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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. “Di
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.
Di
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, doye
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 sca
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 sca
Tonight I have just gotten into my pajamas when I hear a code on the sca
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 sca
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.