Mattie

by Judy Alter

  She meant, I suspected, that she might have other plans, both professional and personal. One of her classmates, Dwight Peterson, had been courting her rather strongly, and that probably was behind her change in plans. I accepted the job with the school.

  One of the things I felt I had to do was to write Will Henry and Mr. Reeves about my decision. I knew they both kind of harbored a hope that I would settle in western Nebraska, and I hated to disappoint them. But I simply could not see myself leaving Omaha, especially for what sounded to me like a wild country.

  Their answer, written jointly, came quite quickly, considering the state of mail service in those days. They were disappointed but wished me well, and wouldn’t I come to Benteen to visit before I began my new duties at the college? I toyed with that idea but ultimately rejected it, urging them instead to try to come to my graduation.

  Dr. Dinsmore had been partly responsible for my decision that I could not visit them. “Mattie, how would I get along without you?” he asked jokingly. There was an underlying seriousness in his tone that alarmed me.

  “Someday, you know, it’s going to be time for me to grow up and leave this house.” I said it lightly, but I, too, was serious.

  So was he. “I hope not.”

  We wore the traditional mortarboard and black graduation gowns, and all during the ceremony I felt like I had to pinch myself. Had Mattie Armstrong, that ugly girl from the wrong side of the tracks in Princeton, really come this far? I felt a sense of panic that I would never be able to retain all that I had learned, alternating with a wonderful sense of self-confidence that I had really done it, I had completed medical school. I was proud, of course, to be the first woman, but that didn’t mean as much to me as leading the class.

  After graduation, there was a reception at the school, with champagne—the first I’d ever tasted—and tiny cakes. Everyone milled around, offering congratulations and asking questions about the future.

  “Oh, Mattie, I’m so excited!” Sara nearly jumped up and down in her joy. “I’m going to be a doctor, too, when I grow up. I know I can do it, just like you.”

  “Of course you can, Sara, if that’s what you really want.”

  “I don’t know that I could stand to have two women doctors in the house,” Dr. Dinsmore laughed. “One may be more than I can handle.” Again, his arm rested casually around my waist, a possessive gesture that was becoming more frequent and was, to me, unsettling.

  Cora congratulated me and confided the news that she and Dwight Peterson planned to be married as soon as they finished their studies. She thought I’d done the right thing by staying at the school, because Dwight talked of the two of them going to Chicago to practice. Chicago! The very thought intimidated me, and I was glad I had stayed at the college, too. It seemed the right thing to do.

  Dean Lacross congratulated me, too, sincerely, saying that in truth he had had his doubts about my ability, but he now had to admit that he was wrong, and he was, indeed, proud of my achievement. He was a sophisticated man, dignified, you’d say, and to have someone like that praise me, a country girl from Missouri, was heady indeed. I forgave him all his slights to my womanhood.

  Will Henry and Mr. Reeves did not cone to graduation. I barely had time to miss them.

  Working at the clinic seemed little different than my final student days, so my life went on essentially unchanged. I felt pretty smug, I guess, sure that I was settled. I would be a doctor and live happily ever after in Omaha. Reminds me of the Greek saying that whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. I wasn’t mad with power, just smug with success. And, of course, I wasn’t destroyed. Just pointed in a new direction which turned out to be the best thing that ever could have happened to me. But if you’d told me those first days in the clinic that within a year I’d be living in a soddie in western Nebraska, the only doctor for miles and miles, I’d have either laughed or cringed in terror.

  I became active in the newly organized Douglas County Medical Society, working with public education programs, going out to churches and the like to give talks on the importance of cleanliness, proper treatment for cholera and things like that. Public speaking terrified me at first, but I found that I was good at it. People responded. I think a lot of young mothers responded simply because I was a woman, sharing with them, rather than a man preaching at them. I was so successful at the public education program and so willing to go out and speak when other doctors thought they were too busy that I was soon elected president of the medical society.

  “Now, Mattie, that’s a real feather in your cap. To think they’d elect a woman president.” Dr. Dinsmore beamed as we rode home in the carriage after the meeting.

  “Bother!” I answered. “Being a woman had nothing to do with it. They just know I’m the only one who’s willing to do the work and will take the time.”

  “The medical college, of course, will let you take as much time as you need. They want to be closely involved in the local society, you know.”

  “Closely involved? You mean they want to control it!”

  “Ah, Mattie, you do have a gentle way with words. Yes, they want to control it so they can maintain the quality of medicine in this area. It’s not such a bad goal, you know.”

  “Still sounds like tyranny to me.”

  Dr. Dinsmore threw up his hands in mock despair and said loudly, “Look what I’ve created! Educate a woman and you get yourself all kinds of trouble!”

  We laughed together, and it was the last unrestrained laugh I remember that we shared.

  It took me months to realize it, but Dr. Dinsmore was the fly in my ointment. The man who’d rescued me from Princeton, the man whose every judgment I respected and whose every word I dwelt on, the man to whom I owed everything that I was now proud of—he’d changed. Or I’d changed. Or somewhere, something was different.

  I’d noticed for some time that he put an arm around me differently than he did Sara, or that he seemed to stare intently at me when he talked to me, whereas when I was younger he would discuss medicine with me in a kind of abstracted way, so that I knew I was a handy listening post, not really the object of his talk. Nowadays I felt like he was always talking directly to me, and his talks became more philosophical, less scientific.

  I still regarded him as the father I’d lost or never had, and for him to step out of that role, with the casual hugs and soul-baring conversations, made me uncomfortable with a guilt I couldn’t pinpoint. He would discuss life, love, children, health as a reflection of mental happiness. One day he startled me by saying, “You know, Mattie, man was not meant to live alone. Nor woman either. It’s not good for emotional health. I shall want to remarry soon. Have you thought about marriage?”

  I was making notes for a presentation to the medical society, and his remark caused me to press so hard on my pencil that I broke it. “No,” I hesitated. “I haven’t given it much thought, because I just always assumed that it was something I would think about when I met the man I wanted to marry.” Vaguely, I knew what he was hinting at, but the idea of a romantic relationship with him was so foreign, so impossible that I blocked out the thought.

  “And you haven’t met that man?”

  I laughed nervously. “You know very well you and Sara would be the first ones to know about that. And you also know there haven’t been any men around here courting me.”

  “That’s true.” He fingered his watch chain and gave me that intense look again. “But I didn’t know if you’d met someone at the clinic or perhaps the church.”

  “Well, I haven’t.” I tried to say it with finality and turn back to my work, but he disconcerted me by crossing the room to stand above me.

  “That’s good,” he said softly, looking down at me until I was compelled to look away in confusion.

  Dr. Dinsmore began to ask me to be his hostess on various occasions and to accompany him to some social functions. I was a little anxious about this but viewed it, truthfully, as another step in his prolonge
d training of me. By sitting at his dinner table, I learned to watch after the guests’ needs, to signal Kate when more water or wine was needed, to judge the moment to have the first course cleared away and the next served. Not that I’ve used any of those skills lately. People in sod huts tend to eat a lot more casually than those at the dinner parties we gave and attended. There was quite a round of social events in Omaha, and now that I was out of school and had more time, I was free to accompany Dr. Dinsmore.

  I still addressed him as Dr. Dinsmore. Do you know a teacher for ten years and suddenly start calling him John? I couldn’t do that, even though he brought the subject up.

  “My dear, don’t you think, especially when we are out in public together, that you could call me John? Dr. Dinsmore sounds so formal. It makes me think I’m escorting a schoolgirl around.”

  In my mind, he was still escorting a schoolgirl, and for me to call him Dr. Dinsmore was the most natural thing in the world. But after that, I called him nothing but merely waited until I had his eye if I wanted to speak to him. I’m not sure if he noticed my evasion or not.

  Things went on like this for several months. Even Sara noticed the difference. “You and Papa go so many places without me these days,” she complained. “Why are you always going out at night to dinner parties?”

  “Shhh, Sara. It’s important for your father’s work at the medical school.” I repeated the justification he had given me, word for word, because I wanted to believe it.

  “Not your work?” The child was perceptive.

  “My work isn’t as important. Someday your father will be a well-known, even famous doctor and educator, and that’s what’s important.”

  “Are the parties fun?”

  “Your father enjoys them a great deal.”

  “And you?”

  I hesitated, wishing she weren’t quite so smart and knowing that I had rarely if ever misled Sara by the tiniest of white lies. “I enjoy them, too, but because they’re showing me a whole new world, a way of behaving and a set of manners that I know nothing about.”

  “And Papa already knew about these manners? What can be so different from the manners he drums into me all the time—don’t eat with your elbows on the table, chew with your mouth closed, butter your bread on the plate and not in the air!”

  I laughed at her recital, dismal as it was. “Those things are important, of course. You wouldn’t go to a fancy dinner party and chew with your mouth open, would you? And yes, your father knew all those things from long ago when he lived in Philadelphia, not Princeton.”

  Dr. Dinsmore had grown up in the East in a wealthy family and had reached young manhood without fighting in the Great War because he had come west at that time to ride with a physician. He once explained to me that he abhorred war to the extent that he left his family, who, being loyal Northerners, disinherited him, although they gave him a kind of nest egg which enabled him to keep himself comfortable. He had simply ridden west until he found a place to stop, and that place had been a small town in Missouri where he spent three years studying under the local doctor. It was there, too, that he’d met and married Mrs. Dinsmore. And when he felt he’d learned all that doctor could teach him, he packed up his wife and the medical books he’d acquired and rode again until he found a town that needed a doctor. That was Princeton. But he hadn’t always lived the unsophisticated small-town life, and once in Omaha, his city tastes and sophistication, which had always distinguished him in Princeton, made him part of a very fashionable crowd. I was a tagger-on.

  Our relationship came to a head one night after one of those dinner parties, some eight months after I’d gone to work at the clinic. We arrived home late. Kate and Sara were both asleep, and the house was quiet and dark.

  “Stay a moment, Mattie. Don’t rush off to sleep.”

  “Oh, I’m really very tired,” I yawned. Being so ladylike and watching my manners always exhausted, and I really was tired.

  “Come sit here on the sofa beside me. I want to talk to you.”

  So I sat, primly, with a distance of maybe a foot between us. Before I could say a word, Dr. Dinsmore was next to me, his arms around me, his lips brushing my cheek.

  “Mattie, Mattie, you must know that I’m in love with you. I want to marry you.” And he kissed me, a kiss that began gently, inquiringly, and then became demanding and firm, even as I tried desperately to pull away, my fists pushing against his chest, my heart beating wildly.

  Finally, released, I fairly leapt across the room to stand and stare in shocked and frightened disbelief, outraged that he had stepped out of his role as father and tried to become a lover. If I had loved him in return, response would have been automatic, but I felt no awakening surge. Fleetingly, I thought that I wasn’t feeling the things that I was supposed to when a man kissed me that way. But this wasn’t any man. This was my beloved Dr. Dinsmore.

  Before I could gather my senses, he crossed the room to grab me again, one hand fumbling at the buttons of my dress, the other holding me immobile. I fought an urge to scream only because I didn’t want to alarm Sara.

  “Mattie, don’t fight me. It’s meant to be. We belong together.” His breath smelled of wine, heavy and unpleasant.

  I don’t know how I broke away from that iron grasp, but I remember finally stumbling and running from the room in tears, slamming the door to my bedroom and not caring by then if I wakened Sara and Kate. I threw myself on the bed and sobbed loudly, the kind of great sobs that come from confusion too strong to be borne. How could he have done that? The man who stood for everything right had done what I thought the most unpardonable thing he could. He had violated not only my physical body but my relationship to him, my respect for him. In one drunken moment, he had wiped out almost ten years and destroyed the foundation on which I had built my life.

  Next morning I stayed in bed. When Sara knocked on the door to tell me breakfast was ready, I pled a headache.

  “Can’t I bring you something, Mattie? Perhaps some tea?”

  “No,” I said, my voice as feeble as I felt. “Just leave me alone.” I burrowed under the covers, hoping she would not come into the room. My eyes were red and puffy, and my head throbbing from all my crying. Every time I thought of the previous evening and the dilemma I now faced, a slight wave of nausea crept over me.

  I appeared at the dinner table, pale but, I hoped, composed, and tried to carry on as normally as possible. Dr. Dinsmore was quieter than usual, barely speaking during the meal, and Sara, well aware of the tension though baffled by its cause, tried to lighten the atmosphere by incessant prattling about her schoolwork, her friends, an upcoming party. Each time she addressed me, I smiled as brightly as I could and made some appropriate comment. But I had only to look beyond the dining room table to the mirror on the wall to see how pale my face was, how false my smile. Dr. Dinsmore avoided looking at me, for which I was grateful. A direct look from his haunted face would have sent me running from the table.

  “If you’re feeling well enough, I’d like to speak to you after dinner,” he said as we rose to leave the table. Neither his face nor voice betrayed the emotion he must have been feeling.

  “Certainly,” I said formally. “Sara, will you excuse us?”

  She nodded mutely, and Dr. Dinsmore, walking erectly as always, led the way to his study. I followed, obediently. Hadn’t I always done what he had told me to? And yet, I fought with every step the urge to run and lock myself in my room. I knew he would make no more advances, but sorting out the previous night’s scene promised to be even more uncomfortable than the scene itself. My heart pounded as before, and I felt a flush cover my face.

  He closed the door firmly, while I stood awkwardly in the center of the room, waiting to see where he would go, what he would do.

  He crossed the room slowly, as though walking were almost painful for him, and sat at the round oak table where Sara had done so much of her homework. Without looking at me, he said wearily, “You have no cause to worry. I won’t
repeat last night’s bitter scene.”

  I knew then that he was angry with himself, desperately angry, and not with me. For the first time, I felt a rush of pity, an urge to go to him and comfort him in the way I might have done before. But my own inner turmoil was too strong, and I simply stood there, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, my hands nearly tearing a handkerchief in half behind my back.

  “You can sit down, you know.”

  Obediently, I sat on the edge of the sofa, looking, I’m sure, as if I were poised for flight. And in truth, I was. Every fiber of my being wanted to run from the room.

  “You must know that I wish to apologize, Mattie.” He spoke in a soft, controlled voice, but one more distant than he had often used of late in speaking to me. “I . . . There is no way to tell you how much I regret attacking you . . . There is, unfortunately, no other word for it. I will not, cannot change the emotions I expressed. I had thought, perhaps, you were aware of my feelings, and I had hoped you shared them. But that is no excuse. I realize you are inexperienced, and I apologize for trying to take advantage.”

  I sat silently during this long speech, still twisting my handkerchief and looking at the floor. I ached for him, for the humiliation he must be suffering, but still I could not bring myself to reassure him. It wasn’t that I wanted him to suffer but more that I myself could not yet get the past evening out of my mind.

  He waited a moment, as though hoping I would speak, and then went on. “I assure you it won’t happen again. I had, as you well know, drunk too much wine last night, and I’m afraid that contributed to my loss of self-control. After this, I will see that neither the wine nor the loss of self-control will be repeated. I hope in time you can forgive me.” He rose then, as though his having said what he needed to had solved the entire matter.

  I wasn’t sure whether he was coming toward me or leaving the room, but in one breath I blurted out, “I have decided to leave.”