A Flickering Light Read online

  That thought made her cringe. Her mother would not be pleased to know she’d spent a nickel of her own hard-earned dollars from the book bindery on something frivolous like a bicycle rental, especially because she’d recently been released from the bindery. There was little money to spare with her father’s illness, which the doctors couldn’t name or fix. He had so much pain that they’d had to leave their Wisconsin dairy farm near Cream and move across the Mississippi into Winona, where the girls could find employment and they could be closer to the doctors. Her father eventually worked in the dray business and drove a team to make deliveries, but they all worried over him, her mother and brother and sisters, fearing he might have one of his episodes and suffer excruciating stomachaches that couldn’t be stopped without laudanum and rest.

  Prickles of uncertainty clustered at her temples. This morning’s ride was important too, important for Jessie. If somehow her mother found out she’d spent the money, she’d just have to convince her that it was for a worthy cause—though how she’d do that she wasn’t sure. When she tried to explain this recent pull on her, this desire that came over her, the words came out as flat as a knife and not nearly as sharp.

  She’d deal with that later. Jessie pushed her spectacles up on her nose, set her shoulders, and took a forward step, moving past the shadow ghosts of bicycles and what appeared to be one of those new ringer washers in need of repair. Her skirt caught on a bicycle seat. When she straightened, she saw a sliver of light, a thin string that marked the bottom of a back room door. Had it just come on? “Mr. Steffes, I don’t mean to bother you, but it’s Jessie Gaebele and I was hoping I could just—”

  She heard a groan, then what sounded like scuffling followed by a thump.

  She readied herself for someone to come charging through the door. When that didn’t happen, she listened to her throbbing heart, swallowed, then pushed the door open to face this complication of her day.

  F. J. Bauer yanked at the heavy drapes, the purple velveteen loosening splinters of dust to shimmer in the sunlight. He preferred white lace-hemmed sheer covers for the windows, but Mrs. Bauer suffered from headaches, and the light, well, the light could touch them off. She wasn’t in the room now though, so he relished the dawn’s washing in. He listened for the train that clicked the tracks beside his home; he could set his watch by it. He placed the ties to hold back the drapes. As he turned, he adjusted his spectacles and scanned the latest books he’d purchased, encased behind glass. He’d treat himself to reading when he returned home that evening if he wasn’t too tired.

  A sound down the hall moved him toward the nursery in their house at 420 South Baker Street. He’d built a new photographic studio on the corner of Fifth and Johnson in 1895, and it was one of the finest. Everyone told him that. A two-story white clapboard structure with a studio room that captured natural light. He’d wanted to build family quarters into the studio, but Mrs. Bauer had objected. Work should be separate from family, she’d said, though how a man was to do that he didn’t really understand. He did this work for his family. The home they lived in was comfortable but nothing as fancy as what his friend Watkins had built; but then, FJ lacked that man’s resources to both solicit and promote. He shook his head. Confound that Watkins for marrying into good fortune!

  FJ’s wife, Jessie Anzina Otis Bauer, whom he called Mrs. Bauer at her insistence, sometimes worked with him in the studio, mostly retouching photographs. He had thought she’d be good with customer complaints, something his impatience aggravated. She was a comely woman with intense blue eyes that gave her a nearly romanesque beauty, though her slender frame belied anything robust. He had hoped she’d help with developing photographs too. But the chemicals frightened her, she said, and the flash lights she pronounced “dangerous,” the flamed powder exploding before the shutter closed. She preferred the quiet isolation of the dark retouching room, erasing the wrinkles of an autocrat who wished to look younger than his years, or using a brush stroke to add sparkle to a mother’s tired eyes. After he built the new studio, she’d urged him to set up a retouching room in the house so she never had to come to the studio at all, but so far he’d resisted that. After all, wasn’t she the one who wanted work separated from family?

  What he had liked best about his old studio was its closeness to his children. He could hear the boys’ laughter and petty arguments as Russell and Donald made noises with their wooden horses. A pang of memory shot through him at the thought of his boys, but he set it aside. He passed the water closet door. He’d have to get it fixed and felt a little shameful for having lost his temper when Mrs. Bauer locked the door and wouldn’t come out when he asked. Instead, approaching the nursery now, he focused on the comforting chattering sounds that came from two-year-old Winifred. She’d be suckling at her mother’s breast.

  He hesitated at the nursery door. He wanted to run his hand over his only daughter’s silky hair, tie a bow into her curls himself, exchange a few words now that Winnie had begun talking a streak. But Mrs. Bauer preferred that such intimacies as nursing or diaper changing be accomplished without his presence. Mrs. Bauer also wished to wean the girl, but it was FJ who’d convinced her to wait a bit longer. “What could be better for a child’s health than her mother’s milk?” he’d told her. He recalled the conversation.

  Mrs. Bauer had raised her eyebrow in warning. “Russell,” she said. They were at the table, and their eight-year-old ate his egg while they spoke.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “She was speaking of you, not to you, Son,” FJ told him, then persisted. “Cow’s milk will do when they’re older, but if you can give the child life’s fluid from your own body, you ought to. At least until she’s three. Bitte.” Russell had giggled; FJ’s wife had blushed, then turned to him with narrowed eyes, his pleading in German falling on deaf ears, or so he’d thought.

  He was all for scientific advancements, and the pasteurized milk developed by Halsey nearly twelve years previous probably added to the nutrition of the liquid. At least that’s what some proposed. But it wasn’t in wide use, and there could be problems. Chemicals did cause problems. He was well aware of that, having endured his first attack of mercury poisoning the year Donald was born.

  Brought back to the present by that terrible memory, that deep crevasse of yearning that sucked his breath away, he gasped, seeking to fill the loss. He wondered if Mrs. Bauer thought of Donald while she suckled Winnie. Maybe that was why she wished to stop. He hadn’t considered that before. It would be three years this October.

  On impulse, he opened the nursery door. A child’s quilt lay over his daughter’s head and his wife’s breast as the child nursed in the muted room. A small lamp reflected Mrs. Bauer’s eyes, which opened with a start.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  At her words, Winnie pulled the nine-patch from her head and sat up. Mrs. Bauer grabbed at the wool and pulled it over herself. “Papa!” His daughter lifted her arms to him. The gesture warmed him. She would give up mother’s milk to have him hold her.

  Mrs. Bauer pulled her daughter’s arms down. “Papa has to go to work,” she said. She still clutched the cloth over her shoulder and breast, covering herself. “Don’t you.” It was not a question.

  “I wanted to say good morning. To you both,” he said.

  “You wanted to please yourself,” she said, though under her breath.

  Was she right? Was such a wish so terrible? He decided against defending. “I’m sorry I intruded,” he said. “I was thoughtless.”

  “Yes. You were.”

  He backed out as Mrs. Bauer pushed Winnie back to nurse, pulling the cloth over them both. But Winnie resisted. “Papa!” She yanked the quilt and wailed.

  “See what you started?”

  He closed the door, stood outside it. Winnie cried, calling for him, screaming. He didn’t know whether to go in and rescue his wife from his daughter’s temper or the other way around. Either way, there’d be a fury to pay when he returned
home. He lifted his hand to the glass doorknob, then heard her say to him through the closed door, “I’ll take care of this, Mr. Bauer. No need for you to fret or disrupt your busy day.” Her sarcasm melted over him like icy snow and left him just as cold.

  He walked on down the carpeted stairs to the kitchen, turned on the gaslight, and fixed himself hot coffee and toast with marmalade, working to put the incident behind him. While he ate, he scanned the Republican-Herald for his ad. They’d gotten it correct this time. He wiped up the crumbs from the daisy-dotted oilcloth and cupped them in his palm, dumped them into the wastebasket. He surveyed the plate rail, each item tidy in its place. No clutter in this kitchen. He heard no more cries from upstairs. She’d settled Winnie down. He donned his bowler, buttoned his coat, lifted his cane, and stepped outside. His morning had begun.

  As he walked, he could smell smoke from the fires set at the base of the bluffs, burning shrubs away. The flames moved up the face in a kind of dance, back and forth in a mesmerizing amber weave. If he were closer, he’d hear the licking and spitting as they hit patches of snow and were doused at the top of the ridge. It was a rite of spring to see the fires light up the night, a tradition on the bluffs, which rose nearly six hundred feet above Lake Winona. The predictability of seasonal displays calmed him.

  He reviewed his day ahead. Several portrait sittings were scheduled. He thought of the clients as he walked toward his studio. He enjoyed that part of his work most, the staging and cajoling people into a level of comfort so they could be captured on film. People read his Republican-Herald ads, saved their money, got the family “attired,” arrived, and then turned all shy or nervous about having scheduled themselves for something they suddenly defined as frivolous or self-indulgent. The Germans, his own people, were the worst, not wanting to “waste” money and yet loving the results once he got them past their frugality and focused them on family.

  It was up to him to give them reasons to sit before a stranger, staring at a lens that would capture this moment in time. He wondered if they thought the photograph would somehow hold them hostage, so they could never be different from what the photograph revealed. He assured them they could be and insisted that photographs are just a slice of their life meant to stir the memory, not to carve the image into eternal stone. “Years from now, when the children are grown, you’ll be so pleased you took this time. The same money put into your house or into your horse won’t have memories nearly as fond as what this photograph will bring. And this return comes with a fine wooden frame and nothing you have to clean up after.” They’d laugh, then, and settle down.

  They didn’t know about the creativity needed to use light or to pose a subject or to decide how long to expose the film. Even the backdrop he chose put its mark on the photograph. Things not really there could be made to seem so. A woman’s hard-worn years carved against her face could be softened; a man’s natural scowl could be lessened with the right angle. Every child had beauty with the right light, the right pose. These were tricks of the trade: the use of sunlight and setting mixed with time.

  Sometimes the photographs could also reveal qualities in people and in relationships that he wouldn’t even notice until after the film was developed. How far apart a wife and child stood from the husband and father. The way a father’s hand reached out to a child with a bit of grime still beneath his fingernails; the surprising evidence of a mother’s presence. Once he’d photographed a toddler barely able to stand, and so the mother had squatted behind the studio chair, seeming to hide while stabilizing the child for the duration of the exposure. When he pulled the photograph from the developing solutions, he’d seen her shadow, just a hint of her being there behind the girl. It said so much about a parent’s wish to give protection and strength to a child without always being seen.

  Protection. The German poet Rilke had described love as two solitudes come together to protect, border, and salute each other. He’d loved Donald that way; he had. He’d bordered Donald, saluted his son’s efforts. He just hadn’t protected him.

  He put the memories away, and at Fifth Street he walked up the steps and turned the key to his studio door, coming in the front the way his clients did. He paused for a moment to look at the photographic display in the bay window. The year that Donald was born, the gold medal he’d won for his portrait work had been stolen right out of the lobby. The police never found it, and they’d made him think it was his own fault for posting such a valuable piece right where others could see it. But confound it, what was the point of receiving recognition if one couldn’t show it off just a little?

  His other awards—announced on paper and framed—helped adorn some of the portrait work, the eyes of the subjects gazing out at him. It was good work he did. He could be proud of it even if his judgment resulted in the gold medal’s loss. A businessman had to announce his accolades. They engendered confidence in clients. Burying the praise in a safe? What would be the point in that?

  Inside, he hung his hat on the oak rack at the end of the mirrored bench, straightened his tie, then walked to the appointment ledger on the desk in the reception room.

  He hoped the first appointment, set for nine, would be on time. The light made all the difference.

  He adjusted his glasses, checked his schedule book, and frowned. At ten, he had appointments with two women who might become camera assistants. A flash of annoyance crossed over his mind. Mrs. Bauer had made those arrangements. She ought to have known it wasn’t the best time of day for an interview, not when the sunlight was so necessary for his work. Interviews should be late afternoon. He tapped with his pencil. He’d have to pull the heavy drape up against the glare and then lower it for the portrait sitting at eleven. He had another scheduled at one, another at two, then planned to work in the developing room until closing. Well, perhaps Mrs. Bauer felt the harsh light of late morning wouldn’t be good for a sitting but would work fine to decide if two ladies ought to be hired to assist him.

  He didn’t want to hire any help. His former assistant, Risser, had taken over the studio while FJ spent an extended time in North Dakota; then that arrangement soured. FJ had returned to find things deteriorated. A fire had damaged the reception room and destroyed many of the valuable glass plates in his Grove collection, from which he had numerous requests for prints. It was a terrible loss, though fortunately he’d stored the Charles Tenney collection plates at home, and some of the Grove plates in the middle of the sets of negatives were salvageable. FJ took back the studio, and Risser went on to become competition, opening his own studio just blocks away. FJ had trained the man for four years, though he’d say he had come with skills. Risser claimed his brother had a photographic business in St. Louis where he’d apprenticed, but FJ always wondered if he hadn’t just been some itinerant tramp photographer anyway. Risser had left him faster than a grease splat could ruin a man’s good shirt.

  Perhaps Mrs. Bauer thought women would be less likely to leave once trained. But he’d lost other women he’d trained when they moved on to be assistants elsewhere. He settled on hoping for washer girls who wanted jobs with a little less scrubbing involved. Maybe this time he’d have more mature women rather than those with starry eyes for photography. The latter could be more annoying than helpful.

  He bristled remembering the Republican-Herald’s story that urged “young women possessed of a well-ordered and dependable camera, an artistic taste, a deft hand, and a wide acquaintance” to increase their dress allowances by creating “society booklets” for their friends. They offered no competition to him. His objection was to the idea that the mere possession of a camera could turn someone into a professional, a creative artist. What nonsense. The photographic business was about so much more than that.

  What he’d advertised for was someone he could train who could take over the studio when the poisoning hit again. Someone reliable, someone who could learn to develop, to take pictures, yes, and schedule portraits, but mostly to work the chemicals. He intended to photograph
as he could. It was just the chemicals that destroyed. Mrs. Bauer could have done it if she chose to; she’d had minimal exposure through the years and wouldn’t be at risk the way he was, though he’d told her not to hold the chemical-laden brushes in her mouth while she made a pencil correction on the film. No telling what such chemicals might do. If she were here, the children could be with him through the day too. It would be a family affair. He supposed that was the other reason the interviews annoyed him. Mrs. Bauer could but wouldn’t. Mrs. Bauer had her ways.

  Mrs. Bauer’s father had been a traveling photographer, and she “knew the business,” as she often told him. Or she’d poke at him with, “If Papa were here, he’d say…,” or, “If Papa were still alive, he’d want you to…” Not-so-subtle reminders that it was Mrs. Bauer’s father who had gotten FJ started in the business and that, at his death in 1894, it was her father’s estate that had allowed the studio to be built.

  Now that he thought of it, it was probably a marvel that she’d listened to him about not weaning Winifred. She so seldom did follow his advice.

  He stepped into the office, seeking a cigar. Mrs. Bauer didn’t like him to smoke, and he didn’t. He chewed them instead. He opened the small tobacco box, pulled a cigar from it, and bit into the end, letting the thin paper caress his tongue, the tart taste of the tobacco refreshing. He looked at the ledger again. Mrs. Bauer had written in her fine hand Jessie Gaebele, Voe Kopp on the appointment book. He chewed the tiny flavorful flecks. Good German names. Jessie Gaebele. He ought to be able to remember that one at least, Jessie being his wife’s first name too.

  He heard the bell in the reception room. His clients were here. He inhaled, put aside the cigar. He hoped the young women he’d be interviewing afterward would be on time. Tramp photographers often weren’t timely, always stopping to shoot a bird or some lake scene. He was a studio portrait maker, and he prided himself on punctuality and professionalism.