Jodi Picoult - House Rules

He doesn’t touch me or hug me or comfort me, the way my mom would. The way any other human would. Jacob just keeps fanning his fingers, and then he says I’m sorry I’m sorry like I did, an echo that’s been stripped of its music, like rain on tin.

It’s prosody. It’s part of Asperger’s. When Jacob was little, he would repeat questions I asked and throw them back at me like a baseball pitch instead of answering. My mother told me this was like his movie quotes, a verbal stim. It was Jacob’s way of feeling the words in his mouth when he had nothing to say in return.

But all the same, I let myself pretend it’s his robotic, monotone way of asking for my forgiveness, too.

That day when we come home from court, instead of watching CrimeBusters, I choose a different video instead. It is a home movie of me when I was a baby, only one year old. It must be my birthday because there is a cake, and I am clapping and smiling and saying things like Mama and Dada and milk. Every time someone says my name I look up, right into the camera.

I look normal.

My parents are happy. My dad’s there, and he’s not even in any videos we have of Theo. My mother doesn’t have the line between her eyes that she has now. Most people take home movies, after all, to capture something they want to remember, not a moment they’d rather forget.

That’s not the case later on in the video. All of a sudden, instead of sticking my fingers in a cake and offering up a big gummy smile, I’m rocking in front of the washing machine, watching the clothes turn in circles. I’m lying in front of the television, but instead of watching the programming, I’m lining up Lego pieces end to end. My father isn’t in the film anymore; instead there are people I don’t know-a woman with frizzy yellow hair and a sweatshirt with a cat on it who gets down on the floor with me and moves my head so that I focus on a puzzle she’s set down. A lady with bright blue eyes is having a conversation with me, if you can call it that:

Lady: Jacob, are you excited about going to the circus?

Me: Yes.

Lady: What do you want to see at the circus?

Me: (No answer)

Lady: Say, At the circus, I want to see…

Me: I want to see clowns.

Lady (gives me an M &M): I love clowns. Are you excited about the circus?

Me: Yeah, I want to see clowns.

Lady (gives me three M &M’s): Jacob, that’s great!

Me: (I stuff the M &M’s into my mouth)

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.

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.