House Rules: A Novel Read online

  “I’ll add it to the bill,” I say, but we both know I probably won’t.

  Emma closes her eyes for a moment. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then just be quiet.”

  “You shouldn’t have to get involved in this mess.”

  “Lucky for you the only other thing I had to do today was organize my sock drawer,” I joke, but she’s not laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma replies. “It’s just … I don’t have anyone else.”

  Very slowly, very deliberately, so that she will not startle or pull away, I thread my fingers through hers and squeeze her hand. “You have me,” I say.

  If I were a better man, I wouldn’t have eavesdropped on Emma’s conversation with her ex-husband. Henry, she said. It’s Emma.

  No, actually, I can’t really call back later. It’s about Theo.

  He’s fine. I mean, I think he’s fine. He’s run away from home.

  Well, of course I know that. He’s on his way to your place.

  Yes, California. Unless you’ve moved lately.

  No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t an insult …

  I don’t know why. He just took off.

  He used my credit card. Look, can we just talk about this when I get there?

  Oh. Did I forget to mention that?

  If all goes well, I’ll land before Theo.

  Meeting us at the airport would be great. We’re both on US Airways.

  Then there is a hesitation.

  Jacob? she replies. No, he won’t be joining me.

  It is decided that I will camp out for the night to be the over-twenty-five-year-old adult watching Jacob while Emma hauls Theo’s ass back across the country. At first, after she leaves, it seems like a piece of cake—we can play the Wii. We can watch TV. And, thank God, it’s Brown Thursday, which is relatively easy: I can cook Jacob a burger for dinner. It isn’t until an hour after she leaves that I remember my hearing tomorrow—the one I had not yet told Emma about, the one I will have to take Jacob to by myself.

  “Jacob,” I say, while he is engrossed in a television show about how Milky Way bars are made. “I have to talk to you for a second.”

  He doesn’t respond. His eyes don’t even flicker from the screen, so I step in front of it and turn it off.

  “I just want to have a little chat.” When Jacob doesn’t answer, I keep speaking. “Your trial starts in a month, you know.”

  “A month and six days.”

  “Right. Well, I’ve been thinking about how … hard it might be for you to be in court all day long, and I figured we need to do something about it.”

  “Oh,” Jacob says, shaking his head. “I can’t be in court all day. I have schoolwork to do. And I have to be home by four-thirty so that I can watch CrimeBusters.”

  “I don’t think you get it. It’s not your call. You go to court when the judge says you go to court, and you get to come home when he’s ready to let you go.”

  Jacob chews on this information. “That’s not going to work for me.”

  “Which is why you and I are going back to court tomorrow.”

  “But my mother’s not here.”

  “I know that, Jacob. I didn’t plan for her to be away. But the fact of the matter is, the whole reason we’re going is something you said to me.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Do you remember what you told me when you decided I could run an insanity defense?”

  Jacob nods. “That the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination by the state or local governments, including the courts,” he says, “and that some people consider autism to be a disability, even if I don’t happen to be one of them.”

  “Right. But if you do consider Asperger’s syndrome to be a developmental disability, then under the ADA you’re also entitled to provisions in court that will make the experience easier for you.” I let a slow smile loose, like a card that’s been played close to the chest. “Tomorrow, we’re going to make sure you get them.”

  Emma

  From Auntie Em’s column archives:

  Dear Auntie Em,

  Recently I have been dreaming about my ex. Should I consider this a sign from a higher power and call him to say hi?

  Sleepless in Strafford

  Dear Sleepless,

  Yes, but I wouldn’t tell him you are calling because he’s starring in your dreams. Unless he happens to say, “Gosh, it’s so strange that you called today, because I dreamed about you last night.”

  Auntie Em

  I asked Henry out on our first date, because he didn’t seem to be picking up on hints that I was his for the taking. We saw the movie Ghost and went out to dinner afterward, where Henry told me that, scientifically, ghosts could simply not exist. “It’s basic physics and math,” he said. “Patrick Swayze couldn’t walk through walls and tag along behind Demi Moore. If ghosts can follow someone, that means their feet apply force to the floor. If they go through walls, though, they don’t have any substance. They could either be material or be unmaterial, but they can’t be both at the same time. It violates Newton’s rule.”

  He was wearing a T-shirt that said FULL FRONTAL NERDITY, and his corn silk hair kept falling into his eyes. “But don’t you wish it could be true?” I asked him. “Don’t you wish love was so strong it could come back to haunt you?”

  I told him the story of my mother, who one night had woken up at 3:14 A.M. with a mouth full of violet petals and the scent of roses so thick in the air that she could not breathe. An hour later she was roused by a phone call: her own mother, a florist by trade, had died of a heart attack at 3:14 a.m. “Science can’t answer everything,” I told Henry. “It doesn’t explain love.”

  “Actually it does,” he told me. “There have been all kinds of studies done. People are more attracted to people with symmetrical features, for example. And symmetrical men smell better to women. Also, people who have similar genetic traits are attracted to each other. It probably has something to do with evolution.”

  I burst out laughing. “That is awful,” I said. “That is the most unromantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I don’t think so …”

  “Oh, really. Say something that will sweep me off my feet,” I demanded.

  Henry looked at me for a long moment, until I could feel my head growing lighter and dizzier. “I think you might be perfectly symmetrical,” he said.

  On our second date, Henry took me to Boston. We had dinner at

  the Parker House, and then he hired a hansom cab to take us around the Boston Common. It was late November, and frost crouched in the

  bare branches of the trees; when we settled into the back of the carriage, the driver handed us a heavy wool blanket to put over our laps. The horse was spirited, stamping its feet and snorting.

  Henry was telling me riddles. “The ratio of an igloo’s circumference to its diameter?”

  “I give up.”

  “Eskimo pi,” he said. “How about half of a large intestine?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “A semicolon.”

  “That’s not a math or science joke,” I said.

  “I’m a Renaissance Guy.” Henry laughed. “Eight nickels?”

  I shook my head.

  “Two paradigms,” he said.

  The puns weren’t, by definition, funny. But on Henry’s lips, they were. Lips that were curved at the ends and that always seemed a little embarrassed to smile, lips that had kissed me good night on our first date with a surprising amount of force and intensity.

  I was staring at his lips when the horse dropped dead.

  Technically, it wasn’t dead. It had slipped on a patch of black ice, and its front legs had buckled. I had heard one snap.

  We rolled in slow motion out of the hansom cab, Henry twisting so that he would cushion my fall. “You all right?” he asked, and he helped me to my feet. He held the rough blanket around me while the police came, and then animal control. “Don’t watch,” Henry whis