Great or Nothing, page 15
Did everyone see their own version of her, instead of the girl she was and always had been?
“Jo?”
It wasn’t Meg’s voice in her ear. It was Mrs. Harris, gently prodding her shoulder. “The doctor’s here.”
Wincing and shaky, Jo succumbed to the doctor’s ministrations with an uncharacteristic meekness. By the time her forehead was stitched up (just three stitches, the doctor said; nothing to worry about too much), she’d been ordered to stay home for the rest of the week, with instructions for someone to monitor her for the next few days.
“Do I really have to rest for the whole week?” Jo protested as Mrs. Harris helped her to her car, which seemed like a Rolls-Royce compared to Anna’s beat-up truck, even though it was just a simple Ford.
“I don’t know many girls who would complain about getting to miss work,” Mrs. Harris observed as she pulled out of the parking lot and checked the slip of paper Jo had written the boardinghouse address on.
“I probably don’t even have a concussion. Mr. Bates will think I’m a weakling.”
“Mr. Bates has been informed that you pushed your friend out of the way and blocked the cart with your own body, preventing further injuries. He is the one who told me to make sure you rest up, so that when you come back, you can start training on the more complicated machinery.”
Jo’s heart twisted with hope. “You’re not pulling my leg?”
“My dear, I don’t do that,” Mrs. Harris said, and it must’ve been the blow to the head, because it made Jo laugh like it was a real joke. “Mr. Bates likes tenacity and quick thinking. You showed both today. You didn’t lose your head when you saw the cart coming at you, and you prioritized the weakest link—Molly is very sweet, but she talks so fast I fear she doesn’t hear half of the things that go on around her. She could’ve been speared by those rods. You very likely saved her life.”
Jo flushed, which made her head throb further. “I don’t know about that.”
“I’ve seen my share of accidents on the floor,” Mrs. Harris said. “You have not.”
“Point taken,” Jo said, properly cowed. “Can I ask how you got into this line of work?” She shifted in the seat of the Ford, trying to find a position that didn’t make her whole body ache. Whatever excitement and thrill the danger had caused to pulse through her had started to fade, her aches and pains becoming more apparent with each breath.
“I was Mr. Bates’s secretary before we started increasing production,” Mrs. Harris said. “Once it was realized they’d need to start hiring women, I was asked to be in charge of the girls. Mr. Bates hasn’t stopped complaining about losing me to the floor since.”
Jo grinned. “Do you like the floor better than the office?”
“It’s a lot more walking,” Mrs. Harris allowed. “But I’m good at managing. I was the oldest of twelve.”
“I’d let out a whistle, but I’m afraid my head will hurt,” Jo said, which made Mrs. Harris smile as she took the turn onto Peach Street, where the boardinghouse stood. She pulled into the driveway and got out, opening the door for Jo and helping her inside.
“Why don’t you go upstairs, and I’ll have a quick chat with the head of the house,” Mrs. Harris said.
Jo inched up the creaky boardinghouse stairs as she heard the murmur of Mrs. Harris greeting Mrs. Wilson. By the time she got to her door, her head was aching even more fiercely than before. Maybe a day or two of rest would be good. But the rest of the week was still absurd.
“Jo?”
Jo winced at the sound. She turned slowly to see Charlie standing in the doorway of Peg’s room.
“You’re home early.”
“Little accident,” Jo said, gesturing to her forehead.
“My God.” In seconds, Charlie had closed the space between them, her hand cupping Jo’s face gently. “What happened?”
“Some rods got too close to my forehead,” Jo said. “I just need to rest.”
“What you need,” said a warm but scolding voice at the end of the hall, “is to be monitored closely for signs of a concussion.”
Mrs. Wilson had arrived, having been briefed by Mrs. Harris. Jo flushed guiltily at the thought of causing so much fuss.
“I’m really fine,” she insisted. “I’m not concussed. I’m just tired.”
Mrs. Wilson tutted. “I’m going to bring you a tray with tea, straightaway,” she said. “Do you want me to call your family, or do you want to tell them yourself?”
“I’ll phone when my head doesn’t hurt so much,” Jo said. “The sound…it hurts.” She attempted to look pitiful then, hoping it would lead to less fussing, but Mrs. Wilson wouldn’t be dissuaded from caretaking.
“I’ll be right back with that tea,” she said. “The factories are so dangerous. I worry about you girls.”
She bustled away, muttering to herself, and Jo leaned against the fading rose-papered wall, feeling more than a little faded herself.
“Why don’t I sit with you?” Charlie suggested. “I won’t make a peep.”
“I just said noise hurt so she wouldn’t push me about calling home,” Jo said, the stress of the day loosening her tongue horribly. But Charlie had the grace not to ask any questions as Jo opened the door to her room and beckoned her inside.
“You’ve got Peg’s old room,” Charlie observed as she strolled in.
“So I’ve heard.”
Jo collapsed as gently as she could on her bed, wanting desperately to curl up in her blankets and sleep for a year. She toed off her heavy boots, two clunks on the worn rug, and stretched out with a sigh.
“Can I?” Charlie gestured to the chipped vanity, and Jo nodded, flushing when she realized her stockings were still tossed over the mirror. She’d left her clothes at work. Hopefully, one of the girls would bring them home.
Jo closed her eyes, grateful for the silence, until she heard the rustle of paper and she realized what else was on the vanity. Eyes snapping open, alarm filled her when she saw that Charlie’s elbow was inches away from a stack of paper that was one of the last stories she wrote before…
“This your work?” Charlie asked, glancing down at it, but then fixing her gaze back on Jo.
Jo nodded again.
“Don’t worry, I won’t snoop,” Charlie said. “It would seem like taking terrible advantage, even if I am curious. I always hated it when my sisters tried to read my work before it was finished.”
“One of mine burned an entire manuscript once,” Jo said.
“On purpose?”
“She was very mad at me.”
“And you two still talk?” Charlie asked, eyes wide.
Jo shrugged. “I suppose I got back at her, even if I didn’t mean to. The first boy she ever had a crush on proposed to me, though I don’t think she knows of it.”
Charlie’s thin brows rose, her mouth pursing. “Jo March, you seem to be unable to escape adventure, be it romantic or catastrophic.”
“This is one adventure I wish I could’ve dodged,” Jo said, touching the stitches on her forehead.
“I didn’t realize you were engaged,” Charlie said.
“I’m not,” Jo replied.
“If he broke your heart, I hate him,” Charlie offered, and it made Jo smile.
“He didn’t, so no need.”
“Well, now I really want to hear the story. Were you the heartbreaker?”
“I suppose I was,” Jo said, with a twinge of realization. The memory of Teddy’s crumpled expression, the defeat and hurt in his face, hit her like it was fresh again. “I didn’t mean to be. I didn’t even know he…” Her eyes burned, and then so did her throat; it was like a weight being pressed on her chest.
“I’ve touched a nerve,” Charlie said hastily. “I’m sorry for ribbing you. I shouldn’t have. You’ve been through an ordeal.”
“I guess it’s just complicated,” Jo confessed. “And confusing.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s the boy I grew up with. He’s as good as family. But I didn’t realize he wanted to make us a family. And when he proposed, I felt…” She trailed off, trying to find the right word for that horrified lurch in her stomach when he’d pressed his lips against her hands and then said, Marry me, Jo. She couldn’t quite settle on one. “It was just not what I expected,” she said slowly. “Not what I wanted.”
“What do you want?” Charlie asked, like it was a question that had a simple or easy answer.
But before Jo could scoff or dodge or lie in answer, there was a knock at her door and Mrs. Wilson saved her the trouble by arriving with the tea.
* * *
Later, when Jo found herself alone in her room, between Mrs. Wilson’s routine checks to make sure she hadn’t fallen into some sort of coma or seizure, she found she could not escape the thoughts she had worked so hard to avoid. Still aching and wishing more than ever that she could lay her head in her mother’s lap and sob, she had to fight back the urge to cry every few minutes. Finally unable to bear it any longer, she dragged herself out of bed, still wrapped in her blanket to ward off the chill. Tucking her feet underneath herself in the rickety chair, the end of her pen in her mouth, she stared at the notebook on her vanity, the empty page beckoning.
There was a word for it. That lurch she’d felt, when Teddy had begged her to see things his way. To just trust him. To love him. To marry him.
What was it? Not sadness. Not anger or frustration.
Her hand was writing the word before she was fully thinking it. And then there it was, in ink and paper.
Betrayal.
His confession had been a lifted burden and then a heartbreak for him.
His proposal had led to a realization that shook the marrow of her.
She had thought he had seen her. As sure as her name was March and the sky was blue, she’d always thought Theodore Laurence didn’t just see her but valued her. For who she was—as difficult and strange and ornery as that girl was—and for how she thought.
But then she found herself in that train station, seeing him off for training. The hustle of the crowd and goodbyes were all around them as he promised to be a saint to her. He talked of love and other people’s expectations in the same breath, like the latter had ever mattered to her, let alone him.
Had he ever seen her? Or had he seen his vision of her, some version where she didn’t say what she meant and played games she never would if she loved someone?
Because she did love him.
She just didn’t want him. Not like he wanted and loved the Jo he thought she was.
Jo could not pretend. It’s why she left home. Meg was the one with the flair for the stage, not her, and eventually, her family would’ve realized just how broken she’d found herself. Meg already suspected.
What are you so scared of, Jo?
She traced her finger over the word she’d scribbled in the notebook, drawing out each letter, lingering on the l.
What do you want? Charlie had asked her earlier.
Was it that she didn’t know?
Or that she didn’t want to admit it to herself?
With a trembling hand, she flipped to a new page in the notebook.
Dear Teddy,
I don’t know if this letter will be welcome. I cannot blame you if it isn’t, though I cannot help but blame you for other things, maybe unfairly. But when have I been some great torchbearer of what is fair? My life is a study of the world not being so.
I have cursed you and that day and that damnable question you cornered me into answering, so many times. I hurt you, I know it, and maybe you hate me for turning down your proposal, even now.
Or perhaps, with this time and an ocean and war between us, you have seen my side of it a little in this secret battle we’ve found ourselves in. Is that too much to hope? Too selfish? Desperate, even?
I am all those things. Hopeful and selfish and desperate. Because you are my dearest friend and I THOUGHT I was yours, and now I worry that we are nothing. And if we are nothing, not family, not even friends, then did my friendship mean so little?
I don’t want to think so. But life has been so terribly unfair to both of us in different ways that I fear that it is so.
—Jo
Betrayal
Believing what he wanted
Even though your
True self had been there
Right in front of him
All along.
You’re so close,
Almost ready for
Love.
Blame
It’s easier for me now
to see you as you are
from this place where I find myself
outside a world of expectations.
But I promise,
if you let them,
the ones who matter
will see you too.
Is it quite fair
to blame them
for failing to see
what you haven’t
been willing to show?
CHAPTER 15
AMY
“You’re out past curfew, you know,” Laurie said, loudly enough so that Amy could hear him above the Savoy’s band.
Amy almost laughed. Didn’t he realize how ridiculous he sounded? She didn’t need a chaperone like some character out of an 1800s novel. Laurie ought to remember what century they lived in. A young woman like her could stay out late and dance with whomever she pleased.
“Heaven forbid!” she said dramatically, pressing a hand against her cheek in feigned shock. “Will you have me court-martialed, Lieutenant?”
Laurie drew a step closer. “Amy,” he said with a frown, “you said you wouldn’t break curfew.”
“I don’t believe I signed a contract and, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine.” She threaded her hand around Marcel’s elbow and couldn’t help but notice how it made Laurie’s jaw twitch. “I’m simply enjoying a drink with a new friend.”
“Is this fellow giving you trouble, chérie?” Marcel asked as he curled a hand around her waist possessively. In response, Amy sighed and tried to angle her body away from his, but his grip was as firm as a viper’s.
A fire lit in Laurie’s eyes. “There’s going to be trouble if you keep manhandling her like that,” he warned Marcel.
This time, Amy’s eyes widened with genuine shock. The Laurie that she knew was almost always genial, the type of person who played pranks on his tutor and tugged on Amy’s hair to make her laugh. She’d never seen this side of him before.
“I have this under control, Laurie,” she told him under her breath. She’d gotten plenty of practice dealing with soldiers who got a little too touchy. Most of the enlisted men were very gentlemanly when they interacted with the Red Cross workers, but a few of the officers had gotten aggressive at the get-togethers that Amy and the other Clubmobile girls were expected to attend.
Marcel released her suddenly so that he could stand nose to nose with Laurie. “Do you know who my father is?”
“Let me guess. Is he a handsy drunk like his son?” Laurie said right back.
Amy watched, speechless, as everything unfurled from there.
Marcel grabbed Laurie by the collar while Laurie launched a fist into the Belgian’s side. The hit had little effect, though. Marcel might’ve been halfway soused, but he also had at least twenty pounds on Laurie and soon wrestled him to the floor.
“Stop it, you dolts!” Amy cried. But the boys kept tussling and slinging punches, and she knew she would have to do something.
As Marcel pulled his arm back to clock Laurie in the nose, she entered the fray, shoving her weight against Marcel to throw him off balance. She figured that would be enough to knock some sense into him, but he had the audacity to try to push her away. Out of instinct alone, she slapped him across the cheek.
Now, that certainly got their attention. Marcel cradled his face with a whimper while Laurie just stared at her, stunned. At that exact moment, Amy looked around and realized that they had an audience. The whole room had fallen silent—even the band had stopped playing. Everyone had taken notice of them, including a pair of beefy bouncers who were elbowing their way through the crowd. One of them laid a thick hand on Amy’s shoulder while the other jerked Laurie to his feet.
“You two better come with us,” the bouncer said.
“Hold on, what about him?” Amy said, pointing at Marcel.
“He’s a guest of the hotel,” the bouncer said curtly before he escorted her and Laurie out of the room and across the lobby floor.
“Wait a second! Are you tossing us out?” Amy said, right before the guards did just that, shoving them both into the cold.
She let out an exasperated huff—the nerve of those men!—before she started pounding on the door, but Laurie stopped her.
“It’s no use,” he said.
“No thanks to you, Theodore Laurence!” She whirled around, ready to let him have it, until she saw how his left eye was bruising and how he was clutching at his side, right where he’d had his appendectomy. Her fury quickly shifted into worry. “Did you pop a stitch?”
“Feels like it.” He unbuttoned his blazer to reveal his white dress shirt underneath. “How does it look?”
“You’re bleeding!” she said, noting a few droplets of blood on the fabric.
Laurie lifted up his shirt to survey the damage, and Amy balked at the wound there. It was four inches long and, sure enough, he had pulled a couple of stitches.
“Will I live, Doctor?” he quipped. A chilly wind blew in, breathing goose bumps over his skin, and Amy snapped her eyes away when she realized that she’d been staring. She wasn’t sure why her mouth had gone so dry. She’d seen Laurie without a shirt dozens of times before, thanks to all the days that she’d gone swimming with him and her sisters at the Concord city pool. This situation wasn’t that different, aside from the weather. And the fact that they were thousands of miles from home. And that they were alone.
