Raising Cubby (38 page)

David Hoose was a tall, trim fellow, balding, with close-cropped hair. He had a ready smile and a firm handshake. He looked like exactly the kind of lawyer you’d want to see if you were locked in a jailhouse cage full of criminal deviants and freaks. There was little doubt he’d stand up fine to the likes of Murray and Perwak if push came to shove.

Actually, I was mostly just relieved he’d agreed to meet us, because we all felt pretty traumatized, and I knew he must have had better things to do on a Sunday afternoon. I sure knew I’d rather be somewhere else, but keeping my kid out of jail was pretty important. After all the trouble I’d gone to raising him, I did not want him to end up in some state prison cell.

Even though we had not met before, I had seen Hoose’s face in the paper several times. Whenever there was a big criminal case, his name always seemed to appear. If he was picked to defend people in life-or-death situations time and again, it seemed to me that he had to be good. I hoped Cubby’s case would be easier. I hoped it would cost less, too.

We talked together, and then he and Cubby spoke alone. Cubby had his laptop, which he used to show off his videos. He was still at the point where pride of creation outweighed fear of incarceration, but Hoose took steps to change that right away.

He cautioned Cubby that he could not destroy any of the videos without risking a charge of obstructing justice, but at the same time he told him in no uncertain terms that it was time to shut down the website. No more posting of videos and no more discussions on his forums on any topic, given that law enforcement would surely be monitoring his every word online.

Cubby looked chastened, but he agreed to do what he was told. With a few reminders and a subtle jab from his lawyer’s sharp stick, Cubby’s stuff went offline, and to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t returned since.

The seriousness of the situation still hadn’t completely sunk in
for Cubby. An ordinary kid would have been terrified at the prospect of going to jail, but my Aspergian son seemed mostly worried that the cops might damage his expensive laboratory glassware. Then he started wondering whether they would confiscate it. The idea of being sent to prison was simply not on his radar. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.

In fact, throughout most of these events, he remained completely oblivious to the way other people might perceive him and his lab. All he could see was the purity of science. His inability to grasp others’ point of view was typical of people on the autism spectrum. It was a stark reminder of how powerfully Asperger’s had affected him, and how invisible to others those effects had been.

But I had to keep my focus on the here and now, where the threat of prosecution remained. I tried to get some reassurance from our new lawyer about what might happen next, but he didn’t know any better than I did. After listening to our stories, all he could tell us was that whatever happened next was in the hands of the DA, and that he hoped she wouldn’t press charges. It was the same refrain we’d heard from the cops.

There was nothing to do but wait. Hoose told us he’d send a letter to the DA telling her he was Cubby’s lawyer and asking for a meeting. At that time, I still believed prosecutors listened to defense lawyers and cases got worked out quietly in back rooms, without the aggravation of court. If only that were true.

After the meeting, Cubby’s mom returned to South Hadley. There was no one at the house but the hazmat crew, and they had turned friendly. The previous day’s talk of “blowing up the house” was forgotten. Little Bear did her best to put fear and frustration aside as she waited them out. Finally, at 3
P.M
., they left, and she was alone in the mess of a house. She began the process of putting her home back together. The first step was regaining the right to live there from town officials.

When the bomb technicians had the gas and electricity shut off,
the utility companies notified the town inspectors. The building inspector said, “You can’t live in a house without heat or light, especially in February!” The health inspector saw a wreck of a house with junk and clutter everywhere, and no utilities. He didn’t need any encouragement to slap a Condemned notice on the door. Little Bear could not stay in a condemned house without utilities. The earliest she could get them reconnected was Monday, so she was stuck in the motel for yet another night.

Meanwhile, there was the matter of the cleanup. Little Bear has a problem with housekeeping; some would say she has great hoarder potential. When we were married, I thought she was just messy, but much later we found out that she has autism too, and her organizational ability is seriously impaired. In Little Bear’s case, she has trouble completing tasks she begins, and she has terrible difficulty keeping things neat and orderly. Most people store their clothes in drawers or closets. She didn’t have closets, because she’d taken them out while renovating her house in order to create more living space. But she had yet to replace the closets with other storage space. So she filled the drawers and stacked clothes and belongings on every flat surface. Then, rather than give stuff away, she installed a portable chin-up bar across the hall and hung that with clothing that should have been in a closet. When the raiders entered on Friday, the bar stood between them and the basement door, so they pulled it down and tossed it and the clothes aside. Over the next two days, innumerable boots trampled the clothing, which together with the other junk on the floor became one giant, muddy mess.

The result was definitely not for the faint of heart. Little Bear cried as she gathered her muddy, torn clothing into hampers for bulk cleaning at the Laundromat. Bags of trash were hauled out and taken to the dump. The following day, town inspectors signed off on her occupancy permit and she was back in her nest—sad, scared, and wounded.

Now the authorities were gone, but there was still a clamor in the media. The most visible outcry was in the Internet forums of the
Springfield Republican
, our local newspaper. There, in the South Hadley bulletin board, a self-described group of “Dartmouth Street neighbors” were whipping the Internet crowd into a frenzy. They were actually talking about banding together to sue Cubby’s mom. It wasn’t clear what they would sue for, as she had not done anything to them, but it was deeply upsetting to her.

It was also puzzling, because the neighbors she spoke to in real life were for the most part understanding. She and Cubby had gone from house to house the day after the raid, calming fears and apologizing for the disturbance. Even if they were annoyed, no one had given any indication they wanted to rise up and sue.

Yet the anonymous crazies in the forums were quite outspoken and sure of themselves, even when they were dead wrong. One stated with certainty that my son had an arsenal of guns, while another had the real scoop: It was a meth lab. There was talk of crack addicts mixed with mentions of Boy Scouts, nearby schools, and any number of popular conspiracies. It could have been a comedy routine except it was my family they were talking about. Our lawyer had said not to comment on the case, but I knew something had to be done. Whatever my son was accused of, I’d worked hard to build a reputation in that community, and I aimed to keep it.

That night, we paid visits to two of the three network TV stations serving our area. The news directors put Cubby on the air, where he introduced himself as the teenager who’d caused all the uproar. Then he apologized for all the trouble he’d caused and assured viewers that there were no bombs, drugs, or anything else to be afraid of. For a kid who was still terrorized by the raid, his composure was remarkable. I was glad they’d offered him the chance to tell his side of the story. He said the same things the following day in the Springfield newspaper.

In a perfect world, news reports would be impartial, but in
this world, they’re not. One result of Cubby’s outreach was that the Springfield paper—the biggest in our region—gave Cubby a fair shake, while the reporters for the Northampton local wrote as if they were in the district attorney’s back pocket. The same thing happened on TV. He made a friend at Channel 3, where the news director told him his own son had Asperger’s, while one of their competitors demonized him in a play for ratings.

None of the reporting made a shred of difference to the people on the forums. Although Little Bear’s real-life neighborhood seemed to have returned to normal, forum activists announced that a “mass meeting” was going to take place at the local Polish-American Club. Supposedly, a lawyer would address the group and dispense advice. With some trepidation, not knowing whether she’d be at all welcome, Cubby’s mom drove to the meeting at the appointed time.

No one was there except a film crew from the TV station that had been airing the wilder rumors since the night of the raid. A few old men sat at the bar, nursing drinks. The bartender didn’t know anything about a meeting and didn’t care. There was no lawyer and no advice. That was the last she heard about “community action.” I don’t know if all the traffic on the forum was the result of a TV reporter trying to stir up a story, online bullies, or some weirdo’s fantasy. Whatever it was, nothing came of it.

As the story of the raid faded from the news, I realized that the goodwill I’d built up in the local business community had paid off in an unexpected way. Most of the newspapers and television stations had respected our privacy and reported the story fairly. No one mentioned that I was an author and local business owner, or that my brother had written
Running with Scissors
, a massive bestseller. My brother and I remained in the background, anonymous. Unfortunately, the same was not true for Little Bear. It was her house that had been raided, and there was no keeping her name out of the stories. Even today, people ask her if our son is “still in jail.”
I guess the raid got so much attention that people assume he must have been arrested.

I’d never thought of myself as “connected to the media,” but the events of that week showed me I was. Employees, managers, and even owners of every local media outlet had bought cars from me over the years, and brought them to my company for service. Several reporters had family members with autism, and they’d attended my talks at Elms College and elsewhere. When Cubby got into trouble, I didn’t say a word, but many good-hearted people looked out for us anyway. No one convicted us in the news, spread rumors about us on the wire services, or sensationalized my teenager’s misjudgments. I’ll always be grateful for that.

Just when we thought things had quieted down, Little Bear got two letters from the government. The outfit that runs the dump for the Town of South Hadley sent her a bill for ten thousand dollars, claiming that she was responsible for the cost of opening the landfill on a weekend to dispose of “a chemical spill.” At the same time, the state hazmat people billed her for an additional twenty thousand dollars for “cleaning up” her basement. Cubby’s mom answered them both politely, pointing out that there had been no chemical spill to clean up. Everything in the lab was stored securely in containers, which the raiders had chosen to seize and carry to the landfill. Nothing was leaking, and anything they had spilled was their responsibility, not hers. They had made the choice to take Cubby’s chemicals and dispose of them in the landfill. If she had any financial responsibility for that, she wrote to them, it would have to be determined by a court of law. Until then, she wasn’t paying. Then she talked to her brother Ted, an attorney in Oregon. From his perspective, the situation seemed clear.

“They can go pound sand,” he said.

Cubby was never arrested, but Trooper Perwak had warned me that there was still the possibility that the DA would read the police reports and decide to press charges. That was very worrisome to us, especially when I began reading up on the prosecutor.

At the time of the raid, Elizabeth Scheibel was in her fourteenth year, and her fourth term, as Northwestern District Attorney. DAs are elected in Massachusetts, and she had run unopposed, as a Republican, in the last few elections. Her work on behalf of children was widely praised, and she had received accolades for her support of people with disabilities. Offsetting those good points were the many critics who described her office as capricious, heavy-handed, and unreasonable. By the time Cubby’s lab was raided, the local media had become quite vocal in their criticism of her. The consensus was she’d been in office too long and the power of the job had gone to her head.

Cubby’s case was assigned to an assistant DA named Alice Perry. I don’t know whether she asked for the case or whether it was just handed to her. Either way, she seemed to take a vigorous interest in it, and warning bells began to ring in my head.

The first sign of trouble was Perry’s refusal to give our lawyer a straight answer about anything involving the case. Then, when attorney Hoose offered to bring Cubby in for a meeting, she declined. That spoke volumes to me. It told me that she didn’t want to learn who Cubby was, because the reality might differ from the image of him she’d already formed. In my experience, people often refuse to meet when they’ve closed their minds and don’t want to face the possibility that they made a bad call. Wars have started that same way.