The Assembler of Parts: A Novel

by Wientzen, Raoul

  “Mr. Hill.”

  “I’m bringin’ you the folder. Read it real good for tonight, now. Pages eleven to twenty-three inclusive. And thank you for the loan.”

  Father extends his hand to receive it. “And two twenty-dollar rolls of stamps while you’re at it,” Hill says. Father hesitates but then gets the stamps. Hill takes them and hands Father the folder. He turns and leaves. The walk is the same.

  Father has no cash with him. He borrows forty dollars from Cassidy to reconcile his drawer. “Forty dollars,” Cassidy says blankly. It is his second day back at work after his leave of absence. He’s done well but the strain of the day—all the weighing of parcels, all the numbers, all the counting out of change—has drained away his mental energy. He opens his wallet and stares at the bills. He removes them all from the billfold and gives them to Father. Father takes two twenties and returns the rest.

  Outside the entrance to the post office, Robert Hill sells the stamps for twelve dollars a roll. “Services industry,” Father says, watching him through the plate-glass window.

  While Nana cooks supper, they huddle at the kitchen table and review the folder’s assigned pages. Mother had been correct. None of the reading material contains anything new. It deals with the normal visits to the pediatrician’s office during the first two years of life. It lists the important features of the physical and developmental exams that the physician will be especially concerned with, reviews the immunizations that are given, and lists safe and effective approaches to “the crying baby” and “the willful toddler.”

  “Jess never cried much,” Mother says at the table. “She was so sweet-tempered.”

  “She let her sister take care of that,” Father says. At that moment BJ lets out a loud wail from the living room where she plays Old Maid with Ned.

  “No!” yells BJ. “N-O-O-O-O!”

  It’s bath time and BJ has voted against it. Mother and Father laugh, their first real laugh since my death.

  BJ’s shouts grow fainter as Ned carries her up the stairs. They hear the report of one well-placed kick against the banister. They both laugh a second time at that, and then Mother cries. It is more a brief shower than a storm; her hands stay calm on the tabletop. “It’s all so mixed up inside me. The sadness with Jess still so heavy. But the new baby inside me kicking like a new hope, and the fear about BJ, all of it so sharp in me. It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s . . .” She wipes her cheek with her finger. “There seems to be just too many parts for one thing. Am I . . . Is it . . . ?” Father thinks her face is that of a child awakened by a bad dream, straining both to remember and to forget. He takes her hand, and Nana comes over from the stove to stand behind her. She places her wet hands on Mother’s shoulders. No one knows what to say. They all have too many parts to construct one single, simple emotion. They hear the upstairs pipes clunk as Ned turns on the bathtub tap.

  “Cold and then hot,” Father says. Mother cheers a little at this attempt to focus on the here, the now, the practical.

  “Cold and then hot,” Mother echoes. They haven’t read that in a book anywhere. They just know how to fill a tub safely.

  Father deposits Mother in front of the building and finds a parking place two blocks away. Mother walks the flights of stairs alone. Her back aches with each step, her breath quickens with the effort. But she is grateful none of the other participants enters the building and makes his way up the dark staircase with her. The conference room door is locked. She checks her watch. It is ten after seven. At the far end of the hall, light—the only light—shines out of an open doorway. She can hear music coming from there. Heat is pumping out of the radiators along the wall, and Mother feels warm. She removes her coat and hangs it on the conference room doorknob. She walks the length of the hall hoping to find Shaniquia Russell. Mother’s thought is that Shaniquia could open the door, switch on the lights, maybe be made to understand a little more about Mother and Father and their situation, something more than the awful and incomplete confession the last time. Possibly even become their ally. The room at the end of the hall houses four work cubicles. Shaniquia Russell is alone and sits at her desk eating Cup Noodles soup with a plastic spoon. Mother gently knocks on the doorframe. Ms. Russell looks up and Mother says, “Ms. Russell. Good evening. We got here a little early and were wondering if you could unlock—”

  Shaniquia Russell holds up a hand as a signal for Mother to stop. Mother complies. “I’m eating my supper now. Go back down and wait.” She returns her attention to her soup. Mother walks slowly back to the locked door. Her coat is gone. Carlos and his girlfriend walk into the hall from the stairwell. “Ma-Ma-Ci-Ta!” he says with a sneer. He casts his eyes around to be sure Father is absent. “After you push that fuckin’ baby out of your pussy, you know what? You come see me and I will put another one inside of you. You like that? A little fuckin’ gift from Carlos.” The girl’s laugh frightens Mother as much as the young man’s threat does. He steps to Mother. She can smell a sickening mix of stale sweat, cologne, and cigarette smoke clinging to him. He smiles and delivers a sharp jab to her belly. The shock of it doubles her over and steals her breath. She feels the baby shift and squirm. There is the feel of wetness between her legs. For a second, she thinks her water has broken. Still bent over, she steps back. She smells the odor of urine in the low air and knows what liquid the punch has produced. Anger, relief, embarrassment wash over her. From the stairwell come the sounds of foot scrape and echoing words. Then she hears the boy and girl both laughing, and it is only anger she feels.

  After Father arrives, she goes to the ladies’ restroom to remove her underwear and blot her dress dry. Her coat is jammed in the toilet.

  There are ten questions to the quiz. It is the first order of business. Mother and Father work through the questions quickly and easily. They are the first to finish. Father carries their answer sheet to Ms. Russell. On his return, Carlos glares at him and tries to trip him as he passes. “Hey! Man! Watch where you stepping,” Carlos yells. He is the last to turn in the quiz and then only after Ms. Russell has started counting to ten. At ten, she will accept no more papers returned. “Why you have to make it so hard on me?” he tells Shaniquia Russell at the three-count. “It is not fair you don’t test me in Spanish. I think you violate my rights. I should read these in Spanish.” He waves the paper in the air. “Yeah,” says the girlfriend. “We gonna sue.”

  “Eight,” says Shaniquia Russell, and Carlos is on his feet and moving fast to the table in the front of the room.

  They spend the remainder of the session on pediatric poisonings and how to childproof the home.

  “Hey, gringo, this how you did it with the kid? A little poison? What did you use, man? Come on, share it with us. We all good friends now. We won’t tell nobody. Was it the rat poison? Huh? Did you put it in her milk, amigo? Come on, Papi, open up. This is like question number eleven: What’d you use, man?”

  Even Shaniquia Russell pauses, looking like she would like to know, too.

  Mother stares at the floor. Father feels his heart pound in his chest and something soft and weak in his heart grows hard as rock. He knows he won’t be able to suffer this abuse much longer. Four more sessions, he thinks. Four. No, he thinks. No.

  The next morning Father calls Dr. Burke’s office to find out if the autopsy results are ready. Burke is tied up with a heavy clinic load and can’t come to the phone. The receptionist takes Father’s name and number. At five o’clock, shift’s end, he has heard nothing. He calls again. A taped message informs him the office is now closed. Father is irritable at home that night. He makes little dinner conversation. He reads to BJ in the evening without intonation. Mother is exhausted and retires at eight thirty. Father declines Ned’s invitation to help him with his garage project and takes a long walk in the cold instead.

  The next morning, Friday, he phones Burke again. He is asked to leave another message. He tells the young-sounding receptionist, “It’s about our daughter’s autopsy report. I just
wanted to know if it’s finished. If Dr. Burke has received the report. We are supposed to get a copy and then have like a final meeting.”

  “I’ll let him know,” she says. “Thanks for calling!”

  “Wait,” he interjects before she hangs up, “where is the report coming from? I mean, who issues it? Maybe they would be the best place to check on its status.”

  “Well, that would be the medical examiner’s office. Would you like that number?”

  Father dials the number robotically, convinced it will be another dead end. “Benton Ridgely,” the speaker says smartly into the phone. “Medical examiner.”

  Father is doubly surprised it is the medical examiner himself who answers. He was prepared for another secretary, a wait on hold, more time to practice his words silently again before they died silently in his head. But there is no time to do that now. “Yes. Sir. This is Ford Jackson. Jessica Jackson’s father. The girl you did an autopsy on just before . . .” Father has to stop to compose himself. His voice is wavering, his silent practice undone by his ears. The words coming out of his mouth sound too distanced, too coldly clinical, for the emotional weight they carry, and they collapse in his chest. He takes a deep breath and is about to continue when the medical examiner speaks.

  “Mr. Jackson. Let me express my deepest sympathies on your daughter’s death. How very sad. And how difficult it must have been for you and the family to witness her . . . passing. With her airway already partly compromised by that aberrant blood vessel, well, even a cold could have closed it over enough that she couldn’t breathe. I’m so, so sorry for your loss.”

  Father is stunned. He tries to form a sentence in reply. “Well, ah, well, thank you for your kind words. But I . . . we didn’t know . . . hadn’t heard—”

  “Mr. Jackson. It’s all right. Just take a second. I got all day.”

  Father tries again. “I don’t really know what you’re telling me. A blood vessel and her airway? I was just calling to see when you would be finished with your investigation so your report would be issued. We’re supposed to meet with Dr. Burke to discuss it. And we hadn’t heard anything from him.”

  “Well, I sent him . . . no, I faxed him the final report on Monday. I thought you had already seen it, and maybe were calling for me to clarify something. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with the findings like that, but I thought you already knew. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. But explain it to me again. Jessica had what?”

  “She had . . . Everyone has two large arteries that branch off the top of the heart. They are called subclavian arteries. They are large and normally bring blood from the heart into the upper extremities. The arms. Well, in Jessica’s case one of them came off the top of the heart at the wrong spot. It then had to run all the way across the upper chest from the left side of the body to the right, so it could go into the right arm. It’s usually not a big deal unless it runs behind the trachea. Which it did. The trachea is . . . You know what the trachea is, Mr. Jackson?”

  “I do. It’s the main windpipe into the lungs.”

  “Right. So this large blood vessel ran behind the trachea and pressed in on it from the rear, making the diameter of the airway much, much smaller than it should have been. So the real problem happens when there is something that causes additional narrowing in the diameter of the trachea. Like what happens in croup. And any new narrowing produces marked and immediate increase in resistance to airflow. It’s a law of physics. You know, it’s not hard to breathe through a regular straw, but narrow that opening just by half and you can’t. Like trying to breathe through a cocktail straw. Impossible. That’s what happened to Jessica in her bedroom that night. Her airway narrowed quickly and unexpectedly to the point where she couldn’t move air. It was a totally unexpected problem. And totally undiagnosed until the autopsy. That’s what I told Burke. And Officer Mattingly.”

  “Mattingly has the autopsy report, too?”

  “Monday. I talked to both of them Monday.”

  “And he—”

  “He should be ending the investigation into Jessica’s death. Cause of death is natural. That’s what I wrote on the autopsy report and the death certificate I issued. Laryngo-tracheo-bronchitis (croup), mild. Airway obstruction secondary to aberrant right subclavian artery, severe. I have it all right here. You have a fax machine?”

  “I do,” says Father. He becomes breathless and lightheaded as he recites the ten digits of the post office’s fax.

  “But you have to review this with Dr. Burke. There’s a lot in here for a layperson to grapple with. You’ll see. Meet with Dr. Burke. He’ll take you through it.”

  “We will,” Father says. He wonders why Mattingly hadn’t called to inform them of the investigation’s end, to remove that weight from their backs. Or Burke. Burke who knew about the parenting classes they were attending on threat of CPS action. Burke should have called, he thinks. He had all week. He had my messages. He should have called.

  “And Mr. Jackson,” says the medical examiner.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You should . . . There is . . .” He stops for a moment. “I’m real sorry for your loss and everything that happened. Just wanted you to know that.”

  “I appreciate that. Your report at least will . . . will help us understand what happened.”

  “Yeah, that it will.”

  Father has the sense Benton Ridgely wants to say more but can’t.

  *

  The Assembler brings more tapes. “You are troubled by what you see, yes?” He asks.

  “Aren’t You?” I snap the tapes from His hands. Oh, the advantage to having thumbs. I turn away, but He’s still there* in front of me.

  “Honestly?” He asks.

  “It’s a sin to tell a lie,” I respond.

  “Lies can be their own truth, as a path is part of the destination. I am not troubled in the least by My creation.” He looks at me with those big “Thou” eyes of His. Today* they are blue.

  Father calls Ned from work after he’s read the fax twice. He asks him to come to the 7-Eleven near home to talk at three. “Three?” Ned asks. “Yeah,” says Father, “I’m getting off a few hours early today.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The laws of physics.” Benton Ridgely said it was the laws of physics behind what happened. And Father knows only one person who might understand them, if only a little.

  “Physics,” Ned says flatly. “Sure. But why can’t we talk physics in the garage. That’s where I keep it.”

  “You’ll understand,” Father says.

  “It’ll cost you a Slurpee.”

  “Deal.”

  They buy two hot teas instead and stand talking near the racks of magazines that offer everything from Automotive Digest to Zodiacal Review. Father gives Ned a copy of the autopsy report and lets him read through it before they start. When he is done reading, Ned says, “Whew. Some complex stuff here. What do you suppose all that stuff about feeling her bones is about? Even her neck bones.”

  Father looks at him with his face set and angry. He blows on his tea. A puff of steam rises up and dissipates in the air. “Same reason Mattingly and CPS were on us afterwards.”

  “Oh. No.” Ned shakes his head in disbelief.

  “Yeah. They took the tack that we might have abused Jess, beat her.” He pauses, then says it. “Killed her.”

  Ned shakes his head again. He looks over the summary paragraph at the end of page three. “Says here the cause of death was natural means, secondary to airway obstruction from an aberrant right subclavian artery and superimposed mild croup. I take that to mean they no longer have their suspicions.”

  “That’s what the medical examiner told me. Thing is, these guys—Burke and Mattingly and Beatrice Smith— they all knew about these findings Monday. Monday, Ned. And no one contacted us. Would have saved us a week of worry. Would have saved us two trips out to those shitful classes. But no one did. They just went on letting us feel
guilty, lettin’ us pay the price for something we had no part in. And I’m wondering why they would do that.” He blows on the tea again, and takes a tiny sip.

  Ned’s eyes narrow. “Ford, I know where this is going. Says here Jess had an anomaly that no one knew about. Not us, not Burke, not anyone. And that’s what closed off Jess’s airway when she got the flu. You’re thinking—”

  Father interrupts. “I’m thinkin’ they missed it. They flat-out missed it. Either they didn’t do the right tests or they missed seeing it on all the goddamned tests they did do. All those expensive X-rays and echo studies and CAT scans, something this big just has to show up.”

  “That’s the law of physics you want to talk to me about? The limits of resolution of sonar waves and X-rays? Ford, I don’t—”

  Father holds up a hand. “No, Ned. Two other laws. One is why no one can breathe through a cocktail straw. That’s what the medical examiner said to me to explain what happened to Jess and her airway because of this thing in her chest.” He nods to the report in Ned’s hands. “Like breathing through a cocktail straw.”

  Ned scratches his head. “Well, not so hard a concept. Resistance to flow in a tube goes up by the fourth power for every decrease in diameter. So, you decrease the diameter by half, resistance goes up sixteen times. It doesn’t go up twice, it goes up by a factor of sixteen. Even plumbers know about that one. I can look it up in my books when we get home, show you on paper, but that’s the essence of it.” He studies Father’s face. There is something in it he hasn’t ever seen before. It’s not smugness, or haughtiness, but it’s close. “You said there’s another law you want my help with.”

  “Yeah. The law of gravity.”

  “Gravity?”

  “What goes up must come down.”

  Ned looks from the report to Father’s face and back to the report again.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, I’m getting even with those bastards for what they did. Their mistake is what took Jess from us. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, they put it all on us. I’m going after them, Ned, and I asked you here to get your support. Kate’s going to be reluctant to do it. But I want to take those guys down for what they did. Will you help me?”