No more empty spaces, p.23
No More Empty Spaces, page 23
Of course, it was important for all sorts of reasons that Kevin, Rob, and Didi had reconnected with Mom; she was, after all, their mother, even if embracing that role didn’t seem to be the highest priority for her. Kevin felt what he thought was love for her, though he saw them as having little in common. She seemed stuck in a high school mindset, something Kevin had graduated from, if he’d ever been there in the first place. For him, the reconciliation had only become possible when she had finally quit drinking.
It was too bad it had taken her boyfriend dying, driving drunk on New Year’s Eve on his way to pick Mom up no less, to scare her into sobriety. Afterward, his mother had admitted to him that she and Russell had gotten drunk together while Russell was driving, any number of times. She knew it could have been her that night, and she had stopped.
Several months after the accident, she had written the three of them a long letter, apologizing for all she’d put them through after the divorce and before his father took them to Turkey. It didn’t change what had happened, but it helped to hear it anyway.
After almost a year of steady letters and phone calls back and forth, the three of them had decided they wanted to go to New Jersey to spend Christmas with her last year. Their father had agreed, and it had all gone well. Kevin thought it must have helped her get through the anniversary of Russell’s gruesome death too.
His mother was doing better now—she’d gotten a job as a receptionist at a dentist’s office, then started dating her boss. Mom liked having a guy in her life, and she seemed happier in her most recent letters. He hoped the new boyfriend wasn’t an asshole. He’d find out in a few days.
During that Christmas trip, Kevin had also been able to visit MICA. He remembered pacing the platform, waiting for the southbound train early that cold, gray morning. Relieved to board for the two-hour ride to Baltimore, he’d settled into a seat, his breath fogging the window when he leaned close to peer out as the train groaned forward and gained speed.
As usual, he’d failed miserably at trying to read the landscape, like his father could, as it flashed by the train window, but the contrasts with Kayakale were unmistakable—in the land forms, and in the heaviness of the humid smoggy air, and the colors, smells, and sounds of the urban corridor the train had carried him through.
With all his mental meanderings, the trip flew by faster than the passing scenery, and Kevin was surprised when the conductor announced that Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station was the next stop. He’d triple-checked around his seat to make sure he hadn’t left anything, while butterflies, as Paula called them, started fluttering in his stomach.
“You don’t get anxious about things you don’t care about,” Paula had said. “And you should care about the studies you’re embarking on.”
Kevin appreciated the way she’d expressed it—studies you embark on—like it would be a journey, an adventure.
Walking briskly, he’d made it to MICA in ten minutes flat. There, his jaw had dropped at his first in-person look at it. Kevin had seen pictures in the institute’s catalog, but in the midmorning sun, the white marble edifice fairly sparkled. It was beautiful, and as he mounted the front steps, he felt reverent.
Warmth swirled around him when he pushed into the entryway door. He gazed up at the leaded glass skylight towering more than two stories above. It flooded the space with natural light, and as a photographer, Kevin pictured how that light would shift throughout the day and with the seasons.
“Hello, young man.”
Kevin jumped and turned. He raised his hand in a half wave to a white-haired man in a blue uniform who lumbered toward him. “Hello,” he said. “I’m applying to come here for the fall, and I was kind of close by. May I look around? Did I need to make an appointment?”
“No, no. You’re fine to come in,” the guard said. “We’re open, but there’s hardly anyone around. Only saw one young lady on my rounds. Sketching.” He tilted his head up to the mezzanine. “Better to visit when classes are going, see what it’s really like.”
“Yes, sir,” Kevin said. “But I live in Turkey, and we’re only stateside for the holidays.”
“Well, then you won’t be hopping on a bus for a second visit, will you, young man? Go ahead and explore. The galleries are open. Here’s a brochure.”
“Thank you.”
The man nodded and continued, “The studios are all locked, but there’re windows in their doors, so you can peek inside.”
“Thank you,” Kevin repeated, then took a deep breath and made himself ask, “Do you think I could see the darkroom, sir?” Desire to see it outweighed his desire not to be a nuisance.
“I guess I’ll just have to say yes to such a polite request. Tell you what, I’m about to take my coffee break, so look around on your own awhile, then come get me.” He pointed to a tiny office off the foyer. “I’ll be in there. Come back around, and I’ll take you down to the darkroom. It’s in the basement.”
Then the guard walked off, brandishing his arm in a sweeping arc, as if ushering Kevin farther in. Kevin accepted the invitation and headed for the central marble staircase. He had read about the award-winning architecture and the replicas of Greek and Roman statues that students sketched and painted and photographed in their first-year studies, but the words and pictures had not done justice to the space. He made his way around the second floor, pausing at paintings and sculptures in the hall and galleries, thinking about how he might photograph or draw them, and what he might find within himself to create.
Leaving the last gallery on that level, he turned left and headed for the staircase opposite the one he’d come up, anticipating the promised tour of the darkroom. He nearly tripped over the girl, feeling rather than seeing her seated on the floor in front of him at the last second.
“Whoa!” he said. “Sorry . . . I didn’t see you.”
“How could you miss me?” She laughed, her voice lilting, with an accent that sounded both British and not.
Where was she from? he wondered.
She was right, she sat directly in his path, her back against the stone railing that overlooked the first floor, her legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles in turquoise-and-black leather cowboy boots. Kevin’s eyes traveled from her colorful boots to ribbed black tights, to a red knit skirt, gold turtleneck sweater, and finally, her burnished complexion, deep brown eyes, and black hair pulled severely back.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi yourself.”
“Are you a student here?”
She tipped her head down to the sketch pad in her lap, and with the movement, a cascade of long thin braids poured over her shoulder. “You think? Are you?”
“I’m applying. For next fall.”
“Nerve-racking, isn’t it?”
Kevin nodded. “Do you like it here?”
She patted the floor to her left. “Love it.”
“What are you studying?” he asked, setting his backpack down and sitting beside her.
“Sculpture. That’s the plan, anyway.”
“But you’re drawing.”
“Need to get it right in two dimensions before you venture into the third. I only got a B in Forms Foundation. That’s not good enough. When you get here, you go from being the best artist in your whole school, to just one of the pack. It’s humbling. And motivating. For most of us, anyway. Two in our class dropped out before break.”
“Really?”
“I know . . . why would you work so hard to get here, and then just quit? I don’t get it. I’m Andréa, by the way.” She twisted to reach out to him with her right hand.
Kevin took it, shook it, and introduced himself. Without realizing he was going to, he blurted out, “You’re beautiful.”
“Thanks, handsome.” She laughed again, her musical voice resonating.
Kevin felt his cheeks flush and probably blushed harder for noticing it. He looked down and saw that his hand was smudged with the charcoal she’d been drawing with.
“Can I see?” he asked, pointing to her sketch pad.
“They’re just small studies.” She held it out to him.
He considered the different views she’d rendered. They were good, her strokes solid yet somehow soft. She’d played with shading to create illusions of light and shadow.
“Where else did you apply?” she asked, reaching to take the pad back.
“Here and RISD, Columbia, Chicago, Tyler, RIT, and Milwaukee.”
“No ‘insurance’ school then?”
“Milwaukee, maybe? It’s newish, so maybe sort of, but no, not really . . . I’ll wait a year and try again if I have to.”
“Me neither. But I got in, here and Tyler.”
“And you love it.”
“Absolutely! It’s. . . .” She stopped, glanced at her watch, another colorful bit about her with a bold purple band.
Kevin thought she must want the interruption to end.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been really nice talking, but I’ve got to go. Meeting my mum for lunch.”
She tore a corner off her notebook page, scribbled on it, and held it out to him. “Write?” she asked. “Tell me where you decide to go.”
“Okay,” he said, watching her leave in a graceful swish of textures and colors. He smiled at the scrap of paper in his hand. In addition to her address, she had given him one of her sketches, the outer curve of the statue’s hand.
Back on the first floor, after seeing the well-appointed darkroom, which was almost as thrilling as meeting Andréa, Kevin strolled the perimeter of the great hall. The shifting tones of afternoon light reminded him to check the time, and lucky they did, or he would have missed his northbound train. Safely aboard, he had leaned back in the coach seat, swaying with the rhythm of the train. He closed his eyes and imagined himself studying in that marble temple to art.
Kevin returned from the memories of that winter trip to the dry heat of the Kayakale summer afternoon—MICA and Andréa both on his mind. He bounced off the not-so-springy springs and rose from his bed, and that brought up another memory—of Rob and Timur using one of those smaller-than-single beds as a trampoline on an April afternoon during the first year they lived there. Timur was lucky he’d only broken his leg. Also lucky the nasty fracture had healed so well. You didn’t get off scot-free from many stupid decisions, which made Kevin think of his own brush with fate that same year.
“You were lucky too,” he said, addressing himself.
He wished Buddy were there, rather than being alone with all those memories. Buddy made everything better, like he had since the moment they’d found each other just before dawn in the hills surrounding the dam site on Kevin’s first morning in Kayakale.
Didi was out walking him now. That kid was sure going to miss Buddy. The whole family would, but once they’d confirmed that Kevin could get him through customs, there was no question about his dog going with him.
They would overnight in Sivas that night, then drive the rest of the way to Istanbul the next day. Kevin and Buddy were booked on a nonstop flight to JFK early Tuesday morning. The family had all agreed it would be easier on their beloved pet to fly nonstop to the States, and that would make the extra hours on the road worth it.
So this was the last afternoon Kayakale would be Kevin’s home. His father would complete his work on the dam in a year, maybe two, and move on, like he always did. Dad seemed to find home in his work, wherever in the world it was. Kevin wondered if he would find his home in his art. He didn’t know yet, but he was going to find out.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Will stayed on the job long after Kayakale Dam was completed. As the reservoir began to fill, he supervised expansion of the network of wells that already peppered the site, to further define the groundwater regime and observe any changes in it.
He learned about applying an old technology in a new way—using a microseismic array to monitor reservoir-induced seismicity. Or, as he translated it for the executive project manager who needed to sign off on the budget, a system to track earthquake activity triggered by the increase in hydrostatic pressure exerted by the water impounded in the reservoir. The project included installing seismometers to measure ground motion and seismographs to record those measurements, and contracting a seismologist to design the network and interpret the data. Fascinating stuff to Will, if not to his accountant project management counterpart.
Another task became a daily ritual Will loved, especially since the intensity of fieldwork had eased, and so had the physicality involved with his job. He hiked the nearby tributaries, a different drainage each morning, repeating the circuit the next week, over and over. Will thought of it as making his rounds.
He would occasionally meet local children on those walks.
Ne yapıyorsun, they would ask him. What are you doing?
Su arıyorun, he would answer. Looking for water.
They would laugh. There’s no water here, they’d respond. Su yok! No water!
He would laugh with them, then tell them that he thought he’d keep looking anyway.
They would shake their heads and wave as he moved on.
It began with a trickle. More came as the months went by. Only in one drainage, a tiny tributary of Kayakale Creek (itself a small tributary to the Firat), close to the troublesome left abutment of the dam. By the time it stabilized, there was enough flow to support a fish hatchery. So they built one, for rainbow trout. Making lemonade out of lemons, if Will ever saw it.
As Kayakale Reservoir filled, the water surging farther and farther up the Firat and Murat valleys, Will took Blue on weekly overflights to check the slope mitigation measures he and Borkan had risked their jobs for. They all seemed to be holding, even after big storms. A good sign, but time—with its seasonal wetting and drying cycles, and all the geologic hazards the area was susceptible to—would be the real test.
On one of those flights, Will squinted ahead through the whirling propeller, then shook his head as if to clear his vision; the reservoir had risen halfway up a house that he knew. He’d even sat there, visiting and drinking chai, by the very door small waves were lapping up against. Will found himself choking up, thinking about Okan, the man who had lived there. Will had met him and his brother when the slope mitigation work was beginning. He’d hired them as laborers, gotten to know them, enjoyed their company. They’d hunted ibex together in the mountains that towered over their town. Then, busy as he always was with work, Will had lost track of them. When had they relocated, and where?
The week before, the reservoir had not yet reached Kemaliye, but now a full third of the quaint hamlet was under water. The lump in Will’s throat remained, even when he’d flown well past the village, soon to be submerged. He wanted to believe the positives of the project outweighed the negatives, but seeing the inundation shook him.
In the end, Will chose to make his peace with the professional decisions he’d made at Kayakale. He had done his best and was proud of what had been accomplished, though he understood it was not nearly as black and white as he’d once thought. He also knew hazards could never be completely mitigated and risks never completely eliminated, so he waited and watched.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Paula pulled her bandanna from her back pocket and dabbed away the sweat on her forehead before it dripped into her eyes. In the seven years she’d lived in Kayakale, she was sure this was the hottest day ever. Not the best day for packing, but this was the last of it.
Kerr-rip-thwack, kerr-rip-thwack—she hit a steady cadence with her tape dispenser, sealing up the boxes. Hands on her hips, she surveyed her handiwork—sorting, packing, and shuttling the house contents that they weren’t giving away off to storage.
In the kitchen, she soaked the bandanna under the cold water tap and wiped her face, sighing with the simple pleasure of cool wet cotton on hot skin. She tied the dripping cloth around her neck, shivering a bit at the cold trickle down her back.
Paula looked forward to getting back to the sea breezes on the Med. Being able to dive in as the day warmed when the afternoon winds stilled. What had started as a casual conversation on the beach five years before, after their first sail with Skipper and Joe, had become a dream.
And starting tomorrow—Monday, August 20, 1979—the dream of living on their sailboat would become a reality. The date had been marked with a big red X on their wall calendar for months. Paula slid her fingernail under the thumbtack holding the calendar to the kitchen wall, and after glancing once more at the X on their momentous day, folded it closed and made space for it between some files and books in her already overstuffed briefcase.
In 1972, back in Dudley Gap, she hadn’t had time to mark her calendar, time to contemplate what might come next when she left West Virginia for Turkey. But she had dreamed, having submitted an application with the Calvert School for just such a possibility, preferably in a faraway place. When it came, the stipulation was that Paula would be on-site within a week.
Never sorry that she’d leapt at the chance, still she’d felt at sea, tossed about, for months after her whirlwind arrival in Kayakale. But now, Paula felt rock-solid in her preparations for actually going to sea. Her inner foundation fortified over the years.
The past Friday had, finally, been Will’s last day on the job. Yesterday, he and Erdem left for Ankara with Rob and Timur, who were off to college at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. The two of them would have a week to settle in as roommates in the freshman dorm. A friendly face would meet them at the Denver airport. Refik Kaptanoğlu was a year into a master’s program in geological engineering. Will seemed as pleased and proud about Refik matriculating there as he was about Rob and Timur.
It sounded like the campus was nestled into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and Paula hoped the boys would strike a healthy balance between their studies and skiing, which they’d both gotten into on trips to Mt. Erciyes, even learning to race. They still loved baseball, and harbored a season-long rivalry between the Phillies and Mets throughout each summer, but they’d broadened their horizons to include a wintertime passion.
