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

  Marie looks younger than her seventeen years here. I’d pulled the sleeves just off her shoulders, then used the fan to cast a shadow on her back so her mother wouldn’t worry over how exposed she was.

  The palm fan turned out to be the hit of the evening. Several girls asked to be posed with it. That surprised me. I suppose there ought to be room in life for spontaneity, for having things happen as they might, without always organizing and arranging. Still, the one time I’d jumped into momentary desires, I’d paid a price. I was still learning how to distinguish an instinctive move that advanced my art (like using the palm fan) from an impulsive one (like allowing Joshua Behrens to kiss me beneath the mistletoe without protest). I still had much to learn.

  Prone to Wander

  THE MISTLETOE KISS ENLIGHTENED JESSIE. Aside from affectionate pecks from her family, the only time she’d been kissed by a man had been by Fred. His kisses, passionate and consuming, had been tainted with all the colors of the rainbow, including the deep violet shade of guilt. Still, it was the memory of those kisses that preoccupied her. She longed to repeat them despite the path they’d taken her down. She supposed allowing the kiss at the dance spoke the wrong words to Mr. Behrens and she ought to have acted offended. But she’d noticed a few other couples chastely touching puckered lips, their bodies wide apart as they arched beneath the mistletoe. People around them applauded, their gloved hands making sounds as soft as summer raindrops on rooftops. She and Mr. Behrens weren’t a couple, of course, but he had been attentive through the evening, filling it with mindless chatter several times when they stood alone in that corner.

  “Isn’t your name on any dance cards?” Jessie had asked him when the music started and he didn’t leave to select a dance partner.

  “I came to make my parents happy,” he said. He pointed to a matronly couple that might have been his grandparents given their age. “They rather indulge me, so this is a small return I can give them.”

  “Are you spoiled?” Jessie teased.

  “Ruined. Just like a puppy given its way every day.” He grinned at her, and she noticed then the dimples that reminded her of her younger brother, Roy. “And what about you? Don’t you have a dance card? I’d put my name on yours.”

  Jessie shook her head. “I’m working.”

  “Yet you’re dressed for dancing,” he said. “And beautifully so.”

  “My wearing this made the Harms family happy,” she told him.

  “Ah. So you return their indulgence now and then too. Spoiled, like me.”

  “Ruined,” she concurred. It was closer to the truth than he could know.

  He didn’t press her to dance, and often they stood in comfortable silence, not unlike the way she and Fred had when they worked together, before everything changed. She kept making observations that reflected positively on Mr. Behrens—Joshua, he insisted she call him—how he reminded her of her family, that his help was reminiscent of a friend’s in Winona. She had meant Voe, yet his dapper looks brought Fred to mind.

  So when she turned from putting away her camera at evening’s end and saw him holding the mistletoe high over their heads, a bashful grin on his face, she didn’t back away. He bent, hesitating just a moment to see if she’d object. She was eighteen, nearly nineteen, a woman working on her own. There was nothing wrong with one small kiss to mark an evening’s labor.

  Kissing Joshua had been like bussing a cantaloupe: interesting, with a new texture to remember, but no desire to repeat it.

  Each pulled away. “Merry Christmas,” he said to her.

  “Good greetings of the season,” she told him. She dropped her gaze to her shoes.

  Jessie assumed she’d never see Joshua Behrens again except in passing. He’d planted no relationship with that mistletoe kiss.

  Weeks later she regretted the kiss and wanted to avoid Mr. Behrens, who had jumped off the streetcar more than once since the cotillion when he saw her tramping through the snow. She really didn’t want to run into him again. Still, the first time he leapt off the streetcar to join her, she found that she enjoyed his company again as they trudged along. She learned that his father was the chief cashier at the Traub Bank building where the cotillion had been held (that really was his ancestor’s portrait on the wall) and that he attended Marquette University’s newly opened business school. Mr. Behrens didn’t seem the least threatened by her occupation or her independence and told her with pride that Marquette permitted women to attend starting in 1907, the first Catholic university in the country to do that.

  “That’s the year I started my own training in photography,” Jessie told him. She shared little of her personal history but did tell him of her wish to one day have her own studio. They spoke of politics. The politician Woodrow Wilson planned a trip to the Cream City. The butter-colored bricks from which so many of Milwaukee’s buildings were made gave the city its nickname. Jessie didn’t keep up much with political things but found Mr. Behrens’s observations interesting, just as Fred’s had opened her eyes to events beyond Winona’s streets.

  When he tried to find out more about her, though, asked questions beyond photography, or wished to expose the reasons why she’d left Winona and how long she planned to stay, she colored her answers in pale shades. She felt herself closing the way a morning glory did at night, protecting, showing its finery only with the invitation of true light. When she reached her destination, he had caught the next streetcar and continued on his way, and she hoped her reluctance to reveal herself served as wind to any seed he thought that kiss might have planted.

  Then, in mid-February, Joshua knocked on the Harmses’ door and asked to see her. Marie carried the message up the stairs to the darkroom, where Jessie worked to develop the portraits from her most recent dance. Henry Harms had arranged for Jessie to attend and photograph a few other dances through the winter, and she was grateful for his efforts. She’d just placed the canister holding the film into the stop bath solution, then recited psalms that took her two minutes, the amount of time she needed before checking the status of the film.

  “He’s downstairs, right now!” Marie shouted through the closed door, respecting Jessie’s rules about not letting light in. Jessie had admonished her about never entering if the sign “Working!” was on that attic door. “Papa wouldn’t mind your seeing him, I know.”

  “Your father doesn’t have say over me,” Jessie said. She hadn’t meant to sound upset. Her head throbbed. Maybe it was the smell of the chemicals. She was shorter with people than intended.

  “I only meant he’s a nice man. Your own papa would approve.”

  Marie was too young to understand. “Please tell him that I’m busy, working in my darkroom.”

  “I’ll bring him up, and he can talk to you through the door. Is that all right?”

  “No! He’d see my bedroom, Marie. Just ask him to leave his card. I don’t know why he thought he could come calling anyway.”

  She would have to put him off more firmly, just as she had the other men from the cotillion who had given her their addresses on the back of Marie’s dance card. When the prints were ready, she’d arranged for a time when the men could come to the Harms home and pick them up. They came, collected, and if they tried to linger, she made herself as unapproachable as Winona in a snowstorm and sent them on their way. Apparently, she’d have to create a blizzard to keep Joshua away.

  Marie left but returned in a few minutes. “He says he’ll wait.”

  “Confound it,” Jessie said to herself.

  “I’ll entertain him in the parlor,” Marie said. “With the chessboard.”

  “Surely he won’t stay that long,” Jessie said through the door.

  She heard no answer so went about finishing her work, annoyed now that the time she liked to take felt rushed. It wasn’t Joshua’s doing, but she couldn’t calmly go about her work knowing that people waited. She carried the film downstairs to wash it, then back up to hang it to dry. To make prints, she had to carry the film to S
uzanne’s. She finished, wiped her hands on a towel, then headed down the three flights of stairs to the receiving room.

  “It’s really not a convenient time for you to call,” Jessie told him when she entered the well-lit room. Might as well make everything clear before he clouded it with courtship.

  “He’s a good chess player, Jessie,” Marie chirped.

  “I’m sure he is.” She wished Marie would leave but didn’t want to suggest that she go ask Rebecca to bring tea, as that would make him linger. He said nothing, so she greeted him more civilly. “Mr. Behrens.” She nodded to him, her hands clasped in front of her. “What can I do for you?”

  “My classes have resumed, so I’ve missed you these last weeks.”

  “So you have.”

  “I’ll ask Rebecca to bring us coffee or tea,” Marie said.

  “No! I mean, I’m sure Mr. Behrens can’t stay.”

  He stood now, hat in his hand. “You’re right, Miss Gaebele. I can’t. But before you toss me out, I’ve a business proposition I thought might interest you, and negotiations always go better with tea.”

  “I’ll speak quickly,” Joshua said when Marie left. “May I sit?”

  “Of course.” She took the chair angled across from the settee, intrigued by his comments but on guard. He moved the chess table aside so he could sit down again and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

  “It’s risqué, this idea, but an independent woman as you are might see the possibilities,” he said. “I remembered your saying that you hope to have your own studio one day, and I see this as a way toward that.”

  Had he found a studio for her? What good would that do though? She didn’t have the money. Her photographing of cotillion participants did appear to have a future, though the income was limited for now. Once people saw the prints, then others would want copies or their own pictures made, and that’s where her investment of time and effort could pay off. Reprints. Fred had always said that was where photographers made their way.

  “Something daring, is it?”

  He couldn’t know about that streak in her; she’d never told him anything of that.

  “Nothing bawdy or vulgar, but yes, a bit provocative, for a woman.” He cleared his throat. “I attended a sporting dance the other evening. They meet nightly at the halls, except for Monday, attracting people from throughout the city. Mostly our age or younger. Always good music, from a local band or two, and they play the newer dances like the Texas Tommy and the Grizzly Bear. The Turkey Trot. Quite a show. There are saloons attached to these. Women aren’t allowed in the saloons, of course.”

  Saloons and dance halls together, the perfect mix for trouble. She could just hear her mother’s voice.

  “Aren’t they the places where women charge a dime for a dance? Maybe for… other favors?” Jessie asked.

  “Not these. At least I didn’t see that happening. What I noticed is that when the men headed to the saloons, the girls just sat around talking. Sometimes the band lured devoted couples to remain. A few girls danced with one another. Others headed outside, and I suspect they might have been smoking. But the majority stayed inside. Exuberant,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It was written all over their faces, Jessie. The girls were, well, beautiful.” He hesitated. “Not in the way you are. But in that way of girls who have worked hard all day emptying other people’s slop jars or sweating in the candy factory, then get to blow off steam moving their bodies to music.”

  Jessie knew something about the fatigue of a day’s labor. She’d worked for a printing company in Winona, and her younger sister had worked as a domestic and now as a milliner. Her older sister, Lilly, held a supervisory position in the glove factory. They hadn’t “blown off steam” by going to dances, but she could understand why many would. They’d had to find other ways to “wash the soul of the dirt of daily living.” Jessie had embroidered a punch kit written in German that her mother had translated as Music washes the soul of the dirt of daily living. She was certain her mother had meant the music from her favorite hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and not the tones of the Turkey Trot.

  “Here we are,” Marie said. “Set it right there, Rebecca. Have you been to any of those halls?” Marie asked the housemaid then.

  The color on the maid’s round face paled to cream. “I…I…”

  “Marie, it’s none of our business what Rebecca chooses to do with her own time.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just thought she might have.”

  “You were eavesdropping,” Jessie said.

  “I was, but it’s so interesting. I’ll never get to go to such places.” She pouted, folding her arms over the bodice of the sailor dress she wore. The wide collar in the back bounced with her movement of chagrin.

  “Will that be all, miss?” Rebecca set the tray on a side table. Faint color had returned to her face.

  “Marie…,” Jessie prodded.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” Marie said.

  “It’s fine, miss,” the maid said as she curtsied. “Fact is, miss, I have been to such a dance. Once or twice.”

  “Would you mind giving us your opinion of it?” Joshua asked.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about music, sir,” she said.

  “But when you were there, would you have been interested in having your picture made?”

  “Oh, sir, I wouldn’t want no one to know I’d been there.”

  “What if it was just your face? Not the background at all. No one would know where the picture was made. What then?”

  Rebecca blushed now, lowered her eyes. “Girls like me don’t have coins to do such as that. And it’s not the sort of thing a girl like me should want… I’ve work to do in the kitchen, so if that’s all?” She turned to the door, and when no one stopped her, she left.

  The girl’s slight of herself caused Jessie to say, “Why shouldn’t girls like Rebecca have their pictures made? They’re just as deserving as anyone else.”

  “I agree. There’s a certain stigma attached to the dance halls of working people like your maid, but except for the saloons, there’s really nothing to separate those dances from cotillions,” Joshua said.

  There’s nothing separating me from Rebecca either, Jessie thought. We’re both working girls who couldn’t aspire to cotillions without the interest of a wealthy beau. In a wash of emotion, she felt grateful. Grateful that she’d been given a talent, a passion, and someone to nurture it in her. She was equally grateful that she hadn’t eclipsed all that good by succumbing any more than she had to temptations. She’d found a way out by coming to Milwaukee. That’s all those girls were doing: finding ways out, seeking pleasure after a long day of labor. If she could help them do that, give them a little joy through her own talent, what would be wrong with that?

  “I’ve heard that the punch bowl can get sparked at cotillions,” Marie said.

  “I believe the word is spiked,” Joshua corrected.

  “Looks like Marie knows as much about this saloon business as I do.” Jessie laughed.

  “What I’m proposing,” Joshua said, “is that you take your camera business to the sporting dances. You might not be able to charge as much as at the cotillions, but you could photograph six evenings a week if you wanted to. So there’d be volume.”

  “Few reprints though,” Jessie said after a minute of thinking. “Six evenings… when would I ever find time to develop and print? After I got back home, I suppose.” She could give up sleep or print the film during her lunch breaks.

  She’d also have to find a way to get the prints to the working girls, which wouldn’t be easy. Many of them only got one day off a week, and it wasn’t always Sunday. She didn’t want to work on Sunday anyway, though she’d proposed doing just that to Suzanne. But maybe for something like this.

  “I wouldn’t see many referrals for more portrait shots. Besides, these girls send most of their money back home. They haven’t much to spare. You hea
rd Rebecca.”

  “That’s why you’d have to charge them less. Maybe make postcard-size prints instead of the larger ones to save paper costs.”

  Jessie nodded. “Then there’s the lighting,” she said. “Those dance halls won’t have much light, will they? And it’ll be at night.”

  He sat back. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “If you stay at the same dance hall each night, if you find just the right one,” Marie said, “maybe you could bring your flash-light equipment and leave it there, have your own corner like you did at my dance. You wouldn’t have to take things back and forth. Except your camera, of course. Maybe photograph just three nights in a row and leave a fourth night for the social dances.”

  “Swell,” Joshua said clapping his hands. “That’s a great idea, Marie.”

  She beamed.

  “It would provide a way to get the final prints to their owners,” Jessie said. “When they come back. But then there’s the issue of, well, my being a woman alone there. I mean, there are other girls present, of course, but they’re chums with each other. I’d be off to the side and—”

  “That’s where I come in,” Joshua said. “I’ll be your assistant.”

  “You? I can’t afford that,” Jessie said.

  “Won’t cost a dime.”

  It could cost her much more than that if she allowed it.

  “Why would you do this? Just to spend time with me?”

  “Ah, that too,” he said. “But I have an ulterior motive. I’ve proposed this as a business idea for one of my classes. I’d ask only that you share information about your costs and expenses with me so I could write about it. And maybe use a few of the photographs to illustrate my report. I’d earn top grades while you earn money for your studio, and together we’d bring cheer into the lives of those working girls. A perfect proposition.” He rubbed his hands together.