Mattie

by Judy Alter

  That anger rose in me a lot in those days. It welled up when Em yelled, “Leave me alone! She’s my daughter, and I’ll raise her the way I want!” and it simmered when he said, “I think Nora is too smart for the local school. We’ll have to send her to boarding school.”

  But Em gave that child something I never could, a sense of herself as a complete individual. While I was still caught seeing her as an extension of myself, something to be loved, cuddled, disciplined and put to bed, he was sometimes, though not always, able to regard her as a separate individual with wishes, angers and needs. It came out in little ways.

  “What did you do today, Nora? I’d like to hear about it.”

  “Would you? Oh, I . . . well, this morning I worked at my books, and Mama helped me, and we learned to spell letters beginning with P. Do you know how many words begin with P?”

  “No,” he said solemnly, “how many?”

  “I don’t know,” she laughed. “Mama said lots and lots, but I have learned some. There’s potato and preacher and poor and purple and . . . let me see . . . oh, piano.”

  “That’s right, love,” he crowed. “Those are good words. And you know what? We’re going to have to get you a piano. Soon, so you can learn to play beautiful music and soothe your father when he’s tired and cross.”

  “Oh, you’re never cross. Only Mama is.”

  I was in the kitchen fixing supper, but I heard those words, and they went through me like a knife.

  Late that night, I talked to Em about it, when we lay close together in bed and Nora slept soundly in the next room.

  “Em, does she really think I’m the only one in the world who ever gets cross?”

  “Shhh. Of course she doesn’t.” His hands reached up under my nightgown and began exploring the sensitive area inside my thighs. I quivered with delight, but my mind wasn’t ready to give up the discussion.

  Pushing him away, I said, “But, Em, it’s not fair. I’m with her all day and trying to see my patients at the same time. And you come home at night, having been free and outdoors all day, and you’re not out of patience. She sees you as wonderful.”

  “Hush,” he said, “she’ll realize when she’s older. It’ll be all right.” And his magic hands did their work, and I melted, my complaints lost in the passion that Em had taught me.

  Em and I had a wonderful private life, as it’s euphemistically called. He was a skilled lover, and I accepted without question that there had been many other women in his life—and his bed—before me. The double standard was stronger than ever in those days, and while I would have been horrified myself not to go to my bridal bed a virgin, I would have been equally terrified if I’d thought Em was virginal. But far from it.

  He taught me the joys of passion with patience and understanding, and after one or two awkward encounters, I responded fully every time we made love. They talk about sex problems a lot today, people who must work at odds instead of with each other, and I don’t know what all kinds of things. But for Em and me, sexual passion was the great joining together that you read about in books. Even after all the other aspects of our marriage had begun to tarnish, we were still one in bed. Some days at the most awkward moments, my thoughts would fly back to the night before, and I’d catch myself smiling, wondering what this patient or that would think if they knew what was on my mind and what I’d done the night before. Not that making love isn’t something most people do, but Em made it so special that I was always sure that it was better for us than any of the rest of the world.

  But you can’t spend your lives in bed, and we had a real world to face each day.

  My real world began early, even if I’d had no calls during the night. Actually, I didn’t get called out that much at night. It’s just that each instance made such an impression that it seemed more frequent. Once Nora came along, there was no question of Em going with me if I had to go out at night, because he had to stay home with her. I let it be known far and wide that in all except the most dire emergencies, patients were to be brought to me at night, and so it was only a far, poorly timed newborn infant who called me out. Still, I dreaded those long drives at night as much as I enjoyed them on a warm spring or fall day.

  But with a full night’s sleep behind me, morning was my time. I’d organize my thoughts for the day, make the breakfast in peace and quiet, and only waken Nora and Em when I had to. Once they were up, the days often seemed to go downhill.

  It was no time at all until Nora was off to the schoolhouse every morning, carrying her little sack lunch and waving brightly to us. Those first few mornings, my heart was in my mouth as I watched her trudge down the road. You’d have thought I was sending her five miles through the snow when in truth I could watch her all the way to the schoolhouse.

  With Nora at school, I turned my attention to my practice, and if Em went on to the claim as usual, my days were busy but satisfying. I kept office hours in the morning, and generally tried to spend the afternoon reading or working on my books until Nora came home. Then I was free to review her lessons with her and start the dinner. I saw that afternoon period as my attempt to assuage Em’s disapproval of my profession, to be the devoted mother that he was convinced Nora needed. In truth, Nora always seemed a little bored going over her lessons with me.

  If Em stayed around the house, as he sometimes chose to do, my days went less smoothly. He would pop into my office a dozen times, no matter who was there, with tiny questions, bits of advice or inane comments, none of which I wanted to hear. It was as though Em couldn’t stand not to be a part of everything that was going on, even my practice. And if I suggested he was bothering me, he either pouted or became angry.

  “No time for your husband, huh? Guess I’m just in the way here.”

  “Em, you know that’s not true. But really, you can’t come barging in when I’m talking to a patient.”

  “Someday you’ll have gone too far in putting your patients before me,” he threatened, but I didn’t even take him seriously.

  Outwardly, we were still accepted as the ideal couple, one of the most stable and happy in Benteen and the surrounding area, a fixture at every church social, school supper and meeting of the literary society.

  “Do we have to go to the literary guild tonight?” Em would ask plaintively.

  “Em, you know they need our support. They count on us.”

  “Can’t they, just once, count on someone else? Just think, Mattie, we could go to bed early and—”

  “I know exactly what you have in mind, Em . . . and it sounds wonderful, but it’ll just have to wait until later. Think how important it is to Benteen to have community activities that will attract more people.”

  “But think how important some time together is to us . . .”

  “Em, we need to support the town so it will grow.”

  “All right, all right, but you haven’t got an ounce of romance in that straight iron soul of yours, Mattie Jones.”

  “Ask me later,” I said lightly, and turned to get Nora ready for the evening.

  Benteen was growing. By the time we had lived in town several years, the population had grown nearly to a thousand, and I was getting more and more patients from in town, with less need to ride the prairie. I liked that part, but I wasn’t sure I liked the growth, much as I knew we needed it. With two hundred people in town, we’d known them all, and I’d felt like part of a safe, secure world. With a thousand, I couldn’t keep track of them, and I felt like I was losing control of my world.

  The town boasted several businesses, a bank, saloons, a newspaper and all the trappings of a growing town rather than just a cluster of houses that happened to be built together. Much of the building was done in anticipation of an extension of the railroad from Fort Sidney, but that never happened. Many prairie towns dried up and blew away when the railhead passed them by, but Benteen for some reason seemed to survive and even grow. In later years, it became a retirement community for farmers, but that’s getting ahead of my story.r />
  Meantime, a city council of sorts was formed, and Em was asked to sit on it.

  “You know, I could try politics someday.” He said it seriously, sitting in my office one night while I worked on my account books. The books were the bane of Em’s existence, for my bookkeeping system was as erratic as my schedule of charges. I generally accepted what the family could pay me for whatever services I rendered, and I still often got two chickens for delivering a baby or a basket of fresh-picked grapes in the spring for treating a sick child. Of course, enough families paid in cash to give us an income, but I still hoped Em would settle down to something that would bring in more money. But no, he was always chasing the grand scheme, like his idea about politics.

  “Politics? Em, really, what do you know about it?”

  “That’s the beauty of it, Mattie. Nobody else knows any more than I do. And I’d be in at the start, just like I am in this city council here in Benteen. Who knows, maybe I should start by offering myself as mayor here.”

  “Ralph Whittaker is already the mayor, Em.”

  “I know, I know. But maybe he won’t want that responsibility for long. It would be good training for me.” His face darkened. “What’s the matter, Mattie? Don’t you think I’d be a good politician?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes, Em, I do think you have the makings of a politician. But I don’t think you should do it.” How to tell him some sense back in my mind knew that he had the makings just because he could charm anybody out of anything, but he didn’t have the perseverance that a career in politics would take? Instead, I said, “There’s not much money in that, you know. Maybe you should stick to enlarging the farm and cattle herd.”

  “Money! That’s all you ever think about. If you’d do a better job with those books of yours, and make people pay you, you wouldn’t always be worried about pennies.”

  He left the room abruptly, but I wouldn’t have answered anyway. It was an old and futile argument, and we had been through it too many times.

  Probably our proudest and happiest moment as a family together was the year Nora had the part of Mary in the annual Christmas pageant. I say annual because it was then in its second year, I believe, and Nora was eight or nine.

  We worried about that pageant for weeks, it seemed, sewing a costume, discussing it with Nora, assuring her she would be fine on center stage, especially since she had no lines to speak.

  “But what if I get scared?”

  “Look out in the audience. Your father and I will be right in front. Besides, Nora, you won’t get scared. You’ve got too much self-confidence for that.”

  “You don’t understand!” she shot back. “Just because you never get scared of anything doesn’t mean I don’t. Daddy will know what I mean.”

  It was a measure of how little my own child understood me that she thought I was never scared. Maybe I wasn’t afraid to ride out on the prairie alone or undertake a delicate medical procedure, but I was full of unspoken fears she knew nothing about. Mostly those fears had to do with Em and our future, and I pushed them to the back of my mind, where they remained to gnaw lightly but persistently at my consciousness.

  Em acted as though Nora’s part in the pageant was but the first step to a major acting career, and Nora relished his attention.

  “Always knew she had a lot of talent, didn’t you, Mattie? You can just tell by the way she carries herself. It would have been a serious mistake to cast any other child in that part.”

  “Em, for heaven’s sake, it’s only a Christmas pageant at the school.”

  “Well, she has to start somewhere. I’m proud of her, even if you aren’t.”

  “Of course I’m proud of her, Em. She’s a beautiful and intelligent child. I just want to keep things in proportion for her sake.”

  “And I want to be sure she realizes how very special she is,” he retorted. “She’s not like other children, and she never will be.”

  Later, I knew that it was Nora’s bad luck not to be like other children.

  Differences between Em and me were forgotten the night of the pageant, and we sat together, holding hands, in the front row of the small cluster of chairs put up in the church meeting room. The school had arranged to have the pageant in the church rather than asking parents to force their grown-up bodies into those small student desks.

  Nora was all the things that Mary should be. She looked humble, virginal, awestruck, totally devoted and absolutely beautiful.

  “Isn’t she something?” Em whispered, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear.

  “Yes, she is, Em, she really is.”

  “It’s all because you take such good care of her. It’s really all because of you.” He leaned over and kissed my ear right there in public, and I laughed gently and pushed him away.

  “Em, behave,” I whispered.

  Nora’s part required nothing of her except a prolonged period of stillness and silence on the stage. She managed it with grace, never once fidgeting or, as one of the watching angels did, scratching rather obviously. She was a lady through and through.

  Afterward, she was filled with a need to be praised. “Was I all right? Did I look like Mary? You couldn’t see my missing tooth, could you?”

  I tucked her in that night and kissed her, saying, “You were the very best thing about the pageant.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes, dear, I do. Now, hush, I have work to do. You go to sleep.”

  I went off to my desk but Em stayed with her, talking and praising until she was fast asleep.

  As I write, I realize that even that period I viewed as happy was filled with discord. Em and I were, in truth, rarely pleased with each other and much more likely to bicker, differ, quarrel and resent. When we should have been like a team of horses, pulling together in one direction, we were more often at odds, more like a pair of wild stallions fighting over territory. In retrospect, many memories aren’t as happy as they seem.

  In 1908, when Nora was eleven, we made a trip to Omaha. I had been in Benteen for nearly eighteen years then and had seen civilization come in a big way. Benteen, as I have said, was a growing town, and the prairie itself was more populated. My patients no longer lived so far apart nor expected me to come to them. Other doctors had moved into the general region, so someone who lived, say, thirty miles from Benteen, might find a closer doctor in another direction. The radius of my practice was then twenty miles at the most, far enough for those times when I did have to go. Em said someday I’d have to have one of the new horseless carriages, but I, who’d never seen one, scoffed at him and told him I’d much prefer to stick with old Betsy and my rather fancy enclosed carriage, built for me years ago by Ed Landman.

  But back to our trip to Omaha. Em announced that he had to go on business, and nothing would do but that Nora and I go with him. I had mixed emotions about the whole thing, wanting to see the city again, longing for a visit with Sara, and even feeling that now, so many years later, I wouldn’t mind facing Dr. Dinsmore. Once I’d gotten over that early anger and dismay at his advances—and it had taken several years for that feeling to subside—I began to put things in perspective and to remember how much he had meant to me for so many years. We had in recent years corresponded some, mostly impersonal letters dwelling on our medical practices, but I knew that he had never married and that he was still lonely, in spite of an active professional and social life.

  In truth, what made me uneasy about a trip to Omaha was Em. I didn’t know what kind of “business” he had there, and he was most secretive about it, grinning slyly and saying, “Just wait, Mattie, just wait. This is a big deal, really big.” And my uncertainty was complicated by an absolute inability to imagine Em and Dr. Dinsmore meeting.

  Nora, however, was so excited about the trip that she made up for my rather lukewarm enthusiasm.

  “Mama, what’s Omaha like? Tell me everything about it!”

  “Lord, Nora, it’s been too many years since I was there. I prob
ably won’t recognize the place, but it was a wonderful city, with fine big houses and lots of electric lights and a huge stockyards.”

  “The fine houses sound wonderful, but we have electric lights now in Benteen, and stockyards don’t sound interesting at all. Are there lots of stores?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are. We’ll buy you some fancy new clothes while we’re there. And we’ll stay in a hotel, probably a big one.”

  She beamed in contented anticipation, and I went on to describe hotel dining rooms, at least the best I could from my meager and faraway experience.

  “People will really come bring me my food to the table?”

  “Just like I do here,” I laughed.

  “No, Mama, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. And yes, gentlemen in uniforms will bring you whatever you order. You tell them what you want and sit there and wait for them to have it cooked and bring it to the table.”

  Packing was a major chore, even though we would be gone only a week. Nora wanted to take enough clothes for a year, and I realized I had very few suitable dresses for the city. My life seemed spent in shirtwaists and practical cotton or wool skirts. My one good broadcloth was beginning to look a little shabby.

  “You need something with lace,” Em said, “something soft and feminine.”

  “Pooh. I’m not the soft and feminine type.”

  “You could be, you know. Why don’t you have Sally Whittaker make you up a good dress for the trip?”

  “There’s not time for that.”

  “Well then, we’ll just buy you some clothes in Omaha.”

  “Em, there’s not money for that!”

  He looked grim and said nothing. It was that old topic of money that always came between us.