The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  She scrawls, Wish you were here. And this time, she addresses it directly to me.

  Emma

  Nobody dreams of being an agony aunt when they grow up.

  Secretly, we all read advice columns—who hasn’t scanned Dear Abby? But sifting through the problems of other people for a living? No thanks.

  I thought that, by now, I’d be a real writer. I’d have books on the New York Times list and I’d be feted by the literati for my ability to combine important issues with books that the masses could relate to. Like many other writer wannabes, I’d gone the back route through editing—textbooks, in my case. I liked editing. There was always a right and a wrong answer. And I had assumed that I’d go back to work when Jacob was in school full-time—but that was before I learned that being an advocate for your autistic child’s education is a forty-hour-a-week profession in and of itself. All sorts of adaptations had to be argued for and vigilantly monitored: a cool-off pass that would allow Jacob to leave a classroom that got too overwhelming for him; a sensory break room; a paraprofessional who could help him, as an elementary school student, put his thoughts into writing; an individualized education plan; a school counselor who didn’t roll her eyes every time Jacob had a meltdown.

  I did some freelance editing at night—texts referred to me by a sympathetic former boss—but it wasn’t enough to support us. So when the Burlington Free Press ran a contest for a new column, I wrote one. I didn’t know about photography or chess or gardening, so I picked something I knew: parenting. My first column asked why, no matter how hard we were trying as moms, we always felt like we weren’t doing enough.

  The paper got over three hundred letters in response to that test column, and suddenly, I was the parenting advice expert. This blossomed into advice for those without kids, for those who wanted kids, for those who didn’t. Subscriptions increased when my column bumped from once a week to twice a week. And here’s the really remarkable thing: all these people who trust me to sort out their own sorry lives assume that I have a clue when it comes to sorting out my own.

  Today’s question comes from Warren, Vermont.

  Help! My wonderful, polite, sweet twelve-year-old boy has turned into a monster. I’ve tried punishing him, but nothing works. Why is he acting up?

  I lean over my keyboard and start to type.

  Whenever a child misbehaves, there’s some deeper issue driving the action. Sure, you can take away privileges, but that’s putting a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. You need to be a detective and figure out what’s really upsetting him.

  I reread what I’ve written, then delete the whole paragraph. Who am I kidding?

  Well, the greater Burlington area, apparently.

  My son sneaks out at night to crime scenes, and do I heed my own advice? No.

  I am saved from my hypocrisy by the sound of the telephone ringing. It’s Monday night, just after eight, so I assume it’s for Theo. He picks up on an extension upstairs and a moment later appears in the kitchen. “It’s for you,” Theo says. He waits till I pick up and disappears into the sanctuary of his bedroom again.

  “This is Emma,” I say into the receiver.

  “Ms. Hunt? This is Jack Thornton . . . Jacob’s math teacher?”

  Inwardly, I cringe. There are some teachers who see the greater good in Jacob, in spite of all his quirks—and there are others who just don’t get him and don’t bother to try. Jack Thornton expected Jacob to be a math savant when that’s not always part of Asperger’s—in spite of what Hollywood seems to think. Instead, he’s been frustrated by a student whose handwriting is messy, who transposes numbers when doing calculations, and who is far too literal to understand some of the theoretical concepts of math, like imaginary numbers and matrices.

  If Jack Thornton is calling me, it can’t be good news.

  “Did Jacob tell you what happened today?”

  Had Jacob mentioned anything? No, I would remember. But then again, he probably wouldn’t confess unless he was directly asked. More likely, I would have read the clues through his behavior, which would have seemed a little off. Usually when Jacob’s even more withdrawn, or stimming, or conversely too talkative or manic, I know something’s wrong. In this way, I am a better forensic scientist than Jacob would ever guess.

  “I asked Jacob to come up to the board to write out his homework answer,” Thornton explains, “and when I told him that his work was sloppy, he shoved me.”

  “Shoved you?”

  “Yes,” the teacher says. “You can imagine the reaction of the rest of the class.”

  Well, that explains why I didn’t see a deterioration in Jacob’s behavior. When the class started laughing, he would have assumed he’d done something good.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll talk to him.”

  No sooner have I hung up the phone than Jacob appears in the kitchen and takes the carton of milk out of the fridge.

  “Did something happen in math class today?” I ask.

  Jacob’s eyes widen. “You can’t handle the truth,” he says, in a dead-on imitation of Jack Nicholson, as sure a sign as any that he’s squirming.

  “I already talked to Mr. Thornton. Jacob, you cannot go around shoving teachers.”

  “He started it.”

  “He did not shove you!”

  “No, but he said, ‘Jacob, my three-year-old could write more neatly than that.’ And you’re always saying that when someone makes fun of me I should stick up for myself.”

  The truth is, I have said that to Jacob. And there’s a piece of me rejoicing in the fact that he initiated an interaction with another human, instead of the other way around—even if the interaction wasn’t socially appropriate.

  The world, for Jacob, is truly black and white. Once, when he was younger, his gym teacher called because Jacob had a meltdown during kickball when a kid threw the big red ball at him to tag him out. You don’t throw things at people, Jacob tearfully explained. It’s a rule!

  Why should a rule that works in one situation not work in another? If a bully taunts him and I tell him it’s all right to reciprocate—because sometimes that’s the only way to get these kids to leave him alone—why shouldn’t he do the same with a teacher who humiliates him in public?

  “Teachers deserve respect,” I explain.

  “Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?”

  I blink at him, speechless. Because the world isn’t fair, I think, but Jacob already knows that better than most of us.

  “Are you mad at me?” Unfazed, he reaches for a glass and pours himself some soy milk.

  I think that’s the attribute I miss seeing the most in my son: empathy. He worries about hurting my feelings, or making me upset, but that’s not the same as viscerally feeling someone else’s pain. Over the years, he’s learned empathy the way I might learn Greek—translating an image or situation in the clearinghouse of his mind and trying to attach the appropriate sentiment to it, but never really fluent in the language.

  Last spring, we were filling one of his prescriptions at the pharmacy and I noticed a rack of Mother’s Day cards. “Just once I’d like you to buy one of those for me,” I said.

  “Why?” Jacob asked.

  “So I know you love me.”

  He shrugged. “You already know that.”

  “But it would be nice,” I said, “to wake up on Mother’s Day and, like every other mother in this country, to get a card from her son.”

  Jacob thought about this. “What day is Mother’s Day?” he asked.

  I told him, and then I forgot about the conversation, until May 10. When I went downstairs and started my Sunday morning coffee-making routine, I found an envelope propped up against the glass carafe. In it was a Mother’s Day card.

  It didn’t say Dear Mom. It wasn’t signed. In fact, it wasn’t written on at all—because Jacob had only done what I’d told him to do, and nothing more.

  That day, I sat down at the kitchen table and laughed. I laughed