The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs: A Novel

by Matthew Dicks

  “Emily!” Ellie said. “Don’t be mean. I’m sure you still have a few things in common. Right, Caroline?”

  More giggles.

  “I was just thinking maybe I could pull up a chair so we could all fit,” Caroline managed.

  “Jesus Christ, Caroline, we don’t need to be attached twenty-four-seven. Could I just get a break? Just once?”

  And just like that, Caroline was on her own.

  “Emily?” Caroline said. Pleaded.

  “What?”

  “Is this for real?”

  “I just need a break,” Emily said, her voice softening. “Okay? We’ve been stuck at the hip for such a long time. I just want a break.”

  “Fine,” Caroline said, her anger rising again. In that moment, an image of her father entered her mind. He had wanted a break, too. “Fine,” she repeated, feeling the first tears form in her eyes. “But I want my seat back. I’m serious. You can’t just kick me out like this.”

  Caroline braced for the counterattack that never came. Emily rose from her stool first, followed Ellie. Then Kimberly and Molly, and a few seconds later, Janet and Briana. “Fine,” Emily said, and without another word, all six girls walked past Caroline toward the other side of the cafeteria.

  “Wait,” Caroline said. “You don’t have to go.”

  The suddenly empty table might as well have been an erupting volcano. It drew the attention of almost every eye in the cafeteria.

  Caroline was alone. Her seat was empty. The whole table was empty.

  “Shit, Mom,” Polly said. “That was harsh. Talk about mean girls.”

  “I know it was a long time ago. I know it sounds adolescent and silly, but I sometimes think that if it weren’t for those stools, then things would’ve turned out different,” Caroline said. “One more stool and everything that happened afterward would’ve been different.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. It sounds like Emily was done with you, seat or no seat.”

  nine

  By the time Caroline had finished her story, she and Polly were sitting in a diner somewhere in northern Jersey, a basket of fries and two Cokes occupying the table between them. It was raining now. The large windows of the diner were streaked with thin rivulets of water. Polly and Caroline were still drying off from the sprint from the car to the diner. Polly’s hair was wet and flat. Her T-shirt hung limp from her shoulders. It was strange for Caroline to see her daughter look so disheveled. So natural. Like a little girl again. Gone was the carefully constructed image in which she emerged from her bedroom each day, the armor she wore to face the world.

  Caroline couldn’t believe that she had just told that story for the first time in her life, and to her teenage daughter no less.

  “So what’d you do?” Polly asked, leaning forward as if there was more to the story.

  “What do you mean?” Caroline asked between bites.

  “What’d you do after Emily dissed you?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Caroline said. “I went to the library. I skipped lunch. End of story.”

  “No, I mean what did you eventually do?”

  Caroline jammed a handful of fries into her mouth. She needed a moment to think. She had acted. Soon after, in fact. But she had already promised herself that the story, at least for Polly, would end there.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Caroline finally said. “I didn’t go back to the cafeteria all year.”

  “Are you kidding me? You didn’t eat lunch for the rest of year? How is that even possible?”

  “I spent my lunch period in the library, okay? I tried to bring in sandwiches when I could, but—”

  “But you were a free lunch kid.”

  “Yeah, I was. Grandma was having a hard enough time keeping food on the table without me taking it to school.”

  “So you didn’t eat lunch for the rest of the year?” Polly shook her head slightly, almost imperceptibly. And then—perhaps taking a cue from Caroline—she stuffed a handful of fries into her mouth before shifting her gaze to the rain-streaked window and the parking lot beyond.

  Polly may have understood the gravity of the incident. But she didn’t know what the incident had set in motion. She could never know.

  So many things could be traced back to that moment in the cafeteria. That’s what Caroline had always thought. And yet she had also wondered if she hadn’t blown the whole thing out of proportion—made an overly dramatic reaction to the kind of mundane cruelty that happens every day. She had often wondered if the course of her life had been determined not by the malice of a childhood friend, but by her inability to overcome an average case of embarrassment and teen angst.

  Get over it, she had told herself. And yet she hadn’t.

  But Polly’s reaction gave Caroline a glimmer of hope. Maybe her daughter sensed the gravity of the moment. Maybe what had happened to her all those years ago was at least awful enough to give her disaffected teenage daughter reason to pause. Like the years she had spent under the thumb of that one moment could be understood, at least a little, by someone other than herself.

  “You never did anything about it?” Polly asked. “Never tried to get back at Emily? Or Ellie?”

  “The retaliation gene must have skipped a generation,” Caroline said. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it was sort of like me against the world back then. My dad was gone. Grandma was a mess, working two jobs and starting to drink, so there was no one at home for me. When your best friend humiliates you in public and takes the rest of your friends with her … well, it’s just easier to run away than fight. I know it’s probably hard for someone like you to imagine, but I decided that it was easier to be invisible.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “You’re hardly invisible,” Caroline said.

  “I’m not exactly head cheerleader, either.”

  “But you have friends.”

  “Yeah, Kate and Peyton. And Peter, I guess. But if any of them did to me what Emily Kaplan did to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  This surprised Caroline. If asked to name her daughter’s friends, she would have immediately named Kate and Peyton, but she was surprised to realize that she’d be hard pressed to name more. And Peter? Who was Peter?

  Caroline had always assumed that her daughter was well liked. She saw Polly’s hairstyle, T-shirts, and tattoo as something that only a confident, socially adept teenager would attempt. Her articles in the school newspaper challenging the administration, her refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in homeroom, and her success on the debate team had led Caroline to believe that her daughter was outspoken. Popular. (Did kids still use that word?) Maybe even admired. Kids with limited social standing, in her experience, tried to remain as nondescript as possible. Polly was anything but nondescript.

  Then again, this was the longest conversation that she and Polly had had in almost two years. So really, what did she know?

  “After the cafeteria,” Caroline continued, “I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. It’s embarrassing to be alone, especially in high school. Embarrassing not to have friends to sit with. Embarrassing not to have a phone number to call when you can’t remember the homework assignment. It makes you want to disappear. It’s easier to let people forget you than remember you without any friends. Invisible was good. You don’t strike me as wanting to be invisible.”

  “You have no clue what you’re talking about,” Polly said, her voice almost a whisper. “You have no idea how hard it is for me.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I’m fine,” Polly said, her voice flat. “It’s not always easy, but nothing worth worrying about. Besides, you still haven’t told me why we’re driving to Grandma’s house. What does Emily Kaplan and Ellie What’s-her-face have to do with you breaking me out of school and dragging me to Massachusetts?”

  Caroline took a deep breath. Her idea was ridiculous. Her plan was ridiculous. “I want to go find Emily Kaplan and say the things I should’ve
said to her that day in the cafeteria.”

  Polly stared, her face blank.

  Caroline waited for her daughter’s reaction to shift. It didn’t.

  “That’s it?” Polly asked, her eyes narrowing. “That’s your plan?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said, trying her best to sound committed.

  Polly leaned over the table a bit. “Mom,” she said in a half whisper. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  * * *

  It was almost 9:00 P.M. by the time they passed over the state line into Connecticut. Polly was hungry again. Caroline was tired. “I think we have a little more than three hours of driving still ahead of us,” Caroline said. “Let’s find a hotel to spend the night and get an early start in the morning, okay?”

  “As long as it’s not Motel 6.”

  Caroline raised an eyebrow.

  “If the best they can do is leave the light on for me, the place must be a dump.”

  They stopped at a rest area along I-95 and ate cheeseburgers and fries at McDonald’s. Their second meal eaten together today. Probably their second meal eaten together this month. And with actual conversation, too.

  “Did you know the Queen of England owns a McDonald’s?”

  “That can’t be right,” Caroline said.

  “The Google will prove me right,” Polly said, pulling her phone from her coat pocket.

  “No, it’s fine. I believe you. I don’t feel like another ‘I told you so.’ But that doesn’t mean she eats the food.”

  “That lady? No way. Not that there’s anything wrong with a little McDonald’s from time to time. But I have to give queenie credit. She’s got balls.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hell yeah,” Polly said. “Can you imagine the nerve it must take to still be a queen in this day and age? It’s got to be totally embarrassing by now. She gets to be queen through birth. Who does that today? It’s like walking around topless in New York City.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s totally legal to walk around topless in New York. Some woman actually made a ton of money by doing it and then suing the city when the cops arrested her.”

  “Okay,” Caroline said. “But how is that like being the queen?”

  “Both things are completely legal but completely ridiculous. Just because something’s legal means it should be done. Imagine what would happen if Queen What’s-her-face handed her crown over to the prime minister, declared Buckingham Palace an orphanage, and got a job driving taxicabs or something. People would love her for that. People would go ape shit over her for that.”

  “I don’t think it’s that easy,” Caroline said.

  “That’s what people say when they don’t have the nerve to do the right thing. She’s the queen. Who better to end the completely embarrassing monarchy?”

  “Oddly enough, I think you’re probably right.”

  “You know I am.” Polly was smiling as she stuffed her mouth with fries. Caroline couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Polly smile at the dinner table.

  “Speaking of doing the right thing,” Polly said, her mouth still jammed with food, “don’t you think you should call Dad? When you called him at the diner you told him that you’d call back soon. That was hours ago.”

  “I know, Polly. I know.”

  Caroline had told Tom not to worry. She told him she would call back soon. That had not gone over well.

  “You do know,” he’d said, “that saying ‘don’t worry’ never stops anyone from worrying.”

  “I promise to call as soon as we stop,” Caroline had assured him.

  “You’re stopped now,” Tom said. “Take five minutes and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Can you just trust me on this? I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  “This isn’t about trusting you. I just want to know why my wife and daughter are three hundred miles away from home.”

  “I’m fine. Polly’s fine. Can’t that be enough for now?”

  “Do I have a choice?” One of those Tom questions that made you sound like a jerk no matter how you answered.

  “No,” she said. “You don’t.”

  He had called her twice more since then. Both times Caroline had let the call go to voicemail. She knew that she needed to speak with him soon, and she also knew that she needed some privacy in order to have that conversation. Certainly out of earshot of Polly.

  “Let’s get supplies first,” Caroline said. “Then I’ll call.”

  The convenience store was attached to the rest area, so five minutes later, they were standing in front of a wire rack of T-shirts.

  “I know they aren’t what you normally wear, but it’s just for bed. I swear I won’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Why would anyone even wear something like this?” Polly asked. She removed a white shirt with an image of Connecticut across the chest. The message below the image read:

  CONNECTICUT: TOO COOL FOR NEW ENGLAND. TOO CLEAN FOR NEW YORK.

  “It’s not great,” Caroline admitted.

  “It’s not even funny. It makes the person wearing it look like a douchebag. It actually makes New England and New York seem a lot better than Connecticut. And news flash: Connecticut is part of New England. This is possibly the stupidest T-shirt I’ve ever seen.”

  “Worse than your I’M NOT WITH STUPID ANYMORE T-shirt?”

  It was a shirt that Polly had worn to her school’s science fair last month. It showed a blue stick figure and a pink stick figure standing side by side. The pink stick figure had just punched the blue stick figure in the head. The small blue head was detached and flying away.

  “That’s a great shirt. I don’t care what that stupid science fair judge said. It’s funny. It’s graphic. It’s referential. And it actually makes fun of a legitimately stupid T-shirt. It’s legitimate cultural commentary. It is nothing like this stupid shirt.”

  “Can you just find one to sleep in for tonight?”

  Polly scanned the rack, shoving aside shirts as she rejected them.

  Caroline sighed. “We can literally throw the shirt away when we’re done sleeping in it. Burn it, even.”

  “Here,” Polly said. “This is good.” The shirt was white. It read WIKIPEDIA IS ACCURATE. Below this sentence, in parenthesis, it added, CITATION NEEDED.

  “Yeah,” Caroline said. “It’s good.”

  “You don’t even get it. Do you?”

  “Not really,” Caroline admitted. “But if you’ll sleep in it tonight, that’s all that matters.”

  Polly scanned the aisle. “How about some underwear?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to find that in a convenience store.”

  “That would be a great product,” Polly said, suddenly excited. “Don’t you think?”

  “Underwear?”

  “No, like emergency underwear. Underwear in a can. Like the kind they put tennis balls in.”

  “I don’t know, how often someone is stuck without underwear? Seems like a niche product.”

  “Maybe,” Polly admitted. “Still, it sounds good. So I guess I’m going commando tonight?”

  “Unless we find a store first.”

  “That’s fine,” Polly said. “Some people believe it’s healthier not to wear underwear. Doctors even.”

  Caroline sighed. “Sometimes I hate the Internet.”

  By the time they stepped off the elevator and walked the dozen paces to their hotel room, it was nearly 10:00 P.M. Caroline was exhausted. The excitement she had experienced upon leaving the diner had given way to uncertainty and a looming sense of dread. Even with Polly tepidly onboard, Caroline’s spirits were ebbing. She was beginning to feel foolish for even attempting this trip. She worried that tomorrow she might feel downright stupid.

  Sleep, she hoped, would make things better.

  She slid the plastic room key into the lock and pushed the door open.

  “I thought you said nonsmoking,” Polly said as she sat down on the bed. “This place
totally reeks.”

  “Someone must have ignored the no smoking signs,” Caroline said, pointing to the placard on the nightstand.

  “Mom. It’s awful.”

  Caroline thought about debating the point but reconsidered. “I’ll see if I can get us another room.” She picked up the phone and dialed zero.

  “Good evening,” a female voice answered. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, hello. This is Caroline Jacobs in room 208. I requested a nonsmoking room, and this room smells of cigarette smoke.”

  “Reeks of cigarette smoke,” Polly said.

  “Room 208?” the woman said.

  “Yes.”

  “Room 208 is a nonsmoking room.”

  “Yes, I appreciate that,” Caroline said. “Nevertheless, the room does smell of cigarette smoke.”

  “Reeks!” Polly shouted.

  “In fact, the whole floor is nonsmoking,” the woman said. “A previous guest may have violated our policy, but that room is supposed to be nonsmoking.”

  “Yes, I know that the room is supposed to be nonsmoking, but the smell is bad. Could we be moved to another room, please?”

  “Just a moment, please.” A clicking of computer keys, a momentary pause, and then, “I’m afraid I don’t have another nonsmoking room available with two beds, Mrs. Jacobs. I could put you in a single and have a cot moved into the room if you’d like.”

  Caroline looked back at Polly, who was scanning the available television stations on a laminated card. “Let me call you back. Okay?”

  Caroline hung up the phone. “They don’t have any doubles left. We can stay here or they can move us to a single and get us a cot. What do you think?”

  “Seriously?” Polly said. “We stay in this disgusting room or I sleep on a cot? That’s our choice?”

  “I’ll sleep on the cot. It’s not a big deal.”

  Polly shook her head.

  “I’m going to use the bathroom. Let me know what you want to do when I get out.”

  Caroline was suddenly worried. She and Polly had been enjoying themselves for the past couple hours. There had been banter. She and Polly had been bantering. Speaking without sarcasm. Communicating without contempt. It hadn’t exactly been a profound conversation, but the fact that they were speaking at all was amazing. The room situation had put everything in jeopardy. She and Polly were standing atop a shaky pedestal, shifting back and forth in order to maintain balance. It sounded stupid, but she knew that something as simple as a smelly hotel room might be enough to knock them over. Restore their routine.