by Jodi Picoult
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.
Emma
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.
I listened to the testimony today. And yes, as Oliver has said, it’s not our turn yet. But I watched the faces of the jury as they stared at Jacob, and I saw the same expression I’ve seen a thousand times before. That mental distancing, that subtle acknowledgment that there is something wrong with that boy.
Because he doesn’t interact the way they do.
Because he doesn’t grieve the way they do.
Because he doesn’t move or speak the way they do.
I fought so hard to have Jacob mainstreamed at school—not just so that he could see the way other kids behaved but because other kids needed to see him, and to learn that different isn’t synonymous with bad. But I cannot say, honestly, that his classmates ever learned that lesson. They gave Jacob enough rope to hang himself in social situations, and then set the blame squarely on his shoulders.
And now, after all that work to shoehorn him into an ordinary school setting, he is in a courtroom peppered with accommodations for his special needs. His only chance at acquittal hinges on his diagnosis on the spectrum. To insist that he is just like anyone else, at this moment, would be a sure prison sentence.
After years of refusing to make excuses for Jacob’s Asperger’s, this is the only chance he has.
And suddenly, I am running, as if my life depends on it.
* * *
It’s after 2:00 A.M. and the pizza parlor is dark, the Closed sign flipped on the door, but in the tiny window above, a light is burning. I open the door to the narrow staircase that leads to the law offi
ce, climb the steps, knock.
Oliver answers, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt that has an old, faded picture of a man with furry, ursine arms. SUPPORT THE SECOND AMENDMENT, it reads. His eyes are bloodshot, and he has ink stains on his hands. “Emma,” he says. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” I say, pushing past him. There are take-out containers on the floor, and an empty two-liter jug of Mountain Dew lies on its side. Thor, the dog, is asleep with his chin notched over the green plastic bottle. “No, everything’s not okay.” I face him again, my voice catching. “It’s two in the morning. I’m in my pajamas. I just ran here—”
“You ran here?”
“—and my son’s going to prison. So no, Oliver, everything is not okay.”
“Jacob’s going to get acquitted—”
“Oliver,” I say. “Tell me the truth.”
He moves a stack of papers off the couch and sits down heavily. “You know why I’m awake at two in the morning? I’m trying to write my opening statement. Want to hear what I’ve got so far?” He lifts up the paper he’s holding. “Ladies and gentlemen, Jacob Hunt is . . .” He stops.
“Is what?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver says. He crumples it into a ball, and I know he’s thinking of Jacob’s meltdown, just like I am. “I don’t fucking know. Jacob Hunt is saddled with an attorney who should have stayed a farrier, that’s what. I shouldn’t have said yes to you. I shouldn’t have gone to the police station. I should have given you the name of some guy who can do criminal law in his sleep, instead of pretending a novice like me might have half a chance of pulling this off.”
“If this is your way of trying to make me feel better, you’re doing a really lousy job,” I tell him.
“I told you I suck at this.”
“Well. At least now you’re being honest.” I sit down beside him on the couch.
“You want honest?” Oliver says. “I have no idea if that jury is going to buy the defense. I’m scared. Of losing, of the judge laughing me out of court as a total sham.”
“I’m scared all the time,” I admit. “Everyone thinks I’m the mother who never gives up; that I’d drag Jacob back from the edge of hell a hundred times if I had to. But some mornings I just want to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed.”
“Most mornings I want to do that,” Oliver says, and I swallow a smile.
We are leaning against the back of the couch. The blue light from the streetlamps outside turns us both into ghosts. We aren’t in this world anymore, just haunting its edges.
“You want to hear something really sad?” I whisper. “You’re my best friend.”
“You’re right. That is really sad.” Oliver grins.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Are we still playing True Confessions?” he asks.
“Is that what we’re doing?”
He reaches toward me and rubs a strand of my hair between his fingers. “I think you’re beautiful,” Oliver says. “Inside and out.”
He leans forward the tiniest bit and breathes in, closing his eyes, before he lets the hair fall back against my cheek. I feel it inside me, as if I’ve been shocked.
I don’t pull away.
I don’t want to pull away.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” I stammer.
Oliver’s eyes light up. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” he quotes. He moves slowly, so that I know what’s coming, and kisses me.
I should be with Jacob, by court order. I am already breaking rules. What’s one more?
His teeth catch my lip. He tastes like sugar. “Jelly beans,” he murmurs against my ear. “My biggest vice. After this.”
I tangle my hands in his hair. It’s thick and golden, wild. “Oliver,” I gasp, as he slides his hands under my camisole. His fingers span my ribs. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to sleep with your clients.”
“You’re not my client,” he says. “And I’m not nearly as attracted to Jacob.” He peels back the cardigan I’m wearing; my skin burns. I cannot remember the last time someone treated me as if I were the hallowed museum piece that he had received permission to touch.
Somehow we have inched ourselves down onto the couch. My head falls to the side, along with my best intentions, when his mouth closes over my breast. I find myself staring directly into Thor’s eyes. “The dog . . .”
Oliver lifts his head. “Jesus,” he says, and he stands up, grabbing Thor like a football in one arm. “You’ve got lousy timing.” He opens a closet and tosses a handful of Milk-Bones on a pillow inside, then sets Thor down and closes the door.
When he turns around again, I draw in my breath. Somehow, his T-shirt has gotten lost between the cushions. His shoulders are wide and strong, his waist tapered, his sweats riding low. He has the easy beauty of someone young enough to dismiss how lucky he is to look like that without trying.
Me, on the other hand: I’m lying on a ratty couch in a cramped room with a jealous dog in the nearby closet, with freckles and wrinkles and fifteen more pounds than I ought to have and—
“Don’t,” Oliver says softly, as I pull the edges of my cardigan together again. He sits down on the edge of the couch beside me. “Or I will have to kill Thor.”
“Oliver, you could have any girl you want. Any girl your age.”
“You know what young wine is? Grape juice. There are some things worth the wait.”
“That argument would have been much more convincing coming from someone who hadn’t just finished off a trough of Mountain Dew—”
He kisses me again. “Shut the hell up, Emma,” he says amiably, and he puts his hands over mine where they rest on the edges of my sweater.
“It’s been forever.” The words are quiet, hidden against his shoulder.
“That’s because,” Oliver says, “you were waiting for me.” He slips aside the sweater again and kisses my collarbone. “Emma. Is everything okay?” he asks, for the second time this night.
Except this time, I say yes.
* * *
I should have gotten rid of the king-size bed. There is something horribly depressing about only having to tuck in half the sheets each morning, because the other side always remains pristine. I never cross the Mason-Dixon Line of my marriage and sleep, every now and then, on Henry’s side. I’ve left it for him, for whoever might take his place.
That turned out to be Theo, during thunderstorms, when he was afraid. Or Jacob when he was sick and I wanted to keep an eye on him. I told myself that I liked the extra space anyway. That I deserved to spread out if I wanted to, even though I have always slept curled on my side like a fiddlehead fern.
Which is why, I suppose, it feels perfect when the pink fingers of the morning stroke the sheet that Oliver’s tossed over us sometime in the night, and I realize that he’s curled around me: a comma, his knees tucked up behind mine and his arm tight around my waist.
I shift, but instead of letting go of me, Oliver tightens his grasp. “What time is it?” he murmurs.
“Five-thirty.”
I turn in his embrace, so that I am facing him. There’s stubble on his cheeks and his chin. “Oliver, listen.”
His eyes squint open. “No.”
“No, you’re not going to listen? Or no, you’re not Oliver?”
“I’m not going to listen,” he replies. “It wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t just a onetime, what-the-hell night. And if you keep fighting me on this, I’ll make you read the fine print on the retainer you signed, which very clearly states that the attorney’s sexual services are included in the fee.”
“I was going to tell you to come over for breakfast,” I say drily.
Oliver blinks at me. “Oh.”
“It’s Thursday. Brown day. Gluten-free bagels?”
“I prefer Everything,” he answers, and then he blushes. “But I guess I made that fairly obvious last night.”
I used to wake up in the morning and
lie in bed for thirty seconds, when whatever I had dreamed might still be possible, before I remembered that I had to get up and make whatever breakfast fit the color code and wonder whether we would survive the day without some schedule change or noise or social conundrum triggering a meltdown. I had thirty seconds when the future was something I anticipated, not feared.
I wrap my arms around Oliver’s neck and kiss him. Even knowing that, in four and a half hours, this trial will start again; even knowing that I have to hurry home before Jacob realizes I am missing; even knowing that I have likely made a mess of things by doing what I’ve done . . . I have figured out a way to stretch those thirty seconds of bliss into one long, lovely moment.
Three letters: a place where hope was found.
Joy.
Him.
Yes.
If this happened . . . well, maybe anything can.
He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently pushes me away. “You have no idea how much it’s killing me to say no,” Oliver says, “but I’ve got an opening argument to write, and my client’s mother is, well, incredibly demanding.”
“No kidding,” I say.
He sits up and pulls my camisole out from under his head, helps me stretch it over my head. “This isn’t nearly as much fun in reverse,” he points out.
We both dress, and then Oliver frees Thor from his banishment and hooks a leash onto his collar, offering to walk me partway home. We are the only people on the streets at this hour. “I feel like an idiot,” I say, glancing down at my slippers and my pajama bottoms.
“You look like a college student.”
I roll my eyes. “You are such a liar.”
“You mean lawyer.”
“Is there a difference?”
I stop walking and look up at him. “This,” I say. “Not in front of Jacob.”
Oliver doesn’t pretend to misunderstand me. He keeps walking, tugging at Thor’s leash. “All right,” he says.
We part ways at the skateboarding park, and I walk quickly with my head ducked against the wind—and the view of drivers in passing cars. Every now and then, a smile bubbles up from inside me, rising to the surface. The closer I get to home, the more inappropriate that feels. As if I am cheating somehow, as if I have the audacity to be someone other than the mother I am expected to be.
