Little Women and Me (27 page)

Dr. Bangs said he expected there would be a great change, for better or worse, around midnight. To me it sounded no better than the sort of mumbo jumbo found in horoscopes, but what did I know?

I heard the others leave the room, Jo going to get a telegram they’d already prepared for such an event, which she’d take into town herself, even though a storm had whipped up outside.

When the room was at last empty, I emerged and kissed Beth, thinking I’d sneak out myself for a bit. It did get cramped on the floor of the closet. I stretched my aching muscles and then, realizing how hungry I was, went in search of some food. Sure, I might run into Meg or Hannah, but they wouldn’t be nearly as tough about kicking me out of the house as Jo would be if she were still here.

I was in the kitchen making a snack when Hannah entered.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“What does it look like?” I said. “I’m making a snack.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Hannah put her hands on her hips and looked at me sternly, but when I coolly gazed back at her, she dropped those hands in defeat. “Ach, you always were the most stubborn.”

This surprised me. “Not Jo?”

“You must be joking.” She waved a hand. “It was always you.”

News to me!

I wasn’t buying it.

I was still eating my snack—I didn’t care what it was or what it tasted like with Beth sick, I just needed to put something in my stomach—when Jo returned, breathless.

She looked at me in disgust.

“You back again?” she said.

I shrugged. “I never really left.”

I prepared to be kicked out again, but before that could happen Laurie showed up.

He looked just as breathless as Jo as he grabbed her by the elbow and steered her into the living room.

“I have some news and also something to confess,” he said.

Figuring I might as well hear this too and figuring that since he hadn’t even greeted me he probably wouldn’t notice my presence, I trailed after them.

“First the news,” Laurie said. He brought out a telegram.

Jo scanned it quickly. “It says here that Papa is improving.” She looked up at him, tears of hope in her eyes. “But this is wonderful news!”

Then she began really crying, telling him how with both parents gone she felt as though God was far away too.

Laurie comforted her, saying Beth was too good to die,
that God would never take someone like her. This bothered me. If God wouldn’t take a good person, then what about all the other good people he’d taken over the last few millennia? Laurie’s argument may have comforted him, but it sounded like a bunch of nonsense to me.

Apparently Jo thought so too. “But the good and dear always die,” she said.

Laurie couldn’t find a thing to say to counter this, so he made his confession instead.

“I took it upon myself to telegraph your mother yesterday to inform her Beth is ill and that she is needed at home. Brooke says she’ll be here later tonight.”

The look Jo gave him then—I thought I was seeing thunder—and when she flew at him I was sure she intended to beat him up for doing such a thing without permission.

But then I realized she was hugging him. She was
grateful
. Laurie must have realized it too, because he tried to kiss her, at which point Jo pulled herself away.

Idiot. I wouldn’t have pulled away!

Laurie didn’t seem to mind her reaction, though. Maybe it dawned on him that this wasn’t the best time to put the make on a girl?

“The last train comes in at two a.m.,” he informed Jo. “I shall be happy to go to the station now and wait for your mother however long it takes.”

It was when he turned to leave that he saw me standing there.

“Oh!” He blushed. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be staying with Amy at your aunt’s? I could have sworn I saw you there earlier in the day.”

“Oh, you know Emily.” Jo waved her hand here, but for once it wasn’t in disgust. I figured maybe she was so relieved Marmee was
coming, she didn’t care about what I did just then. “Emily just comes and goes as she pleases. I only wish there were some way to help Beth. If only there were some medicine for what she has …”

A way to help Beth … Some medicine …

Suddenly I remembered something from science class and an idea occurred to me. I stared at the remainder of the piece of bread in my hand.

“Do we have any old bread in the house?” I asked Jo urgently. “Something with a bit of mold on it?”

The sudden thought I’d had was about something I vaguely remembered learning in science once. Hadn’t penicillin been discovered from mold on bread? Maybe that could save Beth!

“How should I know?” Jo asked, irritable once more. “Ask Hannah.”

I asked Hannah and she
did
have some moldy old bread.

“Here,” I said, returning to Jo with the bread. “When you sit with Beth, please,
please
get her to eat this.”

“Moldy bread?” Jo wrinkled her nose. “But why? I should think, if she has any appetite at all, she’d want something other than moldy bread.”

“
Please
, Jo,” I pleaded, desperate now. “For once just trust me. I think this might help Beth.”

The shadow of death hung over the house.

Even though it was night already and Laurie had left for the train station, it seemed a long wait until midnight, the witching hour that Dr. Bangs had declared should represent a turning point for Beth.

I was back in the closet, urged there by Jo.

“Meg’s been through enough this past week,” she’d said, shooing me along, “what with worrying about Beth
and
running the household. She shouldn’t have to worry about you too right this minute.”

So back into the closet I’d gone.

“I am so worried about Beth,” Jo said in a loud whisper, almost like she wanted me to be able to hear them, as she and Meg hovered over Beth’s bed.

“We need to trust in God,” Meg said, sounding more confident than I suspected she felt, “and Marmee.”

“You’re right,” Jo agreed.

Hey! What happened to the girl who agreed with me that God would take a good person as easily as a bad person?

I sighed. Looked as though I was the only person questioning authority left in the foxhole.

Then Meg vowed to never complain about anything again if God would only spare Beth.

Me, I was making no vows to God or anyone else, because I knew I’d never keep them.

Or maybe I’d make one, just to myself, that if Beth lived through the night I’d never again mock poor headless and limbless Joanna, not even in my own mind. But no, that wasn’t a big enough trade. If Beth lived through the night, I’d do my best to find a way to be a better person.

“Did you see that?” Meg said in a hushed voice just after the hall clock struck midnight.

I poked my head out and saw a long shadow fall across Beth’s bed. It was as though something had come to claim her.

If I hadn’t been there to see it with my own two eyes I’d never have believed it.

And then …

Nothing happened.

Nothing appeared to change: her face still flushed, her breathing still labored, her body still fighting in its fevered sleep.

We all settled back into our respective positions to wait, some of us more comfortably than others.

One o’clock.

Two o’clock.

Suddenly Jo leaped from her chair. “Oh, Meg!” she cried. “I think she’s dead!”

She began to say good-bye then, but Hannah, having no doubt heard her cry, rushed in.

In the instant before she spoke, I saw the shadow was gone. Somehow, it had receded without any of us noticing.

“She’s not
dead
,” Hannah said. “She’s only sleeping. Peacefully. Her fever’s turned.”

Her fever had
turned
? Did this mean, then, Beth wasn’t going to
die
? That I had somehow saved her? But … but …
how
had I done it? Was it the Miley Cyrus song? The moldy bread?

Had
I
invented penicillin?

Dr. Bangs was sent for.

“She will pull through, I think,” he said, adding, “this time.”

I didn’t like his cautious note, but I told myself he was just being careful—malpractice suits and all that. Beth had survived the witching hour, had survived scarlet fever. She’d be fine in time. Thank you, Miley Cyrus! Thank you, moldy bread!

I could almost feel Jo’s eyes boring through the closed door, almost hear the words in her head as she wondered:
Did Emily somehow do
this
?

The others began rejoicing then even though Dr. Bangs was giving instructions on what to do once Beth awoke.

Good thing
I
was listening!

There was the sound of bells and then Hannah and Laurie shouting Marmee’s arrival.

Oh,
now
she comes home! Talk about anticlimactic.

But wait a second. If my purpose here had been to save Beth, Beth had been saved.

So what was I doing still in Alcott-land?

Nineteen

Meanwhile, over at Aunt March’s …

There were two things to come out of the time Amy and I spent living there while Beth had scarlet fever: 1) I realized for the first time just what a ginormous suck-up Amy March really was; and 2) Aunt March was buying into the whole thing, resulting in statements like:

“Emily,” Aunt March confided, “I find that I like having Amy here so much more than having Jo.

“Emily,” Aunt March observed, “Amy is so well-behaved. She has such pretty manners.

“Emily,” Aunt March complained, “why can’t
you
be more like Amy? My word, you’re just as bad as Jo. As a matter of fact, I think you’re even
worse
than Jo!”

“Worse than Jo!” Polly the parrot taunted. “Worse than Jo!”

Obviously, the parrot was buying into Amy’s suck-up act too.

Oh, and there was one other thing that came out of our time at Aunt March’s, an odd thing. There came a day when I admit I was complaining even more than usual about having to do whatever insane thing it was that Aunt March wanted us to do.

That’s when Amy turned to me and said, “Honestly, Emily, your time here would go much faster and be more smooth and pleasant if only you’d get into the spirit of the thing.”

“Maybe I could make things more smooth here at Aunt March’s,” I said, “but I don’t see how I could ever make it pleasant.”

“I didn’t mean
here
specifically,” Amy said.

“Then what did you mean?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but then she tilted her head to one side, considering me. “Never mind,” she said at last. “Forget I said anything.”

Twenty

Having returned at Laurie’s urging, Marmee refused to leave Beth’s side, even though Beth was clearly on the mend. But just because Marmee wouldn’t leave Beth, it didn’t stop her from insisting that others do so.

“Laurie,” she instructed, “please go to Aunt March’s to inform her and Amy that I have returned, and that the worst regarding Beth appears to have passed.

“Emily,” she instructed, “please go with Laurie and do your best to stay put at Aunt March’s as instructed until I say that it is safe for you to come home.”