House Rules: A Novel Read online

  “Well. That’s interesting … but it’s not why I asked to speak to you today.”

  “It’s not?” Mimi whispers. “Oh, crap.”

  “I wanted to ask you about Jacob Hunt.”

  Her face goes beet red. “I don’t really know him very well.”

  “You were involved in an incident last year that led to his suspension, right?”

  “It was all just a big joke,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I mean, how was I supposed to know he couldn’t even take a joke?”

  “What happened?”

  She sinks down farther on Mrs. Grenville’s couch. “He was always hanging around. It was creepy, you know? I mean, I’d be, like, talking to my friends and he’d be standing there eavesdropping. And then I got a forty on a math quiz because Mr. LaBlanc is the biggest jerk ever and I got really mad and asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. But I never went to the bathroom, I just went around the corner and started crying because if I failed math again my parents were going to take away my phone and make me give up my Facebook account—and Jacob walked up to me. I guess he’d left class for one of his weirdo breaks or something, and he was headed back. He didn’t say anything, he just kept staring at me, and I told him to get lost. So he said he would stay with me because that’s what friends do, and I said that if he really wanted to be my friend, he’d go into math class and tell Mr. LaBlanc to go fuck himself.” Mimi hesitated. “So he did.”

  I glance at the guidance counselor. “And that’s why he was suspended?”

  “No. He got detention for that.”

  “And then?” I ask.

  Mimi’s gaze slides away. “The next day a bunch of us were hanging out in the commons when Jacob showed up. I guess I sort of ignored him. I mean, it’s not like I was actively being mean to him or anything. And he just went crazy and came after me.”

  “He hit you?”

  She shakes her head. “He grabbed me and threw me up against a locker. He could have killed me, you know, if a teacher hadn’t stopped him.”

  “Can you show me how he grabbed you?”

  Mimi looks at Mrs. Grenville, who nods, encouraging her. We both stand up, and Mimi takes a step forward until she has backed me against the wall. She has to reach up because I am taller than she is, and then gingerly, she wraps her right hand around my throat. “Like this,” she says. “I had bruises for a week.”

  The same bruises, I realize, that Jess Ogilvy had revealed at her autopsy.

  Emma

  As if I need any further reminder after Oliver Bond’s visit that my life is not and never will be what it was, my editor calls. “I was hoping you could come in this afternoon,” Tanya says. “There’s something we need to discuss.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Tanya,” I say, “Jacob’s under house arrest. I’m not allowed to leave.”

  “Well, that’s sort of why I wanted to meet … We think that it might be best for everyone right now if you took a leave of absence from your column.”

  “Best for everyone?” I repeat. “How is losing my job best for me?”

  “It’s temporary, Emma. Just until this … blows over. Surely you understand,” Tanya explains. “We can’t really endorse advice from—”

  “From a writer whose son was accused of murder?” I finish for her. “I write anonymously. No one knows about me, much less Jacob.”

  “For how long? We’re in the news business. Someone’s going to dig this up, and then we’ll be the ones who look like idiots.”

  “By all means,” I say hotly. “We wouldn’t want you to look like idiots.”

  “We’re not cutting you off. Bob’s agreed to keep you at half salary plus benefits if you do freelance editing of the Sunday section for us in return.”

  “Is this the part where I’m supposed to fall to my knees in gratitude?” I ask.

  She is quiet for a moment. “For what it’s worth, Emma,” Tanya says, “you’re the last person in the world who deserves this. You’ve already got your cross to bear.”

  “Jacob,” I say, “is not a cross to bear. He’s my son.” My hand is shaking where it holds the phone. “Go edit your own fucking Sunday section,” I tell her, and I hang up.

  A tiny cry escapes as I realize the magnitude of what I’ve just done. I’m a single parent; I hardly make any money as is; I can’t work outside the home right now—how am I going to afford to live without a job? I could call my old boss from the textbook company and beg for freelance assignments, but it’s been twenty years since I worked there. I could scrape by on whatever savings we’ve got, until this is over.

  And when will that be?

  I admit that I’ve taken our legal system for granted. I assumed that the innocent prevail, that the guilty get their due. But as it turns out, it isn’t as simple as saying you’re not guilty if you’re not guilty. As Oliver Bond has pointed out, the jury has to be convinced. And connecting with strangers is Jacob’s weakest link.

  I keep waiting to wake up. To have someone surprise me with the hidden camera and tell me this is all a big joke: that of course Jacob is free to go, that of course there has been some mistake. But no one surprises me, and I wake up every morning and nothing has changed.

  The worst thing that could happen would be if Jacob goes to prison again, because they don’t understand him there. On the other hand, if he’s hospitalized, he’ll be with doctors. Oliver said that he’d be kept in a secure treatment facility until the judge could be sure that he wouldn’t hurt anyone again. Which means that he’d have a chance, however slight, of getting out one day.

  I pull myself up the stairs heavily, as if my feet have been cast in lead. At Jacob’s door, I knock. He is sitting on his bed, Flowers for Algernon folded on his chest. “I finished,” he says.

  As part of our new home-schooling protocol, I have to make sure he keeps up with the school curriculum, and this novel was the first assignment for his English class. “And?”

  “It was stupid.”

  “I always thought it was sad.”

  “It’s stupid,” Jacob reiterates, “because he never should have had the experiment done.”

  I sit down beside him. In the narrative, Charlie Gordon, a retarded man, undergoes a surgical procedure that triples his IQ, only to have the experiment ultimately fail and leave him with subnormal intelligence again. “Why not? He got to see what he was missing.”

  “But if he never had that procedure, he would never know he was missing it.”

  When Jacob says things like this—truths so raw most of us won’t even admit them in silence, much less speak them out loud—he seems more lucid than anyone else I know. I do not believe my son is insane. And I do not believe that his Asperger’s is a disability, either. If Jacob didn’t have Asperger’s, he wouldn’t be the same boy I love so fiercely: the one who watches Casablanca with me and can recite all of Bogey’s dialogue; the one who remembers the grocery list in his head when I’ve inadvertently left it sitting on the counter; the one who never ignores me if I ask him to get my wallet out of my handbag or run upstairs to get a ream of paper for the printer. Would I have rather had a kid who doesn’t struggle so hard, who could make his way in the world with less resistance? No, because that child wouldn’t have been Jacob. The crises may be what stick in my mind when it comes to him, but the in-between moments are the ones I would not have missed for the world.

  Still, I know why Charlie Gordon had the procedure done. And I know why I am about to have a conversation with Jacob that makes my heart feel like it’s turned to ash. It’s because, whenever possible, humans err on the side of hope.

  “I have to talk to you about what Oliver said,” I begin.

  Jacob sits up. “I’m not crazy. I’m not letting him say that about me.”

  “Just hear me out—”

  “It’s not the truth,” Jacob says. “And you always have to tell the truth. House rules.”

  “You’re right. But som