House Rules (4 page)

After watching the episode, my day definitely improves from a one to a three.

Hey, my mother says, poking her head into the living room. How are you doing?

Okay, I reply.

She sits down beside me on the couch. Our legs are touching. She is the only person I can stand having close to me. If it were anyone else, I would have moved away a few inches by now. So, Jacob, she says, I just want to point out that you did in fact survive the day without the free food sample.

It‘s times like this I am glad I don‘t look people in the eye. If I did, surely they would die on the spot from the contempt shooting out of mine. Of
course
I survived. But at what cost?

Teachable moment, my mother explains, and she pats my hand. I‘m just saying.

Frankly my dear,
I murmur,
I don‘t give a damn.

My mother sighs. Dinner at six, Rhett, she says, even though it‘s always at six, and even though my name is Jacob.

At different times, the media have posthumously diagnosed certain famous people with Asperger‘s. Here is just a sampling:

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

2. Albert Einstein

3. Andy Warhol

4. Jane Austen

5. Thomas Jefferson

I am 99 percent sure not a single one of them had a meltdown in a grocery store and wound up breaking a whole shelf of relish and pickle jars.

Dinner proves to be a painful affair. My mother seems driven to start a conversation, although neither Theo nor I is inclined to hold up the other end of it. She has just gotten another packet of letters from the
Burlington Free Press,
and sometimes she reads them out loud at dinner and we make up politically incorrect responses that my mother would never in a million years write in her advice column.

CASE IN POINT 4

Dear Auntie Em,

My mother-in-law insists on cooking roast beef every time my husband and I come to visit,
even though she knows that I am a lifelong vegetarian. What should I do next time it
happens?

Steamed in South Royalton

Dear Steamed,

Turnip your nose at her and walk away.

Sometimes the questions she gets are really sad, like the woman whose husband had left her and who didn‘t know how to tell her kids. Or the mom dying of breast cancer who wrote a letter for her baby daughter to read when she grew up, about how she wished she could have been there for her daughter‘s high school graduation, her engagement, her first child.

Mostly, though, the questions come from a bunch of idiots who made bad choices.
How do I
get my husband back, now that I realize I shouldn‘t have cheated on him?
Try being faithful, lady.
What‘s the best way to win back a friend you‘ve hurt with a nasty remark?

Don‘t say it in the first place. I swear, sometimes I can‘t believe my mother gets
paid
to state the obvious.

Tonight she holds up a note from a teenage girl. I can tell, because the ink of the pen is purple and because the
i
in
Auntie Em
has a heart over it where the dot should be.
Dear
Auntie Em,
she reads, and just like always, I picture a little old lady wearing a bun and sensible shoes, not my own mother.
I like a guy who already has a girlfriend. I know he
likes me cuz
God, don‘t they teach you how to spell these days?

No, I answer. They teach us to use spell-check.

Theo looks up from his plate long enough to grunt in the direction of the grape juice.

I know he likes me
because, my mother edits,
he walks me home from school
and we talk for hours on the phone and yesterday I couldn‘t take it anymore and I kissed
him and he kissed me back
… Oh, please, someone get this girl a comma. Then she frowns at the loose-leaf paper.
He says we can‘t go out but we can be friends with benefits. Do
you think I should say yes? Sincerely, Burlington Buddy.
My mother glances at me.

Don‘t
all
friends have benefits?

I stare at her blankly.

Theo? she asks.

It‘s a saying, he mutters.

A saying that means what, exactly?

Theo‘s face turns bright red. Just Google it.

Just
tell
me.

It‘s when a guy and a girl who aren‘t going out hook up, all right?

My mother considers this. You mean like … have sex?

Among other things …

And then what happens?

I don‘t know! Theo says. They go back to ignoring each other, I guess.

My mother‘s jaw drops. That is the most demeaning thing I‘ve ever heard. This poor girl shouldn‘t just tell that guy to go jump in a lake, she ought to slash all four of his car tires, and Suddenly she pins her gaze on Theo. You haven‘t treated a girl like that, have you?

Theo rolls his eyes. Can‘t you be like other mothers and just ask me if I‘m smoking weed?

Are you smoking weed? she says.

No!

Do you have friends with benefits?

Theo pushes back from the table and stands up in one smooth move. Yeah. I have thousands. They line up outside the front door, or haven‘t you noticed them lately? He dumps his plate in the sink and runs upstairs.

My mother reaches for a pen she‘s tucked into her ponytail (she always wears a ponytail, because she knows how I feel about loose hair swishing around her shoulders) and begins to scrawl a response. Jacob, she says, be a sweetheart and clear the table for me, will you?

And off goes my mother, champion of the confused, doyenne of the dense. Saving the world one letter at a time. I wonder what all those devoted readers would think if they knew that the real Auntie Em had one son who was practically a sociopath and another one who was socially impractical.

I‘d like a friend with benefits, although I‘d never admit that to my mother.

I‘d like a friend, period.

For my birthday last year my mother bought me the most incredible gift ever: a police scanner radio. It operates by receiving frequencies that regular radios cannot ones assigned by the federal government in the VHF and UHF range above the FM stations, and which are used by police, fire, and rescue crews. I always know when the highway patrol is sending out the sanding trucks before they arrive; I get the special weather alerts when a nor‘easter is coming. But mostly I listen to the police and emergency calls, because even in a place as small as Townsend you get a crime scene every now and then.

Since Thanksgiving alone, I have gone to two crime scenes. The first was a break-in at a jewelry store. I rode my bike to the address I heard on the scanner and found several officers swarming the storefront for evidence. It was the first time I got to see spray wax being used on snow to cast a footprint, a definite highlight. The second crime scene was not really a crime scene. It was the house of a kid who goes to my school, who is a real jerk to me. His mother had called 911, but by the time they got there she was standing at the front door, her nose still bleeding, saying that she didn‘t want to press charges against her husband.

Tonight I have just gotten into my pajamas when I hear a code on the scanner that is different from any I‘ve ever heard, and I‘ve heard plenty: 10–52 AMBULANCE NEEDED.

10–50 MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENT.

10–13 CIVILIANS PRESENT AND LISTENING.

10–40 FALSE ALARM, PREMISES SECURE.

10–54 LIVESTOCK ON HIGHWAY.

Right now, though, I hear this:

10–100

Which means,
Dead body.

I don‘t think I‘ve ever gotten dressed so quickly in my life. I grab a composition notebook, even though it‘s a used one, because I don‘t want to waste any time; and I scrawl down the address that keeps getting mentioned on the scanner. Then I tiptoe downstairs. With any luck my mother is already asleep and won‘t even know I‘m gone.

It‘s bitterly cold out, and there are about two inches of snow on the ground. I‘m so excited about the crime scene that I am wearing sneakers instead of boots. The wheels of my mountain bike skid every time I go around a turn.

The address is a state highway, and I know I have reached the right spot because there are four police cars with their flashing blues on. There is a wooden stake with police tape (yellow, not orange) fluttering in the wind, and a visible trail of footprints. An abandoned car, a Pontiac, sits on the side of the road covered in ice and snow.

I take out my notebook and write:
Vehicle has been abandoned for at least twelve
hours, prestorm.

I duck into the edge of the woods as another police car arrives. This one is unmarked and ordinary, except for the domed police light magnetically affixed to the top.

The man who gets out of it is tall and has red hair. He is wearing a black overcoat and heavy boots. On one of his hands, he has a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid.

I write this in my notebook, too.

Captain, an officer says, coming out from between the trees. He‘s dressed in a uniform, with heavy gloves and boots, too. Sorry to call you in.

The captain shakes his head. What have you got?

A jogger found a body in the woods. Guy‘s half naked and there‘s blood all over him.

Who the hell goes jogging at night in the dead of winter?

I follow them into the woods, careful to stay in the shadows. There are searchlights illuminating the area around the body, so that the evidence can be fully recorded.

The dead man is lying on his back. His eyes are open. His pants are gathered around his ankles, but he is still wearing his underwear. The knuckles of his hands are bright red with blood, as are the bottoms of his palms, and his knees and calves. His jacket is unzipped, and he‘s missing one shoe and one sock. All around him, the snow is pink.

Holy crap, the captain says. He kneels down and snaps on a pair of rubber gloves that he takes from his pocket. He examines the body up close.

I hear two more sets of footsteps, and another man steps into the pool of light, escorted by a uniformed officer. The uniformed officer takes one look at the dead guy, goes totally pale, and throws up. Jesus H., the other man says.

Hey, Chief, the captain replies.

Suicide or homicide?

I don‘t know yet. Sexual assault seems like a given, though.

Rich, the guy‘s covered in blood from head to toe and he‘s lying here in his tighty whites. You think he got sexually assaulted and then committed hara-kiri? The police chief snorts. I know I don‘t have the vast detective experience you do after fifteen years on the job in the metropolis of Townsend but

I look down at the list in my notebook. What would Dr. Henry Lee do? Well, he‘d examine the wounds up close. He‘d analyze why there was only superficial blood that pink transfer on the snow, without any dripping or spatter. He‘d note the footprints in the snow one set that matches the lone sneaker on the victim‘s foot, and the other set that has been matched to the jogger who found the body. He‘d ask why, after a sexual assault, the victim would still be wearing his underwear if other items of clothing were still removed.

I am so cold I‘m shaking. I stomp my frozen feet in their sneakers. Then I look down at the ground, and suddenly everything‘s crystal clear.

Actually, I say, stepping out of my hiding place, you‘re both wrong.

Rich

I don‘t know why I kid myself into thinking that I‘ll get anything done on the weekends. I have the best intentions, but something always gets in the way. Today, for example, I was determined to build an ice rink in the backyard for Sasha, my seven-year-old. She lives with my ex, Hannah, but she‘s with me from Friday night to Sunday, and she is currently planning on joining the U.S. Figure Skating team (if she doesn‘t become a singing veterinarian). I figured she‘d get a kick out of helping me flood the tarp I set up in the back, bordered by two-by-fours that I hammered into place all week long after work, just to get ready. I promised her that when she woke up on Sunday morning, she‘d be able to skate.

What I hadn‘t counted on was the fact that it would be so freaking cold outside. Sasha started to whine as soon as the wind picked up, so I nixed the plan and drove her to dinner in Burlington instead she‘s a big fan of one place, where you can draw on the tablecloths.

She falls asleep on the car ride home while I am still singing along to Hannah Montana songs on her CD, and I carry her upstairs to her bedroom. It‘s a haven of pink in a bachelor pad. During the settlement, I got the house, but Hannah got nearly everything inside it. It‘s weird to pick Sasha up from her other home and see her new stepdad sprawled on my old couch.

She stirs a little while I get her undressed and into her nightgown, but then she sighs and curls on her side beneath the covers. For a minute, I just stare at her. Most of the time, being the only detective in a one-horse town is a losing battle. I get paid crap; I investigate cases that are too dull to even make the police log in the local paper. But I‘m making sure that Sasha‘s world, or at least this tiny corner of it, is a little bit safer.

It keeps me going.

Well … that and my twenty-year retirement bonus.

Downstairs, I grab a flashlight and head out to the aborted ice rink. I turn on the hose. If I stay up for a few more hours, maybe there will be enough water in the tarp to freeze overnight.

I don‘t like breaking promises; I leave that to my ex.

I‘m not a bitter guy; I‘m not. It‘s just that, in my profession, it‘s a lot easier to see actions as either right or wrong, without shades of explanation between them. I didn‘t really
need
to know how Hannah realized her soul mate was not the guy she‘d married but instead the one who serviced the coffee machines in the teachers‘ room. He started bringing hazelnut for me, she said, and somehow I was supposed to be able to understand that meant
I don‘t love you anymore.