The Assembler of Parts: A Novel (30 page)

Then Garraway arrives.

Garraway arrives at noon carrying a briefcase. He examines Brian Joseph, and declares him “normal.” After Burke’s careful exam, Garraway’s proclamation sounds to Mother and Father like the priest’s last blessing at Mass. They half expect him to walk to the doorway, turn and say, “Go in peace.” But he lingers by the cribside. They exchange a few words about me. Garraway recalls our first meeting in the nursery. Then he opens the briefcase.

“I found Jess an interesting example of Hilgar syndrome, especially her highly accelerated cognitive development. So I’ve written her up as a case report. I’m sending it in to the
Journal of Pediatrics
for publication. I thought you might like to have a copy of it for your scrapbook on her.” He hands Mother a manila folder. In it is a five-page document titled, “Hilgar Syndrome and Cognitive Development: A Case Report and Review of the Literature.”

Mother looks at the neatly typed pages, going through them hoping to see a photograph. There is nothing but words and tables and numbers. “Thank you, Dr. Garraway. I’m not sure we’ll understand the medical words in here, but it’s good to know there was something to learn from Jess’s life.” She looks to Father, who nods.

Garraway’s face grows somber at that. His eyes lose the little crinkle of lines at their edges. Color drains from the port wine stain on his forehead. He just stands there a moment then reaches again into his briefcase. In his hand he holds a round metal container. He hands it to Father. “There may be one last thing to learn from Jess. I don’t know. But this is a copy of her two-year echo. I borrowed it from the sonography library a few months ago when I started writing her case report. But I never needed to use it. Now, it seems, it is the only echo still existing except for the neonatal study you saw Dr. Marshall play on Monday. All the others are lost. I checked. How or why, I don’t know. No one knows I have this spool, or that I made a copy for you. My duty to Jess wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t let you know of its existence and give you a copy.” He looks at Father and then back to Mother. “Seven, eight echoes lost. I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know if there is something left for Jess to teach us with this study or not. I hope not, actually. But I wanted to give you the opportunity to answer that question for yourselves.” He snaps the latches on the briefcase shut, one by one. He goes to the door and turns to them. “If you’re ever asked how you came into possession of this tape, you can tell them it came with the case report from me. The original echo I’m going to refile in the library. Today.” He considers saying that it, too, will probably disappear, but feels he doesn’t have to. Instead, he says, “It’s my last duty to Jess. I think she would have wanted me to discharge it. Put all the pieces of her life on view.” He turns and leaves.

At first Father is not infused with anger. He feels too shamed by his gullibility—no, his stupidity, for that. On Monday, he never thought to ask about the other echoes done through the years. He allowed Marshall to take him in, make a fool of him. If he had questioned her then on the other studies, he would have learned of their disappearance. That alone would have heightened his suspicions. But, no, he sat there in the dark,
in the dark,
weepy-eyed and forgiving, and let her get away with her ruse because he was who he was, a mid-level postal clerk with a year and a half of junior college. And she was who she was, the brilliant cardiologist with enough paper framed on her office walls to wrap a three-hundred-pound box of weights. So before he gets angry he says matter-of-factly to Mother, “We’ll find the smartest goddamn malpractice lawyer in the city and we’ll get her. We’ll get them all. Act of God, they said. Bull. I’ll show them an act. An act of man.”

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

I
t 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.