Carol

From Candypedia
Carol
GenderFemale
SpeciesCat
BreedKhao Manee
Family
OccupationHousewife
DebutGaming Rivalry, page 2
May 5, 2006 (2006-05-05)

Carol is Lucy’s mother and the housewife in charge of Lucy’s house, where she keeps a timer running in the kitchen and a pet name ready for everybody who walks through the door. Married to race-car driver Harvey and mother to Sam, Jordan and Lucy, she is sweet, strict, and a bit more oblivious than any of her children would like. The ribbon Lucy has worn around her neck since preschool was Carol’s idea, and so was the chicken lasagna she immediately offered Augustus the night he moved in.

Personality

Carol runs her household on warm dinners, pet names and a curfew, roughly in that order. She calls the kids to dinner with a musical flourish, swoons over her husband on television, and can take an egg to the face on Halloween without even losing her smile.[1] She also worries about her daughter far more than she lets on, and since Lucy hardly ever gives her a straight answer, she ends up asking the people around her instead.

Carol turns a welcome into dinner plans in Love Again.

Carol feeds people to tell them she loves them. She offers Augustus chicken lasagna the evening he arrives,[2] bakes Jordan his favourite cheer-me-up brownies when a college turns him down,[3] and offers Jordan and Augustus cookies before school.[4] Nicknames come easily, so Sam is “Sammy”, Jordan is “Jordie” and Augustus, eventually, is “Auggie”.[5][6][7] Mind you, the sweetness comes with rules attached. A lollipop before dinner gets confiscated for spoiling appetites,[8] the kids are seen off with a reminder about curfew,[9] and any swearing within earshot earns an instant “LANGUAGE!”, a reflex that survives from sophomore year right through Lucy’s return home.[10][11][12] Veronica’s commentary sums the whole approach up as casually baking cakes while vetting the boys her daughter brings home.[13]

Carol has firm opinions about her daughter’s boys, and for most of the comic those opinions favour Mike. In Dinner Time she defends Paulo as very courteous for calling about the sleepover, then hears him called a manwhore and swings hard the other way, telling Lucy that Michael respects her while “Paulo, I’m not so sure.”[14][15] Veronica’s commentary on that page suggests Lucy’s family needs to chill on their MikexLucy tendencies.[15] When Paulo turns up in person in After You she is calmly whisking batter, asking Lucy whether this is a bad one and offering to sic Jordan on him.[13] By junior year she has changed her tune. When Lucy comes home from a night out with friends, Carol asks “No Michael?”, hears that there wasn’t one, and says “Good.”[16] Veronica has said Carol finds it hard to fully hate or go against Mike, since he spent his life scoring good-boy points while Lucy was seen as a bit of a nuisance. Once the subject is properly opened, though, she would probably lose all her cool.[17]

Carol wants enough truth to get it right next time.

Carol notices when something is wrong with Lucy and almost never finds out what. In Dinner Time she asks whether something is the matter and gets a flat “fine”, concludes that boy troubles are getting worse, and ends the night talking to Lucy’s closed door about the space on the couch downstairs.[18][19][20] Veronica’s commentary says she knew something was up but felt powerless, because she didn’t want to smother.[21] After Lucy comes back the worry gets a guilty edge. She promises Augustus she won’t pry, then says a page later that she wants to know enough to do the right thing next time, followed by “Oh dear did I say that out loud?”[22][4]

Appearance

Carol is a white cat with the same blue eyes as her daughter. Veronica has explained that Lucy’s family are Khao Manee, with Carol and Lucy being the occasional ones with mono-coloured eyes,[23] and, unlike Lucy, Carol got lucky in the hearing department.[24]

Carol makes hospitality look effortless in Love Again.

Unlike most of the cast, she is always fully dressed, and usually dressed up, as Veronica points out in her commentary on Made Fresh.[25] Her wardrobe runs from a purple turtleneck and dark blue trousers in Dinner Time[21] to a yellow flowered apron in Love Again,[26] a red shirt for New Year’s Eve[27] and a nurse costume for Halloween.[28] Her pearl necklace keeps recurring, including during some of her most painful conversations with Lucy.[29][30] Flashbacks show a younger Carol in sepia, tying ribbons and watching over the elementary-school kids.[31][32]

Significant events

Carol first turns up in Lucy’s memories in Gaming Rivalry. She offers a two-year-old Lucy a doll, which gets run over with a toy car, and two years later kneels down to tie a ribbon round her neck on the first day of preschool.[31] A seventh-grade flashback in Pillow Talk shows her cheerfully letting Lucy drag a snow-soaked Mike upstairs, over Sam’s objections about leaving the two alone.[33] For a while, her present-day role stays in the background: Lucy remembers her washing the quilts and beach towel she badly needed in Crash and Burn, and Carol waves the kids off to school at the start of sophomore year.[34][35]

Carol learns that dinner conversation has somehow become an interrogation about dating.

Dinner Time puts her at the centre of things. With Sam away at college and Lucy shut in her room after Mike’s cold shoulder, Carol cooks for the family and has to knock to get Lucy to the table.[21][18] Dinner goes downhill from there. She learns about the sleepover at Paulo’s house, grounds both children on the spot, and lectures Lucy about Mike until Lucy leaves the table.[36][37]

On New Year’s Eve in Ten Seconds to Midnight, with Sam home, she agonizes on the couch over a decision she really doesn’t want to make, and Lucy overhears from the stairs.[38][39] That spring, after Lucy’s attempt on her own life, she waits at the hospital counter with Sam’s hand on her shoulder in Breaking Up, and in Leaving Home she weeps into her hands after Lucy is sent away.[40][41]

Lucy comes home at the start of junior year in Love Again with Augustus in tow, and Carol welcomes him into the family.[42][6] Unpacking Day, a Volume Six chapter, follows straight on, and the two of them finally have it out over why Lucy was sent away, with Carol asking to be let back in as a friend.[43] From there she settles into a supporting role. She vets Paulo in After You,[13] catches up with Ellen outside the Tae Kwon Do studio in It’s All in the Mind,[44] stays home to hand out Halloween candy in Witch Hunt,[28] and hosts a crowded New Year’s Eve party in New Year’s Resolution.[27] In Seeing Stars she quizzes Augustus about how Lucy is really doing,[45] in Made Fresh she hands out the early-decision college letters,[46] and in Tickets Please she and Lucy agree to a girls’ night.[7]

Major relationships

Lucy

Carol ties the ribbon on a four-year-old Lucy on her first day of preschool in Gaming Rivalry.

Carol’s first promise to Lucy came with the ribbon. She tied it on a scared four-year-old with the words “Mommy’s always going to be with you”, and the teenage Lucy still wears it and calls it corny but comforting.[31] Being there tends to mean a lecture over dinner about not taking Mike for granted, though, and Lucy’s answer in Dinner Time is a slammed glass and a lost appetite.[32][37]

Carol knew before she made the decision that sending Lucy away might look like abandonment.[38] Lucy read it exactly that way. In Unpacking Day Lucy throws it at her, calling herself a problem her mother couldn’t deal with. Carol loses her temper in return, shouting that Sam never ended up in a psychiatric ward, and then breaks down completely, insisting “It wasn’t that I gave up..” and that she had been too frightened to know what else to do.[29][47][48] She calls it the hardest decision she ever made and asks to at least be Lucy’s friend. The offer comes sweetened with every embarrassing Mike story Ellen has ever told her, and Lucy wants to know just how embarrassing.[48][43]

Since Lucy came home, Carol does most of her mothering from arm’s length. She tells Ellen she thinks Lucy just wants everything to be normal again,[44] kisses her cheek outside the dojo,[49] and does her checking-up through Augustus rather than through Lucy herself.[45] Lucy tells her she has done enough when Carol suggests checking in with Ellen again.[30] Still, when Carol proposes a girls’ night and tacks on “If you don’t still hate me”, Lucy shuts that down with a single “Mom.” and says it sounds great.[7] Veronica has confirmed that Lucy never told her mother the full extent of what Alejandro did to her.[50]

Jordan

Jordan’s lollipop is confiscated before it can spoil his appetite in Dinner Time.

Jordan gives Carol plenty of chances to parent him, which mostly means telling him no. He chatters to her at breakfast while Lucy eats in silence,[35] and in Dinner Time he bounces a toy basketball off her head, then loses his lollipop because it will spoil his appetite, and hears “The answer is no.” to his curfew request at the start of the meal and again at the very end.[8][10][51] He is also the one she quizzes when Lucy won’t talk, and the one whose pyjamas get lent to Augustus without consultation.[19][6]

Carol hurts Jordan mostly by accident, and usually by mentioning Sam. She tells him girls were the last thing on Sammy’s mind at his age.[36] In Made Fresh she hands him a thin envelope, greets Augustus’s explanation of what that means with an “Oh, fascinating!”, then needs a beat to realise it is a rejection and starts a sentence about how Sammy never got a single one.[46] She then congratulates him on a fat acceptance letter that is actually Augustus’s.[25] His favourite brownies come out of the oven not long afterwards.[3] Veronica’s commentary notes that the two of them share the happy-go-lucky, minimal-braincells gene.[46]

Augustus

Augustus discovers that Carol’s gratitude comes with a crushing hug.

Carol decided Augustus was family almost immediately, and he still hasn’t quite recovered. He arrives in Love Again introduced by Sam as a creep, and once she hears he saved Lucy’s life she is sobbing against his chest over how close she came to losing her “precious baby”.[11][42] She offers chicken lasagna, Harvey offers the guest room until graduation, and the jacket Augustus came in is declared “filthy” and marched off to the laundry hamper, along with a promise to have words with his mother.[2][6] Veronica’s commentary reads his tears as shock that something good is actually happening to him.[6]

By winter, Carol knows that Augustus has learned more about Lucy than she has. In Seeing Stars she pours his juice and asks whether Lucy is doing okay, then whether he’s sure, then whether there are any secrets, until he remarks that this is why he likes to pour his own drink.[45] She backs off, and he watches her with some sympathy when she blurts out that she wants to do the right thing next time.[4] By Tickets Please she is delighted that Auggie keeps her up to date on things Jordan never would.[7]

Harvey

Carol swoons over her husband on television while Jordan tries his luck one more time in Dinner Time.

Three children in, Carol is still completely gone on her husband, and Harvey mostly gets to bask in it. She watches his race on television with hearts in her eyes,[51] presses his fan letters to her cheek while counting the days until he’s home,[52] and toasts the new year with his arm around her.[27] Their wedding portrait sits out on the side table.[53] He backs her up when it counts, offering Augustus the guest room and answering her fury over the boy’s jacket with a soothing “I know, dear, I know.”[2][6] Veronica describes him as a mid-tier racer, successful enough that Carol doesn’t need to work.[54]

Minor relationships

Ellen

Carol and Ellen have been friends since middle school, which makes Ellen her one line to Mike’s side of the story.[12] The two catch up outside the Tae Kwon Do studio in It’s All in the Mind, where Carol goes quiet when Ellen says Mike needs a good friend.[44] Talking to Ellen is also Carol’s standing offer to Lucy, volunteered in Unpacking Day and raised again in Tickets Please, where Lucy tells her she has done enough.[55][30] Veronica has said Ellen only knows that Lucy got sick, and that Carol mostly listens while trying not to think about Mike too much.[17]

Sam

Sam is the child Carol measures the other two against, whether they like it or not. Girls were the last thing on Sammy’s mind at Jordan’s age, he took good care of his siblings, and he never got a college rejection, or so she starts to say.[36][56][46] In return he is the one who comes home for the crisis, telling her on New Year’s Eve that Lucy would understand and keeping a hand on her shoulder at the hospital.[38][40]

Quotes

.. You know I can’t pick favorites. You, Lucy and Sammy are my three shining stars~ ♥ Carol, to Jordan at the dinner table in Dinner Time

I know it’s all a little scary, but remember.. Mommy’s always going to be with you. If you ever feel lonely, this ribbon’ll remind you how much I love you. Carol, tying the ribbon on a four-year-old Lucy in Gaming Rivalry

I don’t need to because he won’t be going anywhere on weekends until he’s thirty. Carol, grounding Jordan in Dinner Time

But there’s always space for you on the couch downstairs, okay? Carol, through Lucy’s closed door in Dinner Time

That jacket is filthy. This will not do. Carol, welcoming Augustus into the family in Love Again

You sure? I can sic your brother on him if he gives you trouble. Carol, vetting Paulo over a bowl of batter in After You

Trivia

  • Her name is not spoken in the released main-comic dialogue. The transcript labels switch from “Lucy’s mom” to “Carol” in Made Fresh,[52] and Veronica has confirmed that Lucy’s parents are Carol and Harvey.[57]
  • Dinner Time, her showcase chapter, was originally a 2011 BCI members-only story. Veronica has said she always regretted it being stuck behind a paywall, because there is a lot of Lucy’s mother in it.[21]
  • In 2017, after the chicken-lasagna scene, Veronica said Augustus would get “more coddling” one day.[58]
  • The Carol of Paulo’s daydream in Piece of Cake has always wanted a little Somali in the family and finds him much sweeter than that Mike kid.[59] The real one asks Lucy if he’s a bad one.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Seven, “Good Egg”, page 4
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 45
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 41
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 120: Seeing Stars, page 7
  5. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 5
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 46
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 34
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 2
  9. ↑ Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 5
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 6
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 29
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 3
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Chapter 97: After You, page 1
  14. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 10
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 13
  16. ↑ Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 32
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 “Ask response on what Carol thinks of Mike and what Ellen knows”. 2026-06-27.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 4
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 17
  20. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 18
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 1
  22. ↑ Chapter 120: Seeing Stars, page 6
  23. ↑ “Ask response on the Khao Manee breed of Lucy’s family”. 2017-06-01.
  24. ↑ “Ask response on whether Lucy’s mother is deaf”. 2017-10-06.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 39
  26. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 44
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 1
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 2
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 5
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 33
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 Chapter 2: Gaming Rivalry, page 2
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 14
  33. ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 44
  34. ↑ Chapter 36: Crash and Burn, page 3
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Chapter 50: A Distance Apart, page 1
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 11
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 16
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 38.2 Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 4
  39. ↑ Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 5
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 18
  41. ↑ Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 9
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Chapter 95: Love Again, page 42
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 8
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 Chapter 103: It’s All in the Mind, page 2
  45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 45.2 Chapter 120: Seeing Stars, page 5
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 46.3 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 38
  47. ↑ Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 6
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 7
  49. ↑ Chapter 103: It’s All in the Mind, page 3
  50. ↑ “Ask response on what Lucy’s mom knows about the assault”. 2026-06-28.
  51. ↑ 51.0 51.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 19
  52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 37
  53. ↑ Chapter 95: Love Again, page 43
  54. ↑ “Ask response on Lucy’s father’s racing career”. 2026-06-08.
  55. ↑ Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, “Unpacking Day”, page 4
  56. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 12
  57. ↑ “Ask response confirming the names of Lucy’s parents”. 2026-01-10.
  58. ↑ “Ask response on Lucy’s mom coddling Augustus”. 2017-08-29.
  59. ↑ Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 3
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