House Rules (15 page)

Today‘s top story, however, is not funny at all.

Early Monday morning, the anchor reads, the body of Jessica Ogilvy was found in the woods behind her residence. The twenty-three-year-old UVM student had gone missing last Tuesday.

The plate on my lap falls to the floor as I stand up, tears in my eyes. Although I‘d known this was a possibility a probability, really, as days went by and she wasn‘t found that doesn‘t make her death any easier.

I had often wondered what the world would have looked like if there were more people like Jess around, young men and women who could see someone like Jacob and not laugh at his quirks and flaws but instead celebrate the ways they made him interesting and worthy. I imagined the boys who would one day be in a class Jess taught and who would not have to struggle with the self-esteem and bullying issues that Jacob had struggled with in grade school. And now, none of that would happen.

The story cuts to a reporter, whose segment has been filmed close to the spot where Jess‘s body was found. In this very sad turn of events, she says soberly, investigators responded to a 911 call placed from Ogilvy‘s cell phone and traced the call here, to a culvert behind Ogilvy‘s home.

This was taped near dawn; the sky is striped with pink. In the background are the crime scene investigators, setting up markers and taking measurements and photos.

Shortly afterward, the reporter continues, authorities took Ogilvy‘s boyfriend, twenty-four-year-old Mark Maguire, into custody. An autopsy report is still pending …

If I had blinked, I probably would never have seen it. If the reporter had not shifted her feet, I would never have seen it. The image was
that
quick the tiniest flash on the side of the screen before it was gone.

A quilt with rainbow patchwork, ROYGBIV over and over.

I freeze the frame a newfangled feature of the satellite system we use and run the clip backward before letting it play again. This time maybe I will see that it was only a trick of the eye, a flutter of the reporter‘s scarf that I mistook for something else.

It is still there, so I run the tape backward a second time.

I once saw madness defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. My heart is pounding so fiercely now that I can feel it beating at the base of my throat. I race upstairs to Jacob‘s closet, where I‘d found Jess‘s backpack a few days earlier, wrapped in the rainbow quilt.

Which is missing.

I sink down on his bed and smooth my hand over his pillow. Right now, at 12:45, Jacob is in physics class. He told me this morning that they are doing a lab on Archimedes‘

principle, trying to determine the density of two unknown materials. What mass, when inserted into a medium, causes it to displace? What floats, and what sinks?

I will go to the school and pick the boys up, making up an excuse a dentist‘s visit, a haircut appointment. But instead of coming home we will drive and drive until we cross the border into Canada. I will pack suitcases for them, and we will never come back here.

Even as I am thinking this, I know it could never happen. Jacob would not understand the concept of never coming back home. And somewhere, in a police station, Jess‘s boyfriend is being blamed when he might be innocent.

Downstairs, with numb fingers, I pick through the stack of bills that I haven‘t sorted. I know it‘s in here somewhere … and then I find it, beneath the second notice from the phone company. Rich Matson‘s business card, with his cell phone number scrawled on the back.

Just in case,
he had said.

Just in case you happen to think that your son might be involved in a murder. Just in case you are confronted with the glaring evidence that you have failed as a mother. Just in case you are caught between what you want and what you should do.

Detective Matson has been honest with me; I will be honest with him.

His voice mail picks up immediately after I dial the number. The first time, I hang up, because all of my intended words have become jammed together like putty. The second time, I clear my throat. This is Emma Hunt, I say. I … I really need to speak with you.

Still holding the phone like an amulet, I wander into the living room again. The news program is over; now there is a soap opera on. I rewind the action until the segment about Jess Ogilvy plays again. I deliberately keep my eyes trained to the other side of the screen, but it‘s still there: a flag on the field, a nanosecond of truth in all the shades of the color spectrum.

No matter how hard I try, I can‘t unsee that damn quilt.

Jacob

Jess is dead.

My mother tells me after school. She stares at me when she says it, as if she‘s trying to find clues in my expression, the same way I scrutinize the tilt of someone‘s eyebrows and the position of their mouth and the size of their pupils and try to connect them with an emotion.

For a moment I think,
Does
she
have Asperger‘s, too?
But then, just when it seems that she is analyzing my features, hers change, and I can‘t tell what she‘s feeling. Her eyes look tight at the edges, and her mouth is pinched. Is she mad at me, or is she just upset about Jess being dead? Does she want me to react to news I already know? I could act like I‘m shocked (jaw dropped, eyes round), but that would also mean I‘m lying, and then my lying face (eyes looking up at ceiling, teeth biting down on bottom lip) would do a hostile takeover of my shocked face. Besides, lying is right up there on the House Rules list. To recap:

1. Clean up your own messes.

2. Tell the truth.

Regarding Jess‘s death: I have done both.

Imagine what it would be like if you were suddenly dropped from America into England. Suddenly
bloody
would be a swear word, not a description of a crime scene.

Pissed
would be not angry but drunk.
Dear
would mean expensive, not beloved.
Potty
isn‘t a toilet but a state of mind;
public school
is private school, and
fancy
is a verb.

If you were dropped into the UK and you happened to be Korean or Portuguese, your confusion would be expected. After all, you don‘t speak the language. But if you‘re American, technically, you do. So you‘re stuck in conversations that make no sense to you, in which you ask people to repeat themselves over and over, in the hope that eventually the unfamiliar words will fall into place.

This is what Asperger‘s feels like. I have to work so hard at the things that come naturally to others, because I‘m just a tourist here.

And it‘s a trip with a one-way ticket.

Here are the things I will remember about Jess:

1. For Christmas she gave me a piece of malachite the exact size and shape of a chicken egg.

2. She is the only person I‘ve ever met who was born in Ohio.

3. Her hair looked different indoors than it did outdoors. When the sun was shining, it was less yellow and more like fire.

4. She introduced me to
The Princess Bride,
which is possibly one of the greatest movies in the history of filmmaking.

5. Her mailbox at UVM was number 5995.

6. She fainted at the sight of blood, but she still came to my presentation this fall in physics about spatter patterns, and she listened with her back to the PowerPoint presentation.

7. Even though there were times when she probably was sick of hearing me talk, she never, ever told me to shut up.

I am the first person to tell you that I do not really understand love. How can you love your new haircut, love your job, and love your girlfriend all at once? Clearly the word doesn‘t mean the same thing in different situations, which is why I have never been able to figure it out with logic.

The physical side of love terrifies me, to be honest. When you are already hypersensitive to the feeling of anything against your skin or to people standing close enough to touch you, there is absolutely nothing about a sexual relationship that makes it an experience you look forward to attempting.

I mention all this as a disclaimer to the last thing I will remember about Jess: 8. I could have loved her. Maybe I already did.

* * *

If I were going to create a science fiction series on television, it would be about an empath a person who can naturally read the auras of people‘s emotions and, with a single touch, can take on their feelings, too. It would be so easy if I could look at someone who was happy, touch him on the arm, and suddenly fill with the same bubbles of joy that he‘s feeling, instead of anguishing over whether I‘d misinterpreted his actions and reactions.

Anyone who cries at a movie is a closet empath. What‘s happening on that screen bleeds through the celluloid, real enough to evoke emotion. Why else would you find yourself laughing at the hijinks of two actors who, offscreen, can‘t stand each other? Or crying over the death of an actor who, when the camera is turned off, will dust himself off and grab a burger for dinner?

When I watch movies, it‘s a little different. Each scene becomes a catalog card of possible social scenarios in my mind.
If you ever find yourself arguing with a woman, try
kissing her to throw her off guard. If you are in the middle of a battle and your buddy is
shot, friendship means you have to go back under fire to rescue him. If you want to be the
life of the party, say, Toga!

Later, if I find myself in that particular situation, I can shuffle through my file cards of movie interactions and mimic the behavior and know, for once, that I will be getting it right.

Incidentally, I have never cried at a movie.

Once, I was telling Jess everything I knew about dogs.

1. They evolved from a small mammal called miacis, a tree dweller that lived 40 million years ago.

2. They were first domesticated by Paleolithic cavemen.

3. No matter the breed, a dog has 321 bones and 42 permanent teeth.

4. Dalmatians are born all white.

5. The reason they turn in a circle before lying down is because when they were wild animals, this helped mat the long grass into a bed.

6. Approximately one million dogs have been named the primary beneficiaries in their owners‘ wills.

7. They sweat through the pads of their feet.

8. Scientists have found that dogs can smell the presence of autism in kids.

You‘re making that up,
she said.

No. Really.

How come you don‘t have a dog?

There were so many answers to that question, I didn‘t really know where to begin.

My mother, for one, who said that anyone who could not remember to brush his teeth twice daily did not have the fortitude to take care of another living creature. My brother, who was allergic to nearly anything with hair on it. The fact that dogs, which had been my passion after dinosaurs but before crime scene analysis, had fallen out of favor.

The truth is that I would probably never want a dog. Dogs are like the kids in school I cannot stand: the ones who hang around and then leave when they realize they are not getting what they want or need from the conversation. They travel in packs. They lick you and you think it‘s because they like you, but it‘s really just because your fingers still smell like your turkey sandwich.

On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger‘s.

Like me, they‘re very smart.

And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone.

Rich

Once I leave Mark Maguire to steep in his own conscience for a few minutes, I grab a cup of coffee in the break room and check my voice mail. I have three new messages. The first is from my ex, reminding me that tomorrow is Open School Night for Sasha an event that, by the looks of things, I‘m going to have to miss yet again. The second is from my dentist, confirming an appointment. And the third is from Emma Hunt.

Emma, I say, returning her call. What can I do for you?

I … I saw that you found Jess. Her voice is husky, full of tears.

Yes. I‘m sorry. I know you were close to her.

There are sobs on the other end of the line.

Are you okay? I ask. Do you need me to call someone for you?

She was wrapped in a quilt, Emma chokes out.

Sometimes, when you do what I do for work, it gets easy to forget that, after you close the file on a case, there are people who suffer with the fallout for the rest of their lives. They‘ll remember one little detail about the victim: a single shoe lying in the middle of the road, a hand still clutching a Bible, or in this case the juxtaposition between being tenderly tucked into a quilt and being murdered. But there‘s nothing I can do for Jess Ogilvy now except bring the person who killed her to justice.

That quilt, Emma sobs, belongs to my son.

I freeze in the act of stirring cream into my coffee. Jacob?

I don‘t know … I don‘t understand what that means …

Emma, listen. It might not mean anything at all, and if it does, Jacob will have an explanation.

What do I do? she cries.

Nothing, I tell her. Let
me.
Can you bring him down here?

He‘s in school

Then after school, I say. And, Emma? Relax. We‘ll get to the bottom of this.

As soon as I hang up, I take my full mug of coffee and empty it in the sink; that‘s how distracted I am. Jacob Hunt admitted to being at the house. He had a backpack full of Jess Ogilvy‘s clothes. He was the last person known to see her alive.

Jacob may have Asperger‘s syndrome, but that doesn‘t preclude his being a murderer.

I think of Mark Maguire‘s flat-out denials about hurting his girlfriend, his unscarred hands, his crying. Then I think of Jacob Hunt, who cleaned up Jess‘s house when it looked like it had been vandalized. Had he left out the intrinsic detail that
he
was the one who‘d wrecked it?

On the one hand, I have a boyfriend who‘s a jackass but who‘s grief-stricken. I have his boot prints outside a cut screen.

On the other hand, I have a kid who‘s obsessed with crime scene analysis. A kid who doesn‘t like Mark Maguire. A kid who‘d know how to take a murder and make it look like Mark Maguire did it and then attempted to cover his tracks.