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

  On the other hand, it might be better to forget the cotillions, focus instead on finding an inexpensive place to live and storing up funds for when Suzanne sold the studio. Jessie would be let go and would have to find a new place to work. She could sense Suzanne’s disinterest in maintaining the business. Perhaps the headaches made her decisions for her. Jessie would look at possible openings closer to home. She wondered if Eau Claire or La Crosse, across the river from Winona, might have need of an independent photographer to help run a studio.

  “Just when I think I have a plan, life jumps up to tell me I don’t,” she said out loud. Her day had been like a ride on Mr. Ferris’s wheel: one moment she felt on top, and the next she was swooping toward the bottom.

  The idea of buying the Johnson Studio niggled at her mind. But Jessie couldn’t imagine making enough to buy out Suzanne, and while she might believe that Jessie would pay her back, Suzanne probably couldn’t afford to extend credit. Jessie could ask a bank for a loan, but no one in Milwaukee really knew her to put in a good word for her. She would not ask the Harms family to speak for her. Truth was, she hadn’t thought about living the rest of her life in Milwaukee anyway.

  There was much to like about the city, especially the Mitchell Park Conservatory, where flowers bloomed nearly all winter inside the cavernous greenhouse. The Harms family had taken her there to see the ten-year-old building that demonstrated the city’s love for year-round foliage. But she’d always imagined she would own a studio in Winona, close to home.

  The idea of photographing at the dance had given her such a jolt of excitement that she just had to make it work. Photographing people at dances wouldn’t be allowed in Winona, that was certain. Her parents would be appalled. She swallowed. If things worked out, she’d find a way to tell them, to ease any worries they might have. She couldn’t find another place to live in Milwaukee with such short notice, however, so remaining with the Harmses made sense. A new line of income would allow her to put money aside, however small the amount. Meanwhile, she felt excited about the attic darkroom. She would take Mr. Ferris’s wheel up and see what happened from there.

  Six inches of new snow fell on the Saturday of the cotillion. Mr. Harms said they’d have to take a cab because his REO touring car wasn’t built for snowdrifts or the winds pushing at high speeds across the lake. As a help to Jessie, they’d planned to arrive early so she could set up her camera and allow the lens to warm up, because moving from the cold to a warm room would cause it to fog over.

  She didn’t want to make the Harmses have to wait for her, but she’d lost track of time. They’d agreed to her darkroom plans, and she’d been setting up, making the large attic area on the other side of her room her own. Her attic had one narrow window at the end, which she’d covered with several layers of black cloth. She’d have to sit hunched because the wall sloped, but it was otherwise perfect. Chemical tins lined a shelf above the developing trays. The chimney ran up through the space, providing precious warmth.

  “Haven’t you dressed yet?” Marie asked, fanning herself nervously. All day the girl had been skittish as a gopher being hounded by a dog. Rebecca, the maid, had piled Marie’s thin hair up on her head, then flattened it with a black velvet bow. Still, she looked lovely. Marie fidgeted with the clasp on her black velveteen cape. “You have to wear the new dress so you’ll look like you belong there.”

  “I’m wearing this suit, Marie.”

  She wailed her disappointment: “You’ll look too stuffy!”

  “Marie…”

  “You have to wear the dress Mama had made for you! You have to. If you don’t, they’ll remember that I told you about Gottlieb, and Papa will be angry all over again and not let me go to the dance.”

  “All right, all right.” Jessie relented, though she couldn’t imagine Henry Harms stopping things at this point; he probably waited in the cab. “I’ll take the dress with me and change once I get everything set up. Your parents are waiting, and I can’t pick up the train and carry my camera at the same time.”

  “Can you hurry?”

  Jessie pressed her hat against her curls, grabbed her camera case and the dress from the closet, then padded down the stairs to where Henry waited in the foyer. He took her camera, and Rebecca helped her carry the dress box and a few more props out to the cab, where Mary and Marie now waited.

  “This is so exciting!” Marie sang out as Jessie slid onto the leather seat. “My first dance ever!”

  “You’ve been to them before,” her mother corrected. “Remember that time we were with—”

  “But this time I have a dance card. I’ll be meeting boys—I mean gentlemen—there,” Marie said.

  Jessie remembered being that excited once, but not about a dance.

  At the Traub Bank building, Marie grabbed the dress box while Henry paid the cab, then took his wife’s arm to assist her up the stairs. Jessie managed the camera and the props on her own. Jessie had taken a single chair the Harmses had loaned her to the dance hall the day before. Many of the social and sporting dance halls were open every night except Monday, but the Traub building, housing respectable businesses by day, only opened for weekend dances and only during the season. The wide marble steps took people right past the oak doors of the bank and doctors’ offices, up to the third floor, where the smooth oak would be covered with cornmeal to make the dancers’ feet slip more easily across the floor.

  “Wait until you see how they’ve decorated,” Marie said.

  “I was here yesterday, remember?” Jessie said.

  “Oh, but they always do amazing things the last day. Don’t they, Mama?”

  Mrs. Harms concentrated on the stairs but nodded.

  “We can take the lift,” Jessie said.

  “I wouldn’t step foot in that Otis thing,” Mary Harms said. “Can’t imagine riding in a room held up by cables and such.”

  Jessie had no such reservations. Marie asked if she could go with Jessie, and Mr. Harms concurred, looking wistful as he held his wife’s elbow to steady her up the stairs. The girls walked to the end of a narrow hall, where an operator wearing white gloves opened the sliding iron-grill door. They stepped inside.

  A jolt as it started caused Jessie to gasp, and Marie squealed. Jessie felt her stomach jump, but the excitement of the entire evening ahead caused this as much as the Otis lift, of that she was certain.

  At the third floor, the elevator stopped. Jessie stepped out with her case and the props, and Marie ran ahead with the dress box. Jessie lugged her items down the hall, then went through a door into the dance pavilion, where Marie waited.

  “Isn’t it swell?”

  Jessie stood in awe at the overnight transformation. The room was decorated like a Christmas gift with bows and glitter, including two fifteen-foot trees in each far corner, both with tiny gaslights, silver tinsel, and red bows taking one’s eye to the ceiling and the angels on top. Red and white bunting lined with pine boughs looped across the tops of tall windows. The pine scent swept through the room. Candles, not yet lit, sat at every windowsill and on the long tables being loaded with food. Holly abounded. So did mistletoe, on great red ribbons that hung from the dozen bright chandeliers. Jessie twirled around slowly. She hadn’t seen anything as lovely.

  An orchestra warmed up on the far side as the Harms adults huffed through the door. “I’ll take the Otis down with you,” Mary said, puffing to catch her breath.

  “Its advantage is in the going up,” Henry said.

  Jessie looked for the chair and backdrops she’d arranged earlier. They’d been set aside as the musicians apparently needed the additional space. She scanned the room and headed for the end of the refreshment table. It was not too close to any mistletoe, but closer to the punch bowl and tree than she wanted. She had hoped for an uncluttered area to hang her backdrop. At least social dances didn’t allow liquor. She could be grateful for that.

  She’d brought an extra roll of film in the side pockets of her Graflex, but she hoped she wo
uldn’t need it. Finding a place dark enough in which to take the film out and put another roll in could be difficult.

  She set to work rehanging her backdrop, aware of the time. She wanted to look calm and professional when she greeted people, to put them at ease. The musicians played a waltz. She tried not to think of the elegance she was so unfamiliar with. A professional presented herself as though she knew just what to expect, as though she did this sort of thing every day. If only she could get the backdrop hung! She was taking too long and noticed a few impatient glances from those organizing the refreshment table. She stepped up on her chair, hoping to reach the top and get the adhesive better situated. She was using a glue ball to press the backdrop against the plaster walls, but the cold air made the adhesive brittle, and the backdrop, heavy as it was, kept slipping.

  “Maybe I could be of assistance.”

  The voice came from behind her, a Yankee accent. With the orchestra playing real music now, no longer warming up, she knew people would be arriving soon. She had yet to change into the Madeleine dress.

  “I should be finished in a moment,” she said. “I came earlier to get set up, but I chose the wrong place, apparently.”

  “If I might make a suggestion …”

  Out of frustration with the backdrop, she wanted to say, No, you might not make a suggestion, but instead she turned.

  She looked down on him from her chair perch. “I know you,” she said. “You’re Joshua Behrens.”

  He looked surprised. “And you are?”

  “In a better mood.”

  He looked confused, his slicked-down hair parted to one side. He wore a cream-colored wool evening jacket with a black cummerbund, just as Henry was dressed. But he was much younger and thinner than Henry Harms.

  “Jessie Ann Gaebele.” She allowed him to help her down, and then she shook his hand when on two steady feet. “We met on the streetcar last summer,” she told him. “I wasn’t very sociable.”

  “Ah. Yes,” he said. “I remember. I haven’t seen you all winter. I thought you’d moved. Did you?”

  “I like the walk. I don’t take the streetcar unless I have lots of time.”

  “Lots of time?”

  Jessie smiled. “I like to ride to the end of the route and back when I’ve a bit of thinking to do. I could use help getting this thing hung,” she said, turning the conversation away from anything personal.

  “I assume you’re going to photograph guests.” He looked at her camera set up on the three-legged stand. “Not necessarily while they’re dancing. Might I suggest you move your studio to the front area, in the wide hallway?”

  His idea annoyed her, and her face must have shown it.

  “Perhaps leave one of those framed photographs here to remind people, with your listings on the refreshment table. But in the corridor, they’ll see you when they come in, before they enter, and they might decide to have their portraits made right then and there, just after they’ve checked their coats.”

  And if they didn’t, they’d never think about having a photograph made once they entered the ballroom. She’d be out of their sight and out of their interest as they took in the glittering trees and the music. She’d never get them back outside until they were ready to leave, and then they’d be in too much of a rush to want their portraits made.

  “I don’t think that will work,” she said.

  “Besides,” he continued, “there are hooks along the one wall where you could hang your curtain.” He pointed to the backdrop now dangling from one side.

  “But I need the lighting.” She pointed to the chandeliers. “That’s far more important than the hooks on the wall.”

  He paused. “Then I’ll do my best to help you hang your curtain.”

  “It’s a backdrop,” Jessie told him as the final adhesive let loose and the material fell to the floor.

  “Perhaps if we moved your chair to that corner over there, you wouldn’t need it—the curtain. The backdrop.”

  Jessie let her eyes move to where he pointed. This idea had merit. “Let’s try it,” she said. She picked up the camera on its stand and carried it to the corner he’d suggested. It wasn’t perfect, but he was right about not needing anything behind the subjects. The white wall would reflect the light, and the corner was one of the few places without a window breaking up the long walls. Maybe she could drape the backdrop over the back of a tall chair to have as contrast. Or maybe not.

  While Jessie considered, Joshua removed the framed portrait hanging on the wall closest to the corner. “An old ancestor,” he explained. “I’m sure he won’t mind being unhung for an evening. It’s fortunate he wasn’t hung when he was alive.” He grinned.

  “I can’t imagine anyone with his portrait in a bank building having to worry about being hung,” she said.

  He laughed. “You’d be surprised.”

  “I think this might work. If you’d be so kind as to retrieve my chair for me, I’ll bring the props and be ready.” From across the room, Marie pointed and mimed slipping a dress over her head. “I promised my hosts that I’d change into more formal wear.” He nodded and motioned for Jessie to precede him so they could collect the last of her belongings.

  She was aware of his presence behind her as they walked across the floor. That surprised her. She usually didn’t notice young men, except as potential portrait subjects, and she’d been so busy getting settled that asking to take his picture hadn’t occurred to her. She would do it later. He had fine features: a patrician nose not unlike Fred’s. Joshua was much closer to her own age, unlike Fred, who had twenty-six more years of living than Jessie. She wondered for just a moment what Mr. Behrens might be thinking as he followed her slender frame. She shook her head.

  “Is something wrong?” Mr. Behrens asked her.

  “No. I’m fine,” Jessie told him. It might have been a lie, because for the first time since Fred, she felt her heart beating a little faster, and it wasn’t because she was frightened or riding on an elevator. She’d have to ask Henry what he knew about Joshua Behrens. She didn’t need another “episode.”

  Marie Harms, first dance

  December 1910, Milwaukee

  5 × 7 Graflex

  Intuition

  I wish I could tell you how much Marie enjoyed herself. She talked about the cotillion for weeks afterward, and I have to say that her enthusiasm wore well on the other guests. She insisted I take her photograph first and made a fuss about it in a positive way. She wanted people to notice me so they’d have their portraits made. She wore a bighearted spirit that night—and always, truly—but I wonder how many others would have stepped forward if dear Marie hadn’t made such a joy of the activity.

  She danced often. But if she noticed I was standing alone in my cream-colored dress, she’d bring her partner over, and after introductions she’d suggest he have his portrait made. The men mostly refused, and then she’d say, “Well, I’m not afraid of a camera,” and she’d sit down on the wicker chair or stand behind it looking regal and say, “Shoot me, Miss Gaebele.” The boys would laugh, and I would bend to focus the lens. I wondered if I wasted material that night, but a good reputation begins in many forms, and like sourdough starter, one needs to put in a little flour to take more out.

  When I look at this portrait, it’s the shadows I see first, how they heighten certain parts of the image: her neck and back, the side of her face. Shadows tend to make what is not in them more interesting, illuminate in a revealing way. My time in Milwaukee was like that: I lived in Fred’s shadow even though he was far away, and yet in that separation, things became clearer. The props, for example.

  The palm fan had been a whim. At the Bauer Studio I would have grabbed peacock feathers or a basket filled with pine boughs to set beside the wicker chair. But the palm fan beckoned because it was so different. I wondered if Suzanne and Harold had gone to Tampa once, if that’s where Suzanne had gotten it. Lots of people from Winona traveled to Florida in the winter, and I imagined people
from Milwaukee taking the train out of snowstorms to wade in Tampa’s tepid bay. Or maybe a client had given it as a gift, as such frivolities often seem critical in one place and time but are of no use when one returns home. It’s an advantage to a photographer that seemingly needless things like palm fans can be turned into practical applications for a portrait. Even the shadows on the fan give interest, as though the tips of the fronds are reaching for light.

  Marie wanted one of her dance partners to be in the photograph with her, but none were willing. She didn’t seem to take that poorly. Instead she told them they could purchase a print of her alone to help them remember their evening. Several of the fellows standing around watching me pose Marie chuckled at that. But she turned her card over for them to write on, and to my surprise, four gave me their addresses and paid my price of fifteen cents so I could send them a print.

  Several dance couples had their portraits made. From the way they talked to each other during the pose, I assumed that most of them were married or engaged. Who would want a portrait made together without an understanding of a shared future? What would a person do with an old portrait if the relationship ended? One wouldn’t want to keep the print, surely a painful reminder of a broken promise or abandoned love. On the other hand, if something happened to a loved one—if they were still the dear one when disaster struck—then a photograph would be a treasure without price.

  One couple that I could tell were newly courting smiled as I stood them together rather than have the man sit and the woman stand behind him. I posed the beaded purse she carried in front of her, occupying both hands, and had him place one arm loosely around her shoulder. He tugged her to him momentarily but then returned his arm to a position of decorum. She turned to look at him; he gazed at her, and I could see new love in the exchange. They risked a permanent record of this evening and carried a hopeful future with them.