Vera wandered over to the sideboard where the week’s rejected photographs were in a stack. She pulled out the one of Luke and wiggled it suggestively. “This is the best of the lot. Go ahead and add it into the stack to show your father.”
Marianne considered the suggestion. Although the Department of the Interior primarily wanted photographs documenting specific government initiatives, they liked occasional artistic shots taken in the city.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marianne said. Yesterday she’d told Papa about the incident with the dog, but not about the photograph. Something about it seemed too personal. It was a shared moment of communion between herself and a complete stranger as they embarked on a daring venture together. It had been one of the most exciting moments of her life, and she wasn’t ready to share it yet. Normally she let her father witness her entire life through her photographs. She showed him everything. But she didn’t want him seeing that man with the dog. Something warned her against it.
It was almost ten o’clock before her father arrived home, and masculine voices outside the door indicated Clyde had brought company. Vera immediately fled upstairs in horror. Her mother had already taken her hair down and wore nothing but a casual lounging dress without the painfully tight corset. Appearances were everything to Vera, and she would never let herself be seen so casually attired.
Marianne had no such qualms and did nothing aside from straightening the collar of her blouse before heading to the entryway to greet her father, who was already hanging up his jacket. His guest was a redheaded man with an enormous walrus mustache. She suspected he was Congressman Roland Dern, because Clyde had told her how much he disapproved of that mustache. Congressman Dern was in his mid-thirties and the chairman of her father’s only committee assignment. That meant Congressman Dern was her father’s boss.
“Roland, I’d like to introduce my daughter, Marianne. She’s the one I brag incessantly about.”
Congressman Dern gave a polite nod. “I’ve come to see your photographs,” he said. “I didn’t realize when we began our dinner that you have a standing appointment with your father every Thursday night. I’m sorry to have delayed the ritual, so let’s not beat around the bush. Show me your pictures.”
She looked to Clyde for permission. Normally the weekly ritual was an event she and her parents enjoyed together. Clyde seemed uneasy as he gave a stiff nod of consent. How awkward it must be for her father to be beholden to a man young enough to be his son, but Marianne pretended not to notice the tension as she led the way into the dining room, where the best of her photographs were on display.
The scent of cigar smoke lingered on both men as they circled the table. Her father paused before the photograph she’d taken of children playing in the snow outside the Library of Congress. The picture captured the spirit of unabashed joy as the children romped and played.
“This belongs in a museum,” Clyde said, chuckling at the snow-encrusted children. “The lighting, the expressions, the composition . . . all of it is sheer poetry captured on celluloid. It makes me want to pick those boys up and take them home with me.”
She smiled but didn’t miss the hint of regret in his voice. Clyde had always wanted lots of children, but her mother’s fragile health precluded more.
“The government pays you to take photographs like this?” Congressman Dern asked, disapproval plain in his voice.
Her father heard it and jumped to her defense. “They need as many photographs as possible in preparation for the McMillan Plan.”
The McMillan Plan was an optimistic vision to tear down old government buildings and clear the way for a huge national park around which new cultural and administrative buildings would be erected. Everyone she knew, including most of the people at the Department of the Interior, thought the McMillan Plan was an extravagant waste of money. That was why she’d been assigned to photograph the existing architecture and how people used the public spaces.
“The entire McMillan Plan is a misuse of taxpayer funds,” Congressman Dern said. “It’s all so that Washington can compete with the great capital cities of Europe. I say the business of our country is business. Not lavish green spaces.”
“I agree,” Clyde said as he wandered over to her collection of images of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. “This one is okay,” he said after a pause.
It was faint praise. Her father was no artist, but he had keen instincts, and she trusted his judgment.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.
He continued frowning at the picture as he studied it. “Do you have any others of the train station?”
“I haven’t enlarged them, but I’ve got a dozen or so other shots.”
“I’d like to see them.”
The other pictures were only three-by-five inches in size, the standard format of the Brownie camera. After she developed the film, she selected only the best photographs to enlarge. The eight-by-ten-inch pictures would be added to the government repositories that would document the city for future generations. Even without the McMillan Plan, Washington was undergoing a state of regeneration as the red brick buildings of the colonial era were torn down and replaced by monumental buildings in the neoclassical style. She’d been hired to document the process as old buildings were torn down, the land graded and levelled, and the skeletal frameworks of new buildings were erected.
She brought over the other pictures of the Baltimore and Potomac and handed them to her father, who flipped through them quickly, identifying three and setting them on the dining table.
“These might make your case better,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. The three close-up photographs seemed boring and didn’t capture the gothic beauty of the station. The B&P was only thirty years old and a masterful example of Victorian gothic architecture. It was made of red brick and featured three towers with slate roofs and ornamental ironwork. Its beauty made it one of the most popular images on the postcards bought by tourists. It was only three blocks from the Capitol and was the primary railroad station used by everyone serving in Congress.
“If the McMillan Plan passes, the B&P is slated for demolition,” Clyde said. “Congressmen see it every day, but your close-ups highlight the expense that went into creating the hand-carved entablatures and the ornamental ironwork. There’s value in that. Roland? What do you think?”
The younger man nodded. “If the government tears down a perfectly good railroad station for the benefit of a public park, I think the nation should know what we stand to lose.”
Clyde walked over to the sideboard to return the smaller pictures, then paused. “What’s this?”
She stiffened. Her father held Luke’s photograph in his hands, and his face was a mask of disapproval. True, Luke wore no shirt in the picture, but it wasn’t a lewd photograph. A coat was draped over his shoulders, and Bandit covered most of his torso.
“That’s the man who got Bandit out of the ice,” she said. “I couldn’t resist taking a picture.”
“This is the man who rescued Bandit?” he asked in a surprised tone.
“Yes. He was very heroic.” She was about to say that he had even sent her roses afterward, but the grim look on Clyde’s face made her reconsider.