Little Women and Me

Twenty-Nine


Jo, Amy, and I were at Aunt March’s visiting with Aunt March and Aunt Carrol.

Aunt Carrol.

It reminded me of that Miss Crocker woman, the one who was supposed to be such a close family friend when she appeared for dinner the night Pip died, only to turn up again much later to have Jo escort her to that People’s Course on the Pyramids. Similarly, I’d never heard of Aunt Carrol until she showed up at Meg’s wedding, and now here she was again at Aunt March’s.

If I didn’t know any better I’d swear these barely seen women were some sort of literary contrivance.

And how had we gotten here—Jo, Amy, and me—visiting Aunt March and Aunt Carrol?

It had started a few hours earlier …

“But, Jo, you promised!” Amy all but whined. “You said that if I did that picture of Beth for you, you’d go on six calls with me today!”

Okay, she actually did whine.

“I’m sure I said nothing of the sort,” Jo said. “I hate going on calls.”

Calls, apparently, were visits paid to friends in the neighborhood. Certainly it had nothing to do with having a telephone.

I missed having my own phone.

Gee, I wondered if I’d still be stuck here in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell invented his.

“You did so promise,” Amy said.

Apparently calls were something people regularly did in the 1800s and yet this was the first I heard of anyone in our family going on a round of them since being here.

“You promised, you promised, you promised,” Amy insisted.

“Fine,” Jo said irritably. “I’ll go with you on your stupid calls …” She paused dramatically before adding, “But only if Emily goes with us.”

“Emily?” Amy was clearly both shocked and displeased at this.

Emily? Me, I was just shocked.

“Yes,” Jo said coolly. “If Emily comes along, I might find the idea of paying calls on people I couldn’t care a fig about just barely bearable.”

Since when had I become Jo’s go-to person for companionship?

Wow, when I talked her back into being a writer again, it must have made quite an impression.

“It’s important we make a good impression on people,” said Amy, adjusting her gloves so that the bows were in the exact same position on each hand as she strolled along. “You never know who might be someone who can do you a favor later.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Jo and I said simultaneously, breaking into simultaneous giggles as we trailed along behind Amy.

“It’s bad enough she made us change into better clothes,” Jo whispered to me, although Jo’s voice was always so loud regularly, her idea of whispering could probably be overheard by the object of our discussion.

“I know, right?” I agreed. “And now she expects us to behave properly on top of that?”

We broke into peals of laughter.

“What is so funny?” Amy spoke sternly, wheeling on us.

“Emily said something uproarious,” Jo said, punching me in the shoulder in a friendly way as she tried to stop laughing.

“I only did that because Jo did it first,” I said, giving Jo a friendly shoulder jab right back.

“Yes, I can see something is funny,” Amy said in exasperation, “but what exactly?” Before either of us could answer, she shook her head.

“Never mind that now. We are at our first stop, the Chesters’. And do please refrain from punching each other when we are inside. It is so unladylike.”



Amy may have made a good impression at our first stop, what with her ability to make lame small talk, but Jo and I didn’t. The need to behave had been so ingrained in us by Amy that we remained stiff the whole time. I’m sure the Chesters thought we were totally boring.

The second stop, the Lambs’, was even worse, but in reverse. We were too chatty there, with Jo telling embarrassing stories about Amy as a young girl, and me adding embellishments, leaving the Lambs to conclude we were “great fun,” while Amy just glared at us.

At the third stop—I didn’t catch the people’s name, which made it very difficult to speak politely to them—Jo had yet more fun, and I had fun with her, talking to a bunch of guys our age. With the exception of that time Laurie had taken us picnicking with his English friends, had I spoken with any guys close to my own age? Funny, I couldn’t remember. While we talked to the group of guys, Amy focused her attention on just one: a Mr. Tudor, whose uncle had married an English lady who was third cousin to a real live lord. I couldn’t see anything great about him, but Amy, being in love with the idea of royalty however far removed, did. Well, Amy would.

At the fourth stop, the Kings’, no one was home so we left a card.

At the fifth stop, the young ladies of the house were home but otherwise engaged—too busy to see us? But we were so cool! So again we left more cards.

Finally, we arrived at the last stop, Aunt March’s.

Which was how we had arrived at Aunt March’s to visit with her and Aunt Carrol.

Aunt Carrol: who was this mysterious new relative, really?

She looked like a troublemaker to me.

Jo hadn’t even wanted to go inside, claiming she’d rather risk her life for someone else than be pleasant to people when she didn’t feel like it. Remembering the rude parrot, Polly, I’d agreed, but Amy shot us down.

And now we were here.

Jo and I, restless with all these visits, kept popping up from our seats to look at books in the bookcases or pace the room like caged animals. While we did that, Amy sat on the sofa with her back ramrod straight, close to this Aunt Carrol person.

Suck-up came the uncharitable thought.

Even though I was enjoying looking at books and stretching my legs with Jo, far more than I would have sitting with Amy and the aunts, after a while I began to develop a strange sensation of something going on beneath the surface. I turned just in time to see Aunt March and Aunt Carrol exchange a series of meaningful glances: first at Jo, then to each other, to Amy, and to each other again.

What was going on here?

It was immediately obvious that whatever the aunts were trying to figure out, Jo was suffering from the comparison. Well, of course they would prefer Amy, with her perfect clothes and her suck-up manners.

Blech.

“Do you speak French?” Aunt Carrol asked Amy, out of the blue.

“Oh yes,” Amy replied enthusiastically. “I speak it quite well. Ever since the time I stayed here when Beth was ill, and during my subsequent visits since Aunt March arranged for art lessons for me, I have been able to practice with Esther, her maid. Esther is French, you know.”

“And how about you, Josephine?” Aunt Carrol turned her attention to my restlessly strolling sister. “How are you getting on with languages?”

A chill went up my spine at her words. I don’t know what came over me then. I only knew I had to stop Jo from answering. The aunts were testing Jo and Amy, and I suddenly knew that whatever impulsive, brash thing Jo said next would cause her to flunk that test.

“Isn’t it lovely out this time of year?” I began chattering just as Jo opened her mouth to speak. “I love everything about”—what month and season was this? my mind screamed—“whatever month this is. Why, whenever I hear the birds or see the”—what kind of flowers would be out now?—“general flowers blooming, I am always reminded of”—gosh, what could they remind me of? I spied a book on the shelves—“the part in Shakespeare where—”

“Emily, what are you talking about?” Jo said, cutting me off when I was really doing so well. “Not knowing what month it is, general flowers blooming—and what does Shakespeare have to do with anything?” She shook her head at me, annoyed, before turning to Aunt Carrol. “Don’t have any other languages. I’ve got English and that’s plenty for me, the only one I have any use for.”

Oh, Jo.

She was always her own worst enemy.

I tried to tell myself it didn’t mean anything, the rapid meaningful glances that once again passed between the aunts. As the visit wore on—and on and on—I continued to tell myself that everything was going to be fine, that I’d simply been imagining things. By the end of the visit, I’d almost convinced myself of that.

But as we finally left I felt an impulse to go back, and used the excuse of wanting to borrow that Shakespeare volume from Aunt March.

It was as I stood outside the parlor door that I heard Aunt March say to Aunt Carrol, “You’d better do it”; and Aunt Carrol say ominously in reply, “I certainly will, if her mother and father consent.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!