A Flickering Light (44 page)

Roy sat on the back porch steps and plucked away on his banjo. They’d all saved enough to get him the instrument, but the speech hesitations continued when he tried to ask that the potatoes be passed or if he wanted to alert his father to a spill on the floor. He hadn’t tried to sing with Selma again. In spite of everyone’s focus on Roy’s speech, and even Jessie’s extra time with Roy now that she wasn’t out taking photographs or staying extra long at the studio to develop them, it hadn’t advanced his initial progress. But with the banjo, he was happier at least.

Jessie felt guilty about that too, because getting it had taken longer in part because she’d put her money into an eyelet dress and that brass cigar cutter and match holder for Mr. Bauer. She had to keep admitting her ways and allow forgiveness to sift through her. At least now Roy could soothe away the sad memories of taunting at school. Music could do that. So could art. Her kind of art, through the lens. Music and photography were beautiful, and beauty healed. It was what she needed now. Healing. Somewhere far from here.

She’d written several more letters to studios across the West, and then she’d written one to Ralph Carleton, telling him she would be leaving town. It would save him the embarrassment of having employed her if her shame ever became public. She supposed she was a coward not to face him directly, but Jessie sometimes remembered Jerome’s remarks at Voe’s wedding, in particular how knowing looks like his could spike her guilt. She prayed that for now only her family knew. They had not turned her out. Neither had they resisted her decision to leave.

Then the letter from Milwaukee had arrived, and she allowed herself a moment of joy. She’d been hired to help run a studio with a new widow.
Newly widowed. Fine studio. Broadway district of Milwaukee. Need female assistant
. She hadn’t told Mr. Bauer she’d found this ad that day, and wouldn’t. She’d take her disgrace with her, along with the camera and the memories he’d given her, and she’d begin again.

“Is there an apartment attached to the studio? There are so many immigrants in Milwaukee.”

“Mama,” Jessie said. “Grandma and Grandpa came from Germany. More than half of Winona is immigrant!”

“Hush now. But women involved in suffrage live there too. They could lead you astray, Jessie. Milwaukee is known for such goings-on.”

“We know you’re impressionable,” Lilly added, but she smiled too.

“Why not look for an opening in Eau Claire or—”

“No matter where I go there will be temptations, Mama. Chances asking for caution just because they’re unfamiliar, regardless of their true danger. Mrs. Johnson has need of me now, and if I stay here…”

“There are temptations right here at home, aren’t there, Jessie?” Lilly again.

Maybe she ought to stay to pay penance by listening to Lilly, but she would also suffer by leaving the safety of this family—who did love her despite the rules she’d violated, despite the disappointment she’d brought to their doorstep. That she
had
to leave such comfort would be the highest price to pay.

“But we’re told in Scripture that we never face too great a temptation for God to help us through, isn’t that right, Mama?” Jessie said.

“You’re one to be quoting Scripture,” Lilly said.

Jessie held a clothespin in her hand. “Lilly, you don’t need to do this. Maybe you need to give your sorrow words too.”

Lilly gasped and ducked behind the hanging sheet.

“You could sew clothes full time,” Jessie offered.

“It’s never been that,” Lilly said, muffled by the sheet. The wind lifted it and it brushed Jessie’s cheek, the scent of bleach carried with it.

“My heart’s fine,” Lilly said. Jessie didn’t say that Lilly protested a charge she hadn’t made.

“I’ll miss you,” Selma said. “I finally get a beau interested in me and—”

“What?” This from their mother, who had just put a wooden clothespin in her mouth and had to take it out to exclaim. “You’re just turning fourteen. Having a beau is not something you should be considering at your age. Goodness.”

“Yes, Mama,” Selma said. She winked at Jessie when her mother turned back.

Jessie’s mother pushed the wooden pin over the shirttail.

“Your sister is a bad influence on you,” Lilly said, but some of the sting had faded from her words. She handed Jessie the end of another sheet.

“Why? She hasn’t had any beaus,” Selma said. She cast a quick glance at Jessie. “Not really.”

“She taught you to take too long for your morning toilet.”

“Then my going to Milwaukee will be a good thing,” Jessie said. “Allow Lilly more time at the mirror, not that you need it, Sister, and offer more time for you to influence Selma without my interference.”

Lilly appeared settled with that response, and the discussion turned to where Jessie would stay in Milwaukee. There was an apartment attached to the Johnson Studio, but Jessie didn’t know if there’d be room for her there or not. She planned to get a room nearby. That’s how she’d begin.

“Where will you take your meals? How far will it be from the studio? How will we reach you? What kind of neighborhood it?” Her mother wiped her hands on her apron in that way she had. “I don’t know. You may not be safe there.”

Jessie took her interest as a sign of love.

“I’ll have to learn that I can do what I say I will and not get, well, sidetracked.”

Could she do the right thing in Milwaukee? She had to believe that she could. Maybe one day she’d feel happy again. Experiencing joy wasn’t sinful, was it? It was how one got to those joyful moments and kept them close that mattered.

“And besides, with me gone,” Jessie said, “Selma will have a more… mature influence around her. And I’ll be safe from whatever evil influences live in Lilly’s head.” Jessie grinned.

“Mama,” Lilly complained.

“Wh-wh-what lives in Lil-Lil-Lilly’s head?”

“Her imagination, Frog,” Jessie said. Roy burped as she ran her fingers across his banjo strings.

“Hush now, Roy,” her mother chastened.

“Play me a tune,” Jessie said. “One from your imagination.”

He did, and the music made Jessie forget for a moment the struggles that still lived within her.

FJ sat at his studio desk and looked out through the window toward the library. He found himself doing that often, hoping he might see Jessie on the streets or in the Gaebeles’ yard when he walked by, but he hadn’t. So earlier that day he had sent the letter of recommendation by post, though he’d have preferred to deliver it himself. But that was out of the question. He’d listened to the inner voice that told him no, that doing so wasn’t necessary and would offer no assistance to Jessie. He’d written the first letter with his flowing hand, something he admired in himself, his learning English and writing it with German precision. It would have been a selfish act on his part to hand it to her, to look into her eyes and again be comforted by the scent of her perfume, the blush on her face, the way her hair frizzed around her ears even when she tugged at it out of nervousness.

She had not crossed the threshold of the studio since the day she left. He’d heard through his photographic friends that she was headed to Milwaukee. She had to be taking the position at the Johnson Studio. It would be a good place for her, the timing perfect, though it came on the heels of a loss for Mrs. Johnson.

He hoped Jessie would never learn about the other letter he’d posted.

He’d been making changes these past three weeks himself. He’d made the appointment at Rochester. He’d increased his time at the lodge, volunteering to assist with various civic projects. The veterans met weekly and he started attending, surprising himself that he could tell stories about his service and exchange compassion with soldiers who’d had it much harder. He felt rested after he left those meetings and slept then without the dreams that for so long had haunted him in the night.

He’d made more effort with his wife too. He brought flowers to her; she looked at them, said thank you, then turned back to whatever it was she’d been doing. So he arranged them himself in the slender glass vases, and he even took a bloom for his studio. He looked at the rose that lowered its head to him. He turned the glass vase and felt the cut crystal beneath his fingertips. Good German precision. Beautiful. The flowers, too, were lovely, and he found he liked seeing them when he arrived home, where a new girl now helped out. Selma had decided to work for Lottie Fort, the milliner. It had seemed to him a sudden decision but perhaps for the better. He wouldn’t be seeing Jessie’s moves inside her sister’s. He tried to remember the new girl’s name… Melba. Yes. She walked with heavy footsteps through the house, and the children had accepted her. That latter was the only similarity between her and the Gaebele girls.

Sunlight through the window struck the glass vase, sending a shattering of light across the room. The china and glassware for their home had mostly come from Mrs. Bauer’s side of the family, except for what they’d purchased over the years. He had no family heirlooms. What his parents had sent with him had been lost on the docks. Nothing more had arrived from the Old Country. All but one of his brothers and sisters were still in Germany. His sister, Luise, had followed him to New York, married there and had two sons. She lost them all to typhoid before a second marriage brought her to Wisconsin. Losses were a part of his life, he decided, that and saying good-bye. His family wrote to him.

One sister had surprised him by writing that she’d become a Catholic nun. That must have set the family’s German Lutheran tongues to wagging. She wrote that they felt she had sinned grievously and that they would no longer speak or write to her. She hoped that wouldn’t be so of “my Gottlieb.” It wasn’t.

He wrote her immediately, telling her it was right for her to follow her heart despite the family’s protests. If the family knew of his heart’s journey, they wouldn’t speak to him either, though he didn’t say this in the letter. He’d keep the door open to his Catholic sister. There was too much dissension in life to put one’s family in a silent cage because of how they chose to follow their faith.

He checked his watch as the phone rang. He had a sitting soon, and Voe was busy in the darkroom. He really did need another apprentice. He might even consider hiring that young man who had stopped by and indicated his interest in photography. FJ wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought about a male assistant before. It would be less complicated, and he wouldn’t lose the lad to a family as he assumed he’d lose Voe before too long. But right now he lacked enthusiasm for the search.

He folded the copy of Jessie’s recommendation just in case something should happen and he be asked to send another. He put it in the safe with a copy of the other letter he’d sent on ahead. He didn’t allow himself to think about how Jessie would come to his mind every time he opened that door or how he’d wonder if he ought to have done what he did. He’d only tried to be helpful. It was how he hoped to redeem himself.

The train trip was nothing like the one Jessie had taken with her family to Rochester. It was a much longer ride to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a different state altogether from Minnesota. But the countryside shimmered its prodigal growth, corn and wheat spreading sheets of green across the rolling hills. When she thought of what she’d face in Milwaukee, all the uncertainty, her heart beat faster and her palms sweated. All the doubts came roaring back: Maybe she wasn’t as good a photographer as she thought herself to be. Maybe Mr. Bauer had indulged her all this time, hadn’t really told her the truth about her work so she’d keep learning from him. Maybe she couldn’t make it on her own without her family to protect and salute her efforts.

She’d have to take one step at a time and trust that she wasn’t alone on the journey.
The Lord knows my lot. He makes my boundaries fall on pleasant places
. She’d cling to that psalm, those boundaries.

The train lumbered its way across the Mississippi, heading east and leaving behind the bluffs she’d known all her life. It traveled through areas where geese and ducks clustered like thick flies on reedy waters. Maples and oaks stretched in long arcs of woods. In the fall, as their foliage changed, they’d look like an artist had cleaned her brush on their leaves, but now they boasted green. A dog splashed into a pond, followed by children, as the train chugged by. Jessie strained her neck looking back at them.
Children
. She thought of Roy. He never even knew that she’d deprived him of time and resources too, just to have her own way. He’d forgive her, though. There never was a soul as generous as Roy’s. Still, she felt her face grow warm with shame again.