Jodi Picoult - House Rules

“Jacob!” I grab his shoulders and pull on them. He topples to the side and just lies where he has fallen.

Panic climbs the ladder of my throat. “Speak to me,” I demand. I am thinking catatonia. I am thinking schizophrenia. I am thinking of all the lost places Jacob could slip to in his own mind, and not return.

Straddling his big body, I strike him hard enough across the face to leave a red handprint, and still he doesn’t react.

“Don’t,” I say, starting to cry. “Don’t do this to me.”

There is a voice at the door. “What’s going on?” Theo asks, his face still hazy with sleep and his hair sticking up in hedgehog spikes.

In that instant, I realize that Theo might be my savior. “Say something that would upset your brother,” I order.

He looks at me as if I’m crazy.

“There’s something wrong with him,” I explain, my voice breaking. “I just want him to come back. I need to make him come back.”

Theo glances down at Jacob’s slack body, his vacant eyes, and I can tell he’s scared. “But-”

“Do it, Theo,” I say.

I think it’s the quiver in my voice, not the command, which makes him agree. Tentatively, Theo leans close to Jacob. “Wake up!”

“Theo,” I sigh. We both know he’s holding back.

“You’re going to be late for school,” Theo says. I watch closely, but there’s no recognition in Jacob’s eyes.

“I’m getting in the shower first,” Theo adds. “And then I’m gonna mess up your closet.” When Jacob just stays silent, the anger Theo usually keeps hidden rolls over him like a tsunami. “You freak,” he shouts, so loud that Jacob’s hair stirs with the force of his breath. “You stupid goddamn freak!”

Jacob doesn’t even flinch.

“Why can’t you be normal?” Theo yells, punching his brother in the chest. He hits him again, harder this time. “Just be fucking normal!” he cries, and I realize tears are streaming down Theo’s face. For a moment, we are caught in this hell, with Jacob unresponsive between us.

“Get me a phone,” I say, and Theo turns and flies out the door.

As I sink down beside Jacob, the bulk of his weight sways toward me. Theo reappears with the telephone, and I punch in the page number for Jacob’s psychiatrist, Dr. Murano. She calls me back thirty seconds later, her voice still rough with sleep. “Emma,” she says. “What’s going on?”

I explain Jacob’s meltdown last night, and his catatonia this morning. “And you don’t know what triggered it?” she asks.

“No. He had a meeting with his tutor yesterday.” I look at Jacob. A line of drool snakes from the corner of his mouth. “I called her, but she hasn’t phoned me back yet.”

“Does he look like he’s in physical distress?”

No, I think. That would be me. “I don’t know… I don’t think so.”

“Is he breathing?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know who you are?”

“No,” I admit, and this is what really scares me. If he doesn’t know who I am, how can I help him remember who he is?

“Tell me his vitals.”

I put the phone down and look at my wristwatch, make a count. “His pulse is ninety and his respirations are twenty.”

“Look, Emma,” the doctor says, “I’m an hour away from where you are. I think you need to take him to the ER.”

I know what will happen then. If Jacob is unable to snap out of this, he’ll be a candidate for a 302 involuntary commitment in the hospital psych ward.

After I hang up, I kneel down in front of Jacob. “Baby, just give me a sign. Just show me you’re on the other side.”

Jacob doesn’t even blink.

Wiping my eyes, I head to Theo’s room. He’s barricaded himself inside; I have to bang heavily on the door to be heard over the beat of his music. When he finally opens it, his eyes are red-rimmed and his jaw is set. “I need your help moving him,” I say flatly, and for once Theo doesn’t fight me. Together we try to haul Jacob’s big frame out of his bed and downstairs, into the car. I take his arms; Theo takes his legs. We drag, we push, we shove. By the time we reach the mudroom door, I am bathed in sweat and Theo’s legs are bruised from where he twice stumbled under Jacob’s weight.

“I’ll get the car door,” Theo says, and he runs into the driveway, his socks crunching lightly on the old snow.

Together, we manage to get Jacob to the car. He doesn’t even make a sound when his bare feet touch the icy driveway. We put him into the backseat headfirst, and then I struggle to pull him to a sitting position, practically crawling into his lap to fasten his seat belt. With my head pressed up against Jacob’s heart, I listen for the click of metal to metal.

“Heeeeere’s Johnny.”

The words aren’t his. They’re Jack Nicholson’s, in The Shining. But it’s his voice, his beautiful, tattered, sandpaper voice.

“Jacob?” I cup my hands around his face.

He is not looking at me, but then again, he never looks at me. “Mom,” Jacob says, “my feet are really cold.”

I burst into tears and gather him tight in my arms. “Oh, baby,” I reply, “let’s do something about that.”

This is where I go, when I go:

It’s a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through.

I’m there, but I’m not there.

I am pounding to be let out, but nobody can hear me.

This is where I go, when I go:

To a country where everyone’s face looks different from mine, and the language is the act of not speaking, and noise is everywhere in the air we breathe. I am doing what the Romans do in Rome; I am trying to communicate, but no one has bothered to tell me that these people cannot hear.

This is where I go, when I go:

Somewhere completely, unutterably orange.

This is where I go, when I go:

To the place where my body becomes a piano, full of black keys only-the sharps and the flats, when everyone knows that to play a song other people want to hear, you need some white keys.

This is why I come back:

To find those white keys.

I am not exaggerating when I say that my mother has been staring at me for fifteen minutes. “Shouldn’t you be doing something else?” I finally ask.

“Right. You’re right,” she says, flustered, but she doesn’t actually leave.

“Mom,” I groan. “There has got to be something more fascinating than watching me eat.” There’s watching paint dry, for example. Or watching the laundry cycle.

I know that I’ve given her a scare today, because of what happened this morning. It’s apparent in (a) her inability to leave my side for more than three seconds and (b) her willingness to cook me Ore-Ida Crinkles fries for breakfast. She even forced Theo to take the bus today, instead of being driven into school like usual, because she didn’t want to leave me at home alone and had already decided that I was going to have a sick day.

Frankly, I don’t understand why she’s so upset, when I am the one who went missing.

Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I announce. “Are you coming, too?”

That, finally, shocks her into moving. “You’re sure you feel all right?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come up and check on you in a few minutes, then.”

As soon as she is gone, I put the plate with the French fries on the nightstand. I am going to take a shower; I just have something to do first.

I have my own fuming chamber. It used to be the home of my pet fish, Arlo, before he died. The empty fish tank sits on the top of my dresser now, inverted. Underneath the fish tank is a coffee cup warmer. I used to use a Sterno, but my mother wasn’t very enthusiastic about fire (even one burning at low level) in my room, hence the electric warmer. On top of this I make a little boat out of aluminum foil, and then I squeeze in a small nickel-size dollop of Krazy Glue. I take the mug of cocoa (nondairy, of course) my mother brought me and stick it in the chamber, too-it will provide humidity in the air, even though I won’t want to drink it after the fuming, when white scum is floating around on its surface. Finally, I place inside the drinking glass that has a known sample on it-my test fingerprint-to make sure everything is working.