A Flickering Light

  She had been often sick and in bed, her emotions up and down like the roads up the bluffs and back. Sometimes her feet swelled and she couldn’t walk. Those days he’d remained at home to assist. He was grateful he hadn’t let either of the girls go, as the business continued without interruption despite his wife’s special needs. But now that would be over, and he was glad of it. The baby would arrive without difficulty. His wife had never had trouble delivering. Tonight he’d give out cigars to his cronies at the lodge. At least he hoped he would.

  He took a cup of coffee the nurse brought to him.

  “While you wait, sir.”

  His hands shook.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine, sir,” the nurse said.

  “If it’s a boy, we’ll name him Robert,” he told the nurse.

  “That’s a fine name,” she said and left him alone.

  He hoped everything would go all right for his wife, for them, for this child. They hadn’t yet picked a girl’s name. Maybe Joan, a name related to Jessie, named for her mother.

  Jessie. So interesting that he had two Jessies in his life: a wife whom he loved and an employee who somehow had found a place in his heart. He cared about the young woman and her future. That was all it was, and he hoped she understood that. Maybe that was why she’d seemed cool of late, had even asked to be called Miss Gaebele again, even when it was just the two of them working in the developing room. He’d honored that, of course. But it did take away a little of the informality of being at the studio.

  Perhaps the double exposure would bring some of that back. He could only hope. Maybe he should consider taking her to the congress meeting in St. Paul this year, to show off his model. He’d have to think about that.

  For now he would concentrate on his wife and bringing this infant into the world and keeping the baby safe, ever so safe.

  Jessie’s pursuit of employment at other studios had gained her nothing except sore feet. Polonia’s was too small and Mr. Polonia did all his own work, he told her, had no need for assistants. She tried to be discreet, not wanting the news to get back to Mr. Bauer, but her mother heard it from a woman at church who had seen Jessie going into Van Vranken’s studio.

  “Were you delivering something?” her mother asked. “I didn’t think studios worked together like that.”

  “No. Yes. No. All right, Mama. I’m looking for additional work so I can contribute to Roy’s trip and maybe one day be out on my own.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Ralph Carleton is looking for a full-time assistant. Your father could approach him for you.”

  “The evangelist? Oh no, Mama. I want to stay with photography.”

  “You could have a worse employer,” her mother said. “His influence might do you good.”

  “It probably would,” Jessie said. “But I was hoping to advance my art too.”

  “Your art. Is that the only thing that drives you?”

  “No, Mama.”

  She was certain she told her mother the truth.

  President William Howard Taft was scheduled to visit the Winona Normal School. When Jessie learned of it—her father mentioned the proposed visit was in the paper—she urged Mr. Bauer to take a camera and get a picture of the president.

  “It’s much too difficult to catch a face decently while the subject is moving. It’s hard enough in the studio. Think of it as taking photographs of kittens,” he said. “Or young children. I haven’t yet taken one of Robert because it’s not reasonable to ask a child to sit so still. Maybe when he’s six months old.” Jessie remembered the stillness of the infant who had died. “But a president can be as energetic as an infant or a cat,” Mr. Bauer continued. “Very likely he will be either getting into his car or getting out. He won’t be standing around waiting for a photographer. Those around him won’t allow the citizens to come too close either, Miss Gaebele. It would be a blurred shot at best.”

  “But you could try. You did a double exposure, and that was a challenge. This could be a nice feather in your cap.”

  “You think so.”

  “I do,” Jessie said. “He’s going to be at the normal school. And there’s a parade later as well. Why not try to take a parade picture too?”

  “No parades. I’m not interested in that. Too—”

  “Trampish,” Jessie finished for him. He nodded once in agreement. “It’s not tramping,” she continued. “You’ve said yourself that much of the quality a client wants comes from the developing, the retouching. You can do magic in the darkroom.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Can I, Jessie?”

  He looked at her in an odd way, she thought. Flirtatiously? There’d been none of that after she’d asked him to refer to her as Miss Gaebele. He’d acted surprised, but she told him that sometimes she called him Mr. B. when she was at home, and her family seemed to think that too informal. She had decided not to call him that anymore and would like it if he’d remember to use her surname as well. He had complied. He forgot sometimes, but then he’d had much on his mind with a new baby at home.

  “Outdoor photographs don’t suit me,” he continued.

  “I hope I never grow too old to try a few new things,” she said.

  He harrumphed and turned away.

  She would take it herself then. But the next day he changed his mind. “You’re right, Miss Gaebele. I can try something new. I’ll see what I can do with my camera on my shoulder, though I must tell you, it reminds me of tramp photographers. I have worked to keep them from piercing real photographers with their sharp talks about giving people high quality when they know they can’t. Their failure sets a bad name for those of us who could succeed.”

  “You’ll need an assistant,” Jessie said.

  “I’ll need both of you. One to carry the plates and one to help with the camera setup. It’s probably insane to try such a thing, but at least the weather is cooperating.”

  They left early and set up the camera near the normal school, hoping they’d anticipated the place where he’d come out of or get into his car. It felt like a picnic almost while they waited. The camera made them look official.

  The big man, Taft, came out of the school earlier than expected. He stood, shading his eyes, viewing the crowd. Jessie and Voe scurried after Mr. Bauer, who fast-walked with his cane and carried the stand while Jessie rushed behind him with the camera. They paused at the president’s touring car.

  “Over here, Mr. President!” Jessie shouted.

  She handed Mr. Bauer the camera, and he quickly put the plate inside as Jessie jumped up and down. The crowd began to move toward the president, but she kept calling, and he looked toward her as he came around to enter the vehicle. He stopped, posed, his large belly arching before him.

  Mr. Bauer got the picture of President Taft as he stood up in the presidential car. It was not a double exposure by any means. Instead it was a portrait captured outside, with Mr. Bauer making the best of elements he couldn’t control. It was a very good likeness, Jessie thought. Very good indeed.

  The picture was written about in the paper. Actually, Jessie wrote the article for the Republican-Herald. She’d been very careful with her grammar and asked Mr. Bauer to look it over. He tugged at his mustache as he read, made several suggestions, then nodded his approval. His smile warmed her to her toes. She submitted a print of the picture as well. The local newspapers still resisted using photographs, but it didn’t matter. The article saluted Mr. Bauer’s work, and the portrait was in the glass-encased window of the Bauer Studio gallery now. Any number of people stopped by to see it. Mr. Bauer planned to take it to the congress in July.

  Jessie sent the article to the president in Washington DC. By return mail, the White House requested prints. Jessie howled when she saw the letter’s return address, and she opened the mail as she always did, singing out to Voe, who helped pose a couple in the operating room as Mr. Bauer directed.

  “You see, you weren’t too old to try something new,” Jessie said, bursting into t
he room. “The president of the United States of America wants your work. Your cabinet card will sit in the White House!”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jessie apologized to the couple holding their pose. “Mr. Bauer’s picture of President Taft has been requested by the White House. You’re being photographed by a man who photographed the president!”

  The couple beamed. So did Mr. Bauer.

  She could make things happen. There was art in that.

  In September, two events surprised Jessie. Mr. Bauer’s double exposure was written up in the St. Paul paper in an article submitted by someone attending the congress. Later the Winona papers ran it too. The exposure was touted as a unique contribution to the photographic field. His model, of course, was not mentioned, but Mr. Bauer had done something innovative. Perhaps there’d be increased interest in his techniques and Jessie would be a part of whatever exciting changes might come from that. She could imagine people choosing a double-exposed portrait to be framed or that others might come to learn how he’d posed and developed the print. She had helped him in the darkroom, had washed the plates and worked the solutions as he tried over and over to make sure that the double exposure was clear and that each of the two images of her appeared as he wished. He’d used the smaller glass plate, but it was still a dramatic photograph, and she was pleased for him and pleased for herself.

  “You’re a fine model, Jessie,” he told her.

  She beamed at his praise but made sure she never stood close enough that he could pat her back or that she could smell the scent of baby powder on his shirts.

  The second surprise came the following day, when Jessie came to the front of the studio, where a few people had gathered. She pushed her way past them. Lilly was in the crowd.

  Jessie gasped.

  Mr. Bauer had framed the print of his double exposure and placed it in the window. Jessie told herself there was nothing to be alarmed about. She was simply a model, an employee. But she hadn’t cleared it with her mother, and her mother didn’t like surprises. Worse, here in this setting, away from the technicalities of the developing room, she could see the portrait for its nuances. He’d once again made her look wistful, reflective, and even pretty. He’d taken a photograph that showed her to be more than what she was. And very likely, Mrs. Bauer too would see things in the print that were better left unexposed. She never should have agreed. But it was too late now.

  Mrs. Bauer had heard about the Taft photograph by reading the paper. But it was the dressmaker, Lilly Gaebele, who mentioned to her that her sister’s photograph was in the window beside the president’s. “It’s a double exposure or something like that,” Lilly had said. “I don’t really understand it.”

  “Two images on one print,” Mrs. Bauer explained as Lilly fit the dress. She had not lost all the weight she’d gained with Robert, but she’d decided to ask the elder Gaebele girl to take in at least a little from the dresses made for her while she carried the boy. “Were both images clear?”

  “As far as I could tell, but there were several people staring and I couldn’t really get too close.”

  Her dressmaker continued to work, circling her, pins plucked from an oval cushion attached to her bodice. Mrs. Bauer anticipated pricks at her waistline. They never came. The girl was good at what she did, and she could be silent too if Mrs. Bauer didn’t pursue conversation. Was the girl bragging on her sister’s portrait by mentioning the crowd gathered around? Maybe she ought to take a look at it.

  Mrs. Bauer had known of the double exposure’s success, of course, but not who the model was. She hadn’t asked, nor had she requested to see it. She just hoped he hadn’t had to pay the girl more for the modeling. The Bauer Studio wasn’t made of gold. It might have been if her husband had put as much money into new cameras and promotions as he’d put into that ranch. Even getting a better market for that salve of his would help. Times were difficult right now. People were nervous about the economy, and the Bauers had three children to care for.

  She never should have agreed to another child. The baby was easy to care for, but she was more tired now than she’d ever been. She dragged herself from bed each morning only to bring the child back to nurse him. Sometimes she fell back asleep before he did, and she worried she might roll onto him. She’d sent Winnie to her mother’s, begging her to look after the girl for a few days each week even though Mr. Bauer had agreed to take Winnie to the studio. He made subtle comments about the distraction, having children’s toys in the reception room, and she knew he was hoping to increase the portrait sittings what with the good news of the double exposure and Taft’s photograph.

  Winnie’s absence helped, but she still felt herself going up and down the hills of exhaustion that always bottomed out in a lost temper with her husband, and even with Russell sometimes, though the boy rarely did a thing out of line.

  If only they had enough money to hire a live-in girl, one of those Polish immigrants who populated the city. They were clean and tidy and said to be fine cooks. She didn’t know how they might be with children, but she could ask.

  Except what was the point? They couldn’t afford it. Just as they couldn’t afford Mr. Bauer’s trips to the congress either, but he’d gone. Or his club memberships, but he continued to rejoin. And who knew how many hours and dollars he’d spent perfecting that double exposure? How many glass plates? How many tins of developing solutions had he gone through? However would they recover such frivolous losses? She felt her face grow warm, almost hot. She looked up into the mirror. That flush again. Sometimes she felt as though a thousand bees were stinging her, and this awful flush moved up through her body to her neck and face. She couldn’t get her breath.

  Her dressmaker spoke to her. What had she said? “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Mrs. Bauer said.

  “Would you like to do something different?”

  Lilly was talking about the retailoring of the dress, but when Mrs. Bauer answered yes, she referred to more than the shape of her gown.

  Jessie’s parents called her into the parlor. Her father began by telling her that both of them felt it would be better if she left the employ of Mr. Bauer.

  Nothing made Jessie more likely to click a shutter shut than being told what to do. It was true she had considered leaving the Bauer Studio a while back, but her lack of success at finding work and the changes at the studio made her feel she had things under control. There’d been a realignment of the border between her and Mr. Bauer, and neither she nor he had crossed it. She believed she could have a life as a photographer, maybe one day independently. Why her parents would choose now to have her leave made no sense to her, but she was ready for this argument. She’d outlined several points in her mind about why she ought to remain. She started in, but her mother held her hand up for her to stop.

  “Just keep in mind,” her mother said, “that with Ralph Carleton’s evangelistic work, you might get to travel. You’ve always said you’d like to do that.”

  “He’s the one who travels. I doubt he’d take a young female assistant along with him. And you wouldn’t approve of that anyway, would you?”

  “Hush now. He’d send you ahead,” her mother said.

  “I suspect he has a male secretary to handle the advance preparations, Mama. Arranging the site, getting the proper authorities to permit him to be there, all of that. And really, any man can do that. And any woman can write his letters for him. But how many women can make a photograph that other people look at and smile? Or even cry because it’s so beautiful?”

  “At least with Mr. Carleton you’d be exposed every day to rightful behavior,” her mother said. She turned to her husband, who watched Jessie with kind eyes.

  Jessie lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry you think I need that.”

  “The photograph,” her father said. “Lilly says it is quite provocative.”

  So that was it. Somehow Lilly’s scandalous and erroneous view of her relationship with Mr. Bauer had been conveyed to
her parents by Lilly’s tragic review of a simple photographic success.

  “Have you seen it? It’s nothing to be alarmed about. Just a technical photograph.”

  “We urged August to get you the camera because you were so sad after Roy’s fall. We hoped it would help you, and it did. But now it’s taking you places you ought not to go, Jessie.”

  “Don’t you see? I have a profession because of it. Not like Lilly. She doesn’t get to spend all her time doing what she’d like, making dresses. She’s wrong about the portrait. She’s just jealous!”

  “She has a beginning,” her mother said.

  “This is my beginning.”

  “We’d like to see you happily married one day,” her mother said. “And that isn’t likely to happen while you hold on to these dreams that can’t ever be achieved. We want you to be wise, Jessie, and not hold unnatural affections for an art or for a forbidden person.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked like she’d just eaten some of her mother’s vinegar pickles.

  Jessie looked aghast.

  “Unnatural affections?” She whispered the words. “I…I… admire his work. I think he’s a good man. He has taught us well. There’s nothing unnatural in that.”

  “He is putting thoughts in your head that you may never be able to secure. A studio of your own.” This from her father. “We wanted you to have something to distract you from the hard times. But—”

  “Papa, he doesn’t know about my desire to have my own studio one day. He doesn’t! I just don’t see why I have to leave doing something I love. I only told Lilly and Selma and Roy!” She didn’t want to cry, but she could feel the tears of frustration nibbling at the edge of her eyes. Her parents looked at each other.