A Flickering Light (23 page)

That
thought had bothered her the most. Thoughts alone might not be sinful, but left unchecked they could lead to actions that were.

He had a wife. Jessie was not her, nor did she have any intention of being so. He might have a loveless marriage. She’d heard of those. Lilly even used that reality as a reason why she’d likely never marry herself. “Love fades,” she’d told Jessie after she stopped seeing a particular beau. Mr. Bauer had the children, and Jessie had no doubt of his love for them and theirs for him. What went on between a husband and wife was none of her affair. That was the thought she had to bolster.

Whatever had gone on before was water under the bridge, and she was on that water now, moving away. She’d find a job that paid more, and then she could help with Roy’s trip to the Mayo brothers’ hospital as well as save small amounts for her camera. This was what a career woman did: assess the situation, choose the best path, and take it, trusting that resources would arrive and putting unwarranted feelings behind her.

Jessie had decided to tell Voe today that she would be looking for other work, but she’d wait to tell Mr. B. until she was hired elsewhere. She looked for the good things in this choice as she walked. No more teasing from Voe and no more questions from Lilly. Even Selma’s romantic swoons wouldn’t apply to Jessie anymore. Most of all, Jessie would have no more pounding heart when it ought to be quiet.

Winnie looked sleepy as Jessie opened the kitchen door in the studio. Mr. B. had prepared cocoa for his daughter; the can sat on the counter with its Walter Baker label pointing toward her. With a silver spoon, the child scooped up Egg-O-See cereal, milk dripping from the soggy mass. The box lay tipped over, and cereal flakes like those molted chicken feathers lay scattered all over the table.

“Jessie!” Winnie said, dropping the spoon as she ran to hug her.

“Oops, let’s get that spoon back in the bowl,” Jessie said as she walked the child back to the table. “Maybe we can put some of these flakes back in the box.”

“I sorry,” Winnie said, trembling.

“Don’t cry,” Jessie told her. “I need to get my coat and hat off.”

“Didn’t mean to spill.” Winnie’s eyes blinked away tears.

“It’ll clean up faster than if we had a cat to lick it,” Jessie reassured.

“I like cats,” Winnie said, settling back on the chair. “They make Mama cough.”

Voe entered and stomped her feet to warm them. “It’s only October, and I’m already an ice block,” she complained. “Ooh, Walter Baker cocoa. Do you think Mr. B. would mind if I fixed myself some?”

Jessie checked the temperature of Winnie’s cocoa. “Where is your papa, Winnie?”

“There.” She pointed to the other room.

“It’s kind of odd that he’d leave her here by herself,” Jessie said.

“I eat alone lots of times,” Winnie told her. Jessie raised one eyebrow. “Well, I do.”

“You’re just three years old.”

“Three and one half,” Winnie corrected, holding up pudgy fingers.

“Heat up Winnie’s cocoa when you fix your own,” Jessie said to Voe. “Hers has cooled off. She must have been here for some time.”

Jessie made her way through the office area and into the reception room, where a fire burned to take off the chill. It could use another log. She added one, then removed her hat, hung up her suit jacket. She put her reticule in the desk behind the door, smoothed her linen skirt. She turned toward the studio operating room. Mr. B. wasn’t there, nor did she see any sign of his having been there yet this morning. The shades were drawn, and he usually opened them first. She moved toward the developing room.
He must have forgotten the time
, Jessie thought.

She opened the door into the small room where they’d stayed during the storm, careful to close it behind her tightly. In the darkness, she knocked on the inner door. “Mr. Bauer? Are you in there? We were just wondering.” She didn’t hear any sounds. She knocked again. “Mr. Bauer?”

As she opened the door, her eyes adjusted to the orange filter he used over the light in order to see while he developed. She scanned the room, seeking him, finding him near the solution tubs.

“Are you all right?” she spoke as she approached. He looked up, surprised, as though he’d never heard her knock or enter. “We were wondering. Winnie was alone in the kitchen and—”

“Winnie. Alone.” He frowned. “Oh. My. I got carried away.” He rubbed his temples. “I think I’ve discovered something, Jessie,” he said. “And if I’m right, it could revolutionize photography.”

He asked her to step back out into the operating room, wiping his hands of the solutions he’d been working with. He asked her to sit. “I have a special request,” he told her. “I’d like you to pose, Miss Gaebele, for a portrait that I intend to develop with two images on it, with both appearing as clear as Sugar Loaf against a morning sky.”

“Is that possible?” Jessie asked. “The images always come out blurry when there’s more than one on the plate.”

“I believe I’ve found a way. I’ve been working at it. At night, after you and Voe leave. Early in the morning, when I first arrive. And if I have succeeded, it will be the first of its kind, and I can take it to the congress next year.”

“I guess if you take my portrait, I’ll get to go too,” she said. She made the comment light, but she experienced a tingle of excitement at the idea of having her portrait seen by professional photographers.

“Miss Gaebele…I, no, it wouldn’t be seemly, I—”

“Oh, I was only teasing, Mr. Bauer.” Jessie had flustered him. She felt emboldened by that and by the possibility of being a model for such an experiment. “Would I be paid for the posing?” She’d heard that artists’ models were paid extra. “This is nothing…lewd. Nothing—”

“Certainly not.” He dismissed her with a brush of his hand. “I’d like you to wear just what you have on. A lovely blouse with lace collar is perfect. No, don’t worry about your hair,” he added when Jessie touched the high bob on her head. “And yes, I will pay you extra. I can hardly consider this request a part of your normal duties.”

Several thoughts raced through Jessie’s mind. She wondered if she should ask her mother if it would be acceptable to pose for a portrait that might be seen by many and used perhaps for advertising the studio’s business. Maybe there was some sort of contract she ought to sign. She didn’t want to be naive as a businesswoman. Her parents might object to her doing it without a written understanding, especially if the pose was too exposing, not that she’d allow a provocative shot. Was it acceptable to have others ogle a young woman’s image? Mr. B. would never suggest that, though she’d heard of photographers’ models who did at least partially disrobe. Now that she thought of it, she’d never seen a portrait of a woman alone in a studio’s window, even with a tailored collar tight at her neck.

She thought of Lilly’s look on her birthday as she stared at the candid shot he’d made of Jessie. She swallowed. It wasn’t as though she’d gone to a dance or visited unannounced without wearing her gloves or carrying her calling card. But photographs could tell more than the subject wanted them to. She didn’t want anything untoward revealed. This would be an opportunity, then, to show others that the camera described their relationship as simply employer photographing employee. What could be the harm in it? It was unlikely that anyone she knew would ever see the photograph anyway—she wasn’t a model for a corset or anything like that. Even if he proved successful in making a double exposure on the same plate when, to date, no one else had, any notoriety would be in the camera world. If Mr. B. wanted to use the result for promotion, she could talk to him then about a contract and tell her family. Why, they might even be pleased with the extra funds available to put toward Roy’s trip.

A tiny twinge of hesitation preceded her commitment, but she was, after all, her own person, fully capable of making a decision related to her career, wasn’t she? And she’d planned to quit working for him without consulting her mother. So she guessed she could continue for a short time more without a conference too.

“I’d be pleased,” she said, “to advance your artistry.”

Mr. B. posed her on a plain bench and asked her to please fold her hands in her lap. Behind the camera he fidgeted, rolled it closer, measured distances. Then he came to her and lifted her hands just so. His were warm, and she felt small calluses on them as though he’d worked with tools, which surprised her. He was always so prim, so nattily dressed. Maybe he liked gardening.

He adjusted the lace on her blouse. Jessie blinked. This was why women preferred female assistants, she thought, to handle this kind of special posing. He didn’t touch her, just the lace, but Jessie was aware of his closeness. He removed her glasses. She felt awkward and exposed.

He knelt to line up the hem of her dress the way he wanted it. He was beginning to bald, she noticed. As he bent, she could look directly on the small circle of his bare pate. His ears were small, not like her uncle August’s. Mr. B. squatted before her now, pushed his glasses up on his nose, then adjusted her hands once again. It seemed to Jessie that he held her hands just a bit longer than he needed to. She pulled away first.

He patted her hands then, pushed up on his knees to stand, and looked at her. Her heart began that pounding again.
Hesitate, hesitate
.

“Keep that serene look,” he told her. “It will take some time to expose the film. Then I’ll have to change the camera angle just slightly. But if you can remain in the exact position, it will be best. Can you do that? Not move even when I am moving here?”

Jessie nodded. As he walked away from her, her heart beat normally. It was nothing. He was merely posing her as he did all his clients, gently touching to present their hands just so. She inhaled and set her face as he worked with the camera. She was certainly not a romantic like Selma. She didn’t see hidden motive in every movement. Nor was she a logician like her sister Lilly, weighing every little emotion against the logic of it all. But as she watched him move the wheel to raise and lower the camera, to set things, she knew that today was not the day to plan to resign from the studio, not when there was something as exciting as a double exposure and her small part to play in it. Quitting the studio would have to wait.

The Bauer Studio kept busy through the fall with new requests for prints and portraits. Jessie kept her thoughts of Mr. Bauer in check, made sure to keep herself at distances from him. As Lilly had pronounced one evening as she discussed her own beau troubles, emotions could be kept in check with a little willpower.

Still, she looked forward to coming to work. She enjoyed the banter with Voe and with Mr. B. She found the clients fascinating too. She knew that in high school people studied biology and something called anatomy, which addressed the way bones and organs are covered with skin. She found herself noting the angle of a man’s chin or the distance between a woman’s upper lip and her nose and even the varying depth of that small indentation between the two.

She commented on that once when they developed a portrait of an older woman who had a decided groove above her lip, and Mr. B. told her a German tale of how angels made those indentations to help children forget all that had happened to them before they were born.

“The angel touches them as his last act before the child arrives on this earth, and then all they can remember after that is heaven’s light, the illumination we move toward as we try to find our own way.” It was a treasured story.

Jessie thought she could be under the spell of photography for her entire life. When she finished reading the latest issues of
Camera World at
the library, she imagined herself not just having a special camera to call her own but owning a studio, holding afternoon teas the way the women photographers in New York did. She’d travel, take her photographic equipment to the top of Sugar Loaf, or even risk the excursion trains out West. There were trains direct from Winona to Seattle now. Jessie’s aunt lived in Seattle. She could get in touch with her and stay for a time, shooting photographs, making her way in that booming city that people spoke of as though it was wild and untamed. Jessie scoffed at that. It couldn’t be all that wild. They had a children’s hospital there.