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She starts drawing sometime after dinner. She doesn’t stop to think. She doesn’t decide to draw. She didn’t plan to, ever again, actually. She meant to stop after Rome, after she finished the portfolio for Jo.
But she’s home now, and the whole household hangs in the gentle, horrible balance between Beth’s dying and Amy’s wedding. Everything is done now for Beth, and for Meg too, and even for Jo, Amy suspects. Jo has lost something while Amy was gone, something that cuts deeper than a sister.
All that’s left to be done now is Amy, and so she folds herself up on the sofa and starts to draw. She draws on the back of a note Meg sent to say she and John had arranged for the flowers, and she draws with one of the pencils that Jo leaves strewn everywhere even now that she’s not writing. Amy cannot wash her sisters from her skin.
She draws absentmindedly at first. A circle, a line. Everything following the rules she learned from that wretched Frenchman Aunt March insisted was a great artist. Amy despises the fact that everything he taught her makes her art look better. She has no need for it. She is not going to be an artist; she has decided that already. And Amy never gives up once she decides.
She lets her mind slip away for a second, thinking of the wedding dress that Meg has insisted on making, even though Amy could have gotten one in Paris. The dress is blue, not even white, with florals so large and round that they’re more reminiscent of great eyes than of flowers. The sleeves are tight and scratch and trail down into great cascades of lace that teeter precariously between gaudy and absurd.
Amy loves the dress. She loves Meg.
With a great effort, Amy pulls herself back and looks down at her drawing. “Fuck,” she murmurs, and instinctually covers her mouth as if Aunt March might be lurking around a corner somewhere, ready to rap her on the knuckles and insist that she stop accompanying Laurie to the seedy French bars he frequented.
But she’s not in Paris, and there is no one to be angry at her, and what Amy has done is worse than a mild indiscretion in terms of what establishment she frequents.
Amy has drawn Beth.
Or something like her. A face that could almost be Beth’s face stares up at her from the page, only she isn’t quite right. Beth’s eyes never looked that sharp. Her nose was smaller. The birthmark by her eye was darker.
Amy wants to crumple up the paper and throw it away. She will not be an artist, she has decided that.
But she can’t crumple up Beth. She can’t throw away Beth.
So Amy sighs. She lays down the pencil and stretches out her hand.
And then she picks up the pencil and gets to work.
It’s nearing eleven when Laurie appears, shedding his coat and hat like he’s come home. He seems to come from nowhere, just like when he appeared that first day she saw him: A boy from nowhere, in Concord.
But he’s not a boy from nowhere, he’s Laurie, and he kneels before her, next to the couch, and catches her hands. “Amy,” he says. “It’s late.” It is late. It’s dark outside. There are stars burning up there, cold and burning.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, keeping her voice quiet so as not to disturb the rest of the house, though her father is often awake late, puttering around in his study, and Marmee sleeps like the dead, and Jo seems to have given up sleeping entirely, so really, it’s unlikely anyone is going to be awoken—still, Amy, in the absence of Beth, is trying to be considerate and good and sweet.
Laurie looks down—he looks away, and Amy feels it like a knife. God, she’s always been like this, feeling every word and gesture and look like they’re all meant to wound her in particular. She can't believe she’s not over it yet. “Jo came over to get me,” he says, and Amy feels an ancient, instinctual panic that can only be tamped down by thinking He’s marrying me. Not Jo. Not Jo. “She said you’ve been down here for hours.”
“Not hours,” she says, which is a lie. “I just—” She pushes away her mind, which is screaming to hide the paper forever, and instead turns it to face him. “Beth,” she says, because that’s the only explanation.
His face seems to crumple and burn up and come back to life in a second. “Oh, Amy,” he says gently, taking the paper like it’s a baby bird. She waits, tensed for the rejection, but he looks back at her with soft, damp eyes. “It’s beautiful.”
“No, it’s not.” She snatches the paper back. “It’s—horrid; it’s wrong. Look. Look!” She points at the nose, which is still closer to Aunt March’s than Beth’s, and somehow her forehead has grown to nearly grotesque proportion, and the hair looks coarse, and the eyes are different sizes, and the shading is uneven, and Beth looks sick—
“Amy.” He catches her hands. “It’s beautiful.” He smoothes out the drawing and stares down at it. His eyes look so soft. “I can tell how much you loved her. I can see it.”
She tries to keep quiet, she really does, but it leaps from her mouth: “Then why wasn’t I here?” The question she’s asked herself so many times. Her voice is soft, not because she’s being quiet but because suddenly, she can barely keep from crying. “Why was I gone? Why, when everyone else—They all said goodbye to her, and I was off in—Antwerp—” She wants him to stop her so badly but for once, it appears that Theodore Lawrence III has nothing to say. His eyes have fallen, fixing on the drawing almost forgotten in Amy’s lap; his face is red, and his mouth stays shut as words tumble out of Amy’s like she can’t stop them. “I wasn’t even supposed to go—If I’d only been here—It was supposed to be Jo!” The words taste like vinegar. “It was supposed to be Jo ,” she says again, quieter.
And Laurie is still silent, but he’s looking at her now, all trembling mouth and deep eyes, so she keeps speaking, looking right at him. “Jo was supposed to go to Europe,” she says. “She wanted it so badly. It was like a hole in her chest. Jo always just—” She gives up and throws a hand in the air, like she can show Laurie how Jo was always just about to take off, how she was always on the verge of flight.
And how it was Amy who flew away in the end. And how it was Amy who didn’t fly back in time.
“If Jo had gone—” Laurie is speaking slowly, like he’s afraid he might misspeak. That’s new. Laurie never used to be so careful. When did they both grow up? “She wouldn’t have been here to say goodbye to Beth. She wouldn’t have been able to take care of her. Is that—”
He stops, but Amy knows what he’s asking. She knows her answer, too; she’s known it with sharp clarity since she first heard the news.
“I'd rather it was me,” she confesses. It’s a relief in a way, to peel back her skin and show him the rot. “I wish I’d been here. Even if it meant Jo wasn’t.” There it is. The words carved into her heart: Amy always wants what Jo has. Nothing else can make her happy. Nothing can make her happy.
She sits there, crumpled over like a puppet with her strings cut. The drawing, imperfect, lays in her lap. She stares into Laurie’s face, waiting for anger like a shattering vase. Amy feels empty and echoing. She’s always done this. If she shouts back enough times, someday someone will try and hurt her. Amy hurt is Amy angry, and Amy angry isn’t Amy devastated.
Laurie looks back, and Amy sees just the faintest shine in his eyes. Not broken glass: Tears. He takes her hand, holding it like something breakable. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry you weren’t here.”
In a moment, Amy feels her eyes fill and overflow. All anyone has done since she got back is reassure her that it’s alright, that Beth understood, that she would have forgiven Amy in a heartbeat. What they don’t seem to understand is that Amy is not half so forgiving.
And with Laurie in hand, and a clumsy simulacrum of Beth created, and the Massachusetts stars wheeling and ancient and familiar overhead, Amy March cries and cries and cries.