“Haven’t you started yet, Emily?” Jo asked crossly. “We want to get these off with the early post.”
“Simply composing my thoughts here,” I said brightly, while inwardly I groaned.
What do you say to someone you don’t know?
Get well soon was usually a crowd pleaser, but not with this crowd, since Jo would yell at me for not putting enough time and thought into it.
Then I remembered something he had written to me in a packet of letters the household had received shortly after my arrival, and then I too bent my head to the task, trying my best to pick words a March would use.
Dearest Papa,
I know, as you told me once, that even when I feel there is no clear place for me, there is always one in your heart. And so I write to give you a full report on the state of the March household.
Meg is now the head of the table at meals. The role seems right for her and I think when the time comes for her to have a bunch of kids, she will do a good job. She hardly ever yells at any of us.
Jo is, well, Jo. She and Laurie got in a fight, but even though she still claims to be right, she was willing to apologize the moment he was.
Sweet Beth! You should see her. So kind, and even with these letters, it’s like she’s determined to take up as little space as possible. Honestly, I wish she would take up more. Do you ever stop and think how much better the world would be if it were filled with Beth? Or how empty it would be without her?
Amy’s handwriting and grammar are terrible. But I suppose you can see that? It’s hard to believe she’ll one day m—
Whoops! If I predicted who Amy would end up marrying (so crazy!) and one day it came true (still crazy!), Papa might think I was a witch. No one, to look at Amy now, chewing her pen and then writing “contradick” and “punchtuation,” would ever believe who she was destined for.
Sorry, one of Beth’s kittens just jumped on the paper and I lost my train of thought.
Where was I …
Okay, so perhaps this was not a full report, but please know that everyone here—including me—wishes you a speedy recovery. So GET WELL SOON!
Anyway, Jo is now glaring at me, so I had better wrap this up. I hope it will give you comfort to know that while Marmee is down there in Washington with you, I am keeping an eye on things up here and seeing that the others remain the little women you love so well. I even read Pilgrim’s Progress every day for strength.
A lie. The others read it religiously but I’d barely cracked the spine on mine. Still, it wouldn’t be good for him to think one of his little women had gone heathen.
So continue mending and, as I say, GET WELL SOON!
There are many here who miss you.
A truth. Many did miss him, even if one of them technically wasn’t me.
Signed,
“Aren’t you going to sign this?” Jo asked when she was about to put all our letters in the packet.
“Oh,” I said vaguely. “I thought I did.”
“Well, you didn’t,” she said, thrusting the sheet back at me.
I stole glances at how the others had signed theirs.
Ever your own Meg.
Hugs and kisses from your Topsy-Turvy Jo.
Come home soon to your loving Little Beth.
Your affectionate daughter, Amy Curtis March.
Well, at least Amy was capable of spelling her own name right.
Even Hannah had signed hers: Yours respectful, Hannah Mullet. As though he might not know which Hannah she was if she didn’t write out her whole name. And what kind of last name was Mullet anyway?
What to write, what to write … how to sign, how to sign …
And then it hit me: the one thing that if I included it in a letter to him was sure to put a smile on his face.
I smiled myself as I took up my pen again and scrawled across the bottom of the page:
Your Middle March.
Seventeen
We spent the next week being so virtuous it would have made my teeth hurt if it weren’t for the fact that I felt just as caught up in the purpose as the others did: the purpose being to keep the household running as smoothly as possible in Marmee’s absence so that she should have nothing to worry about while she continued to nurse Papa.
But then Jo got sick and everything got crazy.
At least for me.
“You must go to Aunt March in Jo’s place,” Meg in her role as Marmee in absentia directed me.
“But I’ve never gone there on my own before,” I objected.
“What can be so hard about that?” Meg wanted to know. “Jo goes there every day of the week on her own save the one day you go with her.”
“The old lady terrifies me,” I admitted.
“Don’t be absurd,” Meg said, proving herself to be no real Marmee at heart. Marmee would never mock one of our fears. “What can one little old lady do to you?”
“She can pound her cane at me,” I said with a shudder. “She can cry for ‘E-mi-LY!’ until I think I’m going crazy.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Meg said.
“Try it sometime,” I challenged. “If she addresses you as Margaret, you’ll be surprised at how many syllables she can turn your name into, and the longest will sound like there’s a shriek buried inside it.”
Meg tilted her head to one side for a moment as if considering what her name might sound like: “Mar-ga-REET!” But then she shook her head as though annoyed at me for forcing her to consider it at all.
“Never mind that,” she said. “Jo’s sick and Aunt March doesn’t like to be read to by people who sound sick. She says it spoils her pleasure. And since Aunt March has been kind enough to finance Marmee’s journey down to Washington to be by Papa’s side—”
“Kind enough?” I cut her off. “It’s not kindness when a person gives an ‘I told you so’ lecture before forking over the cash!”
“ ‘Forking over the—’ What?” Meg shook her head again. “Whatever the case, we cannot afford to anger Aunt March at this time. After all, what if Papa takes a turn for the worse and Marmee needs to stay longer and needs more money to do so?”
I was finally impressed. I could see Marmee’s pragmatism in Meg.
“Fine,” I said, pulling my bonnet down off its hook. “I’ll go in Jo’s place today. I’ll go and read to the old bat no matter how crazy she makes me with all her pounding and screeching my name and—”
“A mere day?” Meg laughed. “You can’t be serious!”
“Excuse me?” I’d been tying the bonnet under my chin, but my hands froze now mid-tie.
“A day won’t be enough—you have to go every day this week!”
A week of Aunt March pounding her cane at me.
A week of Aunt March screeching, “E-mi-LY!”
They say you can get used to almost anything given enough time and no other option: like bad prison food or no air-conditioning or hairy armpits if you accidentally stumble into the wrong century.
But “they” never met Aunt March’s parrot, Polly. “E-mi-LY!” the parrot would croak at me. “Is that hair color real?
“E-mi-LY!” the parrot would croak at me. “Are you sure you belong with the March family?”
The answers were respectively “yes” and “no,” but I refused to talk back to a parrot.
“Why does Polly say those things to you?” Aunt March demanded. “She’s rude to everyone, of course, but the things she says to you never make any sense to me.”
“I don’t know, Auntie,” I said. I liked to call her Auntie because I knew it bothered her. “I don’t speak Parrot.”
She started to sputter and I knew from experience that if I gave her enough time, that sputtering would turn into some kind of pronouncement concerning my rudeness.
So I didn’t give her enough time.
I picked up King Lear and found a place that was different from where I’d left off.
“Shall I continue?” I sighed. “I’m pretty sure we’re almo
st at the part where one of his daughters kicks him out for the last time.”
Take a week off from your regular duties in order to go read to some old bat and things really do get crazy, and not just for me. Life: it’s what happens when you’re looking in the wrong direction.
Beth was finally sick.
Every morning that week I’d gotten up early to avoid Aunt March screeching at me for being even a second late.
And every morning after I left, apparently Beth had reminded the others of their responsibility to look in on the Hummels in Marmee’s absence.
But no one else wanted to go.
Jo was sick, Meg was too busy running the household, and Amy was just, well, Amy.
Not to mention, it was dreary going to the Hummels.
So Beth went dutifully, bravely on her own.
And the others let her.
If I’d known, if she’d said anything about her visits when I returned from Aunt March’s each evening, I would’ve found a way to prevent her. Or I would’ve forced one of the others to go, or even gone myself in the evenings. After all, this was my whole reason for being here: to change that one thing, to keep Beth from dying. With only that one job to do, how had I failed at it so miserably?
But she never said a word, so I hadn’t known.
I knew something was up, though, when I returned one evening to find Beth in bed, her fever raging, her tongue red as a strawberry.
“I’m sorry,” Beth apologized as Meg and Jo nursed her. “But there was no one else to go. Mrs. Hummel goes to work and the baby is—the baby was—so sick, although Lottchen did her best to take care of it.”
Normally, I would have been puzzled over the name of Lottchen—Lottchen? Seriously?—but a word in her last sentence stopped me cold.
“Was?” I echoed. “You mean the baby is better now, right?” I asked hopefully.
But a look around the room told me that Beth had already shared this tale and that the outcome wasn’t a good one.
“No.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The baby died … in my arms.”
Oh no!
“The doctor came,” Beth went on bravely. “He said it was scarlet fever.”
“And now Beth has it too,” Meg said.
Scarlet fever. The disease that would kill Beth—had killed Beth every single time I’d read the story. My mind raced—could I still avert that final outcome? There must be something I could do. But what? If only I hadn’t been at Aunt March’s, if only Amy wasn’t so … Amy. There must be something!
“The doctor told her to come home and take belladonna,” Jo added.
“It’s contagious, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Very,” Meg said.
“But both Meg and I had it when we were younger,” Jo said.
Had I been vaccinated against it? Was there even a vaccine? And if I had been vaccinated against it, would a vaccine in the other world still apply in this world?
Without thinking, I took a step back from the bed and felt immediately guilty when I saw the look in Beth’s eyes. But the look wasn’t disappointed; it was forgiving.
I stepped forward again.
“Well.” I laughed as though it didn’t matter. “I probably had it too then.” Pause. “Didn’t I?”
“How can you not remember if you had scarlet fever or not?” Jo scoffed. “It’s hardly the sort of thing a person forgets!”
“I agree,” Meg said, but she looked puzzled. “But it is funny, because suddenly I can’t remember if Emily ever had it or not! It is odd about Emily, how sometimes a person mysteriously forgets things about her as though great gaps of her life are just one blank slate.”
“Well, I remember!” Jo snorted. “Meg and I were the only two to get it.”
Now that I knew I’d never had scarlet fever in this world, I was tempted to step away again. Would this be how I’d die? Of scarlet fever, in a world that was only fictional until a year ago? And if I did die here, would my own body mysteriously show up dead in the real world?
Still, I forced myself to step closer to Beth, taking her hot little hand in both of mine.
“Is it very bad?” I asked quietly. “Do you feel awful right now?”
“Not awful,” she said, far more calmly than I could have been in her position. “There is the headache and now the sore throat and I do feel queer, like somehow I am not even here, not even completely me, but it is not awful.”
“I’ll stay with you until you’re better,” I said, forcing a bright smile, knowing somehow that she’d never be all better.
“I’ll stay,” I went on more brightly still, “and read to you from your favorite books.” I forced a laugh. “I’d much rather read to you than to Aunt March! And I’ll even take care of all your dolls for you while you’re sick, even headless and limbless Joanna, so you don’t have to worry about them being neglected. I’ll—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jo cut me off. “Dr. Bangs has already been here. He asked Beth which one of us she would most like to have nurse her and she said me.”
“I’m sorry, Emily,” Beth said apologetically. “It was very hard for me to choose, but you see I did remember you hadn’t had it before and I don’t want to endanger you.”
“That’s right,” Jo said. “Come to think of it, what are you still doing here, Emily?” She began to shoo me like she would one of Beth’s kittens. “Get out! Get out! What do you want to do, get yourself sick so that I have to take care of you too?”
I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave Beth’s side, but …
“Please go, Emily,” Beth urged. “If I were ever responsible for getting you sick, it would kill me.”
I hated to hear her speak those words, but how could I refuse?
Okay, I may have been willing to leave Beth’s bedroom, but leave the house completely? And to go stay at Aunt March’s?
“I’m sorry, Emily,” Meg insisted, “but there simply is no other way to keep you and Amy safe from catching scarlet fever.”
Amy kicked up even more of a fuss than I did.
“I won’t go! I won’t go!” she shouted when informed of Meg’s plans. “I can’t stand that old bat!”
It was no comfort to think that one other family member thought of Aunt March in the exact same terms I did.
But then Laurie came by to see how we were doing.
“Couldn’t we stay at Laurie’s house until the danger’s passed?” I suggested.
Meg looked shocked. “I can’t let you go stay unchaperoned at a boy’s house!”
Laurie looked shocked at my suggestion as well, a little fearful of it too.
Why was he so scared of being sort-of alone with me?
“Please, Meg,” Amy pleaded. “It is, after all, only Laurie, so it’s not as though it were a real boy.”
Before Meg could respond to this odd claim, Laurie stepped in.
“It won’t be so bad,” he reassured Amy. “Every day you’re at your aunt’s, I’ll come by to take you on walks and for drives. I’ll even take you out trotting in the wagon with Puck and to the theater.”
Amy was immediately satisfied. She may have claimed Laurie wasn’t a real boy—who did she think he was, Pinocchio?—and yet she certainly managed to simper and flirt with him now as though he was one.
As for me, why wasn’t I reassuringly offered walks and rides in the wagon with Puck? Whoever Puck was.
“It’s wonderful how strong you are about these things,” Laurie said to me in a low voice when Amy had skipped off to pack a trunk and Meg had followed to help her not pack anything foolish. “The others are lucky to have you. You’re such a brick.”
No one had ever called me a brick before. It was a bizarre compliment, but one that made me feel good.
Then everyone was back in the room.
“Should we write to Marmee and tell her about Beth?” Jo wondered aloud.
“No,” I said, determined to remain a brick now that someone had decided I was one. “It’ll only worry
her when she can’t do anything about it anyway. What kind of choice would that be: Stay with her sick husband, who has no other family in Washington, or leave him to come tend to her sick daughter? No, I say leave her in ignorance unless a time comes when she absolutely needs to be told.”
I’d done my best to deliver a persuasively Marmee-ish speech and the others took it well enough. Even Jo nodded a grudging approval.
Then:
“Emily,” Jo said exasperated, “why aren’t you packed yet? Always holding everybody up!”
As I rushed around the bedroom, throwing items into a trunk like a crazy person—mustn’t forget my spare corset!—sadness and worry returned: worry because, having failed to prevent Beth from getting sick, now I might get stuck here forever; and, more importantly, sadness because I’d grown to love Beth and I really hated to leave her behind.
Not to mention that in my mind’s ear I could already hear that wretched parrot taunting me.
“E-mi-LY want a cracker?” it would croak.
Then I brightened.
Once installed at Aunt March’s, there was nothing to prevent me from sneaking back to the house in order to spy on Beth’s progress, was there? And maybe when I did sneak back, I could find something to do to save her.
It was a long walk, but I was strong—a brick, even!
I could do it.
Eighteen
It was a lot easier to make the long walk from Aunt March’s house to the March home than it was to find a good time to sneak in. As I stood freezing under Beth’s window in the gray of a dying day, occasionally going on tiptoe to risk peeks over the ledge, only to see Jo sitting at Beth’s bedside, I kicked myself: I should have waited until the middle of the night, when even Jo would have to fall asleep for a bit. As it was, my feet felt like blocks of ice, my legs too stiff, the road between that house and Aunt March’s too long to go back only to make the trek again later.
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