A Flickering Light

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “Why, I catch the faces of strong, handsome men like…Daniel here.” More kudos and applause. “Didn’t you see his portrait hanging in the parlor? Voe and I did the matting and the frame for that.”

  “I don’t think you can get them all in that way,” Fred said, coming up behind her.

  “It’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.”

  “There’s too much in the photograph for the eye to accept,” Fred argued. He kept his voice low. “The food becomes the focus instead of the people. There’s too much chance of movement, Jessie. Miss Gaebele.”

  “Just do it as I’ve set it up, or move aside so I can, Mr. Bauer,” she told him, her voice a slightly louder whisper.

  “The sun hits in the wrong place. There’ll be shadows. No one will stand out. It’s the bride and groom who should draw the viewer’s eye.”

  “They will. People will know. Just do it, please, before they tire.”

  “Lover’s spat or professional squabble?” Jerome called out.

  Jessie felt like someone had struck her with a chunk of ice.

  Fred stood still as a post, so Jessie pushed past him, stuck her head under the cloth so she could see the image, pulled the shutter open, counted, then closed it.

  “Now the wedding party alone,” Voe said. “You and me and Daniel and Thomas. Come on, Jessie.”

  “All right,” Jessie said. “But let’s set it up over there in the garden. The two of you sitting with Thomas and me behind you.” She picked up the camera before Fred could protest, set it up again as she wanted. After all, it was her camera.

  The shot was taken among the rows of new greens sprouting up. “New life,” Jessie said. “It’s the perfect place.” A yellow butterfly fluttered at the camera.

  “I think a nice portrait shot of the bride and groom in the parlor would be good,” Fred suggested then. Voe agreed, and so once again the camera was carried back inside while Daniel commented on the growl in his stomach.

  Jerome walked beside Jessie, carrying some plates he’d gotten from Fred, who had gone on ahead with the camera to arrange chairs and pull the drapes.

  “Still giving directions, are you?” Jerome said.

  “It’s what I do,” she told him. She smiled.

  “I take directions well.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem,” she said.

  “It’s a lost cause, Jess. It is. You’re ruining your future hoping for what can’t be.” He nodded his head toward the parlor.

  “Don’t be small, Jerome,” Jessie said. “Or foolish. I like you. You’re Voe’s brother. But I have a career to pursue. That’s all.”

  “It’s him, isn’t it? I can tell.”

  “Did you see the way I directed him? Do you think anyone would want to spend time with a woman like that if he didn’t have to? If the woman wasn’t his mere associate? Better think twice, Jerome.”

  “Aw, you’re not so tough,” he said. His eyes sparkled.

  “As tough as I have to be,” she told him, then started giving orders to Voe and Daniel.

  “Hurry up, Mr. B.,” Voe said after several minutes of his arranging and rearranging. “We don’t have all day.”

  “Yes, you do,” he told them. “You have a lifetime. Stay there. Don’t try to smile. It freezes in the frame and makes you look pasted.” Jessie wiggled rabbit ears behind Fred, making Voe and Daniel both laugh just as Fred snapped the shutter. Everyone applauded. It was as it should be. It was a wedding day.

  The afternoon waned. The meal had been blessed and the food consumed (before the ale, at the direction of Mrs. Kopp), and the pickup band that played afterward took a break. “I think we ought to leave,” FJ said. “I’m going to be late getting you back, and I promised a ride to Russell yet before the day is over.”

  “I suppose so,” Jessie said. She sat on one of the dining room chairs brought under the shade tree. She fanned herself. She looked incredibly young and vulnerable, and he hated himself for his loss of control that morning. It was a momentary lapse. It couldn’t happen again. It must not happen again.

  Yet her presence comforted him. Even her pointing and prodding about how to do this or that, while annoying, also demonstrated her vitality, her amazing fire as she flitted like a bee around the honey of the wedding crowd.

  “Oh, look,” Jessie said. “There’s a mourning butterfly. Don’t you just love the way they have that little white edge around the gray, as though they’re wearing a little cloak?” One settled on the back of her hand. “They always have the proper clothes to wear.”

  “It mourns the loss of sweetness when it leaves your hand,” FJ said.

  She turned to him. “You’re poetic,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  “The band’s starting up again,” Jerome Kopp said, motioning as he approached the two of them. “Wouldn’t you like to dance once, Jess?”

  “Jessie,” she corrected. “It’s bad enough my mother gave me a boy’s name, so please don’t shorten it any more than it is. And no. You know I don’t dance. Our church doesn’t allow it.”

  Jerome cocked his head, looked at her and at FJ. “Doesn’t allow dancing, your church. I bet it doesn’t allow a number of things that you are indulging in.”

  FJ watched Jessie’s face turn pink before she said, “You’re right, Mr. Bauer. We ought to be getting back so you can give your son a ride in the touring car. I’ll say my good-byes to Voe and Daniel.” She stood then and smoothed her skirt before striding off with as much stature as her short legs allowed.

  “She’s quite a woman, wouldn’t you say?” Jerome said. Both men stood staring after her.

  “She has a bright future ahead of her as a photographer,” FJ told him. “Your sister too, if she applies herself a little more.”

  “Oh, Voe won’t last long at your studio. Daniel will have her waiting on a babe before a year is out. Then he’ll want her home at the end of the day when his train crew’s in town, now that he’s certain she’ll be there waiting. A man likes to have a wife waiting for him, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It seems to be the way of things, yes.”

  “You’ve got a wife counting on you, don’t you? I’m sure Voe said you were married with children.”

  “Indeed,” FJ said. The collar of his shirt felt tight. The heat of the day.

  “A man has to appreciate what he’s got or he’ll forget and start looking for what isn’t his to have.”

  “You’re a wise young man,” FJ said, “but you don’t have all your facts straight, Mr. Kopp. So perhaps you ought to forestall any more advice.”

  He walked to the car then. They’d long ago loaded the camera and plates. He busied himself with his back to Jerome, hoping the boy had gone back to the crowd. He could hear his heart pounding a little louder than it should. He opened his shirt and the collar. If a bumpkin like Jerome Kopp saw what he thought he saw, how many others might see it as well?

  “I’ll drop you off at your home,” Fred said. “No sense in you having to carry the camera back. I’ll bring the plates in on Monday, and we can develop them together.”

  “Oh, just let me off at the studio now,” Jessie told him. “I may as well get started on some of them. I don’t have anything better to do. Besides, my parents don’t know that you drove me. They think Daniel or his brother came and picked me up here this morning.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Because I told the truth slant.”

  The drive back had been a silent one, but Jessie assumed that the warm wind breathing on their faces and the tight goggles Fred had remembered he could wear to keep his eyes clear were the cause of the stillness between them. Maybe he was upset about her pushiness with the camera at the wedding or Jerome’s guessing at something improper. But she’d wanted him to see that she was fully capable of managing herself and that she didn’t need his protection or guidance in matters of the lens or her heart. She hadn’t liked Jerome’s comment about what her church didn’t allow. She’d wanted to look
at Fred when he said that but didn’t dare. Jerome was seeing things, but she could handle him. He wouldn’t tell anyone that mattered, and what did he have to tell, after all? They’d shared a moment of intimacy, of affection. The world needed people to be more affectionate toward one another, more tender. That’s all this had been. Jerome saw things that weren’t there.

  She just wanted to get back to the safety of the studio, where they could be themselves and talk if they wanted to, or work together as a couple who cared about the same things. Her grandparents had worked together on the farm, and her parents too, until her father’s illness had forced the move to town. They were a team, raising children, though it wasn’t the same as when her mother had been out with him milking the cows or pitching hay beside him. How many people had the privilege of working beside someone they loved?

  She startled herself with that statement. She wasn’t in love with Fred. She wasn’t. She could not be. She simply wanted his company, his companionship, his…tenderness for one more week.

  “Jessie,” Fred said when he pulled up next to the studio. He turned the engine off, removed his goggles. “We’re in dangerous water here. At the moment, it’s just been a splash, nothing too harmful. But it could be. And I’d be terribly remiss if I let this continue. Even to say how wonderful it was to hold you. Even if I told you that I have never in my life been unfaithful to my wife, never. And I don’t consider that one kiss an act of unfaithfulness. Maybe some would.” She stared at him. “It is.” He covered that last with a cough. “It was a moment of loveliness that I will cherish. I—”

  “Let’s just carry the camera inside, and you can go on your way. We have all next week to discuss this. Just next week and then I’m gone. Poof!” She snapped her fingers the way Lilly sometimes did to make her points. “Out of your life forever. So let’s not ruin what was a lovely, tender thing. Let’s not.”

  He nodded, opened his door, and came around to open hers. He took her hand to help her step on the running board, and through her gloves she felt the electricity of his touch. It sparked a tingling in her throat and, like a long ellipsis, moved through her body to her toes. She saw by the look on his face that he had felt it too, and she pulled her hand from his.

  “Can you reach the camera all right?” she asked. “I can take the plates. Oh, and where’s my hat? I was going to wear it to make my transition from bridal party participant to professional wedding photographer.” She looked over the side into the back. “I forgot I even had it.”

  “It must have flown out,” Fred said. “Though I didn’t see it. Or maybe you left it at Voe’s.”

  “I probably did,” Jessie said. “It was just a small-brimmed one I thought would keep the wind from lifting me up and carrying me away if it got beneath the felt.”

  “You were quite professional without it,” Fred said. He bowed his head to her.

  “We did well, didn’t we? I can hardly wait to see how the pictures come out. We can always take out the background in the shot we took of them eating. I know you didn’t like that one.”

  “An unpainted house isn’t the best backdrop,” he noted. “Not to mention all the distractions on the table.”

  “Good backdrops are hard to find in the unposed world,” Jessie said. “At least in photography we can dismantle them, make it into just the picture we want.”

  “A benefit of our profession.”

  Jessie sighed.

  He carried the camera into the studio, set it on the table in the kitchen. She walked past him and took the plates into the darkroom area. She hoped he’d follow her, willed him to be curious about the photographs, hoping it would overcome his reticence of being too close to her.

  She waited to hear his footsteps. Instead she heard the engine of the touring car start up, and she stepped out in the lobby of the studio just in time to see him pulling away.

  Lessons of a Night Sky

  “HEY, LOOK WHAT I FOUND.” Russell came running in from the touring car as they readied themselves for church Sunday morning. Mrs. Bauer frowned.

  “You left it in the car, Mama,” Winnie said.

  “It was under a rug like the one Papa has at the studio,” Russell said.

  “What?”

  He handed her a small-brimmed blue hat with tiny white flowers dotting the brim. The felt was soft. Holding something firm made Mrs. Bauer feel steady. The color was a deep blue, not a color she liked at all. She didn’t think it was her hat, but it must have been. Whose hat would it otherwise be?

  “Thank you, Russell. I must have left it there on Sunday last.”

  She sat then, staring at the hat that she was certain wasn’t hers, but maybe she saw stains others couldn’t see and maybe she wore hats that looked better on a lovely young woman who was working with her husband. Could that be? Voe Kopp didn’t wear such hats as that. Had she seen it on…? She tried to remember. Maybe Lilly wore it and had left it. Or Selma. But how would it have gotten into the car?

  It must be her hat, and she couldn’t even recall it. She felt a pang of—she searched for the word—envy. Envy of young women who remembered things. Envy of young women who felt something for their lovers, their husbands, something she never had and never would. That Kopp girl had married, hadn’t she? Hadn’t Mr. Bauer said something about the wedding dates being set up and changed? And the other one, Jessie, her name was, she’d found another job. Had her husband hired a new girl? Why hadn’t he told her? Maybe he had. She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. She had become more like her sister Eva than she wanted to admit.

  At least Eva was better now. Not so scattered, her husband said. The doctors in Rochester had helped her. Maybe they could help me. But I’m all right.

  It’s my hat. It must be.

  She was so tired she could hardly lift a hand to shell a pea, and yet she could feel envy. For a young woman getting married? Why envy her? For the new beginning, perhaps. It would be nice to begin again. There had been a time with Mr. Bauer when the children had brought them both such joy. Until Donald… She felt tears slip down her cheeks.

  “Are you all right, Mama?” Russell again, touching her. She jerked back.

  “I’m fine. Fine.” She shook her head. At least she could feel something.

  Jessie had a plan for how this was going to be. She ignored Lilly’s looks as she readied herself for work at the studio. “My last week,” she told her.

  “I’m sorry it’s worked out this way, Jessie. Really, I am. Maybe you can photograph things on the side, get Papa to help put up a darkroom in the basement and develop your pictures here. You can still pursue your dream…in a good way.” Jessie stiffened. Lilly reacted to it. “I only meant that you won’t be giving up what you want for something you can never have. That’s all I meant. That you are being good to yourself.”

  “Not that I deserve it,” Jessie said.

  “We do. It’s just that if we pray for things that will hurt us, we won’t get them.”

  “So if we get them, and they still hurt, then it was all right with God? Our suffering wipes away what we shouldn’t have wanted in the first place?” She was being obstinate, she knew.

  Lilly hesitated. “You have a fresh start with Mr. Carleton waiting for you. Don’t do anything to risk that.”

  She thought of Fred as she walked to the studio the Monday after Voe’s wedding. Fred waited for her. She held resolve like a fan against her face. The fabric proved too slender a separation. All the promises they’d made to themselves and to each other when last they’d met disappeared like snowmelt in the spring.

  Each day became a treasured ritual for Jessie. When they first arrived, they allowed their passion to set free the desire of the nights, to hold, caress—nothing more, nothing more, and only for a moment. I am a good girl. She was. People would be coming in; knowing that set the boundaries. There could be no flushed faces greeting clients, no fluttering at an interruption. Professionalism. Her mother might come by or even Lilly, knowing Voe was on her honey
moon and here was their precious daughter and sister alone with a man. They could come in anytime at all, though Jessie was quite certain they wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure why. Her parents trusted her. She pushed at her glasses.

  Jessie and Fred stole a moment for themselves, each tasting of the morning, and then went to work.

  When people left, when Jessie held the door open for them to leave, she’d watch Fred shake the man’s hand and graciously assist the woman with her purse, offer a few chatted words, exchange thank-yous as he watched them, hand to elbow, walk down the street. Then Fred would step back inside. Jessie organized the props of scarves or watered the plants set on the stands for the previous pose. She would sense his movement toward her as though the very air he stirred reached out with tentacles of longing. He’d trace her chin with his fingers or frame her shoulders, his face against her cheek, the stubble rough. He’d wrap his arms around her so she could sink into him and sigh. It was enough then to know that he carried in his heart the same vibrancy that shuddered in her own. It wasn’t what she’d intended; it wasn’t. They kept the boundaries, together ignored that they’d already stretched beyond forgiveness.

  After the last client left, Jessie took the plates into the developing room. They allowed themselves but one embrace, in the entryway between the darkroom and the light, where they’d taken refuge from the storm those years before. Jessie waited for this moment every day that week, predictable as a heartbeat. Just one enfolding of two lives, one clasp in the darkness, where loving was allowed but sating not.

  Jessie always broke the embrace. To reassure him she still controlled her heart.

  Until they neared the end of the magical week.

  They’d been in the entryway, and Fred held her so tight that she understood why dancing was forbidden—such closeness: self-control and linens all that separated them.

  They hadn’t heard the bell announcing visitors, Jessie realized later. Instead, Winnie, with Selma in tow, rushed into the darkroom entry, startling Jessie and Fred.