A Flickering Light (39 page)

She just wanted to get back to the safety of the studio, where they could be themselves and talk if they wanted to, or work together as a couple who cared about the same things. Her grandparents had worked together on the farm, and her parents too, until her father’s illness had forced the move to town. They were a team, raising children, though it wasn’t the same as when her mother had been out with him milking the cows or pitching hay beside him. How many people had the privilege of working beside someone they loved?

She startled herself with that statement. She wasn’t in love with Fred. She wasn’t. She could not be. She simply wanted his company, his companionship, his…tenderness for one more week.

“Jessie,” Fred said when he pulled up next to the studio. He turned the engine off, removed his goggles. “We’re in dangerous water here. At the moment, it’s just been a splash, nothing too harmful. But it could be. And I’d be terribly remiss if I let this continue. Even to say how wonderful it was to hold you. Even if I told you that I have never in my life been unfaithful to my wife, never. And I don’t consider that one kiss an act of unfaithfulness. Maybe some would.” She stared at him. “It is.” He covered that last with a cough. “It was a moment of loveliness that I will cherish. I—”

“Let’s just carry the camera inside, and you can go on your way. We have all next week to discuss this. Just next week and then I’m gone.
Poof!”
She snapped her fingers the way Lilly sometimes did to make her points. “Out of your life forever. So let’s not ruin what was a lovely, tender thing. Let’s not.”

He nodded, opened his door, and came around to open hers. He took her hand to help her step on the running board, and through her gloves she felt the electricity of his touch. It sparked a tingling in her throat and, like a long ellipsis, moved through her body to her toes. She saw by the look on his face that he had felt it too, and she pulled her hand from his.

“Can you reach the camera all right?” she asked. “I can take the plates. Oh, and where’s my hat? I was going to wear it to make my transition from bridal party participant to professional wedding photographer.” She looked over the side into the back. “I forgot I even had it.”

“It must have flown out,” Fred said. “Though I didn’t see it. Or maybe you left it at Voe’s.”

“I probably did,” Jessie said. “It was just a small-brimmed one I thought would keep the wind from lifting me up and carrying me away if it got beneath the felt.”

“You were quite professional without it,” Fred said. He bowed his head to her.

“We did well, didn’t we? I can hardly wait to see how the pictures come out. We can always take out the background in the shot we took of them eating. I know you didn’t like that one.”

“An unpainted house isn’t the best backdrop,” he noted. “Not to mention all the distractions on the table.”

“Good backdrops are hard to find in the unposed world,” Jessie said. “At least in photography we can dismantle them, make it into just the picture we want.”

“A benefit of our profession.”

Jessie sighed.

He carried the camera into the studio, set it on the table in the kitchen. She walked past him and took the plates into the darkroom area. She hoped he’d follow her, willed him to be curious about the photographs, hoping it would overcome his reticence of being too close to her.

She waited to hear his footsteps. Instead she heard the engine of the touring car start up, and she stepped out in the lobby of the studio just in time to see him pulling away.

Lessons of a Night Sky

“H
EY, LOOK WHAT I FOUND
.” Russell came running in from the touring car as they readied themselves for church Sunday morning. Mrs. Bauer frowned.

“You left it in the car, Mama,” Winnie said.

“It was under a rug like the one Papa has at the studio,” Russell said.

“What?”

He handed her a small-brimmed blue hat with tiny white flowers dotting the brim. The felt was soft. Holding something firm made Mrs. Bauer feel steady. The color was a deep blue, not a color she liked at all. She didn’t think it was her hat, but it must have been. Whose hat would it otherwise be?

“Thank you, Russell. I must have left it there on Sunday last.”

She sat then, staring at the hat that she was certain wasn’t hers, but maybe she saw stains others couldn’t see and maybe she wore hats that looked better on a lovely young woman who was working with her husband. Could that be? Voe Kopp didn’t wear such hats as that. Had she seen it on…? She tried to remember. Maybe Lilly wore it and had left it. Or Selma. But how would it have gotten into the car?

It must be her hat, and she couldn’t even recall it. She felt a pang of—she searched for the word—envy. Envy of young women who remembered things. Envy of young women who felt something for their lovers, their husbands, something she never had and never would. That Kopp girl had married, hadn’t she? Hadn’t Mr. Bauer said something about the wedding dates being set up and changed? And the other one, Jessie, her name was, she’d found another job. Had her husband hired a new girl? Why hadn’t he told her? Maybe he had. She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. She had become more like her sister Eva than she wanted to admit.

At least Eva was better now. Not so scattered, her husband said. The doctors in Rochester had helped her.
Maybe they could help me. But I’m all right
.

It’s my hat. It must be
.

She was so tired she could hardly lift a hand to shell a pea, and yet she could feel envy. For a young woman getting married? Why envy her? For the new beginning, perhaps. It would be nice to begin again. There had been a time with Mr. Bauer when the children had brought them both such joy. Until Donald… She felt tears slip down her cheeks.

“Are you all right, Mama?” Russell again, touching her. She jerked back.

“I’m fine. Fine.” She shook her head. At least she could feel something.

Jessie had a plan for how this was going to be. She ignored Lilly’s looks as she readied herself for work at the studio. “My last week,” she told her.

“I’m sorry it’s worked out this way, Jessie. Really, I am. Maybe you can photograph things on the side, get Papa to help put up a darkroom in the basement and develop your pictures here. You can still pursue your dream…in a good way.” Jessie stiffened. Lilly reacted to it. “I only meant that you won’t be giving up what you want for something you can never have. That’s all I meant. That you are being good to yourself.”

“Not that I deserve it,” Jessie said.

“We do. It’s just that if we pray for things that will hurt us, we won’t get them.”

“So if we get them, and they still hurt, then it was all right with God? Our suffering wipes away what we shouldn’t have wanted in the first place?” She was being obstinate, she knew.

Lilly hesitated. “You have a fresh start with Mr. Carleton waiting for you. Don’t do anything to risk that.”

She thought of Fred as she walked to the studio the Monday after Voe’s wedding. Fred waited for her. She held resolve like a fan against her face. The fabric proved too slender a separation. All the promises they’d made to themselves and to each other when last they’d met disappeared like snowmelt in the spring.

Each day became a treasured ritual for Jessie. When they first arrived, they allowed their passion to set free the desire of the nights, to hold, caress—nothing more, nothing more, and only for a moment.
I am a good girl
. She was. People would be coming in; knowing that set the boundaries. There could be no flushed faces greeting clients, no fluttering at an interruption. Professionalism. Her mother might come by or even Lilly, knowing Voe was on her honeymoon and here was their precious daughter and sister alone with a man. They could come in anytime at all, though Jessie was quite certain they wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure why. Her parents trusted her. She pushed at her glasses.

Jessie and Fred stole a moment for themselves, each tasting of the morning, and then went to work.

When people left, when Jessie held the door open for them to leave, she’d watch Fred shake the man’s hand and graciously assist the woman with her purse, offer a few chatted words, exchange thank-yous as he watched them, hand to elbow, walk down the street. Then Fred would step back inside. Jessie organized the props of scarves or watered the plants set on the stands for the previous pose. She would sense his movement toward her as though the very air he stirred reached out with tentacles of longing. He’d trace her chin with his fingers or frame her shoulders, his face against her cheek, the stubble rough. He’d wrap his arms around her so she could sink into him and sigh. It was enough then to know that he carried in his heart the same vibrancy that shuddered in her own. It wasn’t what she’d intended; it wasn’t. They kept the boundaries, together ignored that they’d already stretched beyond forgiveness.

After the last client left, Jessie took the plates into the developing room. They allowed themselves but one embrace, in the entryway between the darkroom and the light, where they’d taken refuge from the storm those years before. Jessie waited for this moment every day that week, predictable as a heartbeat. Just one enfolding of two lives, one clasp in the darkness, where loving was allowed but sating not.

Jessie always broke the embrace. To reassure him she still controlled her heart.

Until they neared the end of the magical week.

They’d been in the entryway, and Fred held her so tight that she understood why dancing was forbidden—such closeness: self-control and linens all that separated them.

They hadn’t heard the bell announcing visitors, Jessie realized later. Instead, Winnie, with Selma in tow, rushed into the darkroom entry, startling Jessie and Fred.

Jessie turned. “Selma.” She rubbed her finger over her lip, quickly dropped her hand.

Winnie ran to her father. “I don’t see you. It’s all dark, Papa.”

“You mustn’t rush in like that, Winnie. The room must be dark, remember?” He sounded gruff.

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

“Yes, yes, I know you are.”

Winnie hugged Jessie’s legs then. “Mama!”

Jessie patted Winnie’s head. The child was frazzled by her father’s sharpness. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“I didn’t mean Mama,” Winnie said, her lower lip rolled into a pout. “Jessie. I know.”

Selma said nothing, but she held a question on her face.

“You walked a long way to get here. Or did you take the streetcar?” Her heart was slowing.

“Mrs. Bauer has a terrible headache, so I thought I’d leave the house quiet for a time until Russell gets home from school. Winnie wanted to walk home with her father, and I thought I’d walk back with you.”

“Time to go, Papa.” Winnie pulled on her father’s hand.

He pulled his watch out. “In a while,” he said. “We have a few more things to finish up.” His voice quivered a bit. “Go ahead, Misses Gaebeles. I can manage here with Winnie. You walk home with your sister. It’s the right thing to do.”

Jessie moved into the reception area, secured her gloves, and told him she’d lock the front door so they might exit through the kitchen. She said good-bye to Winnie, talking a little too loudly, she knew. As they walked, Selma said nothing as Jessie sorted out just what it was she was doing. How easily the mind is capable of slanting truth. What they’d done would have no long-term impact, would it?

Mrs. Bauer noted with calmness that her husband came home right after work, on time, this entire week, and this pleased her. He was especially attentive, not even reading the paper before he came in to nod to her and ask about her day. He sorted through the mail while she talked, commenting on what she shared. He didn’t raise his voice. Mostly she spoke of the children or of Selma. The girl was faultless except for those occasions when she failed to see necessary cleanup, but then Russell seemed to have the same problem these days. She had intended to bring that up with Mr. Bauer but told him instead of some school event they ought to attend on behalf of the children. He’d have to come home early. It was on Friday.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “With the children’s school-work?”

“You can read the letter,” she told him.

“The children are doing well, aren’t they? No problems?”

“Read the letter,” she repeated, hearing annoyance in her voice. “It’s Friday. It’s the last day of school for the term. The ice-cream social happens then, you remember. Winnie can come. Her kindergarten schooling ends too.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. Friday.”

She thought his mind went somewhere as he stopped sorting but then returned as he looked for the letter. He still had not told her anything about Selma’s sister leaving the studio, and she wondered why. Wouldn’t he have to train another? Were their finances so short that he had let her go in order to save money and no one would replace her? Maybe Mrs. Bauer should return to retouching, to help him out. No. She’d done that while he was ill, before the Gaebele girl was trained. A wife ought not have to do such work. She had enough demands with the children. She hoped he wasn’t waiting to replace the girl in order to force
her
back into the studio.

Too many problems to deal with. Her mother counted on her more because of Eva, her sister. She sometimes forgot she had a brother and sister, she saw them so little. Why was that? Something had happened years ago, maybe when their father died, that had separated the three of them. But now her mother wanted her to “help with Eva.” She’d have to ask Mr. Bauer to assist. It wasn’t something she could handle on her own. Was that part of what the estrangement was about, that her sister didn’t like Mr. Bauer? Was that it? Something like that, something having to do with what happened with the studio. Yes, but she couldn’t remember what. Funny how memory played tricks on her. She’d have to ask him. If she could remember to do it.

“I thought we could ride in the touring car,” FJ said as they finished supper.

“Isn’t that a waste of petroleum?” Mrs. Bauer asked. It was an unusual suggestion. She didn’t like changes in their evening routine.

“We could go to the park if you’d like. Or tour up to Sugar Loaf. Take all the children.”

“I suppose you could drive slowly. The children will enjoy that. The wind won’t tug at my hair so much if you drive slowly.”

He’d been different of late. More attentive, she thought. More conversational with the children and kindly toward her. She detected something different.

“Maybe we could see Mama. It’s been a while.”

“If that’s what you’d like.”

Russell groaned. “Can’t we go up Sugar Loaf, Mama? Grandma’s house is dull.” How old was he now? Eleven. What interested eleven-year-old boys?