June 21, 2013
“I wanted you to know that I knew,” said Kristin.
She was having one of her regular lunches with Catherine, they’d met again at Kafe 6 in Cihangir. The day was turgid and the summer air lay stalled all around them. They sat in the empty garden, at one of a half dozen small round tables set out beneath a lattice that in spring had bloomed with violet explosions of wisteria, but for now was merely a tangle of strangling branches baking in the heat.
“And why do you think that’s important?” asked Catherine. She then lowered her eyes, her gaze resting on her bowl of cooling soup, her spoon hovering above its surface. Several weeks had passed since she and Kristin had bumped into one another at the Twenty-second Precinct. Catherine had seen Peter almost daily since then. The two of them had resumed their relationship with vigor, as if by so doing they were asserting that nothing had happened, that they hadn’t been found out and that, perhaps, they could carry on as before.
“Do you care about him?” Kristin asked.
The door from the restaurant’s kitchen was flung open and the chatter of lunch-hour patrons who had chosen to sit cramped inside beneath the air-conditioning spilled out to the garden. A waiter presented Kristin with the salad she had ordered, an ultranutritious mix of greens and root vegetables. She removed a bottle of Purell from her purse, squeezed a dab into her cupped hand and then unwrapped her knife and fork from a paper napkin. Catherine remained silent until the waiter left. “Of course I care about Peter. He lacks confidence in his work, but he has talent. You see it, too. That’s why you introduced us, isn’t it?”
“I am talking about your husband. Do you care about your husband?”
Catherine took a sip of her soup, which burnt her tongue. “I don’t know.”
“Is Murat a good father?” Kristin asked.
Catherine dropped a pair of ice cubes from her water into the bowl, stirring them into the soup. She pondered the question as she watched them melt. “A good father?” she asked herself. “He works incessantly. He’s hardly ever at home, not that I really want him in the house. When he takes William to school, that’s nice … I don’t know. I haven’t thought about whether or not he’s a good father, at least not for a long time.”
“Are you being fair to him?”
“Fair?”
“He provides well, doesn’t he?”
“What has that got to do with him being a good father?”
“Everything,” answered Kristin. “He takes care of you. And of William.”
“It’s surprising to hear such a conventional attitude from you,” answered Catherine. She set her spoon down on the table and kept her eyes fixed on Kristin.
“Each of us has to live,” said Kristin. “No matter how we do it. Do you think that I take my daughter to school each morning? If that were my measure as a mother, I would be failing. But I know how to provide for a child. I do that part of the job and do it well.” Kristin glanced impatiently at her slim triathlete’s watch, and Catherine could imagine her waking up each morning as her daughter slept, running however many miles she ran before sunup while she used that same watch to time herself.
“You’re misunderstanding me,” explained Catherine. She then paused, momentarily weighing whether or not to be explicit as to all she understood about her husband’s relationship with Kristin. “Murat’s business would be nothing without you. So you are our provider, not him. You are the one taking care of us while he does whatever it is he does for you.”
Kristin stabbed her fork into her salad. She took one bite and then another, contemplating whether or not to acknowledge any of the myriad sensitive tasks Murat performed on her behalf and the many ways her interests, Murat’s interests and Catherine’s all aligned. “Let me ask you a different question,” said Kristin. “If I am the one who has been taking care of you, if I am in fact the person who has ensured that your husband’s business hasn’t collapsed, don’t you think that you owe me something?”
Catherine took another spoonful of her soup. She glanced up at the tangle of blossomless wisteria above, contemplating the invisible tally of debits and credits that existed between her and Kristin. “And if I do owe you something?”
“Then we both need to consider that,” answered Kristin. She leaned over the table, closing the distance between her and Catherine. “My concern is that you might do something rash, especially as it relates to Peter.”
“Like what?”
“Let me ask you this another way,” said Kristin. “If you returned to the U.S. with William and Peter, do you think it would be good for either of them?”
“Is that what you’re worried about? That I’ll leave Murat and return to the U.S.?”
“Shouldn’t it be?”
Catherine pushed her meal away and leaned forward, matching Kristin’s posture. “Why did you introduce me to Peter?”
“I thought you could help him with his work.”
Catherine leaned back in her chair, annoyed by this response. “Thank you for lunch,” she said, and then turned to flag down their waiter, whose eye she caught through the window.
“Stop it,” said Kristin. “Why did I introduce you to Peter? Because I thought he might give you a reason to stay. And after seeing you at the precinct, I’m worried that Peter might have given you a reason to leave instead. But have you thought about him and what would happen if he quit his work? And your son, what would happen if he lost his father? You can’t afford to only think of yourself in this.”
For the briefest of moments, Catherine felt a twist of guilt as Kristin held up a mirror to her selfishness. But undermining this interpretation of events were Kristin’s own interests in the matter. Kristin needed Murat. She needed his calibrated understanding of a corrupt system, one that Kristin couldn’t navigate herself and that her invisible superiors demanded she report back on with an impossible degree of clairvoyance. Here, in this city, there was no one above Kristin in authority. She was spectacularly alone. However, a dependency existed between Kristin and Murat. Although the framework of that dependency was not entirely clear, Catherine recognized how Kristin would never permit her to disrupt that framework by leaving, even if Catherine tried. No threat had been made, it didn’t have to be, the facts were evident and Catherine felt certain of Kristin’s willingness to go far further than a pleading over lunch when it came to safeguarding her position in relation to Murat.
“What would it take to keep you from running off?” Kristin asked.