House Rules Read online

  --Holy shit,|| Mark says, grinning. I can feel his eyes on me. (That's the other thing about eyes; they can be hot as lasers, and how would you ever know when they're about to be turned on full force? Better not to risk it, and to avoid eye contact.) --He isn't showing you some communication skill, Jess. The retard is actually asking you out.||

  --Mark! For God's sake, don't call him--||

  --I'm not a retard,|| I interrupt.

  --You're wrong. Jacob knows we're just friends,|| Jess says.

  Mark snorts. --You fucking get paid to be his friend!||

  I stand up abruptly. --Is that true?||

  I guess I have never thought about it. My mother arranged for me to meet with Jess.

  I assumed Jess wanted to do it because she (a) is writing that paper and (b) likes my company. But now I can picture my mother ripping another check out of the checkbook and complaining like always that we don't have enough to cover our expenses. I can picture Jess opening the envelope in her dorm room and tucking that check into the back pocket of her jeans.

  I can picture her taking Mark out for pizza, using cash that came from my mother's bank account.

  Gluten-rich mushroom pizza.

  --It's not true,|| Jess says. --I am your friend, Jacob--||

  --But you wouldn't be hanging out with Forrest Gump if you didn't get that sweet check every month,|| Mark says.

  She turns on him. --Mark, go away.||

  --Did you say what I think you said? Are you taking his side?||

  I start rocking back and forth. --Nobody puts Baby in a corner,|| I quote under my breath.

  --This isn't about sides,|| Jess says.

  --Right,|| Mark snaps. --It's about priorities. I want to take you skiing for the afternoon and you blow me off--||

  --I didn't blow you off. I invited you along to a standing appointment I had, one that I couldn't just change at the last minute. I already explained to you how important plans are to someone with Asperger's.||

  Jess grabs Mark's arm, but he shakes her off. --This is bullshit. I might as well be fucking Mother Teresa.||

  He storms out of the pizza place. I don't understand what Jess likes about him. He is in the graduate school of business and he plays a lot of hockey. But whenever he's around, the conversation always has to be about him, and I don't know why that's okay if it's Mark talking but not if it's me.

  Jess rests her head on her folded arms. Her hair is spread out over her shoulders like a cape. From the way her shoulders are moving, she is probably crying.

  --Annie Sullivan,|| I say.

  --What?|| Jess looks up. Her eyes are red.

  --Mother Teresa saved the poor and the sick, and I'm not poor or sick. Annie Sullivan would have been a better example to use, because she's a famous teacher.||

  --Oh, God.|| Jess buries her face in her hands. --I can't handle this.||

  There is a lull in the conversation, so I fill it. --Are you free on Friday now?||

  --You can't be serious.||

  I consider this. Actually, I am serious all the time. Usually I get accused of not having a sense of humor, although I am capable of that, too.

  --Does it matter to you that Mark is the first guy who's ever told me I'm pretty? Or that I actually love him?|| Her voice is climbing, each word another step on a ladder. --Do you even care if I'm happy?||

  --No ... no ... and yes.|| I am getting flustered. Why is she asking me all these things? Mark's gone now; and we can get back to business. --So I made a list of the things people sometimes say that really mean they're tired of listening to you, but I don't know if they're right. Can you check it?||

  --Jesus Christ, Jacob!|| Jess cries. --Just get lost!||

  Her words are huge and fill the entire pizza place. Everyone is watching.

  --I have to go talk to him.|| She stands up.

  --But what about my lesson?||

  --Why don't you think about what you've learned,|| Jess says, --and get back to me?||

  Then she stomps out of the restaurant, leaving me alone at the table.

  The pizza lady brings out the pie, which I will have to eat by myself now. --Hope you're hungry,|| she says.

  I'm not. But I lift up a slice anyway and take a bite and swallow. It tastes like cardboard.

  Something pink winks at me from the other side of the napkin dispenser. Jess has left behind her cell phone. I would call her to tell her I have it, but obviously, that won't work.

  I tuck it into my pocket and make a mental note. I will just bring it to her when we meet on Tuesday, when I have figured out what it is that I am supposed to have learned.

  For over a decade now, we have received a Christmas card from a family I do not know.

  They address it to the Jenningses, who lived in the house before we did. There is usually a snowy scene on the front, and then inside there is printed gold lettering: HAPPY

  HOLIDAYS. FONDLY, THE STEINBERGS.

  The Steinbergs also include a photocopied note that chronicles everything they have been doing over the years. I've read about their daughter, Sarah, who went from taking gymnastics lessons to being accepted at Vassar to joining a consulting firm to moving to an ashram in India and adopting a baby. I've come to know Marty Steinberg's big career breaks at Lehman Brothers and his shock at being out of a job in 2008, when the company folded; and how he went on to teach business at a community college in upstate New York.

  I've seen Vicky, his wife, go from being a stay-at-home mom to an entrepreneur selling cookies with the faces of pedigreed dogs on them. (One year there were samples!) This year, Marty took a leave of absence, and he and Vicky went on a cruise to Antarctica--apparently a lifelong dream that was now possible since Eukanuba had bought out Vicky's company. Sarah and her partner, Inez, got married in California, and there was a picture of Raita, now three, as the flower girl.

  Each Christmas season, I try to get to the Steinbergs' letter before my mother does.

  She tosses them into the trash, saying things like Don't these people ever get the message when the Jenningses don't send a card back? I fish the card out and put it in a shoe box I have reserved specially for the Steinbergs in my closet.

  I don't know why reading their holiday cards makes me feel good, the same way a warm load of laundry does when I'm lying underneath it, or when I take the thesaurus and read through an entire letter's words in one sitting. But today, after I come home from my meeting with Jess, I suffer through the obligatory conversation with my mother (Mom: How did it go? Me: Fine. ) and then go straight up to my room. Like an addict who needs a fix, I go right for the Steinberg letters and I reread them, from the oldest to the most recent.

  It gets a little easier to breathe again, and when I close my eyes I don't see Jess's face on the backs of my lids, grainy like a drawing on an Etch A Sketch. It's like some kind of cryptogram, and A really means Q and Z really means S and so on, so the twist of her mouth and the funny note that jumped in her voice are what she really wanted to say, instead of the words she used.

  I lie down and imagine showing up on the doorstep of Sarah and Inez.

  It is so good to see you, I'd say. You look exactly like I thought you would.

  I pretend that Vicky and Marty are sitting on the deck of their ship. Marty is sipping a martini while Vicky writes out a postcard with a picture of Valletta, Malta, on the front.

  She scrawls, Wish you were here. And this time, she addresses it directly to me.

  Emma

  Nobody dreams of being an agony aunt when they grow up.

  Secretly, we all read advice columns--who hasn't scanned Dear Abby? But sifting through the problems of other people for a living? No thanks.

  I thought that, by now, I'd be a real writer. I'd have books on the New York Times list and I'd be feted by the literati for my ability to combine important issues with books that the masses could relate to. Like many other writer wannabes, I'd gone the back route through editing--textbooks, in my case. I liked editing. There was always a ri