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

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  A sound in the hall startled her. She wiped at her face with the edge of the shawl, pulled it tighter around her flannel gown. Rebecca’s room was also on this third floor, across the hall. She hoped she hadn’t awakened the girl. Maybe she went to a sporting dance too. Jessie eased open the door.

  Rebecca stood in the hall holding a candle, a nightcap on her head.

  “Are you all right, miss?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “Nothing you did,” Rebecca said. She pressed her fingers against her eyes, rubbing sleep from them. “I weren’t sleeping well.”

  “Me neither.”

  Aside from the day in the receiving room when they’d briefly discussed the sporting dances, Jessie’d rarely conversed with the girl except for discussing daily tasks. She felt ashamed that she’d never noticed the girl’s large eyes or the way she chewed at her fingernails as she did now.

  “Did you take pictures, then?” Rebecca asked. “At Mr. Behrens’s dance?”

  “Just a few,” Jessie said.

  “That’s too bad. I guess I were wrong then.”

  “The lighting was poor, and people came to dance, not to be photographed.”

  “You was there a long time.”

  “I left at midnight, but the cab I took broke down and I had to walk. Miles.”

  “Oh, miss, let me heat water for the rubber bottle for you. Mrs. Harms loves one at her feet.”

  “You’ve done a day’s work already, Rebecca. Go back to bed.”

  “It’s no trouble.” Jessie shook her head. “Thank you then, miss,” Rebecca said. She turned, then stopped. “And, miss? Girls do like their portraits made. I know a lot of girls who’d like a picture.”

  “Just not when they’ve been dancing,” Jessie sighed.

  “Someplace nice instead,” Rebecca said. “If you don’t mind my mentioning it, a place like the Harmses’ parlor.”

  Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  The Present

  THE ARTICLE ANNOUNCED “the opening of the third class for stammerers now available in the Milwaukee Public Schools.” It was funny how when one paid attention to a topic, pebbles along the path appeared out of nowhere, leading one closer to it. At Jessie’s query, Henry Harms told her that there’d been a special school in Milwaukee since 1909 for children and adults with speech impairments, and now children received instruction in public schools too. “A few instructors at Detroit’s stammer school don’t like having public teachers trained. They want the business,” Henry told her. “But our schools want to reach whoever needs it, same with the stammer-school people here.” He’d shown pride in the community’s efforts, with no embarrassment at all that there were children who needed such extras.

  Maybe Roy could come and live with her here in Milwaukee! She wouldn’t be alone then, and he could receive special instruction just by attending the public school. Or maybe she could afford extra help for Roy at the stammer school.

  She took the streetcar, then paced back and forth in front of the North-Western School for Stammerers, gathering her courage. Eventually, she ascended the stone steps with plans to introduce herself to the director. While she waited she noticed the Winter Term Announcement with its bright poinsettia on the front cover wishing “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” in a big ribbon. Inside, a message from director Lee Wells Millard listed twelve reasons why one should choose his North-Western School. Jessie liked number four: “Our method is void of all singsonging, time-beating with the arm or hand, nodding the head, heel and toe movement, monotone drawling, sniffling, and of substitutes and subterfuges of all kinds.” She smiled, recalling some of the activities suggested to Roy by the Mayo brothers’ hospital, where he’d had to try to speak while swinging his arm in a figure eight. She knew he hated that practice. “Th-th-they l-l-laugh,” he told her, speaking of his schoolmates. “I l-l-look like a sc-sc-scarecrow.”

  “And you feel like you’d like to fly away,” she told him. At least she made him laugh.

  “He’ll be with you shortly,” Mr. Millard’s secretary, a skinny man with round glasses, told Jessie as he sat behind his desk.

  Jessie thumbed through the Winter Term Announcement until she found the tuition page. The cost was beyond anything she could imagine raising for Roy! She stood to leave.

  “May I help you?” The baritone words were spoken by a man wearing a three-piece suit with a red handkerchief in his coat pocket.

  “I don’t know,” Jessie told him. “I, that is, I… have a brother who, well, he stammers. He had a fall as a child, and—”

  “Our method deals with both the science of speech and the psychology. We’re familiar with such issues. Won’t you come into my office? We can talk about your brother there.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll be wasting your time,” Jessie said. “I have no way of paying up front for any kind of tuition; my brother doesn’t even live here. And I don’t imagine you accept credit.”

  “Some of our students come from thousands of miles away,” he assured her as he stepped back and pointed toward his office. “We have people who pay on credit, over time. Our dormitories and staff provide all that anyone needs.”

  All that anyone needs. Wouldn’t that be heaven? Jessie thought as she walked through the man’s door. All she had to do was convince him to believe in her ability to pay. Oh, and convince her parents to let Roy come and live with her in faraway Milwaukee.

  Jessie’s birthday arrived on a sunny day in February, the same day as the fallen President Lincoln’s birthday. She was nineteen. She said nothing to the Harmses about the day and expected nothing special. Melancholy settled onto her shoulders as she planned to spend her first birthday away from Winona, separated from her family. Milwaukee was full of separating firsts: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now her birthday. The day did bring back memories of birthdays past, including the jokes of her uncle August and the affection of her grandparents and family. She recalled the pillow fights with her sisters in the bed they all shared and her father shouting up through the heating grate in the floor, telling them to “settle down or you’ll bring the bed down on the kitchen table and your mother never will get the birthday cake baked.” She remembered the gift of her camera case and the photograph Fred had taken of her tucked within it, and the camera he’d given her another year.

  “Put him from your mind, Jessie Gaebele,” she told herself.

  Her parents sent her a card that held a small coin purse with a dollar inside. Her mother told her to buy herself a bauble. Her bauble, bought with a tincture of guilt, was film she needed to photograph the Saturday cotillion dances.

  But when she arrived home from work that February 12, Marie Harms greeted her by saying they had a surprise she would never, ever guess and that would make her so happy. Marie clasped her hands and unclasped them with a wry smile that lit her face. Jessie wondered if her parents might be waiting in the parlor. Her heartbeat quickened. “Close your eyes,” Marie sang as Jessie let herself be led into the room.

  But it wasn’t her parents; it was a cake. A lovely cake with Jessie’s name written in lavender-colored frosting.

  “How did you know?” she said as she pulled off her gloves. “Happy Birthday” spread in yellow just below her name.

  “Oh, Gottlieb told us,” Mary said. “His Winnie has the same birthday as yours. Did you know that? He wrote and mentioned the plans for Winnie’s party and said that brought you to mind, and he thought he’d send a note along with his… ah…”

  “Payment for my room and board,” Jessie finished for her.

  “So I had Rebecca bake the cake. Henry will love the dessert, so don’t say we shouldn’t have.”

  She wouldn’t say that to them, but she thought it in reference to Fred. He shouldn’t have told them, and he shouldn’t be paying for her stay here. Her need to repay him was an increasing weight of guilt. She’d have to unload it in the future and would consider how to do that more carefully than she’d considered Jo
shua’s business proposition.

  “We have a present for you too,” Marie said.

  “Now that you shouldn’t have done,” Jessie said.

  “It’s something we already had,” Mary told her, touching Jessie’s elbow. “Come see.”

  Henry Harms had apparently decided that Jessie could use a room in their home as a studio—but not the parlor. And while the third floor held an unoccupied servant’s room, Mary didn’t want strangers moving through the house. All this was told as part of the story while Marie repeated, “Keep your eyes closed,” and they led Jessie into a downstairs room that had once served as a sewing room.

  “It has good lighting, especially in the morning,” Marie pointed out. “I know you said that matters.” Windows frosted with ice let sun spill into a room more than large enough for backdrops and chairs. Its location in the house meant running up the stairs to develop film, but that was a small price to pay to walk through this door to her future.

  “But how did you—”

  “Rebecca said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Miss Gaebele could take pictures in the parlor?’ and I said that was a keen idea and told Mama, and she talked to Papa, and here you are.”

  They’d actually listened to their maid! Jessie would make certain that Rebecca’s portrait was the first she took in her new “studio.”

  Jessie considered letting Joshua know that he might have another subject for his business paper, but she’d not heard from him since she repaid the cab money. “You didn’t need to,” he’d said the day she rode the streetcar hoping to find him. He was right: she didn’t need to repay him since the cab hadn’t taken her home, but she didn’t tell him that. She’d given him her promise and she kept it. Beyond that, they had little to say, and she was relieved that she wouldn’t be seeing him again except in passing. There’d been little flickering light inside her heart when she’d met him, just a notice that he was a fine-looking man. But she hadn’t convinced herself there was anything more. She’d been truthful at least about that.

  So Jessie’s studio began not in the way she’d hoped: it wasn’t where she wanted it to be, but she would take what came her way, believing that each photograph she took put her closer to a real studio in Winona, closer to paying for Roy’s treatments, and closer to home.

  She had sent the information about the stammerers’ school to her parents. She talked to the school’s owner several times over the next weeks and convinced him that she ought to photograph the students at the school come spring. Mr. Millard thought that a fine idea once he’d seen her samples, and Jessie left that meeting with her stomach in knots. She could convince people of her abilities but wasn’t sure she believed in them herself. However was she going to photograph the students, follow up with the dance cotillion patrons, and still be a good employee for Suzanne Johnson? Had she taken on more than she could do?

  Jessie couldn’t imagine Roy living in a boarding school even if everyone there suffered from the same speech problems as he did. No, she hoped to have him come for the summer session and share her room at the Harms household. If he liked it and if he did well, they’d explore his staying in Milwaukee and maybe finding their own apartment together. If she could make that come about, her exile in Milwaukee would at last have been for something truly good.

  Into separate envelopes Jessie began putting her savings. The first held payments for the cost of her stay with the Harms family. She’d decide when she left whether to give it to them or to “Gottlieb” himself. And when the time was right, she’d confront Fred about his taking care of her.

  A second envelope kept the portion she sent to her parents once a month with a sum added for Roy. A third held money for personal needs and for her own gifts to charity, and the fourth held coins saved toward the purchase of a studio, ideally one in Winona. Her family’s absence from her daily life wore a dark color; she wanted to replace it with bright light.

  As spring approached, Rebecca brought her friends who wanted their photographs taken in a nice place. The matrons of the households where the girls worked took notice of the quality of Jessie’s photography. Upon learning that her studio, such as it was, operated in a well-respected district, they made appointments, and Jessie’s business began to grow.

  “I can help with phone calls,” Marie suggested one day after she arrived home from school. “You could also show me how to keep records of the prints. I can work for you after class.”

  Jessie still had to repay Suzanne for the paper, but her employer had allowed Jessie to purchase an enlarger on credit so she could print the film at the Harms household. Keeping track of everything did take time.

  “I can’t pay you very much, Marie. It wouldn’t be right for you to—”

  “It would be good for me to learn a trade. Papa started out as a bookkeeper.”

  “There’s still the matter of payment.”

  “Show me how to develop my film, the way you do it, in the darkroom. That would be payment enough. Besides, what respectable business doesn’t have a receptionist?”

  “It would help,” Jessie said. “But next fall, you’ll be off to college. Don’t even think about making this kind of work your future.”

  “Mama wouldn’t let me,” she said. “But until then, I’m yours, Miss Gaebele.” Marie curtsied. “When I’m not visiting my friends or sledding or skating. I have such a busy life.”

  When Marie headed off for a skating party while Jessie developed film, it crossed her mind that maybe she spent too much time in photographic pursuits. She didn’t have conversation to share with the Harmses over Sunday suppers unless they spoke about photography or sermons. Marie stopped asking her if she had any beaus when Marie began to be courted by her own peers. But Jessie had her goals; those consumed her, giving her scant time for pleasure.

  Her future success required vigilance. Jessie knew that like a kite she could be riding high one day but be swooped down in a flash by a change in the wind. She would put in as many hours as she could in the event that Suzanne decided to sell. If that happened, she’d need an alternate plan. She didn’t want to stay in Milwaukee all her life, so buying the studio wasn’t an option. Her “Harmses’ studio” wasn’t enough to survive on. She needed to consider work elsewhere—not Winona. She wasn’t ready to go back there. But she must not be caught without a plan. She would order a photographic magazine that listed assistant positions. They might be in faraway places like New York or Seattle. She’d keep watching. Meanwhile, she’d save and one day enter a bank and show them that she was good for the payments, that they could give her credit to buy a studio when she found just the right one. Hopefully one day in Winona—when she deserved it.

  In March, Suzanne asked Jessie if she had any hobbies. Jessie was startled both by the personal nature of the question and that she didn’t really have an answer. “I like music,” she said. “I wish I played the piano.”

  “Every woman should have a hobby,” Suzanne said. “Piecing or sewing or gardening. Something she can lose herself in. Maybe even fall back on to earn money.”

  “I get lost in photography,” Jessie said. “It’s my hobby and my work. What about you?”

  “Harold and I used to like to travel. We spent a week in Florida once, when the weather here was ghastly cold. But Harold liked Wisconsin winters. I think he enjoyed telling people how cold it was here or how much snow he had to shovel, to demonstrate his hardiness. Especially when we traveled south. We played tennis then. And Harold was going to take up golf, President Roosevelt’s game.” Suzanne was thoughtful, and Jessie wished she had a hobby if for no other reason than to keep this kind of conversation going. “Such pursuits help a person during a challenging time I think.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Jessie said. “I like to skate,” she remembered. The two worked in silence while Jessie wondered what had initiated Suzanne’s interest in hobbies.

  “Me too,” Suzanne said then, surprise in her voice. “Or did. I just haven’t had the energy for skating sinc
e Harold’s death.”

  “The Menomonee River is still frozen over, and there are ponds.”

  Suzanne frowned. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of now. These headaches…”

  “You said yourself that hobbies help in times of trial. I’ll see if Marie has an extra pair of skates,” Jessie said. “Maybe doing something you like would make the headaches go away. My sisters and I used to skate on Lake Winona. And we tobogganed down the hill from the cemetery too.” She wished she hadn’t mentioned the cemetery.

  “I doubt that skating will address my headaches,” Suzanne said. “More likely it’ll bring up bad memories.”

  “Memories aren’t supposed to hold us hostage,” Jessie told her.

  “They’re meant to transform us, make us different, but in a good way. When someone is missing from our lives, I think the memories of them ought to bring us comfort, a hopefulness that even though they’re gone, we have them here.” She touched her heart. “We still know them in ways no one else ever will, so they stay a part of our lives.”

  Suzanne started to speak, then halted, but she didn’t retreat to her apartment the way she usually did. Jessie hadn’t known she possessed that bit of wisdom, but the saying of it comforted. She didn’t feel so alone when she thought of the happy times with her family before things got complicated. She needed to bring the memories into this place so that she could have confidence instead of concern. Separations could color a soul with good shades, she decided, and not only be reminders of loss.

  Marie’s skates did not fit Jessie well, not even with stockings stuffed into the toes, but Jessie didn’t plan to make any quick moves. Her skates were back in Winona, and it hadn’t occurred to her to bring them. Chilly March winds brushed against their faces as she and Suzanne held hands and poked their skates out onto the frozen river.

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, Jessie,” Suzanne said. Jessie didn’t correct her. Suzanne had been the one to follow up on their conversation. The next day she had told Jessie that Saturday would be fine for skating. Jessie had to scramble to rearrange a portrait sitting so she could go and chastised herself for making commitments that caused her complications. But it was worth it, because she was so pleased that Suzanne wanted to do this with her.