4

VEGETABLE VALLEY

I hate writing,” Jo announced the next day, standing in her stockings and petticoats on the back veranda. She’d been trying to work all morning on her manuscript, with no luck at all, and had given it up for the moment.

Instead, she’d wandered outside, as she so often did when her muses abandoned her, to pester her sisters as they worked in the broad-striped family kitchen garden—lanes of bold colors and patchy greens—that occupied the full length of the house, all the way from the back of the veranda to the fringe of forest thicket lining the property.

Vegetable Valley, Jo called it. When she found herself particularly stumped, she would come outside to rub a few tomato leaves and smell the life on her fingers. Today, though, not even the newly hatched tomato leaves seemed to have any effect.

Standing on the edge of the porch, her quill still tucked into her ink-stained cap, she looked a bit like a privateer . . . on laundry day.

Give me back Meg’s little pupil prison. Anything is better than this.

“No, that’s not true. I don’t hate writing; I absolutely, positively loathe it.” She took a carrot from the woven basket that sat at the edge of the cellar door and began to clean it against one of the few unspoiled folds of her writing apron. “Good Wives are now Dead Wives. I’m going to tear up my new contract.”

“And good morning to you, Josephine.” Mrs. March looked amused from the ancient rocking-chair at the corner of the porch, where she was snapping peas. She eyed her daughter as she did most mornings, checking for signs of Jo’s shifting temperament as if it were another Concord spring storm.

Jo smiled ruefully.

“Did you sleep at all last night, my dear Jo? I’m beginning to worry about you.”

“I don’t know, Mama Abba. Day, night . . . they’re all starting to blur.” She bit into the carrot, crunching loudly as she continued to bemoan her fate. “I loathe it. (Crunch.) I loathe myself when I try to master it. (Crunch crunch.) I loathe all of Concord (crunch) and Orchard House (crunch crunch) and this . . . this carrot . . . for being . . .”

“Here?” Amy suggested, looking up from her sketch-pad, over near the rose garden.

Jo held high the half-eaten carrot, waving it wildly as she spoke. “The scene of my probable and most tragic demise.”

Mrs. March chuckled and snapped another pea spine. Meg looked up from her place in the middle of the vegetable beds, but kept quiet—and kept weeding.

“Oh,” Amy said, her hand with the charcoal hovering above the page.

“Does no one care?” Jo wailed.

“Jo. Please.” Meg sighed. “We all know you hate writing; you say it every time you have to write. We are not unsympathetic. On the contrary, we are well aware of your writing storms.”

Amy rolled over on her stomach, giving up momentarily. She went back to studying her face in the dull reflection of their mother’s good mirror, sketching herself with a satisfied smile. “There. I’ve got the nose bit just right.”

“And?” Jo said, insulted, ignoring her little sister.

“And it doesn’t seem to change anything. If you hate it so much, quit!” Meg sniffed. Her nose was still reddened from her cold, but she had determined not to waste another day in bed—which was just as well with Jo, as it had given her the opportunity to start devouring The Necromancer before Meg could change her mind.

But now, with a deadline plaguing her, not even Herrman and Hellfried and their supernatural cohorts or Flammenberg himself had been able to distract Jo for long. The most passionate of the March girls was suffering the worst of all worlds: no time for reading, and no success with writing.

She was left, as a result, with no alternative but to resort to the most trusted and time-honored, if most time-consuming, occupation of all writers—belly-aching about needing to work instead of working.

The ritual did require an audience, however; for a great many years, that service had been dutifully performed by Beth. But Beth was gone, and Jo was left alone with her ill humors—which was what had brought about this little visit to the garden now.

“Quit?” Jo snorted. “Quit?! What else is a person like me supposed to do? Govern children?!”

Meg arched an eyebrow. “I should say not. After yesterday’s little Byron assignment, you’ve been banned from my students for life.”

“Well, there you go. I’m doomed. Doomed!” Jo paced up and down between rows of cabbages, the family cat trotting behind her. “I hate writing and I hate this book.” She grabbed each side of her ink-stained, raggedy writing cap and yanked it down the sides of her head. “Frankly, I believe the feeling is mutual. My silly book also despises me. My editor will fire me.”

“Then I suppose it’s a very good thing you aren’t a writer,” Meg said, yanking out crabgrass with both hands. “Wait—oh. Oh, dear. Too late!”

Jo looked at her sister suspiciously; it wasn’t like Meg to joke. But the oldest March child kept a straight face as she continued to pull weeds out from around a particularly knotty root.

“What’s the real problem, Jo?”

Jo did not answer Meg immediately. Instead, she paced Cabbage Lane, turning around at the intersection of Tomato Hill and Zucchini Park. Finally, she stopped in her tracks.

“What’s the real problem, you ask? How are we to distinguish between real problems and imaginary problems? When my real problems concern themselves with matters so entirely fictional, so utterly—”

“Hand me that trowel?” Meg tossed another handful of muddy grass.

Jo did. She squatted on her heels in front of Meg, rattling the bucket between them dramatically.

Meg let go of the root and wiped her hands on a rag. “The real problem, Jo. I’m still waiting.”

Jo shook the bucket in frustration. “Is my current poverty of imagination not a real problem?”

“Indeed,” Amy said, poring over the mirror.

“Indeed, Jo. And we shall help you fix it,” Meg said patiently, as she had to her little sisters a thousand times before.

“Indeed?” Jo rattled the bucket again. “How are you going to help me fix it, Meg? Will you pay a visit to Mr. Niles tomorrow? Write my pages for me, the day after?”

“I suppose so, if that’s what it takes. You’re my sister.” Meg picked up the trowel again. “I’ve been fixing your problems since the day you arrived. What makes you think I can’t fix this one?” She had a point.

“Weddings and balls and gardens and carriages, Jo.” Amy was quick to rattle off Meg’s particular specialties. “She’s written whole pages of them, in almost every issue of the Pickwick Portfolio—you know she has.”

The Pickwick Club had been their favorite childhood game of all, writing news articles and bits of ephemera for their homegrown newspaper in the style of the characters in Dickens’s novel The Pickwick Papers. They all had roles: Meg as Mr. Pickwick; Jo, Mr. Snodgrass; Amy, Mr. Winkle; and even Laurie as Mr. Weller. Beth had been Tracy Tupman. The old Pickwick nicknames still occasionally reappeared, a lovely reminder of when all four sisters had been together. But that was long ago, now.

Even so, every time any of them read a passage from Dickens—or “old Charley,” as Jo had a habit of calling him, as if he were a bosom friend rather than a writer she’d long idolized—it brought all those pleasant memories flooding right back.

“Not whole pages, Amy.” Meg blushed.

“Yes, pages, Mr. Pickwick,” Jo said, a bit shamefaced, because it was a truth among sisters—especially these sisters—that what could be said of one could be said at least partly of the others; Jo had dragged her sisters along into her writing attic garret, as often as not. “Old Winkle has a point.”

“Only because you insisted, Mr. Snodgrass,” said Meg.

“Very well.” Jo pulled herself to her feet. “It’s a story problem. Quite a lot of them, actually.”

Meg nodded. “About?”

“My sisters and their prospects. The March girls—I mean, the fictional variety.”

“Prospects?” Amy sat up. “Go on.”

Jo looked at Meg. “Am I really to do this with you? Here and now? In Vegetable Valley?”

“Why ever not? Was I not your champion editor, Mr. Snodgrass?” Meg smiled. “Of all Pickwick’s most esteemed editorial board?”

Jo’s face took on a suddenly grave expression. “Ah, most certainly, Mr. Pickwick! Most certainly, indeed.”

“Then, proceed, dear Snodgrass. If I may call you that.” Meg lay back on her elbows, despite the garden mud, which was unlike her.

“Very well, Pickwick. If we are not to stand on formalities.” Jo pointed to a nearby cabbage. “Let’s say that hideous deformed leaf-head is your future husband, John Brooke.”

“Not again.” Meg twisted to have a better look at her leafy green ball of a suitor. “Please don’t, Jo. It’s so awkward. I’ve hardly spoken to him, and now half of Concord believes him to be my intended!”

“Plus, he’s a cabbage!” Amy laughed.

Meg rolled her eyes. “Must he be?”

“Absolutely.” Jo plucked a long twig free from one of the saplings lining the muddy garden path. “Yes,” she repeated firmly.

“What prospects!” Amy shook her head.

“But that cabbage doesn’t look like Brooke.” Meg frowned.

“Not a bit,” Jo said, feeling a bit cheerier now. “But he is . . . rather serious, like your John.”

Meg looked distressed. “Jo, you know he is not my John and has never been! I can’t even look the man in the eye since your book was published.”

Jo shrugged and ripped loose a fat, many-stalked rhubarb plant, tossing it into the dirt next to the cabbage. “And that’s you, Meg. You’ve put on a few pounds since the wedding. I suspect . . . well, yes, you’re with child.”

“No!” Amy howled.

“Already?” Meg pursed her lips. “Are you certain?”

“As the grave.” Jo looked somber.

“Ah, very well. A baby’s a blessing, as Mama says,” Meg said.

“Babies. Twins, in fact.” Now Jo was almost enjoying herself.

“Twins? Oh, Jo, that won’t be easy.” Meg grimaced. “What a thing to do to your sister.”

“Horrid business.” Jo nodded.

“Do they at least have names?” Meg asked. “My babies?”

Jo picked up and swung a stick, beheading a daisy from the clipping garden on the other side of the path. “Daisy. That’s one.”

“Daisy?! Why Daisy?” Amy began drawing daisies along the page.

“I don’t know. I suppose because I could reach the daisies.”

“Why not Rose?” Meg asked.

“The roses are on the other side of the house. Do you really want to make me walk past the woodpile? It’s practically a mansion for spiders!” Jo swung the stick again, clipping off the tops of the basil bush.

Meg tossed her rag back in the bucket. “Fair enough. Daisy, then. What about the other twin?”

Amy scoffed. “The boy? Who cares?”

“John Brooke the second. After his father,” Meg said, blushing as she bent back over her weeds. “We could call him Demi!”

Jo pointed her stick at her elder sister. “Please don’t fall in love with your beloved imaginary baby’s fictional father, Meg. You’ll only regret it.”

Amy looked interested. “Why not? What’s wrong with him?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Perhaps he’s a terrible drunk. A terrible, stinking drunk!” Jo laughed.

Meg was horrified. “Jo! No!”

“Is he, Jo?” Now Amy was intrigued.

“Of course not!” Meg looked appalled.

“He is if I say he is.” Jo threw the twig as hard as she could, sending it flying into the trees. “See? This is why I didn’t want to have to write all this girlish nonsense!”

Meg scrambled to her feet. “Those are my twins you’re talking about! That’s not nonsense, Jo!”

“They’re a daisy and a . . .” Jo grabbed a stone from the path. “Rock.”

Meg grabbed the rock from Jo’s hand. “You’re a horrid thing! I don’t want a rock for a son! That’s my Baby Brooke!”

Jo shook her head. “You’re missing the point, Meg. Your family is happy. Daisy and Baby Brooke are the apples of your matronly bosom . . .”

“Eye,” Meg corrected.

“That, too. You live over there . . . in that shoe. Which is a cottage. A dovecote. You love it. You do all sorts of—I don’t know—sweeping and laundry and mending things there.”

Amy watched as her big sisters negotiated Meg’s future family in the middle of the garden bed.

“I see. Not a bad life. But what about you? Don’t you need a suitor?” said Meg.

Jo laughed. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” Meg folded her arms. “Since you have been so bold as to have married me off to a man who doesn’t even know my name, you need a suitor as well.”

“She has a point,” Amy said. “Turnabout is fair play and all that.”

Meg considered their middle sister. “Perhaps a professor.”

“To ensure that I die of boredom?” Jo rolled her eyes. “Fine. Professor Bore.”

Amy folded up her sketch-pad. “Bore isn’t a name. Bayer? Baer?”

“Bhaer. There you go. He’s from Europe. Positively Continental. You’ll love him,” said Meg, pointing to a head of German lettuce. “Wait, not a professor, a prince!”

“A prince? Whatever would I do with a prince?” Jo made a face.

“What about me?” Amy demanded. “Can I at least go on a Grand Tour? I’ll meet the prince, and Jo can have the professor!”

Jo looked at the vegetables. “Hmmm, it might work. Your husband, Prince Arthur?”

Amy folded her arms. “No, I loathe the name Arthur. I’ve an idea! Laurie’s as rich as prince! What if we met over there? While I’m painting the Colosseum!”

“But what about Arthur?” asked Meg.

“Arthur . . . fell in a well . . . and broke his neck.”

“How sad for him,” Jo said. “And for you.”

“It was. I wept piteously and tremendously into my best lace handkerchief until Laurie came to console me in a horse and buggy with chocolates.” Amy stuck out her chin. “I want Laurie.”

“You can’t have Laurie,” Meg said. “It doesn’t work in the narrative. You and Laurie don’t even like each other all that much. Actually, I take it back about the German professor. Obviously, Jo has to marry herself off to Laurie.”

“Obviously?!” Jo sat up, spluttering indignantly. “I do not!”

“Jo does not!” Amy crowed, equally so.

“In point of fact, Jo does.” Meg yanked a worm-ransacked, half-green tomato from the vine. “It’s written in the stars, just as Jo wrote about Roderigo of the North. In Act the Third, our scandalous Laurence Lovers elope, and it breaks Mama’s heart.”

Jo was aghast. “Foul plagiarist! You can’t just steal Roderigo’s Act the Third!”

Amy tossed her head. “I still think my ending is better.”

Meg threw the rather sad-looking vegetable to a still red-faced Jo. “There you go. That’s a Jo March of a tomato if ever I’ve seen one.”

Jo looked like she wanted to hurl the lopsided green orb at her sister’s linen-capped head.

Amy giggled, in spite of her commitment to a good sulk. “You mean Jo Laurence, now that they’ve eloped.”

“Christopher Columbus! Enough!” Jo roared. “No wonder they call you the weaker sex!”

Amy and Meg burst out laughing.

Jo’s pink-spotted cheeks were now bright red. “Fine. Take Laurie. I don’t want him. But you have to live here. I can’t write back and forth across a whole ocean and between two countries. I’ll be describing cities until the cows come home.”

“What about Beth? What happens to Beth? In the book, I mean,” asked Amy. “Since she’s meant to be still alive in your book.”

A momentary silence rose up between them. The elder March sisters looked at each other askance. How could they imagine a future without their sister? What would their lives have been like if she had lived?

“Beth becomes a famous pianist, of course,” said Jo, staunchly.

She tried not to think of Beth’s final days, of the way Laurie had played all her favorite melodies on her little piano, over and over and over—

“A pianist? Of course,” said Amy, approvingly. “Which means she’ll be touring the world over, just like me. I’m a vray artiste, Jo. I’m not meant for Concord.”

“If you stay, I’ll let you babysit the twins,” Meg said, attempting to sound cheerful, even though her face had gone decidedly pale. “Daisy and what’s-his-name. If you’re responsible. Twins are an enormous responsibility. You’d need to be patient, and kind.”

Amy looked stricken.

Meg faltered. “I mean, I’ll have to ask Brooke, but seeing as I’m the mother of his children . . .”

Jo looked at Meg like she was speaking gibberish. “We’re talking about a rock and a daisy. I think Amy will be fine.”

“I’m sure,” Meg said, brightly. “And I’ll show her what to do.”

“Also? You probably die in childbirth, on account of the twins. I haven’t decided. But if that’s the case, Brooke will be eternally grateful for Amy—seeing as she’ll most likely be the only mother your poor children ever know. Perhaps they’ll even marry each other after you die.”

“What?!” Meg and Amy both shouted.

“You’re killing me off?!” Meg looked horrified.

“You’re dooming me to twins?” Amy looked terrified. “Can’t I be the one to die?”

“Fine! No one gets married in the sequel!” Jo huffed. “I shall write a Manifesto of Femality! One to rival Margaret Fuller’s own! Where women give themselves to service and to fulfillment of their art!”

“Sounds terribly didactic,” said Meg. “And a bit dull.”

Amy pouted. “No princes? No castles? No Laurie?”

“None! As the author, after all, these decisions are best left entirely up to me.”

“Like the limes?” Amy hissed.

“And the borrowed dress?” Meg scoffed. “Or our dowager aunt?”

“Exactly,” Jo said, rising to her feet. “Now off to the garret I go, to destroy your horrible lives.” She was feeling a bit better.

A good scrap with her sisters was, at times, an even better distraction than rubbing tomato leaves.

And as she savored the teacup-sized triumph of the writerly life, she wondered again how anyone could content themselves with any other sort of horrible life at all.