The Assembler of Parts: A Novel

by Wientzen, Raoul

  “Wood hath hope,” the Assembler tells me when I think about that incident. “A tree, if you cut it down, shall spring a shoot from the root and shall live!” I don’t know what He’s talking about, but I sometimes still feel Cassidy lean against me, hear the second clunk of the glass on the wood, this one a gentle sound, like a dying echo. I ask Him, “Did You ever feel the power go out from You?” “Wood hath hope!” He replies.

  It is Cassidy who tells them the history of the paper ring, and they put it on my finger before the viewing starts.

  The doctors come to me in death as they came to me in life, with a mixture of duty and curiosity. They drive over from the hospital all together, Burke, Garraway, Marshall, Stein, and O’Neil all in the same car. Burke and Garraway are the most affected by my death, though for different reasons. Burke hugs Mother and shakes Father’s hand and repeats, like a mantra, “We will miss her so,” to everything either one of them says.

  “So nice of you to come.”

  “We will miss her so.”

  “She loved going to see you in your office.”

  “We will miss her so.”

  “Thank you for your care all these years.”

  “We will miss her so.”

  Stein and O’Neil say, simply, “I’m so, so sorry,” and leave it at that. Marshall cries in Mother’s arms, whispering, “And we never got the chance to fix her heart. But maybe it was all for the best.” Garraway kneels at my casket before approaching my parents. He makes the sign of the cross and closes his eyes. His height makes him look like he’s peering down on me from heaven itself. Then, slowly, he bends. His lips brush my fingers a last time. The third, fourth, and fifth black beads of the rosary’s third decade briefly sparkle with his breath’s moisture. He smiles when he spots my ring and taps it with his finger.

  Other than my family and Cassidy, he is the only one of the multitudes to touch me. The Assembler lets me feel it, those soft warm dabs to my fingers like some tiny bird at play.

  He greets Mother and Father. He says at first how sorry he is for their loss. Then, how privileged he was to have known me and them. And finally, he says what none of the other doctors have ventured to say. “You were the absolutely best, best parents she could ever have had. And I really mean it.”

  The tape ends there with Mother breaking down into tears and going to Father’s arms. They seem weak and tired, those arms, as they surround her.

  The Assembler insists I watch Basement Tape #14. I pass a second eternity* waiting for it. It is Cassidy at the wake. Helping put my ring on. Helping to settle photos around. Talking with friends and coworkers about me, my life, his life with me. Laughing at some of this, crying too. Cassidy in the hospitality room pouring stiff ones into plastic cups, working hard not to slur his words, not to stagger and sway, darting his eyes around the room for the lady in the orange turban. Wondering who is caring for BJ tonight, trying to remember to ask Father that very question, willing to volunteer to drive home to read her to sleep, but in the thickening alcohol fog, forgetting and forgetting again. But he does not forget, cannot forget, the nights decades earlier in these same rooms, the two coffins, the swamping twin miseries of heartbreak and anger. He feels almost at peace here and now, at peace that he must confront only the sadness, and the sadness of just one death. It is like a gift he has gotten from me.

  During the short ride back to the hospital parking lot, Garraway asks where the autopsy stands. Burke answers, “So far, just the aberrant subclavian causing partial airway obstruction so that a little croup was catastrophic.”

  “How’d we miss that?” Garraway asks, sounding far away.

  “I don’t know that we missed anything,” Marshall replies. “I’ve requested all her prior echoes to review. I’ll let you know what I see. It is an unrelated anomaly, you know, the subclavian. Not something one would expect to find.” Marshall thinks the geneticist looks a trifle haughty, and must blame her for the mistake in the girl’s management. She adds, trying to take the fight to him, to make him doubt the thoroughness of his own evaluation, “God, it makes me wonder what else there was missing from that poor girl. She was like a walking time bomb. And she just went off.”

  Garraway is about to tell her he has my echo from age two, just before the kidney surgery, and that he was going to review it with her in preparation for the case report he is writing, but Stein interrupts his train of thought. “Anyone for a beer and a burger? I’m starving.”

  Marshall is the only one to opt out. Too much to do.

  I receive Basement Tape #15. It is one of the briefest recordings of events I have seen to date*. Cassidy is sitting on the examining table in the same ER room where I was pronounced dead. It is near midnight of the evening of my wake. He is drunk. He nods off twice waiting for the doctor. Each time, his body slumps off the plastic surface of the examining table, and he is jarred awake. He mumbles something inaudible. I cannot see his lips well, and even if I could, the drunken laxity of his facial muscles would inhibit my reading ability. The Assembler has chosen not to overlay the tape with Cassidy’s internal voice. Cassidy is nodding off again when the curtain parts and an Indian doctor enters.

  “Well, what can I do for you tonight, Mr. Cassidy?” he says, sounding precise and dignified. He has a young-looking face but graying hair that’s so long in the back it covers the collar of his white coat.

  “Drunk,” says Cassidy, touching his index finger against his breastbone three times so there is no mistake as to who is drunk.

  “So it would seem, sir.”

  “An’ tamorra I can’t be drunk. Mus be a pill for that. Gotta be.”

  The Indian doctor strokes his chin. “Tomorrow is a special day, is it?”

  Cassidy nods so forcefully, he loses his balance and almost tumbles again. “Tamorra I gotta sing at the fun’ral. Jus’ lemme have a pill.” He holds out his hand. It swoops and rises and falls like he’s trying to catch a butterfly. He quickly brings it to his side and sighs from the effort.

  “Would you consider taking the treatment for more than a single day? Would you be interested in seeking sobriety, sir?”

  “Doc, I ain’t. Jus’ tamorra through the fun’ral z’all I ask. One pill. Two. Nothin’ more.” He closes his eyes and his head spins like a top. He opens them and is surprised to see a doctor standing before him, rubbing his knuckles.

  “I could write you a script for Antabuse and you could fill it first thing in the morning. But I cannot administer you a dose now. It would cause you marked gastric distress if you take it with alcohol in your blood. You would be afflicted with the most pernicious retching, sir. So, a dose in the morning should do the trick.” He folds his hands together as if in prayer and then rubs them again. The word “pernicious” sticks in Cassidy’s mind like a pin.

  “Zokay. Zokay, Doc. I’ll jus’ take it now. I can’t trus’ myself ta take it in the mornin’. Jus’ gimme it.” Again he holds out his dancing hand.

  “If I treat you now, you would need to stay here under observation and intravenous fluid therapy until the vomiting subsides. Is that acceptable?” All this to sing a song at a funeral, he thinks. The Irish.

  “Yeah, sure,” Cassidy says. He stills his hand and offers it to the doctor.

  The tape is edited at this point. What remains is a haggard Cassidy forcefully emptying his stomach contents into green basins that look like half moons six times over the ensuing hours, saying, “Oh, Christ Almighty,” after each episode. He leaves at five thirty a.m. with two additional tablets and a script for a month’s supply. “Just in case,” the doctor says as he hands him the discharge papers.

  Tina and her mom are at my funeral Mass. Even a few parents of my classmates come. Ms. Smith the caseworker is there, too.

  Tina is frightened and holds her mother’s hand as they walk past my casket in the vestibule, where it sits next to the baptismal font waiting for the service to start. After they pass, she turns to look at it again and says without a single stutter, �
�I think she can hear better now. She can hear me and speak to me better now, but I can’t hear her anymore.”

  “Maybe sometimes you might hear her whisper in your heart.”

  “Will she tell me why she had to die? At Christmastime?”

  “Maybe someday she will.”

  “Why did she have to die, Mommy? It’s Christmastime.”

  “I know, baby. No one knows why now. Maybe someday we’ll know.” She squeezes Tina’s hand and Tina squeezes back. They slide into an empty pew.

  “Mommy, there’s BJ!” She points excitedly to my sister in Mother’s arms at the back of the church, squirming to reach the white handkerchief sticking out of Ned’s jacket pocket.

  “I see her,” Mrs. Dalton says.

  The organ music plays louder and the ushers push me down the center aisle. Mother, Father, BJ, Ned, Nana, and Cassidy slowly lead the procession of the rest of the family. They step into the first two pews as Father Larrie ascends the sanctuary steps to the altar. He turns and greets the congregation. “On behalf of the Jackson family, I would personally like to thank you all for coming to this celebration of the Mass of Christian Burial for Jessica Mary Jackson. We are here today to celebrate Jessica’s uniting with her risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In the midst of all the pain and sorrow her passing has brought, we take comfort in our faith, her faith, that life is not ended in death but merely changed. We believe in our hearts that she now is fully alive in Christ. So we start what is our celebration of her life and her new life, as always, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son . . .”

  The service is not long, under an hour. Father Larrie’s homily is brief. It makes Mother and Father, Ned, Nana, and Cassidy cry. I had not realized that through the steel bars of that priest’s many rules, there still beat a heart that could feel. “She brought joy to her family and her friends. Vexation for her willfulness to her teachers. Admiration from them because of her perseverance. And clarity about God’s complex design for humanity because of her setbacks that did not set back her spirit. In short, she was like all of us hope to be.”

  Before the Kiss of Peace, Cassidy leaves his pew and walks up the steps to the lectern. The black suit smothers his frame. The jacket hangs loosely over his stooped shoulders, his pants cuffs drag at his heels. His eyes are hollow and seem to have retreated into their sockets. His guitar is next to the altar boys’ seats. He retrieves it and begins to play. His hands are shaky at first and he misses a note or two as he starts the introduction to “Amazing Grace.” But before the voice comes in, he abruptly switches tunes. Out come the sweet slow notes of “Dark Eyed Molly.”

  Deep and dark are my true love’s eyes

  Blacker still is the winter’s turning

  As the sadness of parting proves. . .

  Father Larrie is standing behind the altar. His mouth falls open a fraction at the switch. He moves his arms a little in protest. Then he thinks, “Let him have his way with it. It’s harmless and maybe it’ll do the family some good.” He closes his mouth and reverently hangs his head. The music is lovely and sad.

  I feel it in my marrow up here* when I hear that song Cassidy sings, the thumping and buzzing alive in my bones.

  Especially in my thumbs I feel it. I feel it all.

  In an eternally* repeating epiphany, I realize how close those words are to Cassidy’s promise to me in my room after BJ was born. He sings from the lectern:

  No fiddle tune will take the air

  But I see her swift feet a-dancing

  And the swirl of her long black hair

  Her smiling face and her dark eyes glancing

  The song ends with the triple refrain: “Then who’s to know in the morning after, That I long for her dear dark eyes.” Tears drip silently in the congregation while he sings. At the close fifty people take to blowing their noses. It goes on for over a minute, the only sound now in the church. Finally, Father Larrie continues the service. “Peace be with you,” he says looking over to Cassidy. “Peace be wit’ you, too, Father,” Cassidy says into the microphone. Though the congregation mumbles this same reply in unison, their noise doesn’t drown out Cassidy’s response.

  After the service we drive to the cemetery. It is a normal winter day, cold but not bitter, tranquil but with an occasional puff of wind, overcast but with jagged spots of blue suddenly appearing above. The robins hop on the straw sod and sometimes fly off, frightened. Their shadows are still like arrows. It feels good to be buried on an ordinary day. There are more prayers at the grave site. Then the mourners walk slowly to their cars, and four men I never knew lower me down into the earth.

  Tina is right. I hear everything. The sound of earth clumps on my casket like the pounding of an eternal drum. I think, now* or then*, it’s hard to say, there should be a constellation, the Drummer. The drum should be long and rectangular and made of polished wood and ring loud enough to wake the dead. Even the deaf dead.

  The earth, surprisingly, smells sweet and clean, of pine. Death has exhaled the wormy whiff in me.

  The Assembler provides me with the long tape of the reception at our house after my interment. It is generally known up here* that He likes to memorialize parties— there are hours* of footage of bar mitzvahs, seders, communions, confirmations, birthday parties, wedding receptions, baptismal gatherings. He says to me when I ask why, “Wherever two or three are gathered together in My Name . . . ,” but I really think there is another reason. It’s as if He can’t ever get His fill of simple human joy.

  I sit through the long film. It’s much like all the other affairs my parents have had at home, but larger, warmer, louder, and more ironic given the mix of tears and laughter in the rooms. The sunlight through the windows seems on a switch, coming and going through the afternoon in shafts of clean brightness that fall on tables and floors in ever-changing geometry. There is so much food, Nana sets up tables in the kitchen, dining, and living rooms. No one needs to circulate much. They just arrive, find a place to sit or stand, and begin eating, drinking, and talking. The dozen children who are there chase each other through the rooms, sometimes making chains by holding on to the dress or sweater of the child in front and behind. It makes the adults smile to have to move aside for the twisting onslaught of twelve linked kids. Mother and Father keep busy attending to the ice and drinks, putting out new trays of food that seem to magically appear on the stove top or on the old glass table on the back porch. In all, there are five pans of baked ziti, two hams, a twenty-pound turkey, casseroles that pair meat and potatoes, chicken and broccoli, tuna and noodles, a Dutch oven full of baked beans, breads, rolls, and two platters of cheese. Each room has a bar and the bottles come with the guests.

  Cassidy takes condolences on his loss and congratulations on his song in equal measure. He sweats even before the house is stoked with body heat. He blinks hard every few seconds as if he is trying to clear his clouded vision. He turns to regard the lineup of whiskeys on the tables and blinks again. He moves to the kitchen and receives instructions from Nana, this platter, this casserole, this tray of rolls to here or there. Then there is nothing more to do but stand and talk. He stares at the bottles between greeting the mourners. He watches as they refill their glasses. He looks at his watch. It is almost one o’clock.

  His stomach is in a knot and he feels the tug of the bottles. They slosh when people pour and set them back down. It makes him dizzy to watch the liquids rock. He can smell the contents of the plastic cups passing by—Jimmy Shehan’s bourbon, Murphy’s rye, Ivey’s rum and coke. The table is against the living room window. The sun emerges from behind a cloud, and the browns in the bottles seem to glimmer, seem to burn. He taps his shirt pocket that holds the plastic vial they gave him in the ER. He shakes his head. The surfaces of the whiskies are like burnished gold skins in the sun, and he longs to kiss them all.

  “It is time,” he says out loud to no one. He steps to the table and reaches for the Seagram’s.

  In the kitchen doorway, BJ cries in the arms
of Aunt Miriam. “Come on, BJ,” she says, “I’ll get you a Coca-Cola.” BJ continues to wail. Through the chatting knots of people she sees Cassidy. “AceyDee!” she yells, extending her arms toward him. “AceyDee!” Cassidy turns to grimace a smile at her as they make their way to him. He sees, beyond the doorway, the broad back of Beatrice Smith. She stands in the kitchen dressed in a black pantsuit, but there is no mistaking her. She wears the same orange turban as the day they met. The way she stands, he can’t see her face. He remembers it, though, and a shiver passes through him.

  “I want Coke,” BJ proclaims as she throws herself into his arms and Miriam leaves to find Mother. My sister’s hands play with Cassidy’s ears the way they used to play with mine.