Mattie

by Judy Alter

  “Nora, please pick up your room.”

  “I will.”

  “Now, Nora.”

  “I don’t have to.” It was said coldly, calculatingly and bluntly. “There’s no reason to do it now.”

  “There’s one very good reason, miss. I told you to.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  I resorted to pleas. “Nora, for goodness’ sake, can’t you be some help instead of trying to make things worse? If I pick up your room, I’ll throw the things on the floor into the trash.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” The dark eyes flashed in warning. “I’ll go live with Papa.”

  “No, you won’t, and you know it.”

  Neither of us ever won those arguments, though they were hard on both of us. Not that Nora didn’t have her sweet moments. She could be adorable, and everyone in Benteen thought her a charming child. She seemed to save her temper and unpleasantness for me, and I was smart enough to figure out that regardless of blame or fault, she blamed me for Em’s leaving. In her eyes, I had destroyed her world and robbed her of the one person she held dear, the one who gave her her own way with absolute consistency. There was no way I could explain the truth to her.

  If Nora became my enemy, so, too, did the prairie. I, who had loved to ride abroad on it, came to dread even the closest house call. It seemed as though I was most aware of my aloneness out there on the grass, though year by year the patches of uninterrupted prairie were less and less as farmers built solid homes, replacing their soddies with brick and board, adding durable barns and outbuildings. Still, you could ride for an hour without seeing anyone, and sometimes if that happened to me, I would feel a rush of panic, a momentary feeling of having forgotten all I knew about reading signs and finding my way.

  “Nora, come go with me out to the Gelsons’. Luther’s sick, and I have to go see about him.”

  “I don’t want to go to the Gelsons’. They’re nasty boys, always finding snakes and things.”

  “You like Lucy. Come on and go with me.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the truth, that I dreaded so deeply the ride out there alone and needed Nora, not merely wanted but needed her for company. In the end, she got her way and stayed home, and I gritted my teeth and made the trip, making every step of it worse for myself simply through my own dread.

  “Mattie, you look exhausted.” Lucy greeted me as I pulled the buggy up in front of their new house. “I should have brought Luther to you. I don’t think he’s that sick. I just asked Jed to stop and tell you when he was in town.”

  “I truly wish you had brought him, Lucy. The ride out was hard on me today.”

  She looked keenly at me. “Come inside; I’ll brew some tea while you check Luther. I think maybe it’s just a fall cold, but I’ll feel better if you look at him.”

  Luther had pneumonia. I heard the congestion in his lungs and prayed that he was as tough as he seemed. Lucy took the news calmly and did as I told her, bundling herself and the child for the trip back to town.

  “He can’t stay here?”

  “I want to watch him, Lucy. Send Jake to tell Jed.”

  Droopy with fever, Luther, then about eight or nine, simply watched us with glazed eyes.

  Lucy and I battled the fever in that child for five days, bathing him with cool water, forcing him to drink broth, holding him close and crooning to him. Each of us read the concern in the other’s eyes, but we never spoke of it. Instead, we spoke often of my life, of Em and Nora and the future.

  “Will you get a divorce, Mattie?”

  “Yes. It’s . . . well, it may cause more gossip, but I need to be free of him.”

  Nobody in Benteen had ever gotten a divorce, and I could imagine there would be much talk. I had supportive friends, like the Gelsons and the Whittakers and others in the community, but there would be those who would cluck and flutter about how I should have put my husband and family first and what a shame and disgrace it was for Nora. There was a lawyer in town now, a young man named Bertram who had opened offices after reading law with an older man in Ogallala. I would consult him soon, especially about the nagging business of the cattle that Jim couldn’t locate.

  “Mattie, what of Nora?” Lucy asked.

  “What of her? I can’t give her up, and I can’t keep her. She’s almost fourteen now, and I’m hard put to tell how much of my trouble with her is the result of the divorce and how much is simply the age she is. But I, well, I never talked to my mother the way she does, and Sara Dinsmore never talked to me that way. I worry about how she’ll get along in the world.”

  Lucy laughed, a short, wry little sound. “I have a feeling Miss Nora will get along fine, with everything going just as she wants it.”

  “But that’s not right, either,” I said stubbornly. “She learned that from Em, to expect everything to go just as she wants it, and to throw a tantrum if it doesn’t.”

  “Yes, she learned well from a master, and you may just have to accept that it’s too late to undo those early lessons, Mattie.”

  Silently I cursed him for what he had done to both Nora and me.

  Luther Gelson died the fifth day after we brought him to Benteen. He slipped away in one night in a coma, no longer able to breathe for the fluid in his lungs. Lucy was a stoic prairie woman, and she knew the odds for survival of children. She seemed to take the death calmly, her eyes wide with tears and her hands clutching the tiny hands that she folded across his chest. There were no wails or screams, and for a moment I wanted to cry out in her place. But I knew that Lucy’s hurt was deep and her grief would go on for a long time. I sent word out to Jed, and Lucy and I simply clung to each other until he arrived, red-eyed but equally stoic.

  Jed insisted on making the coffin himself, and he would hear of no burial place but their own land. Light frost had touched the prairie by then, but the ground was soft enough to dig, and the next day a small party from town traipsed out to the Gelsons. It was only five days since I had made the earlier trip, so busy worrying about my own fears and dreads that I had scarcely taken Luther’s illness seriously. Now he lay in the ground, and the prairie seemed more than ever to me to be an evil thing.

  Will Henry and Jim stood by my side at the funeral, each holding on to my arm, and Nora stood next to Will Henry. Even Nora was strangely affected, staring with unseeing eyes as the minister commended Luther’s soul to God, and clutching her uncle as we walked away.

  They came back to town with us, and we were a solemn foursome as we sat in the kitchen. It seemed almost too much effort to me to make a pot of coffee, but I drew myself up and started the water heating.

  “Mattie, are you all right?” Jim asked it with real concern.

  “No, Jim, I’m not.” Everything seemed to overwhelm me, and I was swept by an awful despair, as though there was no one good thing in my life that I could hold on to. I buried my head in my hands and gave in to great, gulping sobs that sent Nora running from the room in confusion and left the two men who cared most about me staring helplessly. Finally, Jim came and awkwardly put an arm around my shoulders.

  “Will Henry and me, we’ve talked about it, and we, well, we think maybe you should get away from here awhile. Get a new perspective on things.”

  “Where would I go?” Even as I asked, I knew the question was silly. I would go nowhere.

  “How about to Omaha to see the Dinsmores?”

  I almost wailed aloud at the suggestion. The memory of my last visit there still burned in my mind. I knew now that I had not heard the full story from Em and that his arm around Sara had not been as casual and comforting as he protested. It was one of many truths to which I had blinded myself over the years of my marriage.

  “No. I cannot, will not go to Omaha.” I said it with such finality that Jim backed away, muttering, “Whatever you think best, Mattie.”

  Finally, I gathered myself together enough to make the coffee and to apologize to both of them for having lost control. They were embarrassed and concerned, and they drank t
heir coffee quietly.

  The days following Luther Gelson’s funeral were the lowest point in my life, lower even than the teasing I took from Mary Jane Canary in Princeton, for now my grief and despair were adult and deep. As I went through the days routinely seeing the few patients who came, fixing meals for Nora and myself only to find I could not eat, lying endlessly awake in the middle of the night, the idea of going away took more and more shape for me. If only I could escape the prairie, I thought, everything would be all right. It was a foolish thought, and perhaps I even knew it then, but it gave me a fantasy to cling to.

  Cora’s letter came as the answer to a prayer. She wrote from Omaha, saying she had never married Dwight Peterson and never gone to Chicago but had a successful practice in Omaha, independent of the school, treating women’s problems, and she was busier than she wanted to be. Would I consider leaving Benteen and joining her in practice? Her letter prattled on about her life in Omaha, and it did sound glamorous. She apparently had a wide circle of friends, including many gentleman escorts. Though she didn’t come right out and say it, I gathered that most of these gentlemen wished to be the special man in her life but each took her on her own terms.

  I ached with jealousy, plain, old-fashioned green-eyed envy. Omaha, once my escape from Princeton and poverty, now seemed to offer me a way out of despair, a path away from the small town and back to the city I had loved. I could work with Cora, whom I liked, and I could work with women, a practice that would be meaningful for me. I began to build castles in the air, planning the move, deciding what to sell, what to keep.

  For two days I allowed myself to believe this fantasy.

  “Mama, what makes you grin like that? I haven’t seen you grin in so long!” Nora was amused at me and, I suspect, thankful to see my sour face lightened.

  “Oh, Nora, I’m just thinking about something.”

  “What? You have to tell!”

  “No, I don’t. But it’s Omaha. I . . . I’m thinking of going there.”

  “To visit the Dinsmores?”

  “No. To visit a woman I knew in medical school.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Nora, she wants me to move to Omaha and practice with her.” I reached and hugged the child in my enthusiasm, but she drew away.

  “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of. Of course you won’t go to Omaha.”

  I was startled. “Why not?”

  “Because you live here in Benteen. It’s our home. I wouldn’t go with you. And I doubt you’d really go.” With that astute judgment, she stalked out of the room and left me thinking. My castle in the air crumbled.

  I began to think in other terms. How could I leave Benteen when I had worked so hard here for so long, making it my town? And would I take Nora away from Benteen, where she was known and loved by an entire community? To Omaha, where she would have no friends? And what about the Dinsmores—could I once again live in the same city with Sara and her father? Finally, of course, there was the legal problem. I had done nothing about a divorce from Em. Yet the dream of Omaha remained attractive, and though I now saw it with more clarity, I did not give it up.

  Eventually, I left Nora with the Whittakers and asked Jim to drive me to Fort Sidney to the train.

  Cora met me, in a handsome carriage driven by a gentleman she introduced as Mr. Albert. He was, she explained, a lawyer and a close friend. Mr. Albert just smiled briefly at me and turned his adoring eyes on Cora. Age had not withered Cora’s blond fragility one whit, nor had it shadowed her bright approach to life.

  “Mattie, we could have such a good practice here. Women really want to go to women doctors, even if we don’t always get the respect from our male colleagues that we should. You know who I mean,” she added darkly, and I wondered if she had tangled with Dr. Dinsmore. He had never liked her, though I had always thought that was caused by jealousy of my affection for her.

  “Well, Cora, I’m anxious to see your office and hear all about your work.” I felt matronly and dumpy next to her and tried to slink in my seat to hide my height, a trick I had thought I was long past resorting to. It was winter, and I wore my serviceable cowhide coat that I’d had forever. Cora, on the other hand, wore a flowing black wool cape with a smart fur collar and matching hat. She looked fashionable and sophisticated; I felt very much the country bumpkin.

  The next few days reinforced that feeling. Cora took me to a round of parties—dinner with this one, tea with that one. I met a dizzying succession of people whose faces and names I could not remember then and cannot now. I saw very little, however, of her office and practice, and it began to dawn on me why Cora wanted a partner.

  “Cora, I must get back to Benteen tomorrow. Can we talk about your practice today?”

  “Of course, Mattie, dear. You have had a good time, haven’t you? I wanted so badly for you to enjoy your visit.”

  “Cora, I’ve loved it,” I lied. “But I must get home to Nora and to my own patients.”

  “Well, your own patients will have to find another doctor, soon, because I intend to steal you away.”

  We talked seriously then about income and numbers of patients and all the things that make up a doctor’s life, and I began to see that my impression was wrong. Cora was truly involved in her practice and had been taking a slight vacation to entertain me. With characteristic kindness, she had wanted to show me a whirl in the big city. What she unintentionally proved to me was that I no longer belonged. Benteen was home.

  I saw Dr. Dinsmore and Sara once during my stay, an awkward visit which I regretted and yet which I could not have left out of any trip to Omaha.

  “Mattie, Mattie, I told you you were unhappy when you were here . . . and with good reason apparently.” He said it wryly, looking at me with a question in his eyes, and I wondered if he could possibly think that I might now return to him.

  I tried to speak lightly, but a tangle of memories nearly brought tears to my eyes. Sitting in his study, I remembered another encounter there when I had wanted to bolt and run. I felt a little that way again, with his piercing stare that seemed to know all about my life with its failures and disappointments.

  “You have often been right about my life,” I reminded him, not adding the “but not always” that surfaced to the tip of my tongue.

  “I think I’m right now, too. It would be a good thing for you to accept this offer you have, even though it is with a woman for whom I have less respect than I do for you. You need to return to Omaha. And Sara and I would be delighted, wouldn’t we, Sara?”

  Sara, now well into her thirties, had greeted me shyly, extending a timid hand in place of the exuberant hugs I had once known, and she had sat silently during our entire visit. Now, directly addressed, she smiled only a little and nodded her head, eyes on her father as if seeking his approval. I saw too clearly that the mother’s instability had indeed been visited upon the daughter, and my heart broke for both Sara and her father.

  Lowering my eyes to hide the sadness, I answered him. “I truly don’t think I belong in Omaha anymore. I think Benteen is my home.”

  “And your husband?”

  This time my answer was strong and defiant. Raising my head, I said clearly, “I intend to divorce him.”

  “Bravo. That’s the Mattie I know and remember. It may have taken you a while, but you’ve got your spunk back.”

  Later he sent Sara to the kitchen to see about tea, and we talked privately. Remembering our last private talk, I started to shrink into my chair, the old intimidation and fear returning after nearly twenty years. But then I felt again that self-confidence with which I had answered his question about divorce, and I sat straight and firm, looking him in the eye.

  It was he who lowered his eyes and seemed to sink in posture. “Mattie, I know now that what I want can never be between us, and I want to say clearly that you must not let that affect your decision about Cora’s offer. I will cause you no trouble. I’ll even, if you insist, stay out of your life.”
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  “Thank you,” I murmured, truly touched. “But that’s not the basis for my decision. I have felt out of place here this week . . . and strangely, even to me, I’ve felt a longing for the prairie. I belong in Benteen.”

  “So be it. You have nothing but my best wishes.”

  We talked then of Sara, and he confirmed my suspicions, though he apparently had little insight into the role his own strong domination might have played in developing her weakness. In the years since his wife’s death, understanding of such conditions had progressed, and he felt none of the despair he had once felt, though he knew that caring for Sara would be a lifelong burden.

  “That’s something I’ve wanted to ask you, Mattie. I’m not the spring chicken I like to think of myself as, and, well, I have to plan ahead for her. If anything happens to me, will you take Sara?”

  “Of course. Nora and I would welcome her, but surely the day is far off.”

  “I hope so,” he smiled. “Come, let’s see where that tea is.” He held out a hand of friendship, and I accepted it, feeling at last that he and I had made our peace.

  On the train going home, I pressed my nose to the window, taking in as much of the scenery as I could and longing to be instantly back in Benteen. Cora had been understanding about my decision and nonchalant about my profuse thanks for her hospitality.

  “No, Mattie, dear, I don’t believe I will ever let you return the favor. You’ll just have to come to Omaha again to see me. I believe I’d wilt in Benteen.”

  And she would have, too.

  But I took something back with me from Omaha, something indefinable but important. Not only had I decided to commit myself to Benteen, to staying where I had worked to build something, but somehow I had regained my view of the world. I was going home to stay not in defeat but in strength. I felt good about my decision and felt I had made it for all the right reasons. If I had once decided to marry Em Jones for all the wrong reasons, I had now righted that decision.