The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs: A Novel

by Matthew Dicks

  “This is why you brought me here?” Emily asked.

  Caroline took a deep breath, preparing to fire off her own rehearsed salvo, but Emily jumped in before she could say a word. “Seriously, Caroline? You’re going to embarrass me in front of my family because of a fight we had in high school?”

  Caroline didn’t say anything for two seconds, but in those two ticks on the clock, she felt a chasm open up, separating her from the rest of the room. The people around the table fell silent, and she could feel their collective gaze shift in her direction.

  “It wasn’t a fight,” Caroline finally said, dropping her own gaze as she spoke. Emily’s question had forced her off script. She sounded weak. Wounded. Defeated already. Polly had managed to recreate the cafeteria scene for her mother’s benefit, and now it seemed that Caroline was reverting back to the same role that she had played when she was fifteen years old.

  “It wasn’t a fight,” Caroline repeated, this time meeting Emily’s gaze, hoping to find strength in her improved posture. “You humiliated me in front of my friends.”

  “No,” Emily said. “You humiliated yourself in front of my friends. But Caroline, who cares? We were kids. It was forever ago. Don’t you think you should have forgotten it by now?”

  “You didn’t forget,” Caroline said. “You remembered. You remembered from the moment I showed up at your door. I didn’t know it then, but I do now. If you never forgot about it, why would you expect me to?”

  “I don’t understand,” Randy said. “What’s going on?”

  Emily sighed the sigh of the indignant and the outraged. “Caroline got stuck without a stool at lunch back in ninth grade, so now she’s trying to get even. And apparently she’s dragged her daughter into it, too.”

  “I’m sure we can find another seat,” Spartacus said. “Right, Penny? And if not, I’m happy to give up mine.”

  “There’s a whole dining room set in the basement,” Randy said. “We could just grab a chair from there.”

  “How do you know there’s furniture in the basement?” Emily asked.

  “No,” Caroline’s mother said, rising from her seat. “We don’t use that furniture.”

  “How do you know that there’s a dining room set in the basement?” Emily asked again, her head now cocked in the direction of her husband.

  “Caroline spilled some wine on my sweater,” Randy said. We put it in the wash. The machines are in the basement.”

  “You didn’t sit on the furniture down there?” her mother asked. “Did you?”

  “No, Mom,” Caroline said. “Of course not.”

  “When did this happen?” Emily asked.

  “We can’t use those chairs,” Caroline’s mother said again. “We don’t use that furniture.”

  “Why not?” Jane asked, genuinely curious.

  “We just don’t,” Caroline said.

  “Don’t snap at my daughter,” Emily said.

  “I didn’t snap. We just can’t use those chairs in the basement.”

  “Why?” Emily asked. “So you can keep me standing here like an idiot?”

  “I still don’t understand what’s going on,” Randy said.

  “Your wife was a total bitch in high school,” Polly said, spittle firing from her mouth. Polly was angry, and Caroline suspected that she was angrier with her than Emily. “She was mean to my mother, and it fucked up my mom’s life.”

  “Polly!” her grandmother shouted. “Language!”

  “She didn’t fuck up my life,” Caroline said.

  “Caroline!” her mother barked.

  “What’s the deal then?” Emily asked. “Why am I even here?”

  Polly laughed. “You can pretend that you’re innocent, but I saw it on your face. And Mom did, too. I wasn’t sure if she was making a big deal out of nothing, but you remembered. The second you saw that there weren’t enough seats around the table, you knew. Mom was right. You were a fucking bitch in high school, and you know it.”

  “Hey!” Jane said, rising from her seat now. “Don’t talk to my mom that way.”

  “Stay out of it,” Polly said, not even bothering to look in Jane’s direction.

  “Polly!” her grandmother shouted again.

  George Durrow rose from his seat, slammed both hands on the table hard enough to knock over several empty water glasses, and shouted, “Stop!” in a voice so loud, so commanding, and so unexpected that everyone froze in their tracks. All eyes (even Spartacus’s, Caroline noted) turned to George, who was visibly shaking. His hands were bunched in small fists. His lips were pursed shut. The room was silent for a moment, waiting, it seemed, as George collected himself. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, shook his head, and then opened it again. When he finally spoke, it had none of the authority of his previous command. He was quiet but earnest. Almost desperate. “I have enough bullshit in my life already,” he said. “Pardon, the language, Penelope, but I do. It’s not every day that I get invited to a dinner party, so I’m not going to let you ruin it for me or anyone else here. So knock it off and eat some chicken.”

  Caroline liked George Durrow very much. She had underestimated the man.

  “Fine,” Emily said, the resentment in her voice receding like the ocean tide. “If I can just get a chair, I can sit down and eat.” There was still hostility in her voice, but less than before. By all rights, Emily should be charging out of the room right now, but George Durrow seemed to command even her in this moment.

  “Someone needs to tell me what the hell is going on,” Randy said.

  “I have folding chairs in the shed out back,” Penelope said. “For funerals. I’ll get one.”

  “You know what?” Polly said. “Don’t bother. She can have mine.” She shoved the armchair aside and stormed from the room.

  “Polly!” Caroline called. “Come back here!” A second later she heard the back door slam shut.

  The room was silent again. Jack, Jane, George, and Caroline’s mother were still standing. Emily had yet to move from the doorway. The bottle of wine remained in her hand. After a moment, George sat back down, followed by Caroline’s mother.

  “George?” Emily asked. “It’s George, right? I don’t mean to ruin things, but I think we should leave. This is crazy. I can’t stay here. My family can’t stay here. But you stay. Enjoy your dinner. Maybe another time. Okay? Obviously Caroline and her daughter had other things in mind when we were invited. I think it would be better if we just left.”

  “Now we’re leaving?” Randy said. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Me, neither,” Spartacus said. “Could someone help the blind guy for Christ’s sake?”

  “I’ll let Caroline explain,” Emily said, the hostility returning to her voice. “Thank you, Mrs. Waters, for having us over. No hard feelings. Okay? Maybe Randy and I could have you over our place sometime.”

  “Sure,” Penelope said, uncertainly.

  Emily placed the wine bottle on the table and turned to leave, pausing to allow Randy and the kids to exit ahead of her. Then she turned and faced Caroline. “I was happy to see you today. So happy. I can’t imagine why you’d do something like this.”

  “That’s how I felt in the cafeteria that day,” Caroline said. “That’s exactly how I felt.”

  “Well, I guess your plan worked then. Congratulations.”

  twenty

  “That went well,” Penelope said, pouring herself a glass of wine.

  “I still have no idea what the hell happened,” Spartacus said. “Could someone please explain it to me? And who’s still at the table. That woman Emily and her family are gone. Right? Anyone else?”

  “Polly’s gone, too,” Caroline’s mother said. “Everyone else is present and accounted for.”

  “Good. Now someone please tell me what’s going on.”

  “Caroline?” her mother said, her eyebrows raised and her head tilted to the right in a look that Caroline knew was meant to say I told you so. “Do you want to expl
ain?”

  Caroline felt like a fool. This whole trip had been ridiculous. She could see that now. “Can we just drop it?” she asked.

  “Of course,” George Durrow said.

  “Absolutely not,” her mother said.

  “Damn straight,” Spartacus said.

  “Caroline was apparently still angry at Emily for something she did in high school,” her mother began. “And she decided that tonight would be the night she finally said her piece. In my house. Only it didn’t work out like she had planned.”

  “That was not my plan,” Caroline said. “I had no idea what Polly was up to.”

  “Yes, but you’re the one who dragged her to Blackstone to help you,” her mother countered.

  “I don’t understand,” George said. “Why did you need Polly’s help?”

  Caroline pushed back from the table. “Seriously, I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Too bad,” her mother said. “You don’t get to make the rules in this house. Answer George’s question.”

  “I didn’t need Polly’s help,” Caroline said. “She was in trouble at school, and I thought she could use a change of scenery. She was going to be suspended anyway, so I decided to take her with me.”

  “Suspended?” her mother asked.

  “But Polly’s the one who arranged the chairs,” Agnes said.

  “What do you mean arranged the chairs?” Spartacus asked. “How are the chairs arranged?”

  “Look, I came to Blackstone to say something to Emily that I should’ve said a long time ago, and I was worried that I might chicken out before I got the chance. But when I went to Emily’s house today, she was nothing but kind to me, and I don’t know, I guess I realized that that maybe I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. So I decided to abandon my plan. But I told Polly that I was worried I might chicken out and to keep me on target no matter what, and that’s exactly what she did.”

  “Like Fargo,” Spartacus said.

  “Who’s Fargo?” Agnes asked.

  “Not who,” Spartacus said. “What. Fargo’s a movie. A car dealer hires a couple of thugs to kidnap his wife so he can collect the ransom from his asshole father-in-law, but at the last second, he decides to back out of the deal. He finds some money somewhere else or something. I can’t remember. But he can’t get in touch with the bad guys in time so they kidnap the wife anyway.”

  “What’s that have to do with Polly?” George Durrow asked.

  “Polly is just like the bad guys in the movie,” Spartacus said. “You told her to do something, and now she’s doing it. You can’t stop her even if you wanted to.”

  “What happens in the movie?” Agnes asked. “To the car dealer and his wife?”

  “The wife gets chopped up in a wood chipper,” Spartacus said. “And the husband gets arrested, I think. I don’t remember the rest.”

  “That’s great,” Caroline said. “Polly’s going to end up in a wood chipper.”

  George Durrow raised a professorial finger. “Actually, no. Your friend Emily would be the one in the wood chipper. If we extend the analogy, I mean.”

  “So what would happen to Polly?” Agnes asked.

  “She would be the one shoving Emily into the wood chipper,” Spartacus said. “Oh, wait. Actually, it might’ve been Steve Buscemi in the wood chipper. At the end of the movie, one of the scumbags kills the other scumbag. So maybe Polly ends up in the wood chipper after all. Along with Emily. Though I don’t think Polly is a Steve Buscemi type. She’s more like the other guy. The Nordic one.”

  “Wait,” said George. “How do you watch movies if you’re blind?”

  “You’d be surprised how much you can figure out just by listening. But if I’m watching with someone, we can pause the movie and they can explain what’s going on. Agnes is great at that.”

  “That wood chipper description must have been a doozy,” George said.

  “Enough,” Caroline said. “It’s over. I had my chance here and I blew it.”

  “So you didn’t say what you planned?” Spartacus asked.

  “Not even close,” Caroline said.

  “Well, that’s good,” Spartacus said, grinning.

  “Why?”

  “Because what you said sucked,” he said. “I mean, you ambushed the poor girl and she still got the best of you as far as I could tell.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Caroline said.

  George Durrow cleared his throat. “Caroline, I know it didn’t work out like you envisioned, but I think it was pretty brave of you to give it a try. A think a lot of us would like a second chance with a high school bully. You at least gave yourself a chance.”

  Caroline shook her head. “I guess things don’t change much.”

  “You’re just figuring that out now, sweetie?” Spartacus said with a laugh.

  Caroline glared at him before she realized that Spartacus was immune to all forms of passive-aggressive facial expressions. No wonder he got along with her mother so well.

  “Emily was right,” her mother said. “You’ve got to let it go. Kids do stupid things. You can’t blame her for the rest of her life. She’s a different person now.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Caroline snapped. “You are who you are.”

  “That’s a tough way to live your life, sweetie, never forgiving anyone for the indiscretions of their youth,” Spartacus said.

  Or forgiving yourself.

  * * *

  Only now did Caroline understand why she had returned to Blackstone. Emily had been the impetus, but she wasn’t the real reason for this journey. Spartacus was right. It’s a tough way to live, never forgiving anyone for the indiscretions of their youth. Especially yourself.

  Her journey home was about a secret. Her secret. The burden that she had been carrying on her back for so long. The guilt she had carried for so long.

  The secret behind Lucy’s death was more important than anything Emily had done to her. She had blamed Emily for her sister’s death, and though she still believed that Emily owned a small part of it, that part was shrinking fast. The reason she had hid that plastic bag in Lucy’s closet and never spoke the truth about that day was because Caroline was responsible for her sister’s death, more than Emily and even more than Katherine Paley, who she had last seen standing beside that yellow van in the middle of Summer Street on the day her sister died, but who she suddenly wanted to see again.

  In that moment, she knew why she had brought Polly here in the first place. She needed someone to tell. It was time to dig that plastic bag out from her sister’s closet, open it, and tell someone what she had done.

  twenty-one

  When Caroline heard Tom’s voice from somewhere in the house, she rolled over and wrapped her arms around her pillow. Pulled the other pillow over her head to muffle the sound. Why did he have to be so loud in the morning? Couldn’t the man sleep in for once in her life?

  Then it hit her.

  “Tom?”

  She looked across the room to Polly’s empty bed.

  Caroline dressed quickly and made her way downstairs. She found Tom in the kitchen engaged in conversation with her mother.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” he said, stepping across the room to hug her. Tom looked tired. Tired eyes. Uncombed hair. Wrinkled shirt.

  “Seriously,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “You didn’t answer your phone all day yesterday, so I canceled my appointments for the next couple days and drove up.”

  “You drove all night?”

  “Actually, I went to bed early, got up at two in the morning and pulled into your mother’s driveway just before nine. No traffic if you travel at the right time.”

  “It’s nine?” Caroline asked, looking to the clock on the wall for clarification.

  “Nine forty-five,” her mother said. She was standing at the stove, laying strips of bacon into a sizzling pan.

  “Where’s Polly?”

/>   “I assumed she was still sleeping with you,” her mother said. “She’s not?”

  “No, and the bed’s still made.”

  “Maybe she made it before she left,” her mother said.

  “Polly’s never made a bed in her life,” Tom and Caroline said in unison.

  “If she didn’t sleep in the bed last night, where did she sleep?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know,” Caroline said.

  “I’ll check the bed,” her mother said. “I’ll be able to tell if she made it or not. Watch the bacon, Tom. I don’t want a grease fire.”

  Caroline waited until her mother had left the kitchen before speaking. “I can’t believe you drove all this way. You didn’t need to come.”

  “I thought you might need me.”

  She had expected Tom to chastise her for her sudden and unprecedented disappearance. Now she felt bad for doubting him. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s going to sound stupid,” Caroline said. “But at the time, it made a lot of sense.”

  “Okay.”

  She explained the events of the previous day as she poured coffee and sat down across from Tom at the small kitchen table.

  “I can’t believe I never told you about it,” Caroline said. It didn’t feel like much of a secret anymore. She felt foolish for not telling anyone sooner. “It was something Emily did in high school. A long story. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, but then something came up, and I felt like now was the right time to confront her. I know. It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud.”

  “Mary Kate Dinali,” Tom asked. “She’s the something that came up?”

  The problem solver at work.

  Caroline leaned across the table and kissed him. “Yes, Mary Kate was part of it. But there’s more.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “She didn’t sleep in that bed last night,” Penelope said, reentering the kitchen. “There’s no way in hell that Polly made those hospital corners.”