Little Women and Me

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.