The Assembler of Parts: A Novel

by Wientzen, Raoul

  Brian Joseph begins to cry a hunger cry. Mother looks at his plethoric, wriggly form under the blue blanket, then back to Father. She nods.

  *

  My heart breaks. I love you, Vincent Garraway. But why did you puncture their peace with the truth? I have seen the truth, and you know the truth. But they would be happy and whole and healed if left in the lie. Why ask them to find the answer in the life of Jessica Mary Jackson? Or was my entire life somehow about “the truth"? What is my truth, Dr. Garraway, and why must it bring pain? Again.

  Nothing I have seen in these tapes provides me even a tiny clue. I remember the first tape with the photo of Mother holding me, a newborn, and roses in her arms, her Christmas message to the world. Now* I cannot escape the sadness of my breaking new-knitted heart as I watch them both consumed with vengeance, and mindless, forgetful rage. It is a new photo I see: every rose is wilted black, every thorn thick as thumb.

  The tapes seem more useless than the hands of my birth. I am worried that, through Garraway, Mother and Father will find the answer to my life, one that only causes more anger and bitterness.

  PART THREE

  WHAT MOST MAKES US HUMAN

  12

  THE ASSEMBLER OF PARTS

  It is the advertisement in the Washington Post that convinces Father to make an appointment for a “free consultation” with an attorney at D’Woulfe and D’Woulfe. The ad reminds Father of a postcard. It is rectangular in shape. In its center is a picture of Brandon A. D’Woulfe, an elderly, serious-looking man wearing a plain dark suit and a short beard. He stands, arms crossed at his chest, before a gathering of fifty people, all of whom smile while they hold up settlement checks. The caption printed in bold letters below the photograph is a single word: “Justice.” The firm’s address and phone number are in the upper left corner. The zip code is in bold. Father has talked to many friends about finding a malpractice attorney. None of his acquaintances has ever used one. He has read through the yellow pages twice, each time analyzing the information to settle on a firm, but all the write-ups seem identical, unrevealing.

  But D’Woulfe’s zip code is in bold. The postman in Father likes that. The firm attends to detail. Plus the man’s eyes fix you as if they know something prophetic and unimaginably painful about life. Your life. Even his stare is bold. Father decides he likes that, a lot.

  The office of D’Woulfe and D’Woulfe occupies the entire seventh floor of a metal and glass building just south of the expensive department stores I used to see on Wisconsin Avenue during trips to the hospital. Mother and Father are served coffee in china cups. They sip it slowly. It tastes like the coffee they’ve had in restaurants on anniversaries or birthdays. There is a plate of cookies on the silver tray bearing cream and sugar. “Galettes,” says the receptionist setting down the tray on the glass-topped table. Father bites one and the crumbs seem to disappear in his mouth before he can crunch them, like buttery ashes on his tongue. Mother raises her eyebrows in exclamation, as if to say, “What in heaven are galettes?” Through the picture window in the waiting area, they can see the carefree cursive of Bloomingdale’s and the sedate seriousness of Saks Jandel.

  Father is at first disappointed with the man who enters to greet them. He is tall and young and clean-shaven and wears red, white, and blue suspenders over a starched white shirt. The letters BAD’W are written in blue thread on his shirt pocket. Father is taken aback by the man’s eyes. They seem altogether too closely spaced in his narrow, elongated head. He has none of that look of strength and experience Father thought he’d seen in the advertisement. He is hoping the man is simply an assistant or a secretary. And the monogrammed initials, perhaps nothing more than part of a corporate uniform. Like the UPS people.

  “Brandon D’Woulfe,” he says as he offers his hand. “And you are Mr. and Mrs. Jackson? Yes?”

  “Yes,” says Father. Mother smoothes her blouse collar before taking his hand. He looks so well dressed, so proper and dignified, she thinks.

  “Welcome,” he says. “Please come with me. We can talk in my office. Leave your coats. They’ll be fine.” Brandon D’Woulfe turns and leads the way. The receptionist smiles at Father’s perplexed look as he walks by her desk. She mouths, “Junior.” His eyebrows register her remark. He wants to smile back in thanks, but his head is too full of words, facts, dates, and contradiction to do so.

  “Please, have a seat,” the younger D’Woulfe says gesturing to a leather couch against the wall. He occupies the sole chair opposite them. A low table sits in the space between them. He waits until the creaking noises have quieted before he says, “So, I want to know the details of your problem. I will sit and listen to you until you are finished. I will not interrupt. I will record everything you say. I will ask you some questions. I will review whatever materials you have brought. I will discuss your case with the senior member of the firm, my father, Brandon A. D’Woulfe, Sr., and I will let you know where we propose we go from there. Agreed?”

  Mother nods. Father clears his throat as if to speak, and nods.

  “Alright. Who would like to tell me the story?” He presses the record button of the machine on the table.

  “This here is the autopsy report. And this is the echo tape,” begins Father as he hands D’Woulfe the “materials” he brought. “Jessica was our firstborn. They killed her, the doctors did. Then we were made the scapegoats. Then the autopsy proved us innocent. But then they tried to cover up their mistakes by getting rid of the evidence. We don’t think any of that is right.” He stops. His face is flushed and his eyes are narrowed in their sockets like he is seeing too much sun on snow. He waits a few seconds and adds, “We want justice.” The only sound in the office is from the machine. It seems to breathe in a wheezy, struggling way.

  When it is apparent that Father is finished, B. A. D’Woulfe, Jr. says, “Alright. That’s a good start. But go back to the beginning now. Tell me the whole story of what happened to Jessica Mary. Everything.”

  Mother is touched the lawyer has used my full name. Before Father can begin again, she starts. “Jessica Mary was born with Hilgar syndrome almost eight years ago. She came out of me with no thumbs, but that didn’t matter. She had her life, and she had us. That’s what matters.” Mother spins out the story of my life and death. She talks, uninterrupted for half an hour.

  What Brandon A. D’Woulfe hears makes him happy. Exceedingly happy. Wait until the old man hears about this one, he thinks after my parents have left and he returns to his office to make written notes from a review of the audio. He works until midnight getting the timeline, the players, the medical facts straight. He keeps his secretary working until ten typing the transcript of the interview. He sleeps on his office couch until five, showers and shaves and puts on clean clothes but still his signature suspenders. He works over coffee highlighting the transcript in yellow from five thirty until seven a.m.

  He’s in his father’s office at two minutes past seven, waiting for him to arrive for the presentation.

  It’s going to be a blockbuster of a case.

  He can feel it in his bones, which resonate with a distinctive tickle to the internal “Ka-ching! Ka-ching!” of the insurance industry’s cash register. Oh, how his fingers twitch, how his thumbs hum! At five past seven, he can bear it no longer. He hooks his thumbs under the suspenders and does five sets of ten repetitions against the elastic bands. His thenar muscles are screaming in pain when his father enters the room at seven minutes after seven. It is January twenty-second.

  Even Cassidy is anxious about the phone call they all await from the firm of D’Woulfe and D’Woulfe. He eats supper with the family the night of the consultation and listens to Father describe the three-hour meeting. He thinks it is fair and reasonable to sue if the facts are as Father insists. But he himself has a sketchy recollection of the events from the time shortly before I died until a week or so ago. He remembers me in his arms the morning of my death. And the words I whispered in his ear. He remembers singing at
my funeral. Looking at Jeanine pouring chocolate milk onto her smashed sweet potatoes and yelling, “Gravy, Mommy, gravy!” he remembers the face of Beatrice Smith, and even now a chill of fear rattles his spine. He remembers Father Larrie shaking his hand and exhorting him to lay aside his blame and his guilt. He remembers how easy it was for him to do just that even as the sadness coalesced and bore down on him like a storm. He thinks it was the acceptance of that storm that eased his heart of other anger, other blame. He remembers now how sweet sadness can feel. The rest of the days are conflated with withdrawal dreams, the hauntings of his past, the phantasms of his future without me. When Brian Joseph cries in his crib upstairs in my old room, he is startled from his minute steak and his miasmic rememberings. It takes him a few seconds to recall the birth of the boy who will go on to choose “Joey” as his appellation, who will attend college on a baseball scholarship, and who will never once in his life drink to excess. “Brian Joseph,” he says to Mother who is already pushing back from the table to go to him. Cassidy’s face is full of certainty, as if it is he who must remind her of the new birth. “Yes,” says Mother with a slight nod. “Brian Joseph.” It is as if an agreement has been concluded between the two of them, ending some uncertainty.

  Cassidy holds the baby after Mother has fed and changed him upstairs. The dessert is being served. He smells like a bottle of good rum to Cassidy, caramel and vanilla and the salt sea. He kisses the baby’s forehead. “Yo-ho-ho,” he says to the wide-eyed boy.

  Later that night, after Jeanine has been fed the story of Cupid and has succumbed to the length of the day by the creak of the rocker and the velvet in his voice, he tells Father, “Ford, whatever I can do ta make it all come out right, I’ll gladly do.”

  “Kind of you, Joe. We’ll keep that in mind.”

  The next morning, Father watches the clock on the far wall of the post office as he sets up his counter slot. In his worldview the gears of justice grind slowly. He envisions hours, days perhaps, of tortured deliberation on the merits of their case at the office of the attorneys. The debate of pros and cons. The caveats. The loopholes. The finer points of the law. He imagines three, four lawyers in the firm’s library surrounded by leather-bound books piled high as walls on mahogany tables, scouring the law for the way, the truth, the light. He imagines yellow legal pads full of scribble, one of the pages neatly divided by a thin red line down its very center. A sort of exodus for truth and justice. The page, a yellow sea divided by the attorney’s hand. “Drown them all,” Father mumbles as Cassidy unlocks the front door.

  Before the first customer can enter, he hears the manager sing out from his office. “Ford, you got a call. An attorney. Take it in here. I’ll leave ya alone.”

  “Mr. Jackson?” Brandon A. D’Woulfe, Jr. says over the phone. “We’re going to take your case. We’d like you and your wife to come in again, this time to sign our standard contract and some authorizations for release of records. We think you have a case, a real good case. And we feel, given all the circumstances, the sooner we go forward with it, the better it will be. Could you come sometime this afternoon or evening? It won’t take but a minute. Then we’ll get Jessica Mary’s records and send them out for expert review. Within a month, the suit will be filed. By Passover, they’ll be begging to settle. Shall we say six?”

  “Six would be fine,” Father says. “Kate and I will be there.”

  “Excellent. And, please, jot this down. The key code to the gated parking lot is W-O-U-L-F-E. The lot is heated. Cold out there.”

  “Thank you, sir,” says Father. “Kate and I appreciate that.” He remembers the bleak cold of the street where he parked to attend the parenting classes. Anger and relief compete in his heart.

  “No problem,” says D’Woulfe. He is doodling on a tablet of yellow paper. It has the summary of points made by his father at the morning meeting. Four lines that read: “Sympathetic plaintiffs,” “Understandable medical issues,” “Medical fraud,” “Settle for policy limits.” He adds his own commentary to this paternal wisdom and writes, “Punitive damages—fifteen million.”

  “See you at fifteen,” D’Woulfe says to end the call.

  “Sir?” Father asks.

  “I meant, six. See you at six.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Father. He hangs up the phone and calls Mother, misdialing twice out of excitement.

  Brandon A. D’Woulfe, Jr. turns his eyes again to the memo, reading, “The Jackson case will settle not because of the medicine but because there’s fraud on the part of the docs. The hospital will pay up to protect its reputation. So fraud’s the angle to take in the discovery phase. Bang on it like a kettledrum.

  “Name everybody who touched the kid, and the hospital. Work up a damages claim that goes heavy on the kid’s lost future wages. Like forty years at 100K per. And add another half mill for loss of consortium, pain and suffering, blah, blah, blah. That ought to scare them into surrendering the policy limits on the cardiologist and the hospital. Settlement figure I have in mind is four mill.

  “Send the file to Freidman, the cardiologist in Boston and to Bill Chester, our peds guy at Hopkins. In your letter to them, tell both there’s a rush on the review. Let them charge a premium. I’d like to get this case filed in a month.

  “Last. Badger, as slam dunk as this case is, DO NOT try to hit it out of the park. They’re gonna come back at us with limited lifetime earnings capacity b/c/o her set of handicaps if you do. Then we’re in a brawl that will take years to sort out, expert by expert. Just go at them hard over the fraud thing, and take the policy limits.

  “Dinner? This week? This month? B. A.”

  It is this closing inconsistency that kindles his thinking. January has but one week to run. To dine with his father “this week” or “this month” is a distinction without a difference. It sets him to wondering what else might be wrong with the old man’s logic.

  Certainly not the part about the hospital’s eagerness to settle because of the specter of fraud. No, that’s a given. Or the probable strategy of the defense to try to limit the economic damages by suggesting the child’s handicaps would have constrained her vocational opportunities. No, a jury would certainly consider those arguments. And four mill for a quick case with forty percent going to the firm, well, that’s not bad for a couple months’ work drawing up the complaint, filing the suit, getting the depos of the treating docs and parents done. But there is something in the case that gnaws rat-like at him, because he thinks that, with just the right manipulation, juxtaposition, reassembly, it could be an altogether different case, a big, fat, juicy one. Say fifteen mill. Say twenty mill. He repeats that out loud, “Twenty mill.” He likes the sound of it.

  He reads over the memo again as he waits for the mother and father to arrive, digging and pawing at the nugget in the case. It’s in there. He can feel its solidity beneath the surface. He’s the Badger.

  It is a great relief for Mother and Father to hear Brandon A. D’Woulfe, Jr. say that there will be no cost to them for his firm to litigate their claim unless the outcome is successful. Until then, the firm will bear all the costs including the fees of the experts, which, the young attorney says with great earnestness, may run upwards of forty thousand dollars if the case goes to trial. No, as the contract he hands them stipulates, all costs will initially be borne by D’Woulfe and D’Woulfe. Whatever monetary settlement is won will be proportioned forty percent to the firm, sixty percent to the claimants. Only then will the costs of bringing the claim be taken out of the family’s share. “So you see,” he says, “there is no risk to you and your family. For instance, if we receive four million dollars in settlement, the firm retains one million six hundred thousand and you get the rest, two million four hundred thousand, out of which you pay the experts’ fees, the court costs, duplication costs, postal costs, those sorts of things. Let’s say they all come to fifty thousand. That leaves you with a net of two point three five million.” He lets that last word hang in the air like the peal of
a Sunday church bell. “Mill-y-on,” he repeats for effect. “If all that’s clear, please, both of you sign and date the last page above your names.”

  Mother looks at Father. Her face does not hide her fatigue. She is but a week postpartum. Brian Joseph calls for her breasts every hour and a half through the nights. Father has tried bottles of milk so that Mother can rest, but the hungry baby will have none of it. Fatigue has eroded some of her eagerness to join Father’s cause to set my death aright. So she regards Father’s face and simply says, “Ford?”

  “It won’t cost us a thing,” Father says. “And it’s what we got to do. For Jess.” He doesn’t hesitate a bit. He signs his name and adds the date and hands the paper to Mother. She signs but even her cursive is grudgingly slow. “It won’t cost us anything,” he repeats when he takes the contract from her.

  They also sign a dozen form letters requesting a release of my medical records to the law firm of D’Woulfe and D’Woulfe. Brandon D’Woulfe explains the next step—a formal review of my records by their experts and then the filing of papers that will commence the legal proceedings. He offers his best guess of the timeline—a month to file the case, three or four more for discovery, and then either settlement or trial by summer. Mother nods. Father makes notes.

  “May I offer you some tea or coffee?” he asks.

  Father checks his watch. “No, thanks. It’s getting close to seven and we best be getting home. Our new little one will be wanting his dinner about now.”