Jodi Picoult - House Rules

I glanced at my mother, and that’s when I saw her crying. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she wasn’t doing anything to try to wipe them away. It was almost as if she didn’t know it was happening.

There were plenty of other times in my life that it would have made more sense for my mother to cry: when she had to go to the school to talk to the principal about something Jacob had done to get himself into trouble, for example. Or when he had one of his tantrums in the middle of a crowded space-like last year, in front of the Santa Claus pavilion at the mall while a bazillion kids and parents watched the nuclear meltdown ensue. But then, my mother had been dry-eyed, her face wiped clean of expression. In fact, during those moments, my mother looked a little like Jacob did.

I don’t know why seeing my brother with two little girls in a sandbox was a straw that broke the so-called camel’s back, for her. I just know that, at that moment, I remember feeling like the world had turned itself inside out. It’s the child who’s supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.

Even then I knew that if Jacob was the one who made her cry, I was the one who had to stop it.

Of course I know where they are; my mother has called me from the courthouse. But that doesn’t keep me from being unable to concentrate on Civitas or Geo until they come home.

I wonder if my teachers will accept that as an excuse: Sorry I didn’t get my homework done: my brother was being arraigned.

Sure, my geometry teacher will say. Like I haven’t heard that one a thousand times.

The minute I hear the door open, I run into the mudroom to find out what happened. My mother walks in, alone, and sits down on the bench where we usually dump our school backpacks.

“Where’s Jacob?” I ask, and very slowly she looks up at me.

“In jail,” she whispers. “Oh, my God, he’s in jail.” She bends at the waist until she is doubled over.

“Mom?” I touch her shoulder, but she doesn’t move. It scares me to death, and it’s eerily familiar.

It takes me a second to place it-the way she’s staring off into space, the way she won’t respond: this is how Jacob looked last week, when we couldn’t get him to come back to us.

“Come on, Mom.” I slip an arm around her waist and lift her. She feels like a bag of bones. I guide her upstairs, wondering why the hell Jacob is in jail. Aren’t you supposed to be guaranteed the right to a speedy trial? Could it have been that speedy? If only I’d done my Civitas homework, maybe I’d understand what had happened, but this much I know: I am not about to ask my mother.

I sit her down on the bed and then I kneel and take off her shoes. “Just lie down,” I suggest, which seems like something she’d say if the tables were turned. “I’ll get you a cup of tea, okay?”

In the kitchen I set the kettle to boil and have a tsunami of déjà vu: the last time I did this-boil a kettle, take out a tea bag, and hook its paper tag over the edge of a mug-I was in Jess Ogilvy’s house. It’s really just a matter of luck that Jacob’s the one sitting in jail right now, and I’m here. It could easily have been the other way around.

Part of me is relieved about that, which makes me feel like total crap.

I wonder what the detective said to Jacob. Why my mother brought him down there in the first place. Maybe that’s why she’s so messed up now: not grief but guilt. That much, I understand. If I’d gone to the cops and told them I had seen Jess alive and naked earlier that day, would it have made matters worse for Jacob, or better?

I don’t really know how my mother takes her tea, so I put in milk and sugar and carry it upstairs. She is sitting up now, the pillows piled behind her. When she sees me, she tears up. “My boy,” she says, as I sit down beside her. She cups her hand around my cheek. “My beautiful boy.”

She might be talking about me, and she might be talking about Jacob. I decide it doesn’t really matter.

“Mom,” I ask. “What’s going on?”

“Jacob has to stay in jail… for two weeks. Then they’ll take him to court again to see if he’s competent to stand trial.”

Okay, I may not be a rocket scientist, but sticking someone who may not be able to handle a trial in jail doesn’t seem like the best way to see if they’re able to handle a trial. I mean, if you can’t handle a trial, how the hell could you handle jail?

“But… he hasn’t done anything wrong,” I say, and I look carefully at my mother, to see if she knows more than I do.

If she does, she’s not showing it. “That doesn’t seem to matter.”

Today in Civitas we talked about the cornerstone of our country’s legal system: that you’re innocent until proven guilty. Locking someone up in jail while you try to figure out what to do next doesn’t seem like you’re giving him the benefit of the doubt. It sounds like you’re already assuming he’s screwed, so he might as well get comfortable in his future living quarters.

My mother tells me how Jacob got suckered into talking to the detective. How she ran to find him a lawyer. How Jacob was arrested in front of her. How he decked the bailiffs when they tried to grab his arms.

I don’t understand why this lawyer wasn’t able to get Jacob released and back home. I read enough Grisham novels to know that happens all the time, especially for people who don’t have a previous record.

“So what happens now?” I ask.

I don’t just mean for Jacob, either. I mean for us. All those years I wished Jacob didn’t exist, and now that he’s not in the house, it’s like there’s an elephant in the room. How am I supposed to make a can of soup for dinner, knowing that my brother is in a cell somewhere? How am I supposed to get up in the morning, go to school, pretend that this is life as usual?

“Oliver-that’s the lawyer-says that people get unarrested all the time. The police get some new evidence, and they let the original suspect go.”

She is holding on to this like it’s a lucky charm, a rabbit’s foot, an amulet. Jacob will be unarrested, and we can all go back to the way we were. Never mind that the way we were wasn’t that terrific, or that unarrested doesn’t mean the slate is wiped entirely clear so you forget what happened. Imagine spending twenty years in prison for a crime you never committed before you’re acquitted thanks to DNA evidence. Sure, you’re free now, but you don’t get back those twenty years. You don’t ever stop being “that guy who used to be in prison.”

Because I don’t know how to say this to her-and I’m sure she wouldn’t want to hear it, anyway-I reach for the remote control on her nightstand and turn on the TV that’s sitting on the dresser across the room. The news is on, the weatherman predicting a storm sometime next week. “Thanks, Norm,” the anchorwoman says. “Breaking news in the case of the murder of Jessica Ogilvy… Police have arrested eighteen-year-old Jacob Hunt of Townsend, Vermont, in connection with the crime.”

Beside me, my mother freezes. Jacob’s school photo fills the screen. In it, he is wearing a striped blue shirt and, as usual, not staring at the camera. “Jacob is a senior at Townsend Regional High School and was tutored by the victim.”

Holy shit.

“We’ll have more on this story as it develops,” the anchor promises.

My mother lifts the remote control. I figure she is going to turn off the television, but instead, she hurls it at the screen. The remote breaks apart, and the TV screen cracks. She rolls onto her side.