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

  Neggie wound her way around his legs, and he stood to pour milk into the cat’s bowl, add pieces of bread. “If I feed you too much, you’ll neglect your duties,” he told the cat. “Mice abound, yes?”

  Lilly had brought the cat back after “negotiations with Roy’s chickens failed.” In the return, Lilly hadn’t conveyed any information about her sister nor about her parents’ views of his now running “Jessie’s studio.” He assumed such words as might be said by Jessie’s father wouldn’t easily pour from Lilly’s tender lips.

  “I have no news,” Lilly said as she set the cat on the floor. “And I wouldn’t tell you even if I did.”

  He nodded, deserving of her scorn. “I hope she’s all right. I do care for your sister, very much. You must know that. I only wanted the best for her.”

  “It’s not enough,” Lilly said. “Love is not enough.”

  She said it with a firmness meant to convince herself as much as him, or so he thought. She’d surprised him, though, in recognizing that what he felt for Jessie—what Jessie once felt for him—was more than fleeting fancy but in fact nearly consuming love.

  As the cat lap-lapped her milk, Fred rinsed the cup with yellow daisies, then reread the letter from his ranch partner, Herman Reinke, in Hazelton, North Dakota. He reported that the winter had been fierce, long before its official beginning, yet he hoped for an early spring so they could get the wheat planted. He’d agreed to Fred’s suggestion that they plant more acres in flax next year and suggested he come for spring planting if he could make the time.

  Fred laughed at that: there was no time for him to travel, not with two studios to operate. He’d probably never travel again. Maybe he should sell the ranch there come spring. It held all those painful memories. He should close his seasonal studio there too. “I’m running three studios, Neggie. No wonder I’m tired.” The cat stopped, looked up at him, then continued with her meal, hunched over the bowl like a troll.

  He could keep the forty acres he’d bought not far from Minneapolis. Maybe he’d travel that far once in a while, just to see its woods and rolling fields, a good investment that hadn’t caused him grief. He should sell the Texas lot on Mill Creek in Montgomery County though. He owned it free and clear, and it might be developed at a later time. He didn’t imagine he wanted to ever live in Texas, despite the claims of the real estate brochures that the land could grow cauliflower “as big as oak barrels.”

  He took out his cigar cutter, chopped off the cigar end. He didn’t smoke cigars, just held them and chewed the tobacco. Mrs. Bauer didn’t like him smoking, but he was free to do that now. He imagined that the Gaebele family didn’t approve of smoking either. He held the small cutter in his hand, fingered the embossing. A keepsake from the St. Louis World’s Fair. Jessie had given it to him. Too many memories lurked even here, Fred thought, slipping the cutter back into his pocket. How could a man reclaim his future when the past held such sway? Neggie meowed for more milk.

  Jessie’s cat.

  Even the present offered no respite. “I live in limbo,” he told the cat. “As the old Latin describes it, that region ‘on the border of hell.’ I’m just sorry you have to be here with me.”

  “Who is it?” Jessie said to the wiggling door handle. She looked around for a weapon to defend herself. The frying pan sat on her stove. Could she reach it? She mustn’t panic. No sense borrowing trouble, as her mother would say. Maybe her Seattle aunt had already told her family where she was, long before she forwarded Selma’s letter. Maybe it was her father come to bring her home.

  She couldn’t make out the image that finally pushed through the snow-laden door. An escapee from the penitentiary?

  “I’m sorry to frighten you,” Virginia said as she pulled a blanket from her head.

  “Oh, good, it’s you. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m terribly cold in the studio,” Virginia said. “So I knew you must be freezing out here. There’s absolutely no reason for you to suffer through a night like this, or me either, all alone.”

  “Sometimes people deserve to be miserable,” Jessie told her as she sank onto the bed.

  “Thank you so much,” Virginia said.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean you,” Jessie corrected. “I meant me. I’ll be all right here, really, I will.”

  “Nonsense, you come inside with me. You’ve abused yourself long enough. Here, put the robe around your shoulders. You have neither the proper clothes for a North Dakota winter nor the proper attitude for an enduring woman.”

  “Endurance applies to horses,” Jessie said and smiled at her.

  “Women too,” Virginia said. “Good to see some spunk back.” Jessie curled her back into the buffalo robe Virginia wrapped around her.

  “I do prefer my teeth chattering with company,” Jessie said. “But I didn’t want to, that is, I feel so—”

  “Jessie,” Virginia took her hands. “You must put the penitentiary behind you. It was a mistake. No one died, and even if they had, while tragic, it would have been unintended. You’re human. We humans mess up. It’s why we need unwarranted forgiveness. We can never do it right, so we must rely on grace. Please. Accept my forgiveness and forgive yourself. Then perhaps one day, you can pass that on.”

  Jessie nodded, still not convinced.

  “Why were you walking around the back of the cabin?” Jessie asked as they moved toward the door.

  “I wasn’t,” Virginia said.

  “But I heard noises like snowballs against the wall, or a shovel, and—”

  “Come along quickly.” Virginia looked left and right, then hurried through the drifts to the studio, pulling Jessie’s hand as she did. “There’s another reason you should spend the night inside with me,” Virginia said when they safely stomped snow from their boots in the enclosed back porch. She locked the door behind them. “The sheriff stopped by. There’s been an escape at the penitentiary. He said we women should stick together.”

  The women stuck together, turned the whirling blizzard into a background for tea and talking. Jessie told Virginia everything about her lost love—except his name. There was no sense in telling that. Virginia might run into Fred Bauer at a conference, and how awkward that would be!

  Virginia didn’t condemn her or call her a fallen woman. “We’re drawn to relationships for different reasons,” she said. “Often there’s a lesson to learn. If we don’t understand it, I think we find ourselves swirling like flotsam on the backwaters until we figure out how to pull ourselves back into a safe current.”

  “I’m not yet sure what the lesson is supposed to be…with him. Maybe to plan my life better.”

  “One thing I’ve learned,” Virginia said, “is that life is unpredictable. Plan as I might, there’ll still be a smudge on the glass plate of life to contend with.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t waste time planning?” Jessie asked.

  “Oh no, we have to think ahead. But we need to be ready to change and not make ourselves flummoxed in the process. We can do what we can, but we don’t control much. And wasting time in blame just keeps us from moving forward, Jessie. That goes for self-recrimination too.”

  Virginia told Jessie then of being married to a man she loved, how they’d planned for a large family but weren’t blessed with one, and how they filled their lives with other joys. She described the sadness she felt when people came from all around to get a quick divorce in North Dakota, then to marry just as suddenly and come to her for their photographs. “North Dakota is getting a reputation,” she said. “And not a good one when it comes to marriage.”

  “Don’t any of the marriages last?” Jessie asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure a few do. People usually move back to where they came from, so I don’t know. Some return a few years later to get yet another divorce. I think people who make the choice to divorce and then fall in love later have a better chance of making it. There are no greener pastures on the other side of that legal fence, that’s what I think. There will always be weeds masquera
ding as flowers.”

  “Virginia, I need to talk about weeds I brought into your life,” Jessie said. “Without the prison contract, I realize you need to let me go. I do understand.”

  “Oh, not yet,” Virginia said. She reached to pat Jessie’s blanket-covered knee. “I’ve made contact with other photographers in Bismarck and offered our printing services. Some of the seasonal studios in surrounding areas may prefer not to maintain their own supplies and equipment year-round either. I’ve had interest.”

  “Have you? I’m glad, truly glad.”

  “Who knows? We might end up with more business than we know what to do with.”

  Jessie couldn’t imagine that kind of abundance. She filled the coal stove as they talked, and Virginia said, “That was William’s job. Keeping the coal banked up.”

  “You miss him.”

  “William and I are…were one of those long marriages here in this state.” She smiled. “I miss him terribly, as though a part of me is frozen. He was the thaw.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” Jessie said. And she did.

  “Will you ever marry again?” Jessie asked. “Maybe that’s too personal. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. Perhaps.” Her reddish hair had streaks of gray, and she twirled her finger into a strand at her ear. She looked young, Jessie thought. Closer to forty than to the sixty she probably was. “Marriage was a happy state for me. For us. We teased each other that whoever outlived the other would marry again within the year. I knew he would, but I wasn’t sure I could. There are so many memories to weave into a new love. So many memories.” She stared into the flames behind the stove’s glass.

  Jessie’s parents had a marriage like that, with long years of contentment and love and old memories—joyful and sad—woven into the fabric of their passion. That’s what she hoped for, when the right person came into her life, when her thaw arrived. “I hope one day I’ll be worthy of a marriage like that,” Jessie said.

  “Sometimes our prayers are answered before we’re worthy,” Virginia said. “Don’t forget the prophet Jonah and his whale. He wasn’t worthy of delivery, having defied God, but his prayer was answered and he survived to tell the tale. Of course, he had to endure a little retching in the process.”

  Jessie smiled and pulled her feet up beneath her as the two women curled on the settee in front of the fire. Maybe all this disappointment—her misplaced hope to have a studio of her own, falling in love with an unavailable man—maybe that was the spew required, the shelterbelt to border her soul until she found true refuge.

  Two days passed before Jessie went back to her cabin, and by then snow had silted onto the bed, around the floor, and across the table too. But Jessie could still see the tracks of a man’s boots in the snow on her cabin’s floor, and she noticed that while her letter was there, the currency that she’d put with it for her family wasn’t.

  For Christmas, Jessie embroidered a handkerchief with lily of the valley flowers, framed it like a photograph, and gave it to Virginia. “It’s lovely,” Virginia said. “My favorite flower.”

  Virginia surprised Jessie by telling her she had piano lessons waiting for her, once the weather permitted, with the Methodist pastor’s wife.

  “But that’ll be so expensive,” Jessie said. “I know. I’ve been saving to do that.”

  “I agreed to do their family portrait,” Virginia said. “You can help. Or make a donation to the church if you want to contribute.”

  “I can do that,” Jessie said. “I didn’t know you knew of my interest in music.”

  “Mrs. Jefferson told me she saw you at the piano after church one day, after everyone left. She noticed you played without any music and quite well, just the same tune over and over.”

  Jessie felt her face grow warm. “I only know how to plunk out a few melodies. The music flows into my head, and I can play it, the chords and all. I’m not sure how. But I can’t do that with many songs.”

  “It’s a gift,” Virginia said patting Jessie’s hand.

  “I’m hoping to improve on the gift, if that’s what it is. My younger brother is skilled on his banjo. And my sister sings beautifully.”

  “Runs in your family then. You’ll do well with Mrs. Jefferson. She can be opinionated, but I’ve seen you with difficult patrons. You’ll manage.”

  Jessie arranged for her first lesson while she helped clean up after the church’s Christmas meal. Jessie noticed several women with young children at the dinner, and Mrs. Jefferson smiled as she served them. She commented to Jessie later that “the prison holds the men, but the community holds their families.”

  “They move here after their husbands are put in jail?” Jessie asked.

  “We don’t discourage it. People need to know they’re still loved and cared about despite making mistakes. Small sins are as bad as big ones,” Mrs. Jefferson told her. “And besides, the prisoners have fewer altercations with the guards that way, knowing they’ll see their families now and then. They have little hope if loved ones forget them or live in far-off Fargo or Williston.”

  The authorities had never found the man who escaped during that raging storm, and Jessie wondered if her money was his ticket to family somewhere far across the prairie. She hoped so. Better that than if he only made it to a frozen drift.

  In late February, soon after Ash Wednesday, Virginia took a trip to visit relatives in Denver while Jessie managed the studio for a week alone. The time moved quickly, reminding her of the season when she’d owned the Polonia. She mourned its passing and wondered if grief was the purpose of the Lenten season after all, requiring her to slow down, witness to her losses to make room for what truly mattered in her life.

  Where the Bluffs Speak

  SPRING CAME AT LAST and with it high water on the Missouri. Flooding too, as the ice floes jammed, creating giant lakes behind the ice that broke with loud pops and booms to mark the dam’s demise. Birds arrived next, many new to Jessie, along with familiar swans and pelicans and geese. They filled the air with the flush of wings, and she stopped her work to go outside to listen to their calling songs—but without neglecting her darkroom this time. Around the city, she saw purple martins and meadowlarks, and when she hiked the bluffs, she watched red-tailed hawks swoop beneath her just as they did when she stood on the bluffs above Winona. Sometimes she took photographs, but more often than not, she simply stood and marveled, twirling around amid the shimmering grasses, her arms to the wind. She danced. She wasn’t worrying about the future or clinging to the past. She lived for the day without any plans. It was an odd state to be in.

  Easter arrived in April, and Jessie sent a picture postcard of calla lilies to her parents. She practiced the piano as she could that spring of 1914 and pleased Mrs. Jefferson with her effort. She visited the library, tried new photographic shots of butterflies. She read the paper. In Bismarck she lived with the uncertainty of her future, trusting that when the time was right, she’d move forward as God intended.

  In June, while reading the latest issue of the Republican-Herald, Jessie noted Lilly’s election as treasurer of the newly formed STC, “which is an industrial organization similar to those in the Twin Cities,” the article explained. Jessie wondered how things were with her and Joe O’Brien. She didn’t dare ask in her letters; they’d be read out loud. And so far Lilly hadn’t written to her, though the rest of her family had. Jessie considered telling Lilly about the twelve friends from Minnesota, men and women who had taken homesteading claims close to each other and supported one another’s efforts in getting the land proved up. Maybe Lilly and Joe could do that. Jessie smiled to herself. She had stopped planning out her own life day by day, and now she had thoughts of planning other people’s.

  Then her eye caught the headline “District Court.” Usually that section talked of trials and such, and Jessie always read it with trepidation, thinking the bank might eventually bring a suit against her. But this article was about another broken promise.

  Jud
ge Arthur H. Snow of the District court has handed down findings in the divorce suit of Jessie A. Bauer vs. Frederick J. Bauer, in which he grants Mrs. Bauer an absolute divorce from her husband. No appearance was made by Mr. Bauer at the trial. The divorce is granted on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment, Mrs. Bauer alleging that on two occasions she left her husband, once fourteen years ago and again in 1912 because of the way he treated her, but each time she returned to him at his solicitation. She set forth at the trial that he called her vile names and made accusations against her in the presence of relatives. By Judge Snow’s decree the custody of the three children, Frederick Russell N. Bauer, Winifred E. Bauer and Robert J. Bauer, is given to the mother, who is required to provide for them, for which the court gives her title to the Winona homestead, lot 2, block 2, Wilsie’s addition, and the household goods; also the Bauer photo studio on leased land at the corner of Fifth and Johnson streets and the operating equipment, some of the furniture being excepted. Mr. Bauer, the defendant, retains title to a 320 acres farm in Emmons County, North Dakota, to another 40 acres farm and to two cottages in Winona.

  Jessie laid the newspaper down. Her damp hands shook.

  Mrs. Bauer stared at the clipping. Printed in the paper. Now everyone knew. Were all divorces publicly announced? She hadn’t remembered seeing any before, but then, so few occurred. She kept the clipping in the recipe book and reviewed it occasionally, feeling successful for her ability to read it now and not fall into despair.

  The trial had been wretched, though Mrs. Bauer thought that if FJ had appeared it would have been so much worse. His lawyer had told him to stay away, and hers agreed. So she and her mother had gone through it together.