“I wasn’t thinking of Meg’s job,” Marmee said. “But yes, you are right: you will have to go.”
Rats.
“No,” she continued, “it’s that I fear this time away, being exposed to the Moffats’ grander lifestyle, Meg will return even more discontented with her life here than when she left.”
Grander lifestyle? Suddenly, I wanted more than anything in the world to be where there would be fun and parties and new experiences.
“I have a solution!” I offered eagerly.
Marmee waited expectantly.
“I could go with Meg!”
“Of course you can’t. You weren’t invited. Jo wasn’t even invited.”
“Well”—I hurried to think of some useful purpose I could serve—“I could act as lady’s maid to Meg, helping her dress her hair and things like that. Remember that ponytail I gave Amy that time?”
Funny. She didn’t look impressed.
“I’m sure all the Moffats have their own ladies’ maids,” I rushed on. I was sure of no such thing, but what the heck? “I wouldn’t want Meg to do without. Plus, it would be good training for me—you know, to learn the ropes so I know what to do when I’m old enough to attend house parties.”
Would I still be here in a few years? I shuddered at the thought. It was already spring.
“ ‘Learn the ropes’?” Marmee echoed. “Sometimes, Emily, you say the strangest things. And while your offer is tempting …”
Please say yes! Say yes!
“… I’m afraid I must say no.”
I could feel my face fall.
“It was a kind offer, Emily, but I fear that Meg must learn to conquer her discontent on her own. Besides …” She paused. “… you’ll be too busy taking care of the King children.”
I felt outraged. Hey, this woman wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t the boss of me!
But I couldn’t tell her that.
Wretched King children!
Wretched stupid everything!
I had to finally admit it: my chief problem in life, the one I needed to work on in a Pilgrim’s Progress sort of way, was jealousy. Sometimes it seemed as though I was jealous of everybody and everything: jealous of Meg’s opportunity in going to the Moffats’, jealous of Amy’s pretty blondness, jealous of Jo’s writing—specifically the fact that she’d done more of it than I had—plus her friendship with Laurie, even jealous of the tender way everyone treated Beth.
“Doesn’t it bother you,” I said to Jo a few days after Meg’s departure, “Meg getting to go to the Moffats’ while you and I have to stay here? After all, we are almost as old as she is.”
“Bother me?” Jo looked startled. “Of course I’m not bothered. I hate parties and getting dressed up. Why should I mind someone else getting something, especially when I don’t even want that something for myself?”
Apparently, I was the only March sister to be plagued by jealousy.
In fact, the others seemed just as happy to rely on their imaginations as they would have been to go to the house party in the first place. Just like when Meg and Jo had gone to the New Year’s party at the Gardiners’, leaving me behind with Beth and Amy, the other three now spent their evenings discussing what they were sure Meg must be doing right that second.
“I’ve heard,” Amy said, “that one of the older Moffat girls, Belle, is engaged. I’ll bet Meg finds that extremely interesting and romantic. I know I would.”
“I hope Meg isn’t feeling too badly,” Beth said with a worried frown, “that her dresses are somewhat shabby compared to those of the other girls.”
“Well, she won’t feel bad for long,” Jo said. “Laurie told me he was sending her a box with roses, heath, and ferns in it for the small party tonight.”
“Doesn’t anyone else find it strange,” I said, “how much attention Laurie spends on each of us?”
The others stared at me as though I’d said the oddest thing in the world. Apparently I was the only one who found Laurie’s behavior strange.
“You’re not going to bring up the pact again, are you?” Jo said witheringly. Then she shook her head as though shaking off my peculiar words. “I’ll bet it’ll be like Amy said before—the other girls will be green with envy over Laurie’s flowers. But if I know our Meg, she’ll play a trick on them. She’ll pretend they’re from the old man, Mr. Laurence.”
I wasn’t sure what was so funny about a sixteen-year-old girl pretending a man old enough to be her grandfather was sending her flowers, but the others apparently found it a hoot, because they started laughing.
“The ball is going to be a week from Thursday,” Amy said with a wistful sigh.
Now that I understood. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on that wall.
Every now and then, a person gets what she asks for. In this case, I got to be a fly on the wall at the ball, although not in the way I’d imagined.
The Moffat girls were so impressed with the flowers Laurie sent Meg, Belle Moffat sent Laurie an invitation to the ball. Laurie’s initial inclination was to decline politely—he said he didn’t like dressy parties any more than Jo did—but Jo convinced him. Jo, who never seemed to care at all what she herself looked like, wanted him to report back on how Meg looked.
And Laurie consented, just like that.
It would be nice, I thought, thinking of Jackson, to get guys to do what you wanted them to do.
The day after the ball was a Friday, which worked out well for me, Friday being the day I had free from my jack-of-all-trades work. While Jo grumbled off to Aunt March’s, and Amy and Beth stayed behind in the house to work on their lessons and do housework, I practically skipped across the newly green lawn to the Laurence estate and knocked loudly on the door.
I hadn’t been over by myself since that … last time, and at first Laurie looked vaguely shocked to see me standing there. I wondered if he was scared I’d try to kiss him again.
My concern grew when he tried to shut the door in my face.
“I’m not going to try to kiss you again!” Or at least not today, I mentally added as I pushed back forcefully against the door.
Laurie stopped trying to shut the door so abruptly, that with no resistance anymore, I immediately fell at his feet. As he reached out a polite hand to help me up, I saw he was blushing.
“Of course I wasn’t worried about that,” he said. “I know you will never do such a thing again.”
A lot you know, I thought.
“It’s only,” he went on, “that I promised Meg I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about last night.”
If that wasn’t catnip …
“You have to tell me now!” I said.
“Oh no, I mustn’t!” he said.
“But you can’t say something like that and not expect me to ask any questions.”
“But a promise is a promise. And Meg made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone at home.”
I had an inspiration. Grabbing on to his arm, I tugged him outside.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
But I didn’t answer. I just kept tugging.
“There,” I said, satisfied with myself now that I’d tugged him so far across the lawn, we stood exactly in the center between our two houses.
“I’m not sure I follow you,” Laurie said, “although I just did—follow you, that is, but that was only because you tugged me so hard.”
“There’s your home,” I said with a nod in one direction, “and there’s mine.” I nodded in the other direction. “Since neither of us is technically at home right now, then there’s no reason why you can’t tell me what Meg didn’t want you to tell anybody.”
“Well, while I suppose that might be literally true—”
“Besides which, I’m not anybody. I’m just Emily. I won’t say a word, and it’s not like anyone listens to me anyway.”
“Yes, well—”
“Spill, Laurie.”
“Spill? Is that another new word you invented?”
I sim
ply waited, hands on my hips.
“Very well.” He sighed, then: “It was awful, I tell you!”
“What was?”
“Meg! They had her dressed up like a, like a … doll. There were high-heeled silk boots to match the blue silk gown Belle insisted she wear. The dress was so tight she could hardly breathe, the train so long she could barely walk. They put makeup all over her, crimped her hair … and the neckline on the dress!” He blushed again. “It was so low, they put tea-rose buds in her … bosom… and her shoulders were bare!”
That didn’t sound much like prim Meg.
“And as for the young gentlemen!” Laurie said.
“Yes? What about them?”
“They were begging introductions and lining up to dance with her when I showed up!”
After the practically guy-free months I’d spent in the March household, that sounded awesome.
“And the worst was that after I told her I didn’t care for the way she looked, that I didn’t care for fuss and feathers, and after she made me promise not to tell any of you, saying she’d tell you all herself, after all of that, later on I saw her drinking champagne with Ned Moffat and his friend Fisher. And even after I made it clear I disapproved, she kept drinking!”
“There, there.” I made vague patting gestures with my hand on his arm, meanwhile thinking of how much I’d learned in the past few minutes:
One, Laurie could talk a blue streak when he wanted to, and he was a little priggish about certain things.
Two, when let off her leash, Meg was something of a tarty lush—so that’s what the March girls were really like when readers weren’t looking!
Three, Laurie really didn’t like fuss and feathers, not at all. I figured this knowledge would serve me well in my romantic war against Jo for Laurie’s heart. And I still did want to win his heart. In a weird way, it was insanely cute how worked up he was getting on Meg’s behalf. Back home, if a girl’s neckline was so low you could see her … bosom, the only thing any guy might say would be “Lower! Lower!”
“Oh!” Laurie added, newly outraged. “I almost forgot: the Moffats nicknamed Meg ‘Daisy,’ of all things. Can you believe it? Daisy!”
Four, Laurie had something against nicknames, unless it was his own.
Oh, and five, I had the power to get Laurie to spill secrets.
Meg returned the next day, Saturday. She looked ragged and I thought she might be suffering from a hangover. Champagne’ll do that to a girl. Or so I’d heard.
Meg said she was happy to be home, even if home was unspectacular.
Marmee let that “unspectacular” pass.
But once Beth and Amy went to bed, Marmee was all ears, which was good, since Meg was suddenly all mouth.
“It was awful!” Meg echoed Laurie’s words to me from the day before. Then she confessed about the dress. “But that wasn’t the worst part. Oh no. The worst part was that at one point I heard Mrs. Moffat telling her girls how smart you are, Marmee, how you had such plans for us girls, chief among which was that we should all be kind to Laurie because he is rich, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if he married one of us!”
Well, when she put it like that, it didn’t sound like such a very awful idea. I mean, someone had to marry him.
“I would like to confront Annie Moffat!” Jo sprang from her chair.
Geez. What a hothead.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Marmee said.
“Marmee’s right,” Meg said, going on to add something about how she’d forget the bad, only remembering the good—HA! I thought. As if that ever worked for anybody!—and that she wouldn’t be dissatisfied with her life any longer.
HA! again. I’d heard that kind of talk before. I’d talked that kind of talk before. I’d never been able to follow through, though.
“Of course, I must admit,” Meg said, “I did like being praised and admired.”
And cue the violins for a Marmee Speech …
It turned out that Marmee wanted Meg to be modest as well as pretty but that further, she did indeed have plans for us:
“… to be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman”—No wonder, I thought, girls get so guy-gaga they’ll do almost anything to get one; it’s because of stupid books like Little Women!—“but if it doesn’t work out that way …”
Hey, what if I turned out to be the lesbian March girl? I bet that would screw up their story!
Never mind that, though.
Would it ever work out for me in the way that Marmee described?
Ten
Okay, maybe after getting upset about Marmee saying “… to be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman”—barf—it was hypocritical of me to change the way I dressed to suit a boy. If that’s the case, sue me. Anyway, there was a world of difference between Marmee’s version, in which the guy was the center of the universe, and mine, in which the guy was just a fun and interesting part of it.
Since learning that the wealthy boy next door didn’t like “fuss and feathers,” I’d started dressing down in order to attract Laurie’s attention. So far, that didn’t seem to be working, but it looked as though my new shabby dress might benefit me in another way. Now that it was fully spring, with longer afternoons for work and play, I’d discovered that the March girls all loved gardening. Every year, they were each given a plot of their own in the yard.
So one Saturday, having seen the others put on their shabby attire too, I grabbed a little spade and followed them out to a square section on our small property that someone had staked out with wooden posts and twine.
“Oh, look!” Meg exclaimed. “My little orange tree is doing nicely! Now, about some roses …”
“I haven’t decided what to plant this year,” Jo said, rubbing her chin. “Maybe sunflowers? A whole plantation of them?”
“I like my larkspur best of all the flowers,” Beth said, “but I am happiest to grow chickweed for the birds and catnip for my cats.”
People grew catnip?
“I’m thinking of redoing my bower this year.” Amy stood with hands on hips. “What do you think of more morning glories and honeysuckles?”
As I observed them excitedly planning their gardens for the year, I realized something was wrong. Where was my little plot of earth to till?
Quickly I did the math in my head, counting off the subdivisions of the squared-off plot. I was able to do it quickly since it doesn’t take long to count to four.
“Hey!” I shouted to the others. “What about me?”
“What about you?” Jo said, not even bothering to look up from her digging.
“Where’s my little plot of earth to till?”
“Silly Emily!” Beth laughed.
“You’ve never liked gardening,” Amy said.
“You don’t like getting your hands dirty,” Meg said.
According to them, I didn’t like this, I didn’t like that. So who was I supposed to be here, some kind of negative no-personality idiot?
I threw my spade down in disgust and trudged back to the house.
Every Saturday evening at seven p.m., like clockwork, the other four disappeared. Happy to have a rare hour or so alone where I could work on my writing, I’d never asked where they were going and they never said. But the night of the gardening incident, curiosity got the better of me and I followed them at a safe distance, keeping silent so they wouldn’t know I was there as they chattered amongst themselves.
Eventually, I followed them up to the garret. I again remained silent, observing as they each picked up badges off the table. The badges had “P.C.” printed on them, and they wore those badges around their heads like paper crowns. With great solemnity, Meg took a seat behind the table, while the others sat in chairs across from her.
“P.C.”? What could that mean? Not “politically correct,” but it was the only thing I could think of at the time.
“I hereby call this m
eeting of the Pickwick Club to order,” Meg announced.
The Pickwick Club?
“Mr. Snodgrass.” Meg turned to Jo. “Do you have this week’s edition of The Pickwick Portfolio?”
“Yes, Mr. Pickwick,” Jo said.
“Please present it,” Meg directed.
“Well, sir,” Jo said, “your own entry about a masked marriage is quite good, and the piece about the squash by Mr. Tupman”—she nodded at Beth—“was also quite good, if a little on the simple side.” Jo turned to Amy with a glare. “Unfortunately, this week all Mr. Winkle had to offer was yet another apology for laughing during club and for failing yet again to deliver a suitable piece for publication.”
In spite of Jo’s stern look, Amy giggled.
Pickwick? Snodgrass? Tupman? Winkle?
What were they doing?
The strange things people did for entertainment before You-Tube was available. And yet, they looked like they were having fun.
“What are you all doing?” I burst out.
The four others gave little jumps in their chairs as they turned to look at me. Apparently, I was better at acting invisible than I’d ever thought.
“Why, you know,” Meg, the first to recover, said.
“We’ve been doing it for a year,” Jo said.
Well—I mentally gritted my teeth—I haven’t been here a year, thank you very much!
“Jo got the idea from reading Dickens,” Amy said. “She liked The Pickwick Papers so much she thought we should put out our own paper.”
“So we each assume different characters from the book,” Beth said, “even though some of us haven’t read it yet and probably never will.”
“Well,” I said grudgingly, “it looks like fun. Why wasn’t I ever invited?”
“What do you mean you weren’t invited?” Jo snorted at me. “You said you hated Dickens. You’ve never wanted to come before.”
“Well, I do now.” I pulled over a chair from against the wall. “Perhaps I could sit in just this once …”
I tried to stay silent, I really did, but soon I realized that in spite of Meg being the symbolic head of the group as Samuel Pickwick, the real force behind The Pickwick Portfolio was Jo, who in addition to writing most of the pieces was also the editor.
Little Women and Me Page 10