The day that Laurie, usually the most graceful man Amy had ever met, jostled the table where she worked at her sculpture and catching the edge, managed to knock the marble figure to the stone floor of the studio, shattering it, Amy finally understood what Jo must have felt when she burnt Jo's book. She admitted to herself what she had done was worse, for Laurie had not meant to damage her work and she had meant it, every single page she'd pulled and crumpled and thrust into the fire when she knew Marmee was out and Hannah was busy in the kitchen. She had liked to see the flames turn sunny as they ate the paper, the words twisting and cavorting as they turned into ash. She'd begun to have some vague uneasiness as time passed, that perhaps she had done wrong, but there were only a few pages left and she felt, obscurely, that she must at least finish what she started, even if it were destruction. Her memory of the day was abridged, reduced to the heat on her face as she watched her sister's book burn and the cold that had been like a strange heat itself when she fell through the ice, the light of the fire and the brightness of the sun on the snow as Laurie had carried her home. She remembered feeling remorse when she spoke to Marmee and Jo and she remembered feeling jealousy as Marmee walked Jo out of the room, her arm around her, and Amy had been left with one of Beth's dolls tucked under her arm. She'd been asleep when Meg came back because she had no recollection of it.
When she saw the statue she had been working on for weeks, months really since she first made clay models, in fragments on the flagstones, she had felt an anger she didn't know she was capable of and it was directed at Laurie. Dear, kind Laurie, her handsome husband whom she laughingly called My Lord, who loved to indulge her artistic temperament and fondness for fine things—she could hardly bear to see him, pressed her lips together as tightly as she could to prevent herself from screaming. He'd been nearly beside himself, apologizing, picking up the larger pieces very gently and laying them on the table before her. She had stood very still for several moments, while he soiled his wool trousers with marble dust, a few smaller shards ground under foot right away, and then she had gathered herself enough to put her hand over his to stop him and told him to let her finish. He had not argued with her at all, had been utterly chastened and she had found comfort in the spark of pity that she noticed within herself, something to relieve the drowning darkness of her rage. She had spent hours in the studio, cleaning up the broken sculpture, turning a few parts over in her hands and scrutinizing them as if they were artifacts from some ancient civilization, and then simply sitting, letting her eyes stare across the room, her mind begin to hover so she might regain her equanimity. She thought a little of walking to Meg's to visit and hold Josie on her lap while Meg did some sewing, but she knew Laurie would worry, was worrying right now, and he had not intended anything other than to walk around to observe what she was making and then to praise her for it, likely lavishly.
They had a quiet supper though she told him she had forgiven him when she found him in the library, making a pretense at reading. She could not suppress some gladness at seeing that he did not want to eat the tempting food Cook had made any more than she did and he excused himself to take care of something, accounting or correspondence, he'd said but she hadn't paid attention, leaving her to sit in the parlor by herself and idly turn the pages of a book, the plates gaily colored renditions of flowers. Amy knew Laurie was still stricken at what he had done, even though it had been an accident, more so than she had been as a child, when it had not seemed so very bad to ruin Jo's book that Jo herself sometimes referred to as her "scribbling." Amy had ruined something else then—she'd never felt she could confide in Jo about her own artistic endeavors, not in any significant way, since she'd realized a little what burning the book had meant, and now, today, she could not go to Jo and tell her about her own destroyed work. She turned the pages and barely saw crimson Chinese poppy, Indian mandragora, hibiscus, moth orchids in violet and a ripe pink; it was not that Jo would not listen, would laugh at her or tell her to pull herself together, it was that she was too ashamed to go to her sister and see that look of comprehension and sympathy. She would have to know, as a grown woman, what she hadn't as a child—how she had hurt her sister, in a way she could never change, how she had damaged the bond between them, who might have been closest.
She turned to Laurie in the night, lying in the wide bed with its delicate linens, all picked swiftly from a French warehouse before they'd boarded the ship that took them back to Boston. He reached out to draw her to him but without any of the ardent enthusiasm or confident command she usually found so very attractive; he was tentative and his touch promised consolation and security, if that was what she wanted.
"I'm so sorry, Amy, I really am," Laurie said, again. He might go on this way for some time, so she stretched and kissed him on the corner of his mouth and felt him relax. She found she liked the roughness of his cheek against her lips, the prickle of his clean-shaven face at night.
"It was an accident, I could have done it myself…I have been too focused on perfection, too unwilling to see that it is unreasonable. I just, I found myself thinking back to that day on the pond," she said and enjoyed his sensitive, pianist's hands stroking her hair and her cheek, the bare skin of her arm in her Parisian nightdress, more elegant than anything her sisters might own, which, in this night of admissions, she knew to be part of its appeal to her.
"When you fell through the ice? Christ, when I think about it now, it's terrifying, I don't think I was so scared then, I couldn't imagine you'd really be hurt," he said and she heard how well he loved her, how he was seeing her younger self no longer as his friend's interfering little sister, but as his Amy, who had cried bitterly in his arms about Beth, who coquetted with him only once they'd married.
"No, well, yes, but I was thinking of before, how I burned Jo's book… how I can understand now, that she didn't run to me as you did, not right away, when she saw me slip. I never really considered what it would mean to her to ruin all her work and now I do, oh, it's not even as bad, it was only one statue, not every piece I've worked on for years. But I can't go to her, not about her book and not about my sculpture," she said.
"Why not?" Laurie asked.
"I don't, we, it's not like that between us. I had Meg and she had Beth and now the three of us… it's not balanced like that anymore. She is still a writer, but she publishes, or tries to, and runs Plumfield, and I, I play at being an artist, when I am the wife of a wealthy man. And, it was too late once I burned the second page. But you, Laurie, you understand, don't you? I, can I truly be a artist as well as a wife? Is that what it means, how angry I was… or am I only a spoiled little girl, all grown up?" she said. It was easier to say these things in the night, with only the faint light of the moon on their hands, soft on the downy bed.
"I think you are an artist, Amy Laurence, and I don't pretend to understand exactly what there is between you and Jo, but then, I have not always understood your sister as I should, though she has been my dear friend all these years. I would go to Jo if I were you, but perhaps you are right, that is not what is between you…" he replied.
"It, it may be enough that I finally understand, couldn't it? What I did? That I understand how she was so angry, that for what I did she might not have forgiven me even if she still loves me?" Amy asked. Laurie moved his hand to her hip, where he liked to rest it when they slept.
"She has forgiven you, Amy. Jo has, I can say that, I know her that well even if you don't. But now, you will have to decide what you will forgive in yourself. I think you have forgiven me, I hope, you've said you have. You have to decide for yourself. But sleep now, my darling girl, you can still think about it in the morning, with a clearer mind," Laurie said, settling closer to her, the warm length of him pressed against her, the way her hand fondled the marble before she picked up the chisel, seeking to know it.
It was not like talking to Jo would be, but there was somehow something of her in talking to Laurie, who had been her friend, who had loved her so long; she would not speak of it to him or, Heavens, to Jo who might shout with laughter or might look too keenly at Amy as she had begun doing after Beth died and more since she'd married the Professor. Three was unbalanced among sisters and among friends. There was something tenuous about how her marriage worked with Laurie's friendship with Jo, as if those were the aspects the scale balanced, but it only pertained to her and to Laurie. Jo seemed completely at ease with her marriage to Friedrich, a man Amy understood little, other than that he was kind and scholarly. She thought, as she was falling to sleep, the words and thoughts not jumbled, but threaded loosely, Jo would always be between her and Laurie just as Jo's burned book would always be between the sisters. It made sense, the sense of the night, but she would have to remember and see whether the morning still said it was true.