The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs (24 page)

“Are you all right?” Polly asked.

“Apparently not,” Caroline said, wiping her eyes again but managing a smile.

“Maybe we should get out of here.”

“No, I have something to show you. And tell you.”

“You don't need to,” Polly said. “Not if you don't want to.”

“No. I want to.” Caroline opened the bag and pulled out a black shirt and handed it to Polly.

“What?” she asked, turning it over in her hands.

“Take a look.”

Polly unfolded the shirt and held it up. It was a short-sleeve black concert T-shirt with T
HE
R
AMONES
emblazoned across the top in block letters. Below it was the image of the band's four members, standing side by side, sort of leaning on one another.

“Cool shirt,” Polly said. “I didn't know you were into The Ramones.”

“I'm not,” Caroline said. “I mean, I wasn't.”

“It's Aunt Lucy's?”

It always sounded odd when Polly referred to Lucy as her aunt. But here in this room, in this time, it seemed absurd. She was already older than Lucy had ever been. Polly was growing and changing every day, but Lucy was frozen in time, a little girl forever.

“No,” she said. “Not Lucy's. It's mine.”

“I don't get it.”

Caroline pulled a similar shirt from the bag and held it up. This one had a list of the 1986 tour dates for Echo & the Bunnymen listed on the back and the band's name scribbled across the front. Caroline stared at the shirt, recalling the moment when she had chosen it from a rack full of similar shirts. She had spent so much time at that rack, examining each shirt before finally making a decision, as if choosing the right one might change her fate.

In many ways, she suddenly realized, it had. If she hadn't spent fifteen minutes going back and forth between this shirt and three others, weighing the advantages of each, things might've turned out very differently for her and Lucy. This thought had never occurred to her until just now, and it only served to add to the immense weight of her guilt. She had the sudden desire to use this time machine of a bedroom to shout back at that fifteen-year-old version of herself, to tell her that the damn shirt didn't matter, that it wouldn't have mattered even if she had all of the Echo & the Bunnymen shirts that ever existed. She wanted desperately to tell that earlier version of herself that you can't restore a friendship with the right T-shirt.

“Mom?” Polly said. “Are you all right?”

“I bought these shirts on the day Lucy died.”

Polly sat still, eyebrows slightly raised, waiting for more. Had she spoken, asked a question or made comment, Caroline thought that she might've changed the subject and avoided everything that came next. Taken the easy road. But Polly either knew that it was important to remain silent or didn't know what to say.

“My mother had a rule,” Caroline finally said. “Lucy was only allowed to ride her bike to the end of Federal Street. Main Street, because it had sidewalks, and Federal Street, because it was a quiet road. Lucy was allowed to ride up the hill to visit him, but that was as far as she could go. I could ride my bike anywhere I wanted, and I did, but all Lucy ever wanted to do was follow me, so I had to either ride up and down Main Stand Federal with her all day or leave her behind. So I left her behind a lot, and sometimes it was fine because either she was busy doing something else, and sometimes she just annoyed the hell out of me and I had to get away for a while. But a lot of the time I hated leaving her behind. She'd stop her bike at the end of Federal Street and cry as I rode off, and it broke my heart.”

“Then that thing with Emily happened in the cafeteria, and I didn't know what to do. I hid in the library during lunch for the rest of the week, but I finally decided that I needed to do something to get Emily back. That's when I decided that I had to become cooler than I was. I figured that I'd lost Emily because Ellie was cooler than me, so if I could … you know, be more like Ellie, I could get my seat back at the lunch table, or at least convince them to let me drag a chair over to the table. I know. It sounds ridiculous.”

“No it doesn't,” Polly said. “Not at all. I've spent half my life trying to be cool.”

Caroline smiled. She didn't think this was true, but she loved Polly for saying it.

“I knew I needed to start liking the right music. I thought that would be my way in. So on that Saturday morning, I decided to ride my bike to Strawberries.”

“Strawberries?” Polly asked.

“A music store. It was popular when I was growing up. Back when you didn't buy music on the Internet. There was a Strawberries in Bellingham, just one town over from Blackstone. Not very far from here, even.”

“Grandma couldn't drive you?” Polly asked.

“No. I mean, she could've, but she was a mess back then. We were barely talking. And I didn't want her to know what I was doing. I was embarrassed about myself. You know what I mean? I was trying to hide until I could make a better version of myself.”

“That happens all the time,” Polly said. “Kids are always trying to make themselves into something new.”

Caroline was on a roll now. “And besides,” she said. “Strawberries wasn't that far away. I used to ride my bike everywhere. It wasn't like it is today. We could disappear for the day and never tell our parents where we went. I figured that I'd ride my bike to the store, spend my allowance on a couple punk albums, and then be home before lunch. It was early in the morning, maybe nine, and I wanted to leave before Lucy noticed me taking off. She was eating cereal and watching Saturday morning cartoons, so I thought I could sneak away. But as I was riding my bike down the driveway, she came running out of house, shoes untied, Cheerios still stuck to her shirt, screaming my name. I almost ignored her. For one split second, I thought about pretending that I didn't hear her and just riding away.”

Caroline paused for a moment, realizing how close she had come to changing everything that was to follow. If she had just ignored Lucy like she had wanted, everything would be different.

“But she was yelling my name,” Caroline said, pressing on. “Screaming it. Crying it out, really. And in that split second, I remembered the way Emily had just walked away from me in the cafeteria and how I'd felt being left behind. So I stopped.”

“She told me to wait up. That's what she used to say all the time.
Wait up.
‘Let me get my bike,' she said. So I told her that I was going past Federal Street but I promised to ride with her when I got back. But she said she still wanted to go. Just as far as Federal Street, she said, so I agreed. But when we got to the end of Federal Street, she started crying. Asking me to stay. Asking me to ride with her just a little bit more. And when I said no, that's when she asked if she could come with me. She'd never asked that before. She'd always thought of everything past Federal Street as no-man's-land. But for some reason, Lucy chose that day to get brave. And she promised that she wouldn't tell Mom if I let her, and she promised not to be a PITA.”

Polly scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. “PITA?”

“Pain in the ass. It's what I called Lucy when she was annoying me. She promised to listen to me and not get in the way. She begged and begged and I finally said yes. I let her come with me. All the way to Bellingham. And when we got to Strawberries, she was the one who talked me into T-shirts instead of music. She said I could always find the songs on the radio, and she would record them for me on her tape recorder. But the T-shirts were way cooler. That's how she said it. ‘Way cooler.'

“On the way home, she was getting tired. She wasn't used to riding so far. She was struggling up the hills and had to walk her bike up a steep one on Elm Street. I tried to go slow so she could keep up. I even rode behind her for a while on that road with Log Cabin Pizza, just so I could keep an eye on her because of all the traffic. Then she fell behind, and I didn't watch her carefully enough, and—”

“It's okay, Mom. You don't have to say anymore.”

“Yes, Polly. I do.” Caroline took a deep breath and continued. “I didn't watch my little sister carefully enough and she got hit by that car and was killed. Killed right in front of me. In the same spot where I agreed to let her break the rule and come along. All I had to do was say
no
. I'd said it a million times before. A billion times before. All I had to do was tell her to go home and watch
Super Friends
and wait for me. If I'd done that, Lucy would be alive today.”

Caroline had thought about these things before, but until this moment, she had never said any of them aloud. She had hoped that doing so would alleviate some of her guilt. Release her from her secret. Maybe even come to the realization that it was crazy to blame herself after so many years. But it just made everything more real. Made her guilt seem even more justified. She had broken her mother's rule, and as a result, her little sister was dead. She'd been dead for twenty-five years. But somehow, in this room, in this moment, it was as if Lucy had died all over again.

“So you've been blaming yourself since the day Aunt Lucy died?” Polly asked. “'Cause that's crazy, Mom. You were just a kid.”

“I don't believe that, and you don't, either.”

“How do you know what I believe?”

“You said it yourself,” Caroline said. “There's no bright red line between childhood and adulthood. We are who we are. Emily is still the bitch from the high school cafeteria, and I'm still the big sister who got her little sister killed on Summer Street.”

“Bullshit,” Polly said. There was real anger in her voice, and it caught Caroline off guard. “What happened to Lucy was an accident. There was no way of knowing that she would get killed. The only thing you're guilty of is bad luck.”

“My mother made a rule to keep Lucy safe. I broke it.”

“No,” Polly said. “That's stupid. Do you have any idea how many times kids break rules? I break them every day. Am I supposed to be worried that every time Kate and I don't use the crosswalk, Kate might get run over by a bus and I'll end up blaming myself for her death?”

“You're not responsible for Kate. I was responsible for Lucy.”

“No,” Polly said, her voice at a near shout. “You were fifteen. You weren't even responsible for yourself.”

Caroline opened her mouth to speak but Polly cut her off.

“Do you know how stupid this whole thing is? We're sitting here in your dead sister's bedroom, arguing about whether or not it's your fault that she's dead, and you sound like a crazy person. Every single person on the planet would agree with me. But you're sitting here, dripping tears on perfectly good vintage T-shirts, blaming yourself for something that isn't your fault. When you're fifteen, you're allowed to make stupid mistakes. You're supposed to make stupid mistakes. Even if they turn out terrible. But when you're forty, you're not supposed to be this stupid.”

Caroline found herself with the simultaneous urge to ground her daughter for a month and hug her as tightly as possible.

“I'm sorry,” Polly said, her voice returning to its reverent state. “But I'm right. You're acting like a complete idiot.”

“Even if you're right, and I'm not saying that you are, do you think that I can just erase a lifetime of guilt in five minutes?”

“Yeah, I do. Just decide that you're an idiot, and you're not going to be an idiot anymore. It's not that hard. Look at Grandma. You said she was a disaster when you were a kid. Now look at her.”

“She didn't change overnight, either.”

“Yeah, but you're a lot smarter than Grandma.”

Caroline smiled. “I wish it could be as easy as you think. Things always seem a lot easier when you're young.”

“They always seem a lot more complicated when you get old.”

Mother and daughter sat in silence for a minute, each staring down at the shirt in their hands.

Finally, Polly spoke. “If you're going to keep blaming yourself, why did you bring me here in the first place?”

“I thought that telling someone might make it easier to live with.”

“Did it?”

“Maybe it has. Or it will.”

“Good,” Polly said with finality. “You should tell Dad, too.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. He's good with that stuff. He's a pain in the ass when you don't actually have a problem, but when you do, he's good to have around. And he won't call you names like I did. And he's your husband. He should know.” She paused and then added, “But don't tell Grandma.”

“No?”

“No way,” Polly said. “She's a total drama queen. She'd find a way to make it about her.”

Caroline now understood why she brought her daughter along on this adventure. It had nothing to do with Emily Kaplan-turned-Labonte. It had everything to do with this moment.

twenty-eight

There were fewer people around the table this time. George Durrow was absent, of course, as were Spartacus and Agnes. Spartacus (with Agnes by his side) had played in a poker tournament the night before and had begged off in favor of sleeping in.

Jake and Randy were also not present. “Fishing,” Emily had said, though for some reason Caroline didn't think she was telling the truth.

The only addition to the table was Tom. She was glad that he was here.

“Don't worry,” Polly said to Emily as she stepped into the room. “Plenty of seats this time. I promise.”

“Good to know,” Emily said.

Caroline knew that Polly's pleasantries were not to be confused with actual friendliness or even tacit approval of her presence at this meal. Despite their “come to Jesus” moment in Lucy's bedroom—as Polly was now referring to it—she was still angry about Caroline's civility toward Emily.