Andante sostenuto: I wish to be loved
"I wrote you a letter," Jo said, without turning her head. She and Laurie were on the gracious pavilion at the back of the Laurence house overlooking the garden that Amy's new gardener had coaxed into a splendor that eclipsed its former loveliness. Amy herself was painting at an easel, a clean pinafore tied over her striped silk dress, the sun making her blonde curls gleams as if Amy had ordered it so, which for all Jo knew, her sister had. Fritz had availed himself of the grand piano Laurie now played rarely and the evocative melody of Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor drifted out the open windows, like the subtle fragrance of white lilacs.
"You did? When?" Laurie said. His hands rested on the carved marble balustrade, quite lightly.
"Oh, it seems like a long time ago. An age," Jo replied. She remembered perfectly the weight of the pen in her hand, how the ink had seemed to form the letters almost without her, thread unspooling.
"I never got it." Was it an assertion or a question? They were careful with each other these days when they were alone, for there was a shadow that could come into Amy's blue eyes and a soft darkness that came into Friedrich's, Amy so young and Fritz not young at all. Between them, without speaking of it, Jo and Laurie had come to an accord, one that kept distance like a charm.
"You weren't meant to," Jo said. Across from them, Amy had tilted her head to one side, surveying her work. The shadows around her hem were like a velvet train she could loop up.
"Are you sorry?" Laurie asked. She thought of his smile when he'd named her sister his wife and how her breath had caught, how her breath had been like a knife in her chest as she ran to get the letter he must never see. She thought of Friedrich's face when he'd assumed she was married to Laurie and his voice in the night, somehow like the piano, rich and low, murmuring how like a rose thou art, how like a lily. How he touched her hand when she slopped the tea into his saucer and sent her off to rewrite her chapter.
"Not terribly, no. Some things, they're meant to be written but not read," Jo said.
"Did you burn it?"
"I tore it up. I threw it in the river," she said. She didn't say, Amy would have burned it, burned her hand reading the words as the flame ate them.
"I'm sorry, Jo," Laurie said. She heard how he intended it—that he'd never known, that he'd never read the words she'd wept over, that the happiness he'd found might have hurt her. That they could never be lovers, for all they loved each other. They could neither of them wish it otherwise, but it was not the joy they'd imagined for themselves as children; there was always a shadow behind the light, one Laurie worked to conceal from Amy. One Friedrich had known before Jo could understand it herself, known and soothed her over.
"It's all right. We've our hearts' desires, haven't we? We've found our way through and here we are together, letter or not," Jo said, reaching her hand, gloveless of course, to rest on top of his. Friedrich's touch on the piano keys was just as delicate, just as potent.
"It's better to know," Laurie said. Once, he would have explained just how he meant it, the fantasy he'd conjured of how he would have run to meet her, how he would have taken the letter from her shaking hand to read. The fantasy where Amy did not wear his ring on her elegant finger and the hand that did not hold the page would have cupped her cheek as he'd kissed her, where Friedrich Bhaer watched America change from green to a sere sooty gold from a train window, his hands empty in his lap. Once, Laurie would have said so many words, not counting their cost. He knew better now.
"I thought so," Jo said. Friedrich had stopped playing and the silence was like another song, one that was unbearably tender, like the scent of white gardenias. At any moment, his wife or her husband would call out some endearment and end this interlude. She felt his dark eyes looking at her and knew she would not return his gaze.
"I told him about the letter," Jo said. The words hovered about them like stars did in the moonless night. Jo did not want to look at Fritz's face but she imagined it, his dark eyes and the way he held his mouth.
"What didst thou hope, liebchen?"
"I don't know," Jo admitted.
"That isn't like thee," he said.
"Not knowing my own mind? My own heart?"
"Admitting it," he said softly, one hand stroking down her bare arm.
"Are you calling me a liar?" she exclaimed. What a respite offense was! How lovely and warm her anger kept her, how distant it made any regret. She took a breath, feeling the intoxication of spite, when Fritz laughed. Such a tender sound, so deeply amused she could not help but turn to face him. He reached towards her and tucked her hair behind one ear, letting his finger trace the curve of her cheek.
"Thou art the most honest soul I know, Josephine," he said. She'd begun to like to hear herself called that, her name said as if he were speaking German to her, the language he spoke in his dreams he'd confided. "Shall we puzzle it out together?"
"It doesn't trouble you?"
"To know what thou wrote? Or that thou spoke of it to Laurence?"
"Either. Both perhaps," Jo said.
"I had already known that thou wrote it. It was only a secret if thou chose to make it one. To keep it," he said. He had coaxed her to him as they spoke so that now she lay pressed against his side, propped on her elbows, with one of his hands steady at her waist. It was not how she had ever thought a philosopher might discuss a perplexing question.
"This wasn't what you wanted," she said. He frowned, but didn't speak immediately, as she would have. "You wanted to be a professor of philosophy at a university, to attend colloquia and write whatever it is that philosophers write."
"Monographs primarily," he offered mildly.
"Monographs, you wanted to write them and argue about them and smoke endless pipes with other men with beards and an interest in metaphysics and epistemology," Jo said.
"I am very content, just as I am. Now and with our school, this Plumfield. No monograph could compare," he said. "But I must point out, thou hast chosen another subject and while I might sleep as easily as a babe, I suspect thou wilt be troubled the whole night through if we do not finish what has been begun."
"I told him because I wanted to, I believe. I wanted him to wonder…and to not find out the answer," Jo said.
"Is there an answer?"
"He will wonder what I wrote instead of why," Jo said, hearing the frustration in her own voice.
"Perhaps. It seems likely though he might surprise thee. He did, after all, marry thy sister," Fritz said.
"And that's supposed to comfort me?"
"Ach, no!" Fritz chuckled. "I am supposed to comfort thee. The truth cares not whether she comforts or torments." Jo would have batted at him but her position made it impossible and then he made it impossible by swiftly taking her in his arms and shifting so that he lay above her, filling the space where all the words had been, where the stars were absent.
"He did not ask, did he? Not what thou wanted him to?" Fritz said. He had a way of doing that, going straight to the most critical point without any dissembling, any temporizing.
"No. But I knew he wouldn't. I knew he shouldn't and so did he," Jo said.
"Meine perle, how it suits thee to call thee that. Thy sister, she is like a diamond, all clear facets, very beautiful, very orderly, but thou art a pearl, thy loveliness made of endless layers, mysteries, warm to the touch," he said, leaning closer to kiss the corner of her mouth, her neck, the hollow at its base.
"A pearl comes from a flaw, sand where it doesn't belong," Jo said, very low.
"Diamonds must be cut to show their beauty, they are crafted. A pearl is beautiful because she cannot be altered," he said.
"I thought you were a philosopher, not a poet," Jo said.
"Thou hast made me one," he said.
"I told him because I loved him. Love him," she said, hardly believing she dared to speak of another man in her husband's embrace. Fritz kissed her mouth, lightly at first and then more deeply, ardent, impatient for her response. Greedy as only she knew him to be.
"I understand. I know the difference between diamonds and pearls, between buds and blossoms," he said. "I know thee, Jo."
"Will you tell me you'll show me?" she murmured.
"No. I already have. Now, I shall make love to thee if thou wish it," he smiled. It was the look in his eyes, the hint of a growl in his voice, his hands gentle, deliberate, thorough. She'd said enough for the night. Any other conversation could wait until morning. She drew him down to her and saw the missing stars had been in his eyes.