Lilly rolled her eyes, and Jessie’s mother appeared to wiggle her mouth to control a smile.
“I’ll speak to Nic Steffes about your working, but you’ll have to ask for your nickel back, Jessie. And”—to Lilly, her father said—“she’ll be without her camera companion, so there is a sacrifice she’s making too. We’ll see if absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Or if out of sight, out of mind,” her mother answered.
“Just so her body isn’t out of duty,” Lilly said. “I’ve got some dresses in need of a soaking that she can help me with on Saturday.”
“Whenever you wish to begin, Sister,” Jessie said cheerfully. She’d gotten through the supper without committing to anything worse than red washboard knuckles.
An early moon rose as FJ walked the streets from his Knights of Pythias lodge meeting to the steps of his South Baker Street home. He always liked the way the trees etched themselves against the moonlight, sharp as a scissors’ cut. Sometimes there’d be a cloud wisping across the Winona sky and the moonlight would reflect upon it, giving depth to the cloud and illuminating something more than what the eye first encountered. For a moment he’d feel, well, comforted. He didn’t think of himself as a religious man, though he faithfully took his wife and family to the Second Congregational Church each Sunday. Religion was like a basket to him, a container for rituals and routines, filled to the brim with practices that had lost their luster and left little room for enlightenment. He attended more for the children and for Mrs. Bauer than for any kind of comfort he expected to find there. He appreciated the intellectual stimulation of the minister’s words and often sparred with him after the service, drawing upon details gleaned from his own library of classics written by Dante, Shakespeare, and Descartes. Second Congregational seated some of the city’s finest. Attendance was something one just did, and he didn’t expect any moments of satisfying spiritual feeding within those walls.
But at moments like this—an encounter with something familiar, trees against moon, light against clouds—he’d find his spirits lifted to a place not bordered by faith or reason so much as by unexpected beauty. Awe, some might say. It was only a moonlit tree on a lovely night, but it gave him comfort. He felt almost sad when he entered the house and the moon with its iron-grate design disappeared.
Inside, he called out to let Mrs. Bauer know he was home. His mind went to his children. He’d talk with them about their days, read a story to each, then say good night. Then he’d scan the paper while Mrs. Bauer reheated his dinner. He hoped she was over the disruption of the morning. He wasn’t sure whether to apologize again or to let it be. He’d wait to see what her mood was. Hopefully, they’d have a civil conversation about each other’s day, hers with stories of the children or what sewing she might have done, whether the garbage had been transported as scheduled or whether he needed to order ice. He’d have to tell her that while he didn’t appreciate her having used a portrait time to schedule interviews, he thought he’d found what he needed in the two young women: the one being spirited and bright, and the other being teachable and loyal. Good qualities all if he could help them master the skills he wanted. The time he invested would be worth it if the girls could assume the duties should the sickness overtake him again. And if not, they could double the output of prints and speed up development, earning him happier customers. If only he could stay well.
He’d had bouts with rheumatic fever since he’d been in the army, and perhaps those episodes had weakened him, made him more susceptible to the mercury poisonings. But then most of the men he knew who made their living as photographers had at least one bout with the poisons—unless they spread the work around, and that’s
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