House Rules

by Jodi Picoult

But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.

I don’t get into trouble because rules are what keep me sane. Rules mean that the day is going to go exactly the way I am predicting it to be.

I don’t like breaking promises; I leave that to my ex.

The reason I choose not to look at people is that I don’t think it’s polite to rifle through someone’s thoughts, and the eyes might as well be glass windows, they’re that transparent.

And I had assumed that I’d go back to work when Jacob was in school full-time—but that was before I learned that being an advocate for your autistic child’s education is a forty-hour-a-week profession in and of itself.

Why should a rule that works in one situation not work in

another? If a bully taunts him and I tell him it’s all right to reciprocate—because sometimes that’s the only way to get these kids to leave him alone—why shouldn’t he do the same with a teacher who humiliates him in public?

Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There’s only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces.

Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I’m wearing will never really fit.

And by the way, since when does being different net you a free pass in life?

I guess that somehow the gene pool in our family got all mixed up, and as a result, Jacob can only focus on one thing, an extreme obsession, while I can do sixteen thousand things at a time.

“My dad used to say that living with regrets was like driving a car that only moved in reverse.” I smile faintly. “He had a stroke a few years ago. Before that, I used to screen his calls because I didn’t have time to talk about whether the Sox would make it into the playoffs. But afterward, I started to call him. Every time, I’d finish by saying I loved him. We both knew why; and it didn’t sit right after all the time I hadn’t said it. It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon. He died eight months ago.”

I would like to be able to tell her that, yes, now I get it. When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.

To be honest, I’m a little disappointed. I would have expected the police to be able to read the clues I left behind. But they haven’t found Jess, and so I have to take the next step.

Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.

I wish I could cry, like other humans do.

This is what you can’t explain to a mother who doesn’t have an autistic child: Of course I love my son. Of course I would never want a life without him. But that doesn’t mean that I am not exhausted every minute of the day. That I don’t worry about his future, and my lack of one. That sometimes, before I can catch myself, I imagine what my life would have been like if Jacob did not have Asperger’s. That—like Atlas—I think just for once it would be nice to have someone else bear the weight of my family’s world on his shoulders, instead of me.

2. No matter what I say, no matter how clearly I say it, no one understands me. Which means I must find a better method of communication.

it’s never the differences between people that surprise us. It’s the things that, against all odds, we have in common.

Fluttering my hands in front of my face or against my leg is my exhaust valve, and maybe it looks weird, but then again, just compare it to the folks who turn to alcohol or porn to alleviate pressures.

If a school day is seven hours long, six of those are eaten up by blocks of time that are full of nothing but crap: teachers yelling at kids who misbehave, gossip as you walk to your locker, recap of a math concept you understood the first time it was explained. What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.

Asking for help doesn’t come easily to me, so you’d better believe that, if I actually do make a request, I’ve exhausted all other options.

The thought jumps into my head like a cricket onto a picnic blanket, and it is equally unwelcome.

Logical thinking keeps you from wasting time worrying, or hoping. It prevents disappointment. Imagination, on the other hand, only gets you hyped up over things that will never realistically happen.

see it as the next step of evolution: I cannot take away your sadness, so why should I acknowledge it?

Emma closes her eyes for a moment. “I don’t know what to say.” “Then just be quiet.”

In all the years we have lived here, my mother has slept on the left side of the bed. You’d think by now she would have branched out and taken over the whole damn thing, but no. It’s like she’s still waiting for someone to crawl into the other side.

It was almost like that was her way of getting to know me—through how my mind worked. It was like a maze; you had to follow all the twists and turns in order to figure out where I started from, and I was amazed that Jess was willing to put in the time.

How when she laughed, it wasn’t a tiny, delicate thing but a sound that came from her belly.

So much time is spent with people superficially. You remember all the fun you had but nothing specific. I’ll never forget anything about her.

Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn’t look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion. It looks like the brain of a person who’s been snorting coke.

But being in court is kind of like watching a basketball game—one side scores, and then the other takes the ball back and scores, and this goes on and on. And just like basketball, I bet it all comes down to the last five minutes.

“Then why don’t you show it?” “Why should I?” I ask, sitting up. “If I know I feel it, that’s what counts. Don’t you ever look at someone who’s hysterical in public and wonder if it’s because they really feel miserable or because they want others to know they’re miserable? It kind of dilutes the emotion if you display it for the whole world to see. Makes it less pure.”

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

I don’t know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You’d be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.

My parents assumed that I was not paying attention, but that isn’t the way it works. I could hear and see and smell and feel everything at once back then, which is why I had to focus so hard to pay attention to only one of the stimuli.

When you’re emotionally bare, the leap to being physically bare isn’t all that far.

decided that I didn’t care if she had slept with me out of desperation or frustration or even distraction—I wasn’t going to let her go. I had charted every inch of her last night; I wanted to return to that territory until I knew it better than anyone ever had or ever would.

Oliver was rubbing my mom’s arm today. Not in the oh-you’re-about-to-fall-are-you-okay way, but in a sweet-child-o’-mine mode.

Whatever a child with Asperger’s does, he does because he’s thinking of how it will affect him, not anyone else.”

In reality, you don’t ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path.

grab her and kiss her. It’s not gentle, either. It’s the physical equivalent of pouring into her all the feelings I can’t put into words.