Little Women and Me

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “Yes?”

  “When Teddy and I were in town, we ran into Meg. She was just coming from the Gardiners’, where Sallie had been telling her all about Belle Moffat’s wedding. Belle’s in Paris for the winter now, you know. Anyway, I could tell that Meg was envious of Belle’s grand wedding. So maybe she can be persuaded to leave off her fancy of Mr. Brooke, since he is a poor man, and wait for a rich one? With a little luck, it could be years before one comes her way.”

  Well, there was Laurie …

  But I knew Laurie wasn’t destined for Meg. Having recovered from some of my story amnesia, I also knew where Meg and Mr. Brooke’s storyline was heading. Of course, I couldn’t tell Jo any of that.

  I was still thinking about Meg and Mr. Brooke’s future when Jo’s annoyingly annoyed voice cut in.

  “Aren’t you paying any attention to me, Emily?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I was trying to tell you about the other problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “Teddy.”

  “Oh. Is he holding some girl’s glove hostage too?”

  She ignored that. “That thing about me seeing him come out of the billiards saloon. I know he told me he was just taking a fencing lesson, and he even offered to teach me when I asked him, so that our fight scenes might be realistic when the time comes for us to do Hamlet, but I’m not sure if I believe him. What if he’s lying?”

  “So?”

  “So? You know how Marmee feels about such things. Why, she won’t even let Ned Moffat come to call—who, I might add, would make a much better secret suitor for Meg than Mr. Brooke, being rich and all—because he spends far too much of his leisure time in billiards saloons. So I told Teddy that he must be simple and honest and respectable so that he will always be welcome here.”

  “And what did he say?” I asked, curious. I couldn’t imagine a guy appreciating being lectured to by Jo.

  “He said that he didn’t go to the billiards saloons all that often anyway, but that he did like to go sometimes. Said he had a billiards table in some room in that huge house of theirs, but that it was no fun for him to play alone at home.”

  A billiards table? Hey, wait a second here. I shot pool.

  I decided the news of the billiards table and Laurie’s interest in the game was useful information to be filed away for later.

  Two weeks later, I was writing in the garret when I heard a racket outside. Going to the tiny window and peering out, I saw Jo and Laurie in the garden. He held something in his hands and Jo kept racing after him, trying to steal it away.

  Soon, they came inside, breathless, and we all gathered around to see what the commotion was.

  Jo held a copy of The Eagle and, flipping to an inside page, she began reading a story called “The Rival Painters.”

  When she finished, I had to admit, the story did show some promise, but nowhere near the praise all the others were heaping on after seeing the byline “by Miss Josephine March.” Laurie even declared Jo “the Shakespeare of our town,” which actually wasn’t that soaringly over the top, given the crummy fish-smelling paper it appeared in.

  “Of course, Teddy’s known all along that I’d submitted some stories, because I ran into him the day I brought them to town,” Jo told everyone smoothly, neglecting to mention the glove, I noticed. “At first, he thought I was there to get a tooth pulled or something. Can you believe the silliness of such a thought?”

  Well, I could.

  “I hope to one day earn enough money to support myself and help out with the girls,” Jo went on self-importantly. “Of course, I wasn’t paid anything for this story and the other one I gave the newspaperman.”

  “Not paid anything?” I may not have been published, yet, but even I knew you weren’t supposed to just give it away. Even if you were only paid a dollar—or, in the 1800s, a few cents—you were still supposed to get paid.

  Jo shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her.

  “The newspaperman said I should be happy enough if he liked my story sufficiently to print it,” she said happily. “Then, once I saw my name in print, and he saw what sort of a reaction the public had to my writing, we’d see about him paying me for subsequent stories.”

  I got paid more than Jo.

  Just barely.

  The newspaperman gave me “two bits” for a short story after my inspired speech about money always flowing toward the writer.

  When the next issue of The Eagle arrived, I waited impatiently as Jo’s latest story was read aloud by its authoress and then breathlessly as she slowly paged through the rest of the paper to see what other short fiction she was competing with.

  “ ‘The Woman from the Future,’ “ Jo announced the title before starting to read.

  The others all looked at one another, puzzled expressions on their faces.

  “But that makes no sense.” Amy wrinkled her nose when Jo was finished. “Why would someone from one hundred years plus in the future travel back in time to live in a town that sounds awfully similar to ours?” Amy turned to me then, as if I might be able to answer her question.

  But I just shrugged, not wanting to give myself away.

  “If there is such a thing as time travel,” Beth said, “which I don’t believe there is, I hope people get to take their cats and dolls with them.”

  “Of course there’s no such thing as time travel.” Jo snorted. “Who does this Evelina Massachusetts think she is?” she asked, referring to the pseudonym I’d used. “What a preposterous name! Whoever wrote this tripe was undoubtedly embarrassed to attach her real name to it.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Meg said. “Whoever she is, she’s no Jo March.”

  Ohhh, go lose another glove, I was tempted to tell her.

  “If you’re done reading that,” Hannah said, “can I have that last story?”

  Oh! I brightened considerably. My first fan!

  Then Hannah added, “I have some fish I’d like to wrap in it.”

  Fifteen

  So what if no one in my entire family, in this entire stupid town, liked my story of a time traveler.

  I’d still keep writing it. After all, I was living it.

  November was the dreariest month ever.

  At least that’s what all the others said, and they went on and on about it so much, eventually I decided to just put on a coat and go out, if only to get away from their complaining.

  “But you don’t like the cold,” Amy said, when she saw me all bundled up.

  “Yes, yes,” I agreed waspishly, “but I’m still going out in it.”

  I went.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  I gave my request to the maid who answered the door and a moment later my request appeared before me.

  “Emily!” Laurie sounded surprised, I hoped not unpleasantly. “What brings you out on such a miserable day?”

  “A while back,” I said, “Jo told me that you have a pool”—I had to correct myself—“I mean, a billiards table here but that you don’t often play at home because it’s boring to play alone.” I took a brave breath. “So I thought I could remedy that for you.”

  “You? I don’t mean to laugh,” he said, laughing anyway, “but what could you possibly know about billiards?”

  I knew this question would come up, so I’d given the matter some advance thought and devised an answer.

  “Oh, I read all about it in some book. There are pretty colored balls, you hit them with a stick called a cue, you try to get them in pockets. Don’t you know that you can learn a lot from reading books?”

  Since no one had asked me to stay awhile, I took off my own coat, looked around.

  “So,” I said. “Where do you keep your billiards table?”

  C-RACK!

  Laurie broke the balls on our second game.

  Nothing went in and it was my turn.

  As I bent over the table to shoot, trying to remind myself what ball I was supposed to be shooting at, Laurie interrupted.


  Interrupting a player who’s about to shoot—back home, in the real world, a person could get beaten up for doing that.

  But that didn’t stop Laurie.

  “It is the most peculiar thing,” he said. “You are very good at putting the balls in the pockets when you shoot—and, I confess, you have even sunk some combinations that would never occur to me to even attempt—and yet you do not appear to have a clue as to how the game is played at all in terms of the rules.”

  Of course I didn’t. That’s because the game he played bore no resemblance at all to my eight ball. When he’d said he had a billiards table, he meant a billiards table, as in English billiards, not a pool table. And instead of the rainbow of solid and stripe balls I was used to, all he had were white, yellow, and red balls.

  And I couldn’t ask for help since I’d already boasted that—

  “Didn’t you say you read a book about billiards?” he said.

  “Maybe it was in German,” I said, “in one of those books Mr. Brooke is always giving Meg.”

  “But it really is just so odd. I watch you play and you appear to be playing very well at some game, just not this one.”

  I took another shot.

  “Nice shot!” he cried. Then: “Too bad it was the wrong ball.”

  Before either of us could take another shot, we were interrupted by a maid announcing Miss Josephine March.

  Why’d she have to interfere with everything? I thought. Well, at least billiards was a game I could beat her at. So what if I didn’t know the rules? Even Laurie admitted I had a great shot.

  “What’s wrong?” Laurie asked immediately upon seeing Jo enter, breathless.

  “A telegram has come,” she said, looking at me with concern.

  “For me?” I said dumbly. Who would be sending me a telegram? And weren’t telegrams almost always bad things?

  “No, not for you.” Typical exasperated Jo. “For Marmee. It was from some man in Washington saying that Papa is in the hospital and that she must come at once.”

  Laurie was standing close to me and he grabbed on to my elbow then as though to steady me.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concern in his voice.

  I swallowed, nodded.

  The truth was, I felt numb. I’d registered that something potentially awful had happened to this man everyone in the household referred to as Papa, but he wasn’t anyone I knew.

  “I’m fine,” I said at last.

  “Oh, why did the others, why did we all complain so much of being bored?” Jo, a girl I could never have pictured wringing her hands, did so now. “We said if only something exciting happened—but this! There was a ring at the door, Hannah answered, then she came back with that wretched telegram. Why could we not have been content as we were?”

  “What can I do to help?” Laurie asked. “Anything!”

  “Oh yes,” Jo said, getting a grip on herself. She produced a letter. “This is for Aunt March. Marmee is to leave for Washington on the first train in the morning to go nurse him. She is already gathering supplies, says the hospital stores are not always good, but she will need money from Aunt March for the trip. Could you please deliver the letter?”

  “At once,” Laurie said. “I’ll go get my horse now.”

  “And I have an errand of my own to run,” Jo said, “so hurry on home, Emily. They need you there.”

  It felt good, the idea of being needed.

  I started to follow Laurie out but then I heard Jo’s annoyed voice.

  “Emily, what were you doing playing billiards with Laurie? You don’t know how to play billiards.”

  Apparently not.

  When I walked in the door, it was as though they were already holding a funeral.

  It was so weird for me being there then, the weirdest moment since I’d arrived there back around Christmas. Once again I was an alien. The others were all crying into handkerchiefs, holding on to one another, absolutely devastated. Although I could feel upset for them, I didn’t know this man they called Papa, had never met him.

  I wished I could do something to help them all, to make it better for them.

  “Oh, Emily!” Beth cried, throwing her arms around my neck.

  I hugged her back, patted her when Meg came to me with a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Here is the awful telegram,” she said.

  It was just a greeting, plus two short sentences, signed by an S. Hale. But then I noticed the address at the bottom:

  Blank Hospital, Washington.

  Blank Hospital? What the heck sort of name was that?

  “I feel so guilty,” Meg said. “There I was complaining how hard times are, how men have to work and women have to marry for money, and then Hannah came in with that telegram.” She began to sob again.

  I pulled her into the embrace so now there were three of us in that hug.

  “It is my fault,” Amy said miserably. “When Meg said that, I said that Jo and I would make our own fortunes—her through her writing and me through my work with clay.” She glanced over at the little clay figures of birds and fruit and faces she’d made, the objects Hannah referred to as mud pies. “It was vain of me to think of personal fortune as if it mattered.” She began to sob again too.

  “There, there,” I said.

  And now we were four in this group hug.

  It would have been comical if it weren’t so tragical.

  “I wish I could be as strong about this as you are, Emily,” Meg said, wiping at her eyes. “I never pegged you for the stoical type before.”

  Easy to be strong and stoical, I thought, when you don’t have a personal stake in anything.

  Then Marmee bustled in and looked at us for a long moment as though counting heads.

  “Where is Jo?” she asked.

  None of us knew.

  “No matter,” she said. “I am all packed and ready.”

  Then Mr. Laurence came and told Marmee that Mr. Brooke would be going with her to Washington as her personal escort, which made Meg straighten up, suddenly looking very grateful and surprisingly pretty.

  And then Laurie came in with a letter from Aunt March, saying she was enclosing the requested funds but first needed to deliver a lecture on how she’d always said March shouldn’t have gone into the army, which made Marmee mad enough to crumple up the letter and toss it on the fire, after pocketing the money, of course.

  And then—the last then!—Jo came in.

  She had a bonnet on her head, one that I didn’t remember seeing on her when I’d seen her back at Laurie’s. It looked ridiculous.

  With one swift move, she tore the bonnet from her head.

  We all gasped.

  Her hair, all that beautiful long chestnut hair, gorgeous as a healthy horse’s mane, had been cut off, leaving her with a short, choppy crop.

  “What have you done?” Marmee asked.

  I didn’t even have to listen as Jo explained to the others.

  She’d sold her own hair, the one thing she could think of for which she could get any cash, so she could give it to Marmee to help out Papa.

  I watched as she pressed crumpled bills, totaling twenty-five dollars, into Marmee’s hand.

  Jo wasn’t a pretty girl, but her hair had been, and now it was gone. Now she looked like a naked bird.

  But she looked like something else too as she stood there, defiant.

  She looked glorious, magnificent.

  Where others would wring their hands over something but then be content to leave it at that, Jo had taken action.

  Tomorrow, I’d no doubt go back to resenting her, thoroughly, but for today she had all the admiration I’d ever felt for anybody.

  Sixteen

  That night, I lay in bed listening to Jo finally cry over her lost hair and then Meg speaking softly in the most glowing terms yet about Mr. John Brooke. Once the room fell completely silent and the house was fast asleep except for me and one other person, I heard Marmee making her nightly rounds, going from bed to
bed to lay a kiss on each of our foreheads. She began in the other room with Beth and Amy before coming to our room, where she kissed Meg and Jo before coming to me last.

  I don’t know why she saved me for last, since by rights I should have been third, or middle, but as I heard her approach I made sure to shut my eyes tightly. I didn’t know what words of comfort I could possibly offer this strong woman who was so worried for her husband, the man who was supposed to be my father. So I just lay there feigning sleep when she kissed me, but in my heart I wished her well.

  The next morning the household rose at an insanely early hour so that Marmee could catch the first train to Washington. After waving her and Mr. Brooke off with promises on our parts to be good and strong and instructions on her part that we were to rely on Hannah’s faithfulness, Mr. Laurence’s protection, and Laurie’s devotion, saying further that she wanted us to work and hope and remember that we could never be fatherless—oh, right, she was talking about God again; well, I supposed we couldn’t possibly escape a Marmee lecture on such an occasion—we were left on our own.

  After Hannah made us a rare pot of coffee and Meg remarked that with Marmee gone the house felt a full half empty—“a full half empty”? Was it full or was it empty? I wished she’d make up her mind!—it was time for Meg to go to the Kings’, Jo to Aunt March’s, Beth and Amy to do housework and schoolwork, and me to go wherever the day of the week told me to go.

  Mr. Brooke wrote every day and the news was good: Papa’s pneumonia was getting a little bit better all the time.

  Naturally, we were expected to write letters too, first to Marmee, but then as it appeared that Papa was finally strong enough to receive letters, to him too.

  This presented me with a huge problem. I saw the others eagerly bend their heads to the task, some thoughtfully (Meg), some energetically (Jo), some gently (Beth), and some with excruciatingly poor spelling and grammar (Amy). They all seemed to have a lot to say, perhaps giving him news or reminding him of shared remembrances to brighten his day. The thing was, I had no past with this man. What could I possibly write that wouldn’t sound totally asinine? What comfort could I possibly offer?