A Flickering Light Page 28

  Except that he signed it, Affectionately, F. J. Bauer.

  Affectionately. Jessie didn’t show Voe or anyone. She certainly couldn’t talk to her parents, and Voe, well, Voe would dismiss her and tell her she needed to get out and meet men her own age before she found herself a spinster dreaming of what could never be. Voe could say those things because she and Daniel had become engaged.

  Lilly would say the same thing, and Selma was too young to understand and spent too much time now with the Bauers. Jessie didn’t want any information about her life being dropped like candle wax on the Bauers’ table. No, there was no one, not really. She had spoken her prayers, but she was pretty certain that requests to sort out the confusing feelings she had for another woman’s husband would go unanswered. The best place she had to express her feelings was through photographs. But even then her thoughts came back to Mr. Bauer.

  At the library, she looked up the word affection. “A feeling of fondness for another.” A different definition was “the act of influencing, affecting, or acting upon.” Then she found affectionate. “Having or showing fond feelings or affection; loving; tender.”

  Loving. Tender.

  F. J. Bauer wasn’t trying to influence or act upon her at all. Her nonsense thinking was doing that to herself. He didn’t even know what he was saying.

  She had to change the way she thought and felt. It had to be possible to do that. Mr. Bauer expected to return in this summer of 1910. She’d get no closer to her own studio if she couldn’t put aside additional funds somehow. Even before he returned, she would find a job that paid more and take it as soon as he was back, or she would secure a second one so she had less time to daydream. She’d wasted too much time imagining what could never be. She’d follow her mother’s suggestion and contact the evangelist Ralph Carleton. Maybe working for him part-time to begin with might set her mind on holy things instead of on her speculations about words like affectionate, tender, and loving. Yes, those were words better left to family, brothers and sisters, and affectionate older uncles.

  Playing Fields of Degradation

  THOSE YEARS WHEN FJ SPENT weeks in the military hospital had at least prepared him for what it took to recover. As he had done then, he did now, trying not to excite himself. He drank tea, lots of tea. He cut back on chewing his cigars. He spent time on the back porch taking in deep breaths, which often got him stepping down into the garden, where he could pull a few weeds, trim the roses until he tired. Sometimes he took the car out for a spin. That’s what they called it, “taking a spin,” though he wasn’t sure why. He’d heard that the manufacturer wouldn’t be offering white tires in the future. The same company that made Winnie’s Crayolas had been asked to provide a black pigment to paint a few tires, and they’d discovered it made the rubber stronger. He liked stronger tires, but he preferred the white color. It provided greater contrast against the jet black of the car, something the eye admired.

  Most of all, he kept his thoughts to positive ones. Last February, when Winnie had turned five and he’d looked at himself as an old man in the mirror, had been a low point for him. Since then he’d made himself seek the brighter things in his life: his children, good help, a profession that suited him. He had the side businesses of the rental cottages and the salves. While neither brought in much cash, he did find the salve helped heal his own family of scratches and scrapes, so it was worth something for all the time he’d put into it. One day it might just take off, and he’d give old Watkins a run.

  The sweet note from Miss Gaebele thanking them for the camera had warmed his heart. It had been an extravagant gift, he knew that. But she had worked for him for nearly three years and only taken off the days she’d gone with her brother to Rochester. She was as faithful as his windup clock, ticking away. But every clock needed a rewinding to keep going. The new camera was just that. Her natural bent for photography kept her going more than his instruction did. Miss Kopp was a good worker too, but he knew by the salary envelopes that she had taken any number of days away, leaving Jessie—Miss Gaebele—alone at the studio. He didn’t like that and had written to Miss Kopp of his concerns, noting with some satisfaction that she’d had perfect attendance the month after his mention.

  He had intercepted Miss Gaebele’s note to the family, however. He didn’t want Mrs. Bauer to see it. He hadn’t wanted to upset her with his purchase. She would have questioned him, and while he felt he had a defensible response, it could also lead to one of their rows. He didn’t want that, not in front of the children, not in front of Selma.

  Why should he worry that Selma witness marital discord? Was he concerned that Jessie would think poorly of him if her sister shared such goings-on? Why should he care what the girl thought? No, he just didn’t want to stain the child’s view of marriage. He supposed the Gaebeles rarely argued. They seemed such a gregarious family whenever he’d seen them all together. William Gaebele probably never lost his temper the way FJ sometimes did.

  He walked out onto the porch, took the steps down to the garden, and bent to pull a few weeds. He knelt. That would be more comfortable. He thought he should go get his gloves, but he didn’t plan to stay long and he liked the feel of the warm earth on his hands, the grit of the dirt. Garden planting time. He’d have to talk with Selma about that. It was funny how he had no difficulty calling Selma by her given name but made a point of not calling Jessie by hers except in private. And then she’d said she wanted to be known as Miss Gaebele anyway. He supposed it set a distance for her, kept the boundaries of work and privacy clear, ones that ought not be leapt over. Miss Gaebele. That’s how I must think of her.

  He looked at his hands. Most of the spots had disappeared, and he opened his shirt to the May breeze. He hadn’t worn a collar for months now. He found himself getting excited about wearing that collar again, every day, donning his tie, vest, and suit and heading back to the studio. He had ordered in some new equipment, and it ought to have arrived by now. A more modern camera, some different papers that were said to take less time to expose. He remembered his trials with the Karsak and Solio “printing-out paper” and how they’d promised exposure using artificial light, such as an electric bulb, for only a few seconds. The paper hadn’t worked out well. Sunlight was more reliable for printing. Something as natural as sunlight outperformed all the technological advances. There really was, as the verse in Ecclesiastes said, nothing new under the sun.

  He stood, finished his breathing exercises, and went inside. FJ made his way to the nursery, where Selma, Robert, and Winnie sat at the corner table. Selma held Robert on her lap, and he scribbled with a bright yellow Crayola held with a death grip in his right hand.

  “Oh, Mr. Bauer, I wasn’t meaning to sit down on my job.” Selma rushed to stand up, her apron catching on the table edge, Robert pulled from his design.

  “You’re fine, Selma. Just fine. Please, sit.” She did. The boy resumed as though nothing had happened. “I thought I’d check on you before I tried to take a walk.”

  “Mrs. Bauer is here,” Selma assured him. “We’ll be fine. She’s just resting.”

  “As she almost always is,” he said, then hated himself for it. What kind of man complained to his children and their nursery attendant? A restless man, he decided. If he felt invigorated by the walk today, he would plan to return to work next week. He’d been separated from what he loved too long.

  “Don’t forget your cane, Papa. You walk lots better with your extra leg.”

  “I do, Winnie,” he said. “Thank you for the reminder.”

  It was the kind of thing he wished his wife would take note of. But she didn’t notice much these days. He wondered if she ever would again, or if she ever really had. Though she was years younger than he was, there were days when she seemed more the age of the mother he’d left behind in Germany than the wife who once shared his bed. He guessed that was fitting for an old man. She had been listless, never even cleaned the closets anymore, it seemed.

  Robert wiggled of
f Selma’s lap and waddled to him. “Daddy. Write. Now,” he said. He shoved the crayon toward FJ.

  “You’ve made a pun,” FJ told him, swooping the boy up into his arms. “Right. Now.”

  That’s what he needed to pay attention to, what was right now before him. “Let’s all go for a walk, maybe a little run, and have a fine time doing it.”

  He hoped he was still young enough for that.

  When Jessie saw him, it was as though nothing had changed, despite her efforts to make sense of the confusion and put her daydreams away. He looked almost dapper. His mustache was trimmed to a fine ledge above his upper lip, and his skin looked, well, healthy. A little pink, but that was likely from being outside in the late spring air.

  “You’re looking good, Mr. B.,” Voe said. “Doesn’t he, then?” She elbowed Jessie. The two stood shoulder to shoulder at the front door as he came up the steps.

  “Yes. He looks very healthy. Welcome back, Mr. Bauer. I hope we’ve done well by you.”

  He stared into Jessie’s eyes, and she had that old feeling of having her heart leave her body and soar around as though it needed to see the world first before settling back into the dreariness of simply beating. Neither of them spoke.

  “Mr. Bauer?” Voe asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes, what? Oh, yes.” He dropped his eyes, turned to Voe, cleared his throat. “Best I take a stroll around the studio, see if things are up to snuff.” He smiled at her, then back at Jessie, and she heard her heart beat so loud she was sure that he could hear it too. She sucked in her breath, and it caught in her throat. She coughed.

  “Should I get you some water?” Voe asked. Jessie shook her head. “You both looked sort of flushed,” Voe said. “Coming down with ague?”

  “Nonsense,” Jessie said. “I’ll just, in the kitchen, I’ll…I’ll make some coffee for us while you give him the tour.” Her hands shook as she touched the back of her hair. She walked past him to the kitchen as though she were alone in the room, simply primping her hair.

  She felt ill. Maybe Voe was right and she was coming down with a summer cold. But no. Jessie knew what this was. Her body knew what this was, and it was dangerous, like a moth to light.

  She collected herself by the time the two of them entered the kitchen, and she heard him say, “Yes, yes, everything is quite fine. I’m impressed and grateful to you both.” He took Voe’s hand in his and patted it. “You did well.” He dropped her hand and went to Jessie and reached for hers as well. “You exceeded my expectations, Miss Gaebele. You both have the gratitude of the entire Bauer family.” Those were the words he spoke, but his eyes said something more.

  Jessie pulled her hands out from his and fluttered around to pour their coffees. “I’m not supposed to have coffee,” he said. “Just teas. But this is a special occasion, my coming back.”

  “Now we can take real vacations,” Voe said. “Because there’ll always be two of us here.”

  “That’s right. You haven’t had much time away, have you, Jessie? You’ve certainly deserved it. Perhaps you should take this next week. Voe and I can manage.”

  “Miss Gaebele,” Jessie corrected. It was all she could think to say to the conflict in her heart.

  In her dreams that night, strong hands held Jessie back from a ledge, the hands of a faceless being. She awoke to an ache of longing for what could never be. She vowed she’d take the week off and talk with that evangelist. She was sure he’d filled the position that had opened last year, but he might have another. Taking it would be the safest thing she could do.

  Ralph Carleton, Winona’s own evangelist, said he’d heard of Jessie’s fine ledger-keeping skills from her mother and understood she’d also managed to run a photo studio on more than one occasion all by herself. If she accepted this job, Ralph Carleton assured her, her life would be markedly improved.

  Yes, Jessie thought to herself. No more having fuel for her daydreams, no more waiting for Mr. Bauer’s step to come in through the door and pretending it could be more than it was: the tired steps of a married man tending to the needs of his family. No more imagining that the two of them were working for similar goals when they worked side by side to pose a portrait.

  “My mother exaggerates my talents, Mr. Carleton,” Jessie said. “I had an associate who helped me at the studio while Mr. Bauer, the owner, took the cure for mercury poisoning.”

  “She said you were just the person I needed—call me Ralph while we’re here and Reverend Carleton in the correspondence—because what I need is someone who can organize this office and make sure that people get the right information for my tent gatherings. This year I branch out into Chicago, little towns around the outside, give Billy Sunday a run for his money. I’m called to take my message to places Mr. Sunday won’t give the time of day to.”

  “The baseball player?” Jessie asked. She’d heard of a Billy Sunday, but he was a Chicago White Stockings player. Her father had mentioned him.

  “Indeed. He became saved and changed his ways, left the halls of degradation where he lounged after games drinking hard liquor, chewing tobacco, and wining wild women.” Ralph Carleton appeared to take his own degradation in sweet cookies and cakes, judging from his size and the crumbs that littered the doily beneath a bowl of walnuts on the corner of his massive oak desk. He wore a white suit with the coat open and a bright blue vest stretched down his middle. The coat buttons were so far from the opposite holes he might have been trying to pull Wisconsin across the Mississippi into Minnesota. He had a wide face, black hair that he combed all to one side instead of in the middle as so many men did, and carried in his broad paw a crumpled handkerchief that he used to wipe his forehead of perspiration. Jessie wondered how much he perspired when he stood in the hot, stuffy summer tents and brought people to their knees. “He left the lure of fame and fortune, the hours afterward in the halls of degradation,” Ralph repeated, wiped at his head and face.

  “Don’t you mean ‘playing fields of degradation’?” Jessie asked.

  He squinted. Jessie wondered if she’d offended him by making a correction or suggestion. Some men did not like women to even respond, let alone shape a thought. “Why, that’s right. It has a better ring to it,” Ralph said. “‘The playing fields of degradation’ could apply to lots of men lost and needing the Lord’s direction. Women too,” he said. “Women need cleansing too, now, don’t they, Miss Gaebele?” She squirmed in her chair. Her corset didn’t fit right. “St. Augustine once claimed that women had no souls, that only men were made in God’s image. Preached that women couldn’t be saved from the pits of hell, without souls, you know. Or did you know that, Miss Gaebele? Or may I call you Jessie? Just here, of course. Yes, yes, women were believed to be lost except through marriage or the convent.” He shook his head. “Times have changed.” Jessie couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of sadness for a lost way or one of hopefulness, for it doubled his potential to redeem the population.

  Ralph wiped a drop of sweat sliding down his stubbled cheek below his ear, then directed her, “Take that down, Miss Gaebele. Write that down.”

  “About women and our lack of souls?”

  “No, no, the ‘playing fields of degradation’ line. I’ll put that in my notes. Playing fields of degradation. Good ring to it.”

  Jessie did as asked, seeing the inkwell and pen on his desk. She reached across, kept her gloves on, wrote, then put the pen down, grateful she hadn’t spilled ink as she wrote the words. She looked at her penmanship. It wasn’t as lovely as Mr. Bauer’s.

  “If you decide you want me, I can start next week. I’m sure that Mr. Bauer is well enough to resume responsibility for his business.”

  “I imagine your leaving will be a great loss to him.”

  It will be so much a greater loss to me. “Oh, I don’t know about that.” She looked at the stitching on her gloves, thought of Lilly, who might have made them though they were a gift from him. From the Bauers.

  “Now, now, God wants no
false humility. It is within Scripture to seek abundance in life and in spirit, for women too. God made you lovely, which we can all see, and made you capable too, Miss Gaebele. So your mother tells me. No cause to deny such based on your performance here.”

  Performance?

  “We are all of us sinners, Miss Gaebele, and all of us still children in God’s eyes, loved beyond measure. You must remember that. It is not arrogance to recognize gifts God has given. To do otherwise strikes on that.”

  Jessie wondered what else her mother might have conveyed to him about her, but the bit of praise, posed as it might be, felt warm against her cheek.

  “I only meant that I did my job and Mr. Bauer trained me for it. The experience has enabled me to find something I love, a career in photographic work. I’d like to work for you so that I can earn money to help my family help my brother, but also because one day, I want my own photographic studio.”

  He sat back on his wide haunches and stared. “That’s a grand plan, Miss Gaebele. Though I must say the roles in this world are changing quickly, what with women in the labor force as they are. Most women wouldn’t hope to have their own business. They’d be content to be attached to family, help their husbands in their work, allow themselves to be protected from the larger evils of the world.” He hesitated as though another thought had entered his hummingbird mind, flitting here and there. His next sentence assured Jessie he had traveled far from a woman’s hopes for a business of her own. “The state even has laws now to protect women from being transferred across state lines. Mann Act. You’ve heard of it?” Jessie nodded. “For immoral purposes, men take women to other states, and the government had to get involved. Got to protect them, our legislature says. Not capable, most of them, of protecting themselves, but the government isn’t necessary. God is enough. He will protect.