A Flickering Light

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Roy raised his hand and pointed before they heard the knock at the door. Selma opened it, and there stood FJ.

  “Mr. Bauer,” Jessie gasped. “Are you lost?”

  “On my way home.”

  “He works very hard,” Jessie told everyone. “I should have been working this Tuesday, so thank you for giving me a day off to have my party.”

  “Invite the man in,” her father said. There’d been an ice storm, and as Jessie motioned for him to enter, she looked at the trees outside. The ice pelted one side of the tree trunks, making them look nearly white in the late afternoon, while the backs of the trunks were bare and black. She wished she could rush out and take a photograph of this checkered contrast.

  “It’s Jessie’s birthday,” Selma told Mr. Bauer. “That’s why we’re having a party.”

  “My daughter’s birthday is today as well, so it was easy to remember Miss Gaebele’s special day. I just wanted to drop something off for her.” His spectacles had steamed in the warm room, and he looked over them as he handed Jessie the package, which felt damp to her hands but not cold. He must have carried it close to his person.

  She hesitated, feeling awkward opening the gift in front of everyone. She didn’t know why. She’d opened everyone else’s present with a dozen eyes looking on.

  “Go on,” Selma urged. “What is it?”

  It was something in silver with St. Louis World’s Fair 1904 engraved on it. She lifted a small case out of the paper wrapping. It fit in the palm of her hand and opened on a single hinge. Inside could rest three or four small photographs.

  “I knew you were fond of world’s fair items,” he said. “You said your uncle had gotten you things.”

  “That I did,” August said, and he thrust his hand out and introduced himself. “But I didn’t see anything like a photographic case to purchase.”

  Jessie turned the small case over in her hands. She couldn’t remember receiving a present that spoke so well to what she loved, except for Uncle August’s gift of the Kodak, of course. But this… this was spare and splendid.

  “Well, what do you say?” her mother urged.

  “C-c-cat’s got her t-t-tongue,” Roy said and grinned widely.

  Jessie brushed the hair from Roy’s eyes, found words.

  “I’m… It’s…beautiful, Mr. Bauer,” Jessie said. “Thank you. I didn’t warrant, that is, I don’t deserve—”

  “Let me hold it,” Selma said, and Jessie passed the case around, grateful to be rescued from her stuttering words.

  “Hey, there’s a photo inside,” Jerome Kopp said when the case got to him. “Wanna take it out, Jess?”

  She’d seen the back of a photo when she’d opened it but hadn’t wanted to turn it face out in front of everyone. She wanted to keep some small part of this present as just hers, though she didn’t know why.

  “No, just let it be,” she told him.

  “Ah, come on.” Jerome lifted it and looked. “Swell,” he said before turning it around and holding it up for everyone to look at.

  No one else said anything for a moment.

  Finally, Jessie asked, “When…when did you take it?”

  “When you were helping get Winifred—that’s my daughter—ready for her portrait. It’s a profile, and I could take out the background easily enough. I thought it a good likeness.”

  “Your glasses are where they’re supposed to be,” Selma said, “instead of sliding down on your nose.”

  Jessie said nothing, afraid that any words would give away what her heart was telling her. She waited for the photograph to be handed back to her, waited until each had looked at it and commented then on “how pretty it was” and “what a good likeness” and all that nonsense.

  It wasn’t a good likeness at all.

  The girl in that photograph had flyaway hair, and she hadn’t worn her earrings, which any self-respecting woman would have for a portrait sitting. But worst of all, it wasn’t like her because the girl—no, the woman—in that photograph was beautiful. She’d been made so by the eye behind the lens.

  She closed the case around the picture and realized people were saying farewells and that Mr. Bauer was backing his way to the door, appreciating their hospitality for allowing the intrusion. She nodded to him, thanked him again, she thought, and then he was out the door. She remembered just as he moved down the steps. “Tell Winnie happy birthday for me!”

  “That I’ll do,” he said. He tipped his hat in the waning afternoon, hooked his cane over his arm, and stepped away.

  “Well, that was a fine present and a nice surprise for a girl’s sixteenth year,” her father said.

  “The old man has taste,” Jerome said.

  Voe punched him in the shoulder. “Not that you’d know about that.”

  “I know what I know,” he said. The look he gave Jessie seemed to peer inside her, accuse her. She looked away only to see Lilly holding the same penetrating gaze.

  “You’d better be careful,” Lilly said as the girls undressed that evening.

  “I’m always careful,” Jessie said.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “What?” Selma asked. “Tell me because I sure don’t know.”

  “It’s none of anyone’s business,” Jessie said. “Besides, it’s your imagination. Mr. Bauer is a kind man who wants to see me succeed as a photographer, that’s all. He likes to instruct. He likes to encourage. A silver photographic case is a thoughtful gift, more generous than he ought to have indulged in, but I did run the studio while he was ill and through the Christmas season too.”

  “He remembered your birthday!” Lilly hissed.

  “It’s the same day as his daughter’s. You’re making too much of this, Lilly.”

  Jessie removed her dress shields and placed them on the dresser for airing. They were damp.

  “Is there something wrong with Jessie getting a present from the Bauers?” Selma asked.

  “No. There’s nothing wrong with it,” Jessie said. “Lilly sees goblins stalking where there are only good wishes roaming about.”

  “I’m not talking about the photographic case,” Lilly said. “It’s the photograph in it that worries me.”

  It concerned Jessie too, but she couldn’t let Lilly or Selma know that. “He’s just like Uncle August to me,” Jessie said. “Those older men like to amuse themselves by delighting young girls. That’s all this is. I bet he remembers Voe’s birthday too and gives her something equally as special.”

  “It won’t have that kind of a photograph in it,” Lilly said. “I can assure you of that.”

  “It was a candid shot. Something he did…spontaneously.” She pulled her nightdress over her head, let it slide down her narrow hips, the heat from her body filling the flannel. She tied the ribbon at the neckline, then began taking the combs out of her hair. “His child was the subject of the sitting. She’s such a sweet little girl.”

  “Let me brush your hair, Jessie,” Selma said, and Jessie sat on the bed while her sister knelt on the log cabin quilt behind her. She hoped the conversation about the photograph was over. She wished she had her own room right now so she could consider the jumble of feelings that tossed around inside her.

  “Jessie, you know what I’m talking about. The eye behind that camera”—Lilly hesitated, looked into the round mirror to catch Jessie’s eyes—“feels deeply about the subject.” She mouthed the words so Selma wouldn’t hear them.

  “The camera was set for his daughter, so of course that makes sense,” Jessie said, making her voice light. She looked away then. “That’s enough, Selma. I’m really tired.” She slid beneath the layers of quilts and buried her face into the down pillow, not wanting to deal any further with the confusion of Lilly’s observations and the clutter of her own thoughts. She was sixteen years old and feeling strange. Maybe she was coming down with something. Yes. That was probably it. She closed her eyes and prayed for sleep while dreams skipped across her mind like stones across a distant
lake.

  The Pose

  Posing someone seeking a portrait means creating the proper setting for them. The setting, after all, is a party to the pretense. Posing is attentive to detail. I’m reminded of the gospel story of the fishermen complaining that they’d not caught sufficient fish and being told to return and fish deeper. Return and go deeper. They were seeking fish, but going deeper forced them to reflect on things, to bring up wisdom and not just what they thought they’d gone after. Going deeper changed their pose.

  The photograph posed here is of two of my friends, Voe on the right, and Clara. I loved the new moon and placed the girls to look as though they balanced each other. It was quite a contraption, that new moon, and became popular in the studio, giving a portrait an almost spontaneous look, though I’d purposefully arranged every detail of their hats and hands. I handed Clara my beaded purse to lay on her knees. I set the feathers on their hats just so. Voe’s hat was made of plaster bananas. I smoothed the wrinkles on their skirts with sliced cucumber, rubbed a cloth along the points of Clara’s shoes to make them shine. Nothing was as it had been when they’d walked in; it was all posed. Sometimes what seems to be the most casual is really quite predetermined.

  You’ll note as well that Clara, on the left, swings her feet. She’s above the floor, while you can’t see Voe’s legs, covered by the moon. I could have put them both on one side, but I liked the offsetting quality of their positions. They weren’t in the some place even though their bodies might appear so. But they sat tuned to each other, though they looked toward the camera. Initially I had them looking at each other, but they laughed too much and could not hold the pose. So I placed their hands just so and had them look at me, forget they sat with a friend, and make the lens their pal.

  In a studio pose, one looks for the very best way of making the subjects look more like themselves than they might really be. There is a quality of pretense, a facade that people carry around on their person. They don’t really want the real, known-only-to-a-few person to come through to everyone they meet. It would unravel their souls to let everyone see who they are, really. Souls seek safety and find it in silences. It’s a kind of feigning, and when I posed FJ’s clients, I helped him with the pretense on more levels than one.

  The position of the hands, for example, can suggest power, or supplication, or frustration. I’ve posed an old man’s hand vertical on his knee but in a fist because it allowed him to hold it still long enough to add the seconds needed to expose the film. He liked the result, said it made him look “regal,” as though he held a staff. His daughter didn’t like it though. She said it made him look hard, and he wasn’t. But you see, he liked that it suggested a view of himself he wanted and now could affirm even if he didn’t feel regal most of the time.

  Which props one puts into the picture can also change the pose. Is the woman looking at a book so we see only a profile? Perhaps she’s holding a hat loosely at her side, suggesting casualness. Many women like that look, though in interaction with others we rarely let ourselves look unplanned, casual. We’re always seeking ways to appear natural, relaxed, and happy when in fact so many of us aren’t. Even worrying about what others think of us can be time consuming, and yet we do it, even when having our portraits made. Perhaps more than ever when we’re having our portraits made. I’m quite critical of pictures of me. Perhaps it’s human nature to want to be received in the good light that we see ourselves in. We experience disappointment when we aren’t so accepted. There is a kind of nakedness (a word my mother would gasp at) in having a photograph made. A risk, too, that someone will see through our pose into our very souls. I’ve heard there are people in the world who do not ever pose for photographs for fear it will do something to their souls. They avoid mirrors for the same reason, and reflections of themselves in water.

  The birthday gift from FJ was a mirror that told everyone, even before my own acknowledgment, that I was on the brink of stepping into a deeper place. I could feign friendship. I could feign professionalism. I was merely a student learning all I could—that’s all I was. I told myself and others any number of things that from afar made perfect sense. FJ and I worked closely together. We shared business conversations. Some weeks we spent more time with each other at the studio than we spent awake with our families. But these things happened among colleagues in the working world, didn’t they? One must learn limits, borders, boundaries. What did the German poet Rilke write? That love meant to “protect and border and salute.” It was the border we needed to address. Or I did. I didn’t even know for certain he felt anything for me. Except for that present and the portrait inside.

  I reasoned that what was happening to us had happened before women ever left the home to work. Consider the pose between a finely dressed female and a bank teller, for example. Or sometimes looks might pass between a pastor and his organist and be understood as longing that moves no further than one’s eyes. The borders are protected, but someone else watching might misunderstand, might not recognize the pose as one subject to limits. I’d read of such things, though I’d never seen it.

  For FJ and me there was no need to say anything. As long as we didn’t, I felt safe, could tell myself I just wasn’t interested in younger boys, not interested in tying my life to a man of any age, for that matter. I didn’t deserve such an alliance anyway. I couldn’t find within me the right to such joy meant to last a lifetime. I wanted to cultivate my passion for photography, and doors had opened to allow it. Each of us had been created for such uniqueness, hadn’t we? Created that way, yes; deserving of it? No. I carried fear within me, of what I wasn’t certain. I had unwittingly protected my heart all the while I worked with Mr. Bauer. Then he gave me that gift, and it caused me to go deeper but not yet to face the fear that I wasn’t worthy of that artistic passion, wasn’t worthy of the joy.

  Afterward, posing as disinterested parties in a photographic studio could go on no longer. How to proceed became the issue. Maybe if I had simply held the thought but not put feet to it, maybe all would have passed over without entanglement or trial. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what FJ understood about what he’d done in giving me the case and the photograph inside. Men can sometimes be quite dense about such things, not realizing the nuances read by others, those little details that can make or break a scene.

  When the shot’s been taken, there is extricating to be done, even with a solo portrait. The props are removed from the subjects, feet now placed so they can stand. There is the moment of discomfort as the subjects walk away from the background and the bench they’ve sat upon and step back into the real world. The fantasy is gone. A kind of loss is felt. The photographer lightens the moment, says something to suggest that it went well, that they’ll be pleased with the results, and then they leave, no longer in a portrait pose but taking on another that helps them manage in the world.

  When I finished the shot with my friends, they chattered to each other and coordinated in order for each to step off that new moon structure safely and go their merry way. As with a teetertotter that children play on, one simply cannot walk away from that kind of pose without consulting the other first, or great pain ensues. Yes, it’s best to work things out step by step when extracting from a pose, if one can.

  It was a lesson I would learn the hardest way.

  Adapting

  FJ ENJOYED THE LAUGHTER of his daughter on her birthday. Winnie’s giggling always warmed his heart. He tried to put behind him financial concerns. They’d made it through the bank foreclosures of 1907, and fortunately the Winona Bank, where he held his accounts, remained solvent. But he’d decided to put money into stocks just before the financial panic, and those investments proved useless. He chided himself. He was forever climbing aboard wagons that raced over precipices he hadn’t seen. His forecasting might as well have been formed in a fog. Congress had appointed a committee to establish a better monetary policy, but he had little hope that anything would come of it. The illustrated ad in the paper had it righ
t: large corporations held the hammer while consumers and small businessmen were the nails.

  He’d probably have to cut expenses. He certainly didn’t want to deprive his children of anything. And Mrs. Bauer always needed more household money. He didn’t want to say no to that. It would lead to argument. No, it was better to let things at home go on and to make expense cuts at work.

  He could cancel the subscription to Camera World, much as he liked taking it and the girls enjoyed reading it. At least Jessie did. The World taught him that the Lumiére brothers, French chemists, had developed a process for color photography. Maybe tinting would fade away. They already manufactured photographic materials and had invented some kind of moving-picture camera. Now color. Should he invest in that? He would have to learn of these things through the conventions if he cancelled the subscription, but even convention going must be curtailed.

  The lawsuit he’d brought against the Dakota farmer who had let his stubble burn get out of hand had gone nowhere. He’d lost five thousand dollars’ worth of timber as well as the house, outbuildings, and his cattle. He was insured but not against all losses. Maybe he’d still get something out of the neighbor, but he doubted it.

  He supposed he ought not to have indulged in the silver photo case for Jessie. But he’d seen it in the store, and the price had been reasonable as it was nearly four years old. It was appropriate for her, loving photography as she did. He hoped it would turn her head toward portraiture work. It concerned him that she was interested in the landscape side of photography rather than the studio side. The international argument about whether photography was art had waged for years. Large numbers of photographers considered themselves Photo-Secessionists. They saw themselves as “amateurs” who didn’t want to associate with professionally trained portrait photographers and held separate gallery exhibitions. FJ believed a professional photographer could be artistic, but he also knew that making a great photograph required technical and scientific skills. Miss Gaebele would have considered herself a Secessionist, he imagined, and that was unfortunate. She had potential, but not if she persisted in taking artful landscape shots rather than cementing her skills in the studio first. She liked the splash of a finished photograph but seemed to abhor the daily rigors necessary to build up her understanding of this art.