An Absence So Great: A Novel (Portraits of the Heart) Read online

  Jessie crumpled the letter in her hand. She paced her narrow room.

  She would go to see him, as well as the bank, face to face. Both of these men would recognize her determination and her abilities. She would convince them. She knocked on the Eversons’ bedroom door. They’d have to give her a few days off, or she’d terminate her employment early. Nothing was going to keep her from owning the Polonia!

  January 15, 1912

  Dear Sister,

  How are you? I am fine.

  Thank you for the Christmas gifts. The locket is beautiful. I see why you bought it. I wish you were still here so Lilly would have someone else to watch. She acts like I’m going to do awful things with Art Roeling, my new beau, though we’re never alone, not ever. What Lilly needs is her own beau to worry about instead of mine.

  I’ll be glad when you meet Art. I’m glad Mama didn’t know that he was special, because she might not have let him come to the Christmas party with the other boys, because he doesn’t go to our church. It was a good idea to invite boys from the youth group too. Thank you for suggesting that. Art is in high school, but he works at the printers where you worked once. When he stops by Lottie’s on his way home, I can smell the ink on him and see it on his fingertips.

  I’m sorry that where you’re working in Eau Claire isn’t an easy place to be. I hope it gets better. You have to make the best of what is. That’s what I’m doing with Lilly, who tells me what to do and what to wear just like Mama does! Did they do that to you? No wonder you left Winona.

  Mama lets Roy’s chickens come into the house, which surprises even Papa. They’re good chickens and will sit on your lap and let you stroke them just like a cat. Not that we have a cat in the house, but I think we should. I hear scratching in the walls at night and I think the sound comes from mice.

  Is the weather changing where you are? It’s so cold here! I’ll be glad for spring, when trumpeter swans stop by the lake’s edges and pluck at rice, and the geese come back to peck at grass. Papa says I can go ice fishing with him and Uncle August and Roy if I want to next week. Why would I want to? It’s always so cold! I didn’t say that to him. He enjoys it. At least when we ice skate we stay moving and warm.

  I know I’m not supposed to talk about Mr. Bauer with you, that’s what Lilly told me, but I will tell you that he came by Lottie’s today and asked about you. He was buying a gift for his wife. He wanted to know how you were, and I told him you were fine but that you didn’t like Eau Claire much, or at least the Everson Studio where you work. Was that all right, that I told him that? I just wonder. He bought Mrs. Bauer a fur neck muffler and matching fur muff. He has “fine taste,” as Lottie said, and likes the more expensive things. Which is nice for Lottie and for Mrs. Bauer.

  When are you coming back to Winona? I just wonder.

  Write to me soon. I’m fine.

  Your loving sister,

  Selma

  Intrusions

  IT WAS PURE CHANCE THAT THE TRAIN pulled in when Fred had stopped by to pick up supplies. He’d taken over that task from Voe and told himself it was simply more practical for him to do it with the car or a cab if the weather turned sour. But he did notice the other deliveries when he picked up his own and then chastised himself for wanting a connection to Jessie, despite how faded that attachment might be. As the train eased by, chugging and belching, his eyes followed the windows. He swallowed when he thought he saw her profile and decided to wait until passengers unloaded. He was being silly. He couldn’t imagine any reason why she’d be coming to Winona. He hadn’t seen her over the holidays, and she hadn’t answered his cordial letter about Mr. Haas’s wish to sell.

  Yet there she was, standing a distance in front of him, staring at the street. He waved as though he’d meant to be the one to pick her up all along, and when he got her attention, she tilted her head before indicating she recognized him. She waved her fur muff as he approached her. He thought tears would fill his eyes and reveal the pain of her absence and the depth of his relief when she walked toward him, slowly, the way a photograph formed onto the paper.

  “It seems our paths cross,” Fred said.

  “So they do.” She looked beyond him, seeking the streetcar, he imagined.

  “I have the car. I’d be pleased to offer you a ride home.”

  She hesitated, and yet he was certain he’d seen a look in her eyes, a flicker of interest as he put out his gloved hand and reached for her tapestry bag. Paying her debt had put them on equal footing. At least he imagined she might see it that way. She nodded and moved toward the car.

  He cared for her, longed to be someone who helped her advance her talent, would do almost anything just to know he could have a conversation with her now and then. He’d keep his distance, he would; but if he didn’t have to, if they could be friends again, it would bring such joy to his life.

  “How nice to see you back, Miss Gaebele,” Fred said. He wasn’t sure how to address her. She was Jessie in his mind and always would be, but now saying that felt like a betrayal to both of the women in his life. They both bore that name, and his wife’s request that he use it for her made the confusion in his heart even greater.

  Both of the women in my life.

  The woman before him, spare and splendid, was not a woman in his life, could never be. And yet his breathing quickened, and when his glove touched hers, he felt a spark. Probably the dry air crackling in the cold weather.

  “It’s nice to be home,” she said as she stepped into the car.

  “Staying long?”

  “That depends.”

  He loaded her bag into the backseat and wondered if she remembered that the last time she’d ridden in this touring car, she’d left her blue hat there. It seemed years before. He smiled to himself as he walked to the front and cranked the car. It had been years before, nearly two. The hat she wore today was a midnight blue velvet trimmed with black ostrich plumes that shaded her eyes. She didn’t look at him as she held onto a large portfolio case. Her small ears were pink from the cold.

  “On what does your stay depend, Miss Gaebele? Your family is well, I trust,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door. “You haven’t come home because of illness or—”

  “No,” she said. “Everyone is fine.” She started to speak, cleared her throat only to take in a deep breath. “I’ve come to buy Polonia Studio.”

  He slapped the steering wheel. “Good for you!” He knew he beamed like a father watching his daughter stand up in front of the school to make a recitation. “I hoped that would come about. I told George you’d be a fine candidate. Skilled, reliable, good with patrons, inventive. I gave him all your greatest attributes.”

  “Apparently your glowing recommendation was insufficient,” she said.

  “What?” He turned to look at her, but his eyes were wrenched back to the road by the car tires hitting the streetcar track. “What do you mean?”

  “George Haas has decided that a young woman should only work to support her husband or her family and shouldn’t even think about owning her own business. Apparently he doesn’t agree that I could run a studio. I plan to show him copies of Camera Notes and educate him about the contributions being made by female photographers, including those who aren’t married. The very idea,” she said. “What’s a girl to do if she needs to work? Men.” She spoke the last under her breath.

  “Perhaps I could talk with him, on your behalf,” Fred said. “I’d be honored. Maybe I didn’t make as strong a case as I might have. I could provide detail about your retouching work.” His voice cracked, and again he looked at her to see if she remembered, if that day they’d worked in the retouching room so close, so very close, still resonated with her as it did with him, the memory a bow drawn slowly across his heartstrings.

  She glanced at him, then turned away. “You did speak to him, and I thank you, but it had no effect. I’ll do this on my own. I’m going to go to the bank and get a loan. If I can convince those bankers that a woman has cap
abilities, then perhaps they can convince Mr. Haas with me. It’s so… frustrating,” she added, plumping her muff as she shoved her hands into it.

  “You have copies of your work?” Fred nodded toward the folio bag that leaned against her knees. It acted as a shield between them. He hoped she wasn’t afraid of him, wasn’t thinking he’d do anything to reignite the fires that had rushed through their lives, burning them both. “I’d be pleased to see them.”

  She hesitated. “I am rather fond of the sample I made. This woman, she had such a fine look about her, a natural beauty. She didn’t think so, of course. It never ceases to amaze me that women who I think have so much character in their faces often discount it. I think a photographer must become like one of those mind doctors who reads the heart and soul and draws out the secrets in the subject.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it as mind doctoring, but you have a point,” he said. He laughed. “Might be a new kind of attraction for a studio: ‘Minds developed while you wait.’”

  She looked shyly at him, grinned. “You don’t really think that.”

  “One never knows about the mind,” he said. “Photography might be as effective as, say, doctoring at Mayo.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. But I do find it fascinating to let people pose themselves. Have you noticed how they act out annoyances that might be shown in the reception room or even when they made the appointment? Whether they’re demanding of a certain time or timid or show up late or early? That all appears in the sitting.”

  “I confess I hadn’t noticed,” Fred said. “But now that you say it, yes, there are times that the props they select reflect their personalities. Flamboyant or shy. And the way another family member chastises them for their choice can show up in their faces too.”

  “Of course, I never tell them what I’ve seen.”

  “One shouldn’t.”

  “I just find it… interesting. It’s as though how they behave in the studio allows me to enter their thoughts, and the experience keeps them with me long after they’ve gone.”

  He could feel her enthusiasm for her talent and profession fill the car, and it pleased him. Who else could he have such a conversation with?

  She continued. “Maybe it shows in the photograph whether I’ve captured special qualities in them, whether the person behind the lens contributes as much as the subject.” She turned to face him. He could see her stare from the corner of his eye as he kept focused straight ahead.

  “Yes. The person behind the lens does express a part of themselves in the final result.” His hands grew damp inside his gloves as he remembered the photograph he’d made of Jessie, had given her as a birthday gift so long ago. Could she be thinking of that?

  He turned the car toward her parents’ home, but she redirected him. “I planned to go by the Polonia,” she said. “I’d better see for certain what I’m buying. I can make my way home from there.”

  “I’m more than happy to wait,” he said. “My presence might lend credibility to your negotiations with Haas.”

  She seemed to think about that and then said, “All right. But let me do the talking.”

  It was their usual time together in the evangelist’s small back office. Mrs. Bauer’s eyes focused on photographs that her husband likely had taken: portraits of the evangelist’s family, Reverend Carleton’s boys and girls. The cross on the shelf behind him was made of tiny seashells, and often when her mind refused to let her listen or absorb what he said, it was because she counted them, those shells, over and over again.

  Mrs. Bauer had told Reverend Carleton everything she could think to say, and yet each time she came to visit, more thoughts poured out. Through tears that wouldn’t stop, she told him about Donald’s death and how it had been her favorite horse they’d had put down afterward, which was only right. And yet, if her husband hadn’t insisted on letting Donald stand up in the wagon, the child would still be here today, not a victim of a freak accident. She told the reverend of her grief and how she never wanted to see North Dakota again, though she missed having horses. “I cannot forgive him,” she whispered.

  “‘For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,’” Reverend Carleton told her.

  “Yes, yes, I know I’m a sinful person to not forgive him, but I just can’t seem to. And that adds to my weariness. I don’t have enough of what I need to get through this.”

  “‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’”

  “But you see, God’s grace doesn’t seem to be. That’s another of my failures.” She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

  She told him then about FJ’s temper, how he’d smashed in her bedroom door when she’d locked herself inside and told him she’d had enough, didn’t want to keep going on this way. Reverend Carleton said perhaps he was worried about her, didn’t want her to harm herself, and she’d thought about that as the evangelist handed her a fresh handkerchief. Hers, embroidered with daisies, was so wet it could no longer hold her drenching tears. She twisted it in her hands. “I know, I know. He’s a good man, though impatient. He barks at the children, at me. I feel as though I can do nothing to please him.”

  Was that the same look of exasperation in Reverend Carleton’s face as in her husband’s? On days she thought she saw such a thing, she could say no more, would sit in silence while he spoke scriptures that she tried to remember, hoping they’d wash over her when she was in the safety of her home. She’d never had the courage to tell Reverend Carleton that there were times when she simply felt relieved that Fred wasn’t home.

  Their marriage mixed confusion and regret with uncertainty and disdain. How could they reestablish a marriage on such a basis? She’d forgotten the last time she laughed with FJ. Maybe it was the day they’d gone fishing together, though she’d laughed more at her success catching fish and the children’s delight than at anything that transpired between her and her husband.

  Her prayers had encouraged her to speak more openly to Reverend Carleton, and lately she’d begun to tell him more of how she felt, of those inner thoughts that intruded. She often refused to let them come to the surface for fear they’d overtake her, the way rice boiled over when it should simply absorb. She wasn’t certain she was ready to deal with all the hidden things, the feelings she kept cloaked, but when she was with this man, this kind and predictable man, she came closer to facing the truths of her life.

  An odd thing also occurred before her visits: she noticed that when she prepared for her appointments with the reverend, she dressed more consciously. She put lavender scent behind her ears and primped to be certain that the dress she chose didn’t pull at her thickening waist. She’d purchased extra face powder at Choate’s, but she used it lightly because she almost always cried during their meetings and she didn’t want her tears to cake ridges on her face. In a mirror, she’d once seen herself crying and was horrified at the image. Who would want to look at a face resembling the contortions of the fat lady in the circus, made worse because of tears?

  One, two, three, four shells on that row of the cross.

  She hoped that how she felt about Reverend Carleton wasn’t wrong, even though she did think about him when she was at home peeling potatoes or pumping water into the pitchers. She hadn’t told him any of this. She didn’t want him knowing, and she feared that if she told him he would tell her she was sinning and perhaps suggest she not come back until she ceased her ways. She had to let him know that he helped her, that she made progress. She had to tell him of more… intimate things so he wouldn’t feel he was wasting his time.

  Five, six, seven.

  “Mrs. Bauer?”

  “I think he might be interested in…other women,” she told the reverend. It was their first meeting after Christmas, and he’d told her that come spring he’d be traveling and would not be able to see her as frequently. She said she understood, but her chest had tightened, as though he’d told her there’d be less water to drink. />
  He leaned away from her. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  She shouldn’t have said it that way.

  “It’s… He’s distracted with me. He used to, that is, we haven’t been, intimate, that is, well, not for some time.” She looked down, didn’t want to see the judgment in his eyes. “He used to shout at me about that, complain when I didn’t want him to touch me. I… We kept it from the children, of course. But then lately, maybe for the past year or more, he’s not sought my… affection at all.”

  She wondered what kind of relationship Reverend Carleton had with his wife.

  “Perhaps he’s respecting your wishes,” the reverend said. Had he sighed? He made notes on a pad as she talked. That was probably how he could pick up so quickly with what she’d said the last time. She hadn’t thought of it, that he’d make notes. “Hasn’t he agreed to call you Jessie, as you asked?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Yes, he has. Maybe he’s just doing what I want him to do, and then, you see, I make it terrible. How can he put up with me? A normal man would just—”

  “A man who loves his wife would honor her wishes.”

  “Do you honor your wife’s wishes?”

  “We’re not speaking of me and mine, Mrs. Bauer.” He smoothed his slicked-back hair. “Let’s stay to the point here.”

  Her face burned. How silly of her to cross the unwritten border of their relationship. Relationship! It wasn’t a relationship at all.

  “Though you should consider, Mrs. Bauer, your wifely duties to your husband.”

  She looked at him. What was he like to be married to? Did he sing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” while he dressed in the morning? Did he help with the children? What would it be like to have him reach for her hand and stroke it? Would she jerk away as she did from FJ? Would she wish to have him breathe softly onto her neck while she cooked at the Monarch? Or would she find relief when he traveled as he so often did around the region, holding tent meetings? Maybe that was the way for women: having time without a man around offered relief, but they didn’t ever dare say so, not even to themselves, for fear the thought violated heavenly law. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The song rolled through her head. A good man may be hard to find, but he isn’t hard to put behind other thoughts once in a while. She suppressed a grin behind her gloved hand, made it look like she suppressed a cough. Good heavens, what was wrong with her?