An Absence So Great: A Novel (Portraits of the Heart)

  “Splendid,” Mrs. Bauer said. “Go back to bed.”

  This burst of energy consumed her until nearly two in the morning, when she’d tried on the newer style dress she now wore. That night, she’d gone to bed thinking how nice it was not to worry over whether she neglected wifely duties or what sort of argument she and FJ would get into over meaningless things. These thoughts were followed by guilt, of course, that she should like his being away, and deeper remorse over what she really wanted, which she realized more and more was to be free of the obligations of marriage while still holding tight to the treasures: safety in her home, financial security, her children around her.

  The next morning, all that changed as she watched FJ back the car into the garage and noticed that Russell was in the backseat. She asked the boy about it when he came in. “Are you and your father not on speaking terms?”

  “Huh?” Russell said as he tossed his cap onto the table.

  “You should say, ‘Excuse me,’ if you don’t understand my question,” she corrected.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were sitting in the backseat. Were you feuding with your father?”

  “No. We dropped off Miss Gaebele, who’d been in the front seat, so I stayed where I was.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What did I say wrong this time?”

  “You dropped off Miss Gaebele?”

  “Dad drove to Eau Claire to tell her about a job. It turns out she knew all about it and was coming back on the train, so this old lady she works for said we should take her with us.”

  “What older woman are you referring to, Russell? And it’s not polite to call someone an old lady.”

  “The lady who ran the studio, I guess. She said Miss Gaebele was packed up and taking the train back to Winona, and why didn’t we drive her back since we were going to the same place. I drove partway.” His face lit up with the story of his success.

  “Did you…,” Mrs. Bauer said. She could feel the heat rise on her neck. How dare he drive all the way to Eau Claire just to talk to that… that young woman. Why, she would have spent the night with Luise too! How dare FJ introduce Miss Gaebele to her relatives and then spend the night like that? If her friends learned of this incident, she’d be the subject of whispers and jokes.

  “I’m hungry,” Russell said, adding, “Aunt Luise fixed bacon and eggs and pancakes and fresh pie for breakfast before they hitched the team and drove us back to the car on their way to church. But that was hours ago.”

  She took cuts of cheese out of the Frigidaire, then sawed without much care the loaf of bread she’d baked the day before. “Here,” she said. “Take it upstairs with you. I want to talk with your father alone.”

  FJ had come in unsuspecting, which suited Mrs. Bauer just fine. “So. You had car trouble, did you?”

  “Ran out of gas. I let Russell drive around in the cow pasture and forgot completely to fill up in Cochrane.”

  “The side trip to Eau Claire had no part in your gas failure, I suppose.”

  He blinked and stepped back before saying, “I told you we were driving north and might go to Eau Claire.”

  “You failed to mention Eau Claire and didn’t tell me the reason was to see Miss Gaebele.”

  “It was strictly photography business,” he said. “It’s always been that. You’ve nothing to worry over… Jessie.”

  “Nothing to worry over? You spend a night with a young woman in the presence of my son, and you think this is nothing to worry about? Where have your senses gone? Think of what people will say when they learn of this! What must Luise think? How… humiliating for me.”

  “For you? This has nothing to do with you. Nothing. Perfectly innocent. Perfectly innocent.” He sat down on the chair and put his hand over his heart.

  “Oh no. Don’t tell me your poor heart is giving you fits now because I’ve caught you in a lie.”

  “I didn’t lie to you, Mrs. Bauer. I told you we might go to Eau Claire, and you said—”

  “You didn’t say why! You kept that from me! That’s a lie!”

  “And what if I had said we were going there to tell Miss Gaebele that the Polonia had an opening? You’d have made an ocean out of nothing more than rain dripping from the eaves. It was a kindness, nothing more. Why, the girl is hardly older than Russell—”

  “Hardly older than I was when you first met me,” she said. “When I was young and beautiful and full of promise.” She could feel the tears fall, and she hated their betrayal, hated that when she finally said what she felt, tears watered the way and drowned her words.

  “Jessie,” he said, rising to approach her, “it meant nothing. It was a kindness, and Luise and Augie were just being gracious. I hadn’t planned to drive her back here. She was taking the train, she said, but her employer, Mrs. Everson, said why not ride back with us, and it seemed a neighborly thing to do. Nothing more. Please. Don’t let this be a…silencing.”

  She turned from him then, went up to her room, and did not come back out until the evening, skipping her Sunday activities, unable to face her friends, who would know. They would know!

  Monday morning, Fred left for work, and Melba got the children up and ready for breakfast and off to school. Now Mrs. Bauer was ready to go see Reverend Carleton, but remembering made her less angry. Russell hadn’t seemed to be bothered by any of the encounter; FJ had assured her it was innocent. He hadn’t seemed defensive, and he was right: if he had told her when he called, she would have been annoyed and thus robbed of the evening of respite she’d enjoyed. She’d tell the reverend of her progress.

  She chose a small two-toned red felt hat lifted in the back with two simple feathers and a sloping brim toward the front. Two-toned. To match my heart. She would carry a fan today too and use it to cool her warm face as she told him of her double-mindedness. She tugged on summer gloves, then took one last look in the mirror: she felt dowdy and not at all as though this would be an agreeable day.

  Jessie had been in Ralph Carleton’s office several times through the years. She didn’t consider herself the best typist or speller, but she worked hard and would perform well for him—if he’d have her. He’d almost hired her once, but she’d moved to Milwaukee. Now she hoped to use her photography to advance his work. He’d acknowledged her insight about the value of holding a women-only meeting, a suggestion she’d made once in passing when she met with him last year. Today she just wanted to see if he could use a clerk a few hours a day. She needed the equivalent of full-time work to impress the bankers.

  “Miss Gaebele,” he said, welcoming her with his booming voice. “Your mother told me you were returning.”

  “My mother’s better than a newspaper,” Jessie told him.

  He laughed, his gray eyes sparkling. He wore a yellow and black vest stretched across his chest, wide as a streetcar bridge. He motioned for her to sit. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Last year, you considered hiring me to organize your office and handle correspondence while you traveled,” Jessie said. She looked around the room; quite tidy now. Chips of walnuts no longer surrounded the bowl on his desk. They had been replaced with a dish of penny candies sold in bulk called jelly beans. “It looks like you’ve become well organized,” Jessie continued. “I wonder if you might consider having me make up your posters, to advertise your events.”

  “You draw?” He offered her the dish of candy. When she declined, he took a handful and popped one into his mouth. “I thought you were a photographer.”

  “I am. But I do draw. However, I think photographs would make good copy for a poster, let people see what they might expect when they enter one of your tents. Reduce the… uncertainties of a religious experience.”

  “A little fear goes a long way, Miss Gaebele,” he said. “Maybe fear is necessary to bring about a change of heart. Fear of the consequences. If they know too much about what to expect, they might not enter that tent at all. Think of what they’d miss. Eternal life.”

&
nbsp; Jessie fidgeted in her chair. This had happened before when she’d interviewed with Ralph Carleton. “It’s my experience,” she said, “that people can’t learn anything new unless they feel safe first.”

  Ralph frowned. “Jonah didn’t exactly feel safe inside the whale. Yet he learned.”

  Jessie was at a loss arguing theological issues with a reverend and could only draw examples from her own life. “I notice this in my younger brother, who suffers from stammering,” she said. “When he’s being teased, how can he possibly learn anything? I just thought that photographs of you, or perhaps of people attending and being touched by your words, could be a good thing for your ministry. But perhaps I’m mistaken.” She stood, resigned. “I’m sorry to have taken up your time.”

  “Let’s not be hasty,” Ralph said. “I’m sure—”

  He was interrupted by the door opening, and both turned to look. There stood Fred.

  “Mr. Bauer,” Ralph boomed. “Are you looking for your wife?” He pulled out his pocket watch. “Not quite her time yet.”

  Fred blinked. Why would Ralph Carleton think he was looking for Mrs. Bauer? He’d come to talk about the studio portrait of the Carletons he’d taken a few weeks back. The proofs were ready, and since he was in the neighborhood, he planned to show them to Ralph. He had another objective too, but he felt his tongue thicken when he realized Jessie Gaebele stood before him.

  “No, I brought your prints. I mean your proofs. They turned out well, I think. I…I hope you’ll like them.”

  “You know Miss Gaebele, I believe?”

  “We’ve met,” Jessie said and nodded. “Good morning, Mr. Bauer.”

  “Of course. Miss Gaebele worked for your studio for a time, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” both Fred and Jessie responded at the same time. Now Jessie looked down, and Fred thought he saw color rise to her cheeks as he looked away. Ralph cleared his throat.

  What does he know?

  “I also came by to speak to you about a business proposition,” Fred said. “But I can see you’re busy. I’ll make an appointment and come back later.”

  “I’m leaving,” Jessie said. “Please, stay.”

  “Miss Gaebele,” Ralph said, “let me take your suggestion under advisement. Check back with me tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can put together. Now then, Mr. Bauer, what can I do for you?”

  Fred stepped back as Jessie slipped between the two men and reached for the door handle. Her lavender perfume wafted to him, and he caught Ralph Carleton’s inquisitive eyes staring at him just before he took a deep breath. He wanted to make a good case for his business proposition. He didn’t want to appear less confident just because the elegant Miss Gaebele seeped the air from the room.

  He launched into his proposal and watched as Ralph shook his head. “Miss Gaebele proposed almost the same idea just moments ago,” Ralph said. “Imagine that.”

  “She did?” Fred said. “But how—”

  “Great minds appear to take photographs.” Ralph smiled. “And I’d be remiss if I didn’t take the first person who brought me the idea, wouldn’t you say?”

  Had Fred said something to her of his idea? No, he was sure he hadn’t. He hadn’t really thought of her as competition. He wanted Jessie to succeed, to accomplish her dream of owning her own business. That was why he’d driven to Eau Claire to tell her of the opening. That was the only reason. That he enjoyed the surprise of additional time with her had been like having a new horn for his car, a horn he’d put together himself with good solid materials that made his heart sing when he pressed the bulb and the horn blasted its joy.

  “Of course,” Fred said. “Well, let’s take a look at these proofs, yes? So I won’t have wasted your time.”

  Competition… She’d be competition. He hadn’t really thought about that.

  Proving Up

  JESSIE’S LIFE NOW CONSISTED OF her part-time retouching job at the Polonia and the side contract with Ralph Carleton. Her work wasn’t unlike early settlers “proving” their property, doing necessary things until they could call the land their own. She wasn’t meeting any Homestead Act requirements, only her own established list. Like those settlers, however, she took pleasure in the process, feeling fortunate that she wasn’t making her way in a distant candy factory and that she was home at last, surrounded by the chaos and charm of family.

  Occasionally, she traveled with Ralph, along with his musicians and “advance men,” who spent the day of their arrival visiting with local ministers. These pastors had been contracted much earlier and served as hosts for Ralph’s tent meetings. They’d inform Ralph about particular parishioners who might come, how they’d been advertising the event, what food would feed the masses. Ralph always asked about who would follow up after the tent troop left, who would assist those believers as they worked hard to follow their newly invigorated faith.

  Jessie knew that charlatans roamed the countryside, where bringing in cash was more important than nurturing souls, but Ralph wasn’t one of those. He genuinely cared for those he met. Jessie wondered out loud once what brought people who hadn’t knelt at the altars of their local churches into his tent, and Ralph said it was often the outsider who brought the message that changed the heart.

  “People can express their grief and misdeeds to those they don’t know more easily than to those they might see on the street every day,” he assured her. “Human nature. We just don’t like to be faced with our truths in places where we’ll have to wake up and face them again. It’s why families struggle so when a secret indiscretion is revealed… Each day is a reminder of that infraction, and all must find a way to live with it.”

  Many of the tent meetings were held throughout the week for two weeks at a time. These travel arrangements worked out well because Jessie could do the retouching for the Polonia when she returned home. She’d go into the studio late in the evening or on a Saturday. For Jessie, the travels reassured her that she could be with men, working side by side, and not compromise her values or her virtue. She did more than make posters; she assisted and even encouraged women who appeared fragile and frightened as they came into the tents. She saw Fred rarely that summer and fall, and that was fine with her. She and Lilly also found a way around their previous tension by never mentioning Fred’s name, neither of them. Lilly even confided to Jessie an interest in her own young man.

  “That’s wonderful, Lil,” Jessie told her as the two girls washed dishes together. Most of the rest of the family had ended up on the porch outside, waving at strolling neighbors sauntering by.

  “Not so wonderful. He…that is, I think he likes to…imbibe. Beer,” Lilly whispered when Jessie stared. “He likes his beer.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I met him at the fair last summer. He was standing outside the beer tent, and I could smell it on him. At least I thought it was him, though that beer tent reeks like a hog farm for miles around.”

  “You never told me! Did you stop and talk to him?” Jessie couldn’t imagine her sister talking to a perfect stranger at a fair.

  “No, I… Well, I stumbled and nearly fell into the muck made by people tracking in front of the tent. It had rained. I was appalled. And this young man, Joseph O’Brien, stepped right over and helped me up. Well, he’s not so young. He’s twenty-eight, two years older than I.”

  “He wasn’t so impaired by beer that he didn’t see a woman in distress,” Jessie noted.

  “He was a perfect gentleman, but I could still smell the ale. He offered to buy me a sarsaparilla, at a very different tent, of course. I couldn’t well refuse the man.”

  “Of course not.”

  “He’d saved my dignity, brushing off my skirt and rescuing my parasol. What was I to do?”

  “Exactly what you did.”

  Lilly put the dried dishes into the cupboard while Jessie wiped the table, rinsed the rag, and hung it on the back porch to dry.

  “He works for Watkins, in the warehouse, and helps
on his father’s farm too.”

  “Has he come courting you?”

  “He wants to, but I haven’t let him. He sent me a postcard of him and his brothers with their ox team, sledding logs. ‘Compliments of your true friend,’ he wrote, then signed it, ‘Joseph 4 ever.’ I couldn’t believe my luck in getting the mail before Mama did that day! I wonder how people ever court, always being hovered over.”

  “You might consider moving out,” Jessie said. “Now, before you protest, what about if you stayed at the YWCA?”

  “I can’t imagine leaving Mama and Papa,” she said. “They need looking after, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “They seem pretty capable,” Jessie said.

  “Well, you don’t see everything.” Lilly’s eyes expressed anguish, and she sank into a chair. “Papa would be appalled if he knew Joe was a drinker.”

  “I’m not sure that having a beer now and then makes a person ‘a drinker,’” Jessie said. “Voe Henderson’s husband sips beer, and even Voe does sometimes, or did before she had her baby. They’re still good people.”

  “Don’t let Mama hear you say that,” Lilly said. “You’re becoming worldly.”

  “If anything, my travels have made me aware that there is more than one way to see things. My way isn’t always the only way. Why, in some countries in Europe, they drink wine because the water is so bad.”

  “I guess we should be glad Winona has good spring water,” Lilly said.

  “I’m not advocating beer or wine,” Jessie said. “But if Joe is a good man, kind, responsible, a faithful man, then an occasional ale ought not to keep you from knowing him better.”

  “Maybe,” Lilly agreed. “But Joe won’t come to our church with me either. That’s the ideal place to meet up with someone.”

  “Go with him to his.”