House Rules: A Novel Read online

  He just stares at me, frowning a little.

  “It would have been cool if we’d fished,” I say. “You know. Like in that pond behind the school.”

  This, of course, is just plain stupid. I was six months old when my father left us. I could barely hold myself upright, much less a fishing pole.

  My father ducks his head. “I get seasick,” he says. “Even just standing on a dock. Always have.”

  After that, we don’t really talk at all.

  I went to Dr. Moon once. My mother thought it would be a good idea for me to talk to a shrink about feelings I might be having, given the fact that my brother sucked up all the time and energy in our household like some giant karmic Hoover. I can’t say I remember much about her, except that she smelled like incense and told me I could take off my shoes, because she herself could think better without shoes, and maybe I would, too.

  On the other hand, I do still remember what we talked about. She said that, sometimes, it would be hard for me to be the younger brother, because I had to do all the stuff the older brother usually did. She told me that this might frustrate Jacob and make him mad, and that would make him act even more immature. In this she was the psychological equivalent of a weather forecast: she could tell me with precise probability what was coming, but she was completely unequipped to help me prepare for the storm.

  She looks different on the witness stand than she does when she is at her office. For example, she is wearing a business suit, and her crazy long hair is tamed into a bun. Oh, and she’s wearing shoes. “At first, Jacob was diagnosed with general autism spectrum disorder. Then we tweaked his diagnosis to pervasive developmental disorder. It wasn’t until sixth grade that we amended his diagnosis to Asperger’s syndrome, based on his inability to interpret social cues and to interact with peers in spite of his high IQ and verbal ability. For kids Jacob’s age, that progression of diagnoses is very common. It doesn’t mean he didn’t always have Asperger’s—he did—it just means that we didn’t necessarily have the correct language to label it.”

  “Can you give a definition of Asperger’s syndrome for people who aren’t familiar with it, Doctor?” Oliver asks.

  “It’s a developmental disorder that affects the way information is processed in the brain, and it’s considered to fall at the upper end of the autism spectrum. People with Asperger’s are often very intelligent and very competent—in this, they differ from profoundly autistic children, who can’t communicate at all—but they have crippling disabilities in the area of social interaction.”

  “So someone with Asperger’s might be smart?”

  “Someone with Asperger’s might even have a genius-level IQ. However, when it comes to making small talk, he’ll be completely inept. He has to be taught social interaction as if it’s a foreign language, the way you or I would need to be taught Farsi.”

  “Lawyers sometimes have trouble finding friends,” Oliver says, raising some laughter on the jury. “Does that mean we all have Asperger’s?”

  “No,” Dr. Moon responds. “A person with Asperger’s desperately wants to fit in but simply can’t understand social behavior that’s intuitive to the rest of us. He won’t be able to read gestures or facial expressions to assess the mood of the person he’s speaking to. He won’t be able to interpret a nonverbal cue, such as a yawn signifying boredom when he’s hogging the conversation. He won’t be able to understand what someone else is thinking or feeling; that kind of empathy is unnatural to him. He truly is the center of his own universe and will react based on that principle. For example, I had a patient who caught his sister shoplifting and ratted her out—not because he thought he was morally responsible to report his sister’s crime but because he didn’t want to be known as the boy whose sister had a criminal record. Whatever a child with Asperger’s does, he does because he’s thinking of how it will affect him, not anyone else.”

  “Are there other hallmarks of the disorder?”

  “Yes. Someone with Asperger’s might have difficulty organizing and prioritizing rules and tasks. He’ll tend to focus on details instead of the big picture and often will become obsessed for months or years at a time by one specific subject. And he can talk about that subject—even if it’s a sophisticated topic—for hours at a time. For this reason, the disorder is sometimes referred to as the Little Professor syndrome. Children with Asperger’s speak in such an adult manner they often get along better with their parents’ friends than with their own peers.”

  “Does Jacob have that sort of obsessive focus on one subject?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s had several over the years—dogs, and dinosaurs, and most recently, forensic science.”

  “What else might we notice about a person with Asperger’s syndrome?”

  “He’ll adhere slavishly to routine and rules. He’s painfully honest. He will dislike making eye contact. He might have hypersensitivity to light or noise or touch or taste. For example, right now, Jacob is probably working very hard to block out the sound of the fluorescent lights in this courtroom, which you and I can’t even hear. One moment a child with Asperger’s might present as an extremely bright, if awkward, child—and the next, when his routine is disrupted, he might have a meltdown that lasts between ten minutes and several hours.”

  “Like a toddler’s tantrum?”

  “Exactly. Except it’s a lot more debilitating when the child is eighteen and 180 pounds,” Dr. Moon says.

  I can feel my father staring at me, so I turn to him. “Does that happen a lot?” he whispers. “The tantrums?”

  “You get used to it,” I say, although I’m not sure this is true. In reality, you don’t ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path.

  Oliver is walking toward the jury now. “Will Jacob ever be cured of Asperger’s?”

  “At present,” the shrink says, “there’s no cure for autism. It’s not something you outgrow; it’s a condition you have forever.”

  “Dr. Murano, which of the symptoms you’ve related here today has Jacob manifested over the years?”

  “All of them,” she says.

  “Even now, at age eighteen?”

  “Jacob’s gotten much better at rolling with the punches if a routine is disrupted. Although it’s still upsetting, now he has coping mechanisms he can draw upon. Instead of having a screaming fit, like he did at age four, he’ll find a song or a movie and repeat the lyrics or lines over and over.”

  “Doctor, this court has allowed Jacob to take sensory breaks when necessary. Can you explain what that is?”

  “It’s a way for Jacob to get away from the overstimulation that’s upsetting him. When he feels like he’s spiraling out of control, he can remove himself and go to a place that’s quiet and less chaotic. In school, he has a room where he can pull himself together again, and in court, he has the same type of area. Inside are all sorts of materials that Jacob can use to calm himself down—from deep-pressure weighted blankets to a rope swing to fiber-optic lamps.”

  “You said that kids with Asperger’s have an affinity for rules. Is that true of Jacob?”

  “Yes. For example, Jacob knows that school starts at eight-twelve A.M. and because of that rule, he is on time every day. However, one week his mother told him that he would be late for school because he had a dentist appointment. He had a meltdown, put his fist through a wall in his bedroom, and could not be calmed down enough to be taken to the dentist. In Jacob’s mind, he was being asked to break a rule.”

  “He punched in a wall? Do kids with Asperger’s have a propensity for violence?” Oliver asks.

  “That’s a myth. In fact, a child with Asperger’s is more likely to not misbehave than neurotypical children are, simply because he knows that’s the rule. However, a child with Asperger’s also has a very low fight-or-flight threshold. If he feels cornered in any way—verbally, physically, or emotionally—he might either run or strike out blindly.”

  “Have you ever seen Jacob do that?”