“I’m sorry to impose,” says Catherine. She drapes an arm over William’s shoulder, pressing the boy beside her. “We had nowhere else to go.”
“You should come inside,” says Deniz, but the tired edge in his voice no longer seems to indicate a nap interrupted, but rather a defeat. With this slight change of inflection, Deniz pushes the front door all the way open. Sitting on the sofa is Murat. He still wears his coat and it doesn’t seem as if he has been waiting for very long. Then, from the white painted room where he had displayed his photographs the night before, Peter emerges.
Catherine turns around, as if she might run out the back of the apartment with William. But before she can take a first step, she hears the rhythmic tick-tock of heel strikes coming from down the corridor. Someone else is ascending the stairs toward Deniz’s front door.
July 7, 2013
Kristin did her best thinking at the gym. Her most original ideas occurred to her while she was exercising. Perhaps it was the clarity associated with early mornings, or maybe it was the meditative qualities of listening to her heart pound out its beats as she struggled to maintain a certain speed on the treadmill, or hold a specific rpm on the stationary bike. She had read articles about how endorphin releases and highly oxygenated blood led to revelatory thinking, although she absorbed such conclusions with a healthy dose of skepticism.
She logged the progress of her workouts carefully. By her calculations she was a first-rate triathlete, posting many of the same times as professional competitors. About once every two months she would wake impossibly early on a Sunday morning and put herself through an Olympic-distance race. She would begin in the lap pool, then move to the stationary bike, and finish on the treadmill. Her overall times—all of which she tracked on the digital watch clasped to her wrist—she kept only for herself, allowing her the quiet satisfaction of knowing the many unclaimed medals, sponsorships and accolades to which she would have been entitled had she ever chosen to compete.
On one such Sunday morning, a couple of weeks after her most recent lunch with Catherine at Kafe 6 in Cihangir, Kristin was hunched over the handlebars of the stationary bike. Twenty-three kilometers into the forty-kilometer bike leg, her cadence held strong but lagged enough to take her off pace for any personal record. Throughout the preceding swim, her mind had looped over the end of that meal, specifically Catherine’s disconcerting insistence on paying her half of the bill. The gesture was no small refusal. Kristin understood that Catherine was beyond her control. How to solve this liability was the problem she focused on as she pedaled.
Her legs pumped, holding at slightly above one hundred rotations per minute, and the entire bike had begun to purr. Steady, single droplets of sweat migrated from her forehead and then gathered on the tip of her nose. She counted them as they fell to the floor and concentrated on her breath, which punctuated her thoughts. Inhale. She suspected that she had, perhaps, played herself to a standstill. Exhale. That if Catherine was dead set on leaving her husband, there was nothing Kristin could do. Inhale. Except for manage the fallout. Exhale. She glanced down at the odometer, 120 rotations per minute. She needed to slow down, or risk burning out her legs.
Her breathing evened out. The task set before her became clear. If Murat remained in his job and continued his work for her, then everything would be fine. This much was obvious. This was all that mattered. To achieve this result, Kristin needed Peter to stay in Istanbul so that Catherine wouldn’t have anyone to run off with. That meant giving Peter something. The grant Kristin had arranged from the consulate had been insufficient. It had allowed him to stay in the city, but it had afforded him none of the recognition he craved. Kristin knew she would have to make a more active intervention in Peter’s career if she was to convince him not to decamp to the U.S. She would have to facilitate the success that had eluded him. Catherine had spoken to Deniz about arranging a show for Peter at the Istanbul Modern, but she had been refused. And now Deniz had been fired from his post at the museum after his arrest at Gezi Park. This offered Kristin an opportunity, because all of this could be fixed, at least she could fix matters for Deniz. Kristin could simply instruct Murat to rehire him. And then, owing his job to Murat, Deniz would be more than willing to show Peter’s work at the Modern.
A sense of contentment took hold of Kristin. By giving Peter what he wanted, both she and Murat would receive what they wanted. Kristin glanced down at the odometer. The glimmering red digital display hovered above one hundred rotations. Kristin felt satisfied that she was on pace, maybe not for a personal record but for a respectable time. She allowed her mind to go blank. For the next half an hour or so she continued to pedal, head down, oblivious to anything except the three digits an arm’s length from her face, which, without too much struggle, she managed to keep above one hundred.
After forty kilometers, she leapt off the bike. Her running shoes were staged next to a treadmill in the opposite corner of the gym, which was still empty. She slid them on. More than the swim or the bike, the run was the portion of the race where she lost herself. On the treadmill there was no odometer she was trying to rev to a certain level, no number of laps she was counting and struggling to complete in a certain time. On the treadmill, she set the pace into the computer and then she ran. The motor on the machine would take over. She would try not to fall off the back. The swim and the bike set her up for this final struggle, one where all of her efforts concentrated on just holding on.
She inputted her pace and then pressed start. The belt on the treadmill engaged, lurching forward. The motor accelerated, releasing a high-pitched whine. Her steps landed in quick succession, sounding wild as native drums, the rhythm of which ferried her away into a pain-induced trance. Her thoughts returned to Catherine and the solution she believed she had found. Deniz was the linchpin that would hold both Peter and Murat in place, but what satisfaction existed for Catherine in this arrangement? Would she be content to carry on as Peter’s mistress?
Kristin could feel herself slipping toward the back of the treadmill. A stitch clawed into her side, slightly beneath the ribs. She rolled her shoulders. She breathed deeply, attempting to relax.
For Peter and Murat—and even for Deniz—she had come up with a solution that would maintain the status quo, in effect suspending them in a construct created by her. Kristin could see how each of their interests might balance the others’. Murat would return Deniz’s job. Deniz would exhibit Peter’s photographs. Peter would secure Murat’s personal life by not running off with Catherine.
What about Catherine?
The stitch in Kristin’s side threatened to spread. Her muscles cramped in a form of contagious hysteria. Instead of focusing on her breathing, or rolling her shoulders again, Kristin turned her energies to the unsolved problem before her. How would she convince Catherine to stay? Her love for Peter—if that’s what it was—wouldn’t be enough. It would quickly erode in a construct where Peter remained in Istanbul for his best interests as opposed to hers.
Kristin made the mistake of glancing down at the treadmill’s screen. The remaining time seemed like an impossibility. She could no longer hang on. Her hand reflexively wanted to lift from her side and dial down the speed. But whatever short-term relief this might have provided would be far less than the frustration she would feel at quitting. She refocused and, once again, turned her attention to the problem of Catherine, not only so she might solve it but also so she might lose track of time through its contemplation.
If Catherine’s love for Peter was conditional, Kristin knew that Catherine’s love of William was not. And if this was so, it was William who could keep Catherine in place. He was the key. Kristin recalled a piece of paper on her desk: the name and address listed for William’s birth mother. The Central Authority had registered this information. A single claim made by William’s birth mother to the local authorities not only would be enough to forestall the boy’s departure fro
m the country but could go as far as threatening the legitimacy of his adoption. Catherine was, after all, a foreigner. Would the threat of William’s birth mother be enough to hold Catherine in place? Kristin suspected so, and as she came to this conclusion, she felt the stitch in her side dissipate. She had been running as though guarding a wound. Without that liability, she straightened up. Her gait lengthened. Her movements became fluid. For moments at a time she had the sensation of hovering as she ran.
When she again glanced at the display, she noticed more time had passed than she had expected. If she dialed up the speed slightly, she would be on track for a personal best. She hazarded to do so. The new pace didn’t challenge her as she thought it might. The sensation of hovering endured. She heard the door open behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a young man, still in his twenties, a gym towel, which he clutched at both ends, slung behind his neck. He was a new consular officer who had arrived only a few weeks before. He wished Kristen a good morning. She replied with little more than a nod and a grunt, not wanting to waste her breath as she closed in on the finish.
Kristin glanced down at the treadmill’s timer. About nine minutes left. She increased her speed by one tenth of a mile per hour. This would place her ahead of her previous best time by under ten seconds. The distracting clank of free weights shuttling in and out of their cradles echoed from across the gym. The noise was accompanied by the pleading grunts of the young consular officer as he began his workout. Kristin wondered if he would make a habit of exercising early on Sunday mornings and if the solitude she had found in the gym would be forever compromised by his arrival. How much of her life, she thought—or at least the portions of her life she prized most—existed in a delicate, interruptible balance. These Sunday mornings existed only for her. She hurt no one by taking this time. Her daughter and husband had been asleep in their beds when she left. They would be asleep in their beds when she returned. If later in the day she felt tired—in the afternoon at her desk, for instance, or in the evening if she was meeting with one of her many contacts, like Murat—she would embrace that feeling, satisfied by the knowledge that on this one day, as opposed to all of the others, her exhaustion served as a reminder that she had done something for herself.
She could feel the young consular officer lurking behind her, unwittingly robbing her of that solitude. He approached the stereo bolted on the side of the gym’s wall. He asked to turn it on. She ignored him and he substituted her silence on the matter for her consent, tuning the radio to a techno-pop station. The music blared and the sound of Kristin’s steps—the heel-to-toe percussion of each foot meeting the treadmill’s belt, which she had followed hypnotically all through her run—suddenly disappeared. And her thoughts dissolved amid the woofing thump of bass line that emanated from the stereo.
Kristin’s concentration lagged until she felt herself lulling toward the back of the treadmill. She then shot a glance at the display, which flashed up her remaining time: less than six minutes. With the last of her energy she corrected her stride, which had become pigeon-toed and sloppy. She did her best to tune out the young consular officer’s music, the rhythm of his grunts and the sense of loss and imbalance she felt when considering that every Sunday morning he would now, unavoidably, be in the gym with her.
Then everything shut down. The lights. The music. And the treadmill.
Kristin stumbled forward, taking a full step in the darkness so her ribs crashed into the treadmill’s crossbar. Across the gym she heard a breathy curse as the young officer dropped his dumbbells on the rubberized flooring, where they landed with a dull thud. Kristin shot her hand up to the treadmill’s control console. She tapped at the buttons, trying to restart the machine—nothing. The power was out. She glanced at her digital watch. The seconds bled away from her. The record she was chasing would soon be lost.
The young officer asked if she knew where the light switch was.
Kristin crossed the gym, feeling her way toward the switch on the wall. She maneuvered blindly through the pieces of equipment, whose positions she had memorized after countless workouts. The young officer sat on his weight bench in the darkness, not moving, although Kristin could hear his labored breaths mixing with her own. Her fingertips found the switch, which she toggled on and off to no effect.
“Does the power often go out?” asked the young officer.
The power had never gone out before, at least not at this time on a Sunday.
“It usually cuts out about now,” Kristin lied.
The young officer stumbled forward, navigating toward Kristin’s voice and what he thought was the door. When he spoke again, he was much closer to her. “Do you know what time the power comes back on?”
“In the afternoon.” Again she lied to him; she didn’t know about the power.
“I guess I’ll have to work out later,” he said. His hands groped around the door, clutching after the knob, which he couldn’t find, so Kristin reached out and opened it for him. The threshold passed into a darker corridor, which led to a locker room lined with a few windows, whose light would help the young officer find his way out.
Kristin felt no guilt about the lie that she had told. This was her time. These Sunday mornings kept her level through the week. It would’ve been far worse for her to pretend otherwise. Although she had not beaten her record, standing in the darkness, she considered the morning to have been a success. She had figured out how to preserve her relationship with Murat. Like the protected space around her morning workout, it required the creation and maintenance of a well-calibrated equilibrium. She would have to lie, or to at least fashion a few mistruths, which in her mind were less malicious than lies and more akin to the factual error she had offered the young consular officer, who would now likely change his gym hours, leaving her alone.
Kristin stood calmly in the dark. She heard the gym’s front door slam shut. Two or three minutes had passed, perhaps slightly longer. She had caught her breath. Her muscles had begun to cool. Then the power came back on. The stereo picked up. The treadmill revved into gear. Kristin glanced at the display, which held the remaining time and distance. The machine hadn’t reset itself, and according to its clock she had lost only seconds. She crossed the gym and turned off the stereo. She then leapt back onto the treadmill, rejoining her race at nearly the exact spot where she had left it. She doubted the young consular officer would return. She also doubted that Catherine would ever be able to leave. As she drew these two conclusions, she noticed that despite the prior interruption she was still on track to achieve a personal best. And minutes later, in the silence of the morning, she did.
Five o’clock on that afternoon
William glances down the hallway toward the creaking stairs. Standing at their top is the woman from the consulate, the one who had made the speech at the exhibit the night before. The boy knows that, like her, he is an American. His mother had occasionally emphasized this part of his identity, although his father never did. His mother had even once shown him his first passport, a blue book with empty, unstamped pages that had a photo of him when he was little more than an infant. When this woman emerges at the landing, William can feel his mother’s grip on him tighten. With both of her hands placed over his shoulders, she pins him to her front in the way she sometimes did when they stood waiting to cross the street, the merciless traffic zipping past so close that the air would stir at their faces.
“What are you doing here, Kristin?” his mother asks. The hallway channels her words, changing the timbre of her voice so that it sounds as hollow as an echo.
“I had a hunch this is where you’d show up.” A grin pinches upward from one corner of Kristin’s mouth. “We need to have a talk,” she adds, and her eyes wander toward the door. As Kristin closes the distance between them, William can feel his mother pressing him ever more forcefully toward her. Kristin stands next to Catherine but won’t enter the apartment before
she does.
A standoff ensues until Peter approaches from the living room. “Catherine …” he says. His mouth remains agape, ready to give some long explanation. His shoulders are hunched forward as if he is dislodging from inside himself certain assurances and optimisms, but when none of those words manifest, Peter’s open mouth repeats her name once more, without context, “Catherine … ,” and then, with his eyes casting down at the boy, he mutters only, “It’s time to come inside.”
Before Catherine can cross the threshold of her own volition, William pulls away from her. He has caught a glimpse of his father, who sits on the sofa, hands pinned between his knees. Seeing William rushing toward him, Murat stands. His son embraces him, his cheek pressed to Murat’s belt buckle. Catherine remains alone in the doorway, then, reluctantly, follows her son into the apartment.
Inside it is more cluttered than during the exhibit. The open living room—furnished the night before with only a couple of chairs—is filled out with a pair of sofas divided by a coffee table. Kristin gestures for Catherine to sit next to her. Peter takes a place across from them on the sofa, so does Deniz. William has climbed back up into the bay window, where he had sat last night looking out at the haloed streetlamps, which now, in the late afternoon, are about to flicker on. He is favoring Murat in much the same way he had favored Peter the evening prior, lavishing attention on the man whom he feels might lavish the most attention on him.
“Are we going to go home now?” William asks his father.
Murat gazes out at the city, at the buildings which had made him his fortune and which have just as quickly threatened to ruin him. “Soon, I think,” he says to his son.
“If we’re going to talk,” says Catherine, “someone please take William outside.” At the sound of her voice and his own name, William glances back to his mother, whose eyes have never left him. Through her look, the boy feels how his question about going home and Murat’s response threaten her. Catherine’s definition of home has changed from his. The place William considers home is now foreign to her, a place to be escaped from, not returned to.
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