  “Did my finished frames arrive?”

  “They did,” answers Deniz, nodding toward the main gallery, a cavernous white room off the atrium. “You want me to take you to see them?”

  “I’d rather see them on my own.”

  “Why this mystery about your next exhibit? You haven’t shown me a thing.”

  “If you didn’t like the work, would you still display it?” asks Peter.

  Deniz reminds Peter about the Karsh exhibit, how he disliked Karsh and thought he was little more than a paparazzo, but nevertheless his photographs remain hung in the permanent collection. “So yes, I would still display your work if I didn’t like it.”

  “Then why should I show you—or anyone—the photos in advance?”

  Murat’s voice breaks above the crowd, cutting off Peter and Deniz’s conversation. He calls across the party for his son, gesturing with a wave of his hand toward the boy, who stands in a nearby corner. In the past few years, William has taken on an uncomfortable resemblance to Deniz, which is to say it has become increasingly evident that he bears no resemblance to either Murat or Catherine. In response to this, Murat has taken greater pains to keep William close by his side, as if proximity might quash any speculations about his son’s paternity. If Murat can’t replicate a genetic resemblance to his son, he’s engineered that resemblance in other ways. William’s impeccably tailored tuxedo matches his father’s down to the studs, and although Peter can’t hear from such a distance what they’re talking about, he can see the way William holds the crowd in suspense and the manner in which Murat shows him off, as if the boy’s innate grace evidences Murat’s own brilliance in much the same way the light of the moon is, at night, the clearest and only evidence of the invisible sun.

  Murat drinks deeply from his champagne, ensconced in his happiness and expensive clothes, as his son carries his fair share of the conversation with their guests. William addresses those gathered around him with whole paragraphs, his words garnering appreciative nods, both for the elegance with which he speaks about the museum and for the well-bred young man he has so unmistakably become. Murat glances about for a server and, unable to find one, he carelessly places his empty flute on the pedestal of the nearby sculpture. Deniz curses under his breath and barrels across the party, elbowing his way through the knots of patrons who, thanks to either a hefty check written to the museum or a favor granted by one of the sizable donors, received invitations to the evening’s celebration. The group encircling Murat continues to listen with rapt attention as William holds forth on the design specifics of this new wing, the particulars of which he has learned through the afternoons he apprentices in his father’s office.

  Deniz fails to break into the circle where his son now stands at the center. When he reaches after the empty flute of champagne, he catches a disapproving glance from Murat, who doesn’t appreciate Deniz’s proximity to William in a crowd, which could, conceivably, discern the resemblance between them. Before Deniz can step away, a few of those who have been listening to Murat and William notice him clearing the empty champagne flute and they offer him their empties as well. Deniz doesn’t protest. He bows his head, not so much in subservience but rather in a reflexive fear that he might compromise his son in some unforeseen way, and with the stems of four or five empty crystal flutes hanging from the spaces between his fingers, Deniz shuffles into the kitchen in search of someone to pass them off to.

  * * *

  “Not even a thank-you from Murat,” says Kristin.

  Peter hadn’t noticed her come up alongside him. Her arms are crossed, she drinks a large glass of rosé instead of champagne, and instead of a ball gown she is wearing a black, knee-length cocktail dress, which is wrinkled in a few places, as if she had taken it from a drawer where it had lain unused for many months. Kristin sips from her glass and continues, “How’s Catherine?”

  “Fine,” answers Peter as he glances in her direction.

  Standing next to her husband, Catherine wears a white low-cut evening gown, which is brutal in its elegance, its front dipping into a slim V that exposes
a plunging strip of skin, which, familiar as her body is to Peter, appears illicit in such proximity to her husband and son. He wonders how Kristin’s relationship with Catherine has developed in the many months since that afternoon at Deniz’s apartment. Catherine and Peter never again spoke of the twenty-four hours when she had tried to leave Murat. All they could do was carry on. And this is what they have done, with Kristin’s help. If Kristin had engineered the events that brought about that crisis, she similarly engineered the events that had allowed Catherine, Peter, Murat, Deniz and even William to reconcile.

  Kristin glances curiously at Peter’s neck. “Your bow tie,” she says, reaching toward him. “It’s crooked.”

  Peter feels beneath his chin. He torques on the knot, trying to fix it.

  “That won’t do,” says Kristin. Without asking permission she yanks on the running end. She hands Peter her drink, so that both of his hands are occupied. She then begins to reassemble the knot as she continues, “I overheard that the photos for your next exhibit have arrived,” she says. “What’s the theme?”

  “You’ll have to wait for the opening. I’m not telling anyone.”

  “Why’s that?” Kristin asks.

  “Maybe I just want to see who will come knowing nothing about the photographs except that they were shot by me. You’ll be there, won’t you?”

  “Straighten up,” Kristin orders while finishing the last twist on his bow tie. Peter squares back his shoulders. “There,” she says, making a final adjustment. “You’re a mess without me.” She takes her rosé from Peter and has a sip, admiring the work she’s done.

  “You’ll be at my exhibit, won’t you?” he asks again.

  “No, unfortunately I won’t be, Peter.”

  He says nothing, demanding an explanation through his silence.

  “I’ve been meaning to speak with you about it,” says Kristin. “A cable arrived earlier in the week. It’s time for me to go.”

  “To go? Go where?”

  “Back to the States until I get my next posting sorted out.”

  “The States?” Peter’s voice mixes with his suddenly elevated breath. A shot of panic stabs him in the stomach and then flows gradually outward, like blood from a wound, pooling into his legs, feet, arms, hands. His mouth is dry and he closes and opens it once like an idiot. He looks above him and feels as if the roof might tumble down, as if this building made of glass is no building at all, but rather an illusion for him to be crushed beneath.

  “I had requested another extension on my tour, but it got denied.”

  Peter shuts his mouth. He wills the roof above him to lift, and gradually it does as time and space reassume their familiar proportions, those infinitely small units of measure that are finite all the same. Peter begins to nod and slowly his face contorts into a slight expression of disgust at the irony. The only person among them who can escape the web of interests and counterinterests that have kept them in place is Kristin herself, the architect of it all. “It doesn’t seem fair,” says Peter.

  “What doesn’t seem fair?” asks Kristin.

  “You leaving after you convinced all of us to stay.” Peter draws silent for a moment. “You leaving after you convinced Catherine to stay.”

  “Catherine made her own decision, so did each of you.”

  “The woman in your car that day, William’s birth mother, where is she?” Peter asks.

  Kristin stares across the room, to an unknown point.

  “Answer my question,” says Peter. “That afternoon, when Deniz was walking back from the İstiklal, I was watching from the window. Deniz didn’t recognize that woman in your car. So who was she?”

  “I don’t see how it’s relevant,” mutters Kristin.

  “That wasn’t William’s mother.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “After that day I traveled to the Central Authority,” says Peter. “I waited in the lines. I even paid a bribe. Do you know what they showed me in their records? That William’s mother has been dead for eleven years. If you leave, I’ll tell Catherine.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Because you convinced her to stay on false premises.”

  “You won’t do that,” adds Kristin.

  Approaching them through the crowd is a man, conspicuous in that he doesn’t wear a tuxedo, but a pair of khakis, a white oxford shirt and rep tie with navy blazer. The rubber soles of his docksiders squeak meekly on the marble floor. He is muscular but gangly, like a rower, with a well-brushed drape of sandy brown hair. He carries his drink, a bottle of IPA, with his elbow bent at a perfect right angle. “There you are,” he says, the relief evident in his voice as he finds Kristin. “Sorry, the caterers had me go all the way to the kitchen to find a beer.” Then he stops, holding up an index finger. “Wait, don’t tell me,” he says. “You must be Peter.” Kristin introduces them properly and her husband has the personality of a Labrador retriever, saying how Kristin has always kept “her work at work and her home at home,” and how after hearing so much about “the elusive Peter” he wondered if he’d ever have the chance “to at least meet before we leave.” Their conversation then turns to that departure, to the scramble of packing up their house, to the question of where their daughter will go to school in the States, and to what they plan to do with their last week or so in the city. “We are treating ourselves to one thing,” he says, glancing sheepishly downward at his docksiders. “It’s a total splurge. We’re going to get a suite at the Çırağan Palace Hotel. Neither of us has ever been. I hear it’s got the best view in the city.”

  He smiles at Kristin. But she is staring fixedly at Peter.

  Then the squelch of a microphone interrupts them. Deniz mounts a black stage in the corner of the atrium. He pulls down the microphone stand, which has been adjusted for a much taller man’s height. He makes brief introductory remarks, which welcome everyone to the opening of the museum’s new extension, and then he offers a summary of some of the Istanbul Modern’s upcoming programs, to include Peter’s “highly anticipated sophomore exhibit.”

  Peter listens, but he hardly hears the words. What he is thinking is that Kristin has, of course, been to the Çırağan Palace Hotel. According to Deniz that’s where the two of them first met. Why would she lie?

  Murat then assumes the stage with Catherine and William dutifully standing alongside him. He begins to speak about his family, their support of his various enterprises, and how he has asked them to the stage because he could not claim any success without acknowledging their contributions. When Murat offers a toast to his wife and son, the crowd lifts their champagne. So do Peter and Kristin, but neither of them drinks. They have already emptied their glasses. When Kristin’s husband swallows the last of his beer, he notices their empties. “I’ll get us another round,” he says but fumbles nervously with the glasses as he takes them and disappears across the reception.

  With Murat’s remarks out of the way, the gentle hum of conversation has resumed among the crowd. Once her husband is safely out of earshot, Kristin turns to Peter. “Did they tell you at the Central Authority how that girl died?” Peter gazes up at the stage, to where Deniz has taken the microphone from Murat and is now attending to the evening’s festivities. “You could have asked Deniz about William’s mother,” Kristin continues. “It would have saved you the trip … and the bribe.”

  “What does it matter how she died, all that matters is—”

  Kristin cuts him off. “A suicide, Peter. The girl whose name you saw was a suicide. But she wasn’t William’s mother, just a name, one that everyone else was ready to forget.” At the foot of the stage, a small, impenetrable circle of celebrants has once again formed around Catherine, Murat and William and a ripple of laughter rises up from the group. Deniz climbs down the stage behind them, again avoiding his son.

  But regardless of whatever clai
ms Kristin makes about this anonymous girl’s suicide, Peter continues to fixate on the Çırağan Palace, on catching Kristin in this lie. Why would she tell her husband that she’d never been? And the language he’d used to describe the place, that it “had the best view in the city.” Peter had heard that before. It was how Deniz talked about sunrise from a suite …

  “So who is William’s mother?” Peter asks clumsily, wishing to retract his words as soon as they depart, because he has already answered the question for himself. Kristin meets his awkwardness with a conversely elegant silence. “But why?” Peter eventually says, but he hardly speaks, it is as though he only mouths the sentence. “Why?” he repeats a bit louder.

  “Why,” answers Kristin, as if how is the question she’s prepared for, and had it been asked she would’ve explained her single night’s indiscretion with Deniz at the Çırağan during a low point in her marriage after her husband had refused to follow her here, how she had thought to get rid of the child but couldn’t bring herself to, how her husband had eventually agreed to stay with her but only if she’d register the child at the Central Authority under a phony name and never speak of it again, how she had used her position in the consulate to find Catherine and Murat, and, lastly, how from there she had arranged everything—Murat’s relationship with her, Peter’s relationship with Catherine, all of the events that had led up to this night. She had arranged it all to create a stable framework for her son, one that would keep him proximate to her, one that would allow her to glimpse him from time to time at her meetings with Murat, or to hear about him at her lunches with Catherine, a structure that allowed her to hold at least a tangential influence over his life, and now that he was grown, or at least grown enough, she had to move on. But Peter’s question, why? She struggles with the word.