A Flickering Light (43 page)

Wind gusted and pushed her skirts against her legs as she headed home. She held her hat. She missed the blue one, knew she’d left it in Mr. Bauer’s touring car. It belonged to Mrs. Bauer now. As did the man Jessie had come to love and left.

Jessie spent the Fourth of July with her family. The parade came down Broadway, and Jessie held her camera at the ready. Selma acted as her helper, and Roy hung on to a box of glass plates as though it were gold. Even Lilly seemed to enjoy the day and offered to pose. Jessie chuckled to herself when she saw the background of that photograph: one of the parade horses had taken that moment to relieve itself. It would be a blur, but Jessie thought she might make a print with that background as a reminder to herself that nothing can be controlled, not one thing except how one thinks and how one acts on those thoughts—and even then one often needs help. She’d take the background out in the print she gave to Lilly. No sense in stirring any more flames with her older sister. Things were settling down after her confession.

Jessie had told Lilly the following week as they dressed in their room. Selma had already gone downstairs. “Your dour predictions and knowing looks were the truth,” Jessie said. “Except that Mr. Bauer and I did not… We never… The marriage bed…”

“You let that man take all you loved, and you gave it up, for him. I knew it! What an evil, evil man.”

“He isn’t evil, Lilly. I don’t think I am either. We all make mistakes; we all do. Part of the tragedy of this is that until recently I didn’t experience any real pain. I imagined myself into another world when I was with him. I didn’t expect you and Selma and Mama and Papa would ever intersect it. He didn’t make me give up anything.”

“Except your integrity and good name. Oh, Jess, I just can’t believe you did that! Why? Why couldn’t you just appreciate that you’d found something you loved to do and were being paid for it, and carried on without undermining it?”

“I took photographs. I learned how to run a studio. It wasn’t all bad, which is part of what let me convince myself I wasn’t hurting anyone.”

She shook her finger at Jessie, more angry than her father had been, matching her mother’s wrath. Jessie stepped back. Jessie’s mother hadn’t spoken directly to her since the revelation. She spoke through her sisters to “tell Jessie to set the table” or whatnot.

“How can you ever think that your life can be anything now except burdened with shame and guilt? Such a waste,” Lilly said. She turned her back. Jessie thought her shoulders shook.
Is she crying?

“There’s no reason for you to be so angry, Lilly. It was my wrongdoing, not yours.”

“But you had happiness with your camera. Joy, and you tossed it away. I don’t understand it.”

It occurred to Jessie that Lilly might have been speaking of herself, and she wondered what joy Lilly had let pass by. “Papa has forgiven me, I think, and I hope Mama will in time. I really do believe what they teach, Lilly, and that we get second chances. Maybe many chances. We may not deserve it, but I’m going to take it if it comes my way.”

“You ought to suffer,” Lilly said. “Now I’ll have to be extra careful when I do Mrs. Bauer’s fittings to not let anything slip. I’ll
know
things I shouldn’t know.”

“I guess I shouldn’t have told you, but you’d find out before long anyway. Selma would tell. Or Mama. And I didn’t want Selma to slip sometime and you feel you’d been excluded.”

“Selma knows?”

“She was the one who really made me face up to…well, what I’d done. I couldn’t let her think that what she’d seen—a chaste embrace, Lilly, that’s all it was—was somehow ‘romantic,’ as she put it. I couldn’t let that stand. I intended to break it off with him that very next morning, and then she said something that told Mama and Papa they had to intervene. But I think I would have cut it off without them. I think I would have.”

“How long has everyone else known?” Lilly pouted.

“Only a little while.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you myself and to tell you too that I’m going to be leaving town. So you won’t have to look at your sinful sister every day.”

Lilly’s shoulders slumped. “I just don’t understand why some people shoot themselves in the foot and then wonder why they can’t step forward.”

“I am sorry,” Jessie said and wondered if Lilly was speaking to herself as well, but she didn’t pursue it. It would be a while, if ever, before Lilly opened her arms to Jessie as her father had.

At the parade, Jessie clasped her own hands, opening and closing them in nervous action until she found another photo opportunity. She caught herself looking for the Bauer family at the parade, but only once, when she glimpsed a woman in a blue hat riding in a touring car. It wasn’t her hat or his car. Her mother caught the direction of her gaze and frowned at her. Jessie dropped her eyes. Shame came as easily as breath.

She didn’t see the Bauer children anywhere along the parade route or in the gardens where other children rushed about. She was sad about that. She would have liked to say good-bye to the children.

The children. She hoped those moments of stolen care she’d had with their father wouldn’t tarnish any shine in their lives. It was one more fervent prayer she would remember to offer up.

As the night blackened, a boom announced the beginning of the fireworks. It was a wet spring, so there’d be more fireworks and less fear of the sparks falling onto dry grassy bluffs and starting fires. Jessie thought of the irony of that: some flames were set to burn the bluffs and be put out by the snowmelt; other flames would do damage falling hither and yon from the explosions. Set fires could have value; playing with fire did not.

Roy shouted and came closer to her. “Y-y-you should stay here,” he said. “D-d-don’t go. I—I—I n-n-need you.”

“Oh, Frog.” She pulled him to her. Could she learn to live with the surprise of seeing Mr. Bauer, his wife, and his children around every corner? Maybe that was exactly what she needed. Maybe seeing them, knowing they would be there on the streets of Winona every now and then, would be a good reminder to her of what she’d done, flesh out her character on the bones of remorse. Roy needed her. She wasn’t one to run away when someone needed something.

But this time she had to go.

“I’ll see you now and then,” she assured him. He leaned into her shoulder, and she held him.

Leaving Roy behind was part of her penance.

The Bauers drove to Bluffside Park to watch the Fourth of July celebration. Robert sat on FJ’s lap in the touring car once they had parked. FJ had a momentary flash of memory sear him with Robert so close. He’d been holding Donald just so when the horse had kicked up past the wagon board in a bizarre way that caught Donald in the head.
While I held him
. The horse’s hoof had lifted high enough just as Donald had leaned forward. Timing. The boy had died instantly.

He pulled Robert to him. He’d keep this child safe. It was what he had to do now. Think of the children. Winnie and Russell argued over who got to sit on the hood of the car so they could see better. “Russell, you’re so tall that if you sit there we’ll all miss the fireworks. Get in the back. Winnie, you can stand beside him. Look up when you hear the boom. It’s really not a good idea for anyone to sit on the hood.”

After a few groans, they complied.

“How are you doing, Mrs. Bauer?” he’d asked then. She sat bundled up beside him as though it were winter, a shawl wrapped as tight as a boa around her arms. “Aren’t you too warm?”

“Why do you ask?” she’d snapped, then calmed. “I’m fine.”

“Good. Very good.”

His mind roamed to Jessie and the weeks past. He would stop the memories eventually, but he wanted to savor them for a time. He rehearsed in his mind how he’d act if he encountered her: nonchalant, as though he were only a former employer meeting with his student. She might come in to visit with Voe, or he might meet her walking in Levee Park. He should write a letter of recommendation for her, even locate a studio if that’s what she planned to do. He knew no one in Seattle. That’s the city she’d mentioned. In the end, he hoped she wouldn’t leave Winona and the support of her family. She was a good girl, and the Gaebeles good people. Making major changes as she proposed required the support of those who loved you.

“I think you should take me to Rochester next week,” Mrs. Bauer said.

“Oh? Some shopping you’d like to do?”

“No. The hospital. The one my sister went to. I want to talk to those doctors there. Maybe something would…change.”

“What brings this on?” He twisted so he was sitting nearly facing her, Robert still between them.

“Aren’t I allowed to improve myself? Find out why I’m so… why I have so little stamina. Why I’m so forgetful.” She stared ahead.

Winnie leaned down from the back of the car to pat her mother’s shoulder.

“Of course. Whatever I can do.” He turned back, looked out the side into the growing darkness.

“Come with me. You could come with me.”

He turned back to her. “You think that would be helpful?” She nodded. He was trying to lose memories, and she was hoping to regain some.

“Is that girl back, Miss Kopp?” Mrs. Bauer asked.

“It’s Mrs. Henderson now,” he told her. “And yes. She’s been back for a week already.”

“She’ll become…well, you know. You’ll lose her. Have to train another. What about that Gaebele girl?”

“She’s going to work for Ralph Carleton.”

“Such a loss of your good training, having her end up there.”

“Would you consider doing some retouching again?” he asked. “I could use the help with Miss Gaebele gone. I have a couple of wedding pictures, Mrs. Henderson’s, in fact, that could use a little work.”

“I don’t think so. Train Mrs. Henderson.”

“Yes, there’s that.” He sighed.

“It’s always good to have a back-up person, especially with your illnesses sneaking up on us. Winnie, stop kicking the back of the seat.”

“They have affected all of us, my illnesses, haven’t they?” FJ said.

“Not as much as Donald’s death,” she said. He believed it was the first time she’d said such a thing out loud.

“I am so sorry,” he said. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes. He patted Robert’s knees. “So very sorry.” He had said it so often to himself, but perhaps he’d never said it out loud to her before. He couldn’t remember. He reached to pat her hand. She withdrew it from beneath his. “We’ll go to Rochester and see what we can find. We’ll all go,” he said, opening his eyes. “Make a day of it.” Make something good to come from all this.

“It’s not going to be an outing,” Mrs. Bauer corrected. “Did I say I wanted an outing?”

“No. You said you wanted to see what Eva’s doctors might have to say. But we all have an interest. So all of us can go, and all of us can enjoy the ride at least. A little thing to make the children smile. Even you, Mrs. Bauer.” He tipped his hat to her. She looked shy for a moment, flashed a quick smile that came, then left, as fleeting as a happy thought. It was the best he could hope for today.

Jessie helped her mother and sisters with the laundry. She and Lilly wrung out the sheet too large to go through the wringer.

“But where will you stay?” her mother asked Jessie. At least Mama was talking to her. They hung wash in the backyard while the hot July wind whipped their skirts and sometimes plastered the wet sheets against their faces as they clipped the wooden pins over the cloth and wash line. A few mallards lifted from the river, sweeping low across the sky, quacking as they rose.