House Rules: A Novel Read online

  These are the movies my mother took as evidence, as proof that I was now a different child than the one she’d started with. I don’t know what she was thinking when she recorded them. Surely she didn’t want to sit and watch all this over and over, the visual equivalent of a slap in the face. Maybe she was keeping them in the hope that one day a pharmaceutical executive might arrive unexpectedly for dinner, watch the tapes, and cut her a check for damages.

  As I’m watching, there’s a sudden streak of silver static that makes me cover my ears, and then there’s another segment of video. It’s been accidentally taped over my Oscar-worthy autistic toddler film, and in it I am much older. It is only a year ago, and I am getting ready for my junior prom.

  Jess took the video. She came over that afternoon while I was getting ready so that she could see the final result of our preparations. I can hear her voice. Jacob, she says, for God’s sake, get closer to her. She’s not going to bite you. The video swings like an amusement park ride, and I hear Jess’s voice again. Oops, I suck at this.

  My mother has a camera and is taking a picture of me with my date. The girl’s name is Amanda, and she goes to my school. She’s wearing an orange dress, which is probably the reason I refuse to get closer to her, even though I usually do what Jess wants.

  On television, it’s like I’m watching a make-believe show and Jacob isn’t me, he’s a character. It’s not really me who closes his eyes when my mother tries to take a picture on the front lawn. It’s not really me who walks to Amanda’s car and sits in the back like I always do. Oh no, my mother’s voice says, and Jess starts laughing. We totally forgot about that, she says.

  Suddenly the camera turns around fast, and Jess’s face is fishbowl-close. Hello, world! she says, and she pretends to swallow the camera. She’s smiling.

  Then there’s a line of red that moves down the television screen like a curtain, and suddenly I am only three years old again and I am stacking a green block on top of a blue block on top of a yellow block, just like the therapist has shown me. Jacob! Good work! she says, and she pushes a toy truck toward me as a reward. I flip it over and spin its wheels.

  I want Jess to be on the screen again.

  “I wish I knew how to quit you,” I whisper.

  Suddenly, my chest feels like it’s shrinking, the way it sometimes does when I am standing with a group of kids in school and I realize I’m the only one who did not get the punch line of the joke. Or that I am the punch line of the joke.

  I start to think maybe I’ve done something wrong. Really wrong.

  Because I do not know how to fix it, I pick up the remote control and rewind the tape almost back to the beginning, to the time when I was no different from anyone else.

  Emma

  From Auntie Em’s archives:

  Dear Auntie Em,

  How do I get a boy’s attention? I am hopeless at flirting, and there are so many other girls out there who are prettier and smarter than I am. But I’m sick of never being noticed; maybe I can reinvent myself. What can I do?

  Baffled in Bennington

  Dear Baffled,

  You don’t have to be anyone except who you already are. You just have to get a guy to take a second look. For this, there are two approaches:

  1. Stop waiting: take the initiative and go talk to him. Ask him if he got the answer to number 7 on your math homework. Tell him he did a great job in the school talent show.

  2. Start walking around naked.

  But it’s your choice.

  Love,

  Auntie Em

  When I can’t sleep, I pull a cardigan over my pajamas and sit outside on the porch steps and try to imagine the life I might have had.

  Henry and I would be waiting, with Jacob, for college acceptance letters. We might pop out a bottle of champagne and let him have a glass to celebrate once he made his choice. Theo would not hole himself up in his room doing his absolute best to pretend he doesn’t belong to this family. Instead, he would sit at the kitchen table, doing crosswords in the daily paper. “Three letters,” he’d say, and he’d read the clue. “Hope was often found here.” And we’d all guess at the answer—God? Sky? Arkansas?—but Jacob would be the one to get it right: USO.

  Our boys would be listed on the honor roll quarterly. And people would stare at me when I went shopping for groceries, not because I was the mother of that autistic boy, or worse, the murderer, but because they wished they were as lucky as me.

  I don’t believe in self-pity. I think it’s for people who have too much time on their hands. Instead of dreaming of a miracle, you learn to make your own. But the universe has a way of punishing you for your deepest, darkest secrets; and as much as I love my son—as much as Jacob has been the star around which I’ve orbited—I’ve had my share of moments when I silently imagined the person I was supposed to be, the one who got lost, somehow, in the daily business of raising an autistic child.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Picture your life without Jacob, and it just may come true.

  I listened to the testimony today. And yes, as Oliver has said, it’s not our turn yet. But I watched the faces of the jury as they stared at Jacob, and I saw the same expression I’ve seen a thousand times before. That mental distancing, that subtle acknowledgment that there is something wrong with that boy.

  Because he doesn’t interact the way they do.

  Because he doesn’t grieve the way they do.

  Because he doesn’t move or speak the way they do.

  I fought so hard to have Jacob mainstreamed at school—not just so that he could see the way other kids behaved but because other kids needed to see him, and to learn that different isn’t synonymous with bad. But I cannot say, honestly, that his classmates ever learned that lesson. They gave Jacob enough rope to hang himself in social situations, and then set the blame squarely on his shoulders.

  And now, after all that work to shoehorn him into an ordinary school setting, he is in a courtroom peppered with accommodations for his special needs. His only chance at acquittal hinges on his diagnosis on the spectrum. To insist that he is just like anyone else, at this moment, would be a sure prison sentence.

  After years of refusing to make excuses for Jacob’s Asperger’s, this is the only chance he has.

  And suddenly, I am running, as if my life depends on it.

  It’s after 2:00 A.M. and the pizza parlor is dark, the Closed sign flipped on the door, but in the tiny window above, a light is burning. I open the door to the narrow staircase that leads to the law office, climb the steps, knock.

  Oliver answers, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt that has an old, faded picture of a man with furry, ursine arms. SUPPORT THE SECOND AMENDMENT, it reads. His eyes are bloodshot, and he has ink stains on his hands. “Emma,” he says. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” I say, pushing past him. There are take-out containers on the floor, and an empty two-liter jug of Mountain Dew lies on its side. Thor, the dog, is asleep with his chin notched over the green plastic bottle. “No, everything’s not okay.” I face him again, my voice catching. “It’s two in the morning. I’m in my pajamas. I just ran here—”

  “You ran here?”

  “—and my son’s going to prison. So no, Oliver, everything is not okay.”

  “Jacob’s going to get acquitted—”

  “Oliver,” I say. “Tell me the truth.”

  He moves a stack of papers off the couch and sits down heavily. “You know why I’m awake at two in the morning? I’m trying to write my opening statement. Want to hear what I’ve got so far?” He lifts up the paper he’s holding. “Ladies and gentlemen, Jacob Hunt is …” He stops.

  “Is what?”

  “I don’t know,” Oliver says. He crumples it into a ball, and I know he’s thinking of Jacob’s meltdown, just like I am. “I don’t fucking know. Jacob Hunt is saddled with an attorney who should have stayed a farrier, that’s what. I shouldn’t have said yes to you. I shouldn’t have gone to