A Flickering Light (42 page)

“He should have known better, but so should you,” her mother said. “Why? How could you?”

She didn’t know what to say, how to say anything with her heart racing and her breath choking in her throat.

Deny it! It wasn’t his fault
.

“Selma has it wrong,” Jessie croaked. “I don’t know what she told you, but we haven’t, that is, I haven’t. Nothing’s passed between us. Nothing about a marriage bed, Mama. Truly. If there had been, do you think I’d dare work for Ralph Carleton, who sees into people’s souls?”

Her mother reached for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. Jessie took the reprieve as a time to leave. “I need to go on to work, to finish my last day. That’s all it’s been. A professional relationship. Selma misunderstood. I’ve been planning to quit. You know I have. I’ll be working for Ralph.”

“You’re not going anywhere until you speak the truth!”

Jessie had never in her life heard her father shout, not at troubling mules, not at his pain, not at any family member, not ever. The redness of his face frightened Jessie, and she stumbled backward, farther from her parents.

In that moment, she knew, truly accepted what she’d done.

“Papa…I…tried. I truly did. I just couldn’t avoid it. It was as though I was drawn to him, like needing to breathe.” She was crying now, her nose running as she wiped at her eyes, reached for a hanky embroidered with lilies of the valley. “All I ever wanted was to take the photographs, but then…” She trembled. “I’m so sorry, Papa, so sorry.” She stood with heaving shoulders. “I didn’t know how to stop. I kept doing what I didn’t want to do, and what I wanted to do, I just couldn’t.”

He’d dropped his hands to his sides and shook his head. He might have looked calmer, but Jessie couldn’t tell through her tear-swollen eyes.

“We always fall short, Daughter. It’s a human thing that only unwarranted love can bring us through.”

“I only wanted to help him, Papa.”

“The truth, Jessie. Only the truth will set you free.”

She wouldn’t have to pretend anymore, wouldn’t have to lie to herself or mislead Lilly or Selma or Voe or anyone else. But oh, to admit this truth, to admit that she had acted so unwisely, had compromised her future and her heart. She shivered now as though a cold breeze had moved into her chest, and she ached so profoundly she thought she’d never gain her breath. Deep sobs wracked up through her from the darkness of who she’d been. Long shards of yearning pierced her side. Not unlike her father’s rolling pain, she doubled over, holding herself, bleeding inside. She rocked. “I am so sorry. So sorry.”

Her father reached out, then took steps toward her, and she fell into his arms. Hot tears ran from her eyes, pushed out through her nose, and made her stomach ache with the waves of her shame.

“I am too, Daughter,” he said. He held her. “We’ll send a letter to him explaining why you didn’t go today.”

“A letter?” She stepped back to look at him. “No, Papa. I have to go in. I have to. I have this present I got for him, as a thank-you for all the years of his teaching me, and I need to give it to him, to keep my commitment to help him during this week with Voe gone.”

“A gift? For that man? No.” Her mother crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s done enough damage.”

“Please, Mama. It’s my fault, not his.”

“Gifts.” She snorted. “When we’re saving every penny to help Roy and you said you were too. That dress was one thing, but a gift for him? You must take it back.”

“I can’t, Mama. But it will be the last of things with him, I promise. I’ll be strong enough.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but she had to make it so.

“Not on your own, Daughter,” her father said. “You must lean on us and the Source of your faith. You’ve been given so much. I’m so sorry you didn’t know how to receive it.”

She forced herself up the studio’s back steps. He must have been waiting, seen her dragging down the street with her blotchy face and puffy eyes, because as soon as she opened the door, he pulled her into the kitchen and into his arms. She sank like a flower to a bee.

“Where have you been? I worried over you, worried!”

His arms felt so safe, so warm…
I do the things I do not want to do
.

She pushed him away. She had to be strong. This had to end. If she didn’t do it right, her father would come here or her mother, and oh, the humiliation of that! Or worse, she’d fail again.

“Your eyes,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. “You’ve been crying. You did get hurt. What happened? Who? I’ll—”

She moved as far from him in the kitchen as she could without leaving the room, crossed her arms over her chest, held herself together with her fingers pinching.
Feel this pain so you will know what you have to do
. “They know,” she whispered. “My parents know. Selma… Whatever she thought she saw was enough to convince them, and I… I confessed, told them it was all me, not you.”

“But we’ve done nothing—”

“Yes. We. Have. That’s the truth of it. We have.” She dropped her arms, leaned into the oak door frame; the rounded edges pushed against her back, and she gained strength from the oak. She pushed at her hair, tucked the tendrils behind her glasses, lenses no longer steamed by the tears and his closeness.

He paced, his hands gripping into fists and releasing. “I am so sorry, so very sorry. What a confounded fool I am. I should have—”

“I’m responsible for my part in this, and I have to get myself out of it,” she said. “I’ve come to say good-bye, to give you this small gift as a thank-you for all you’ve taught me.” She moved like a wary cat in a room full of dogs, around the table to her camera bag. She took the small box from it, put it out to him. He stared at her, not understanding. She shoved it toward him. “Here, take it.”

He could hold it in his palm, and he did that now, lifting the cover. She had eked out five cents a week from her paycheck to pay for it, ever since he’d purchased that camera for her. As her mother had noted, she’d deprived her family of that five cents, put money into trespass.

“I won’t be around to give it to you in August, when you turn forty-five. It’s the last gift I’ll ever give you, except for my going away.”

It was at that moment she made the decision. She
would
go away. She’d push him away, farther than Ralph Carleton’s tents. She wasn’t sure where or how, but she had to. Just being in the same room with him, the same city, compromised every hope she had to regain her footing.

He set the box down on the kitchen table, opened it. “It’s quite remarkable,” he said. “I don’t have a brass match holder.”

“It has a cigar tip cutter on this end.” She stepped forward and pulled the tiny peg and swung out the small knife. When she did, she touched him. She hadn’t meant to do that, only to give him the gift. Her will weakened. She heard it in her voice. “It’s from the world’s fair. See the different pavilions on each side?” Tears pressed against her nose, her eyes.

“This was costly, Jessie.”

“You deserve it,” she said. “For teaching me.”

“I don’t deserve anything. Everything I have in my life is a gift. Including you.”

He reached for her then. “Don’t,” she whispered, backing up. “Don’t, please. I have to do what I came to do, and that’s to thank you for what you’ve done for me. The camera, the training. And then I have to leave.” She eased her way toward the front so she wouldn’t have to pass by him.

“Wait. I have something for you as well.” He pulled a package from his pocket. “It’s an extravagance, but then…” For a moment Jessie thought he’d cry too. He bore pain in his eyes not unlike what she’d seen in her father’s face less than an hour before.

Should she take it? Would that just prolong what was wrong? She opened the box, then rubbed her fingers over the pearl inlay on the gold locket. “I can’t accept it.” She handed it back.

“It’s not a chain attached to me,” he said. “Please. Let me put it on you.”

She hesitated. She’d been so firm when she left her parents, so certain she could end this now. But maybe the necklace would be all right. It wasn’t a tie to him; it wasn’t. She turned and let him put it on her neck, so aware of his breath, the fleck of his fingers against her neck. Once he was finished, she felt his hands rest on her shoulders, but she slipped away, stood to face him at a distance.

“Now we’re finished. And I’m on my own. I tried to quit here two times. Did you know that? Two times.” It was the truth, but she had chosen to make a hammer of it, not give it any slant. “I just didn’t want to do all these stuffy studio shots. That’s why I didn’t show up for the one today. I guess it went all right.”

“What are you doing?”

“Telling the truth,” Jessie said. “I’ve just had a grand time at your expense. You didn’t think a young girl would really be interested in someone as old as—”

He stepped across the distance and shook her shoulders. “I know what you’re doing. I know. And it will make no difference. I have come to love you, Jessie Gaebele, but there is nothing I can do about it.”

“You don’t love me,” she charged. “You—”

He silenced her with his mouth.
No, no, no!
Not even ten minutes with him and her resolve was gone. However would she make it for the rest of her life? She pushed him away, but he wouldn’t let go.

For a Reason

I
NSTEAD OF BEING STRONG
, she’d collapsed, made a perfect mess of herself in front of him, when what she’d wanted was for him to detest her because that was what she deserved.

Instead, he’d held her like a child, rocking her in comfort, the necklace like a hot stone between them.
I’m so weak, so weak. Please, please, please
, the only prayer she could muster.

“You have to hate me,” she said, “so you can go back to your family and never think of me again.”

“Nothing you could do would make me hate you, and the guilt and shame is mine to deal with. I’ve added to yours by letting this happen instead of taking care of you, doing things to make your life easier. People who love each other don’t do that, Jessie. Or at least they ought not to.”

“You’re thinking of your wife.”

“I’ve hurt her too. All of them. Donald especially…”

“What will we do?” Jessie asked. The ache inside her was worse than her fear that Roy would never speak as smooth as cream. Nothing had ever felt as terrible as this.

“You’ll work for Mr. Carleton and pursue your hobby,” he said.

She stiffened in his arms. “My hobby?” She pushed back from him. “You think that all this time of working with cameras and lights I’ve been doing it as a hobby?”

“I didn’t mean to say that. You’re a professional photographer, Jessie. You could go to work as an assistant in any studio you wanted. I’d be pleased to help you do that. But maybe Ralph Carleton’s position is best. Something not so demanding.”

The tone of his voice set Jessie on the path she needed. She hadn’t planned to tell him, but now she would. “I’m not going to work for Ralph,” she said. “I’m going away. I’ll find a studio that needs an assistant, somewhere far from here, somewhere where your influence can’t pave the way for me. I’ll do it on my own, which was what I always intended, and one day I’ll have my own studio. I will.”

“Don’t, Jessie. You don’t have to—”

“I do! I didn’t think I needed to, but I do. I couldn’t even keep my resolve for a few minutes, to just come here, hand you that gift, tell you good-bye, and leave. That’s all I had to do and I couldn’t do it. My parents think Seattle will be far enough, but even there we have relatives and I don’t deserve anyone’s help. I have to do this on my own. I can’t trust what I might do here with the possibility of chance encounters with you. You’re like an… obsession. I say I won’t think of you or come near, and then here I am. I don’t want to know anything about you or what’s going on in your life. I don’t. There has to be distance. And I have to pay the price of separation from those I love.”

“Distance,” he said.

“Like the chamber outside the darkroom, I need a safe and separate place to recover. You must never think of me again. Not ever, ever again.” She was being dramatic, but she had to exaggerate what she felt in order to break the pull.

“Ah, Jessie. When you care for someone very much, they come unbidden to your mind. I don’t think of Donald all day long as I did when he first died. But moments sneak up on me. I think of him while I’m here even though his death occurred in North Dakota. Distance doesn’t stop the sting.”

She began crying again, embarrassed by the sounds, but she could not stop. It was as though she grieved a death. Perhaps she did. She refused to let him hold her now; the pain kept her resolve. She adjusted her glasses, gave her hands something to do.

“We’ll both come to the other’s mind without wishing it so; in fact, with our trying to prevent it, it’s likely to get worse.”

He spoke of her as though she was dying too, and perhaps she was. Dying to the promise, dying to the fanciful girl who had dreamed too much, the girl who liked going up on Mr. Ferris’s wheel with her uncle, flirting and laughing without consequence. She had convinced this father and husband that they could have a pleasure together and not have it affect them later. She’d deceived him and herself.

“Let me help you find a position,” he said.

I must make myself think of him as Mr. Bauer yet again
. “No, Mr. Bauer. No. No help.”

Pain flickered across his face.

Passions did burn out; they had to. She hadn’t considered how wrenching it would be before they did. That her parents knew would make this easier in the end, give her a fresh chance. By leaving she’d save Selma from thinking that what she and Mr. Bauer had done was anything but wrong. She’d save him from acting when he ought not to. The separation would be fair punishment for what she’d done. She could seek forgiveness if she went away.

Would her passion for photography go away one day too?

She supposed it might if she couldn’t find a way to sustain it. She must not feed this love between the two of them but feed only what could truly nurture her: a gift she’d been given. She’d use it for good. She had to.

Ralph Carleton had told her once that sin was something each human had to deal with and that in Hebrew the word meant “to have missed the mark” or “to have taken the wrong road.” She had done both of those; she only hoped she could plead her way back onto a good and proper path.

The bell rang over the studio door. They both jumped toward the sound. Jessie stepped back into the kitchen shadow. “You’ll have to do this sitting on your own.” He took one last stare at her, then moved out of the kitchen, greeted the couple, and left her alone.

He wondered if she’d be there when he finished, or would she do as she’d proposed, just disappear, go where he had no way of imagining her being? She was right, of course, so right. And yet…it was as though a knife had slipped between his ribs. He was bleeding internally and didn’t know if it would stop.

He pasted a smile onto his face, bowed slightly, and lifted his hand to direct the clients to the operating room. “This way,” he said to the couple. “I hope you’ll enjoy your portraits.”

She had planned to leave before he finished. But she’d found the latest issue of
Camera World
and, inside, what she was seeking. By the time Mr. Bauer finished, Jessie was more composed. She took the plates to the darkroom and mixed the solutions. He did not follow her there. But he seemed to know when she was finished. He waited for her, paused a moment before she stepped out into the natural light. Jessie looked into desiring eyes but slipped past him, her heart pounding. What had been was over.

She’d gone around the studio then, closing windows, pulling drapes shut. She asked him to do likewise. She refused his efforts to keep talking about
them
. Instead, she took the Formalin tablet from her satchel and set it on a tin tray in the lobby area. He’d helped with the windows but frowned at the tablet. “It will keep the flies and insects out,” she said. “I used to set it once a month in the summer. We’ll fire it just before we leave, then close the doors. We’ll have to stuff the keyholes. Do the back door from the inside.” She handed him small pieces of cloth she’d used before. “When you come in on Monday, Voe can sweep up any dead moths or flies lying about, and you’ll not have pests to upset your sittings.”

“No pests,” he said.

“It’s a way to clean the slate of them, start fresh.”

She picked up a match from the box and set the tablet aflame. The smoke began to rise like incense. It would cover everything, seep into the lampshades, the wreath of silk flowers on the inside door, the photographs that hung on the walls, and then burn out. They didn’t need to be there to see that it would happen; in fact, it was best if they weren’t there at all. Everything would be different in the morning.

They left together out the front door. Jessie nodded her head to him as she straightened her hat, fingered the heart-shaped locket at her neck. “I need to go to the library. Good-bye, Mr. Bauer. You’ve changed my life, and I will be forever grateful.”

He held her matchbox gift in his hand, rubbed his thumb over the embossing. “I love you, Jessie Gaebele.”

“No, you don’t,” she said as she turned from him. “No, you surely don’t.”

She didn’t look behind her to see if he’d stayed watching or had turned himself and walked away. She didn’t need to know what he did; what mattered was what she did next.

She didn’t want to go home, not yet. The summer evening proved long, and she knew her parents would be wondering about her. Yet she needed time alone. One day, maybe, she’d ask forgiveness of Mrs. Bauer and the children, but that would only absolve a portion of her guilt. And it would add to their misery. If they didn’t know now, then placing her burden on their shoulders could only add to her list of faults. No, she wouldn’t indulge in the luxury of purging on the backs of those she’d betrayed.

Certain he’d continued on—she could imagine his cane tapping as his image became smaller in the distance—she returned to the studio, sat on the back steps. The fumigant would be doing its work inside, and she preferred looking out over the garden with the restored fountain, the leggy purple cosmos, his rosebushes bearing faded blooms. Here she let her sorrow overtake her. She tried to find the words, couldn’t. She rocked with her arms around her and choked on the air, her throat tight and raw, her eyes swelling from the burning tears. It wasn’t his love that had protected her in the end but the love of her parents, her family, who had forced her to face the truth. A breeze worked its way through the oak leaves, and Jessie remembered that comforting verse. She prayed for mending from the sanctuary, longed for healing leaves beside the river. Jessie wasn’t sure she had the strength to stay above the water, at least not by herself, but she would learn to trust that the river would indeed carry her along.

Her body, mind, and soul spent, she stood, and at the little fountain she splashed cold water on her face, her swollen eyes. She felt shaky but walked to the library, grateful it was still open. Behind a large book, she forced herself to repeat the word she read over and over.
Disconsolate. Disconsolate
. That’s what she was. The word gave boundaries to her feelings, helped keep them in check. Nothing would make this better except time, and even then… She found it hard to take a breath.

She knew what she had to do, so she wrote the letter, making several drafts. She’d make a terrible secretary. Why had she ever thought she could write letters for Ralph Carleton? Because her mother thought she should; because it would be safe. She walked to the postal office, purchased an envelope, and wrote the address on the outside. She’d begun to change her path.