Mattie

by Judy Alter

  But we ate better, too, and I began to feel Mr. Reeves must be rich. He brought all kinds of things we rarely if ever had, like beefsteak, which he must have bartered from someone, and fresh vegetables that he bought from someone else’s garden, and lots of staples from the store—coffee and tea, which usually were too dear for Mama to buy, and pieces of horehound, which were an unheard-of luxury for Will Henry and me. Life was sweet, and for a while Mama began to get better.

  And the brightest thing in my life was that I had a job. I was to baby-sit every afternoon for the doctor and his wife, so the wife could have a rest. The Dinsmores lived in a comfortable, clean house, not as grand and frightening as the Canarys but more like what I thought a home should be—great, comfortable chairs, books to read and window seats where you could sit and watch the rain. They had only one child, three-year-old Sara, and she was nice as babies go, about as nice as Will Henry had been, so I had no trouble with her. She played, and I like as not spent the afternoon with only one eye on her and the other on a book I had found in the shelves. Dr. Dinsmore liked that, and next to Mr. Reeves, I thought he was the grandest man ever. The schoolmaster, a Mr. West, who rapped people’s knuckles with a ruler and made us memorize long, dull passages of poetry, went rapidly downhill in my mind.

  “Reading again, Mattie?” Dr. Dinsmore stood there, thumbs hooked under his suspenders, looking, I thought, very grand with his mustache and dark suit. He was not a tall man but so thin and wiry that he gave the impression of height and strength.

  “Oh, yes, sir, but I was watching Sara real carefully.”

  “I’m sure you were. It’s all right. I was just glad to see someone using the books. What are you reading?”

  I showed him a copy of Pamela and asked if he knew the story.

  “Yes, Mattie, I know the story.” Was there laughter hidden in his voice? “I’m not sure your schoolmaster would approve of you reading novels, but you go right ahead.” He walked over to the shelves and appeared to study for a moment, then said, “When you’re through with that, you might want to try this.” He handed me a copy of Five Weeks in a Balloon, by Jules Verne. “You’re free to take it home as long as you’re sure to return it.”

  I was astounded. Not only did he not think I was lazy for reading when I should have been playing with little Sara, but he gave me another book to read. And he would let me take it home.

  I fairly flew home, ignoring the darkening and dingy streets of our part of Princeton. “Mama” —I burst in the door— “Dr. Dinsmore let me borrow a book.” Caution came to me too late, and I hastened to add, “Of course, I won’t read when you need me.”

  I never knew how Mama would react, though lately since Mr. Reeves had been around, she was more predictable. Still, there was always the chance she’d start on about how I could do more errands, try to earn another nickel or two or help out with Will Henry, who was really big enough to take care of himself, or so I thought. But she surprised me this time.

  “Let me see it, Mattie. Oh, Jules Verne. I read that, a long time ago.” She got that faraway look in her eyes. “It’s a good book. You’ll like it.”

  Later, when Mr. Reeves came, she said brightly, “Mattie’s reading Jules Verne’s book about his balloon trip. Dr. Dinsmore let her bring it home.”

  “Well, now, isn’t that fine! Course, I don’t know next to nothing about books, never could read much, and I ain’t heard of that one, but I know it’s important for a young person to get all the education they can. You go right on and read, Mattie, and I’ll help your ma.” He patted me on the head, and as I looked up, I saw Mama give him a long sideways look. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I read a little hurt and disappointment in her face.

  Dr. Dinsmore continued to be my unofficial tutor. He and Mrs. Dinsmore got so they liked each other less and less; at least that’s how it appeared to me. They never argued. I’d even heard Mama and Mr. Reeves raise their voices some, but the Dinsmores were always coldly polite. I knew he wasn’t that way by nature, for he would get down on the floor and play with Sara, laughing and tossing her in the air until she giggled almost out of control. Whenever Mrs. Dinsmore saw this happen, she’d say, “Arthur, you’ll damage the child.” And he’d say, “Stuff and nonsense. Little roughhousing never hurt anyone.”

  Mrs. Dinsmore was blond and pretty like Mama, only her eyes were kind of an ice-cold blue, and her lips were tight, even when they smiled. She never had the laughter that sometimes welled up from Mama, and she looked worse in her fine clothes than Mama did in her patched and worn dresses.

  Big as I was then, almost thirteen years old, I was only beginning to know the facts of life, as they are called. I had an inkling, though, that it took a great liking, even love, between two people to make a baby. I wasn’t really sure about love—heaven knows, have any of us ever learned?—and I wondered a lot about that mysterious man Mama liked or loved well enough to have two babies with, but I also wondered about the Dinsmores. They didn’t seem to like each other well enough to make a baby.

  Mrs. Dinsmore was nice to me, though not as friendly as he was, and I sensed she didn’t approve of my reading program. She’d say, “Reading again, Mattie? Don’t ruin your eyes with all that study,” or “Why don’t you take Sara outside? Too much indoors is never good for youngsters, even as big as you are.” But she continued to pay me regularly, and sometimes they asked me to stay to supper, which was a treat, because there was much more food and better kinds of it than Mama could afford, less greens and cornbread and red beans and more meat and potatoes. I ate heartily on those nights.

  “Mattie, child, are you hungry?”

  “Not really,” I would lie. I didn’t want to say that I was kind of storing up, like a squirrel putting away nuts for the winter. “It’s just that it tastes so good.”

  “Well, here, have another helping of meat loaf.”

  And I would eat away. It’s a wonder I didn’t get fat as a piglet in those days, but I suspect all that food made up for what had been a sparseness in my diet. Lots of times, I’d sneak extra pieces of meat in my napkin to take home to Will Henry, especially during the times Mr. Reeves was out of town and there was less food on our table. I suspect the Dinsmores would gladly have given me food for Will Henry, but I was too proud to ask.

  I overheard them talking one night after I had stayed for supper and, as a way of thanks, had volunteered to bathe Sara and get her ready for bed. She was running around her room, stitch-stark naked, giggling up a storm, and I stepped out to get a towel to wrap her in. They were at the foot of the stairs, and I could hear them talk without having to go anywhere nearer the banister.

  “I suppose she doesn’t eat right at home,” Mrs. Dinsmore said in that slightly disapproving tone.

  “Probably not. It’s a marvelous thing if we can feed both her body and her mind.”

  “We’re not running a charity house, you know.”

  “Come now, Emma, that child doesn’t take one thing from us. She gives us laughter and love for Sara, which the child sorely needs, and she brings me happiness.” It was one of the few times I heard him criticize his wife, even obliquely.

  There was no answer from Mrs. Dinsmore, and I didn’t know enough to realize how significant that was. Poor woman. I never could figure out why she was so stiff and cool and how Dr. Dinsmore ended up with her.

  But the fact that they had such an armed truce gave him lots of extra time to spend with Sara, and he spent some of it with me. We were both glad for his company, even though he seemed preoccupied a lot of the time. Dr. Dinsmore had unusual ideas for a physician, even back in those days when medicine wasn’t regulated much. He hadn’t gone to medical school, of course—few men did, and medical schools were so unregulated that you might learn more harmful things there than good. He had simply read medicine by following an old country physician around somewhere in northeast Missouri. There was a doctor over there in a small town named Kirksville who had announced that he had a new approach to medici
ne. Name was Still, and it seemed that he felt medical practice as he knew it wasn’t helping people; matter of fact, he thought it killed two of his children. So he went about it in a new way, saying that the body was naturally healthy and the physician’s job was to aid that process, not hinder it. One thing he advocated was very little medicine. Well, Dr. Dinsmore believed in that, and he’d sit and talk to me about it at night. Of course, at that age I didn’t understand much, but I was flattered he wanted to talk, and I listened.

  “God wouldn’t have invented a faulty machine, Mattie. We were meant to be healthy and not to be taking a draught to sleep and another to straighten our bowels and another to ward off colds. We need to get all that out of our systems and keep our bodies in good shape, like good machines.”

  I didn’t know much about machinery, so the comparison was a little odd to me, but I went along with Dr. Dinsmore’s idea that we should keep our bodies healthy. Of course, all the walking I did back and forth to the Dinsmores to school and on Mama’s errands kept me pretty well exercised. But I thought about Mama, cooped up in that little shack all day.

  By that time, Mama’s health was really poor again. The last time she had gone to the store herself, instead of sending me, she had come home exhausted, out of breath and nearly faint. Seems she had only gone because I was at Dinsmores, and my heart lurched in fear at the possibility that I would have to quit Dinsmore’s and stay home to be more help to Mama.

  “Mama, I would have gone to the store for you.”

  “You weren’t here.” She sounded a little like a spoiled child.

  “But I’d have come back. You mustn’t tire yourself out.”

  “I’ll just rest awhile and you fix the supper, Mattie. Then I’ll be all right. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  I didn’t know either, but I did know that her cheeks were feverish red again, her skin pale, and pretty often she had a bad cough. I guess Mr. Reeves knew only too well what was wrong, because he made some startling announcements the next time he visited.

  He arrived late one night, after Will Henry and I were asleep, and we didn’t see him till we sat sleepily at the breakfast table, with Mama stirring a big pot of oatmeal with much more vigor than usual.

  “Your ma and I are going to get married,” he announced. “Today.”

  I looked quick at Mama, but she was still busy with the oatmeal, and I couldn’t tell if she was happy about this or not. After a minute’s thought, I decided I was happy. It would, I thought, make life easier for her, and that in turn would make things easier for me. I guess kids always have a way of relating everything to themselves. I should have known better, for his next words tore my world apart.

  “We’ll all be leaving for the West soon as we can get going. I used to farm once back a long time ago, and I’m gonna do it again, because your mama’s got to get out of this Missouri climate before it kills her.”

  Mama stirred harder, and I bit my lip. Move? Not that I was so fond of Princeton—there was a time when my dream was to leave—but now I had the Dinsmores, and I didn’t want to leave them and all the opportunity they represented to me. Will Henry, meanwhile, was jumping with joy, and I could have crowned him.

  “West!” he shouted. “Where west? Will there be Indians? Cowboys?”

  “Whoa,” Mr. Reeves laughed. “We’ll go someplace civilized, or at least as close as we can get.”

  I suppose Mama had the same vision of a white cottage with a picket fence and a great sweeping field of wheat or corn that I did. It turned out things were to be very different, and Mama might as well have stayed in Princeton, but none of us knew that. Mr. Reeves loved her, he really did, and he was doing what he thought was best. He really wanted to settle Mama in a comfortable home instead of a shack and give her the kind of life she apparently had known as a child. I think he thought he could restore her health by improving her life, but he was too late. Who knows? Maybe if he had come earlier, she never would have gotten sick.

  Meanwhile, I was fighting my conscience. If it was good for Mama, I should be glad to go, but I was feeling mighty selfish, wanting to stay in Princeton so I could read the rest of the books in Dr. Dinsmore’s library. I suspected that we would leave pretty quickly—and I was right—and I never could read fast enough to make any progress at all.

  Will Henry and I went to school, with him talking nonstop about our big move and telling every kid in the schoolyard. They all snickered and said things like, “He’s gonna marry your mother?” in incredulous tones. I could have kicked Will Henry but I kept my silence, lost in my own problems. That afternoon I was slow walking to the Dinsmores and late getting there.

  “Mattie, whatever is the matter with you? Looks like you’ve lost your best friend.”

  “I don’t have a best friend,” I muttered unpleasantly, even though I knew he was trying to be helpful.

  “All right, Mattie, I know that.” Dr. Dinsmore turned serious. “What’s the matter?”

  “We’re leaving Princeton,” I blurted out, the whole story then tumbling from my lips in a rush.

  “Leaving Princeton?” He asked it as though he was not at all surprised. “Has your mother . . . I mean, can she . . . well, Mattie, what I’m trying to say is, how will your mother take care of you and Will Henry somewhere else? And where are you going?”

  Dr. Dinsmore had never been critical of Mama, like the rest of Princeton, and I was grateful. I knew what he said now was simply straightforward truth.

  “We’re going out west. I don’t know where, but Mama is going to marry Mr. Reeves, and he says for her health we have to take her out west.”

  “He’s right, of course. I told her she needed to go two years ago, but she said there was no way.”

  “I don’t guess there was until Mr. Reeves came along.”

  “Well, Mattie, I think this is good news, but you still look like you’ve lost your best friend.”

  “Oh no, I’m real pleased.” I had to bite my lip to keep from crying, and I sank down into one of the great big, comfortable chairs in the library. Why didn’t he, one of the few people I trusted and cared about, see how bad this was? Right then Dr. Dinsmore taught me a lesson: If you don’t take matters into your own hands, nothing good happens.

  “I don’t think you want to go,” he said slowly, as though refusing to do all the work for me. He stood before me, straight and unbending, looking just a little stern.

  “I don’t.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “What can I do? I’m only fourteen.”

  He almost laughed aloud, and I could have hit him. “Self-pity, is it? That won’t get you very far. Have you tried to do anything about it?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me. What would you like to do?”

  I took a deep breath and rushed into boldness that I could hardly believe I dared. “Stay here and live with you and take care of Sara.”

  “Oh, would you now?” He turned a little, as though pacing, but I thought I saw a slight twitch of the corners of his mouth. Embarrassed by my own forwardness, I said nothing.

  “Have you told your mother that?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Should you?”

  “How can I? I don’t know if you’d let me stay.”

  “Why don’t you ask?” He was not going to make this easy for me.

  My face turning deep red, I stared at the floor and muttered, “Will you?”

  “Why do you want to stay?”

  “Because, mostly because . . . of the books. I mean, I really love Sara, and you’re both good to me, but if I go to a farm somewhere out west, I’ll never . . . probably never read a book, never get education.”

  “And education is important to you?”

  “Yes,” I said fiercely. “I don’t ever want to live like Mama has.” The very thought brought me upright in the chair, and I looked directly at him.

  “Maybe . . .” He stopped, and I
knew he had been about to tease me again and then thought better of it. “You’re right, Mattie. Education is important, as much so for girls as men. I’ll talk to Mrs. Dinsmore tonight, but I think such an arrangement might work out.” He was the one who stared silently off into space for a moment then. “I know this isn’t exactly a happy house to be in, and I worry about that, for Sara and now for you. Mrs. Dinsmore isn’t always as well as might be, and frankly, I could benefit from your presence.”

  Thoughts tumbled together in my mind. I had no idea at that time about depression and what it can do to a person’s life, so I didn’t know what he meant by his wife not being well, but I knew there was something serious there. And I didn’t understand how complicated our lives could become, with my being a “benefit” to him. I don’t think he understood then either. Dr. Dinsmore was a wonderful and kind man, but he was lonely. It was all too much for a fourteen-year-old, fairly naive mind, but I sailed into my future certain it would all work out.

  Mrs. Dinsmore, anxious to have all the care of Sara taken from her shoulders, agreed readily to the plan, and Dr. Dinsmore relieved me of the burden of talking to Mama. It was uncharacteristic of him, since he had insisted on making me work out my future myself, but I think he did it because he wanted me to stay as much as I did.

  Mama was waiting for me one day when I came home from school. She looked tired and frail, and I was worried about her. “Mattie, I want to talk to you.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Come here in the bedroom.” She pulled the blanket across its wire as though that made the bedroom a separate, soundproof room in the little house. “Dr. Dinsmore was here today.”