A Flickering Light (20 page)

“He’ll never let you go,” Lilly said. She reached for the vinegar jug.

Jessie ignored her and hoped her mother was too distracted to notice the remark.

“Is the studio having financial problems?” her father asked. He pointed to the green beans that steamed in the middle of the table, and Roy lifted the bowl and passed them to him.

“Everyone is having financial problems,” their mother answered.

“Once the election’s over it’ll settle down,” Jessie’s father told her.

“Please let me help,” Selma said.

Lilly said, “She could help save for Roy’s trip to—”

“Hush now,” Jessie’s mother interrupted her.

“What trip?” Jessie asked.

“I know all about it. I know all about it,” Selma sang.

“Wh-wh-what trip?” Roy asked.

“We’ll discuss it later.” Her mother glared at Lilly and put her finger to Selma’s mouth, indicating she should keep something a secret, then began dishing up the boiled tongue. “Selma may work for Mr. Steffes.”

“Wh-wh-where am I g-g-going?”

Her mother shushed Roy as she had Selma, and the room became silent, with only the
click
of spoons against the china and the quiet slurp of soup.

Jessie hated beef tongue, didn’t like her tongue touching the little bumps. She put her fork down. She’d been left out of a family plan. Her stomach hurt. What was it they were saving for? And why had no one told her? Or Roy?

Retouching

M
RS
. B
AUER HAD BEEN
nominated to be president of the newly formed Second Congregational Ladies Aid Society, and they had a good many projects to attend to this year. They hoped to raise money for the poor at events held at least once a month. Weekly women gathered to knot comforters to be sent by Christmas to the poor of Minneapolis. She assumed there were no poor in Winona, or the reverend would have suggested keeping their comforters here at home. Growing up in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, she’d seen plenty of poor people, but since marrying Mr. Bauer, she hadn’t been exposed to such things and assumed it was because of Winona’s affluence as a river, flour, and lumber city.

This year, at her suggestion, the Ladies Aid Society planned to serve meals at the election sites to raise funds for the needy. They’d also hold luncheons, the profits sent to the Frontier Missionary work in Oregon, which served the Indians there. Organizing these projects would take its toll on Jessie Otis Bauer. She was not a strong woman, after all.

Grandmother Otis had let it be known that while she loved seeing Winnie and Russell, she did not wish to entertain them while Mrs. Bauer attended to her society events. Russell, of course, could entertain himself in the summer months while the women met, but Winnie would need watching throughout the year.

She conferred with Mr. Bauer about this issue, deciding to press him for assistance as he had pressed her to allow herself to be nominated.

“That’s a wonderful thing!” he’d told her when she said her name had been placed in nomination. “Think of the referrals you can recommend.”

“It’s to do good works, Mr. Bauer,” she said. He’d actually come home at a reasonable hour and sat in the kitchen while she prepared their supper. It did seem that he was making an effort to be more conscious of her needs.

“Nevertheless, it will allow you to represent the studio in new venues. Without your having to say a thing, people might think of a portrait for themselves when they look at you, knowing you’re married to a photographer. It could help the holiday trade.”

“I’m not going to have a cabinet portrait sitting beside me,” she snapped. “Even if I am elected. And I’m certainly not going to promote the studio from my president’s chair, assuming that I become the president.”

He shook his head. “No. But you’d be surprised. When people see a musician on the stage, enjoy the sounds he makes, and feel comforted, they leave and consider music lessons for their children. They associate certain experiences with future actions. You can’t underestimate the value this might have for the studio.”

She felt annoyed that he had turned a potential triumph of her own into something commercial and related to him. “You don’t find it possible that my name was placed because I have the ability to lead?”

He smiled. “I spoke to Mildred Simmons at the concert. The first thing she said was how much she appreciated the fine portrait our studio had provided and that you’d done such fine work in retouching. I suggested to her that you were quite talented in many ways. And that you might be a good president for the society. She paused only a moment before saying, ‘We need new interests.’ So you see, I might have had something to do with your rise.”

Mrs. Bauer knew she should have been pleased that he’d recommended her, but there was something about it that seemed to diminish her own capacity to be noticed.

“If I am elected,” she told her husband, “I will need help with the children while I’m at the meetings and events. I assume you’ll be available?”

“Confound it, Mrs. Bauer! I don’t see how.”

She felt her face grow warm with indignation, which he must have noticed, for he told her, “Well, you can bring Winnie down to the studio, of course. Or I’ll take her with me in the morning on those days if you’d like. She seems to like the time there. And the shop girls.”

“Your Miss Gaebele will need to take over the retouching too,” she said. She left no negotiation in her voice. This was something she would indeed control.

“I knew that was coming,” he said.

“Well, don’t expect me to be able to wipe away the blemishes of your clients and still be out there doing the things that will bring you more clients. Don’t ask me to do something and then take away my ability to do it just because you don’t want to do your part. I’ve had more than enough of that from you!”

She watched him. He swallowed hard. If he remained calm, she might stay calm, but if he began to disagree with her, gave her fuel for the fire she could feel rising within her, it would end up as one of the explosions. He had so much control over her! She hated the uproars, felt awful when they were over, but she seemed to have no control over them, not really. He never learned how to stop them! Fire burned in the back of her neck. She’d heard her own voice grow strident and found herself praying, actually praying, that she wouldn’t explode this time, that she’d remember what she had done and said later, when it was all over. She inhaled, muttered her prayers for calm.

“Will you help me or won’t you?” She was aware of the edge still in her voice.

“Of course I will. Miss Gaebele can do the retouching, just as you said. She wants to learn the skill anyway in exchange for the use of the studio, to do some work of her own. It’s a good exchange. I’ll bring Winnie. Miss Kopp can watch her when we’re otherwise engaged.”

She felt her heart race but took deep breaths. Sometimes that helped soothe the fire inside her. She put her spoon down, watched her hand shake. She sat. Fixing supper could wait.

“Fine. Then I’ll let my name stand.”

“Good. Excellent. You really will do good things for the community, Mrs. Bauer. I’m quite sure you will.”

They had held the election a few days later, and she won! It was the oddest feeling to be asked to chair the society. She wasn’t sure women had the ability to be in charge of things, though she’d read in the paper that just this past Sunday, the wife of Winona’s Baptist minister had taken the pulpit to speak while he was out of town. That would never happen in the Congregational Church! Fortunately, she’d never be asked to stand up in front of the congregation. She’d be a “behind the scenes” leader. She’d learned that phrase in an article discussing the people who worked silently behind the president. After all, that’s what she’d always done as Mr. Bauer’s wife, worked behind the scenes. It hadn’t brought her happiness, but maybe doing good things at the society would.

There was something both artful and complete about enhancing a print. Jessie fully intended to compose photographs that didn’t need retouching, but sometimes the camera emphasized detracting qualities that the naked eye wouldn’t notice in the setup. Because a photograph was the capture of a moment in time, a viewer could dwell on such features and find the flaws in the subject. In everyday living, with people in action, their faces shifting like kneaded dough as they spoke, one really didn’t notice little blemishes or a nose out of proportion to a face. Retouching often improved reality.

Jessie liked retouching; what she didn’t like was Voe’s teasing, something new of late. “He likes you, Mr. B. does,” she claimed.

“He likes you too.”

“His eyes light up like fireflies when you enter the room. I see it.”

Like Selma, Voe always read the romance stories in
Woman’s Home Companion
first and would tell Jessie about the dreamy men, the hopelessly contrived meetings of young lovers, and the great tragedies of forbidden love.

“You see things that aren’t there,” Jessie said. “Not all relations between working men and women are preludes to a composition for violins.”

“Huh?” Voe said.

“Never mind,” Jessie said.

“I just think Mr. B. holds you special.”

Voe was starting to sound like Lilly. Jessie didn’t think she was being naive. She’d had time to put his portrait of her in perspective and didn’t let herself dwell on the deeper feelings that might be there behind the lens. Mr. Bauer was an older man, not unlike her uncle August, who liked to look after people, give them special gifts at times because the joy that resulted was mutual. Mr. Bauer was a gentle father, and while she’d rarely seen him with his wife, there were certainly no stories bandied about that he was anything but a faithful husband. He’d employed women assistants before, and they’d gone on to work for other photographers. Chances were that he’d given them special gifts on their birthdays too, especially if they shared the day with one of Mr. Bauer’s children.

The darkroom did put them close together, though Voe was almost always there too. But in the retouching room they’d been alone, and he’d had to stand close to instruct her, lean over her shoulder so that she could sometimes feel his breath raise the tender hair on her neck. Once or twice she felt his vest against her summer shirtwaist, smelled the cologne he wore. She was glad Voe didn’t bring up the portrait he’d taken of her, and more grateful Voe didn’t know of the most recent intimate incident that had left perspiration on her upper lip in addition to her nose.

“If you can draw the eyes open,” he had said, leaning over her back, pointing, “the clients really do want their baby’s portrait as though the child were still alive.”

The baby, about a year old, had died of a fever, cause unknown, and the older siblings had convinced their distraught parents that they needed a likeness made, a photograph of Baby George. Jessie had not gone out to help shoot that photograph. Mr. B. rarely did portrait sittings outside his studio, saying such work reminded him of tramp photography. Clients weren’t often happy with the results, giving a bad name to professional photographers like himself. Jessie suspected he didn’t like to do it because he couldn’t control the lighting or the setting either. But he had done this one, and he’d done it alone “as respectfully as I could,” he said later.

Mr. B. started her instruction by telling her the history of certain practices. But she stopped him and told him she’d read a book about it.

“What such book?” he asked. “You can’t get all your knowledge from books, Jessie.” He turned on the small lamp and directed the light to the plates they worked on.

“James Ryder’s book,” she said. “It’s all about his life and work and how he introduced retouching to this country way back in the 1800s. He wrote about this curious thing some photographers did to get that softer look. They’d stretch a piece of catgut from the lens board of the camera to the floor, and during the exposing time, they’d pluck it, like playing a viola.” She twisted in her chair to look at him as he stood behind her, his hands on the back of her chair. “It gave just the slightest movement, which softened the sharp edges of those precise German lenses. Did you know about that?” He’d grunted agreement, redirected her to turn back to the print. “Sometimes they’d leave a little space between the plate and the paper too. That made a kind of fluffy look to the photograph.” She turned back.

“What’s the name of this book?”

“Voigtländer and I: In Pursuit of Shadow Catching
. Nineteen aught two. They serialized part of it in
Photo-Beacon.”
She turned around again. “Voigtländer is the name of a German camera lens.”

“I’m well aware of that. Let’s work on this print now, Jessie.”

“I read of it in one of your old issues and then found the book in the library across the street, not the German library. Lots of photographers objected, I guess, and didn’t think it was authentic to remove moles and such from people’s faces.”

“Every art form has to go through struggle until it is shaped into newness,” he said. “That’s why there will always be this argument between the mechanics of photography and its artistry. Even the size of photograph we use now certainly wasn’t the norm. Early prints were more like your small Kodak ones, and those who made albums had to adjust to the larger size just as the plate makers and photographers did.”

“But it was all for the good in the end,” Jessie said. She turned back. “Which brush do I begin with?” He leaned over and retrieved one. She’d never worked on this kind of print before. She smelled that cigar smell again as he leaned over her. “Very industrious, Miss Gaebele, teaching yourself.” When he used the more formal address, Jessie wondered if she’d offended him. But his voice addressed her as less of a student now and more as a colleague. She turned to smile at his compliment, became aware of his mouth, the narrow lips, his mustache trimmed to perfection. He told her how much easier it was to work on the negative than how it had been done in the old days, with black inks, crayons, and oil spread across the paper prints in order to help the retouching pencil do its magic. “Mrs. Bauer holds the brush in her mouth between strokes, to keep it moist. I’ve wondered if that’s safe,” he mused. “But she’s never gotten ill. We begin,” he said, “by imagining what we want to see at the end of our work, what we want the print to say if it could talk.”