A Flickering Light (31 page)

Lilly frowned.

“Which of you is Jessie?” Jessie raised a gloved hand. “What do you notice?”

Could she tell them that what she noticed every time she looked at him was the lost opportunity of his life? Could she say that because of her, Jessie, her brother wouldn’t have what he deserved? Could she say that it was Jessie who had gotten in the way of what Roy’s talents would have given to the world? Could she?

“That he wants to say so much more,” Jessie said as she gained her voice. “But it tires him, to get his mind and mouth to work together. It’s as though they’re out of tempo with each other.”

“Temper?” Miss Jones asked.

“No, tempo. He’s out of rhythm. He’s very good-natured about it though. I suppose maybe Lilly’s right that I wait for him because…” She looked at her parents, then dropped her eyes. She may as well confess it. She had dozens of times in her prayers, to no avail. She still felt that terrible ache each time she saw him try to speak and knew that any great joy in her life was undeserved because she’d stolen Roy’s joy from him. “Because I feel so bad that it happened, that I wasn’t watching him. I feel sad that he…that I didn’t…well, that the door…I don’t know. I guess I wait for him to speak because each time I do I feel like I’m rubbing away a brick of blame.”

“Such bricks can build up quite a wall,” Miss Jones said, not unkindly at all.

Jessie blinked back tears. She looked away, noticed a painting of a nurse holding a baby protectively against her chest, stared at it until her eyes no longer compromised her composure.

“You always blamed yourself more than anyone else did, Jessie,” her mother said. Jessie heard both confusion and annoyance in her tone. “Which I never understood. We were all there in the backyard, saying good-bye to your grandparents. No one was to blame, not really. No one.” Her mother had said this often, and Jessie wondered if she had explained this to Miss Jones. Maybe she repeated it to assure herself.

“Why, I don’t even remember where you were in the backyard. Had you gone into the house for something? We told Miss Jones that Roy had been asleep on the quilt in the shade of the maple tree and, well, there was all that commotion of people saying good-bye. If anything, it was my fault for leaving the door to the basement open after I brought up jars of applesauce to give my mother.”

“The boy woke up and waddled away while we weren’t aware,” her father said. “No one’s fault. The girls were young.”

“Not me,” Lilly said. “I was nearly nineteen.”

“I just think of you all as being young and innocent,” her father said. “All of you.” He nodded toward Jessie, who dropped her eyes.

“We didn’t even know he’d fallen down the basement steps until we started looking for him,” Selma said. “Jessie found him.”

“Maybe that’s why you took it so hard,” Jessie’s mother said.

She knew they expected a response.

“Afterward we thought we might have lost two children, what with Jessie being so sad all the time,” her mother said.

They must have told Miss Jones about the doctor being called, about Roy’s eyes rolling back and showing nothing but white before he closed them. Then there were the hours of waiting, followed by days of visits to the hospital and eventually the muted joy of Roy opening his eyes and smiling up at them. Then his slow return to speech, but only with words that stumbled and stuck to his tongue. Maybe they’d told of Jessie’s sobbing as she carried the boy up the stairs. But they couldn’t tell Jessie’s real part in it because they didn’t know. They’d never know.

“My brother suggested the camera for Jessie because she’d so enjoyed it at the fair.” Her mother nodded toward Jessie’s camera bag. “And it helped, though now she’s become almost obsessed with those photographs and the studio she works in.”

Selma mercifully changed the subject. “Roy sang with me once,” Selma said. “He didn’t do that word skipping at all then.”

They all turned to her.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that,” Jessie’s mother said. “When did you sing with your sister?” her mother’s words demanded as she stared at Roy.

Roy opened his mouth to speak, but Selma continued. “He came along for rehearsals at church.” She brightened. “Maybe he could sing now.”

“Would you?” Lilly asked. Roy nodded agreement.

“He can just sing out when he wants?” their mother asked. “And he hasn’t done it? Why wouldn’t you do that, Roy?”

Roy started to answer, but instead Selma opened her mouth and out came “Just as I Am,” with that husky tone that made her sound like a woman much older than she was. Roy’s dimples widened, and he opened his mouth to join her.

They all leaned forward.

But only Selma’s haunting alto filled the room.

Jessie felt her chest tighten, and tears pooled in her eyes as she watched Roy’s face take on the look of a trapped rabbit who couldn’t even squeal about its struggle. She clasped her stomach and rocked the way her father sometimes did when his pains first began. She stopped herself.

“I didn’t think he could,” her mother said, turning away.

“Maybe it was the organ playing along with you, Selma, that let him do it,” Jessie said.
I should take piano lessons and play for him, forget about my camera life
. “Sometimes when I ask him to talk smooth and tell him to think of it like wind coming down a narrow tunnel or water flowing lazily over a smooth rock, sometimes then he can speak without taking so long.” She wanted to move past the blend of disappointment and relief she could see in her mother’s face. And in Roy’s eyes too.

“You can sing without the stutter,” their mother said. She crossed her arms over her chest. Jessie’s father touched their mother’s hand gently. She looked startled, shook her head as her shoulders sagged, and she yielded her open palms to her lap.

“We have seen this before,” Miss Jones said. “It may be the rhythm that helps him sing those words, though your voice is lovely”—she looked at her notes—“Selma, is it? Yes, well, it may just be the circumstances today.”

“The complication of the day,” Jessie said. Her mother looked quizzically at her.

“A banjo was what assisted one young girl,” Miss Jones reported. “She learned to play it, and it helped her speech immensely.”

“They cost a lot,” Selma said.

“We can save up for it,” Jessie said. Here was something she could do to partially redeem what she hadn’t done. “That’s what we can all do. Save up our pennies.”

“I’m not saying it would work in this instance,” Miss Jones said. “Why don’t you wait to see what the doctors advise before you invest in something like that? But it is a possible next step.”

Jessie looked longingly at the carpetbag that held her shattered camera. It would be a long time before she had another, a long time before she would be on her own, but the delay, the disappointment, was what she should expect. Roy looked over at her and grinned wide, his unwarranted absolution a trigger for her grief.

She would never tell them. She could never find the courage to say that on that day she
had
seen Roy awake and begin to wander. A thought
had
crossed her mind of how she ought to protect him, go get him while everyone else clustered at her grandparents’ buggy and the steps to the basement beckoned a curious child. But it was only a fleeting thought. She told herself he’d waddle toward the family, or someone else would notice he’d awakened. Instead, she followed a butterfly more beautiful than any she’d ever seen. She hoped to capture it and show it to her relatives before they left. The fluttering wings took her moment by moment away from what might have changed everything for Roy, took her deeper into the peonies and roses and her own garden of regret.

FJ found his strength returning. He looked in the mirror. The dark circles beneath his eyes had faded. Some of the spots had become lighter. He’d taken to walking around the block despite the cold weather. He wasn’t shoveling snow. Russell, the dear boy, had taken care of that. He straightened himself to parade position. He’d put some flesh back on. Selma, their hired girl, cooked well, and her presence had lessened some of Mrs. Bauer’s volatility, or so he’d thought. All in all, he was feeling better. He might even be able to go into the studio in a month or so. Not full-time, but perhaps to assume a few photo sittings.

He needed to speak with Miss Gaebele anyway about the increased tariffs being charged to ship printed postcards back into the United States. He wondered if he should contract with Kroeger’s Printers in Winona or V. O. Hamman in Minneapolis. He’d like her opinion, though the Germans truly did have the very finest printing equipment in the world. His postcards always returned with the photographs he’d taken looking precise and with the colors he’d ordered tinted to perfection. If the tariffs continued to rise, he’d have to find some other means of producing the cards. Or just let that part of the business go. But it was booming. Everyone seemed to love postcards since the postal service had authorized the divided card. A few words, the address, and the stamp on one side, a piece of art on the other. People liked having cards of themselves, but more and more, there was interest in, well, hometowns, buildings, tramplike street scenes.

Miss Gaebele would remind him of that. Miss Gaebele had recommended the parade when President Taft came through town. Though FJ was grateful he’d captured a good likeness of the man, unposed scenes bothered him. There was enough unpredictability in his life without adding street scenes. One couldn’t afford to waste the paper, what with increased costs of the emulsions. There was always risk in business, yet one had to keep branching out, trying new things. Balance was what it took to be successful.

Miss Gaebele once said that a studio either had to be the best at one thing, such as serving their customers, or do the most or be the biggest at something. Anything less would be futile. How she had become so wise at such a young age amazed him. His portraits were the best of any in Winona. Miss Gaebele seemed to think that taking unposed shots, at weddings and such, could be the studio’s mark. That was before she ran the studio on a winter’s day. She might think differently now, working inside in the warmth instead of racing a windstorm for a scenic shot.

She was someone with whom he could really discuss these business things. He didn’t want to alarm Mrs. Bauer with talk of tariffs or trends. And for months he hadn’t been able to visit his lodge or the YMCA, nor attend chamber of commerce meetings, where he could have conferred with others. If any other photographers were present, though, he didn’t want to have them think he wasn’t on top of things or that his studio was in any way in trouble. Neither did he wish them to think him arrogant, as though he knew too much and didn’t need their advice. Balance, always balance.

In fact, the studio appeared to be doing well, judging by the ledger accounts Miss Gaebele provided to Mrs. Bauer once a month. Miss Gaebele’s visit, now a few weeks past, had been pleasant. He thought he might invite her to come back and bring the books to discuss them here, with Mrs. Bauer present, of course. He sighed, sat down. Standing took its toll. No, it would be best if he waited until he was feeling better, fully up to going to the studio to assess things. No sense in alarming Mrs. Bauer with talk of rising tariffs. After all, she was getting ready for Winnie’s party now that Selma had returned from her trip to Rochester.

“Mrs. Bauer wonders if you’d like to hold Robert for a time,” Selma said, interrupting his reverie before the mirror. He shouldn’t have left the door open, though she hadn’t entered, just stood outside holding his son.

“I’d like that,” he said. He reached for the child, who squirmed out of Selma’s hands. He caught him just as he chose to stand beside her, wobbling, then clinging to Selma’s skirt, then holding himself upright and as stiff as a military pose. “Are you going to walk for us, Robert, before you’re even a year old?” The boy grinned, with drool hanging like a string of melted cheese from his mouth. “Well, good for you.” FJ held his arms out. “Come along.” The boy let loose of Selma, took two steps toward him. FJ bent down and reached out for him and barely caught him as he fell into FJ’s arms.

He lifted Robert with effort, heard his heart start pounding. He turned to face the mirror with the boy. “There you are! A big boy,” he told him. FJ considered the child. He would be their last. Mrs. Bauer had made that clear. She wanted no part of FJ, not even a gentle touch after he finished reading his evening paper and passed by his wife as she stitched. She had banished him from her bedroom and said she would only enter his to clean it. But with Selma here to work now, she needn’t ever enter at all.

Robert laughed and pointed. “Baby.” He wiggled to be let down again. FJ complied, bending down to settle the child close to Selma again. As he stood up, he felt his head go light. He was weaker than he’d thought. “Perhaps you can walk him to the nursery,” he said.

“Oh no, Mr. Bauer. The party is about to start, and Robert will likely put his fist in the cake first thing. I think Mrs. Bauer was hoping you’d look after him, if you could.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said. He reached for the boy’s pudgy hand. “Come, Bob, we’ll sit on the floor together and I’ll show you my army buttons. Your big brother always liked to play with those.”