The Diary Of Mattie Spenser

The Diary of Mattie Spenser

For my beloved Dana

Child of love, child of hope

For historical help, I am indebted to Larry Cox, Todd Ewalt, John Hutchins, Stanley Kerstein, Lee Olson, Nell Brown Propst, Roy Coy at the St. Joseph Historical Society, Rebecca Lacome at the National Park Service Homestead National Monument, Don Dilley, Augie Mastrogiuseppe, and Barbara Walton at the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library, Jerry Sloat in Ft. Madison, Syrma Sotiriou at the Treasured Scarab, and Judy White at Zion Book Store. Thanks to Reagan Arthur, my skillful editor at St. Martin’s, to Jane Jordan Browne and Danielle Egan-Miller of Multimedia Product Development for their faith and enthusiasm, and to steadfast friends Robbie Spillman and Libbie Gottschalk.

My next-door neighbor, Hazel Dunn, who is ninety-four, is moving into a retirement home. Ever since she signed the contract to sell her house, she’s been bringing me boxes of china and old books, along with a few wonderful family heirlooms—lacetrimmed linens, a worn paisley shawl, some Indian beadwork, and a lacquered laptop desk that her grandmother brought west in a covered wagon. Hazel’s only son died as a boy, and she has no other close relatives. So I’m not depriving anyone of an inheritance by accepting her family’s things, she says.

Of course, she could sell the stuff to a dealer, but Hazel’s a generous soul, and she knows how much I love antiques. Besides, what would she do with the money? she asks. She could live to be 150 with what she’s got socked away. I think the real reason she doesn’t want to sell the keepsakes, however, is that she dislikes the idea of people pawing through her bedding and schoolbooks and Victorian valentines, holding them up to curiosity.

Sorting through all the stuff has been quite a job for Hazel because she’s lived in the house forever. It’s huge, and every room is cluttered. Her parents designed the home for balls and big dinner parties. They were members of the Sacred Thirty-six, Denver’s fashionable social set at the turn of the century. That’s the group that snubbed the Unsinkable Molly Brown, until she emerged as the heroine of the Titanic disaster in 1912 and they had to invite her over. Hazel remembers “the poor Unsinkable,” as her mother called Molly, showing up for tea, dressed in a skunk-skin coat, poling herself down the sidewalk with a shepherd’s crook. Later on, Molly and Hazel’s mom got to be good friends.

When Hazel married Walter Dunn, he simply moved in with Hazel and her mother, Lorena, by then a widow, “just like Harry Truman did,” Walter always joked. The two of them lived quite happily in Hazel’s bedroom until Lorena died in 1959, at the age of ninety. Then they got the master suite. After Walter broke his hip, he and Hazel closed off the second floor and turned one of two parlors into their bedroom. Walter died two years ago, and realtors have been hounding Hazel to sell ever since.

Although Hazel looks and acts twenty years younger than her age, she’s wise to go into a home where someone can keep an eye on her, because she refuses to slow down or take precautions. Sooner or later, she’s bound to fall. All the neighbors are sorry about her decision, however, because Hazel is a hoot, more fun than anybody on the block. She’s also a treasury of neighborhood history, remembering, for instance, when Dwight Eisenhower married Mamie Doud, who lived over on Lafayette Street. Mrs. Doud, Mamie’s mother, was a good friend of Lorena’s, too.

Our block has become part of what the realtors say is Denver’s most desirable young urban professionals’ neighborhood, and those of us who moved here long before there was such a thing as a Yuppie are skeptical about the couple who’ve bought Hazel’s house. They’ve announced they’ll gut the place, put in a fifty-thousand-dollar kitchen, and paint the brick mauve. I’m upset about the changes, but Hazel doesn’t seem to mind that the house will lose its historic character. She never was crazy about the place, but by the time her mother died, she’d lived there too long to be comfortable anywhere else. Besides, as Walter put it, “Bess Truman didn’t sell her mother’s house.”

Of course, we’re all worried that before she can move into the retirement home, Hazel will hurt herself lifting boxes and hauling junk from the attic to the alley, but she won’t let anybody help her—shoos us away, in fact, when we go over on some transparent errand. Hazel’s not just being stubborn. Sorting through one hundred years of family accumulations is traumatic, and she’s got her pride. Hazel’s never been one to show emotion, and she doesn’t intend to start now. She didn’t shed a tear at Walter’s funeral. The only time I ever saw Hazel cry, in fact, was when I rushed over to tell her that John F. Kennedy had just been shot. She’d already heard the news on the radio, and she was sitting in the kitchen, sobbing. Sharing our grief that day became one of the many bonds between us.

Although Hazel won’t let me help with the heavy lifting, I’ve been keeping an eye on her as she makes trips back and forth from the house to the Dumpster, or runs up and down the stairs of the carriage house—which never once housed a carriage. Hazel’s conservative father owned a car when he built the place, but he wasn’t convinced that automobiles were here to stay. So he erected a carriage house instead of a garage, in case horses made a comeback.

Since I try to keep track of where Hazel is, I knew that she was in the attic of the carriage house when she called out to me in an alarmed voice one afternoon. I was gardening, and I rushed through the gate that connects our yards, yelling up through the open hayloft door, “Are you all right?”

“Come up, dearie,” Hazel cried in a voice that held more exasperation than panic.

Nonetheless, I took the narrow stairs two at a time, and I found Hazel bent over in the center of the room, at about the spot where the new people intend to put in a hot tub.

“I’ve gotten so clumsy lately. I let the trunk lid slam shut on my dress, and now I’m caught. I can’t reach over there to lift the lid, and if I try to pull out my dress, I’ll rip it. Can you believe it, pinned to a trunk by my skirt!”

I carefully lifted the lid, and Hazel straightened up, examining her skirt for tears. I ran my hand over the soft black leather of the old trunk. It was handmade, put together with brass nails that had turned black with tarnish. The inside was lined with mattress ticking, now soiled and torn. An oval brass plate on the front of the trunk was engraved M.F.M.S., Mingo, C.T.”

“The trunk belonged to my grandmother. Those are her initials,” Hazel explained when she saw me rubbing my hand over the ornate lettering. “Mingo is in the eastern part of the state. It’s almost a ghost town now. The C.T. isn’t Connecticut. It stands for Colorado Territory. Grandmother came out here before Colorado was a state, which means sometime prior to 1876.” Hazel dropped the hem of her skirt. “No harm done, except to my pride. All that trouble for nothing, too. There wasn’t a thing left in that trunk. I must have cleaned it out last week.”

“Yes there is,” I said, peering inside. “Over there in the corner. It’s a book.” I reached inside and picked up a worn leather volume that lay on the mattress ticking. “Maybe it fell out of the lid when it slammed shut. There’s a sort of hidden compartment in the top. Look.” I pointed at a four-inch square of cardboard, covered with a trunk manufacturer’s label, which hung down from inside the bow-top lid. It had covered an opening. “That stick lying in the bottom of the trunk must have held the flap shut. See, it goes through the two brass loops on either side of the opening, to pin this piece of cardboard in place.” I held the label flat against the lid and pushed the stick through the two loops. “It’s pretty obvious, so it’s not really much of a hiding place.”

Hazel removed the stick, let the label flop down, and thumped the lid, but nothing else fell out. “Apparently not, because that’s the only thing in here. No hidden treasure.”

I didn’t laugh; I was too busy examining the little book I’d fished out of the trunk. It was well worn, but its marbleized edges were still a brilliant mix of red, blue, and black. A flap on the back cover of the book once held it shut by sliding into a leather loop on the front, but the loop was gone, replaced by a rusty safety pin. Hazel wrinkled her nose when I handed her the volume. “I’m so tired of old books. My family read them all the time and saved every one. Give me television any day.” Instead of taking the book from me, she pointed to a pile on the floor. “Toss it onto the heap with the rest of the trash, unless you want it.”

I started to throw it into the pile. Hazel had already given me a dozen leather-bound books, and they were in better shape than this one. If I kept on accepting things from her, I’d be in Hazel’s spot one day, having to sort through it all and dispose of it. Still, I liked the little book, and cleaned up, it would look pretty propped up on my parlor table. I could always throw it out later. So I thanked Hazel, and I slid the flap out of the safety pin to open the book. I turned it to the late-afternoon light coming through the hayloft door and examined the rich paper on the inside cover. It had been creamy once but was now a warm tan, speckled with as many brown age spots as Hazel’s hands.

“Mattie Fay McCauley Spenser.” I read the name written in big flourishes on the paper.

“That would be my grandmother. Is it her Testament?”

“No,” I said, turning the pages. “This is handwritten. It must be a journal. You ought to keep it, Hazel. It’s family history.”

I handed the book to Hazel, who held it up close to her eyes. “Well, so what if it is? I’m the last of the family, and someone else will just have to throw it out when I die. Besides, I can’t read a word of it. What’s in pencil is smudged, and the ink entries are faded. Look how small the writing is, and it’s crosshatched, too.”

When I didn’t understand what she meant, Hazel held out the open diary to me. “See, she wrote on the page the usual way. Then she turned the book sideways and wrote across the original writing. People did that back then so they could double the number of words they put on a page. Imagine being that hard up for paper.” Hazel closed the book and held it out. “Why don’t you go through it. With your interest in history, you might find it amusing. It must be grandmother’s overland journal. She came west in a covered wagon right after she was married. If the diary turns out to be any good, you can always give it to the library.”

I shrugged. “If you don’t care about my snooping into your family’s past, why should I?” I said, putting the diary into the pocket of my gardening smock. Then I scooped up the pile of trash and followed Hazel down the steps.

“Now, dearie, you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. Give it to me and I’ll just toss it into the Dumpster,” Hazel teased, knowing I was hooked.

I patted my pocket and said, “You don’t fool me. Damn it, Hazel, I’m going to miss you when you leave. We’ve been neighbors for thirty years. Why do I have to replace you with someone who likes purple brick?”

Hazel looked up, startled, and I thought I saw dampness in her eyes before she turned away. I tossed the trash into the alley, then saw Hazel safely inside her house before going back to my side of the fence. I was no longer interested in gardening. The journal had taken care of that. Not that I minded. It was nice to have a reason to sit in the shade with a glass of wine, instead of working in the hot sun. I went to the kitchen for the wine, but before I took down the glass, I opened the book and read the tiny writing on the first page, turning the journal to catch what Hazel’d called the “crosshatching.” As I did so, I looked up and caught sight of Hazel through her kitchen window, which faces mine. I made a mental note to buy a curtain so I wouldn’t have to stare into a fifty-thousand-dollar kitchen.

I love feminist history, have read a number of women pioneers’ journals, in fact, and know that they fall into two categories. Most were for public consumption. They were lengthy letters written on the trail, then sent to the folks back home to be read aloud to friends and neighbors. Parts of them were even printed in the local newspapers. Rarer were the journals women kept for their eyes only. Having no women friends with whom they could confide during the hazardous overland trip, women used their journals as confidantes, recording private thoughts they never expected anyone else to read. Flipping through the pages of Hazel’s journal, catching words such as parturition and marriage bed, I was sure her diary fit into the second category.

I turned on the light over the sink and read on, slowly deciphering the entries word by word. I poured the wine and picked up the glass, then started for the patio. Then I changed my mind and went into the guest room that serves as my office and computer room.

Reading the journal would be slow going, so I might as well transcribe it onto my computer as I went along, in case I wanted to refer back to something. In fact, I could print out a copy and tie it with a ribbon to give to Hazel as a farewell gift. I was pleased with the idea, knowing how surprised Hazel would be. Or maybe she wouldn’t be. Maybe she’d known all along that’s exactly what I’d do. Hazel, you are a sly old fox, I thought. I turned on the computer, and while I waited for it to warm up, I returned to the kitchen. Reading the journal would take time. So I picked up the bottle of wine, held it up to the kitchen window in a salute to Hazel, and took it into the office with me.