Little Women and Me

Twenty-Five


“Why don’t you do Meg’s hair, Emily?” Amy suggested. “I remember when you did mine years ago in le ponytail. If I hadn’t gotten into trouble that day in school, I am sure it would have turned into quite the rage.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “You’re all doing fine with those, um, braids.”

I didn’t want them to realize that le ponytail was the only hairstyle I knew. Besides, le ponytail just didn’t seem fitting for a wedding.

We were all gathered in the bedroom I still shared with Meg and Jo, helping the bride get ready for her big day. Meg had on a dress she’d sewn herself—she said she wanted the simplest of weddings, nothing like the fuss and bother Sallie and Ned had—and the rest of us were wearing silvery gray dresses with roses in our hair and bosoms. I felt kind of funny wearing flowers in my bosom—I also felt funny calling it my bosom. As for the dresses, I gathered from what the others said that these were our best gowns for the summer, but I’d never seen them before.

It was still troubling me, the idea that three years had somehow passed, that I’d somehow leaped forward in time without having any memories of a single event that had occurred in that time period.

But there was no time to dwell on that now.

We had a wedding to get on with here.



Papa stood with his back to the fireplace, officiating over the wedding of Meg and John.

Meg had said she wanted simple and it was a small crowd, but everyone I knew was there: the immediate family, of course, plus Laurie, Mr. Laurence, Aunt March, Hannah, and Sallie and Ned Moffat. There was one couple I didn’t recognize. They were around Marmee and Papa’s age and I heard Jo greet them as Uncle and Aunt Carrol.

At one point during the ceremony Papa’s voice caught and it was a moment before he could go on. I realized then that he was emotional at the idea of his oldest daughter getting married and leaving the nest. Perhaps he was also thinking that soon all his girls would leave the nest?

As I watched Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, noticing the changes of the past three years, I couldn’t help but think of Charlotte and Anne. Had they all forgotten about me? And if three more years had passed here, would three years have passed there too? If so, Charlotte would be in college now and Anne would practically be out of high school. What were their lives like now? What were they like? Had either one ended up with Jackson?

Jackson.

It’d been so long since I thought about him. Funny. He’d seemed so important to me once. I wondered now why he ever had.

But I didn’t get to think any more about that just then because Papa was pronouncing Meg and John husband and wife—Meg was Mrs. John Brooke now!—and the party was about to begin.



I’d thought it promising earlier in the day, when I’d seen Papa pass through the room with a bottle of wine under each arm. After all, I was eighteen now. Wasn’t that legal to drink in some places? At least back in the 1800s? But where was the wine now? All I could see was tea, water, and lemonade.

Laurie also noticed the absence of alcoholic beverages, because he commented on it to Meg. Apparently both his grandfather and Aunt March had contributed bottles to the occasion. That’s when Meg informed Laurie that Papa was donating most of it to some soldiers’ aid society, keeping just a little of it for Beth. Papa only believed in wine for medicinal purposes. Hey, I had medicinal purposes here! I was almost sure of it.

“You know, Laurie,” Meg said, “you would do well yourself to give up alcohol.”

Laurie looked reluctant.

“In fact,” Meg said, “I would consider it a great present to me if you did so.”

I knew Laurie liked to go to the saloons. He always said it was so that he’d have people to play billiards with, but anyone with any sense had to figure he drank there too. And I had some sense.

No, he didn’t look like he wanted to give that up. But Meg was the bride, after all, and this was her wedding day.

“I’m sure I’ll eventually be grateful to you for this, Mrs. Brooke,” he said at last. “Very well. I promise to never drink again.”

Wow, I hoped Meg didn’t ask me to give up anything today!

Hey, wait a second though. This whole thing that had just happened with Meg and Laurie about drinking: Was this the beginning of what would eventually turn into 12-step programs everywhere?

Whatever.

All I knew, as we saw Meg and John off on the short walk to their new life together at Dovecote, was that it had been a lovely day. Perhaps some people, like Sallie and Ned Moffat, needed to have a big wedding to feel their marriage was worthwhile. But Meg and John had proved that it wasn’t the money that made marriage worth it and the ceremony celebrating it wonderful. It was the love.

Oh, heck. I was beginning to sound like Marmee!

Someone get me out of here!



But as I lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, I knew that no one was going to get me out of there. After all, if it was going to happen, wouldn’t it have happened already? I’d been there four years. I’d probably be here forever now.

And that three-year gap between Meg and John announcing their engagement and me basically “coming to”—it was the only phrase I could think of to describe it—the day before their wedding. What did it all mean? Could I only experience things that were part of the original story? And if that was the case …

An uneasy thought came to me, something I’d wondered before. When the events of the original Little Women ended, what would happen to me? What would my fate be when I ran out of story?