Red Dress in Black and White

by Elliot Ackerman

  Murat recognized the root of this depression. How many conversations had they had about adopting? How many agencies, go-betweens and even traffickers had they spoken to? Only now, once a midwife had delivered the boy to a family in Esenler, a neighborhood they had always avoided, and from a mother whose name they would never know, only now did his wife finally reveal her true reservations. Murat understood Catherine’s crippling disappointment. Were he able, he would have given her a child in the normal way. But on assuming his father’s burdens, he had lost the ability to become a father himself. He of all people understood the psychic paralysis of wanting something too much, so much that you cannot even say what it is you want. Yes, he understood. But he had yet to forgive her for wanting something that he could not provide.

  Murat glanced toward a cordoned-off section of the waiting area. Enclosed behind a soundproof glass wall and door were a dozen or so padded recliners and a table of refreshments—coffee, pastries, fresh juice in large glass carafes. Inside, a separate digital counter hung on the wall. The number displayed was far lower than the one in the waiting room for foreign nationals. It was set at 016. The few people inside the glass room lingered, watching a television that was not bolted to the wall, but rather stood on a console, and that played movies identical to those outside, comedies mostly, but with no subtitles. This was the waiting room for U.S. Citizen Services.

  Murat glanced at the paper ticket in his hand. He tried to calculate how much longer this would all take. The soundproof door opened. A teenager with a cascade of floppy brown hair and a polo shirt tucked into his khakis departed, holding a new passport. A wake of noise trailed behind him. Murat could suddenly hear the movie in English and the voices of the few people ensconced behind the soundproof walls. All of them were laughing along.

  * * *

  Eventually his number came up. Built along the far wall of the waiting area were a half dozen interview booths, where on one side there was a counter and on the other side there was a consular officer perched on a high chair. The interviewee didn’t have a chair, but rather stood, presumably so that the interview didn’t last too long. A thick glass pane with a circle of pinkie-size holes drilled into its center like a shot-out target partitioned the booth so that the two parties could speak to, but not reach, one another. Beneath the glass was a slot to pass documents. The setup reminded Murat of the visiting station in a prison.

  Murat had brought his leather attaché, which was a fine calfskin case Catherine had given him the year before, after his father’s death, when he had finally taken control of the company. She had thought the gift might boost his confidence as he assumed the role of chief executive, or so she had told him, and he now clutched the attaché in a double grip like a player about to toss a forward pass. As he hoisted it onto the counter, he felt uncertain about whether he had ever found that elusive confidence. From its satin interior, he removed a sheaf of documents. While he quickly sorted through them, the consular officer opposite him turned over her shoulder. Another officer stepped behind her, a young man with a side part in his blond hair wearing a Brooks Brothers suit similar in style to Murat’s own, except in the fit, which was more carefully tailored. He cupped his hand to his mouth and whispered something into his colleague’s ear. She then gathered her things while the young man installed himself across from Murat and asked vacantly, “Size nasıl yardım edebilirim?” He logged on to the desktop computer in front of him, hardly even glancing in Murat’s direction.

  Murat continued to silently leaf through his documents. He didn’t want to answer the young man in Turkish as his English was impeccable, something he had worked at over many years. Reading the language had come far more easily to him than speaking it. When he and Catherine had first lived together, Murat would, with religious devotion, watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood each morning. The slow cadence of the show helped him to pick apart the spoken language. When he had an early class, Catherine would diligently record episodes for him, herself becoming engrossed in the show, finding appeal in the contained world it imagined. The two of them took to watching episodes together, making whole nights of it with popcorn. And his English gradually improved. When a guest of theirs once noticed the episodes on the DVR, Murat turned ashen. Without hesitation, Catherine said she was considering a degree in child psychology. She was watching for research, with an ambition to one day create her own children’s program. With no prompting at all she had come to her husband’s defense, understanding implicitly the importance of preserving his fragile dignity, at least back then, before he’d so damaged her own.

  Standing in front of the consular officer, without his American wife, Murat felt the English he had struggled to master might now help his son, so he didn’t respond in Turkish, but waited for the consular officer to repeat himself, which he did. “And how may I help you?”

  Murat placed his open attaché on the floor so it leaned against his leg. He slid his documents beneath the glass partition. “I’m here about my son.” He explained that he and his American wife had recently adopted William and that they wanted to submit the appropriate naturalization forms. “The N-400 I believe is correct,” said Murat, while the consular officer reviewed the sheaf of papers Murat had submitted: his own birth certificate, William’s adoption certificate from the Turkish Central Authority, a copy of Murat’s university degree, his Turkish marriage license, a few bank statements. Murat hadn’t collected the documents according to any criteria. He had made his own criteria: an assemblage of what he thought were the essential bits of paper that established his life.

  The consular officer became lost in the confusion of documents, sorting through them with both hands as if he were tearing away tissue paper to find the prize at the bottom of a gift-wrapped box. He gave less than a second’s consideration to each, returning them facedown to their folder until he had cleared them from his desk.

  He glanced up at Murat. “Do you have your wife’s passport?”

  Murat reached into his suit jacket’s internal breast pocket, where he’d tucked her passport for safekeeping. He slid it under the glass. The consular officer flipped through the book. He swiped the bar code on its front flap through a scanner. A readout of data flashed up on his screen.

  A pleasant gust of breeze landed against the back of Murat’s neck. He turned around. Above him a ceiling fan had begun to churn the waiting room’s stale air. The fan’s mechanism wobbled and it made a metronomic clicking sound. He watched the consular officer, while the rhythmic click, click, click of the fan kept the time.

  The consular officer swiveled his computer screen toward Murat. “From what I gather, you and your wife have resided here the last three years. However, I don’t see an American marriage license. Do you have one?”

  Murat bent over and searched his attaché case, as if perhaps the nonexistent document could be in there. He hadn’t known what the complicating factor would be for William, but he had felt certain one would present itself. His son had no greater claim to American citizenship than he did, despite the boy’s given name, despite who his adoptive mother was. Murat had, from the outset, thought there was something unnatural in him petitioning for this favor of citizenship and, when presented with this obstacle, Murat felt relief that his efforts might fail and that his son, like him, might remain with but one nationality, that the boy might remain pure in this way. But as he lifted his glance from the attaché, so his eyes met those of the consular officer, that sense of relief shamed him. How could he deny his son anything? He then shook his head, conceding that he did not have an American marriage license, but only a Turkish one.

  “Both you and your son would need to establish residence in the U.S. for a period of two years before either of you could submit an N-400 naturalization form. That would then take another year to process. These cases are complicated, but usually that’s the protocol.” The consular officer gathered up Murat’s papers.

  �
�I can’t do that, my business is here,” said Murat.

  “I’m sorry then”—the officer glanced down at the top sheet, reminding himself of Murat’s name—“Mr. Yaşar, this isn’t something we can solve today, perhaps …” Then he did a double take down at his form. “What is your business?”

  “Construction.”

  “Are you that Yaşar?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you part of the Yaşar family?”

  He didn’t want to disabuse the young consular officer of the belief that there still was a Yaşar family and not just a collection of inherited real estate holdings that he could hardly afford to maintain, or manage to sell. He was like a vanquished noble—his suit, his calfskin attaché, his father’s broken Patek Philippe—and like any vanquished noble he clung to dreams of reestablishing a bygone order.

  Murat nodded.

  The consular officer meticulously returned the papers in the exact manner Murat had presented them. He then clutched the folder in both hands, holding it like a tablet of commandments. “Your case is obviously complex,” he said. Behind Murat the fan in the waiting room continued its wobbling rotations: click, click, click, click. This was the only sound between them as Murat waited for the officer to finish his thought. “Under such circumstances we could take a closer look at your case file … If you’d be willing, I’d like to schedule another interview with someone in my office in which we’d have more time to discuss the matter.” He glanced past Murat, into the waiting room. His gaze fell somewhere near the Filipina woman. “We can do it at a place and time that’s more convenient for you. That will afford a bit more discretion.”

  Murat thanked him and agreed. He also couldn’t help himself and made mention of how inconvenient scheduling this appointment had been, to which the young officer readily apologized, happy to indulge Murat’s grievance if doing so would facilitate a next meeting. He copied down all of Murat’s contact information. He then handed back the file of documents as well as one of his business cards. Its seal was gold embossed. Murat read the consular officer’s name, but also the name of his office, which was listed right below: Cultural Affairs.

  * * *

  Murat went from the consulate to his office, where he put in a few hours’ work, before returning to a dark house. A window had been left open and a breeze passed through the foyer, making the crystal chandelier’s pendants tinkle and chime in weak celebration, like many gently toasting glasses. Murat stood very still, trying to hear where his family was. A few months before, he had taken out a sizable mortgage to finance the home. The furniture from their walk-up in Cihangir couldn’t fill the new house. The living room had a love seat instead of a sofa. The dining room had a small, round kitchen table. The walls were mostly bare. He had often thought how he might fill them, but less so in recent days.

  He climbed the stairs. The door to his room was shut and Catherine was likely asleep on its other side. Further up the hallway, he could hear William cooing. Murat entered the vast nursery, which they had yet to carpet. The unpolished floorboards creaked as he approached his son, who rested on his stomach in a wicker bassinet beneath a window without curtains. It was a mostly empty room and there wasn’t a chair for Murat to sit in. He flipped William onto his back and then stroked the boy’s primitive whorl of black hair, allowing it to slip through his fingers like fine sand as he considered his son’s dark complexion. “Do you really want to be an American?” he whispered to the boy. Murat glanced up at the high ceiling. “Such a big, lonely room.”

  William clasped his father’s pinkie and began to suck, searching, it seemed, for the breast he didn’t have. Murat reached for a nearly full bottle of formula tucked into the bassinet’s corner. He offered its rubber nipple to William, who refused it, preferring instead the nub of empty flesh. Murat continued to pet the boy’s head, allowing him to suck. When he pulled his hand away, William began to cry. Murat again offered William the pinkie, which he took. This silenced him.

  Murat couldn’t leave now. He crouched over the bassinet, glancing around the room’s four corners for a toy, or anything that would occupy an infant. Murat found nothing, so he unclasped his watch. He dangled it from its band just above William’s nose. Outside was overcast and dim moonlight filtered through the clouds into the room and when that light caught the watch’s gold case it glinted softly. William reached at the air, making little fists as he clutched after the glinting light.

  The floorboards behind Murat creaked.

  Catherine wore a black silk robe, its tie loosely knotted in the front. Her smooth, bare legs revealed themselves up to the thigh as she approached him, as if with each step her body was suggesting a first naked movement from behind a curtain. Her lean stomach was exposed and her small breasts cupped against the silk. She was a mother but had sacrificed no part of that body for her child. However, on closer inspection, her husband could see that this wasn’t true—her depression had taken a physical toll. Her eyes were red rimmed, though she slept more than her child did. Her cheeks were gaunt and pallid, as if she had lost every nutrient in her blood. Dim as the nursery was, she was squinting—the room she had come out of was far darker.

  Catherine crossed her arms and glanced into the crib. “Don’t let him ruin your father’s watch,” she said, observing her son, who now gummed on the white-gold case of the Patek Philippe.

  “The watch has always been broken,” said Murat. “What else can he do to it?”

  Six o’clock on that morning

  Peter opens his apartment door barefooted. Catherine steps over the threshold, clutching William, who is asleep with his cheek cradled against her shoulder and his arms hung behind her neck as limp as a pair of heavy wet ropes. Peter helps her into the living room, where they lay the sleeping boy gently across the sofa. She has managed to carry William from the taxi up four flights of stairs. Catherine stretches her back and Peter watches the curving, upward articulation of her body. Neither of them says anything, not wanting to wake him. Peter then disappears down the hallway and returns with a blanket. Catherine tosses her black silk blazer across the arm of the sofa where Peter’s camera bag hangs by its strap. The two of them creep into the bedroom. They sit on top of the mussed sheets where they have lain through many afternoons insensate from lovemaking with the sun pouring in from the westerly window across the bed. But now, in the morning, the room is dim.

  “Just a day,” she whispers, “enough time for me to get William some clothes and to book a flight to the States.” Her voice accelerates as she speaks, becoming exasperated. “Murat says he’s going to file divorce papers here and then it’ll all be over, then I’ll have to stay. Not even a day, really, just enough time to get us sorted out, to get William out of here with me. Is that okay? Not even a day—”

  Peter raises a hand to quiet her. Catherine’s nervous hedging, asking for something while she insists that she asks for nothing, is about to wake William.

  “Get cleaned up,” whispers Peter. “Then let’s talk this through.”

  Her eyes fix beyond the bedroom door, to where William sleeps. The two of them return to the living room. She kisses William’s head and tucks the blanket up around his shoulders. She then walks into the back of the apartment. The shower turns on.

  Peter sits in a chair across from the sofa. William begins to stir. Beneath his eyelids strange images seem to flicker and die. He appears to be dreaming, floating or falling through some world contained entirely inside him. He kicks away Peter’s blanket and now his feet poke from its bottom. They hold the large, awkward promise of how much the boy has left to grow. A familiar twist of anxiety cinches down in Peter’s stomach. He had never wanted to meet William because he had never wanted to obligate himself. He could know Catherine and keep her at an arm’s length, but he couldn’t treat a boy that way.

  William tucks his knees to his chest. His feet disappear under the blanket.r />
  Peter sits very still in his chair. Past the window a gray mist lingers in the already gray streets. Satellite antennas jut from the baked, broken angles of the rooftops. Clotheslines sag heavily with yesterday’s wash. The morning is becoming brighter. As Peter begins to draw the shade, allowing William to sleep a little more, a muezzin calls the prayer from a minaret a few blocks away. When the first thin note crackles from the speakers, a small flock of birds leaps from their perch several houses down. They fly straight and then all at once make a sudden turn, wheeling over the street and disappearing into the glare from the sun, which sweeps across the rooftops.

  William wakes up.

  Lying on his back he stretches his limbs. Then he opens his eyes. His gaze rebounds through the room and lands on his mother’s blazer slung across the arm of the sofa. He crawls over and snatches it to his chest. This knocks Peter’s camera bag to the floor. “She’s just in the back,” he says, nodding deeper into his apartment. William glances down the hall, but keeps his stare cautiously fixed on Peter, who slowly, as if trying not to spook a skittish animal, picks up his camera bag. “Why don’t you let me hang that up?” Peter points to the silk blazer William clutches to his chest. The boy lets go and Peter crosses the living room and drapes it on a coatrack by the apartment’s entry. He notices William glancing at the camera bag. “Take it out,” says Peter. “It’s the one I showed you last night.”

  William opens the bag’s canvas flap. He stares inside but doesn’t reach after anything. Peter sits next to him on the sofa, removes the Nikon and places it in the boy’s hands. To turn the camera on, the shutter release and power button have to be held down together. The manufacturers implemented this cumbersome sequencing to keep the battery from inadvertently draining, but the result is a camera that requires practice if one is to use it for quick-action shots. William has to awkwardly stretch his fingers so that they can simultaneously reach the two buttons. “Hold it like that,” says Peter, as he wraps the boy’s small grip around either side of the Nikon. “Now press.”