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

  “But his respecting your wishes, offering separation, is no reason to assume he is involved with any other woman, Mrs. Bauer. You mustn’t let your imagination rule your thinking.”

  “No, no, I mustn’t.” He was annoyed with her, she could tell. She’d offer more. “But there is something…hard to describe.”

  He patted his wide belly as though seeking his watch, urged her on with his hand, the pencil bobbing. “Go ahead, tell me.”

  Do I detect impatience? What does he write down about me?

  “Whenever FJ says my name, Jessie, there’s a hesitation to it, as though his thoughts go first to…someone else.”

  “Who might that be? Do you know any other Jessies he encounters?”

  “We had an employee for a time. The one who was in here last summer when I stopped by. Jessie Gaebele.”

  “She’s moved away. Eau Claire now. She’s not even in the city, Mrs. Bauer.”

  “I know. It’s just that he—”

  “If that’s all you have to worry you, Mrs. Bauer, that he hesitates using your name after so many years of your asking him not to, you worry for naught.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “He’s simply making an adjustment, I’d say.”

  “So nothing to worry over.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  One, two, three, four, five, six shells on the left cross bar.

  “I think our time is up, Mrs. Bauer.” He pulled out his vest watch, clicked it open, then closed it.

  How long had she been counting, not aware of where she was? She looked at him closely. His face was so firm, lips full, beard trimmed to a tiny point over his chin. Less tidy than her husband but fuller, rounder, a bigger man. Softer, with gentle hands. Deeply spiritual. Warm. She felt her throat tighten.

  “Do you have scriptures to dwell on this next week, Mrs. Bauer? Received through prayer as I’ve encouraged?”

  “First Corinthians 10:13,” she offered up before even thinking.

  He sat back. “Temptation? Whatever temptations do you struggle with, dear lady? Oh”—he checked his watch again—“it shall have to wait. I’ll look forward to hearing more when next we meet.”

  “Until we meet again,” she said.

  Whatever would she tell him?

  Patricia Benson, character study

  January 11, 1912, Everson Studio, Eau Claire

  4 × 5 Graflex

  Desire

  It is a favorite of mine, this character study of Patricia Benson. I love the looseness of her hair and the way the light filters through the gold-spun strands. I like how she looks to the camera, seeking. We all seek, are sent to the “limits of our longing” as the poet Rilke notes, sent by the very act of being a creative person, born to invent. In her eyes I see this cautious longing so common among women working in this world. When a man does well in a new business venture, everyone says how wise and wonderful he is, such a good planner. If he fails, well, it was a “poor market.” Unforeseen circumstances caused his income to fall; nothing he did caused the trouble.

  Yet a woman like Patricia Benson opens a bakery and it flourishes, but is she praised for her skill at starting something new, for her plans and implementation? No, her praise is that she picked a good time to open a bakery, the markets being good and people ready for such a thing. But if her revenues are insufficient because people have lost employment and no longer visit bakeries, those same sages nod their knowing heads and comment on her poor planning, how she didn’t realize how complicated the world of business really is, and truly a woman’s place is best spent baking in her home. They say this as they cluck their tongues. It is the way of business, perhaps of the world. This portrait is a sample I made while in Eau Claire. I noticed I misspelled sample on the back, reversing the l and e. I do that often, which is why I’d copied my letter to George Haas several times to be certain I had all the spelling correct before I sent it.

  I colored this portrait myself. I thought it would demonstrate my versatility. I got the shadows right along her face and neck, tinted them not too dark, brought out the amber in her eyes so that she looks as though she’s standing right before us. She wore a turquoise kimono that Mrs. Everson had for props, and I allowed the right side of the photograph to bear a deeper tone and brushed the color on the other side. I took out all the background too. Nothing to distract the eye. And I asked her not to show her teeth, which, while perfectly straight, seemed large for her face. I asked her to think of something she longed for. She’d wiggled her nose at me and asked how I knew that speaking a desire was something difficult for her.

  “It’s difficult for all of us,” I told her. “I can tell you what my sister wants, and my father, but when I’m asked to name it for myself, my mind becomes a blank glass plate. Or at least it did until I realized I wanted to have my own studio one day. After that, all my focus went there.” Except for those distractions some years back. But I am past those distractions now.

  I’ll never know for certain, but I think the character study, as we photographers called such samples, gave me an extra step through the doorway that opened onto my dream. The day I met with George Haas, his eyebrow lifted in appreciation as I showed him this sample along with the Marquette girls and Misha, the Russian baby. But it was Patricia’s portrait that he held the longest.

  Still, he shook his head.

  “I don’t think you can do it,” he said. “I don’t want to be in Tampa next year and hear you’ve been consumed by the forces of finance. Or a fiancé,” he added. His eyes twinkled and reminded me of my uncle August’s teasing. But George Haas wasn’t teasing.

  “I’ve no intention of marriage anytime soon, and even if I did, I’d still be able to run my own studio. Any fiancé of mine would accept my business and either like it or skedaddle.”

  Both George and Fred laughed at that, but George seemed unmoved.

  “She can do this, George,” Fred told him then. I felt conflicted over his role in the conversation. “You can judge her considerable talent, and I’ve seen her with patrons. She’s good.”

  “This isn’t a woman’s profession, FJ. You know that. It’s dangerous. One’s got to be aggressive. She likely can’t do that with so many other studios in town. She can’t join the lodges, can’t teach the classes, all the things that make this business go.”

  I felt embarrassed by these men talking about me as though I were a mere prop in this picture. Their comments unsettled, made me wonder if perhaps I wasn’t ready.

  “I can give you the names of plenty of women photographers who are making it just fine,” I insisted. “Frances Benjamin Johnston. Mary Carnell. Evelyn Cameron of Montana, for heaven’s sake. Myra Albert Wiggins. Mary McGarvey. Why, Miss Belle Johnson makes her way taking photographs of kittens, and she does it in the burgeoning metropolis of Monroe City, Missouri!” I was no longer embarrassed; I was mad. “If you gentlemen think I can’t do this—”

  “I never said—” Fred interrupted, turning to me.

  “—then I’ll open my own studio. Who needs yours, Mr. Haas? You can sell the Polonia to whomever you find who adequately meets your esteemed requirements, namely, that they wear pants.”

  I gathered up my folio then and stormed out. I’d already retrieved my bag from Fred’s backseat when he hurried down the steps, his cane hooked over his arm. “Listen,” he said. “Give me a little time with him. He can be melded into shape.”

  “I’ll do it myself, Fred,” I said. My use of his name seemed to fluster him. He stopped moving toward me. “Mr. Bauer.”

  “Jessie. Let me help. Please.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t have you doing anything more for me, Mr. Bauer. This isn’t something anyone can do for me. Do you understand? I’m going to the bank, and I’ll take care of it myself or I won’t own a studio. That’s that.”

  When I looked at Patricia’s portrait again later that evening, I remembered how I’d dodged it, used my hand to burn light into one place more than another.


  Maybe I wasn’t meant to have my own studio; maybe some other area of my life had yet to be exposed and I was too dense to receive it, dodging good light all on my own.

  The Road to Readjustment

  Jessie walked from Fourth Street home to Broadway. It was a good hike in the cold January air, her fur collar tucked up around her face, keeping all but her eyes warm against the wind. Walking helped her quell her outrage. “So what is it I’m supposed to do? Just how am I to proceed?” She’d been bold saying she could secure a loan. She could start her own studio. She didn’t need Polonia. Of course, the issue of money remained. Maybe she could borrow what she needed from her uncle August. He understood her adventurous spirit. “Would he loan money to a woman?” Maybe she should just ask Fred for the money.

  Don’t do it.

  She ought to have declined his offer of a ride in the first place. But his smile warmed her, and he looked so, oh, professional standing there with his cane draped across his arm and his collar turned up against the cold. He wore no hat, which he should have, given the temperature and the icicles clinging to the depot’s roof. Maybe the weather had convinced her to take up his offer for a ride. But then why did she let him come with her to Polonia Studio?

  He was supportive, that was why. He was encouraging, gentle, just as she’d remembered him. A woman ought to be able to have a professional relationship with a man, oughtn’t she?

  She reached the family home.

  “J-J-Jessie!” Roy greeted her at the door. “Mama, i-i-it’s J-J-Jessie!”

  “Well, sugar my beets if it isn’t. Come in, come in, you look frozen as Roy’s snowman. Why didn’t you call from the station? Goodness, get over by the stove there. Roy, put fresh coal in. Oh my.”

  “I’m fine, Mama,” Jessie said, but it came out as “I’mb fine, Bamba” because her lips were numbed by the cold. Roy laughed. “All right for you, Frog,” she said, and he laughed again at her effort to speak. She unhooked the collar and set it a distance from the stove so it would warm up slowly; the muff and gloves she set aside too, to dry.

  “Tea. Here’s hot tea. Your sisters will be home any time now. When did your train get in? Were you on the 12:05? Why, you’ve been out in the cold all that time? Your father will be upset you didn’t call him.”

  “I had business to attend to,” she said when her lips had taken in the hot tea and she’d pulled a tiny leaf of mint from her tongue. Her hands warmed around the cup.

  “What business? Photographic business?” Her mother frowned. “You didn’t go by the Bauer—”

  “No, Mama, I did not go by the Bauer Studio.”

  She nodded. “Are you finished at Eau Claire? I thought they’d need you into summer.”

  “I return in two days. I came home because I thought I could buy Polonia Studio,” she said. “But Mr. Haas doesn’t want to sell to a woman. Doesn’t think I’m up to the task.” She sounded disgusted and she knew it.

  “Such a big venture for one so young.”

  “I’m nearly twenty, Mama. I don’t have enough saved up to buy it on my own. But I’m going to the bank tomorrow to see if I can get a loan to add to what I have and start my own business. Forget Polonia. Let George Haas sell it to someone with a mustache, and I’ll compete with him and the Bauer Studio and all the rest of them!”

  “Jessie, Jessie, best mind your tongue.” Her mother turned back to the jar of canned peaches she’d been opening when Jessie came in. “Maybe you could talk to Ralph Carleton to earn extra for your venture.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes toward Roy. “Mother, please. Don’t. I’m sorry I brought it up.” She picked up her portfolio and muff, put the bag in the other hand. “I’ll take these upstairs and surprise my sisters, who I’m sure will be pleased to give up a third of their bed tonight.”

  “What will you do if you can’t get a loan?”

  “I’ll…find work somewhere when the Eversons no longer need me.” She’d counted on buying Polonia, having George carry the contract on credit. She hadn’t thought much past that.

  She considered writing to Joshua Behrens and seeking his business advice. But he was far removed from her now, and she didn’t need advice; she needed cash. She needed someone with cash to believe in her.

  When she came downstairs again, she helped her mother peel potatoes, picking off the eyes that grew through the fall and into the winter despite the cool storage they’d been in. She put the peels onto last week’s Republican-Herald. An article beneath the pile of peels caught her eye. It was all about banks and what good shape they were in. It listed the First National and the Winona Savings Bank and all their officers and cashiers. The Winona Savings Bank would hold its meeting the next week, the article said. How timely, Jessie thought. She could meet with her own bank first, and if they turned her down, she’d make an appointment by name with the presidents of the other two banks. Surely one of the three would find a way to loan her what she needed.

  Family chatter filled the kitchen as her sisters arrived home. Even Lilly appeared happy to see her, hugging her and letting Jessie be the first to let go. She caught up on family news about their Seattle aunt, the grandparents, her uncle “who is finally courting,” her mother said with pride. Roy’s hen, Madero, had assumed a special place in a pen on the porch, though she went back to the henhouse for the evenings. “He just loves that bird,” Selma said when Roy got up from the table to bring the chicken in.

  A warmth filled Jessie as she looked around the room. These were her people, and she needed—yes, needed—to be nearer to them, to find a way to see them daily and be a part of their lives. She posed them in a picture in her mind: Roy in the middle of her sisters, her parents standing behind them, but all of them close to one another. Bordering and protecting.

  Exhaustion suddenly hit her. She’d had a train ride, an unexpected emotional encounter with Fred, a disastrous negotiation with George Haas, and a freezing walk home in the cold. She shouldn’t have tried to see George immediately after arriving, and she shouldn’t have let Fred join her at all. But that was water under the bridge. She’d rest, and then in the morning she’d go to the Winona Savings Bank and talk about that “meaningful deposit relationship,” and if they wouldn’t listen, she’d form a relationship with another bank.

  Fred hadn’t heard anything more from Jessie or about her. As he drove by Lottie’s Millinery, he realized he could hardly ask her sister how Jessie’s meeting with the bank had gone. For all he knew, she hadn’t even done it, and he suspected now that she was back in Eau Claire. His sadness over the way she’d been treated by George, and his own regret over their talking around her while she stood there, hadn’t gone away. He was supposed to keep quiet, and he hadn’t. But he couldn’t stand by and let George dismiss her, not when she had all the talent needed to be successful.

  When she left he’d driven alongside her for a ways, leaning toward the passenger side, urging her to get in, but she’d refused. He didn’t want to bring attention to them, so he’d pulled over and watched her walk away.

  The rest of that week had passed without his seeing her, then another. His life had gone on, full of moments he imagined encountering her. These were innocent thoughts. Oh, sometimes when Russell brought his attention to a balsa airplane he’d glued together, Fred had to be called more than once because his mind wandered. When Robert waddled through the room and punched Fred’s newspaper, showing his big smile even if Fred lowered the paper in annoyance, he’d realize he hadn’t been reading anyway, merely thinking about Jessie Gaebele.

  Now the early sap of the maples had darkened the crotch of trees, seeping black lines down the trunks, announcing spring. Daffodils and crocuses no longer had to push through old snow, leaned toward new grass instead. He’d written to her, just letting her know he was sorry if he’d offended her and offering whatever help he could if she’d let him assist her.

  His daily pawing through the mail took on new interest, though she hadn’t written back. Even in her
absence she was more a part of his life than his wife, who had gone further and further away. One day a week she got herself up early, before he left for the studio, and she wore new perfume he thought, put on her most stylish dress. When he asked her what the occasion was, she said it was nothing special, that she was giving herself an “agreeable day” now and then.

  “You look wonderful,” he told her. “A sparkle in your eye.”

  When he’d said that, she seemed to disappear inside herself, her eyes taking on a dull look. She’d even stepped away from him.

  “Please,” he said. “I only meant to compliment you.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s good then.”

  She’d stared at him as he donned his lighter suit coat, and she handed him his cane. “Have a good… agreeable day,” he told her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “And you as well.”

  They were like people in a hospital waiting room, aware that this was not a place either wished to be, but here they were, making the best of it while they waited out whatever disastrous news had yet to come their way.

  Then he’d seen the ad in the paper. That morning at the studio, he’d made up his mind. He had to let Jessie know that George still hadn’t sold the studio and was now advertising for a retoucher. If Jessie came back and took that job, she’d surely be able to convince George of her abilities.