Red Dress in Black and White

by Elliot Ackerman

  “What if it doesn’t let up?” she asks, her eyes fixed on the rain and what seems to be some immovable point in the distance.

  “It will eventually.”

  They stand next to one another and William remains perched on the stool in front of them. Minutes pass. There is the sound of approaching thunder. The terrier begins to yip skyward, turning circles, as if chasing some invisible pursuer. Static clouds the television screen, and then overcomes the image altogether as the brunt of the storm passes above them and scrambles the signal. Without anything to watch, William glances at his mother. “Are we still meeting Peter?”

  That the weather would keep Peter away had not occurred to Catherine. She reaches into her pocket, removing her phone. She has no messages and debates whether to call him. She surmises that Peter is with Murat but wonders what has delayed him. Perhaps Murat has convinced Peter to abandon her. Perhaps the weight of meeting her husband has proven too much for Peter. Then of course there is the truth about William. Would Peter care? Catherine had always thought the fact of William’s adoption would simplify his relationship with Peter. After all, her son isn’t Murat’s by blood. Peter wouldn’t have to contend with having betrayed William’s father. Everything but blood is erasable. Without blood William could be one man’s son as much as another’s.

  The attendant glances at the phone in Catherine’s hand. “Let me step outside so you can have some privacy for your call.” He takes his waterproof jacket from its peg on the door. Catherine refuses, insisting that the weather outside is too bad, that she doesn’t need anything.

  “No, no, you have your private business,” says the attendant. “It’s no trouble. I should really check the drains around the lot. They often clog and then flood over.” Before Catherine can say more, he is out the door. She can feel William staring up at her. His look falls like an accusation, as if he were asking his mother why she couldn’t convince any good man to stay, no matter how insistent she was. Spurred on by this look, she dials Peter.

  It rings, but no answer.

  She tries a second time and then a third. While she listens to the ringtones she wonders how she could have allowed herself to become dependent on Peter, so much so that she can’t even get out of this tollbooth without his help. He had offered her money, which she had refused. Now she can’t afford even a cab, and if she had money for a cab, where would she go? Home is no longer an option, neither is Peter’s apartment. She stands, motionless, with the phone to her ear. Each ring that passes unanswered sounds like a jubilant ridicule, a chiming laughter that proclaims all of her weaknesses, all of the many ways she has made a mess of her life. She wants so desperately for Peter to answer, for his voice to interrupt and claim the line. When she tries a fourth time, there are no rings, not the slightest hope that he will pick up. Her call goes directly to voicemail.

  Catherine tucks her phone into her pocket. Her first instinct is to step to the window, which is right above where William sits, and to look out into the storm in search of the attendant. Then she hears the toes of his rain boots striking the threshold as he knocks the mud from their soles. The door swings open. Rivulets of water pour through the creases of his rain jacket and pool on the floor. He rushes to close the door behind him in an effort to shield Catherine and William from the weather outside. When he appears, Catherine feels as if a weight she had not yet noticed is suddenly lifted from her chest. An involuntary smile forces itself upon her.

  “Let me help you with that,” she says, grasping the attendant’s jacket at the shoulders while he makes an awkward turn in the cramped tollbooth and frees his arms from the sleeves.

  “Thank you,” he says, nodding sheepishly.

  She imagines it has been some time since anyone has taken care of him and she can feel her power to grant him this. She takes the wet jacket by the hood and rehangs it on the peg behind the door. She offers to make him tea. Again, he thanks her. When he stands in the corner, she insists that he sit on the canvas stool he had taken out for her. She then asks him where to fill the electric kettle. He tells her that he has another water bottle in his bag. When he motions to get it for her, she won’t hear of it. She rummages through his personals, quickly removing the bottle. She sets out a cup for him, places a tea bag in it and waits for the water to boil. William continues to watch his television. Aside from the program’s low rhythms the tollbooth is quiet.

  Catherine stands across from the attendant. Chilled from the storm, he begins to rub his hands together, blowing into his clasped palms to warm them. She flirts with the idea that he might help her, that if Peter never answers her calls the attendant might care for her, at least for a bit.

  His tea is ready. Catherine pours his cup and steam uncurls across its surface. The attendant nods gratefully. When he reaches for the tea, she carefully passes it to him. Then she notices something on his hand. The rainwater has left a stain around his ring finger. Before Catherine can get a better look, the attendant sits back on the stool and begins to sip his tea. A green color faintly bleeds onto the attendant’s dark skin. What is it, she wonders. Each time he raises his cup to his lips, Catherine stares. The attendant smiles self-consciously in return. He asks if she is sure that she doesn’t want a cup of the tea for herself. She only shakes her head, refusing his offer with silence while she continues to puzzle over where this stain has come from. Then she realizes—the color is seeping out from his wedding ring, which isn’t gold after all, but rather forged from some other, less valuable substance, which would have sold for nothing and taken him nowhere.

  PART IV

  2013

  Three o’clock on that afternoon

  Peter sits on his sofa and through the silence he listens for Murat. The toilet whines as it refills. Water hisses out of the sink. The metal ring with the folded hand towel swivels on its joint, clanging against the rectangular subway tiles. By these sounds Peter tracks Murat as he moves through his apartment. He visualizes Murat’s every step. Straining to keep track of him in this way requires complete focus and for this reason Peter is startled when his phone rings.

  He thrusts his hand in his pocket to mute it.

  “Get that if you want,” says Murat. He ambles into the living room but doesn’t sit next to Peter. Instead he steps to the rain-streaked window that overlooks the Bosphorus. The apartment is warm, fogging the pane. Murat wipes a circle with his hand and looks outside. Before the storm arrived, most households had taken their laundry down from the wash lines strung between the buildings. Peter imagines the heavy, damp heaps scattered across kitchen counters and over the backs of sofas in the many cramped apartments whose occupants can’t afford a dryer. The wash on a few of the lines hasn’t been taken down. A child’s brightly colored shorts. A patterned housedress. White shirts flapping like so many flags of surrender. Perhaps these households hoped the storm would clean their laundry twice over. These abandoned possessions dance mournfully above the street, like the torn sails of a ghost ship.

  Murat turns away from the window. He sits next to Peter on the sofa, crosses one leg over the other and folds his palms across his knee. “Take the call if you need to,” he once again insists. He then leans forward and thumbs through the books scattered across Peter’s coffee table, editions of photos mostly. Murat offers Peter no privacy, for he must know that it is Catherine who’s calling and he must relish forcing Peter to sit with him while her calls go unanswered.

  If Peter had anticipated a heated confrontation with Murat, it doesn’t manifest. An hour before, when Peter had exited the taxi and approached Murat’s double-parked Mercedes, he had half-expected their introduction to turn violent. Peter had his fists clutched to his sides in expectation, hoping that if provoked he might be the one to land the first blow, assuming things would come to blows. Instead, Murat had approached him with his hand outstretched. “You must be Peter,” he had said. Peter didn’t answer, but rather unclenche
d his fists so that the two of them could shake hands. Murat had then parked his car in an empty space on the street and invited himself up to the apartment. As they climbed the stairs Murat had asked about the building—the terms of Peter’s lease, if utilities were included, whether the landlord was responsive to maintenance requests, what Peter thought about the planned renovation to the building’s modest façade and the inevitable disturbance this would create with workmen climbing on scaffolds, obscuring his view, at least for a few months. Murat had inquired about this last subject as Peter was unlocking the front door and Peter had said that he didn’t know of any planned renovation. “Ah, well, perhaps they haven’t told the tenants yet. I came across the approved paperwork a couple of weeks ago.” Then when the door opened, Murat had added, “That’s a shame, too, because you have such a nice view.”

  Murat had settled himself in the middle of the sofa so that Peter would have to sit awkwardly close to him, or stand. When Peter had offered Murat a drink—tea, coffee, water—Murat had asked if he had anything stronger. Peter had disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a tumbler of whiskey. The previous tenant had left behind the bottle. Peter had never touched it, but it was all that he had and he thought nothing of serving something of questionable palatability to Murat. For himself, he poured a glass of tap water.

  Neither of them had wanted to raise the issue of Catherine and William. That first hour was spent in a collegial standoff. “I understand you take photographs,” Murat had said. Peter had looked up at the walls, at his portraits that he had framed and hung. “I do,” he had replied. Murat had mentioned his involvement with the Istanbul Modern, how he had overseen plans for its renovation and expansion. “You’ve visited, of course?” Murat had asked. “Of course,” Peter had answered. Murat had guided their initial back-and-forth, dictating its pace. Like sportsmen warming up before a match, they had volleyed genial snippets of conversation to one another. Neither of them had said much, asking simple questions, giving simple answers. Murat had then excused himself to the back of the apartment, ostensibly to use the toilet. When Murat returned, he didn’t sit on the sofa, he stood by the window. And Peter now watches him as he looks out across the city, toward the water and in the direction of the park with its shaded elms and empty playgrounds where, unknown to Murat, Catherine waits with their son.

  “So where is she?” Murat asks.

  Their entire interaction up to this point has been framed around this single question. Peter can feel how Murat has lured him in, establishing a rapport between them, no matter how tenuous, so that he can strike out after this one fact. He hadn’t said Catherine’s name, only she. By acknowledging that he understood Murat’s question, Peter would be affirming what exists between him and Catherine, the depths of their relationship, its illicit nature, that when speaking she, Catherine is the only person to which either of them could be referring. Peter understands the weight of his own response. His answer could free him from Catherine, and from William. A sickening temptation invites Peter to reveal their location, which would return his interrupted life to him. He glances at Murat, who continues to look away from him and out of the window. The rain has been falling steadily for the past hour. He remembers the birds from that morning, how he had taught William to photograph them in the instant when they would land or take flight. He wonders where they have flown off to in the storm. When the weather clears, they will return, fluttering between his window ledge and the others. After he leaves this city, whenever he decides to journey home across the ocean, someone else will watch them from this same window. It is inevitable. And jealously, he recognizes this inevitability, and that he will have to answer Murat’s question.

  “She doesn’t want you to know where she is.”

  Murat turns away from the window. He steps around the back of the sofa so that he stands menacingly beside Peter. Murat inhales once, heavily, bows his head and then clasps his hands in front of him. “Okay, but now I am asking you to tell me.”

  “Have you tried calling her?”

  Murat unclasps his hands and crosses his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you call her for me?” He glances down at Peter, toward his pants pocket and the phone that had been ringing earlier.

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to trick her into speaking with you,” says Peter.

  “That would be a betrayal?”

  Peter returns his glance, sensing the trap he’s been baited into.

  “Do you think she hasn’t already betrayed you?” adds Murat. He sits next to Peter, who edges away from him on the sofa. “Did she ever tell you the truth about William? Perhaps you should call her and ask.”

  Peter stands. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not his father, surely she at least told you that.”

  If before Peter had felt concerned that Murat might lose control and turn their altercation physical, now he feels that he might be the one to lose control. His hands once again ball into fists at his sides. “Who is the father?” Peter asks, forcing the question out of his clenched jaw.

  “I have my suspicions,” answers Murat.

  “Suspicions? You don’t know?”

  “I never wanted to.”

  As he makes this admission, Murat’s eyes dip toward his hands, which are clutched together in his lap. Peter’s first and most obvious inclination is to assume Murat is emotionally shut off and that this is the reason he doesn’t want to learn who William’s father is. Or perhaps Murat fears that an inquiry into William’s paternity might reveal further—yet to be imagined—infidelities on Catherine’s part. Peter can imagine whole rosters of lovers before him who had sustained her through the course of her marriage. Parsing the details of those liaisons would only further humiliate her husband and interfere with what Murat could offer the boy. Murat had remained willfully ignorant not only as a protective measure for himself, but as a protective measure for his son, who isn’t really his son, just a child, as anonymous as any he could hope to encounter in the street. And in Peter’s mind a question forms: Would it make sense for him to remain similarly ignorant if he were to factor into William’s life?

  “Why don’t you try to reach her?” says Murat. “Ask her who William’s father is.” He again gestures toward Peter’s phone, further asserting that he knows it was Catherine who had been calling. “I have every reason to believe she’d tell you.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes shuttling to the ceiling as if imagining how the scene might play out. Then he returns his gaze to Peter. “In fact, you would be doing Catherine a favor. It would be a relief for her.”

  “I’m not calling.”

  “Then I will.” Murat dials her number. He waits on the line as it rings and then clicks over to voicemail. He calls once more, again with no answer. Shrugging his shoulders, Murat slides his phone back into the breast pocket of his gray suit jacket. “This is all very embarrassing for me. And bad for business, too.”

  At the mention of Murat’s business interests, Peter stands and approaches the window. “I think you should leave.” Sitting alone on the sofa, Murat ignores Peter’s request and continues to complain about his real estate holdings, the depressed market since the Gezi Park riots and the depreciating Turkish lira. He speaks at length about the incomplete Beşiktaş football stadium and the incurred losses on Yaşar Zeytinburnu 4. “This scandal in my personal life won’t help me get any relief from my creditors.” He jabbers on, behaving as though he were playing a part Catherine had assigned to him, that of the inattentive and business-obsessed husband. Eventually his monologue comes to an end. An uncomfortable silence ensues. Peter glances over his shoulder. Murat’s left leg is still crossed over his right and his arms are now spread along the back of the sofa, as if he owns it, while in one hand he palms his phone and lazily sorts through emails and surfs the Web, navigating the interface with
only his thumb.

  Peter again asks him to leave.

  “That’s fine, but I am asking you to tell me where she is.” Murat returns to his phone, apparently engrossed in whatever he’s reading, welded to his spot on Peter’s sofa.

  Rain continues to streak the glass. The wind comes in uneven gusts, jerking the clothing that has been forgotten on the wash line. Among the trousers, shirts and socks, Peter notices a dress. It is a deep red, stained almost maroon by the rain, but Peter imagines that when it is dry it would be a bright red, like the woman’s dress he had photographed months before. The photos he had taken of her had gone nowhere. They existed for his personal collection alone. The other image of the woman in the red dress had achieved a singular status, capturing the consciousness of an entire movement, a consciousness which has since dissipated. However, for Peter, that photo serves only as a reminder of his own inadequacies. In someone else’s hands the woman in the red dress had become an iconic subject. In his hands the subject had been relegated to nothing, to obscurity.

  “How long are we going to wait here?” Murat calls over his shoulder.

  Peter continues to stare out the window.

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me where they are,” Murat adds.

  Peter doesn’t respond, instead he continues to look at the red dress flapping on the wash line. The wind has pulled it free from one of the clothespins and it twists around itself. Peter worries about Catherine and William. They have no money and he can’t phone them with Murat in the apartment. He doesn’t know if they’ve found refuge from the storm. He hopes that they’ve managed to get out of the rain. Peter had been telling Murat the truth when he said he didn’t know where they were—for Catherine and William most certainly aren’t waiting outside in Bebek Park.