A Flickering Light

  “Well. That would be a start,” her older sister said. The dust from the elm and maple leaves always left Lilly fighting a cold once the cool weather came.

  “And you’ll speak to Mr. Steffes since she was so helpful to him this morning,” her mother told her father. Did her mother give some sort of signal to her father? Jessie couldn’t always tell what their raised eyebrows or the set of their jaws might be saying.

  “I heard about that. And what were you doing there at that hour of the day?”

  “Seeing about…employment,” Jessie said, and hoped the slant of truth would slip the subject on to something else.

  But it didn’t.

  “Employment? Strange to be applying at Steffes’s when you had the interview with the photographer,” her father said.

  Jessie sighed. She may as well tell the whole truth because it always came up to catch her anyway. “I’d rented a bicycle, Papa. So I could ride out past Lake Winona to take a picture of the bluff fires right at dawn. It was going to be so lovely. But then Mr. Steffes fell and I had to get the doctor, and then I got all bloody, and then there was the interview and—”

  “You rented a bicycle?” Lilly slammed her fork down. “Papa, why does she have money for such things as that?”

  “I didn’t actually rent it,” Jessie said. “So I’m sure I can get the money back.”

  “I’m singing on Sunday, aren’t I, Mama?” Selma asked. “Irene and me?”

  “Irene and I,” her mother corrected. “It was announced in the paper already. Yes. Hush now.”

  “Don’t let her change the subject,” Lilly complained. “Jessie’s always getting by with things, and Selma helps her.”

  “I don’t get by with anything,” Jessie said. “I do my part and I’ll do even more in the next six months. I won’t even have the pleasure of using my camera to take my mind off the drudgery.”

  “If I couldn’t sing for six months, I don’t know what I’d do.” Selma sighed. “Life would be just…devastating.” She put the back of her hand against her forehead, reminding Jessie of a woman on a theater advertisement looking dramatic, lying back in some swain’s arms. Lilly rolled her eyes, and Jessie’s mother appeared to wiggle her mouth to control a smile.

  “I’ll speak to Nic Steffes about your working, but you’ll have to ask for your nickel back, Jessie. And”—to Lilly, her father said—“she’ll be without her camera companion, so there is a sacrifice she’s making too. We’ll see if absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  “Or if out of sight, out of mind,” her mother answered.

  “Just so her body isn’t out of duty,” Lilly said. “I’ve got some dresses in need of a soaking that she can help me with on Saturday.”

  “Whenever you wish to begin, Sister,” Jessie said cheerfully. She’d gotten through the supper without committing to anything worse than red washboard knuckles.

  An early moon rose as FJ walked the streets from his Knights of Pythias lodge meeting to the steps of his South Baker Street home. He always liked the way the trees etched themselves against the moonlight, sharp as a scissors’ cut. Sometimes there’d be a cloud wisping across the Winona sky and the moonlight would reflect upon it, giving depth to the cloud and illuminating something more than what the eye first encountered. For a moment he’d feel, well, comforted. He didn’t think of himself as a religious man, though he faithfully took his wife and family to the Second Congregational Church each Sunday. Religion was like a basket to him, a container for rituals and routines, filled to the brim with practices that had lost their luster and left little room for enlightenment. He attended more for the children and for Mrs. Bauer than for any kind of comfort he expected to find there. He appreciated the intellectual stimulation of the minister’s words and often sparred with him after the service, drawing upon details gleaned from his own library of classics written by Dante, Shakespeare, and Descartes. Second Congregational seated some of the city’s finest. Attendance was something one just did, and he didn’t expect any moments of satisfying spiritual feeding within those walls.

  But at moments like this—an encounter with something familiar, trees against moon, light against clouds—he’d find his spirits lifted to a place not bordered by faith or reason so much as by unexpected beauty. Awe, some might say. It was only a moonlit tree on a lovely night, but it gave him comfort. He felt almost sad when he entered the house and the moon with its iron-grate design disappeared.

  Inside, he called out to let Mrs. Bauer know he was home. His mind went to his children. He’d talk with them about their days, read a story to each, then say good night. Then he’d scan the paper while Mrs. Bauer reheated his dinner. He hoped she was over the disruption of the morning. He wasn’t sure whether to apologize again or to let it be. He’d wait to see what her mood was. Hopefully, they’d have a civil conversation about each other’s day, hers with stories of the children or what sewing she might have done, whether the garbage had been transported as scheduled or whether he needed to order ice. He’d have to tell her that while he didn’t appreciate her having used a portrait time to schedule interviews, he thought he’d found what he needed in the two young women: the one being spirited and bright, and the other being teachable and loyal. Good qualities all if he could help them master the skills he wanted. The time he invested would be worth it if the girls could assume the duties should the sickness overtake him again. And if not, they could double the output of prints and speed up development, earning him happier customers. If only he could stay well.

  He’d had bouts with rheumatic fever since he’d been in the army, and perhaps those episodes had weakened him, made him more susceptible to the mercury poisonings. But then most of the men he knew who made their living as photographers had at least one bout with the poisons—unless they spread the work around, and that’s exactly what he intended to do. If he never needed the girls to run the studio, well then, after a few years he could perhaps help them find employment with other photographers, where men did need trained assistants.

  His easy mood cautioned as he placed his hat on the round table beside the door and felt the silence slice like the calm before a storm. Silence sparred with concern. Too quiet. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. Surely Russell was still up, and he’d asked Mrs. Bauer not to put Winnie to bed before eight so he could play with the child for a time.

  Not again, he thought as he turned back to look at the moon. It was up above the trees, so bright it created a shadow of the house framed against the lawn. So peaceful everything looked. Nothing to match the turmoil in his gut.

  FJ paced his way through the house, his mind racing to the first evening when he’d returned home to an empty house. Eighteen ninety-four. They’d been married for three turbulent years. Oh, not shouting and such, not on his part; he was never one for that. Mrs. Bauer made her voice heard though. She was young and he’d given her ample time, or so he’d thought back then. Time to adjust to marriage. Time to visit her mother, every day if she wanted. He’d moved her mother to Winona from Ellsworth in fact. He’d encouraged her to come to the studio, to learn the business with him. He’d pushed for more intimacy. She’d resisted. She was still young, he knew, but he wanted a family, wanted children laughing and scampering around the house. What was the point of working so hard if not to have children to share the fruits of the labor and, more, to leave it to?

  Then one fine summer evening he’d come home to emptiness. She’d left him, moved her dresses and chemises and jewelry and cold creams into her mother’s house. When he finally worked through the ups and downs of worrying over something having happened to her, it was the next morning. He walked to her mother’s house, where she met him at the door and told him her mother needed her now, what with her father’s death and her sister Eva’s being newly married and not able to help her mother. “She can’t be alone.”

  But her mother had often been alone while her husband travelled for his photographic business. Ernestine Otis was a capable if not ecc
entric woman who distinguished herself in Winona commerce by never carrying a purse. Instead she wore layers of petticoats into which she’d sewn pockets, and whenever she purchased items—pieces of material for quilts she started but never finished—she’d have to paw through yards of fabric in order to find the pockets that had coins in them. She didn’t need her daughter with her, but FJ needed his wife with him. It was where a wife belonged, beside her husband.

  Eventually he’d gotten his mother-in-law to agree, but not his own wife.

  He’d bought flowers and started her on bottled mineral water, to no avail; he spent long hours at his lodge because the house felt as empty as an overdrawn well.

  What finally brought her back after nearly six months was beyond him. He’d begun to think she would never return, and then one night he came home and there she was, sitting at the table, his dinner warming in the Monarch oven. That he didn’t know why she’d returned meant he couldn’t prevent what might make her leave again.

  She did not wish to speak of why she left or why she’d come back, but she’d been more ready to be intimate with him. The matter of children had taken nearly four more years of gentle persuasion, but in 1899 Russell was born.

  She’d gone home again the next year but returned in less than six months, and he told himself that perhaps she needed that respite to be with her mother, learning how to tend a newborn. Two years later, Donald arrived. She announced that there’d be no more children and moved into her own bedroom. Only one time had she let him in and then only because he cajoled her, convinced her for a night that marriage meant a working through of problems, shared tenderness, not an escape where only one person achieved happiness. Not that he thought her happy, but neither was he. After that single evening together she’d seemed contented, and he thought perhaps he’d made a way through her resistance.

  But then Donald had… There’d been the accident, far away in North Dakota, and he’d had to come home to tell her, the worst journey of his life. Friends had pressed them to have more children right away. None knew that she was already with child.

  FJ had hoped they could help support each other through this wilderness place, but they had not. She claimed illness from the childbearing, wanted to be left alone. He buried his grief in his work.

  Winifred arrived four months later, and with Russell, they became the children that partially filled his emptiness. He wasn’t sure about Mrs. Bauer’s.

  As he entered the kitchen this March evening, he did not smell a warming meal, no boiled potatoes or roast beef. He thought of other reasons why there might be no dinner. It was toward the end of the month and the household budget might be a little low. He’d have to check, but there was surely enough for a chicken. If there wasn’t, it was Mrs. Bauer’s duty to inform him so his children and their parents could eat sufficiently.

  She might not feel well. Her headaches might have consumed her evening. He looked for a note. She had agreed that if she ever left him again, she’d leave a note. There was none. A single lamp burned in the kitchen, casting shadows on the curtains. He walked through to the dining room.

  “Mrs. Bauer? What’s keeping you?”

  He made his way through the still house, took the steps two at a time to the second floor and the bedrooms, then opened Russell’s door. He felt his heart pounding—from the stair climb, he hoped, nothing more. The boy was asleep. It was early, but at least he was there; well, breathing evenly as FJ pulled the blanket over the boy’s shoulder and heard his own heartbeat slow. He found Winnie sleeping quietly in her crib in the nursery, and he caressed her hair, something he’d wanted to do that morning. His knock on Mrs. Bauer’s door brought no response. He opened it slowly, never quite sure what he’d find. The door creaked. She wasn’t there. The oval mirror of her dresser reflected his own frantic look.

  He returned downstairs, calling through the house, not so loud that the children would be awakened or alarmed. She had to be there somewhere! She’d never leave the children by themselves.

  They rarely used the parlor. The drapes there kept the room cool in summer and cold in the winter. It would be cold this evening. A pump organ filled up one entire wall of the small and heavily furnished room, and sometimes Mrs. Bauer played it to soothe her nerves. But he heard no music now. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. No moonlight penetrated here. He started to open the drapes to let the moonlight in when he was startled by her words.

  “You finally join your family,” Mrs. Bauer said.

  “What are you doing sitting here in the darkness?” The words came out sharper than intended, but she’d frightened him, sitting there faded into the mahogany chair beside the door. She’d begun with accusation. He’d defended. “A small light surely won’t hurt your head.”

  “Not that it matters to you,” she said. “If it did, you’d be home at a reasonable hour, have time with your children as you were so anxious to this morning. Winnie’s been coughing. These March winds stir her and make her ill.”

  “She appears to be sleeping soundly,” he said.

  “You would check on the children first.”

  “I would have greeted you first, you know that. I couldn’t find you, and you failed to answer when I called. Please, don’t argue. I’m sorry you’ve had a difficult day with the children. My own day has been… informative, if you’d care to hear of it.”

  “Thrice told? I imagine you’ve told the story to your lodge men. You certainly don’t need to lower yourself to repeat it to your ignorant wife.”

  “Ignorant?” She’d never referred to herself that way before. “Nonsense. Join me in the kitchen, and I’ll tell you about the girls you had me interview. We have eggs in the house, yes? I’ll fix us some scrambled if you’ve not had any dinner.”

  “I’m very tired, Mr. Bauer. Now that you’ve lowered yourself by coming home, I believe I’ll go to bed. And, yes. There are eggs. It’s good you know how to scramble them.”

  “Why do you do this, Jessie?” He corrected himself when she cleared her throat. “Mrs. Bauer. You’re far from ignorant. I’d be pleased to share my day with you. And I don’t think of coming home as something I don’t want to do.”

  “Yet you’re never here in a timely manner.”

  “One time this month have I stopped at the lodge. One time, confound it! I never know what sort of reception I’ll receive when I do come home. I’m always welcome there,” he said, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? I make your life miserable. I never do it right. How can you even bear to look at me?”

  Her voice rose in that strident way it had, like a wave at sea growing and growing. If he didn’t interrupt it, she’d escalate and go on for hours. She had in the past and he didn’t want that, not now. He was tired too.

  “You’re right, Mrs. Bauer. You’re absolutely correct.” He folded his hands as though in prayer. Maybe he did pray. “I should have come immediately home. I worked late, but that’s no excuse, leaving you here with the children. I’ll fix tea for you if you’d like.”

  “I’ve had enough tea to float the Boston flotilla. Yes. I do know a little history,” she said. “I know our history good and well. Shall I repeat it to you? What you did?”

  There’d be nothing he could do now. Every flutter of an eyelash, every lift of his eyebrow, even a tug on his mustache would carry with it messages he hadn’t put there. He made his face like stone.

  She rose from the chair. He waited for her to come closer to assault him with her words. He’d stand his ground. He had to. But instead she slipped like a shadow through the door, leaving him and the room as dry as a photographic plate.

  Candlelight Eyes

  THERE IS SATISFACTION IN REACHING for what one wants, even if attainment escapes one’s grasp. It was the thought on Jessie’s mind when she woke from a sound sleep the first morning of her new job. She washed in the cool water in the bowl, dressed, and found Roy waiting for her in the kitchen. He was her champion, the one who salute
d her adventures.

  She pressed against his cowlick and said, “I’ll take word pictures over the next few months since I won’t have my camera.”

  Roy rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Wh-wh-what h-h-happened to your c-c-camera?”

  “Mr. Bauer is keeping it until I learn new habits,” she said. “I’ll get it back, and when I do, the next pictures I take will be more professional. You wait and see. I never did like to do the practice exercises that Kodak recommended. I just liked to shoot and see what I got. Now that’s probably all I’ll be doing, practicing.” Still, each day she’d learn something new; each encounter at the studio would be one she’d try to remember and “picture” in her eye to share with Roy even if she didn’t have the camera to assist her.

  “Wh-wh-what’s p-p-professional?”

  She thought, then said, “Someone with a certificate saying they are, I guess. That they’re authorized to do a thing. That they both have the skill and then take the risk of using it. You have to do both to be authorized and professional.”

  “Y-y-you don’t need a c-c-certifi-tifi-cate.”

  Jessie brushed the blunt cut of his hair back from his eyes. “Thanks for that,” she told him. She’d sacrifice for Roy. That thought would help her fill the empty days without her camera.

  Mr. Bauer began the morning instructions with a tour of the studio’s reception room, pointing out his awards in portrait work and telling them he’d won a gold medal from the National Photographic Association. “But it was stolen in ’01. The thief was probably one of my customers who saw the gold and totally ignored the great emotional treasure the award held for me.”

  “Probably shouldn’t have stuck it out there in the open,” Voe offered.

  Mr. Bauer had a pained look. “I’ve heard that somewhere else,” he said but didn’t elaborate.

  The room was lighted from the top with skylights. Jessie could look up and see the tips of branches from the towering elms, though not enough to lessen the light’s effect. The room felt comfortable without being too elegant and would put most people at ease with its dark greens and muted reds. Too rich and people would likely protest the costs of their portraits; too simple and they’d wonder if the photographer had the skill or experience to expose the richness they hoped to see in the finished product. Jessie noted that this business was a balance.