A Flickering Light (28 page)

“Truly. You have to be out there swimming or all the fish will pass you right by.”

“I’m not interested in fishing,” Jessie said.

“Me neither. It’s the catching I like.”

“Beaus interfere with my path.”

“You want to know what I think?” Voe said.

Jessie pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Not really.”

“I’ll tell you anyway.” She followed Jessie, who carried the frame into the back room. “You think getting Mr. B. to pay attention to you is enough. He’ll help you with your career, teach you what he knows, keep you employed all right, but he’ll keep you from finding the right man.”

Jessie scoffed. “I’m not looking for a right man. I just want to learn more about photography, and this is a great chance for any girl interested in how a photograph comes together to form beauty.”

“He might just keep you from learning more about photography too,” Voe said.

Jessie turned to face her. “I don’t see how.”

Voe sighed. “What will you do when he returns? I bet you’ll stay working for him for the rest of your life, claiming you’re learning, but really you’re playing it safe. You’ll be independent and lonely, all because you wouldn’t find a real beau. Small, bird-boned girls like you are always treated sweet as ice cream. You’re used to pampering, Jessie. Your uncle August and even Mr. B. have kept you from—”

“I just like being in control,” Jessie said.

“You like standing back, looking through a lens. You stay out of the picture that way.”

“So you say,” Jessie said and turned away.

She wasn’t sure if she was more annoyed by the closeness of Voe’s predictions to Lilly’s or the possibility that they could both be right.

FJ watched the spots on the back of his hands. They didn’t waver. Same size. Same dark pink color, darker than the scars on his arms where he’d been burned in the prairie fire the year that Donald died. Eventually those scars on his forearms had faded, though they still reminded him of ridges, like the barbed wires that surrounded the ranch. But the backs of his hands and blotches over his chest and on his feet were bright as the Christmas berries he’d watched Russell and Winnie string around the tree.

He wanted to call the studio, just to see how things were going there, but he knew if he did, and if he sensed turmoil or problems, he’d want to pay a visit, help settle things, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

He had other worries. He’d gotten a letter from his North Dakota partner, Herman Reinke, who said he planned to invest in some Canadian land. Everyone wanted to expand, but his partner’s suggestion that they join a group of other businessmen to purchase more cropland disturbed him. They could manage what they had, or rather Herman could, with FJ’s help. Herman was a day-to-day detail partner; FJ understood the bigger picture. The market for wheat was good now, but with the expansion of the Homestead Act, more and more people would be putting land into production across the plains, and there could well be a market glut if people weren’t careful. He had planted flax too. Maybe he should have insisted on more flax, but Herman was closer to the soil and FJ held back his concern.

FJ intended to write to Herman about his objections, but he had no energy. It was the worst part about this illness, having to lie for hours doing nothing because he didn’t have the strength to even sit up in bed and read. Not that he could read. The disease affected his eyes as well, and he’d been told to protect them. What good was a photographer, named a diplomat in the National Photographic Association, who couldn’t use his eyes?

He couldn’t ask Mrs. Bauer to transcribe a letter he might dictate. She could barely sustain caring for the baby. Some days Robert seemed to cry a very long time before Mrs. Bauer went to the child and picked him up. Or maybe he was colicky and nothing seemed to comfort. Sometimes she brought the boy in and laid him next to FJ, saying, “I just need a moment alone.”

He nodded. She didn’t have to scream. He welcomed the infant even if he cried. He would caress the boy’s head, feel the velvet of his tiny ears, let the boy’s fingers wrap around his own. Robert sat up by himself now, and FJ had to be careful that the boy didn’t roll or crawl too close to the side of the narrow bed and fall off. When Russell came home from school, FJ would have him line up pillows around the side to keep Robert from crawling too far out of range. Winnie sometimes joined them too. She looked at books, rolled balls to the boy, and then when Robert tired, Winnie seemed to as well, and they would lie haphazard on the blankets beside him and sleep.

If he felt up to it, he and his oldest son would talk about the boy’s day. He even thought of asking Russell to write the letter to Reinke for him, but he could not. Somehow he had to protect his children from the worries of adults, at least for a time. Russell had already assumed more responsibility than FJ wanted for a ten-year-old, and both of his older children were having to deal with sickly and often irritable parents.

Parents. Yes. They were both ill. He didn’t know what to make of Mrs. Bauer’s present lack of personal care. Her hair looked as ratted as a hawk’s nest, and she’d worn the same apron for several days now, stained with the meals she and Russell prepared. FJ couldn’t understand what was happening. He’d been ill before, but she’d managed that. Maybe with three children it was just too much. Had she ever really recovered from the birth of Robert? She’d lost weight, as expected, but now that he thought of it, she looked thinner than she’d ever been, her arms like chicken legs. Her eyes sometimes looked out at him with a vacant raccoon gaze.

If he had the energy, he would call the doctor for her.

It would be something he should do to border and protect. He could still do that much. He made his way to the phone.

What had she forgotten? Something… To take the diapers from the pail where they soaked in bleach. She’d put Robert’s Ruben shirts in there too, hadn’t she? The strings that tied at the front were easier to manage than buttoned shirts. He was probably outgrowing them, but she couldn’t do anything about that. She couldn’t even order clothing from the catalog, and she certainly couldn’t sew things. Her hands didn’t want to move the way they were supposed to. Maybe she’d become afflicted by Mr. Bauer’s disease. Or maybe during those years of holding the brushes of ink in her mouth while she retouched, she’d taken on some sort of chemical illness too. She looked at her hands. No blotches. What had she done with her ring? She’d taken it off when she brushed her teeth this morning. Had she brushed her teeth?

Mrs. Bauer’s thoughts raced like rats around a basement post. In the water closet, she looked at the Rubifoam bottle. The cap was off. She must have brushed her teeth, but her tongue felt thick as woolen socks on a hot summer day, and her teeth—she ran her tongue around them—were coated with sawdust. She knew it couldn’t be sawdust, but it felt grainy like that. She saw her wedding ring lying on the stand beside the sink. She shook her head. She was so forgetful. She hoped she hadn’t forgotten to feed Robert. She no longer nursed him; she’d become so thin. But she had fixed his cereal this morning, hadn’t she?

“Mrs. Bauer.” It was her husband calling her yet again to bring him something, do something, fix something. She wasn’t capable. On the day they met, she’d told him that she wasn’t a strong woman. She’d never lied to him about it. But now he made demands she couldn’t possibly meet. Thank goodness for Russell. Thank goodness for Donald.

No, there was no more Donald. He’d died on that terrible ranch that her husband refused to sell. How could he return there each year? How could he go back to the place where he’d failed their son, failed him as sure as if the child had been forgotten? At least his illness prevented that betrayal.

What had she forgotten?

The baby. She had to get the baby from her husband. He was crying, a strange sort of wail that sounded like a shrill bell almost. No, that was the bell she’d given to her husband to ring if he needed her. Was that what she’d forgotten? The sound of the bell? If only she could get a good night’s sleep. That would help. Otherwise she was simply no good, had nothing to offer, nothing to give. It would be better if she just sank into the ground. But she’d probably forget that’s what she intended and make extra work for someone finding her frozen in place.

Jessie’s eye caught the barren branches of the elm as she turned the corner near the Bauer home. Snow formed drifts at the stone walls and hedges that lined the street. She and Mrs. Bauer had worked out an arrangement for the girls to receive their checks: Jessie would send a kind of invoice noting the girls’ hours for pay. Mrs. Bauer would sign the checks kept at their home and send them back. It had worked for several months, but it was now almost the tenth of January 1910, and they had yet to receive their pay.

“I could go over there,” Voe told her. “Or I’ll have Daniel do it.” She and Mr. Henderson were on a first-name basis now. “Daniel would like to help. What’s the good of having a beau if he can’t protect a girl in distress?” Voe said.

“Mrs. Bauer has a lot to think about,” Jessie said. “I doubt she’d welcome Daniel’s visit.”

“Could it have been lost in the mail, then?” Voe wondered.

Voe must be spending a lot of time with Mr. Henderson, more than his just coming by to walk her home
. She’d started to sound like him.

“No one answered the phone when I called. Maybe it’s off the hook so they can rest. After our last sitting today, I’ll walk over to see what I can find out.”

The afternoon photo session finished early, so Jessie donned her hat and scarf, struggled with the rubber boots that fit over her high-top shoes, pulled the hooks on her warm coat, and headed out. The sky reflected the white world she stepped into. Her breath fogged before her; freezing air bit at her throat. Despite the cold day, people dotted the street, shopping, picking up supplies for the week. Jessie liked the bustle of Winona’s life. It reminded her of the street carnivals Uncle August took them to each September. The festivals brought color and movement to a city that otherwise could seem ordinary and plain. Uncle August. He’d intervene for her, if he were around. It would be nice to have a champion. She clucked her tongue. She sounded like Selma and her romance novels.

This day, dirty snowdrifts crowded the street gutters and blocked the wind and view from across the street as Jessie walked. Looking right, she was flanked by a corridor of crystal white; looking left, drifts reflected in the store windows behind dresses and draperies, powders and pins. A white eyelet dress caught Jessie’s eye in Choate’s window. She hesitated, then stepped inside.

The clerk took her coat, and Jessie held the dress up to herself, spinning around as she did. It was beautiful. If she could just squeeze twenty-five cents a week, it would be hers in time for summer. The idea of it made her feel happy and independent. She tried it on. It fit like one of Lilly’s tailored dresses. Impulsively, she gave the clerk fifty cents and told her to set the dress aside. She’d pay on the first of each month. It was a risky commitment considering she hadn’t been paid yet this month.

Back on the street, she silenced the twinge of guilt that nudged at her stomach. She dragged her mittened hand along the snow-banks, making a horizontal trail with her fingers. Though this weather bit at her skin, Jessie liked knowing there were seasons. A dreary, biting-cold time would be followed by long days of summer and canoe rides on the lake. Shadows slipped along behind her hand. She stopped. It would make an interesting picture. If she only had a decent camera, something even further from her grasp with the purchase she’d just made. Maybe she’d go back and get her money. That nubbin of regret gnawed deeper for having indulged an impulse. But the dress did look lovely on her.