By the time Polly had finished speaking, Caroline was crying.
“Don’t worry,” George said, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “Spartacus is right. Tutu was only a bird, and she lived a good, long life.”
But Caroline barely heard George’s words. She was thinking about Lucy and that day on the corner of Summer and Federal streets. The little girl a full head shorter than she, always looking up, always squinting into the sunlight, always smiling. The little girl who loved pancakes but despised waffles, who never met a set of stairs that she didn’t run up, and who followed her big sister with a ferocity that bordered on obsession.
She was thinking about that girl and the terrible, awful moment that ended it all.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Caroline was sitting on the front porch in the rocking chair. She had asked to be left alone for a while, though she wasn’t sure why. The floodgates had opened on her memories of the day Lucy had died, but the memories had always been there, pushing and nudging and constantly threatening to creep into her consciousness. Tutu’s funeral had given rise to them. She felt foolish and weak sitting in the rocking chair, red faced and teary-eyed. She had wanted to stand beside her daughter at the funeral for a dead bird. She had wanted to dispense with this burden once and for all. Instead, she had fallen apart.
“Caroline?” It was George, stepping out onto the porch. “I have to go, but I just wanted to say thank you.”
Caroline smiled. “For what? Ruining the funeral?”
“Ruining it? I thought I was going to be alone back there. Then Polly showed up, which was amazing, and she guilted Spartacus into joining us. And then you and your husband and your friend and the police officer showed up. I only wish Tutu could’ve seen how many people were there.” He snickered a little and then added, “Actually, I wish my family could’ve seen how many people came. They thought the whole thing was ridiculous.”
“Still, I’m sorry for all the tears, “Caroline said. “It was a little over the top.” She didn’t have the heart to tell him that the tears she had wept for a long dead sister and not for Tutu.
“It was a funeral,” he said. “Tears are mandatory.”
Caroline rose from the chair and reached out to hug George. “I’m sorry for your loss. I really am.”
“I know. Thanks.”
Caroline stood on the edge of the porch, watching as George climbed into his car and backed out of the driveway. Two days ago she had thought that he was a strange little man. She wasn’t entirely wrong, but George Durow had proved to be so much more as well.
Polly seemed to have known it all along.
“I assume you weren’t bawling about the bird?” It was Polly. She had sidled alongside Caroline in time to watch as George’s car disappeared around the curve on Main Street and into a reddening sky.
“Mind telling me where you were all night?”
“The cop already told me that you found my hideout,” Polly said. “Pretty clever.”
“Then would you mind telling me why you ran away in the first place?”
“I didn’t run away. I was just pissed at you and had no place to go. We’re sharing a bedroom. Remember?”
“So you figured you’d stay away all night?”
“Sometimes I disappear to my room for days, in case you didn’t notice. This was less than twenty-four hours. You should consider yourself lucky.”
“I should consider myself lucky?”
For a second, it appeared as if Polly was going to fire back. Then she stopped. “Fine, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I froze my butt off last night.”
“It doesn’t. You scared the hell out of me. Out of all of us.”
“I said I was sorry. And hey, I like your photos. You got them back, right?”
“Yeah, I did. You do?”
“They’re really good, Mom. I kind of love them. You should put them online. Let people see them.”
“There’s a big difference between your family liking your work and the world liking your work.”
“No kidding,” Polly said. “The world can’t like anything you do if you never let them see it.”
“Someday. I’m just not ready yet.”
“Are you trying to be the next Grandma Moses?”
“I’m not that old,” Caroline said.
“Not yet,” Polly said. “But if you wait long enough, you might find yourself old and gray before anyone sees your stuff. Seriously, Mom. It’s time to stop hiding behind your camera. You’re actually talented. It’s shocking but true.”
“Don’t think this is getting you out of trouble for last night.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” Polly said. She was trying to change the subject, Caroline knew. “Ever hear of J D Wetherspoon?”
“No.”
“It’s this chain of British pubs. Like nine hundred of them altogether, owned by this guy named Tim Martin. Guess where he got the name for the pubs.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t name them after himself,” Caroline said.
“No, he named them after a teacher who told him that he’d never be successful in business. Don’t you love that? He named his business out of spite. And revenge.”
“And, my Polymath?” Caroline said, knowing that there was more.
“I think you should open up that photography studio you’ve always wanted and name it something like Better Than Emily. Or Suck It, Emily Kaplan.”
Caroline smiled.
The two stood on the porch in silence, watching the cars drive by, avoiding eye contact. Last night Caroline had been ready, anxious even, to tell Polly the secret that she had kept hidden for so long—both in her heart and in the closet in the upstairs bedroom of this house. It had felt so right. Almost meant to be. But now it felt as if the barriers between the two of them had been reestablished and to break through them would be impossible. Mother and daughter, opposing forces on the battlefield once again.
“So what were you crying about if it wasn’t Tutu or your broken head?” Polly asked. “I was actually worried about you for a minute there.”
And just like that, the door opened once again. Polly had extended her hand, absent of sarcasm and malice, and all Caroline had to do was grab it.
twenty-seven
It was exactly as she had remembered: the pink and yellow bedspread, the misshapen beanbag chair, the enormous stuffed panda slumped in the corner, the heart-shaped mirror above the dresser. All seemed ancient and innocent. Frozen in time. Even the dusty light filtering in through pink curtains felt nostalgic. As far as Caroline knew, nothing had been touched since the day that Lucy had died. She knew that her mother occasionally spent time in this room, sitting on the window seat or the edge of Lucy’s bed, and she would dust and vacuum on rare occasions, but otherwise it had been undisturbed, a monument to a sister who had been gone for so long.
“I’ve never seen the inside of this room before,” Polly said, peering over her mother’s shoulder.
The last time Caroline had been in here, she had stuffed a plastic bag in the back of Lucy’s closet. She had been panicked and frightened and consumed with guilt. Her hands had trembled as she reached back into the closet as far as she could. Standing here now, on the edge of the past, she understood the enormity of the guilt she’d carried with her through her life. It had become a part of her, as essential as her heart and lungs. It was what made her who she was. Caroline was here to share her most secret of secrets with her daughter, but she now understood that doing so would not alleviate her guilt. That could never happen.
“When was the last time you were in here?” Polly asked.
“I haven’t seen this room since I was your age,” Caroline said. “God, it looks exactly the same.”
“Are we going in?”
Three small steps and Caroline reached the purple rug that filled the center of the room. She turned slowly, taking in the entirety of the space as she did. Beside the bed was a small desk and chair. Caroline step
ped over to it. Adventures in Mathematics, a textbook that she had once used in elementary school, was sitting atop a dictionary and a Nancy Drew mystery. Beside the books was a spiral bound notebook, a small diary with a tiny padlock, and a ceramic bowl full of hair elastics, barrettes, and ribbons. Lucy had made the bowl at summer camp. Caroline knew that if she turned it over, she would find Lucy’s initials carved roughly in the bottom.
She took a step closer and saw strands of hair wrapped around a couple of elastics. It seemed eerie that parts of Lucy still existed in this room where time had stopped.
“What’s this?” Polly asked, speaking in a soft, reverent voice.
She turned. Polly was standing by the bedside table and pointing at a small pile of yellow and black Memorex cassette tapes. “Those are Lucy’s tapes,” Caroline said, stepping over for a closer look. “I’d forgotten all about them. She got a tape recorder for Christmas one year, and she would spend hours recording songs off the radio while she sang to them. Kind of like old school karaoke.”
“She’d hold the tape recorder up to the radio?” Polly asked.
“It was a different time,” Caroline said. “Lucy loved to sing to the radio. Madonna. Whitney Houston. The Bangles.”
“Madonna was making music when you were a kid?”
“Are you kidding me? Madonna’s been around—”
“I was kidding,” Polly said.
“Ha-ha.”
“Is it okay if I sit?” Polly asked.
“Sure. On the window seat. Okay?”
Caroline remained standing in the center of the room. She stared at the bed and could almost see her sister snuggled under the covers, propped up on a pile of pillows, listening to the radio and reading a book.
Lucy had been the best person that Caroline had ever known. She was kind and unrelentingly happy. And she had died before the temptations of life could pierce her childhood innocence. Lucy never had the chance to take a drag on her first cigarette or steal a pair of cheap earrings from the pharmacy or let a boy slide his hand down her pants in the backseat of a car. She had read her mystery stories and listened to her music and finished her homework before dinner each day. And then one day she took the last bike ride of her life.
Caroline was crying before she realized it, sobbing uncontrollably, and before she could say a word, Polly had taken her by the hand and was pulling her toward the window seat.
“No,” Caroline said. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Just wait.”
Caroline took a deep breath between sobs, trying to bring them under control, and then stepped over to the other side of the room. She opened the closet door. The smell of cedar instantly filled her nostrils, making the past seem even more real than a moment ago.
“What is it, Mom?” Polly asked, and for some reason, hearing Polly say Mom was enough to bring the sobbing back. She took another deep breath, wiped the tears from her face and eyes, and then got down on her hands and knees. She crawled into the closet, ducking underneath long forgotten cotton dresses and a yellow terrycloth bathrobe, and reached into the back corner of the closet. She felt around, worried for a moment by the empty space, and then her fingertips felt the plastic. She pulled, careful to grasp the bag by the handles so the contents wouldn’t spill. A second later, she was holding the very thing that she had avoided thinking about and yet somehow never stopped thinking about for the last twenty-five years.
“What is it?” Polly asked. Her voice was still soft. Caroline hadn’t told her why she had been brought here, but Polly seemed to know that it was something important.
“It’s…,” Caroline said, unsure of her next words, not because she was choosing them carefully but because she didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to describe the benign yet life-altering contents of the bag. Instead, she stepped over to the window seat and sat down beside Polly, plastic bag in her lap.
“It’s okay, Mom. Seriously.” Polly put her arm around Caroline, and instantly she dipped her face into her daughter’s shoulder and began to weep. She had never wept so hard in her life.
Caroline wasn’t sure how long she cried in Polly’s arms, but the moment finally came when she was able to breathe without sobs and blink without tears. She gave her daughter a final squeeze and straightened.
“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 THE RAMONES 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 the stop sign, 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 and 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 wh
at 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.”
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs: A Novel Page 18
