A Flickering Light (35 page)

“It’s… I think I should separate myself. I mean, don’t you?”

She looked for some recognition on his face, some understanding that they shared feelings that had not been openly expressed, perhaps never should be. She longed to see that he too knew that to remain in close contact would only cause suffering, inflict a wound that would never heal, would just keep hurting, weeping.

He looked away.
Maybe I’ve read into his looks and movements. Lilly and my mother are wrong, and I half believed they weren’t!
She swallowed, her throat thickening.

He began, “Was it that day in the retouching studio with the baby—?”

“Ralph Carleton has offered me a position that will earn me a little more money. So one day I can have my own studio,” she said. She said it firmly, taking the attention from how she felt to the business at hand.

He stepped back, sat on the desk. His shoulders dropped, in relief, she thought. “Oh. Well. We could talk about an increase in pay then. Yes, we must.”

“Eventually I’ll be your competition,” she said. “And it wouldn’t be fair to have you train me further and be the source of an improved salary, then have me spin around and buy a studio that might take business from you.”

He stared at her.
He’s upset
. “Miss Gaebele. The chance that a young woman barely eighteen years old could purchase a business, compete with a diplomat in the photographic congress, and take clients from an established studio is quite a fantasy on your part. An indulgent fantasy, I’d say.” He smiled as though she were fifteen and had just walked through his studio door.

Jessie felt her face grow warm and her breath shorten. She wasn’t sure if it was his condescension of her talents and capability that riled her passion or that he failed to see that she was leaving because to stay would break her heart.

“Good, then. We won’t have discussions anymore about portraits versus more candid shots. The world is moving faster, Mr. Bauer. My interests in the profession may well overtake stuffy studio artist’s poses.” He winced. “I’m sorry,” she said, overcome with remorse for her sharp tongue. “You’ve done so much for me. I shouldn’t have said that.” She heard her heart pounding like raindrops on the rooftop. She fought back tears.

He said nothing for a time. She heard squirrels chatter outside the window.

“No, I’m the one to apologize, Miss Gaebele.” His voice was as smooth as a finger brushed against her brow. “I had no call to poke holes in your dreams. No cause at all. You’re very talented. You’ll go far. I’ve no right to hold you back. I… A salary increase can certainly be considered, if I haven’t insulted you to the extent that you’d refuse to consider it. I’ve become…fond of you, your presence.”

“And I yours,” she said. “Perhaps too much so.”

“No, no,” he told her. “I never should have… The presents, did they offend you? I sometimes felt so…different with you, so alive again. Young.” He sat on the edge of the desk just as Ralph Carleton had, only he clasped his hands together as though in prayer, his elbows resting on his thighs. “I never meant to hurt you. I… Jessie, perhaps I ought not say this, but—”

He did feel as she did, at least a little. She had to be the stronger of the two. She had to keep the words from being spoken. It was up to her, before he began to see the depth of what she felt or acknowledged anything more of his own.

She stood, put out her hand. “I know Voe will be good for you, and you can find another assistant to train. You’re very good at that. And I am truly grateful for all you’ve done for me, for my family too. Good-bye, Mr. Bauer,” she said.

He tried to hold on to her hand after shaking it, but she pulled away.

He stood then, clasped his hands behind him as though a military man standing at ease. “Very well. But Voe, Miss Kopp, has just told me she’ll be getting married at the end of next week. I’m sure you knew.” Jessie nodded. “At least remain until after the wedding and her week of honeymooning. Please, don’t leave me before that.”

She’d be fine, she told herself.
Only two weeks and a day
. “Very well. After their honeymoon, I’ll be replaced.”

She turned toward the door before he could say anything more. She ached for him to reach out to stop her, breathed a prayer of gratitude that he didn’t. The last thing she saw clearly before her tears sent spirals of light shattering through her world was the portrait of his wife and his two sons hanging on the studio wall as Jessie rushed past.

The Long Good-Bye

“M
Y SISTER’S FOUND A NEW JOB,”
Selma told Mrs. Bauer. The two sat at the table shelling peas that Selma had picked from beneath the window hothouse Mr. Bauer had made. “Early peas are just the best, don’t you think? So tiny and yet so tasty.” She popped one into her mouth.

“Oh? Yes. I guess they’re good.”

“I like them in greens with a few carrots cut up on them. Mama likes to put onions in the greens, but I don’t like the taste they leave in my mouth. Do you?”

“I don’t notice much,” Mrs. Bauer said. Something the girl had spoken of earlier made her want to ask a question, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She was just so tired. All the time now. She’d thought after Robert was born this would all end, be different, and somehow she’d feel that life was worth living rather than just going through the motions. But even the laughter of her children failed to ignite some sort of spark in her. She was a weight on her husband and her children with her malaise.

She had left the Ladies Aid Society leadership more than a year ago and said it was because of her carrying Robert, but really, she hated being up front, hated the bickering that went on about such inane things as whether tulips or peonies should be the centerpieces for the spring luncheon. The real issue was about
whose
tulips or peonies would appear, whether Mrs. Jeffs or Mrs. Kursa would gain the upper hand by which flowers were placed. There’d been a time when that sort of thing mattered, but not anymore.

Even Mr. Bauer’s leaving her alone, not scratching on her bedroom door anymore, even that had not relieved the pressure she felt in her head in the morning or the terrible weight she felt when she looked at him at the end of the day, wearing his own fatigue from his illnesses and the studio work now that he’d gone back.
Studio work
.

“Did you say your sister has taken another job, Selma?”

“Yes ma’am. She’s going to work for the evangelist.”

“Taking photographs?”

“Oh, no ma’am. She’s going to be his secretary, write his letters and that sort of thing. It seems silly to me. She never liked school all that much, and my older sister, Lilly, makes fun of her wording when she writes notes. She writes
except
when she means
accept
. Even I know the difference!”

“That surprises me,” Mrs. Bauer said. “My husband hasn’t mentioned it. Maybe he feels now that he’s back full-time he only needs one helper. But I would have thought he’d keep Miss Gaebele rather than that coarse girl, Voe Kopp.”

“What’s a coarse girl?” Selma asked.

“Forgive me. It’s isn’t a word I should have used to describe her. She’s just… I find her sharp in her words and not particularly faithful to our profession.”

“Are you a photographer, Mrs. Bauer? I guess I didn’t know that.” Selma bit into a pea, and it squirted a tiny bit of juice onto the table. Selma didn’t seem to notice.

“I did retouching for a time. Quite a long time, actually. But I never liked it. For my father. He was a photographer. And then for Mr. Bauer.”

“I guess I thought that closet with the paintbrushes set up on a table belonged to Mr. Bauer. What does retouching do exactly?”

She needs to wipe up that wet spot from the pea
.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“I just wondered what retouching was for.”

“It’s to take out blemishes from a person’s face. Or sometimes the extra lines around eyes or a mouth. The wrinkles formed when a person smiles a lot—some people don’t like to see them held static forever, the way they are in a photograph.”

“Did you retouch the picture of Russell and your other son, the one in the hall?”

She felt her stomach tighten. “No, I did not.” She sounded upset even to her own ears. She took a deep breath. “He was a perfect child. As is Russell. And Robert. They’re all perfect. They don’t need retouching.”

“And Winnie, she’s perfect too?”

“Did I leave her out? How could I?”
How could a mother forget one of her children? What kind of mother is that?
She’d been having dreams where she left one or all of the children behind in Cos-grove’s when she went there to buy a hat or gloves and left with packages filled with brushes and paints that weighed her down, and it wasn’t until she got home that she discovered she had no children. They were all gone and she couldn’t remember where to find them.
That pea juice will stain the oilcloth if the girl doesn’t wipe it up
.

“Selma, do you see the pea juice there, on the tablecloth? Wipe that up before it stains.”

The girl squinted. “I can’t see where it is, Mrs. Bauer. Can you point it out?”

“It’s as large as the bottom of a pan,” Mrs. Bauer snapped. “Are you blind? Right there!” She pointed.

Selma’s face took on a frightened look. The girl rose and got a rag and wiped it around, but she obviously wasn’t paying attention. She missed it. “Here, give me that.” Mrs. Bauer grabbed the cloth and scrubbed at the table. She moved the rag, stared. It was still there. It had already stained! They’d have to throw it out. A perfectly good tablecloth ruined. The girl stood with her back jammed against the dry sink.

Mrs. Bauer yanked at the cloth, spilling the peas they’d shelled into the bowl. “It can’t be repaired,” she said. “Take it out, take it out.”
Why am I so distressed? Where has my mind gone? They’re only peas
.

“Mama?” It was Russell. He’d come in from outdoors. “Mama?”

“Would you take the tablecloth outside? It’s been ruined by pea juice. Perhaps your father can use it to lie on when he does what he does with the car.”

“Change the oil.”

“Yes. When he does that. It will keep him from getting his coat dirty.” The boy took the oilcloth from Selma. The two exchanged looks.
Is he mocking me?

“Thanks for taking care of the cloth for me,” Selma said. “I’m sure sorry.”

Russell held the oilcloth up. He looked at Selma with a question on his face. “Mama? Are you sure you want to throw this out? I can’t see the stain.”

“You’re both blind,” she wailed. “Just do as I say. Get it out of here.”

She shooed them out of the kitchen.

She thought her head would burst.

“You have to take the wedding pictures,” Voe told FJ. Jessie had offered to pick up the order at the train station and hadn’t yet arrived. These were her last days.
Last days
. FJ chided himself for using such terms. It wasn’t like the girl was dying. She was simply moving on, and he’d managed to keep her here much longer than she’d intended. Or rather Voe had, repeatedly postponing the dates of her wedding—for more time to prepare the food, to bring the relatives from Wisconsin to sew a dress—until now it was June, and all was at last settled and this Saturday the girl was actually marrying.

He did wonder about the position Jessie had taken. She’d said she would wait until Voe’s marriage, and she had, despite Voe’s having moved the date back twice. Jessie had faithfully come to work as she’d agreed to, yet this Ralph Carleton job was still available, supposedly. Maybe she didn’t really have a position at all. Maybe she just gave that as an excuse to move away from this studio, from him. At least she might have chosen a job that would utilize her photographic talents. It saddened him that she hadn’t at least done that. Maybe locating a position for her at one of the other studios would be something good he could give her. He’d look into that.

“Mr. B.? You will take the photographs, won’t you?” The girl spoke with that long vowel sound so typical to Scandinavians in the city.

“I’m not much good at those kinds of spontaneous poses,” he said. He remembered Jessie had urged him to photograph wedding parties, but it smacked too much of that tramping work.

“It can be your wedding gift to Daniel and me,” she said. “Jessie will help.”

He sighed. “What kind of studio would we be if we didn’t immortalize our favorite girl?” FJ said.

Once Voe married, there’d be but one more week with Jessie’s brightening up his days, and then what?

“You’ll let Jessie assist? She’s done it before. Did we ever tell you how we took a reunion photograph at the normal school while you were ill? It was all posed of course, but we used the natural light and everyone bought a copy of the print.”

“Quite resourceful, you girls,” FJ said.

“Jessie was the one who set that up.”

“I don’t doubt that. She has a way of making things happen,” he said, naming yet another quality of hers he’d miss.

The three of them sat in the kitchen, Voe, Mr. Bauer, and Jessie. Mr. Bauer twisted his mustache, which now had a fine upward point at both ends. He rolled the tips. Jessie looked away, not wanting to see these little endearing habits of his that she’d be reminded of each time she saw a man with a slender mustache. Her heart had begun that thumping, a rhythm beating
beware, beware, beware
. It was what Jessie had chanted to herself these past weeks, the words keeping her at a distance. Voe’s marriage marked the next tow wrenching her from the Bauer Studio forever. She inhaled. It had to be.
I’m still here, I’m still here, I’m still here
. She vowed to maintain a professional stance.

“Just remember,” Voe said, “I can’t assist you this time, Jessie. I mean, I’ll be in the pose, not handling people who spent too much time near the brew.”

“Will your mother allow you to be at an event that serves spirits?” Mr. Bauer said. He turned to Jessie again.

“I’m not serving spirits,” Voe corrected. “At least not until Daniel says, ‘I do.’” She laughed.

Before Jessie could answer, Mr. Bauer offered, “We can take my car. I’ll come by and pick you up, Miss Gaebele, and we can—“

“No, no. We’ll need to load the camera and plates. I’ll just meet you at the studio at nine.”

“That won’t work,” Voe said. “You’re my maid of honor, Jessie. Remember? You’ll have to come out earlier than that, to help me dress.”

Mr. Bauer said. “Let’s say we meet at seven, Miss Gaebele.”

Voe beamed. “I never would have met Daniel if it hadn’t been for the two of you.”

There were problems Jessie hadn’t considered.