Little Women and Me

Thirty


Soon after our visit with Aunt March, a letter arrived addressed to Marmee from Aunt Carrol, fallout from that fateful day.

Marmee read the letter silently, a smile spreading across her face as she read. When she was finished, she announced the following news:

“Aunt Carrol writes that she is leaving in a month to go abroad and she wants to take—”

“Me!” Jo crowed, cutting her off as she began to prance around the room.

“Amy,” Marmee finished her original sentence.

“Amy?” Jo said in shocked disgust, ceasing her prancing.

“Yes, Amy,” Marmee said as the March girl whose name she just mentioned preened in personal delight and satisfaction. “Apparently the last time you were at Aunt March’s you each said things revealing that Amy would make the superior travel companion. And of course Aunt March is paying for the trip.”

“Oh, me and my big mouth,” Jo said. “But I’ve wanted to go abroad forever!”

“So have I,” Amy said.

And so have I, I thought. This was wrong, on so many levels. But I saw something now that I’d never seen before, not when I was thinking only of myself.

I had to do something.

“Summon Aunt March here,” I said with authority.

The others looked at me as though I’d gone mad. Well, maybe I had.

“I don’t care how you get her here,” I went on. “Someone borrow the carriage from Mr. Laurence, I don’t care, but Aunt March must be made to answer for this.”

“Emily!” Marmee was shocked.

“I’m sorry, Marmee,” I said evenly, realizing as I said it that it was the only time I’d ever actually called her “Marmee” out loud, “but it’s only the truth. That old bat throws her money around just to get everyone else to dance to her tune. It isn’t right and she must be stopped.”

That’s what I told them, but it was about more than just putting Aunt March in her place. It was also about keeping Amy from going to Europe. It was about changing the story so it would go the way it should have gone all along.

Amy had her hands on her hips as she moved right up into my personal space. “Just who do you think you are to interfere so?” she said.

“I know exactly who I am,” I said, hands-on-hipsing her right back as I straightened to my full lack of height. “I am the Middle March.”



As we waited—and waited—for Aunt March to arrive, I had some time to think.

Yes, I was the Middle March, here and back home, but what did that really mean?

I’d always been in the middle, not just in birth order but in the middle of everything, on the fence—scared to say what I really wanted, scared to even know what I wanted!

And I’d also always been so down on myself, always looking to others to define my place in the world, wherever that world might be. I’d even accepted it when the others here told me things like “You don’t like to garden, Emily” or whatever else they said about me. Instead of resisting, I’d just taken it and walked away.

Who am I? I wondered. Who have I ever been?

I’d let myself be so defined by the opinions of others, it was almost impossible to answer that question. But I did know one thing, and that was who I wanted to be now:

I want, I told myself, to be the kind of person who stands up for what’s right.



Aunt March tromped in with her stupid cane and her stupid lorgnette. Thank God she’d left the stupid parrot at home.

“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

Who did she think she was, demanding anything? Honestly, we’d been waiting for her there for over two hours. It was a good thing my temper hadn’t worn off.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” I said. “What I’d like to know is: What is the meaning of you sending Amy abroad with Aunt Carrol when it’s Jo who should go?”

“Josephine?” Aunt March was so shocked at my outburst, she forgot to turn the last syllable of Jo’s name into one long shriek.

“Yes, Josephine. Josephine’s the one who took care of you for years and years. The only reason Amy even entered into your world was because she’d never had scarlet fever. You may have fallen in love with Amy’s pretty ways, but Jo’s the one who deserves a reward. Why, at times she may be the most annoying person who ever lived, but when she’s not doing that, she’s always sacrificing for other people. She sold her own hair during the war so we’d have money when we needed it. And when she won a hundred dollars in that writing contest, she spent it all so that Beth and Marmee might go to the seaside.” I paused. Oops, wrong plot, Emily! That happened in the original story! “Okay, so maybe I did that, but it was Jo’s idea that inspired me.”

I paused to breathe and into the silence of that moment Jo’s voice fell with a stunned:

“Emily, I never knew you cared.”

“Yeah, well.” I brushed her off, like a hand on the forehead when one isn’t sick. I had no time for any of that now as I continued:

“If you send Amy abroad instead of Jo, why, it’s as bad as what happened to Great-Aunt Louise. She’s the one who had to leave school and go to work to help the family during the Depression while her sisters got educated, always getting everything. She’s the one who took care of all the older relatives as they died one by one. And what was there for her? No husband, no kids, she never even got out of the country, and the most amazing thing was, she never resented anyone else.”

Someone had been tapping me on the shoulder for that whole last sentence. Finally, I turned, saw it was Beth.

“Excuse me. Emily? I hate to interrupt you, but who is Great-Aunt Louise? I’ve never heard of her before.”

I looked around the room, saw the others were all looking at me with equally puzzled expressions on their faces.

Shoot. Of course they’d never heard of Great-Aunt Louise. She was my great-aunt from back home. I’d never met her—she’d died too soon—but my real mother had told me all the stories about her.

“Okay,” I said quickly, “so I made that part up. But it doesn’t matter, because what Aunt March is doing is wrong and it’s Jo who should—”

“You know, Emily,” Aunt March cut me off, “I never really could see the point of you before today, but now I’m seeing there might be possibilities in you after all. Perhaps I have been hasty in my decision. Perhaps I should send you abroad with Aunt Carrol.”

Me? Was it really that easy—all I had to do was stand up to Aunt March and Europe was mine? I had to admit, if I had to be stuck in the story forever, it would be a lot more bearable if I could finally see Europe. Once there I could—

Amy’s shout cut into my daydreams.

“You!” Amy shouted, pointing an accusing finger in my direction. “You … interloper. You stop interfering right this second. I knew you were going to be trouble from the moment you showed up here.”

What did she mean by that?

“Amy,” Papa said sternly, “be careful what you say here.”

“What do you mean,” Marmee said, perplexed, “from the moment Emily showed up here?”

Amy blushed.

And a realization hit me as Amy grabbed on to my elbow with a muttered “Excuse us for a moment, please” to the others as she practically dragged me from the room:

All those stray things Amy’d said that had struck me as odd since coming here—somehow, Amy had known all along that I’d never really belonged in the story in the first place.

“How long have you known?” I asked, needing to make sure, once we were safely out of hearing.

“Ever since the moment you showed up in front of the fire that time and Jo was saying how it wouldn’t be Christmas without presents.”

Of course. That was the moment I’d arrived here. But …

“How did you know?”

“As Beth would say: Silly Emily!” Amy laughed her tinkling laugh. “I knew because I wasn’t in the original story either!”

What???

“What???”

“How else could I know? Like you, I came here from a different time, like that time traveler in that stupid story you wrote.” Her expression turned to an admonishing one. “You know, it was very irresponsible of you to write that. Who knows what might happen to us if the others ever guessed we don’t really belong here?”

“Wait a second.” This was too much for me. “I know how I got here. I’m from the twenty-first century. I was working on some paper on Little Women for school in 2011 and—WHOOSH!—I got sucked into the book. But how did you get here?”

“2011? Fascinating. You know, I’d always wondered what year you came from, but of course I could never ask that question!”

This was incredible: the idea that the book I thought I’d known so well hadn’t always been the book I knew.

“Are we the only ones?” I asked. “Yes, the only ones I’ve ever seen here. Well, except for Papa.”

“Papa!”

“Yes, he’s really only my papa, although he’s never minded that the rest of you call him that—not even you, Emily, and of course he also knows you don’t belong here.”

“Well, you don’t either,” I said heatedly.

“Perhaps not. But I got here first.”

“When did you and … Papa come?”

“1881,” she answered promptly. “The year after Little Women was finally published in one volume.”

“One volume?”

“Yes. Originally, it was divided into two separate books. See how little you know?” She shook her pretty head at my stupidity. “I’d read it first when it was two books, so I already knew the story. Anyway, Papa had bought me a copy of the new one-volume book, we were reading it side by side, I was saying I didn’t like certain parts of it, he was agreeing and, as you say—WHOOSH!—we got sucked right in.”

How well I knew that WHOOSH!

“You know,” Amy went on, “before we got here, it was just a story about a mother and her three daughters during the Civil War. The husband is fighting down South but then he dies. Very sad.”

“Wait a second. There were only three girls in the original version?”

But Amy waved off my question and was speaking again.

“You know, having you around was just barely tolerable when you were doing nice things like trying to save me that day on the ice—what a surprise that was to me! I was expecting Jo to come to my rescue, because she always does at that point in the story. But then you stalled us at the house and I began wondering how the scene would play out. I have to say, it was a treat to see it go so differently for a change. You know, when you’ve lived through a story as many times as I’ve lived through this one, a surprise can be a beautiful thing. But never mind that now. It’s no longer tolerable if you’re going to try to change things like who goes abroad.”

“But haven’t you ever tried to change anything?”

“Oh yes,” Amy said. “I change things all the time. Usually just little things. Like that part where I invite the other art students over? That wasn’t in the original. I added it because I thought it would be fun to have a luncheon centered all around me.” She frowned. “It’s too bad it didn’t work out so well.” Then she brightened. “Oh! And I also added the incident with the limes. That accomplished two things for me: it got me lots of sympathy, plus I was sick of going to that wretched school with Mr. Davis. Being the only March girl to have to go to some stuffy school? I should think not!”

“Little things,” I said, understanding, “like I changed things with Beth, making it so she won’t die. Well, I know that wasn’t a little thing.”

“You think you’ve kept Beth from dying?” Now Amy looked sad.

I nodded. “Of course I did. I think it was when I invented penicillin.”

“Penicillin? What’s that?” She shook her own puzzlement away before I could answer her. “No, you didn’t,” she said, still sad. “You only postponed the inevitable. But you can’t stop Beth from dying. Believe me, I tried everything I could think of to stop it. One time, I even went to the Hummels’ in her place, but it didn’t change anything. She snuck out when I wasn’t looking and went to see them by herself. Beth dying—it was always the one thing I hated about the book. In fact, it was the thing Papa and I were complaining about when we got sucked into the story, how unbelievably sad it was. But it never can be stopped. Beth always dies in the end.”

“You mean, then …?”

“Yes, she’ll die this time too. It’s just a matter of time.”

Wait a second. I’d thought my purpose here was to keep Beth from dying. But if there was nothing I could do to prevent that, how was I ever going to get out of here? Then I thought of the reality of what Amy’d said—Beth dying—and worries about my own problems disappeared for the moment.

“Now I’d like to ask you some questions,” Amy said, intruding on my thoughts.

“Such as?”

“What’s the future like?” she asked eagerly. “I’ve been dying to know, ever since you got here, but of course I couldn’t ask you before today.”

“The future?”

“Yes! What are the fashions like? What are people like? What is life like?”

Up to this point, I’d felt kind of like I was conducting an interview with her, trying to learn as much as I could because there was finally someone to answer my questions. But she’d turned the tables on me and now it was her interviewing me.

“Fashions?” I echoed. Typical Amy. That would be the first thing she’d ask about. “Well, people no longer wear long dresses unless they’re going to a prom or something.”

“What is a prom?”

“A prom is …” I stopped myself. It would take too much to answer that. “Dresses are much shorter, but girls like us wear mostly pants or even shorts.”

“And shorts are?”

“Really short pants.”

Amy’s eyes opened wide. “You mean girls show their legs?”

“All the time.”

Amy thought about this. “Oh, I would love that. I have very nice legs, but no one ever gets to see them. Tell me more! How else are things different?”

“Well, there are skyscrapers, tall buildings that are sometimes over one hundred stories tall.”

“One hundred stories tall? You are lying!”

“No, I’m not. And there are phones, devices for talking to people in other places. Instead of horses and carriages, people drive their own cars, which are motorized vehicles. Oh, and they fly in planes too.”

“People fly?”

“No, the people don’t fly. The planes fly and the people fly in the planes.”

“Oh my. The future does sound very different indeed.”

“It is different, but some things are exactly the same. We still have sibling rivalry.”

Amy wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”

“It’s what makes you want Laurie instead of letting Jo have him. I think it’s what made me want him too.”

“I don’t feel like talking about Laurie right now.” Amy wrinkled her nose again. “There will be plenty of time for him later. Now tell me, I know Louisa Alcott wrote a sequel to Little Women called Little Men and—”

“She wrote two,” I said. “There was another called Jo’s Boys.”

“Two sequels? Oh my! The second must have come out after I got stuck in here. At any rate, I never read the one I know about and I obviously never read the one I didn’t know about, and I’ve been positively dying to know for ages: Am I in those books too? What do I do? What is my hair like? What—”

“Never mind all that now!” OMG, was there ever a creature more vain than Amy March? “Getting back to these ‘little changes’ you say you’re always making—don’t readers notice? When you originally changed the story in 1881, by joining it, didn’t anyone notice?”

“How should I know what readers noticed or not?” Now she was disgusted. “I wasn’t out there with them, was I? I was stuck in here!”

“Haven’t you ever tried to get out?”

“Yes. At first I thought there must be a rabbit hole somewhere—you know, like Alice in Wonderland?—but if there is, I haven’t found it. You’d think if there was a way in, there must be a way out, wouldn’t you? Then Papa got the idea of apologizing to the book. Papa’s not usually given to such …” She paused as though struggling to find the right word. “… whimsical thoughts, but he was feeling pretty desperate that day. It can be tough being Papa in a book like Little Women. As it stands, he doesn’t get to do much except be talked about a lot when he’s in the war and then come back and officiate over Meg’s wedding. At least I have my big skating scene. At any rate, Papa’s idea was that since we got drawn into the book by criticizing it, perhaps the way out would be through apologizing for that criticism. So we tried that. ‘Oh, Book, we apologize for saying anything bad about you.’ ‘Oh, Little Women, we are sorry if we have offended thee.’ “

Wow, there’s something I’d never thought of—talking to the book!

“But that didn’t work,” Amy said. “And really, we did feel silly. Eventually, we began to accept that we’d be stuck here forever. It can get dull at times—so much sameness year after year!—but it seems there’s always new things to discover, even if they’re just small things, and it beats dying.”

“But what happens when you get to the end of the story? When the book ends?”

“Why, we just go back to the very beginning, of course. What else would happen?”

Go back to the very beginning? If I couldn’t get out of here, I’d be doomed to live through this book over and over again throughout all of eternity? I couldn’t let that happen! If that happened, I’d wind up as crazy and silly as Amy!

“The original book,” I said urgently, “the real original, you’ve read it—how did it end?”

“Oh. That.”

“Yes. That.”

Now she looked uncomfortable as she twisted her hands together. “Well, Jo goes abroad with Aunt Carrol and there she eventually meets up with Laurie—you know, he goes to comfort her after Beth dies—and then of course they get married in the end.”

They what? Amy had claimed that she’d only ever been able to change “little things,” but changing the person who goes abroad with Aunt Carrol—and the person who winds up with Laurie—was no little thing!

I started from the room, but Amy grabbed my arm, hard.

“What are you planning to do now?” she demanded. “You can’t interfere any more. Don’t you understand? Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me getting used to the hardships of the 1860s when I came here used to the modern conveniences of the 1880s? If I have to live through the story, I’m going to wind up with Laurie.”

Talk about an interloper!

I shook her hand off and marched out of the room.



Reentering the parlor, with Amy scampering behind me still trying to stop me, I walked right up to Jo.

I grabbed Jo by the biceps with both hands—man, she had well-developed biceps!—and gave her a good shake. I didn’t care that everyone else was looking, what they were thinking.

It was time I did the right thing. It was time I became a better person.

“I don’t care how you do it,” I warned Jo, “but you must be the one to go abroad. If you don’t, Amy will go. She’ll go to London, she’ll go to Paris, she’ll go to Heidelberg.” I stopped. Heidelberg—where had that come from? I’d never even heard of Heidelberg! I shrugged the thought off, barreled on. “And she’ll go to Nice. Eventually, Laurie will find her there to comfort her about”—I shook my head, shook the sadness away—“something really sad, but never mind that now. The point is, he will find her and eventually they will get married.”

“Amy and Teddy married?” Jo laughed, as did everyone else except for Amy.

“I know,” I said, “it’s a real laugh riot, right? Except it isn’t, because that is exactly what will happen if you don’t go abroad. Meanwhile, while Amy’s larking around Europe on your trip with your Teddy, you’ll go to New York to live in a boardinghouse. You’ll meet an old German guy with a beard and you’ll agree to become his wife one day when you come across him walking in the rain with a parcel under his arm and he shares his umbrella with you.”

“New York? An old German guy? An umbrella?” Jo wrenched one of her arms from my grasp, placed her hand on my forehead.

Now, that was still annoying.

“Are you feeling all right?” Jo’s voice was full of concern. “Is this just one of your castle-in-the-air stories like before with Great-Aunt Louise?”

How was I ever going to persuade her?

“So what if it is?” I sighed. “I’m telling the truth.” I paused. “Think about the bread, Jo,” I said meaningfully. “Think about the moldy bread.”

Jo looked sharp at me then and I knew she was remembering. Maybe it was wrong of me to use that, since I knew now that the bread hadn’t saved Beth, wouldn’t save Beth. But maybe it would at least make Jo listen to me.

“I know things,” I said, and I did, even if I didn’t know how to save Beth. “You may not realize it now, but you love Laurie. You’re in love with him. Maybe you’re too blind to see it, but he certainly knows he’s in love with you.”

It was so true, all of it. I saw that now.

“Everyone knows you two belong together,” I finished somewhat lamely.

Jo was puzzled now.

“But I thought,” she said, “you wanted Laurie for yourself.”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I thought I did, once.”

It struck me then, how for so long I’d thought I wanted Laurie, but it was only ever the idea of him—the idea of having something that was really meant for one of my sisters. It was the whole Jackson thing all over again. And now I saw that there had been signs all along that I didn’t really like him like him—starting with the fact that I felt nothing when we kissed—but I’d been the one who’d been too blind to see the truth.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I told Jo, “what I once thought I wanted. Now I want him for you. Anyone who’s ever seen the two of you together knows you belong together.” I paused before adding, “It’s the way the story was always meant to be.”

V-ROOM!

What was that sound?

It sounded like a vacuum cleaner.

Wait a second, I told myself. No one had a vacuum cleaner in the 1800s!

But the sound didn’t stop. Instead, it grew in volume and suddenly I felt myself spinning in circles rapidly, spinning and spinning until …

WHOOSH!