Little Women and Me (25 page)

“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 almost 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.