8
A PROPER WEEKEND
Between Grandfather’s tea and her own pounding heart, Jo had completely forgotten the promised surprise.
But when, at last, Laurie agreed to go do his reading, Jo went upstairs to her small, plain room in Mrs. Kirke’s boarding house, and there it was.
Not so much it as she—
“Christopher Columbus!” Jo exclaimed.
Because it was Meg. Still holding her gloves in one hand. Sitting in the worn wooden chair by the window, peering out at the crowds of people passing by on the street below.
For a moment, Jo stared in disbelief. Truly, the day had been surreal enough that she thought it entirely possible she was imagining things; to that end, Jo wouldn’t have been surprised to open the door and see President Grant himself sitting there.
“Took you long enough!” Meg cried.
Jo smiled at the sisterly scolding. Not President Grant.
“Meg? Meg!” She flung herself across the room and into the arms of her older sister, almost before Meg could rise to her feet. “But you hate trains! And cities! And crowds! And . . . whatever are you doing here?”
“What do you think? I’m your surprise.” Meg looked annoyed. “Did he not say? Oh, fiddlesticks! Laurie was to tell you there was something waiting for you upstairs. And that something was to be me. I don’t know why he had his heart so set on the trick of it. I took a later train and just arrived, and Laurie made me sneak up the back stairs, that scamp.”
Jo laughed now, finally catching on to the joke. “He made you sound like a parcel of clothes! That ridiculous boy.”
Meg smiled back. “I did bring you a parcel,” she said, now pointing to a paper bundle on the bed, tied with twine. “Mama Abba had them made up for you but forgot to slip them into your bag. She’s not so good at surprises as Laurie, I suppose. So here I am.”
“Mama! Oh, no, I hope she didn’t spend too much.” Jo began doing the frantic mental calculations every writer did in their head every month, especially the sort who worked at The Tall Taler.
Meg put a gentle hand on her sister’s shoulder. “No, Jo. It’s a gift from old Mr. Laurence. For your first trip to New York City. What a gentleman. He made certain Mama Abba was the one who chose your things, to make sure she—and you—would approve.”
Jo smiled at the thought of her mother folding the little bundle before her. It was a relief, to be sure, but still, to have Meg come all this way just to deliver her a bundle of clothes seemed a tremendous lot of bother. “Did Mr. Laurence come with you? I can’t imagine Mama Abba would let you come alone. Or that you would dare attempt it.”
Meg blushed a deep pink, looking back out the window. “I didn’t. Not exactly.”
Jo gave her sister a queer look. “Then how—exactly?”
Meg’s mouth twisted into a half-smile that she couldn’t suppress, though Jo could see she was trying. “John—Mr. Brooke was my escort.”
“John?!”
“Mr. Brooke, Jo.”
Jo found it hard to even imagine the long hours of a rattling train ride down the Hudson Valley sitting across from the solemn and silent John Brooke. “How tedious your trip must have been! You really should have ridden down with Teddy and me.”
“Actually, he was . . . very kind. I feel like I know him much better now, and he seemed pleased enough to spend the time with me.” Now the pink spots on Meg’s cheeks deepened into a particularly becoming shade of rose.
Jo touched her sister’s face. “I expect so. Especially if you were blushing like that all the way to Hudson Station!”
“He was being a gentleman. That’s all,” Meg sniffed. “Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Jo gave her sister a teasing look. “I just hadn’t expected to see my literary matchmaking have such an effect.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Meg pulled off her bonnet, shaking her curls free to her shoulders. “It was nothing. And both Mr. Brooke and I are only here because it was Laurie’s idea. He thought the two of us would enjoy a little escape, as he called it.”
Two? Of us?
“But that old brick? He hardly speaks! How did you manage hour upon hour of conversation?”
Meg pulled loose the ribbon of her bonnet. “We managed well enough. He’s friendly, if a bit shy of me. After all, let’s recollect the whole English-speaking world thinks you want us to marry.”
Jo scoffed and fingered the twine on her bundle. “I’d hardly say the whole English-speaking world cares about John Brooke. If any of my readers care a whit, I suspect it’s only about you.”
Meg smiled, folding her bonnet on the neatly made bed. “We had a bit of a laugh about it, at first. The awkwardness of it all. Once that was out of the way, we found all kinds of things to discuss.”
“What sorts of things?”
“What it’s like to be tormented by having a writer of books in your family. What it’s like to be tortured by having a scamp in your tutelage.”
“Well, that surely took hours.” Jo rolled her eyes.
“It did.”
“Wonder of wonders,” Jo said, crossly. She flung Meg’s discarded gloves onto the floor and took their place on the opposite chair. “Well, I can hardly imagine old Babbling Brooke with us for an entire week. I hope this isn’t Teddy’s way of trying to marry you two off in real life.”
“I imagine it was Laurie’s way of being kind. Really, Jo, I don’t know why you think everything is a marriage plot! It’s only you who thinks about marrying everyone off all the time!”
But to Jo, it was a plot, and an obvious one. Much worse, it was a betrayal. Theodore Laurence, she thought, don’t you dare play matchmaker with my Meg.
“I could never be interested in Mr. Brooke, anyway,” said Meg.
“Why not?” asked Jo, surprised.
Meg flushed, as if she had already made up her mind. “Because.”
“Because he’s poor like I wrote in my book, and ‘Aunt March’ thinks you’re throwing your life away? Oh, Meg, that’s just fiction. You can marry anyone you please, even dull old Brooke if you truly want to,” said Jo.
“Of course I can’t,” said Meg. “I must find a Laurie of my own.”
Jo was stunned. “A what?”
“Marrying well is the only way I can help the family. You help with your writing, Jo, but what can I do? I’m not a famous author like you.”
“Good heavens, I’m not famous by any means,” said Jo, even as that statement was becoming less and less true. “And you mustn’t speak that way. It’s not becoming, and it’s not the Meg I know.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Meg. “Like you think I’m . . .”
“Amy?” Jo couldn’t resist.
“A . . . a trollop!” Meg snapped. Jo raised an eyebrow. Her sister was flustered. “It isn’t the very easiest thing, you know. Having American authoress Josephine March for a sister. Being the other March sister. The one who didn’t die. The one who isn’t renowned. The one who isn’t an artist, or a scamp!”
Jo looked taken aback. Meg’s hurt, you ninny. She’s hurt and you didn’t even see it.
Meg kept going. “When our sister died, you had your garret to disappear into. Amy had her—”
“Mirror?” Jo volunteered.
“Sketch-pad!” Meg was agitated now. “What did I have? What do I have now? What’s left for me, Jo? Being a governess?” She rubbed the back of her hand against her eye, and Jo suddenly felt as if her own heart were breaking.
“What’s left, Meg, is for you to keep being Meg March, the best of us. My hero, and my beloved, absolute loveliest surprise. Let’s not ruin it by squabbling,” Jo said as she took her sister’s arm.
She meant it, which Meg knew—as sisters do—and so peace was struck just as war had been declared.
Also as sisters do.
“Come on.” Meg smiled, suddenly picking at the bundle. “Let’s see what Mr. Laurence and Mama have sent you to wear.”
Jo groaned. “Must we?”
“Yes, we must. This is New York City, and we’re here to inspire you. If we’re all to be characters in a Jo March story, we should at least dress the part.”
Jo flung herself down on the bed, rumpling Meg’s bonnet. “Fine. But if they’re the least bit frilly, I’m giving the whole lot to you. I don’t do frilly.”
“You don’t? What a shocking piece of entirely new information,” Meg snorted.
“I said, the whole lot,” Jo growled again.
“Even better,” said Meg as she undid the bundle. “Now, what have we here?”
THAT WEEK WAS unlike any other in the history of the world, or at least Jo’s world. Seven days of perfection, almost to the point of fiction. Even Mr. Brooke tagging along couldn’t dampen her spirits.
Perhaps her sister was right.
Perhaps they all were characters in a Jo March story now.
In truth, she’d imagined such days before, but she’d always imagined them as the stuff of The Tall Taler—not Jo’s rather more Small Taler, as she had come to refer to her own domestic life. While a week at Mrs. Kirke’s boarding house was hardly the stolen rendezvous of thwarted lovers or shipwrecked castaways at some faraway Castle Otranto—as Jo herself might have written for Niles in the past—it was still so exotic, when compared to her pastoral Concord life, that it might as well have been.
That week, Jo and Meg had no goblets of mead to toast with, but tiny cups of strong coffee. No nectar and ambrosia to feast upon, but thick slabs of toast and jewel-colored berry preserves. No brocade-and-ermine capelets or filigreed tiaras to don, but clever new boots with a row of inlaid mother-of-pearl buttons and a pair of hand-stitched kid gloves—thanks to Mama Abba and the elder Mr. Laurence!
If the two girls and their male companions faced no dueling pirates and dastardly fisticuffs—the one exception being a rather heated exchange between Laurie and a leering, rough-mannered paperboy—they did find plenty of crowds to battle past and whole city blocks to navigate.
And though sadly lacking in both galloping consumption and fainting spells, Jo found no shortage of other maladies of the heart and soul.
Because this week, if there were no Roderigos, there was a Teddy.
Every morning, the two good friends, usually accompanied by Meg and Mr. Brooke, set out for another day of carefree adventure in the city. Jo and Meg (with two new day-dresses to show off, as if they’d stepped out from the pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book, Jo thought) and Laurie (with a trim new suit from the Laurences’ personal tailor that he cared not a whit about showing off) walked the streets of Manhattan until their feet ached, marveling at tall buildings and small discoveries as the city unfolded before them.
Together the four of them ate filet de boeuf and sipped champagne at Delmonico’s, attended lectures on France under Napoleon III, visited the site where Roebling was planning his elegant new bridge across the East River to Brooklyn, and even picnicked on the Green at Central Park.
Their days ranged from the exceptional to the overwhelming. One morning, they found themselves studying the gilded frames at the museum; that same afternoon, they accidentally wandered into the infamous tenement neighborhood of Five Points—west of the Bowery and south of Canal—where they encountered a scene of such squalor that it made the poor Hummels back home in Concord seem positively rich in comparison: mothers begging for food for their children, young boys fighting each other in the streets, and even a bar brawl that tumbled out onto the sidewalk.
After this last, John Brooke quickly urged Laurie and the ladies back north. (“Really, Mr. Laurence, what were you thinking, bringing ladies into this—this den of iniquity?”)
Although Jo was secretly a bit thrilled to have seen said infamous den of iniquity with her own eyes, if only as fodder for future stories, Meg relived it all with such a heavy heart as they crawled into their warm bed that night that Jo was ashamed. “That mother with her babe! I shall never forget the sight! The poor thing had such a fever, I could feel the heat from three feet away!” Meg had cried.
They didn’t say the obvious thing, of course. That it was their sister Bethie who would have taken the child to her bosom. Beth who would have wept at the needs of such a family, just as she had at the Hummels. If it had been winter, she would have pressed her own cloak into the hands of the first desperate mother she encountered, then wrapped her own scarf around the cold shoulders of the next.
Yes, and then contracted scarlet fever and died of it.
Which is precisely why your little sister isn’t here, and you are.
Because, while life is not fair, it is logical.
Jo lay in bed that night feeling the heavy darkness settled upon her once again.
Danger was one thing, of course; destitution, especially that of poor women and their children, was quite another. Mama Abba, like Beth, would have urged Jo to see the poorer residents of the great city less as potential characters in her private dramas—less the personification of misfortune itself!—and more as human beings.
So Jo tried to do, for the sake of the poor creatures as well as her own soul.
And for her lost soul.
For Beth.
Still, every day brought a new discovery, most more pleasant than Five Points. When Jo and Meg, Laurie and Brooke returned to the little boarding house on the dark end of each day, they recounted everything they’d seen and heard, said and done. The younger two raced each other like schoolchildren as they bolted up the stairs and across the landing, each to their own little doors; the elder two lingered, taking their quiet leave at the bottom of the stairs as they went their separate ways. Jo—in such a hurry to write down everything she’d seen and heard, the better to remember it and write about it later—nearly forgot about Meg and Brooke’s budding, or not-so-budding, romance.
Because the truth of it was hard to untangle.
The more Jo watched her sister and Mr. Brooke together, the more she was certain that Meg had feelings for him, whether or not she would ever allow it. Her sister’s face and entire manner brightened in his presence, a rose in bloom. And Jo had to acknowledge that John Brooke, as staid and serious as he was, was a good man, a decent man, and Meg could do worse than to throw her lot in with his.
Jo desperately didn’t want her sister to leave her, but she also deeply wanted her sister to be happy. And she could hear Meg’s question, lingering still—What’s left for me, Jo?
If only she knew the answer.
But romance or the lack of it aside, the week seemed to Jo but one long moment, suspended in a suffusion of pleasant new opportunities and even pleasanter old memories and—pleasantest of all—Laurie’s generous, boyish laughter. The result was a sunbeam and a bubble and a dream of the rarest and realest sort; unsurprisingly, the more—and yet, somehow, less—pressing matters of Plato (still unread) and books to write (still unwritten) fell by the wayside.
It was not a week of writing, but not for lack of effort. Jo dutifully sat at the uncomfortable little mahogany writing-desk in front of the window of her room every night—gas lamps in the street illuminating her blank papers along with the moonlight and the candle-wax—but still no words came. When she forced them out, by way of threatening and bargaining and cajoling, she’d only find herself crossing them out, crumpling the page in the starker light of the next morning. She was as absolutely, irrefutably stuck in New York as she had been in Concord. Finally, she told herself she had no choice except to abandon quill and ink altogether.
You shall write about this someday. But not today.
Today you are too busy living it.
It was enough, for now. It had to be.
On Friday afternoon, when a summer storm drifted into the city, Laurie suggested another ramble. “A good day for tea, isn’t it? And Grandfather’s given us a whole list of tea-rooms to try, what do you say?”
“Yes, please!” Jo snapped shut her journal. “Let’s have an adventure.”
“No, thank you,” Meg demurred, smoothing the ribbon at her tiny waist. “I’d prefer to not muddy a perfectly lovely day-dress I’ve only just had made.”
“And I shall keep Miss March company. I have some long-overdue correspondence I need to catch up on, I’m afraid.” Mr. Brooke nodded at Meg, who blushed.
“As you like,” she said. Jo responded with a meaningful look.
Meg meaningfully ignored it.