House Rules by Jodi Picoult Page B

son.
    Jacob thought about this. What day is Mother‘s Day? he asked.
    I told him, and then I forgot about the conversation, until May 10. When I went downstairs and started my Sunday morning coffee-making routine, I found an envelope propped up against the glass carafe. In it was a Mother‘s Day card.
    It didn‘t say Dear Mom. It wasn‘t signed. In fact, it wasn‘t written on at all because Jacob had only done what I‘d told him to do, and nothing more.
    That day, I sat down at the kitchen table and laughed. I laughed until I started to cry.
    Now, I look up at my son, who isn‘t looking at me. No, Jacob, I say. I‘m not mad at you.
    Once, when Jacob was ten, we were walking the aisles of a Toys R Us in Williston when a little boy jumped out from an endcap wearing a Darth Vader mask and brandishing a light saber. Bang, you‘re dead! the boy cried, and Jacob believed him. He started shrieking and rocking, and then he swept his arm through the display on the shelves. He was doing it to make sure he was not a ghost, to make sure he still could leave an impact in this world. He spun and flailed, trampling boxes as he ran away from me.
    By the time I tackled him in the doll section, he was completely out of control. I tried singing Marley to him. I shouted at him to make him respond to my voice. But Jacob was in his own little world, and finally the only way I could make him calm was to become a human blanket, to pin him down on the industrial tile with his arms and legs flung wide.
    By then, the police had been called on suspicion of child abuse.
    It took fifteen minutes to explain to the officers that my son was autistic, and that I wasn‘t trying to hurt him I was trying to help him.
    I‘ve often thought, since then, about what would happen if Jacob was stopped by the police while he was on his own like on Sundays, when he bikes into town to meet Jess. Like the parents of many autistic kids, I‘ve done what the message boards suggest: In Jacob‘s wallet is a card that says he‘s autistic, and that explains to the officer that all the behaviors Jacob is exhibiting flat affect, an inability to look him in the eye, even a flight response are the hallmarks of Asperger‘s syndrome. And yet, I‘ve wondered what would happen if the police came in contact with a six-foot, 185-pound, out-of-control boy who reached into his back pocket. Would they wait for him to show his ID card, or would they shoot first?
    This is in part why Jacob isn‘t allowed to drive. He has had the state drivers‘
    manual memorized since he was fifteen, and I know he‘d follow traffic rules as if his life depended on it. But what if he got pulled over by a state trooper? Do you know what you were doing? the trooper would say, and Jacob would reply: Driving. Immediately, he‘d be tagged as a wise guy when, in fact, he was only answering the question literally.
    If the trooper asked him if he ran a red light, Jacob would say yes even if it had happened six months earlier, when the trooper was nowhere nearby.
    I know better than to ask him whether my butt looks fat in a particular pair of jeans, because he‘ll tell me the truth. A police officer would not have that history to help color Jacob‘s answer.
    Well, at any rate, they are not likely to stop him while he‘s riding into town on his bicycle unless they take pity on him because it‘s so cold. I learned a long time ago to stop asking Jacob if he wants a ride. The temperature matters less to him than his independence, in this one small thing.
    Hauling the laundry basket into Jacob‘s room, I place his folded clothes on the bed.
    When he comes home from school, he‘ll put them away on his own, with the collars all lined up precisely and the boxer shorts arranged by pattern (stripes, solids, polka dots). On his desk is an overturned fish tank with a small coffee cup warmer, a tinfoil dish, and one of my lipstick containers beneath it. Sighing, I lift the fingerprint fuming chamber and