House Rules (36 page)

She is flipping through an in-flight magazine. I know, she says.

Really sorry.

I‘m sure.

Like, about stealing your credit card number. And all of that.

Which is why you‘re paying me back for these tickets return trips, too even if it takes you till you‘re fifty-six, she says.

The flight attendant walks by, asking if anyone would like to purchase a beverage.

My mother holds up her hand. What do you want? she asks me, and I say tomato juice.

And I‘ll have a gin and tonic, she tells the flight attendant.

Really? I am impressed. I didn‘t know my mother drank gin.

She sighs. Desperate times call for desperate measures, Theo. Then she looks up at me, her brow wrinkled in thought. When was the last time you and I were alone like this?

Um, I say. Never?

Huh, my mother says, considering this.

The flight attendant returns with our drinks. Here you go, she chirps. You two getting off in L.A. or continuing on to Hawaii?

I wish, my mother says, and when she twists the bottle top of the gin, it makes a sighing sound.

Don‘t we all? The flight attendant laughs, and she moves down the aisle.

The page my mother has stopped at in her magazine is a tourism spread of Hawaii, actually, or at least something equally tropical. Maybe we should just stay on the plane and go there, I say.

She laughs. Squatters‘ rights. Sorry, sir, we‘re not vacating seats Fifteen A and B.

By dinnertime, we could be sitting on a beach.

Getting tan, my mother muses.

Drinking piña coladas, I suggest.

My mother raises a brow. Virgin for you.

There is a pause, as we both imagine a life that will never be ours.

Maybe, I say after another moment, we should bring Jacob along. He loves coconut.

This will never happen. My brother won‘t get on a plane; he‘d have the Mother of all Meltdowns before that happened. And you can‘t exactly row a boat to Hawaii. Not to mention the fact that we are categorically broke. But still.

My mother lays her head on my shoulder. It feels weird, like I‘m the one taking care of her, instead of the other way around. Already, though, I‘m taller than her, and still growing. Let‘s do that, my mother agrees, as if we have a prayer.

Jacob

I have a joke:

Two muffins are in an oven.

One muffin says, Wow, it‘s really hot in here.

The other one jumps and says, Yikes! A talking muffin.

This is funny because

1. Muffins don‘t talk.

2. I am sane enough to know that. In spite of what my mother and Oliver and practically every psychiatrist in Vermont seem to think, I have never struck up a conversation with a muffin in my entire life.

3. That would just be plain corny.

4. You got that joke, too, right?

My mother said that she would be talking to Dr. Newcomb for a half hour, yet it has been forty-two minutes and she still has not come back into the waiting room.

We are here because Oliver said we have to be. Even though he managed to get all those concessions at court for me, and even though all of those help him prove his insanity defense to the jury (although don‘t ask me how insanity is not equivalent to disability, or even quirkiness), apparently we also have to meet with a shrink he‘s found whose job it will be to tell the jury that they should let me go because I have Asperger‘s.

Finally, when it has been sixteen minutes longer than my mother said it would be when I have started to sweat a little and my mouth has gone dry, because I‘m thinking maybe my mother forgot about me and I will be stuck in this little waiting room forever Dr. Newcomb opens the door. Jacob? she says, smiling. Why don‘t you come in?

She is a very tall woman with an even taller tower of hair and skin as smooth and rich as dark chocolate. Her teeth gleam like headlights, and I find myself staring at them.

My mother is nowhere in the room. I feel a hum rise in my throat.

Where‘s my mom? I ask. She said she‘d be back in a half hour, and now it‘s forty-seven minutes.

We took a little longer than I expected. Your mom went out the back way and is waiting for you just outside, Dr. Newcomb says, as if she can read my mind. Now, Jacob, I‘ve had a lovely talk with your mom. And Dr. Murano. She sits down and offers me the seat across from her. It‘s upholstered in zebra stripes, which I don‘t really like. Patterns in general make me uneasy. Every time I look at a zebra, I can‘t figure out whether it‘s black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.

It‘s my job to examine you, Dr. Newcomb says. I have to give a report back to the court, so what you say here isn‘t confidential. Do you understand what that means?

Intended to be kept secret,
I say, rattling off the definition and frowning. But you‘re a doctor?

Yes. A psychiatrist, just like Dr. Murano.

Then what I tell you is privileged, I say. There‘s doctor-patient confidentiality.

No, this is a special circumstance where I‘m going to tell people what you say, because of the court case.

This whole procedure is starting to sound even worse not only do I have to speak to a psychiatrist I don‘t know, but she plans to blab about the session. Then I‘d rather talk to Dr. Moon. She doesn‘t tell anyone my secrets.

I‘m afraid that‘s not an option, Dr. Newcomb says, and then she looks at me. Do you have secrets?

Everyone has secrets.

Does having secrets sometimes make you feel bad?

I sit very upright on the chair, so that my back doesn‘t have to touch the crazy zigzagged fabric. Sometimes, I guess.

She crosses her legs. They are really long, like a giraffe‘s. Giraffes and zebras. And I am the elephant, who cannot forget.

Do you understand that what you did, Jacob, was wrong in the eyes of the law?

The law doesn‘t have eyes, I tell her. It has courts and judges and witnesses and juries, but no eyes. I wonder where Oliver dug
this
one up. I mean,
honestly.

Do you understand that what you did was wrong?

I shake my head. I did the right thing.

Why was it right?

I was following the rules.

What rules?

I could tell her more, but she is going to tell other people, and that means that I will not be the only one who gets into trouble. But I know she wants me to explain; I can tell by the way she leans forward. I shrink back in the chair. It means touching the zebra print, but it‘s the lesser of two evils.

I see dead people.
Dr. Newcomb just stares at me. It‘s from
The Sixth Sense,
I tell her.

Yes, I know, she says, and she tilts her head. Do you believe in God, Jacob?

We don‘t go to church. My mom says religion is the root of all evil.

I didn‘t ask what your mom thinks about religion. I asked what
you
think about it.

I
don‘t
think about it.

Those rules you mentioned, Dr. Newcomb says.

Didn‘t we get off this topic?

Do you know that there‘s a rule against killing people?

Yes.

Well, Dr. Newcomb asks, do you think it would be wrong to kill somebody?

Of course I do. But I can‘t say that. I can‘t say it because to admit to this rule would break another one. I stand up and start walking, bouncing up and down on my toes because sometimes it helps me jog the rest of my brain and body into sync.

But I don‘t answer.

Dr. Newcomb isn‘t giving up, though. When you were at Jess‘s house on the day she died, did you understand that it‘s wrong to kill somebody?

I‘m not bad,
I quote.
I‘m just drawn that way.

I really need you to answer the question, Jacob. On the day that you were at Jess‘s house, did you feel like you were doing something wrong?

No, I say immediately. I was following the rules.

Why did you move Jess‘s body? she asks.

I was setting up a crime scene.

Why did you clean up the evidence at the house?

Because we‘re supposed to clean up our messes.

Dr. Newcomb writes something down. You had a fight with Jess during your tutoring session a couple of days before she died, right?

Yes.

What did she say to you that day?

‗Just get lost.‘

But you went to her house on Tuesday afternoon anyway?

I nod. Yes. We had an appointment.

Jess was obviously upset with you. Why did you go back?

People are always saying things that aren‘t true. I shrug. Like when Theo tells me to
get a grip.
It doesn‘t mean
hold something,
it means
calm down.
I assumed Jess was doing the same kind of thing.

What were your reactions to the victim‘s responses?

I shake my head. I don‘t know what you‘re talking about.

When you got to Jess‘s house, did you yell at her?

At one point I had leaned right down into her face and screamed at her to wake up.

Yes, I say. But she didn‘t answer me.

Do you understand that Jess is never coming back?

Of course I understand that. I could probably tell Dr. Newcomb a thing or two about body decomposition. Yeah.

Do you think Jess was scared that day?

I don‘t know.

How do you think you would have felt, if you were the victim?

For a moment, I consider this. Dead, I say.

Oliver

Three weeks before we go to trial, we start jury selection. You would think that, with autism being diagnosed at the rate it currently is, finding a jury of Jacob‘s peers or at least parents who have children on the spectrum would not be as difficult as it is. But the only two jurors with autistic children who are in our initial pool are the ones Helen uses her peremptory strikes against to get them removed.

In between my stints in court, I receive the reports from Dr. Newcomb and Dr. Cohn, the two psychiatrists who‘ve met with Jacob. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Cohn has found Jacob quite sane the State‘s shrink would declare a
toaster
sane and Dr. Newcomb has said that Jacob was legally insane at the time the crime was committed.

Even so, Newcomb‘s report isn‘t going to be that much help. In it, Jacob comes off sounding like an automaton. The truth is, jurors might want to be fair, but their gut instinct about a defendant has a great deal to do with the verdict rendered. Which means that I‘d better stack the odds to make Jacob look as sympathetic as possible, since I have no intention of letting him actually testify. With his flat affect, his darting eyes, his nervous tics well, that would just be a disaster.

A week before the trial begins, I turn my attention to getting Jacob ready for court.

When I reach the Hunt household, Thor bolts out of the car and runs to the porch, his tail wagging. He‘s gotten pretty attached to Theo, to the point where I sometimes wonder if I ought to just leave him curled up on the kid‘s bed overnight, since he seems to have taken up residence there anyway. And God knows Theo needs the company in the wake of his cross-country journey, he‘s been grounded until he‘s thirty although I keep telling him that I can probably find a reason to appeal.

I knock, but no one answers the door. I‘ve gotten used to letting myself inside, though, so I walk in and watch Thor trot upstairs. Hello, I call out, and Emma steps forward with a smile.

You‘re just in time, she says.

For what?

Jacob got a hundred on a math test, and as a reward I‘m letting him set up a crime scene.

That‘s
macabre.

Just another day in my life, she says.

Ready! Jacob calls from upstairs.

I follow Emma, but instead of heading to Jacob‘s room, we continue on to the bathroom. When she pushes open the door, I gag, my hand pressed against my mouth.

What … what is this? I manage.

There is blood everywhere. It‘s like I‘ve stepped into the lair of a serial killer. One long line of blood arcs horizontally across the white shell of the shower wall. Facing that, on the mirror, are a series of drops in various elongated shapes.

Even more strange, Emma doesn‘t seem to be the least bit upset that the walls of the shower and the mirror and sink are completely drenched with blood. She takes one look at my face and starts laughing. Relax, Oliver, she says. It‘s just corn syrup.

She reaches over to the mirror, dabs her finger to the mess, and holds it up to my lips.

I can‘t resist the urge to taste her. And yeah, it
is
corn syrup, with red dye, I‘m guessing.

Way to contaminate a crime scene, Mom, Jacob mutters. So you remember that the tail of the bloodstain usually points in the direction the blood was traveling …

All of a sudden I can see Jess Ogilvy standing in the shower, and Jacob across from her, standing right where Emma is.

I‘ll give you a hint, Jacob tells Emma. The victim was right here. He points to the bath mat between the shower stall and the mirror over the sink.

I can easily picture Jacob with a bleach solution, wiping down the mirror and the tub at Jess Ogilvy‘s place.

Why the bathroom? I ask. What made you choose to set your crime scene here, Jacob?

Those words are all it takes to make Emma understand why I‘m so shaken. Oh, God, she says, turning. I didn‘t think … I didn‘t realize …

Blood spatter‘s messy, Jacob says, confounded. I thought my mom would be less likely to yell at me if I did it in the bathroom.

A line from Dr. Newcomb‘s report jumps out at me:
I was following the rules.

Clean it up, I announce, and I walk out.

New rules, I say, when the three of us are sitting at the kitchen table. First and foremost: No more crime scene staging.

Why not? Jacob demands.

You tell me, Jake. You‘re on trial for homicide. You think it‘s smart to create a fake murder a week before your trial? You don‘t know what neighbors are peeking through your curtains

(A) Our neighbors are too far to see through the windows and (B) that crime scene upstairs was nothing like what was at Jess‘s house. This one showed the arterial bleed in the shower and also the cast-off pattern of blood flung from the knife that killed the victim behind her, on the mirror. At Jess‘s