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.
Kristin is perched next to Catherine on the sofa, their knees angled toward one another, nearly touching. Catherine repeats her request for someone to take William outside. Kristin stalls for a moment, as if reluctant to allow anyone to leave the apartment after her efforts to unite this group. She then glances up at Deniz. Perhaps he would take William.
Deniz comes to the window, where William sits contentedly with Murat. He suggests that they wander up to the İstiklal. “Your father will be here when we get back,” Deniz says, releasing the word father into the air like a noble concession, like the announcement of an entire fortune being gifted as charity. William turns a desperate stare toward Murat, who glances away.
William then turns to his mother, who, like Murat, looks away, refusing to weigh in with a gesture or a remark as to whether or not William should follow Deniz outside. This decision, unlike any other William has known, is entirely his to make. He offers his hand to Deniz, who grips it firmly as they head for the front door.
“Back in an hour?” Deniz asks Kristin, who nods in return.
William and Deniz descend the apartment’s stairwell. Standing in the street, Deniz asks William what he usually does when he’s out with his parents. “My father,” says William, “takes me to look at buildings.”
“At buildings?”
“I tell him how much I think each is worth and he tells me if I’m right.”
“And this is a fun game?”
William considers the question for a moment as they wander down the block, toward a tangle of alleyways and tributary roads emptying onto İstiklal Caddesi. “Knowing what things are worth is how my father makes money. He says that someday I’ll make my money doing the same thing, by being the best at this. He says I’m already good at it, that I’m observant.”
“Maybe you can teach me,” says Deniz, who still holds William’s hand.
The echo of their steps carries cheerfully down the road. As they turn off the block of Deniz’s apartment, they pass by a large white Chevy parked at the corner. They both notice the car, which stands out among the few others scattered along the roadside. But neither of them notices the woman who waits in the passenger seat.
* * *
Kristin begins to explain herself. The men are on one sofa, the women on the other, the coffee table between them. They sit, the four of them—Murat, Peter, Catherine and Kristin—in the awkwardness of a moment, which each must have known their collective choices over the years had driven them toward. And as Kristin talks of their interests and of hers, the many points of intersection, the logic of what each of them should do next—whether it is Catherine giving up her plans to leave, or Murat agreeing to support Peter’s ambitions—Kristin realizes that she isn’t so much explaining herself to them, but rather explaining each of them to themselves. She attempts to speak in a level, even-mannered tone. She had hoped—and continues to hope as she feels their skeptical gazes boring into her—that they will subscribe to her logic of their best interests.
They wait, their bodies settled in three different angles of repose. Murat thumbs through a magazine with his legs crossed one lazily over the other, while Peter sits plank straight like a child who with great effort is demonstrating good posture for an adult’s behalf, and Catherine is leaning forward with elbows perched on her knees as if she might lunge after Kristin, who prattles on:
“Murat, if you’re willing to help reinstate Deniz to his position at the Istanbul Modern, I know Deniz would be willing to reconsider some of Peter’s photographs for an exhibit and perhaps even the permanent collection.” Murat doesn’t reply, but Kristin knows how to interpret his silence, which isn’t a manifestation of disagreement, but rather a quiet acquiescence to the inherent logic of the bargain. “And Peter,” Kristin continues, “an exhibit at the Istanbul Modern would be a significant opportunity. An opportunity I imagine you couldn’t afford to miss.”
Like Murat, Peter doesn’t reply. And if Kristin doesn’t know Peter as well as she knows Murat, if she doesn’t understand the topography of his silences, Catherine surely does. Catherine turns her head toward Peter, so that her profile faces Kristin, who can see Catherine’s clenched jaw and the muscles in her cheek flickering like a candle near the end of its wick. Kristin imagines the flood of accusations screaming through Catherine’s mind as she stares Peter down, knowing that he is weighing the merits of betraying her happiness against the merits of assuring his own success.
“What about Catherine?” Murat interrupts the silence. He has uncrossed his legs and come forward on the sofa. Leaning toward Kristin, he asks her again, “If Peter remains here for work—and if Catherine chooses to stay as well—then what happens to her?” Catherine turns away from Peter and toward her husband. The tension in her jaw eases, her shoulders relax.