House Rules Read online

  --Holy shit,|| Oliver murmurs.

  I reach for Jacob's hands and pin them over his head again. --You ain't seen nothing yet,|| I say.

  The last time I had to dress my brother in a coat and tie we were headed to my grandfather's funeral. My mother was not herself that day, which is maybe why Jacob didn't put up as big a fight about the clothes as he did today. Neither of us owned a coat and tie, so my mother had borrowed them from a neighbor's husband. We were younger then, and a man's jacket fit neither of us. We sat on the side of the viewing room where the coffin was with our clothes swimming on us, as if we'd been bigger before our grief hit.

  In reality, I didn't know my grandfather very well. He'd been in a nursing home since my grandmother died, and my mom dragged us to visit him twice a year. It smelled like pee, and I used to get totally creeped out by the old people in their wheelchairs, whose skin seemed stretched too shiny and tight over bony knuckles and knees. The one good memory I had of my grandfather involved sitting on his lap when I was really little and having him pull a quarter out of my ear. His breath smelled like whiskey, and his white hair, when I touched it, was stiff as a Brillo pad.

  But still, he was dead, and I thought I should feel something ...

  because if I didn't, that meant I was no better than Jacob.

  My mother had, for the most part, left us to our own devices while she accepted the condolences of people whose names she didn't even know. I sat next to Jacob, who was staring straight ahead at the casket. It was black and propped up on fancy sawhorses that were covered with red velvet drapes. --Jacob,|| I whispered. --What do you think happens after?||

  --After what?||

  --After, you know. You die. Do you think you still get to go to heaven even if you never went to church?|| I thought about this for a moment. --Do you think that you recognize people in heaven, or is it like moving to a new school and starting over?||

  Jacob looked at me. --After you die, you decompose. Calliphoridae arrive on a body within minutes of death. The blowflies lay eggs in open wounds or natural orifices even before death, and their larvae hatch out in twenty-four hours. So even though maggots can't live underground, the pupal cases might be buried alive with the corpse and do their work from inside the coffin.||

  My jaw dropped.

  --What?|| Jacob challenged. --Did you really think embalming lasted forever?||

  After that, I didn't ask him any more questions.

  Once Jacob has been forced into his new formal wear, I leave Oliver to deal with the fallout and go to my mother's bedroom. She doesn't answer when I knock, so I push the door open a little bit and peek inside. --In here,|| she calls from her closet.

  --Mom,|| I say, and I sit down on her bed.

  --Is Jacob dressed?|| She pokes her head around the doorframe.

  --Pretty much.|| I pick at a thread on her quilt.

  In all the years we have lived here, my mother has slept on the left side of the bed.

  You'd think by now she would have branched out and taken over the whole damn thing, but no. It's like she's still waiting for someone to crawl into the other side.

  --Mom,|| I repeat. --I have to talk to you.||

  --Sure, baby. Shoot,|| she says. And then, --Where the hell are my black heels?||

  --It's kind of important. It's about Jacob.||

  She steps out of the closet and sits down beside me on the bed. --Oh, Theo,|| she sighs. --I'm scared, too.||

  --It's not that--||

  --We're going to do this the way we've done everything when it comes to Jacob,||

  she promises. --Together.||

  She gives me a tight squeeze, which only makes me feel more miserable, because I know I'm not going to say what I want to say to her, what I need to say.

  --How do I look?|| she asks, drawing away from me.

  For the first time, I notice what she's wearing. Not the conservative skirt and blue sweater and pearls that Oliver picked out for her but instead, a totally out-of-season bright yellow sundress. She grins at me. --It's Yellow Wednesday,|| she says.

  Jacob

  The first job from which I was fired was a pet store. I will not give the name of the chain, because I'm not sure if that's printable, and I have enough legal trouble to last me a lifetime right now. However, I will say--objectively--

  that I was the best employee they had and that, in spite of this, they still dismissed me.

  Even though when someone bought a corgi puppy, I offered facts along with Puppy Chow.

  (It's related to the dachshund! Its name is Welsh and means dwarf dog!) Even though I didn't steal from the cash register, like one of my coworkers.

  Even though I didn't tell on that coworker.

  Even though I wasn't rude to customers and never bitched when it was my turn to clean the public restrooms.

  What my boss (Alan, who was nineteen and an extremely viable candidate for Proactiv) told me was that customers had complained because of my appearance.

  No, I did not have snot running down my face. I wasn't drooling. I didn't wear my pants halfway to my knees, like the coworker I referenced above. All I did, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was refuse to wear the store uniform. It was a blue button-down shirt. I wore it on Fridays, but honestly, it was bad enough I had to deal with buttons--was I supposed to put up with wearing colors on their off days, too?

  No one had complained, by the way. And it was easy to spot me as an employee because, even when I wasn't wearing the uniform, I still wore a tag as big as a newborn's head that read, HELLO MY NAME IS JACOB, CAN I HELP YOU?

  The real reason I was fired was that, after several weeks of making excuses to Alan about why my uniform did not appear on my body unless I happened to be scheduled to work on a Friday, I finally told him that I was autistic and that I had a thing about clothing colors, not to mention buttons. So in spite of the fact that the puppies genuinely loved me, and that I sold more of them than any other person working here; in spite of the fact that even at the moment I was fired one of the employees was texting her boyfriend instead of ringing up a customer and another one was flirting with Steve in Amphibians--in spite of all these things, I was made a scapegoat because of my disability.

  Yeah, I'm playing the Asperger's card.

  All I know is that before I told Alan I had AS he was willing to make excuses along with me, and afterward, he just wanted me gone.

  This is the story of my life.

  We ride to the courthouse in Oliver's car. My mother is in the front seat, and Theo and I are in the back. I spend most of the trip looking at the things I took for granted, sights I hadn't seen while I was cooped up under house arrest: the Colony diner, with its busted neon sign, advertising EAT AT THE COLON. The picture window of the pet store where I used to work, with a Gordian knot of puppies on view. The movie theater where I lost my first tooth and the cross on the side of the road where a teenager once died en route to school during an ice storm. The Restwood Bible Church billboard that reads, FREE COFFEE!

  ETERNAL LIFE! MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS PRIVILEGES!

  --Okay,|| Oliver says, after he pulls into a parking spot and turns off the ignition. --Here we go.||

  I open my door and step out of the car, and suddenly there are a thousand sounds hitting me like arrows and so much light that everything goes white. I can't hold my hands up to my eyes and my ears at the same time, and somewhere in between the screaming I can hear my name and my mother's voice and Oliver's. They multiply before my eyes, microphones like cancer cells, and they are coming closer.

  Oliver: Shit--I should have thought of this ...

  Mom: Jacob, close your eyes, baby. Can you hear me? Theo? Have you got ahold of him?

  And then there is a hand on my arm, but who can say if it belongs to my brother or to one of the strangers, the ones who want to cut my veins lengthwise and bleed me dry, the ones with headlight eyes and cavern mouths who want a piece of me to stick into their pockets and take away, until there's nothing left.