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Going back to Plumfield always feels strange. Not that Laurie ever spent much time there back when Aunt March was still alive, but in the few memories of it he has it was always an austere, uncomfortable place. Somewhere you always had to be on your best behaviour. Admittedly, the years’ worth of Jo’s stories about working for Aunt March have probably coloured those memories a little, but knowing that doesn’t stop the contrast with how it is now from feeling surreal.
Plumfield now is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a place that was left to Jo March. Especially with the opening of her school so close now, it’s a chaotic place to be. He’s sure that Jo takes at least some comfort in knowing that it’s probably Aunt March’s worst nightmare.
Jo herself looks in an equal state of disarray when she greets him at the door, but she immediately lights up when she sees him, “Teddy! What a nice surprise to see you here!”
He lights up in turn, “Thought you could use some help setting things up. It’s only… what? A week or so until this place is meant to be open?”
She nods, “Couple of weeks, yes. But I’m praying the preparations will be done some time before that. It would be nice to actually have a break. I can’t even remember when I last had time to write,” she says despondently.
“Well, you’re in luck! I suspected you might have your hands full, and I thought you’d appreciate a couple of extra hands to help out!”
Jo just leans against the door, regarding him with suspicion, “Oh, really? And you had this wonderful idea entirely on your own, did you?”
“Of course, and don’t believe anything Amy might say to the contrary. I mean, you know her: just notoriously dishonest,” he gives an exaggerated sigh.
“You make a disgraceful brother-in-law,” says Jo flatly, but she then breaks into a smile and holds the door open for him.
While the building may have appeared relatively peaceful from the outside, the interior is a mad jumble. There are half-unpacked boxes and crates littering the floors, and half the rooms don’t even appear to be easily accessible. If Jo’s goal is indeed to make Aunt March turn in her grave, she’s probably succeeding.
He’s only able to take a second to drink in all of the chaos before Jo is ushering him into one of the classrooms-to-be. At first glance it looks like it could be a functioning classroom, with a long desk at the front and the rest of the room filled with smaller desks. But the shelves are bare of books or anything else, the blackboard is lying haphazardly on the floor, and aside from the crates scattered around the place there’s few signs of life. It’s like an empty shell of a room. Jo immediately springs into action, “Come on, we don’t have all day, and I happen to have some heavy lifting you can help with!”
Personally, he thinks she’s being very optimistic in implying he’ll be any use at all with heavy lifting. Unfortunately, she’s already about ten thoughts ahead, and there’s no slowing Jo March down once she has an idea.
“So the main thing I need a hand with is putting up the blackboard,” she says, gesturing to it, “And then there’s also a lot of crates that need unpacking, as you can see. Most of them are just full of books, pens, pencils, possibly some chalk, I think? I’m not really sure though, I haven’t exactly had time to go through it all.” She runs her fingers through her hair distractedly.
“Suppose we’d better get a move on then,” he nods.
It takes a bit of struggle, but between the two of them they manage to set the blackboard up. Jo immediately turns her attention to the crates, unpacking chalk, pens, paper, and finally a large stack of books that she carries over to the nearest shelf. Laurie, in an effort to look like he’s being vaguely helpful, starts trying to organise the other items into some kind of system.
His helpfulness proven, he decides it’s time to turn to the other purpose for his visit.
“I actually had another reason for wanting to see you, Jo,” he says, “I have an invitation I’d like to give you.”
Jo looks a little warily over at him from where she’s shelving books, “Go on…”
“Me and Amy are throwing another of our famous parties at our home next week. It’s mostly just going to be a lot of the Laurence business partners attending, but since you’re family you obviously get an invitation as well! What do you think? It should be an excellent evening, and who knows - you might be able to recruit some wealthy benefactors for this place! I can think of a few family friends who are interested in extending their philanthropy.”
“I’ll think about it…” she says very slowly, in a tone of voice that strongly implies the answer is a foregone conclusion, and not the conclusion Laurie was hoping for either.
“Jo, come on! You can’t hate our company much, can you?”
“No! Of course not!” Pause. “I mean, I have no problem with you and Amy, obviously. It’s more to do with all your rich friends…”
If he weren’t in the midst of battling against Jo to convince her to come, that would be worth a ‘she-has-a-point’ grimace. The primary objective of parties like this, after all, is to keep up a good appearance for the Laurences’ business partners. And while he gets on well with many of them, there’s at least an equal number with whom interactions are best kept limited.
Still, he has a friend to sucker into attending. “They’re not that bad!” And they’re not. Mostly.
She scoffs, “You’re a respectable soon-to-be-family-man with a respectable job. I’m one of the filthy bohemians. We get very different reactions.”
Admittedly, he can’t really argue with that one. For all that Jo has grown up from the rebellious girl he once knew, she’s still Jo, fundamentally. She’s still, as far as most of his peers are concerned, terrifying. As if her being unmarried wasn’t bad enough, she’s also a writer, god forbid.
“Ok, fine,” he sighs, “A lot of them are old-fashioned and extremely judgemental, and I’m sure you get it a lot worse than me and Amy do, but-”
“Last time, I tried counting how many times I got asked about why I wasn’t married, and I got up to ten by two hours in!” She shelves the last of her books with more aggression than Laurie would have thought a person could shelve a book, as if to emphasise her point.
“But they’re mostly decent people,” he says, refusing to give up, “And I’m sure at least some of them would be interested in helping out with the school financially, and the parties are always better when we have family attending! It’ll be nice to have at least someone there we can let our guard down around, and Meg’s always busy with the twins - you’re our only hope!” he looks at her pleadingly, “I promise I’ll do my best to keep you away from prying questions. You have my word!”
He desperately hopes that the possibility of getting more financial help for the school will sweeten the deal enough. As far as he knows, Jo isn’t particularly struggling for funds at the moment, between her own book money she’s putting towards it, the contributions of himself and Amy and Grandfather, and a few other donors she’s managed to pick up she seems to have it all covered. But that doesn’t mean she’d pass up the chance for getting even more funding for the place, and hopefully that will tip the scales.
Jo picks up a pen from the desk and fidgets with it implacably, “I’ll think about it. And I actually will, I’m not just saying that. As much as I take issue with the company you keep -”
“Trust me, it’s not by free choice.”
“I might be prepared to put up with it for the pleasure of you and Amy’s company. And for the sake of Plumfield, of course.”
“Wonderful news!” he enthusiastically throws an arm around her shoulders, “You won’t regret it, Jo, I promise!”
“Calm down, I’m not committed yet. I’m just saying I might… And you might want to be a little less ambitious with your promises. I’m not convinced you have enough power to stave off my own personal judgement day.”
She tosses the pen back on the desk and sits down on one of the remaining crates, looking more than a little sulky. Laurie considers joining her, but he’s starting to get the impression that this is a little bit deeper than simply being annoyed by the judgements of Massachusetts' richest and most ostentatious, and it’s probably best to give her space.
After a few seconds, she looks up at him, “How long do you think it will take?”
“I’m sorry?”
“For people to stop asking me when I’ll get married. How long do you think it will take?”
He winces apologetically, “I don’t know if I’m really the best person to ask, but if I had to guess… probably until you’re old enough that when you say you don’t have a husband they’ll just assume he died.”
“So that’s…”
“A while yet, I’m afraid.”
She nods, seemingly satisfied with the answer, stands up, and proceeds to open the crate as angrily as possible. This, Laurie can’t help thinking, is a decent indicator of why half his rich friends are terrified of her.
He decides to go for a ‘doggedly trying to cheer her up’ approach, “Look on the bright side, Jo! At least Charles Bryant probably won’t be there this time!”
Jo looks distinctly un-cheered-up by this. Instead she just glares daggers at him and crumbles a piece of chalk between her fingers, “Please, for the sake of my sanity, don’t mention that man’s name to me.”
Laurie grins wider at that, “Apologies, allow me to rephrase. At least there probably won’t be anyone asking for your hand in marriage this time!”
Jo drops the chalk back in the crate and dramatically slumps against the blackboard, “Don’t say that, what if they do? Maybe I just shouldn’t go…”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous -”
“You brought it up!”
“Because I wanted to reassure you that it definitely won’t happen again,” he gives her the most naive, innocent look he can muster.
“Like hell you did. You’re just saying it because you enjoy tormenting me.” In hindsight he probably should have known better than feigning innocence to someone who’s practically his twin. They’re famous for reading each others' minds, after all.
“Fine, maybe I do take some enjoyment from it…” If looks could kill he’d be a dead man. “But I promise to do my very best to ensure nothing like that happens again! And if it does you can just handle it like you did with Bryant. I think you did pretty well at defusing the situation - I mean, he’s probably never going to come back to Concord again, but that’s really on him for publicly humiliating himself!”
“I just wish he didn’t feel the need to publicly humiliate me while he was at it,”
“Oh, trust me, you have nothing to worry about there. Poor man was making such a fool of himself that I doubt anyone was even paying attention to you. And even if they were, you handled getting drunkenly proposed to very gracefully. They might even have been impressed!”
The olive branch apparently works, because Jo actually laughs at that, “You really think so?”
“It’s what I thought, anyway. But then I suppose all that practice had to pay off eventually.”
Olive branch immediately destroyed, she puts her head in her hands in exhaustion, “Oh, for god’s sake…”
“I’m just saying, this is starting to become a pattern…”
“Teddy,”
“Three men’s hands turned down and counting…”
“I still don’t think the Professor counts.”
“And I still think you’re being wilfully ignorant about it.”
“He never expressed any interest! How am I supposed to have rejected him if he never asked me?”
“Oh, he was expressing interest. Just not directly. And then instead of reciprocating you asked him if he wanted to open a school with you! It’s an elaborate rejection, for sure, but still a rejection.”
“Well, he agreed. He can’t have been too annoyed about it.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that you turned him down. As you did, most fortunately I might add, to yours truly. And now our poor friend Charles Bryant.”
Jo doesn’t respond to that, instead settling for grumbling unintelligibly at him. On impulse, he closes the distance between them and takes her hand in his, raising it in the air like a victorious athlete on a podium. “Jo March, ladies and gentlemen! Not just a heartbreaker, but an incorrigible heartbreaker!”
“I wouldn’t know the meaning of the word,” she breaks away from his grip, glaring without true malice behind it.
“Both your chosen careers make that hard for me to believe.” She still looks skeptical, so he adds, “And besides, I don’t mean it as a bad thing. From what I hear there’s plenty of women out there who’d envy your track record with proposals, even if they are unwanted.”
She folds her arms, considering the point, “Well, I suppose it might be time for me to start taking some pride in it.”
“That’s the spirit!”
Jo picks up a battered-looking notebook from the desk at the front of the classroom and starts leafing through it distractedly, “This doesn’t mean I want it happening again any time soon, though.”
“You say that like I do. Trust me, I’m hoping for an uneventful evening this time around. For one thing, the Bryants probably won’t be showing their faces around us for at least a few years and we successfully alienated the Vaughns ages ago, and I’d quite like for us to have at least some friends left who are still willing to attend the next one.”
Jo laughs in the back of her throat, gives him a quick nod, and returns her attention to the notebook.
“Writing at a time like this?” Laurie looks at her curiously.
“No, I wish. This is just my itinerary of everything I need to get done before this place opens,” she looks slightly pained, “It’s… a lot.” With what looks like not a small amount of effort, she snaps the notebook shut and forcibly brightens up, “But it’ll be worth it when it’s all up and running! I know it’s mostly been stressful these past few weeks, but I really am excited about this school. This… I feel like this is what I should be doing.”
Laurie grins, watching her pick up yet another stack of books under one arm, “It’s about time if you ask me. I would have loved it if there had been a good school here when I was young, instead of having to be taught at home. No offence to John, of course, but it did get pretty lonely.”
Jo punches his arm lightly as she passes him, “Oh, I see! My friendship wasn’t enough for you, was it?”
“You know what I mean,” he frowns, rubbing his arm, “Obviously it was and still is wonderful to have you as a friend, but it would have been nice if you and Meg weren’t the only people my age I had to talk to.”
She huffs in a parody of irritation, “I suppose.”
Laurie smiles thoughtfully, “Do you remember that one week when we were about seventeen when you just didn’t speak to me at all for some reason? For a whole week I only had John to talk to. He’s a lovely man, but it was still a bit awful.”
He says it expecting her to laugh, the same way she normally laughs whenever he brings up one of the many conflicts or skirmishes from their childhood that now seem unimaginably silly. Instead the only sound he’s met with is the thud of several heavy books being set down on a desk at the back of the room with slightly more force than he was expecting. Jo hasn’t turned around to face him.
“I - I suppose I do,” she says. She sounds unnatural, caught off-guard. “I didn’t realise you weren’t talking to anyone else, though.”
Laurie reckons he knows his best friend. Well enough to know when she’s hiding something, anyway. “Sounds like you remember it pretty well then,” he says cautiously, suddenly feeling like he’s approaching a wounded animal.
She makes a half-hearted attempt at looking like she’s too busy to answer his question, aimlessly sorting through the books.
“Jo?”
At the sound of his voice she abandons the books, turns around, and sits down on the desk. “Yes, I remember,” she sighs heavily, “At least if we’re thinking about the same week, which I assume we are.”
“Can’t think of many other weeks you stopped talking to me,” he shrugs, taking a seat next to her, “Not that I doubt you had some kind of good reason. The details slip my mind, but I’m sure I was being an idiot.”
She sighs again, the way she sometimes does when there’s too many words in her head and she can’t get them all in order, “No, you hadn’t done anything. I was just…” she trails off, picking at her sleeve awkwardly.
He gives her a look that he hopes gets across what he’s trying to say. That he wants them to be able to talk. The days when they couldn’t are still so recent. He’d give anything not to go back to that.
It must have something like the right effect, because it’s only a second after she drops his gaze that she shrugs and forces the words out: “It was nothing you’d done. It’s just that that week was when I realised how you felt about me. And I didn’t want to deal with it. So I didn’t.”
Maybe it’s a sign of his personal growth that what was once such a painful thing to him now seems almost quaint. Or maybe it’s just the surprise of it. Whatever it is, it breaks the feeling of tension that had been slowly building in the pit of his stomach.
“It took you that long to realise?” he laughs, “That’s impressive. I wasn’t exactly known for my subtlety as a child.”
He knows it’s the wrong thing to say even before she shoots him a shatteringly wounded look. He inwardly kicks himself and pulls his friend into a one-armed hug. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”
Jo just laughs bitterly, “I’m not - I’m not stupid, Teddy. I know I can be - be a bit unobservant, about people’s romantic feelings, but I’m not stupid. I’m not -”
“I don’t think you are,” he winces. He’d really thought that the feelings and forces that had once so brutally torn them apart were finally in the past. But maybe that was overly-optimistic. Jo, after all, has a particular talent for getting stuck in her own head. He’s aware, distantly, that she lived with the shame of her own perceived hollowness for a very long time. That’s not such an easy thing to escape.
She only hums in response to him, but she also doesn’t pull out of the hug, so he figures he can’t have completely screwed things up.
A few seconds or a lifetime later, depending on who you ask, Jo breaks the silence.
“Since we’re already dredging up the past, can I ask you a question?” she shakes her hair out of face. It’s getting long again, he distantly notices. Almost down to her shoulders now. He’s been wondering if she’s planning to let it grow out now that she’s running a school and has to keep up the appearance of a Respectable Member of Society, or if he’ll see her in a few days having taken the scissors to her hair again.
“Ask away.”
She shifts out of the hug and stands up. She doesn’t move away from the desk, drumming her fingers against the spot where she was sitting moments before. “Are you angry? That I knew for so long how you felt and never -”
He can see the guilt spiral coming and moves to cut it off at the source. “No, no. Jo, you didn’t have to do anything. This was never your fight.” If he feels a stab of his own guilt at how things turned out it’s worth it for the small smile he gets from her. He smiles back, “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that I ever made it yours.”
She responds with a friendly punch to the shoulder and a slightly exasperated, “Oh, shush. Water under the bridge, right?”
“You’re one to talk,” he chuckles, “And since I’m apparently not allowed to feel sorry about it, you shouldn’t be allowed either.”
Tension seemingly evaporated, Jo returns to shelving books, once again surrounded by her element. As far as Laurie can tell the conversation is over, but something still seems to be up. There’s something about the way she’s carrying herself that tells him she’s on edge.
“You sure you’re ok?” he asks as he goes to join her.
“Yeah. Just… general worries, I suppose.”
“I’m all ears.”
Jo gently rests the remaining books on an empty shelf and turns to him, “Do you honestly think this is a good idea? Starting this school? What if this is all just a pipe dream?”
It’s easy for him to forget. That Jo does, in fact, doubt her abilities sometimes. “Look,” he says, absent-mindedly scuffing his shoe against the floorboards, “I’m not going to tell you this isn’t a leap of faith, because we both know it is, but we also both know you’ve made bigger leaps! I mean, not to imply I ever doubted you, but up until a year ago, you becoming this wildly successful author seemed like a bit of a pipe dream too,” he suddenly realises she’s shooting him an amused look and tries to defend himself, “Not to me! Obviously, but y’know. To other people.”
Jo laughs at that, but the look in her eyes is still troubled, “Good point, but at least with the writing I was only ever at risk of letting myself down. This is different. I’m going to be responsible for educating all these children who have nowhere else to go, for giving them better opportunities in life than they’d have had otherwise. I don’t - I don’t know if I’m up to that…”
“Well, I can tell you for sure that that’s nonsense. I can’t think of anyone who’d be more up to it than you. Trust me, you’re going to be great for the children!”
“What makes you say that?”
He looks down at his shoes, suddenly embarrassed to voice the thoughts spinning around in his head. But today has been a day of honesty so far, so to hell with embarrassment!
“You see, I may be a sophisticated gentleman now,” he says, and immediately gives the lie to the claim with an exaggerated bow and a lift of an imaginary hat. Jo chuckles. He grins, “But I do still remember what it was like to be young. I remember what it was like to feel alone and misunderstood and like I didn’t belong.” Seemingly on instinct she gently takes his sleeve in her hand, which he ignores because the last thing he needs if he’s going to remain composed is Jo March going soft on him. “You helped me so much, Jo. I think… I think you saved me. A little bit. And I know…” It feels like the words are sticking in his throat, and he raps his knuckles against the desk in frustration, “I know I haven’t always shown it but I’m so, so grateful for that. For everything you did. I think if anyone can help these children, it’s you.”
The words are only just out of his mouth when he finds himself being pulled into a hug by his friend, one arm around his neck. She buries her face in his shoulder briefly, which based on prior experience he takes as a sign that she’s using this as a way to hide that she’s trying not to cry. After a couple of seconds she lets him go, but her eyes still look a little watery as she pulls back. “Thanks, Teddy,” she says thickly, “I hope you know you did the same for me, and I’m so, so glad to have had you as a friend all these years -”
“Jo, please, emotions are running high enough as it is.”
“Fine,” she snorts, “I’ll just trust that you know what I was about to say.”
“I think I can imagine it.”
“You’ve given me an idea though…” she says, thoughtfully, “How would you feel about helping us out every now and then? The Professor and I will probably be stretched pretty thin once this place is up and running, even with the other girls I’ve hired, and I think your presence would be appreciated!”
It’s such an absurd notion that it’s all he can do not to burst out laughing there and then, “That’s a very flattering offer, but I fail to see what I’d contribute.”
“You said it yourself! Helping them feel less alone, understanding their problems! The same things we did for each other when we were younger! I think you’d be able to understand too!” her eyes are lit up now, the idea clearly taking hold of her, “We could find something more concrete for you to do officially… You can still play piano, can’t you?”
He shrugs, “Depends who you ask.”
“You could do music lessons or something.”
“I really don’t think I’d be much help.”
Jo rolls her eyes at his stubbornness, “You haven’t met any of these children, Teddy. I’ve only met a few of them, but it’s enough to know…” she trails off, suddenly lost in thought. As if to clear her head, she pushes herself up onto the nearest windowsill, and Laurie quickly joins her.
“I’ve talked to some of their parents, you know,” she says quietly, “The parents who really want their children in this school. And I think some of them just really like the idea of their children being taught by celebrated local author J.L. March,” she doesn’t even try to hide her smile at that, “But the others… they don’t have other options, Teddy. There’s no good schools for girls, after all, and the schools for boys aren’t much better. And there’s so many children who have been kicked out of school or are close to being kicked out because they’re too loud or too quiet or aren’t good at the right things or don’t do things the way the teachers want. There’s children who are doing fine in school but can’t stay because - because they don’t belong, they’re not happy with who they’re supposed to be and they’re not like the other children and they all know it and they’re so lonely but no one’s seeing it! And - and no one understands them! Maybe their parents if they’re lucky but some of them don’t even have that.”
She looks him dead in the eye, and he knows what she means before she even says it, “When I see them all I can see is you and me. The way we used to be. And they deserve better than we got, Teddy. God, we deserved better than we got. I want them to have someone who’ll tell them that they’re ok. Who’ll show them how to be happy on no one’s terms except their own, the way I wish someone had done for us. I want the world to show compassion to them.”
Laurie replies slowly, “And you think that the people who can do that are…”
“Us, Teddy.”
She gives him a couple of seconds to digest that, then shakes his arm lightly when he doesn’t reply, “I know it sounds like a lot, but it’s just… We did ok, didn’t we? We were those scared lonely children once, the ones who didn’t belong, and we did ok. Maybe we couldn’t change everything we wished we could, but we made this world work for us, even when it didn’t want to.”
“Yeah,” he smiles, “We did ok.”
But she’s back to being lost in her own head, still not even moving her hand from his arm, “I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t wish I could talk to my younger self. There’s so much I wish I could tell her. I wish I could tell her that there’s nothing wrong with her, that she’s more than just some stupid child refusing to grow up, that even if this world wasn’t made for her she can still survive in it, that… that she’s not going to get married. Or have children. I wish I could tell her she won’t get the happy ending everyone’s promised for her, but there will be a time when no one speaks of marriage to her anymore, and no one who matters will have called her ‘Josephine’ in years, and there will days when she’s so happy she can hardly breathe for it.” She shakes her head and sighs, “I can’t do any of that, obviously. But I can do this. I can do it for someone else.” A smile flashes across her face, as if at a private joke.
She’s right. He knows she’s right. The paths they’ve taken in life aren’t the same, not even a little bit, but the old connection between them still runs deep. They were just as lost as each other, once. Her running from the role expected of her as long as she could (she might be able to run her whole life now, he thinks, with something a little like awe). Him fighting against his own role and letting it consume him in equal measure.
He can’t imagine how his younger self would feel seeing him now. Seeing how happy he could be. How he could make this world he never liked his own.
“Maybe you’re right,” he sighs, “I’ll think about it, at least. You think about showing up at the party next week, and I’ll think about helping with the school!”
“Deal,” Jo chuckles, “And thank you. For having faith in me and all these ludicrously ambitious projects of mine.”
He shoves her shoulder gently, and not for the first time wonders if she has any idea just how naturally having faith in her comes to him, “Come on, it’s you, Jo. Whatever you do, it’s going to be incredible.”