Stormy Night

By Laura Schiller

Based on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

"Jo would have her baby on a night like this," said Laurie, watching the rain lash against the windows of Plumfield's drawing room. Fritz, sitting opposite him in a cloud of pipe smoke, nodded in agreement.

The entire house seemed to be holding its breath. The students (including Franz, Emil, Demi and Daisy) had gone to stay overnight at the Laurence mansion, where Grandfather Laurence, Amy, and John Brooke were looking after them. (Amy had wanted to come as well, except that she had recently given birth herself, and she and baby Elizabeth were not up to traveling yet.) As a consequence, Laurie and Fritz found themselves alone downstairs, while upstairs busy women ran to and fro, as everybody waited for a new life to make its entrance into the world.

Fritz found that he did not altogether like the sight of the black-eyed young man in the dashing coat, strolling around the room and inspecting the books and pictures as if he owned them. There was a bleached spot on the carpet where the sun shone most often; the furniture was plain, heavy and old-fashioned; there were no china figurines, throw pillows, or other dainty articles such as adorned the Laurence house. The black eyes took all of this in with amused interest, and finally settled on Fritz's pipe.

"I thought Jo didn't like smoking," said Laurie.

Fritz took a long puff and exhaled a cloud of smoke, just to be contrary. Laurie was right – Jo did not usually allow him to smoke in the house, and he was trying to quit – but it was none of the young man's business.

"She does not like cigars, Mr. Laurence," he retorted, "This is a pipe."

"Ah." Laurie sat down in an armchair, crossed his long legs, and said nothing more.

"You know, I do wish you'd call me Laurie. We're brothers-in-law, after all."

Fritz privately found it a silly nickname; it sounded like a girl's. But then again, his own name sounded just as silly in American ears, so who was he to complain?

"Well then, Laurie … tell me, how goes it with your lady? Better?"

"As well as can be expected, thank you." Laurie's face was unreadable. "And how's the school?"

The problem with small talk is that one cannot keep it up without the other person's cooperation. Laurie introduced one topic after another – from the state of the economy to Amy's new lap dog – all of which Fritz managed to cut short. He was a sociable man, but tonight of all nights, and with this person, he did not feel like talking. So eventually, they sat in silence.

The first alarming sounds from upstairs made the two men avoid each other's eyes. Gasps, moans, excited exclamations from Mrs. March, Meg and the midwife, and finally a full-out roar of agony, muffled by the ceiling and walls, but still audible. Fritz stared down at the pipe in his hands without seeing it; that was his wife up there, in labor … if anything should happen to her …

Women died in childbirth often enough. His own sister had.

Meanwhile that incorrigible Laurie was grinning all over his handsome face. "Can you hear that, Fritz? I didn't think she even knew such words!"

"Yes, I can hear that!" snapped Fritz. "It is not amusing!"

"All right!" Laurie threw up his hands. "I didn't mean to offend you. I'm worried too, you know."

The grin faded away; making it obvious that it had never reached Laurie's eyes. In fact, the young man was noticeably paler than usual, and fidgeted constantly with his pocket-watch as if he couldn't keep still. Fritz felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy; he would know exactly how this felt.

"I am sorry, Laurie."

"That's all right." The pocket-watch gleamed between Laurie's fingers as he turned it over and over.

"Fritz?"

"Yes?"

"I've been wanting to ask you something for a while now … and I'd appreciate it if you were honest. We're family, but I still can't get on with you as I do with John or Father March. Why is that?"

It was Fritz's turn to fidget. For Jo's sake, he had done his best not to show what he thought of her dashing, wealthy, handsome childhood friend, who, as Fritz knew, had proposed to Jo before marrying Amy. It was an irrational feeling; Laurie was a good man, for all his dash, and under any other circumstances, Fritz would have liked to have him as a brother. But there it was.

"I have a question for you also, Laurie," he said stiffly. "What are your true feelings for Jo?"

Laurie blinked – and that grin appeared again.

"Come now, old fellow, don't tell me you're jealous?"

"I see you with her," Fritz went on, struggling with his English vocabulary, which still escaped him when he felt upset. "You laugh, you quarrel … you are so very close. You are young and – and spirited, like Jo, and I am only an old fellow, as you say … and she is so beautiful, how can any man not love her?"

Laurie put down the watch with an emphatic clink onto the coffee table.

"Jo is my friend," he said, completely serious for once. "She's never seen me as anything but a brother. I admit I had a fancy for her once upon a time, but I was a boy then; I knew nothing about love. She and I are much too fiery and stubborn to be mated for life; besides, can you see Jo as the lady of Laurence Manor?"

Fritz shook his head. Jo paying formal calls, hosting dances and dinner parties, circulating among high society? The idea was absurd.

"I see you with her," Laurie continued, with a nod to his brother-in-law. "And it's amazing. Before she met you, she used to fly into terrible rages, and say and do things she'd later regret; now, when things vex her, she'll laugh them off or go for a brisk walk, and come back happy. It's your influence, Fritz, and I'm glad of it."

This unexpected credit made the older man uneasy; after clearing his throat and emptying his pipe into the ashtray, he still did not know what to say.

"It is not only I, Laurie," he said finally. "The passing of her sister had a – an influence on Jo as well."

He remembered coming across Jo's poem in a newspaper in New York, a tender, heartfelt tribute to the love between four sisters. 'None lost, only one gone before'. She had found her voice as a writer at last, and that voice had called him home.

He thought of her running through the meadows of the Plumfield estate, riding their old horse or playing hide-and-seek with the boys; smiling at him behind the teapot; scribbling in the boys' 'conscience book' with all her might; sitting on the porch with her hands on her growing belly; blazing like a midnight sun in his arms. His friend, his partner and his beloved, with more faces than the moon.

"She does much for me as well," he continued. "She gives me laughter, irritations … " Laurie laughed and nodded, knowing enough about that himself. "She gives me life."

They looked up at the ceiling, when yet another scream fell into the silence. They had been doing their best to ignore it, but now they both winced.

"Good job the boys aren't here, eh?" said Laurie.

"Yes."

"Bear up, man. A few more hours and you'll be a real Father Bhaer, as your students call you. I tell you what, why don't I bang away on this piano so we can't hear?"

The piano in question, a small upright, had been a gift from Laurie himself, for several of the students were musical. The young man sat down at it, cracked his knuckles ostentatiously, and looked over his shoulder. Fritz named a rousing German folk tune, one often sung and danced to at weddings, and Laurie, who happened to know it, 'banged away' with skill and enthusiasm while his brother-in-law sang.

"Ahem. Fritz, Laurie, could you please keep that racket down? Jo's threatening to come down here and break all your fingers, and I'm inclined to agree."

That was Meg, standing in the doorway, disheveled and disapproving in her enormous cap and apron. Her hands were at her hips, and she was hardly recognizable as their sweet, tranquil sister-in-law. Fritz decided that all of the March women, not just Jo, were formidable beings and not to be trifled with.

Then he caught Laurie's eye, and for a moment, the brothers-in-law saw the same expression – that of a penitent little boy caught in mischief – on the other's face.

"Forgive us, sister," said Fritz. "We shall not disturb you again. Shall we have something quieter instead, brother Laurie? A game of chess perhaps?"

"Capital. See if I can't beat you, brother Fritz."

Meg lifted her eyebrows as high as they could go and disappeared upstairs.

It took seven more hours, two and a half coffeepots, and another pipe to get Laurie and Fritz through. They discovered that, to Fritz's chagrin and Laurie's delight, they were evenly matched as chess players; apparently, not all the university learning in the world can make up for an inborn knack for strategy. The next time Meg came down the stairs, it was on tiptoes, with wet eyes and a radiant smile. She beckoned them upstairs without a word.

Jo was sitting up in bed, guarded by Mrs. March, Meg, and the nurse; leaning against a pile of fluffy pillows, with damp tendrils of hair sticking to her red cheeks. In her arms was a bundle of white linen, which stirred faintly and made noises like a hungry kitten. She looked up, caught sight of Fritz and Laurie in the doorway, and smiled.

It was the loveliest sight they'd ever seen.

Fritz crossed over to her bedside immediately, holding out his hands. Jo handed him the baby; it blinked up at him with Jo's clear gray eyes.

"It's a boy," said Jo, in a softer, lower voice than he had ever heard her use. "Your son."

"Robert Bhaer," said the new father, trying out the name they had agreed on, in case of a son. "Na, mein Kleiner?"

"You, Professor, have a lot to answer for," Jo continued, with a mock-threatening glare. "Don't I wish I could have made you give birth instead!"

"Please, no!" said Fritz, which made the entire company laugh – not too loudly, of course, because of the baby.

"Seriously though, isn't he perfect? Look – ten fingers, ten toes and everything. And I do believe he's got your nose."

"Perfect, yes. Because he is ours."

For a moment, Fritz could hardly believe the strange and wonderful path his life had led him on. Ten years ago, a young academic and confirmed bachelor in Berlin, he never would have believed he would end up looking after a swarm of children, finding love in a foreign country, or having a little boy of his very own. He thanked the Lord for all of it.

"Don't worry, Teddy," said Jo. "We'll name the next one after you."

"Teddy Bhaer, seriously?" said Laurie. "The other lads will plague his life out!"

"Not if we can help it. Fritz dear, show Uncle Laurie his new nephew, won't you?"

Laurie took the baby with becoming gravity, having learned how not to panic from experience with Demi and Daisy. While he was busy cooing nonsense syllables to Robert and letting him grab his finger, Fritz took Jo's hands in his (Not empty now, he thought, and never again) and asked her, in the form of speech they only used during intimate moments: "Art thou well, beloved?"

"Well, let me see. I ache in places I didn't know could ache, I'm sweaty, exhausted, hoarse from yelling … and yet I've never felt better in my life."