House Rules: A Novel Read online

  The truth is, I have said that to Jacob. And there’s a piece of me rejoicing in the fact that he initiated an interaction with another human, instead of the other way around—even if the interaction wasn’t socially appropriate.

  The world, for Jacob, is truly black and white. Once, when he was younger, his gym teacher called because Jacob had a meltdown during kickball when a kid threw the big red ball at him to tag him out. You don’t throw things at people, Jacob tearfully explained. It’s a rule!

  Why should a rule that works in one situation not work in another? If a bully taunts him and I tell him it’s all right to reciprocate—because sometimes that’s the only way to get these kids to leave him alone—why shouldn’t he do the same with a teacher who humiliates him in public?

  “Teachers deserve respect,” I explain.

  “Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?”

  I blink at him, speechless. Because the world isn’t fair, I think, but Jacob already knows that better than most of us.

  “Are you mad at me?” Unfazed, he reaches for a glass and pours himself some soy milk.

  I think that’s the attribute I miss seeing the most in my son: empathy. He worries about hurting my feelings, or making me upset, but that’s not the same as viscerally feeling someone else’s pain. Over the years, he’s learned empathy the way I might learn Greek—translating an image or situation in the clearinghouse of his mind and trying to attach the appropriate sentiment to it, but never really fluent in the language.

  Last spring, we were filling one of his prescriptions at the pharmacy and I noticed a rack of Mother’s Day cards. “Just once I’d like you to buy one of those for me,” I said.

  “Why?” Jacob asked.

  “So I know you love me.”

  He shrugged. “You already know that.”

  “But it would be nice,” I said, “to wake up on Mother’s Day and, like every other mother in this country, to get a card from her son.”

  Jacob thought about this. “What day is Mother’s Day?” he asked.

  I told him, and then I forgot about the conversation, until May 10. When I went downstairs and started my Sunday morning coffee-making routine, I found an envelope propped up against the glass carafe. In it was a Mother’s Day card.

  It didn’t say Dear Mom. It wasn’t signed. In fact, it wasn’t written on at all—because Jacob had only done what I’d told him to do, and nothing more.

  That day, I sat down at the kitchen table and laughed. I laughed until I started to cry.

  Now, I look up at my son, who isn’t looking at me. “No, Jacob,” I say. “I’m not mad at you.”

  Once, when Jacob was ten, we were walking the aisles of a Toys “R” Us in Williston when a little boy jumped out from an endcap wearing a Darth Vader mask and brandishing a light saber. “Bang, you’re dead!” the boy cried, and Jacob believed him. He started shrieking and rocking, and then he swept his arm through the display on the shelves. He was doing it to make sure he was not a ghost, to make sure he still could leave an impact in this world. He spun and flailed, trampling boxes as he ran away from me.

  By the time I tackled him in the doll section, he was completely out of control. I tried singing Marley to him. I shouted at him to make him respond to my voice. But Jacob was in his own little world, and finally the only way I could make him calm was to become a human blanket, to pin him down on the industrial tile with his arms and legs flung wide.

  By then, the police had been called on suspicion of child abuse.

  It took fifteen minutes to explain to the officers that my son was autistic, and that I wasn’t trying to hurt him—I was trying to help him.

  I’ve often thought, since then, about what would happen if Jacob was stopped by the police while he was on his own—like on Sundays, when he bikes into town to meet Jess. Like the parents of many autistic kids, I’ve done what the message boards suggest: In Jacob’s wallet is a card that says he’s autistic, and that explains to the officer that all the behaviors Jacob is exhibiting—flat affect, an inability to look him in the eye, even a flight response—are the hallmarks of Asperger’s syndrome. And yet, I’ve wondered what would happen if the police came in contact with a six-foot, 185-pound, out-of-control boy who reached into his back pocket. Would they wait for him to show his ID card, or would they shoot first?

  This is in part why Jacob isn’t allowed to drive. He has had the state drivers’ manual memorized since he was fifteen, and I know he’d follow traffic rules as if his life depended on it. But what if he got pulled over by a state trooper? Do you know what you were doing? the trooper would say, and Jacob would reply: Driving. Immediately, he’d be tagged as a wise guy when, in fact, he was only answering the question literally.

  If the trooper asked him if he ran a red light, Jacob would say yes—even if it had happened six months earlier, when the trooper was nowhere nearby.

  I know better than to ask him whether my butt looks fat in a particular pair of jeans, because he’ll tell me the truth. A police officer would not have that history to help color Jacob’s answer.

  Well, at any rate, they are not likely to stop him while he’s riding into town on his bicycle—unless they take pity on him because it’s so cold. I learned a long time ago to stop asking Jacob if he wants a ride. The temperature matters less to him than his independence, in this one small thing.

  Hauling the laundry basket into Jacob’s room, I place his folded clothes on the bed. When he comes home from school, he’ll put them away on his own, with the collars all lined up precisely and the boxer shorts arranged by pattern (stripes, solids, polka dots). On his desk is an overturned fish tank with a small coffee cup warmer, a tinfoil dish, and one of my lipstick containers beneath it. Sighing, I lift the fingerprint fuming chamber and reclaim my makeup, careful not to disturb the rest of the precisely ordered items.

  Jacob’s room has the nuclear precision of an Architectural Digest feature: everything has its place; the bed is made neatly; the pencils on the desk sit at perfect right angles to the wood grain. Jacob’s room is the place entropy goes to die.

  On the other hand, Theo is messy enough to make up for both of them. I can barely kick my way through the field of dirty clothes tangled on his carpet, and when I set the basket down on Theo’s bed, something squeaks. I don’t put away Theo’s laundry, either—but that’s because I can’t bear to see the drawers haphazardly stuffed with clothes that I distinctly remember folding on the laundry counter.

  I glance around and spy a glass with something green festering inside it, beside a half-eaten container of yogurt. I place these into the empty basket to go back downstairs and then, in a fit of kindness, try to pull the bedding into some semblance of order. It’s when I am shaking the pillowcase into position around Theo’s pillow that the plastic case falls down and hits my ankle.

  It’s a game—something called Naruto, with a manga cartoon character brandishing a sword.

  It’s played on the Wii, a gaming system we’ve never owned.

  I could ask Theo why he has this, but something tells me I do not want to hear the answer. Not after this weekend, when I learned that Jacob’s been running away at night. Not after last night, when his math teacher called to tell me he’s acting out in class.

  Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There’s only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces.

  I stare at the video game for a moment, and then I slip it back into the pillowcase again before leaving Theo’s room.

  Theo

  I taught my brother how to stick up for himself.

  It happened when we were younger—I was eleven and he was fourteen. I was on a jungle gym on the playground and he was sitting on the grass, reading a biography that the librarian had purchased just for him about Edmond Locard, the father of fingerprint analysis. Mom was inside, having one of a bazillion IEP meetings to make sure that Jacob’s school