Little Women and Me (19 page)

But none of that mattered now as poor Pip was finally laid to rest.

It was as Beth bravely tossed the first clod of earth over his body that the first involuntary sob broke from me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just that the idea of death itself—even if in this case it was only a canary—reminded me that there were more serious things in the world than the silly things I mostly thought about? Maybe it was just the reminder that anyone could die at any time?

What was going on back home, in my real life? Suddenly I missed my own world so much, and not the things, for once, but the people. I even missed Charlotte. And then a thought occurred to me, a scary thought: if I was so oblivious to things going on around me here that I’d failed to notice a canary in the house until that canary up and died, how in the world was I ever going to save Beth?

I began to cry harder.

“Huh.” Jo eyed me strangely as she offered me a handkerchief that looked none too clean. “I didn’t even know you liked Pip. As far as I could tell, you never even noticed he was there.”

It was a big job, doing the cleanup after dinner. Beth was still too upset over Pip to help, Meg felt she’d done enough that day in making breakfast, and Jo thought she’d done enough in
making dinner, and so I had to do all the work, since Laurie had offered to take Amy for a drive in his carriage.

Hel
-lo
!
I thought as I scraped dishes.
What was up with
that
?

Then Marmee came home, Amy came back, we were all together again, Marmee asked how our day was, we confessed that it had been fast and awful.

And then Marmee gave a speech about the need for a balance between work and play, concluding with:

“Work is wholesome.”

That Marmee!
I thought.
What a sly boots!

Twelve

Beth had been appointed our postmistress, meaning it was her job to unlock the little door in the box Laurie installed and then distribute our mail. She’d been appointed because she was the one who spent the most time at home. Also, because we felt sorry for her, having so little in her life that most people would find exciting and feeling that such an important job would mean a lot to her. Also, because some of us were hoping to wean her away from that wretched Joanna doll.

Okay, that last was me.

On that day in July, when Beth entered the house with the mail, her arms were filled to overflowing. My, we were a popular group!

“Here’s the nosegay for Marmee that Laurie always sends,” Beth announced as she began distributing the mail.

HA! What a kiss-up Laurie could be at times.

“Here’s one letter and one glove for Meg.” Beth handed the items over.

The letter was from Mr. Brooke, Laurie’s tutor, translating a song from German that Meg had requested. As for that single glove, it was a puzzle, since Meg claimed to have left two at the Laurence house.

HA!
I thought about the single glove. I didn’t really know what the single glove meant, but it was odd and did seem as though it could be
HA!
-worthy.

“Two letters for Jo, a book, plus a funny old hat from Laurie so she won’t burn her face.” Beth looked relieved to be rid of so much of the mail burden in one shot.

HA!
But then I realized there was nothing to
HA!
about. Instead, I was resentful: Jo always got the most mail, plus I needed that hat more than she did.
I
was the one with the fair skin that always burned.

One of Jo’s letters was from Marmee, congratulating Jo on the good progress she’d been making in controlling her temper.

HA!
Her efforts to control her temper—Marmee hadn’t been there that day in the rowboat when Jo had tried to throttle Laurie.

Jo’s other letter was from the boy she’d tried to throttle. Laurie wrote that he had some English boys and girls visiting the next day—friends he’d made abroad—and he wanted the March girls to join them all at Longmeadow, where a tent would be pitched, a fire lit, lunch eaten, and croquet played. He also said that Mr. Brooke would be going along to keep the boys in line, while Kate Vaughn, the oldest of the English girls, would be in charge of the rest of us.

Jo insisted Marmee must let us go, claiming that she, Jo,
could be such a help to Laurie with the rowing—
HA!
She hadn’t rowed a single row that day on the lake—and Marmee agreed.

“Amy’s got chocolate drops here,” Beth said, continuing with the mail distribution, “and a picture she wanted to copy, while I’ve got an invitation from Mr. Laurence to come play the piano for him tonight before the lights are lit.” Beth gave a happy little sigh, although I couldn’t see what was so happy-making about the idea of playing piano in the dark.

HA!
Who wanted to eat chocolate drops?

HA!
Who cared about playing some stupid piano anyway?

The others continued cheerfully studying the items that had come to them through the post office, while I stood there.

“Ahem,” I said.

The others finally looked at me.

“Isn’t there anything else?” I said. “From the post office, I mean.”

Spreading her arms wide, Beth revealed their emptiness. “What else could there be?” she said with a puzzled frown.

“Ohhhh, never mind,” I grumbled.

But I wasn’t grumbling when I got up in the morning. Instead, I was actually excited about the day ahead.

Something new and different to do—coolio!

Then I saw what my sisters had been up to overnight.

OMG.

Meg had put curling papers all over her head, like the heat and humidity wouldn’t drag any curls straight down. Jo was slathered in cold cream—she looked ridiculous, like a not-too-scary movie monster. Amy had a clothespin on her nose—nineteenth-century cosmetic surgery!

Well
, I thought,
I may not have had any mail the day before, but at least I didn’t have any of their peculiar grooming habits.

As for Beth, she never cared what she looked like. But she did have her own fetish. She’d spent the night cuddling the headless and limbless Joanna.

“I wanted to atone in advance for our day’s separation,” she told me as the others pranced and preened.

Oh brother. Apparently, she was still feeling guilty about Pip’s death and was worried that the day’s separation would result in a similar fate for her doll as that which had befallen her bird.

I was tempted to explain to her that it wasn’t the same thing at all. But there was no point in telling that to Beth, I realized as I watched her croon over the doll. It would only hurt her.

“You’re a good girl, Bethie,” I said. “Joanna’s lucky to have you and I’m sure she’ll still be …
alive and well
when we return.”

Beth and I may not have had anything in common in terms of our feelings about dolls, but we did share one thing. Neither of us liked to fuss over our appearance, so we were ready long before the others.

As we stood outside waiting, I wondered: If Beth and I shared an indifference to fashion, what qualities did I share with my other sisters?

Meg was prim, to the point of being boring. I was nothing like that. Would a prim girl be the March family skank? Amy was vain to the point of absurdity. Nope. Nothing like that either. Look at the shabby clothes I’d been willing to wear to impress Laurie with my lack of vanity. As for Jo: HA! We had even less in common than I had with any of the others.

Just then Meg, Amy, and Jo came spilling out of the house.

“Emily, do you think you could at least make an effort to be presentable?” Jo snapped at me.

“Don’t you think that hat Laurie gave you makes you look ridiculous?” I snapped back at her. “You look like you’re wearing an umbrella attached to your head.”

Honestly. Jo and I were nothing alike.

Kate Vaughn was so prim, she out-primmed Meg
, I thought once we were all gathered on Laurie’s lawn. Was that a lorgnette she occasionally placed over her eye? The only other person I’d ever seen use one was Aunt March. Kate had three siblings with her: Frank and Fred, Jo’s age—Fred was wild, while Frank was lame, causing Beth to be extra-kind to him—and Grace, around nine or ten, who immediately latched on to Amy. It was obvious that Laurie liked the boys but didn’t have much use for Kate. Well, who could blame him?

Making up the rest of our party were Ned and Sallie Moffat. Meg looked happy to see Sallie there, but less so about Ned. Maybe she was still embarrassed over her flowers-in-her-bosom drunk-on-champagne display?

As for Laurie, he was dressed up in a sailor costume. A
sailor
costume? I tried to convince myself it was cool in a retro sort of way, but it was too much of a stretch.

Then we were all being herded into boats and we were off to Longmeadow.

Laurie rechristened Longmeadow “Camp Laurence” and when we arrived there, I saw that someone had set up the tent, arranged wickets for croquet, and deposited hampers of food.

Before anything else, it was decided that a game of croquet must be played.

Well,
I
didn’t decide that. It was Laurie, egged on by Jo. Didn’t any of the others notice how hot it was out here? Maybe if I’d been wearing shorts and a T-shirt it might not have been so bad. But in a long-sleeved, neck-high, grass-length dress and boots? It was awful!

I elected to sit croquet out, taking up a spot under a nice shady tree with the lame and the young.

They chose up teams. On one side were Laurie, Jo, Ned, and Sallie, all Americans, while the other team was a mixture of Mr. Brooke, Meg, Kate, and Fred. In spite of the fact that the opposing team was half American, Jo decided to refight the Revolutionary War.

True, Fred cheated at one point, rather obviously, but it seemed to me little reason for Jo’s nasty remarks, all about American superiority: Americans not cheating, Americans being generous to their enemies even while beating them.
HA!
was all I could think. Just wait, Jo, until we start screaming “We’re number one!” in the world’s face every few years at the Olympics.