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

  “What? Oh yes. I told her.” Fred stared at her. He cleared his throat. “I told her about that opening at the Polonia Studio.”

  “Will you take the job?” Russell asked.

  “I have to apply first,” she said. “But I read about the opening in the paper.”

  “You already knew? We didn’t have to drive all this way.” Russell groaned.

  “Russell,” Fred cautioned.

  “Your father couldn’t know that I knew,” Jessie said. “It was very kind of you both to think of my welfare and to make such a long trip for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Fred said.

  “Here’s the pie,” Hilda said. “So, you come to take our Miss Gaebele back with you to Winona?”

  “No, no, we were just driving about and—”

  “You could save her the train fare and our having to take her to the depot. Not that we want you to leave any sooner than planned, but you were only going for two nights anyway,” Hilda told her. “Isn’t that so?”

  “You were coming to Winona?” Fred said.

  “I have an interview,” Jessie said.

  “That’s perfect then,” Hilda confirmed. “Saves time and money.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Bauer and Russell have the rest of their weekend planned,” Jessie said. “The train will be fine.”

  “Mrs. Everson does make sense, Miss Gaebele,” Fred said. “No reason to take a train when you can have a car deliver you to your door. What do you think, Russell? Should we give Miss Gaebele a lift?”

  “Can I drive a little on the way back?” Russell said.

  “How quickly could you be ready?” Fred said to Jessie.

  “Good idea, ja,” Hilda said.

  Here they were again, everyone making decisions for her and acting like she didn’t have a brain in her own head. On the other hand, why should she put out money for train fare when a perfectly good ride awaited? Returning with Fred now meant she’d be fresh and ready for her interviews with George Haas, the banks, and maybe even Ralph Carleton if she had to prove to everyone she had the drive and the means to make several things work. Best of all, Russell was along, a chaperone.

  “It’ll take me just a minute,” she said. “I adapt quickly.”

  Fred directed Russell to the backseat.

  “I thought I could drive,” he protested.

  “When we’re out of the city,” Fred told him. “I’ve no time to teach you the ins and outs of city driving, especially in a place I’m not familiar with myself.”

  The boy slouched into the back, cap pulled over his eyes, arms across his chest, as Fred placed Jessie’s bag on the seat beside him. The boy could have been a gentleman and helped, Fred thought, but at least he hadn’t protested to the idea of bringing Jessie back to Winona with them. And it hadn’t even been Fred’s idea! He settled Jessie in the front seat, and she tied her hat on even though he had the car top up. He wondered if she remembered: both the way the wind could whip a woman’s hat in a car and that she’d lost one of hers on a certain day in June.

  He pulled out his watch before bending to crank the car. He should have the boy crank it. The movement did get his heart pounding. They’d spent barely an hour in Eau Claire. They had a long drive and would be home well after the supper hour. Even later if he let Russell drive. But he’d have to do that or the boy would protest and maybe upset his mother. There would be enough to deal with, explaining why they went north instead of just coming back home after visiting his sister.

  Once outside of Eau Claire, he asked Jessie to exchange places so Russell could drive. He was conscious of Jessie first beside him and then in the backseat, had inhaled the lavender water she wore when she moved past him. He had no indication from her that she shared his alertness. It seemed to him she deliberately avoided his touch, not even allowing him to help her step up on the running board of the car. He hoped she knew that his offer was simply a gesture of kindness. They could be friends; he’d show her that. And yet her behavior would make any explanation needed for his wife about this day all the truer. They were just colleagues.

  Russell did fine driving, and Fred told him so. The boy kept the car in the dusty ruts and held the wheel as steady as he could when they reached intersections where cars and wagons crisscrossed, the bumps as discomforting as streetcar tracks. At least it hadn’t rained, so mud didn’t bog them down.

  They’d have been fine, would have reached Winona by late dusk, but not far from Cochrane and his sister’s farm, the car coughed and rolled to a stop in the middle of the road.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Jessie asked from the back. She leaned forward and put her hands over the backrest. Such small, delicate hands.

  “Did you turn the ignition off, Russell? By mistake?”

  “No. I didn’t do nothing.” The boy lifted his hands from the steering wheel as though it were hot. “Anything.”

  “I wasn’t accusing,” Fred said. “Let’s see if we can get it restarted.” As Fred walked to the front, his eye noticed the gas tank extended along the side. The gauge showed empty. “Confound it!” He’d meant to stop at an oil station in Eau Claire and refill both the tank and the reserve container they’d used up with all the racing around in the pasture. What had he been thinking!

  Fred first walked alone to the nearest farm, hoping they’d have gasoline or a phone. He left Jessie and Russell talking about basketball and school, how well he’d driven the car. Fred returned with no good news.

  “How far are we from Aunt Luise’s?” Russell asked.

  “You have family close?” Jessie asked. “I thought all your family still lived in Germany.”

  “Four or five miles. Maybe more.”

  “Someone will come along—”

  “And we’re in the middle of the road,” Fred snapped at Russell.

  “Maybe we can push the car out of the way,” Jessie said. “And then I propose we start walking before it gets any later. Does your sister have a phone?”

  Fred shook his head. “She doesn’t. But there’s a grocer not far beyond them where they make calls. Hopefully Augie will have fuel and can give us a ride back. Then we can be on our way, call home, and let them know we’ll be pretty late so they won’t worry.”

  The beauty of the sunset proved insufficient to ward off night, darkness fully cloaking them with no moon to mark their way. Jessie’s eyes adjusted as the light waned, but now she was dependent on rubbing shoulders with Russell and Fred to keep heading in the right direction. Fireflies flickered their tiny lights.

  They’d been walking a long time, and Jessie carried the portfolio and her camera bag. “I can’t afford to have them carried off,” she insisted. Russell and Fred left their cameras, and Jessie could tell they indulged her in helping with hers. Both men traded off hoisting the camera, but her shoulder still felt sore from the weight. At least her legs didn’t hurt; all the walking she did, even short jaunts around the Eversons’ block, kept them in good fit. The hard lumps of dried mud did press against the thin leather soles, though, causing her to wince.

  Eventually, a pale light from a window shone through leafy maple trees, and Russell shouted, “There it is!” Drawing on youthful energy, he sprinted toward the driveway, leaving Fred carrying the case in one hand, his cane in the other.

  “Let me take the case,” Jessie said. “You carry my portfolio. It’s lighter, and I might take your elbow so I don’t fall flat on my face, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No bother at all,” he said and made the switch, his forearm warm where she held it. “I apologize for this…fiasco. I never should have let Russell drive around so much earlier. I should have remembered to get fuel. It’s just… I do apologize.”

  “An honest happening,” she said. “And Russell’s being along keeps things…safe. I didn’t mean to suggest that there was anything but… decorum in your offer. In the drive to Eau Claire. I mean it was Mrs. Everson who proposed you give me a ride back. That is, I didn’t.”

  “
I know what you meant,” he said. “I know.”

  Augie and his son, she imagined, hustled out of the door and onto the porch, the boy racing down to lift Jessie’s camera bag, his father pulling on suspenders, then reaching to shake Fred’s hand. “Be really careful,” she cautioned the child, “and thank you.”

  “Fred. What were you thinking, running out of gas? In your reserve too, Russell says. I tell you, you city boys just don’t always think that far ahead, now, do you?”

  Jessie could feel Fred’s embarrassment as she let go of his arm.

  “These things happen,” she said. She thrust her now-free hand out to shake Augie Staak’s. “I’m Jessie Gaebele,” she said. He didn’t seem to know what to do with a woman’s handshake offer, and he nodded instead.

  “Jessie, you say. That’ll be easy to remember. Welcome.” He took Jessie’s hand to help her up the steps, then said to Fred, “Your sister’s already putting on supper for you wandering souls.”

  “We don’t really have the time,” Fred said. “Would you run us to the grocer to make a phone call so Mrs. Bauer won’t worry? And may I buy gasoline from you?”

  “We use the horses still. We’ll wait till morning when you can get fuel at the grocer, then I’ll harness up the team and take you back to the car. He’ll be closed already tonight. If he had a saloon attached, he’d be open, but he’s dry. We can go to the neighbor to make the call home, but they’re still farming with horses too. I’ll harness the team.”

  Once inside the kitchen, Jessie introduced herself as “a photographer friend of Fred’s. You must be Luise. May I help?”

  “Ja, that would be good,” the round woman said. “I’ll fry up Kartoffels if you’ll peel them. Fritz likes his—how you say it? potatoes?—all fried in lard and crispy brown. Violet’s changing sheets on her bed so the two of you share the space to sleep.”

  Mrs. Bauer will be so worried, Jessie thought. It was good they could make the phone call, though she wished they could get fuel too. She had to get home tomorrow, get rested before the interview. Luise hummed as she worked. There was nothing to be done but stay.

  Jessie didn’t realize how hungry she was until she wiped her plate clean with the crust of brown bread that still crunched when she put the last of the bacon drippings into her mouth. It was more than she’d ever eaten at the Eversons at one sitting. Now they sat, and Jessie showed her camera to Freddie as shy Violet stood behind her mother’s skirts watching the bellows slide out and back.

  “Here’s a pocket for extra film,” Jessie showed him.

  The kitchen smelled of berry pies. Crickets clicked in the night. The children were soon put to bed, with Russell sharing Freddie’s quilts. Fred would bunk down on the kitchen cot, the place where Augie often took an after-dinner nap, Luise explained, or where a sick child could be kept close at hand while Luise cooked or canned.

  Good-natured joking filled the evening as Luise told stories of Fritz, as she called him, when the two of them lived in Buffalo before Fred stepped out on his own. “I worked for another family,” Luise said. “But even I heard about his Halloween prank.”

  “Now, don’t go telling, Luise. Or I’ll tell Augie a story on you.”

  “I’ve told him everything,” Luise said, and her husband patted his wife at her waist when she bent to refill the coffee cups.

  “I doubt that. Everyone keeps secrets,” Fred said.

  “You’d be surprised,” Augie said. “Truth telling gets sympathy, especially when you tell them of the mistakes.”

  “Once,” Luise said, talking to Jessie now, “he and his friends took apart a neighbor’s buggy and, with ropes and pulleys, spent the whole night reassembling it on top of the carriage house of one of our great-uncle’s friends. I wish I could have seen his face when he came out to see that buggy way up there!”

  Fred shook his finger at his younger sister. “You don’t know it was me.”

  “Ach, I do! It was carefully reassembled, and no one but you could have done that so quickly. Besides, you often commented on that buggy and how it could almost fly.”

  Fred laughed with the tips of his mustache bouncing. “Lucky we didn’t do what my friend suggested: move the outhouse two feet back behind the pit.”

  “Ach, that would be terrible,” Luise said.

  “Only for those who didn’t notice,” Augie said.

  “Those were fine times, fine times,” Fred said, wiping at his eyes.

  “You say it like there haven’t been any since,” Augie said.

  Fred turned thoughtful. “There’ve been challenges, haven’t there, Luise?” He looked at his sister with such tenderness. Luise nodded. He’d told Jessie Luise’s tragic story as they’d walked the road toward Cochrane, and Jessie could see between the two of them that same expression of love that she felt in the presence of Roy and Selma and even Lilly. Sisters and brothers held a special bond. Luise had apparently always struggled with why she survived while the rest of her family perished to typhoid.

  “Trials more easily forgiven than forgotten,” Luise noted.

  “Without those challenges, you wouldn’t have come to Wisconsin,” Augie told her. “And we wouldn’t have two scamps snoring upstairs. There is always a bridge somewhere, even when the road appears washed away.” He patted her hand, squeezed it, and she smiled at him with such devotion on her face that Jessie swallowed, blinked. She turned away only to see Fred staring into her tear-filled eyes.

  They finished their evening with Jessie following Luise up the stairs to Violet’s room, where she was shown the pitcher and bowl. “My Bruder is a gut man,” she said in accented English. “I didn’t mean differently, telling of the carriage.”

  “I know,” Jessie said. “I worked for him for three years.”

  “Then you know, it is not always easy for him.” She hesitated. “With his wife, ja? But he loves his children.” She set the lantern down for Jessie to keep. “It is gut to see him laugh. I thank you.”

  Jessie slipped beneath the nine-patch quilt made without batting. Just the right weight for a cool spring evening. The coffee kept her awake, and she lay there staring up to the ceiling, listening to Violet’s deep, steady breathing and the rustling of noises coming up through the heating grate over the kitchen. She’d done nothing to make Fred laugh, had she? And why had Luise said that about Fred’s wife?

  She heard the cot springs creak and let her mind take in that Fred lay there in the kitchen below. She wondered if he too lay awake thinking about a washed-out road that could never be bridged.

  A Second Exposure

  JESSIE ASKED FRED TO LET HER OFF a block or so from her home.

  “If that’s what you’d like,” Fred said. Russell slept in the backseat, and Jessie noted that the boy slept a lot. She tried to think if Roy slept that much, but he was younger than Russell. Growing tall probably took more rest. Maybe that was why she was so short, Jessie thought. She didn’t seem to get much sleep. She certainly hadn’t slept much the night before.

  Few explanations were warranted when her family arrived to find her there. They assumed she came in on the train, and Jessie didn’t correct them. And no one protested when she arose early the next morning, dressed, then made her way to the Polonia.

  The interview went surprisingly well. She shared her portfolio, and this time George Haas actually examined her work, lingered over more than one of her samples. She was humble and didn’t mention a word about trying to buy his studio. Maybe one day she’d be his competitor, but he didn’t need to know that just yet.

  “It’s only a few hours a week,” he told her as they were finishing up.

  “But the ad—”

  “I know. I hope to make it full time, but for now, it is half days, afternoon will be best. Morning hours are better for sittings, as you know.”

  At least he acknowledged that she had studio experience.

  “I can begin in two weeks,” she said. “I need to give my employer notice.”

  They shoo
k hands, though George didn’t seem to know what to do at first with Jessie’s offered palm. She tightened her glove over each finger, lifted her portfolio, and said good-bye, walking fast to Reverend Ralph Carleton’s offices.

  Mrs. Bauer dressed carefully for her appointment. She chose a new corset designed to be worn under the new straight skirts. She had plenty to tell the reverend about today, how her husband had driven all the way to Eau Claire and picked up Jessie Gaebele to bring her back home, with their son along, for goodness’ sake. What was the man thinking? Of course, he hadn’t told her that when he’d called. Oh no. Then, he’d been placating and soothing, knowing she’d been worried sick that they hadn’t returned. She’d imagined everything from the car getting stuck on the railroad track to Russell’s getting lost while they were out taking pictures, or a bull or other raging animal on Luises farm goring them both. The complexity of her imagination surprised her. She slipped the linen over her head and admired for just a moment her image in the mirror. The square neck flattered.

  She’d stayed home, though, through it all, waiting for his return or his call. She hadn’t escaped to her mother’s, hadn’t written him a note saying where she was and that when he got home he could just come and pick them all up, regardless of the time. No, she’d remained with her children. She’d read a few words now and then. She’d cut pieces for a log cabin quilt, one of the more complex patterns she’d challenged herself to do. Reverend Carleton had suggested that she explore things to occupy her time besides worry over waning emotions. He urged her to read Scripture but then allowed that other activities would be helpful too, to strengthen a woman’s weak mind.

  Relief flooded her when FJ called, not only to learn that he was fine but that he wasn’t coming home that evening. That reaction surprised her. Once she knew where he was, that he and Russell were safe, she actually enjoyed herself for the rest of the night. Late as it was, she decided to heat up the irons and press the sheets and handkerchiefs that Melba hadn’t gotten to. The girl even came to the kitchen with her nightcap on, asking if everything was all right.