House Rules (19 page)

Suddenly he grabs my shoulder. Hey, he says, and I start to scream.

His hat has fallen off so that I can see he is a redhead, and everyone knows that people with red hair don‘t really have red hair, they have orange hair. And worse, his hair is long. It falls all around his face and his shoulders, and if he leans any closer it might land on me.

The sounds that I make are high and piercing, louder than the voices of everyone who is telling me to
shut the fuck up,
louder than the officer who tells me he‘ll write me up if I do not stop. But I can‘t, because by now, the sound is oozing out of all my pores and even when I press my lips together my body is screaming. I grab the bars of the cell door

contusions are caused by blood vessels that are broken as the result of the blow
and smack my head against them
cerebral contusion associated with subdural hematoma in
the front lobe is associated with mortality
and again
each red blood cell is one-third
hemoglobin
and then just as I predicted my skin cannot contain what‘s happening inside me and it splits and the blood runs down my face and into my eyes and mouth.

I hear:

Get this fucking nutcase out of my house.

And

If he‘s got AIDS I‘m gonna sue this state for everything it‘s got.

My blood tastes like pennies, like copper, like iron
Blood makes up seven percent
of the total body weight

On the count of three, I hear. Two people grab my arms and I am moving, but my feet don‘t feel like they belong to me and it‘s too yellow under the lights and there is metal in my mouth and metal on my wrists and then I don‘t see or hear or taste anything at all.

I think I might be dead.

I make this deduction from the following facts:

1. The room that I am in is monochromatic floor, walls, ceiling all the color of pale flesh.

2. The room is soft. When I walk, it feels like walking on a tongue. When I lean against the walls, they lean against me, too. I cannot reach the ceiling, but it stands to reason it is the same. There‘s one door, without any windows, or a knob.

3. There is no noise except for my breathing.

4. There is no furniture. Just a mat, which is flesh-colored, too, and soft.

5. There is a grate in the middle of the floor, but when I look down inside it, I cannot see anything. Maybe that‘s the tunnel that leads back to earth.

Then again, there are other factors that lead me to believe that I might not actually be dead after all.

1. If I were dead, why would I be breathing?

2. Shouldn‘t there be other dead people around?

3. Dead people don‘t have fierce headaches, do they?

4. Heaven probably does not have a door, knob notwithstanding.

I touch my hand to my scalp and find a bandage shaped like a butterfly. There is blood on my shirt that has dried brown and stiff. My eyes are swollen, and there are tiny cuts on my hands.

I walk around the grate, giving it a wide berth. Then I lie down on the mat with my arms crossed over my chest.

This is what my grandfather looked like, in his coffin.

This is not how Jess looked.

Maybe she‘s what is inside that grate. Maybe she is on the other side of that door.

Would she be happy to see me? Or angry? Would I look at her and be able to tell the difference?

I wish I could cry, like other humans do.

Emma

Jacob‘s medicines and supplements fill two full gallon-size Ziploc bags. Some are prescription antianxiety meds given by Dr. Murano, for example and others, like the glutathione, I get online for him. I am waiting outside the visitors‘ entrance of the jail, holding these, when the door is unlocked.

My mother used to tell me how, when she was a little girl, her appendix burst. That was back in the day before parents were allowed to stay with their children during hospitalizations, and so my grandmother would arrive four hours before visiting hours began and would stand at the front of a roped-off queue that my mother could see from her hospital bed. My grandmother would just stand there, smiling and waving, until they let her in.

If Jacob knows I‘m waiting for him, if he knows that I will see him every day at nine o‘clock well, that‘s a routine he can cling to.

I would have expected there to be more people waiting with me for the front door to open, but maybe for the rest of the mothers who have come to jail to visit their sons, this is old hat. Maybe they are used to the routine. There is only one other person waiting with me, a man dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase. He must be a lawyer. He stamps his feet.

Cold out, he says, smiling tightly.

I smile back. It is. He must be a defense attorney, coming in here to see his client.

Do you, um, know how this works?

Oh, first time? he says. It‘s a piece of cake. You go in, give up your license, and go through the metal detectors. Kind of like checking in for a flight.

Except you don‘t go anywhere, I muse.

He glances at me and laughs. That‘s for damn sure.

A correctional officer appears on the other side of the glass door and turns the lock.

Hey, Joe, the lawyer says, and the officer grunts a greeting. You see the Bruins last night?

Yeah. Answer me this. How come the Patriots and the Sox can win championships but the Bs are still skating like crap?

I follow them to a control booth, where the officer steps inside and the lawyer hands over his driver‘s license. The lawyer scribbles something on a clipboard and hands his keys to the officer. Then he walks through a metal detector, heading down a hall where I lose sight of him.

Can I help you, ma‘am? the officer asks.

Yes. I‘m here to visit my son. Jacob Hunt.

Hunt. He scans a list. Oh, Hunt. Right. He just came in last night.

Yes.

Well, you‘re not approved yet.

For what?

Visitation. You‘ll probably be clear by Saturday that‘s when visiting hours are, anyway.

Saturday? I repeat. You expect me to wait till
Saturday
?

Sorry, ma‘am. Until you‘re cleared, I can‘t help you.

My son is autistic. He needs to see me. When his routine gets changed, he can get incredibly upset. Even violent.

Guess it‘s a good thing he‘s behind bars, then, the officer says.

But he needs his medication … I lift the two Ziploc bags and set them on the lip of the counter.

Our medical staff can administer prescription meds, the officer says. I can get you a form to fill out for that.

There are dietary supplements, too. And he can‘t eat glutens, or caseins

Have his doctor contact the warden‘s office.

Jacob‘s diet and supplements, however, weren‘t mandated by a doctor they were just tips, like a hundred others, that mothers of autistic kids had learned over the years and had passed down to others in the same boat, as
something that might work.
When Jacob breaks the diet, his behavior gets much worse …

Maybe we should put all our inmates on it, then, the officer says. Look, I‘m sorry, but if we don‘t get a doctor‘s note, we don‘t pass it along to the inmate.

Was it my fault that the medical community couldn‘t endorse treatments that autistic parents swore by? That money for autism research was spread so thin that even though many physicians would agree these supplements helped Jacob to focus or to take the edge off his hypersensitivity, they couldn‘t scientifically tell you why? If I‘d waited for doctors and scientists to tell me conclusively how to help my son, he would still be locked in his own little world like he was when he was three, unresponsive and isolated.

Not unlike, I realize, a jail cell.

Tears fill my eyes. I don‘t know what to do.

I must look like I‘m about to fall apart, because the officer‘s voice gets softer.

Your son have a lawyer? he asks.

I nod.

Might be a good place to start, he suggests.

From Auntie Em‘s column:

What I Know Now That I Wish I‘d Known Before I Had Kids
1. If you stick a piece of bread in a VCR, it will not come out intact.

2. Garbage bags don‘t work as parachutes.

3.
Childproofing
is a relative term.

4. A tantrum is like a magnet: eyes cannot help but lock onto you and your child when it happens.

5. Legos are not absorbed by the digestive tract.

6. Snow is a food group.

7. Kids know when you are not listening to them.

8. A Brussels sprout covered in cheese is still a Brussels sprout.

9. The best place to cry is in a mother‘s arms.

10. You‘ll never be as good a mother as you want to be.

From my car, I call Oliver Bond. They won‘t let me in to see Jacob, I say.

In the background I can hear a dog bark. Okay.

Okay? I can‘t see my son, and you think that‘s okay?

I meant
okay,
as in
tell me more.
Not
okay
as in … Just tell me what they said.

I‘m not on some approved visitors list, I shout. Do you think Jacob has any idea that he needs to tell the jail who can and cannot visit him?

Emma, the lawyer says. Take a deep breath.

I can‘t take a deep breath. Jacob does not belong in jail.

I know. I‘m sorry about that

Don‘t be sorry, I snap. Be
effective.
Get me in to visit my son.

He is quiet for a moment. All right, Oliver says finally. Let me see what I can do.

I can‘t say it‘s a surprise to find Theo at home, but I am so mentally drained that I don‘t have the fortitude to ask him why he is here, instead of at school. They wouldn‘t let me in to see Jacob, I say.

How come?

Instead of answering, I just shake my head. In the buttery light of late morning, I can see the softest down on Theo‘s cheek and jaw. It reminds me of the first time I noticed that Jacob was growing hair underneath his armpits, and I was unnerved. It was one thing to be needed so fiercely by a child; it was another thing to have to take care of a grown man.

Mom? Theo says, hesitant. Do you think he did it?

Without thinking, I slap him hard across the face.

He falls back, reeling, his hand pressed to his cheek. Then he runs out the front door.

Theo! I call after him. Theo! But he is already halfway down the block.

I should follow him; I should apologize. I should confess that the reason I hit him wasn‘t what he said but because he gave voice to all the unutterable thoughts I‘ve been thinking.

Do
I believe Jacob is capable of murder?

No.

The easy answer, the knee-jerk reaction. This is my son we are talking about. The one who still asks me to tuck him in at night.

But I also remember Jacob knocking over Theo‘s high chair when I told him he could not have another glass of chocolate soy milk. I remember the time he hugged a hamster to death.

Mothers are supposed to be their children‘s biggest cheerleaders. Mothers are supposed to believe in their children, no matter what. Mothers will lie to themselves, if necessary, to do this.

I step outside and walk down the driveway, in the direction Theo ran. Theo, I call.

My voice does not sound like my own.

I have clocked 193 miles today on my car, driving to Springfield and then back home and returning again. At five-thirty I am again in the lobby of the jail visitors‘ entrance, with Oliver Bond standing beside me. He left a message on my cell phone instructing me to meet him here, explaining that he‘d arranged a special visit for me while he sorted out long-term visiting plans.

I was so happy to hear this that I didn‘t even dwell on the phrase
long-term.

At first, I hardly recognize Oliver. He isn‘t wearing a suit, like he was yesterday; instead, he‘s in jeans and a flannel shirt. This makes him seem even younger. I glance down at my own clothes which look like something I‘d wear to a staff meeting at the newspaper. What made me think I had to dress up for jail?

Oliver leads me to the booth. Name? the officer asks.

Emma Hunt, I say.

He looks up. No, the name of the person you‘re here to visit.

Jacob Hunt, Oliver interjects. We‘ve arranged a special visit through the superintendent‘s office.

The officer nods and hands me a clipboard to sign. He asks for my ID.

Give him your keys, Oliver says. He‘ll hold them while you‘re inside.

I pass them to the officer and then step toward the metal detector. Aren‘t you coming?

Oliver shakes his head. I‘ll be waiting out here.

A second officer arrives to lead me down the hall. Instead of turning in to a room where there are tables and chairs set up, though, he leads me around the corner to a small cubicle. At first, I think it is a closet, but then I realize it‘s a visiting booth. A stool is pushed beneath a window that looks into a mirror image of this room. A handset is stuck to the wall. I think there‘s been a mistake, I say.

No mistake, the officer tells me. Noncontact visits only for inmates in protective custody.

He leaves me in the tiny chamber. Had Oliver known I wouldn‘t be able to see Jacob face-to-face? Had he not told me because he knew it would upset me, or had he not been given this information? And what is protective custody?

The door on the other side of the glass opens, and suddenly Jacob is there. The officer who‘s brought him points to the telephone on the wall, but Jacob has seen me through the glass. He presses his palms flat against it.

He has blood on his shirt and in his hair. His forehead is covered with a line of purple bruises. His knuckles are scraped raw, and he is stimming like crazy his hand twitching at his side like a small animal, his entire body bouncing on his toes. Oh, baby, I murmur. I point to the phone in my hand and then to the spot where he should have a receiver, too.

He doesn‘t pick it up. He smacks his palms against the Plexiglas that separates us.

Pick up the phone, I cry, even though he cannot hear me. Pick it up, Jacob!