A Flickering Light (15 page)

Jessie looked around at all the different faces shining in the lights. A wood stove burned hot in the back, but she could still see the breath of those sitting near the front. Just a little breath, and the girls all kept their hands inside their muffs. These faces: every one of them could be a portrait, Jessie thought.

Jessie’s mind wandered as the room filled with worshipers. Part of what she’d liked about running the studio with Voe these past weeks were the adventures she could look forward to each day, the new clients, the freedom to experiment in the darkroom, and the independence to eat lunch when they were hungry and not just when Mr. Bauer said to. They’d done well for the studio, or so she thought. She’d written ad copy that was published each week. Appointments were scheduled. Collections came in soon after she sent out the statements, and she made bank deposits just as Mrs. Bauer had told her to.

Mrs. Bauer was cordial, and even when she shared bad news with Jessie about how her husband didn’t like certain aspects of the photographs she’d taken, Jessie found her easy to work with. Jessie took the criticism as lessons she still needed to learn and didn’t carry away bad feelings either about Mrs. Bauer or her own work. Mr. Bauer was expected back after the first of the year, and a part of Jessie wasn’t really looking forward to it. She might be limited to the darkroom again or, worse, relegated just to office work, working the typing machine and answering calls. There was the matter of the camera they’d have to work out, not to mention the rash of critical comments. She’d made notes. She wanted to learn. It wouldn’t be a pleasant discussion with him, but a necessary one.

The Gaebele children sat on either side of their parents on the long pew. During a change up front, when the choir left and another soloist stepped up on the stage, Jessie leaned forward, scanning to see if she knew anyone on the other side of the relatives’ pew. Uncle August winked at her and she waved. Her mother frowned. Jessie turned and looked back. Her eye caught Winifred’s. The child wiggled her fingers in greeting. Jessie waved her gloved hand in reply. The child had a good memory.

She saw Mrs. Bauer and Russell too, though neither noticed her. Then she saw Mr. Bauer. He looked so thin! He’d always been slender, but now he barely had skin enough to cover his bones. He’d lost some of his hair. The woman seated beside him moved, and her hat now kept Jessie from seeing any more of the Bauer-filled pew.

Here she’d been thinking poorly of him, almost wishing he wouldn’t return because it was going to interfere with her enjoyment of her profession. She hoped to catch his eye and nod hello but didn’t. She turned back when her mother tapped her knee and motioned for her to pay attention. The pastor had begun.

He spoke of light and what it meant to the world when Light flooded the darkness of men’s souls. Jessie turned her attention to the front. This was a divergent sort of sermon for him, as he often spent time on darkness and sin. “Light is directional, telling us which way to go when there’s a storm. The lantern swings to move us right or left to safety,” the pastor said. He had a thick German accent, and Jessie had to focus on each word. She could understand a little German, though she didn’t speak it. She believed that God’s light offered guidance, but she still struggled with why things happened to innocents like her brother. Well, she knew in part. She worried about why she didn’t always do what she knew she should.

“Light is warm. Those of you sitting far from the stove tonight might question that, way up here where the heat doesn’t reach.” The pastor was being cheerful, Jessie thought. Tonight many people who weren’t members attended to enjoy the fine musical numbers. Perhaps he hoped to lure them back for another time with his gentler words. Jessie wondered if he’d hold the usual altar call at the end of this service. Selma went up every week to reaffirm her faith. Jessie had done it once, and that was enough.

“Light can not be pushed or rushed. It is either there or not, and no matter how quickly we want a sunrise after a dark, dark night, light takes its own time. It is the absence of light that we notice. That’s what darkness is, especially to men’s souls, an absence of Light.” He paused, and for a moment Jessie thought he might go into that familiar theme of darkness. She fidgeted. She deserved to be reminded of all the wrongs she’d committed. But he continued with his voice light and joyous. He held a candle, which he now lit.

“Light can go out,” he said. “But even after it does, there is an afterimage, isn’t there? You look at this candle I hold. Stare closely now.” Then he blew it out. “Now close your eyes, those of you with them still open. Close them and what do you see?” Jesse did this. “Do you still see the candle? Yes? That is the Lord’s light in our hearts, burning there. Even when we make mistakes in our dark hours. Even though He has gone away from our sight, even when the light goes out—as the lives of those we love do—we can know that that life lives on as an afterimage in the hearts of those who remain behind. Remember that as I invite you forward tonight. Remember that and be drawn into a new place in your hearts and out of the darkness of men. Amen.”

Jessie hoped he also meant women could have the darkness drawn from their hearts, then felt a little guilty to have thought that. It wouldn’t be an idea of which her mother would approve.

In the shuffle of gathering up hymnals for the final selection they’d all join in singing, Jessie turned back. As she did, the woman with the large hat who had kept her from seeing Mr. Bauer bent to retrieve her song book, and when she did, Jessie watched Mr. Bauer wipe his eyes.
Tears?
Perhaps the talk of the afterimage brought his deceased child’s life burning into his eyes.

Jessie lowered her eyes and turned them to the front. It wasn’t her place to intrude on another family’s pain. She watched as Selma once again rose, not to sing but to go forward. “Come along, Jessie,” she urged. Jessie shook her head. Some things didn’t need to be repeated.

The Eye Behind the Camera

C
OLD SUNLIGHT BATHED THE
operating room windows on the day Mr. Bauer returned to his studio. Jessie dreaded this meeting, uncertain of her future given his criticisms of her work. Should she even bring it up or wait for him to? If he didn’t, she’d always wonder about it, carry with her the confusion of whether she held a warped view of her ability or if she truly needed much more training.

Jessie pushed at her spectacles. Her nose perspired even in the cool room. Mr. Bauer sat with her and Voe, who crossed her ankles and chewed gum as they perused the ledgers, the appointments, the prints requested and provided, those paid for and those still pending.

“Would you not chew your gum, Miss Kopp? It’s highly unprofessional and not very complimentary of your face.” Voe complied, putting the glob into a tissue that must have wrapped up one of her Christmas presents. Mr. Bauer appeared ready to begin their day, when Jessie cleared her throat and said she wanted to speak with him about the photographs he’d criticized. Voe excused herself.

“Don’t go,” Jessie said. “I mean, you might learn something from what Mr. Bauer didn’t like about the ones we set up,” Jessie said.

“I did what you told me to do,” Voe said. “So you can tell me later if you want to change it for next time. I’m going to make some tea. Would you like some, Mr. B.?”

Voe called him Mr. B. with Jessie, but she’d never called him that in his presence.

“Mr. Bauer,” Jessie hissed at her.

“Mr. Bauer.” Voe curtsied.

Instead of being upset by the familiarity, he smiled at Voe. “Mr. B. is just fine. I think of myself as FJ,” he told them. “A good short version. No reason you can’t have a short version of your own. As a matter of fact, I wonder if it would be acceptable for me to call you by your given names, Voe, Jessie. When others are about, of course not. We’ll keep it professional. But when it’s just we three, I believe we can be a little less formal, don’t you think?”

“Suits me swell, Mr. B.,” Voe said.

“I’d like that, Mr. Bauer,” Jessie said. “Mr. B.” She tried it on, felt her face grow warm with the unfamiliarity of it spoken in front of him.

“Or FJ if you prefer. Now then, let’s get back to your concerns about the prints. You have a list there, I see.”

“Yes.” She looked pleadingly at Voe, who waved a palm of encouragement as she left to make tea. “Mrs. Bauer told me what you didn’t like about them,” Jessie said. “I tried to use your comments to improve the next sittings, but I never seemed to get it right. The clients were happy, though.”

He frowned. “I’m confused. Aside from the first print of Mildred Simmons, the one that I felt you had no authority to take, I had very little to say about your work. For an amateur, I thought you performed adequately.” He coughed. “Maybe you misunderstood Mrs. Bauer.”

“She was very specific about what she said you didn’t like. Look here.” She showed him a print. “The background was too dark. That’s the note I took. But I wanted it that way, to put more contrast to the faces of the children. And here.” Jessie pointed to another picture. “Here you said that I had a poor angle, that it made the woman look harsh. But the photo actually softens her. And I thought that the line of the window behind her moved the eye to that side of her soft face. Here you said it was out of balance, but see, the book is in the lower right quadrant and the vase with flowers is at the upper right. They offset each other, just as you taught me.”

He lifted several of the prints, put them down, picked them back up, squinted and pushed his glasses up. “I don’t remember saying those things,” he said. “I might have been delirious with the fever. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Bauer.”

“So you do like them?”

“Oh, there are improvements to be made, but you’re quite inexperienced. That you’ve managed to have so many happy customers is reassuring. You’ve made it quite clear what the subject of the photograph is, and that’s very important. No diffusing. Clarity. But Mrs. Bauer’s telling you the problems like that—some of her comments don’t make any sense. You must have misunderstood her.”

She risked another issue. “Am I wrong about your not wanting to return my camera to me either?” She pushed her spectacles up on her nose, crossed her arms over her narrow chest.

“Why, it’s at the house. I never intended to keep it. I was sure I told Mrs. Bauer to return it to you when you began being paid. She did pay you?”

“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.”