The Sisters by Nancy Jensen Page A

“I don’t need any of these hopped-up boys coming round my girl, trying to lure her into trouble just ’cause they’re going off to the war. Plenty of V-girls around for that.”
    Mabel kept her tone casual as she switched off the fill lights, stealing another glance at Daisy. “I don’t put up anything without the client’s permission,” she said. “And even then, I don’t tell anybody who’s in the picture.” She went to where Harker was standing and pointed at the photo showing a dozing young marine stretched out on the ivy-patterned sofa in his mother’s living room, his uniform rumpled, his infant son asleep on his chest. “If he doesn’t come back,” Mabel said, “this is the picture his wife will cherish. Even more than their wedding portrait.” She nodded to the wedding photo—the groom, not a soldier yet, standing awkwardly straight, his bride, head to toe in lace, looking out from her veil with wide eyes, both struggling to look grown-up and dignified, both failing. “Startling how young, she is, isn’t it?” Harker’s head snapped toward her. Mabel nodded again toward the photo. “The bride.”
    Perhaps she had said too much, but Mabel was determined to go on, to show Harker he couldn’t rattle her. She pointed to another photo, one of the marine and his parents around the kitchen table, laughing and spooning up large bites of blackberry cobbler. “I could take shots of you with Daisy while you’re here,” she said, “but if you’ll let me take both, I think you’ll like the home photos better.”
    Harker rubbed hard at his forehead with his fingertips. He turned his head to look again at Daisy, still sitting on the stool in front of the backdrop. He would not look at Mabel. “Saturday afternoon,” he said, “around two. No more than an hour.” He took a small notebook from his pocket, wrote out his address and phone number, and handed it to her. “Ring up when you’re on your way.”
    *   *   *
     
    Just like Paul used to, Mabel kept the studio closed until noon on Thursdays so the morning was free for making prints. The first week she worked there, she had asked him, “Why Thursday?” He said it was because Thursday was the slowest day and mornings were slower than afternoons and he liked having the break just before the busy time on Friday and Saturday, but Mabel had never seen the truth of that. Even before those long Depression years, there hadn’t been any busy time to speak of, and they’d kept the studio going by taking postcard photos and stringing for the Chicago Tribune. Any morning would have done as well as another, but she soon discovered how important regularity was to Paul, how he looked forward to the quiet, there alone in the glow of the red light, and then to the sunlight that met him when he was ready to come out again. Though now she often had to stay late to make prints after hours, Mabel had kept with Paul’s schedule, treating her Thursday mornings as inviolable.
    She swished the print in the first tray with the tongs and watched the outline of Daisy Harker’s face bloom. Behind Mabel dangled strips of negatives, dozens more ghost images of Daisy. Having a few prints to take with her on Saturday would help persuade Harker to let her go on with the session if he balked. On the shelf above her were rolls and rolls of still-undeveloped film capturing other girls who had come to sit for portraits to send off with their boyfriends bound for war, and still more rolls of the men, the boys, who were going—all of them desperate to record a time that was already gone, to have something more tangible than the slippery images of memory.
    The war had brought Mabel more business than she could handle on her own. To fit in the extra session at Emerson Harker’s, she’d had to reschedule two other sittings—but Paul would have done the same. Still, it seemed unfair of fate that Paul should miss the boom time, a chance finally to have enough money to live