A Flickering Light (21 page)

She turned back. Something he had said annoyed her, and she just wanted him to instruct her now so she’d get the skill and be able to do this sort of thing on her own, without his hovering over her. He pointed and they began work to retouch this precious child on a negative. It was a hot May day, and they did the work at a table area of the darkroom, with frangible light and no orange glow. They had to hover over the plate, both of them closely focused on the child’s face. Jessie wanted the face to appear alive so the family would have their son back, if only in their hearts.

With pencil in hand, Jessie worked on the closed eyelids, creating life where there was only death. She forgot her annoyance with FJ as she worked and instead held the task as sacred. For this family, her efforts would bring the child to them as a lively, warm, and loving being and perhaps erase some of the sadness of their loss. Her art was healing, unlike what FJ had once said.

They didn’t need to retouch the child’s smile, as it was one of serenity and peace.

“Thin the eyelid,” he directed. “An infant doesn’t have much skin there.” As they progressed in this fragile work, he became more clipped and short in his instructions despite his soft voice. Jessie wondered if he thought of his deceased son. Maybe he was grateful he’d taken photographs of Donald while the boy lived.

Jessie did as she was told, her head bent. She occasionally reached up to tuck a loose strand back into her hair roll, wishing she’d used a different comb to keep her hair in place. She pushed at her glasses.

“Make the iris smaller, I should think,” he said. “You don’t want it to look like the child is a stone gargoyle. Less iris will be better.”

Jessie added more white around the iris but then, without really any reasoning to support her choice, she took away a tiny bit of blackness from the side of the iris, leaving it almost white.

He exhaled.

“So it will look like a reflection,” she defended. “Which a real eye does in a photograph.”

He leaned in but still didn’t speak, and so she turned to see if he objected. Their faces were nearly as close together as paper to glass plate. Tobacco scent lingered on his breath. He no longer looked at the negative but instead stared at her.

She could see the light reflected in his eyes, just a tiny candlelight of white. It was as though he stared into her soul, and she remembered what Lilly had said about the photograph being taken by a special kind of eye.

She moved back slightly, her heart beating in a wild way she didn’t understand.

He straightened too. “Such a little thing,” he said. He reached out as though to touch her but then turned and picked up the negative, the edges of the glass held tight against the palms of his hands. He coughed, turned away from her. “The eyes make the child alive. In this one small moment of time, his parents will have him back almost as if the photograph had been taken while he lived.” He put the picture back down. She thought his hands shook a little. He pressed his fingers to her shoulder. They felt warm and brought a fluttering as though a hummingbird had settled in her chest.

“I’ve done all right then?”

He patted her shoulder then the way a man does his dog and stepped back. “You’ll do just fine without me, Miss Gaebele,” he said. “Just fine.”

FJ held the newspaper but didn’t read it. Instead he considered what had occurred—innocently enough, but it had happened nonetheless. He needed to limit the time he might have alone with Jessie. Miss Gaebele. Or he’d have to let her go. He’d come to this conclusion on the way home and affirmed it while pretending to read his evening paper. His children talked in muffled tones to their mother in the kitchen as he only partially digested news of the election and Taft’s chances. The girl had done nothing to encourage him, but there was about her a kind of vibrancy that flowed from her, whether she was teasing with Voe about their weekend activities or chattering with his children. She carried a light that drew him to her, a fire that could burn. He could imagine her at the Minnesota State Fair, where her uncle apparently reined supreme with her, taking her to carnivals and whatnot. The girls spoke with vigor about the hayrides following their Youth Alliance gatherings at the church Jessie attended. He wasn’t sure why, but his eye seemed to catch her name in the
Republican-Herald
column listing those participating in such events. Jessie and her sisters would be there along with Voe and several young men. Well, that was as it should be.

Why he bothered to read such drivel was beyond him, though occasionally efforts of his wife’s Ladies Aid activities would be listed there as well. He made it a point to mention this to his wife, to salute her worthy work.

Mrs. Bauer appeared to enjoy the adulation of her successes. She’d been much more predictable of late, more open to his affection. Not adoring enough for his kisses by any means, certainly not passionate, but not resistive of his touching her shoulder or giving her a peck on the cheek. Perhaps success at that level had given her confidence, and he was grateful.

So why had he felt whatever it was he
had
felt with Miss Gaebele? Perhaps it was just a simple longing to have his efforts appreciated. Miss Gaebele did that, made him feel as though his work had merit.

It might be better if he let both girls go. Salve sales had not picked up, and while they’d surely retouch more prints with Miss Gaebele’s quick study, and he wasn’t having to pay her for instruction time, expenses continued to rise. Keeping up with the technology of his profession was expensive. He needed the girls’ help but not at the expense of his own, well, desires.

Desires
. That was much too intense a word to use for that momentary emotion he’d felt in the retouching room. Jessie was a lovely young girl who had done something quite remarkable in the retouching of that baby’s photograph. He’d been thinking of Donald, feeling terribly guilty all over again, and aching for the family who had lovingly dressed the baby in his christening gown, embroidered and tatted to perfection. The oldest son—there looked to be ten or more children at the house when he arrived to photograph the infant—had taken the baby from his mother’s arms and asked where FJ wanted to pose the boy for the photograph. FJ had picked up a velveteen pillow and then motioned toward a table near the window. The child looked as though he were sleeping. FJ had swallowed back tears.

He supposed he was thinking of all that when he’d stood too close to Miss Gaebele in the retouching area. The way she’d brought those eyes alive…

It wasn’t desire he was feeling. How could it be? He was a father and husband and must be, yes, twenty-six years her senior. No, it was…compassion, empathy. He simply wanted to help the girl refine her raw talent. And she had it, there was no doubt about that, even though she seemed to move it in directions he didn’t think were worthy of a great portrait photographer. But what she’d done with the eyes of that child…he shivered with the thought of it.

That’s all it was. He had recognized great talent and been moved by it. The subject had been a deceased infant, and they’d had just a brief moment of physical closeness. These things happened in such snug work space where men and women stood shoulder to shoulder, so to speak, to accomplish a thing.

It couldn’t occur again though. If it did, he’d let the girls go despite the strain it would cause him.

He coughed, a brackish bark of a cough.
Not again
.

Or maybe he could keep just one employee. He hated thinking of rehiring and retraining, especially when he might become ill again at any time. Besides, how would he explain their dismissal to his wife? He’d have to think this through.

Her husband had not approached her for more than a platonic touch in some time. Tonight, Mrs. Bauer found that to be a comfortable state as she prepared their evening meal. She had the kitchen window open to the twilight, a breeze fluttering the printed curtain. He never mentioned having another child, and she was grateful for that. Winnie had been already along when Donald was killed or she never would have wanted to carry a child while she grieved another. But Winnie was a dear, and Russell had certainly brought joy to her life. When she watched some of the younger mothers with their babies during the society meetings, she almost felt a longing for a baby again. But she’d be thirty-four in June and she wasn’t a strong woman, so carrying a child might be difficult.

She listened to the children behind her, looking at the latest
Woman’s Home Companion
. Or rather, Russell looked at it, giggling at various times. She ought to take it from him. She’d forgotten that they advertised Peetz corsets right there with drawings that looked almost lifelike. Winnie grabbed it from him and tried to cut a picture with the scissors she’d commandeered from Mrs. Bauer’s sewing box.

“Not the magazine, Winifred. Mama wants to read the prize-winning letter.” The Vellum Paper Company had offered a prize for the best letter written on their stationery, and the magazine had printed it. Mrs. Bauer wanted to read it to improve her own letter-writing capabilities for her society work. “Let’s put that away,” she told Winnie, though she didn’t reach for it.

“I’m cutting,” Winnie told her mother.

“It’s for Strawberry Bombs.” Russell pointed at the recipe next to the letter.

Mrs. Bauer looked where he pointed. “It will be that time of year soon,” she told him. “Why don’t you let Russell cut it, Winnie? I’ll save it, and we’ll have a bomb at the first fruits of summer, all right?”

“Not just any fruits,” Russell said. “Strawberries.”

“Where are there strawberries?” Her husband had entered the room. He smiled at the children. He always smiled at them first. Russell told them what they were up to. He had his hand on Russell’s shoulder. Her husband liked to touch. She wished she were more comfortable with that. “I’ll cut it out for you, Mrs. Bauer, if you’d like.”

She nodded and turned back to the preserved beans she’d opened. She’d be pleased when the garden began producing. They’d eaten all the canned peas and peaches. Mrs. Bauer preserved for her family and for her mother, whose hands hurt her so much. It hadn’t stopped Mrs. Otis from buying up cloth pieces, but it had kept her from making quilts with them. Her mother’s house was stacked with piles of colorful cloth, a riot of chaos that Mrs. Bauer could barely stand. Yet when her garden produced, her own kitchen looked as though vegetables and fruits had exploded, with so many stems and jars scattered about the room. There was no place even to sit at the table as she worked long into the night, unable to stop and start again in the morning. She could keep it up for days, it seemed, and then she fell exhausted into bed.

“Your name is in the paper,” her husband said. “For the money raised at your last event. I forget the name of that project.”

“The chicken potpie dinner,” she reminded him. She reached for a match to light the stove.

“So it is,” he said. “You’ve done good things for Winona, Mrs. Bauer. I’m proud to say”—he kissed her at the back of her neck—“that I know you.”

She stiffened. Yet it warmed her to think that he’d read about her and that he’d commented and given her praise. She even felt her face grow hot with the double meaning he might have intended with the biblical phrase “to know.” “I should hope you know me,” she said. She turned to him and smiled.

He looked startled, said, “There’s always room to know you better.” He had a different look in his eye now and stayed close to her, putting his arms around her waist and tugging her to him.

“Not in front of the children,” she whispered. She felt confined by his arms and backed her way out of them. He always went too far.

“I’ll take that as a direction for later activity, when the children are fast asleep?” he asked.

“You might,” she said. Why had she said that? She relaxed when he stepped back.

“I’ll await a knock on my door,” he said and smiled.

Now she knew she blushed. She wondered what she’d do.