A Flickering Light

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “We’ve been paid. But I’ve been hunting for that camera and wondered why you wouldn’t give it back to me.”

  “I wonder why I didn’t either,” he said. “Confound it! This is very strange.”

  Perhaps it was Mrs. Bauer who didn’t like her work. Or maybe he was delirious when he made the remarks.

  “I’ll speak with Mrs. Bauer. I believe I’ll do that now and return your camera to you as well.” He rose to leave, and Jessie could see by his quick movements, jerking his coat from the tree, pressing his hat on tightly, that he was upset. “Yes. I’ll see if Mrs. Bauer can shed some light on this little mystery.” He wrapped a wool scarf around his neck. He started out, then turned around. He lifted her hand and patted it, held it for just a moment. “Thank you for the hard work you did while I was ill. I’m so sorry about this confusion.” He looked into her eyes, and Jessie felt gratitude from him that warmed.

  He removed his hand, aware that he had perhaps violated a border. He picked up one of the prints Jessie said he hadn’t liked. He seemed momentarily confused again, tapped it against his hand.

  “I’ll bring your camera back in the morning. It was wrong of me to have separated you from it. You do have quite a talent, Miss Gaebele. I’m sorry if I conveyed anything less.”

  He had given them gloves for Christmas and said they were from the Bauer family. Voe’s were a black pair with tiny stitches, and Jessie’s gloves were the color of cream. They were both leather, and Jessie wondered if Lilly would be able to tell if she had sewn these particular gloves from Stott’s. It would be hard to create things that couldn’t be recognized as your own, Jessie thought. She’d have to be more understanding of Lilly’s irritations, knowing that she lacked tasks that fed her uniqueness.

  To herself, Jessie acknowledged her disappointment with the gloves. She’d wanted FJ to see her as distinctive, separate from Voe. Oh, she knew they both worked for him, had been hired at the same time and all that, but Jessie had done more work and meant to make photography her career. Voe would be the first to admit that it was “just a trade” for her and one she was happy to leave behind each day when they closed the studio door.

  Not Jessie. Once she’d gotten her camera back, it was as though she’d been starving for months and at last could eat and be satisfied. She finished up the roll, taking shots outside of all sorts of things that some might think frivolous. She took a picture of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Station and managed to get a buggy in the foreground with its unusual painted white wheels standing out against the maroon-colored body. A train was in the station the day she took the shot. A yellow passenger car followed the coal tender car. She’d always liked the rail station because of its red brick and a roofline that reminded her of old European mansions. She fully intended to tint the photograph once it was developed, and she made notes to remind herself of the oil colors she’d need: yellow ochre for the passenger car, lamp black for the train, crimson lake and hemp black would color the maroon buggy, and for the blue gray roof she’d use a little prussian blue and crimson lake to create a weak purple tone.

  St. Stanislaus Church and School was another photograph she hoped would turn out well. The turrets and domes of the massive building that took up an entire block in Winona were often photographed from the front, but Jessie wanted one taken at the corner. Whenever she walked past that Gothic-looking building, she thought she was in Russia or maybe Germany, places she’d likely never visit, and yet the architecture had been transplanted right here to their little town of Winona. She took photographs of mallards skimming Vs across the water at Levee Park, and when the snow began to melt, she shot interesting views of its changing shapes. But her favorite, one she hoped would turn out, was of the drive to Sugar Loaf, the natural wonder that people on the steamboats always looked for to tell them they were nearly home. A storm brewed on the day she took that picture, and she made notes so that if she decided to color it for a postcard, she’d get the hues just right.

  She also photographed Winifred with her little camera. It was the last picture on the Kodak roll. FJ had brought Winnie in for a birthday portrait.

  “And when is your birthday, Winnie?” The child looked at her father.

  “February 12.”

  “Mine too!” Jessie said before catching herself.

  “Is it?” FJ said. “We should take a photograph of you too, then, Jessie. You can give it to your mother for a present.”

  “I’d like that,” she told him. “But first Winnie’s.”

  “Yes. Winnie’s.” He posed Winnie with just a gold necklace against her bare skin. She had her little shirt off. It was cool in the studio, and Jessie put a cloak around her until he was ready with reflectors and lighting and just the angle he wanted. “I’ll develop it with a kind of mist around her shoulders,” he told them. “And I don’t want any color except her skin tone and the delicate chain. I want those eyes and that wonderful mouth of hers to be the focus.”

  Winnie fidgeted until he said, “Hold your breath now,” and she did, looking up with her beautiful eyes, posing. “Breathe now, Papa?” she asked after a few seconds.

  “Yes, Liebchen,” he told her, using the German word for sweetheart.

  “I sit for Papa,” Winnie told Jessie. “Do you like to sit for Papa too?”

  Jessie felt herself blushing, though she didn’t know why. “I like to help your papa take beautiful pictures of his best girl,” she said. “And now I’ll take one of you too, all right?”

  She nodded. “I’m Papa’s best girl.”

  “That you are, Liebchen.” The child beamed and posed still again even though her father hadn’t asked her to.

  Jessie took her shot, then helped the almost-three-year-old Winnie put her dress back on over her chemise. The child chattered, and Jessie listened and laughed with her.

  “Want some chocolate?” Voe asked, and when Winnie nodded, Voe took the child to the kitchen. “Now let’s get your photograph,” FJ said.

  “Mine?” She hesitated. He had yet to explain the confusion between Mrs. Bauer and himself with regard to Jessie’s photographs. She wasn’t sure why, but she sensed a tension between the two, and somehow her photographs had become a part of that. She wondered if Mrs. Bauer would approve of his wasting time and dry plates on portraits of a shop girl.

  “It really isn’t necessary, FJ,” Jessie said.

  “Now, it isn’t every day that a young girl turns sixteen,” he said. “Your beaus will enjoy having a likeness of you.”

  “My mother or my uncle might, but there are no beaus for me.”

  “That’ll change,” he said. “Sooner than you think. This’ll only take a moment. You know how to sit.”

  She did sit down, fussed with her hair, settled this way and that on the side chair. She felt suddenly exposed in front of the camera with him behind it, as though he could see something through the lens that she didn’t intend to reveal. She wondered now if others felt that way when she stood behind the camera. It concerned her that she was doing something frivolous when she should be working, and even though her employer was saying it was fine, she felt uncomfortable. She stood.

  “I’d really rather do a sitting, if we must, when I’ve had time to prepare my hair,” she said. “And to choose a blouse that compliments me more. Who needs a working-girl photograph?” She laughed, feeling awkward. “If we’re going to do this, I’d like to look…taller, at the very least.”

  He came out from behind the camera and smiled with his entire face. “I’m not sure I can make you taller, but a gentleman defers to a lady’s need for a fresh toilet. You prepare tomorrow, and we’ll do the sitting then. I should get Winnie on home anyway. Mrs. Bauer will worry.”

  “Speaking of Mrs. Bauer,” Jessie said. “I wondered if you… Did you have an opportunity to discuss with her the concerns about my photographs?” She sometimes waited so long to bring up an issue that by the time she did, the trouble had faded itself out.

  “I did,” h
e said. He’d turned his back to her and fussed with the camera wheel, raising it to prepare for the family he’d be photographing tomorrow. “And I must say I am no more clarified in my thinking than I was before. She insists that I made the comments and was quite upset that I should retract what I said and put the blame on her. That’s what she called it, ‘the blame.’”

  “I didn’t think you were being unkind. I just didn’t understand what you meant about them, how I could improve them next time,” Jessie said.

  “I tried to tell her that, but she—” He stopped himself. “I’m sorry. You’ve no need to be embroiled in our petty marital disputes,” he said. “I found the photographs to be not grand but satisfactory as I looked at them without fever. I regret that Mrs. Bauer felt compelled to share with you her delusions. My delusions,” he corrected. “Can we let it go at that?”

  “Certainly.” She still wondered what wasn’t so grand about them. “I hope that if you have judgments about my photographs, should I be allowed to take some independent of you in the future, you’ll share any thoughts you have. To make them better.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Your asking is a sign of a professional mind. One never improves his art without curiosity and risk.”

  He went to the kitchen to retrieve Winnie, and on the way back through he stopped at the desk where Jessie bent over a ledger. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, suggesting a birthday portrait for you. Sometimes I do things meant to be kind that turn out otherwise. I wouldn’t want that to be the case, with you especially. I’m very fond of you, Miss Gaebele. I hope you know that.”

  He pressed his hat upon his head. Winnie rushed to kiss Jessie’s cheek as Jessie knelt to her, and then the two were gone, leaving Jessie with a wondering ache in her heart.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” FJ told his wife. “She’s simply a young woman who works for me. Nothing else. How do you get yourself into thinking these things?”

  Mrs. Bauer had greeted him at the door several days later, fire in her eyes. “Winifred said you were fond of Miss Gaebele and making a birthday portrait of her, that you said it right in front of the child.”

  “That alone should tell you there’s nothing to worry about. Of course I said it in front of the child. Both of them are children. Miss Gaebele is turning sixteen on the same day Winnie turns three. They’re children. Minnesota doesn’t recognize a girl as a woman until she turns eighteen, remember? Where is your mind going?”

  “I was a child when you married me.” He turned away. “And those other shop girls you employed—”

  “Who deserted me, if you remember.”

  “You tried to make me out to be the bad person about those pictures,” she said.

  Her eyes had that blaze to them that could mean hours of her ranting with nothing to stop it. The more he attempted to be reasonable, gentle, or sweet, the more her voice raised, and before long she would bring in “the history lesson” as he called it, reminders of all the low and thoughtless things he’d done through their nearly seventeen years of marriage.

  “Jessie. Mrs. Bauer. Calm yourself. The children are here. There’s no need for your upset.”

  “No need? You express fondness for some young girl. It’s probably not the first time. Maybe that’s why Miss Schulz and Miss Phalen left. How do I know that isn’t what you do when you’re off at your conventions? After all I do to raise your children, to prepare your meals, to take care of you when you’re ill, and this is how you repay me?” She tore off her apron and rolled it into a ball. “Fix your own supper, Mr. Bauer. Perhaps you should get used to it.”

  She ran up the stairs, the argument ending with the slam of her door.

  Winnie shook. He put his arm on her shoulder. “It’s nothing you did, Liebchen. Mama’s had a hard day. We’ll let her rest. Let’s find Russell, and the three of us will fix something to eat. Maybe I’ll try my hand at a little éclair. Would you like that? Hmm? You will help me stir the eggs.” Winnie nodded, but her lower lip pooched out. He tickled his fingers beneath her chin, and she smiled. “Good. Now where’s Russell? Is he in his room? You go get him. That’s a good girl. We’ll let Mama rest, and we’ll do this together.”

  The child ran off, and he slumped into the kitchen chair. There had never been a partnership between him and Mrs. Bauer, never the reality of two people moving on the same path toward common hopes. The most precious things he had in his life were his children, and Mrs. Bauer had given him those. Yet nothing he did could assure her that he was faithful, reliable, dependable. Even if he came home every night without going to the lodge or to the Masonic temple, where his comrades all gathered, even if he neglected those possible commercial referrals so necessary in his business, and came here every day exactly by six o’clock, he would still have to face the uncertainty: perhaps silence, or more likely, unexplained rage. If she was even here. She’d gone home twice to her mother, and he fully expected her to do that again. He just didn’t know when or why.

  Her behavior had worsened with Donald’s death, and he held himself accountable for that. Everyone said it was an accident, but he’d kept the boy standing between his knees. Donald would be alive today if he hadn’t done that, and so he’d carry the weight of his poor decision to his grave. The horse was a favorite of Mrs. Bauer’s too. Tame. Well trained. He shook his head. They’d all been in this malaise for nearly four years now.

  Maybe Mrs. Bauer was right. Miss Gaebele did bring lightness to his days. She did make him feel as though he had something to offer by allowing him to help her develop skills. Even so, he thought of her as a child, which she was. Nothing more. And he didn’t know why he should deprive himself of pleasure in doing things for people who seemed to appreciate it, unlike his wife. He could do nothing to please her, or at least that was how it had come to seem.

  “Papa?” Russell entered the room. “Is Mama all right?”

  “She’ll be fine, Son. We’ll fix some supper and offer her some, but she may refuse it. We grownups have had a misunderstanding, but it isn’t about you. You mustn’t worry. Wash up now,” he said, standing. He picked up the apron and put it over his head, tying the sash around his waist. Russell started to smile. “What? You think a man can’t wear an apron? I know how to do a few things around here. Time you learned too. Here’s an apron for you as well.” He pulled one from the linen closet, tidy as his tackle box. Winnie giggled. “I’m giving you dish cleanup duty,” he told his son. “And you, missy, you’re the chief egg swamper.”

  Winnie grabbed his legs and hugged him. Russell groaned, but it was a groan of joy. FJ touched his daughter’s soft curls, smiled at his son. At least he could still give pleasure to his children.

  Jessie did bring in a pleated silk blouse, her Sunday best, and a string of pearls she “borrowed” from her mother under the guise that she wanted to try a new prop. She intended to weave them into her hair. He didn’t mention the portrait. Jessie swallowed her disappointment, to shy to bring it up. At the end of the day, she took the blouse and pearls home.

  Jessie Gaebele turned sixteen in 1908 at a party her parents planned that included Voe, Clara Giese (who had run through the storm with her), and Jerome, who always seemed to be around when food was served. Voe had brought him along uninvited. Lilly told her if she didn’t want Jerome around she’d have to be blunt. “That’s how I dealt with Sam,” she said. Sam was one of Lilly’s beaus, and Jessie had liked him. But Lilly said he was fond of “brew,” and she’d never marry a man with that kind of palate.

  Jessie’s uncle August appeared, as did several other friends of her parents’, and of course her sisters and brother, Roy. Sweet, gentle, damaged Roy.

  After the cake, while people took turns on the White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer handle, Jessie opened gifts. Mr. Steffes gave her a certificate “good for a bicycle ride once a week.” Her uncle added another treasure from the world’s fair, a rose glass cup with her name etched into the red. “Did you do all this during the fair?” Jessie aske
d him.

  “I must have,” he said, and he winked.

  Lilly had sewn a new blouse for her, and Selma gave her a fragrant lily of the valley plant she’d nurtured from seed that would bloom in the spring. Her parents gave her a subscription to the monthly Woman’s Home Companion. Lilly scoffed at that.

  “That magazine has articles by radical women. Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” Lilly said. “She advocates the woman of a house pay for household help so she can work outside, both contributing to the household coffers and helping the economy by giving some poor wretch a job cooking and cleaning.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that,” her mother said, frowning. “But the editor is Reverend Edward Everett Hale. He always offers the most encouraging things to think about. I’ve bought an issue now and then. I think it will help all you girls think of womanly things.”

  “‘Faith is looking up, hope is looking forward, and love is looking outward instead of inward,’” Jessie quoted. “I remember seeing that in one of the issues you bought, Mama. I’ll like looking at them. A photographer has to keep up with the times, Lilly.”

  Her sister scoffed again.

  “I like the stories they publish,” Selma said. “And the dress patterns. Won’t you like looking at those, Lilly?”

  Voe gave Jessie a card she’d made with little pieces of dried flowers glued to make the shape of a Kodak. Inside she’d placed some coins.

  “But you worked hard for this money, Voe. I’m sure you have things you’d like to buy.”

  “I never would have kept that job while Mr. B. was ill if it hadn’t been for you organizing and directing. So it’s a little bit I set aside for your present and then figured you’d know better what to do with it.”

  “I’ll get my prints developed,” she said, hugging Voe. “Thank you so much.”

  “That was very thoughtful of you, Voe,” Jessie’s mother said.