The Assembler of Parts: A Novel (25 page)

They leave him and BJ home and bring flowers for my grave. They put them next to Cassidy’s, all the colors so fresh and bright on the winter sod, it somehow seems cruel. They say three Hail Marys and cry. When they return home, BJ is napping on the couch. Cassidy is talking with Father Larrie, who has stopped by for a visit.

I have asked. There is no tape of Cassidy’s visit to my grave that New Year’s morning. Nor of Cassidy and Father Larrie visiting. The tape He gives me shows them all sitting over dessert and coffee as it grows dark outside. BJ waking from her nap, being frightened by Larrie’s white collar. Going to Cassidy’s lap and eating so much pie from his plate, her stomach hurts and she cries again. Nana taking her up for a bath. Cassidy producing his vial of Antabuse, showing it around, taking one when it comes back to him. No one saying anything. Mother and Father and Larrie staring at each other, nodding.

*

He makes me mad, sometimes, the Assembler. What is so important here for me to see? Why not Cassidy at my grave, instead? Why not Cassidy and the priest, talking? What am I supposed to see in this tape? What’s the point?

“The pies,” He says. “Pumpkin and pecan. I thought you’d like to know.”

That second night in their bed, BJ is less noisy but still as flung in sleep as the limbs of a tree. Father almost falls from the bed, she has taken so much room. Mother sleeps better that night, the problem of Cassidy, the problem of Father’s anger, the threat to BJ resolving. Father lies awake until nearly four, listening and remembering. His heart pounds even as he is thankful for the two quiet female forms lying next to him. But his gratitude cannot suppress the memory of his grievances. Finally, he tries to recall every piece of information about geography he has ever learned, and he falls asleep naming rivers.

BJ is fully well the following day. She sleeps next to Mother and Father that night, and the next, before being returned to her own bed. She cries an hour that night, angry over her relocation. Father sits outside the door of her room, reading and listening to the sounds coming through the opening.

Ms. Smith schedules a follow-up visit for January fourth at noon. Father arranges to leave the post office during his lunch break so he can be home. Ms. Smith arrives early at ten forty-five. Mother is upstairs changing when she comes to the door. Nana answers the bell and lets her in. Ms. Smith has interviewed Nana before but decides to ask more questions while they wait for Mother to come down.

“I’ve now had a chance to discuss this matter with BJ’s doctor and Jess’s many physicians and to review their files, Mrs. O’Brien. I’m surprised you didn’t mention that your own brother died at almost the same age as Jessica and that he had some form of her syndrome. Why was that, do you suppose?” They are seated facing each other in the living room. Nana’s spine straightens and she pushes herself back from the edge of the chair.

“I suppose because it’s a genetic syndrome is why they both had it. That’s why we went to see Dr. Garraway. He explained it all.”

“That I know, Mrs. O’Brien. I spoke with Dr. Garraway myself. No. What I meant is why didn’t you tell me about any of this when we spoke the first time I was here?”

“I didn’t see how any of that related to your looking into Kate’s ability to take good care of her children. Which is what you said you were here for.” Nana’s tone is clipped. She has not blinked since the dialogue began.

“You don’t think your attitude toward a handicapped sibling while you were raising your own daughter might have . . . colored her thinking about children with special needs? ”

“It was never an issue in my house when I raised my children. Billy—he died years before any of them came along.”

“True, perhaps. But it
was
an issue in this house, wasn’t it? How to deal with a handicapped child? Certainly that was something that loomed large here. Am I correct?”

Nana has become too angry to answer. They sit in silence for half a minute staring at each other. Mother enters the room. She has promised herself to be patient with the slights likely to come her way during the meeting at noon. She is not prepared to see Ms. Smith sitting on her couch at eleven in the morning, nor to see the look of distress on her mother’s face.

“Ms. Smith,” says Mother frowning a bit. “You’re early!”

“I wanted the opportunity to see how the home looks. I was just about to walk the rooms with my check-off list when Mrs. O’Brien and I started to discuss your . . . uncle, Billy. Shall we go?” She rises in her green and blue patterned caftan. Her orange turban looks like the setting sun at the beach. Mother and Nana lock eyes. “No,” Mother signs, and hurries to catch up with Ms. Smith.

All of the deficiencies of the last visit are remedied. Ms. Smith makes note of BJ’s visit to Dr. Burke. They sit again in the living room. Ms. Smith refuses a cup of tea.

“It’s unfortunate Mr. Jackson is not here for this meeting. But I’m sure you will fill him in. We at CPS feel there has been some progress in the home setting. It is safer and better organized. And you did appropriately bring BJ to her physician when she took ill. And family friend Mr. Cassidy seems to be making an effort to deal with his alcohol addiction. On the other hand, there may well be some unresolved issues in the family over such things as the rights of the handicapped, appropriate use of off-hours medical assistance, child nutrition. Enough concern for us to recommend the parenting classes we discussed last time. Don’t think of this as punishment for something you did. Far from it, these classes are merely a practical way to shore up whatever . . . gaps there are in a family’s understanding of child rearing. The classes are offered at the County Department of Health, three days a week. The series runs twelve hours. That’s six classes, each two hours long.” She pauses there to see if Mother needs clarification. Mother sits mutely. The film captures the bounding pulse in her neck. It pushes the hollow in the base of her throat from shadow to light, shadow to light. Nana sits, staring at the water rings on the coffee table. Ms. Smith continues. “We think that if you and Mr. Jackson complete this curriculum successfully, we can close the book on this . . . chapter of your family’s life.” She pauses again to solicit questions before concluding. “Then all you must confront is the conclusion of Mr. Mattingly’s investigation and, hopefully, you can get on with your lives.”

Mother’s eyes fall to the carpet. The sadness in her heart over my death has been crowded these past days with guilt over her part in it and with the fear of losing BJ. For a second she wonders what would fill her heart if both these terrible emotions—guilt and fear—were to leave. Would there then be room for joy? For love? Acceptance? She wonders, too, if the fear were to go from her heart, whether the sadness would grow too strong, overwhelm her, bring on the black days and blacker nights. Or would the guilt rule all, paralyze her heart, bring her sense of “motherliness” to its knees? What kind of mother lets her child die like that?

There is too much uncertainty to see her future clearly. But the certainty of her present torment—a spirit steeped in the poison of an unholy trinity of sadness, guilt, and fear—prompts her to say to the woman in the orange turban, “When’s the earliest we can start?”

Ms. Smith leaves just before noon. Nana goes up to her room. Mother hears her crying when she passes her door carrying clean towels for the bathroom.

*

I am gaining humility through this exercise. I play but a small part in the events that determine the life of my family. Cassidy’s repentance is not entirely of my doing. He gives up the drink, he heals his heart, as much for the love of Mother and Jeanine and Father as for love of me. My parents grieve the threatened loss of Jeanine as much as the real loss of me. I begin to see my life as a small part of something grander, more elegant: the intertwined nature of the souls of man. What am I in all this? The yeast? The dough? Both? Perhaps my humility is incomplete, but I ardently think: both.

T
here are five other couples in the class. Mother and Father are the only Caucasians. They gather in a room with wooden folding chairs and a single, long, collapsible table. At the end of the table is a pot with tepid water, a jar of instant coffee, and Styrofoam cups. H
ELP
Y
OURSELF
! says the sign in hot-pink marker written under a smiley face. Nobody does. Behind the table sits Shaniquia Russell. She sits before a box containing six blue folders, the handouts for the participants. Ms. Russell is young and petite and has a tattoo on her forearm. The printed words NOT GONNA HAPPEN make a circle around a fist. She has an open face, a crew-cut hairdo, and silver hoop earrings.

Mother and Father are the last to arrive. The wall clock reads seven forty-one. They are eleven minutes late. There were two flights of stairs to walk in the building. They take in the impatient looks of a few of the participants. “Hey, Mamacita,” says a man who looks like he can’t be finished with his teenage years yet, “get the Papi to drop you off out front so we can start on time. You crawl like the turtle when you walk.” Father notices his tattoo. It is a blue skull that shines through the stubble of his shaved head like a reflection off murky water. The woman sitting beside him laughs and throws her head back. She is pregnant but not nearly as far along as Mother.

“Sorry,” says Father to the woman behind the desk. “Had a little trouble finding the place. Then, all those stairs.” They take seats in the rear. Two of the men haven’t opened their eyes since Mother and Father entered the room. They appear to be dozing in their chairs. Ms. Russell rises and distributes the folders, one to each of the men. When she arrives at the chair of the first sleeping man, she stands silently at his side and waits. In half a minute, the female member of the couple shakes his arm. “Leon. Leon,” she whispers as if Ms. Russell shouldn’t know she is waking him. “Wake up.” Leon opens his eyes. “Fuck you do that for?” he says jerking his arm out of her grasp. Then he sees the group leader. He looks away to the front of the room. She offers him his folder. He takes it without looking.

The second sleeper has been roused by his mate before Ms. Russell arrives. He receives his folder and promptly drops it to the floor.

“Pick it up,” Russell says.

“When I’m good and ready, I will,” he replies, staring at her.

Shaniquia Russell bends and retrieves it and carries it with her to her place at the table after she has distributed the rest of the folders. The man’s wife or girlfriend gives him a stare that could freeze water.

“I am Shaniquia Russell and I am the liaison educator for the Department of Public Health of the county. I will lead these next two weeks of sessions on parenting. I will assign reading from the packets I just distributed. I will administer a written quiz to start each session. You fail even one quiz, you fail the class. Take heed. If you don’t have the readings, borrow someone’s and copy it.” She stares at the folder dropper for half a minute. “This is where we go around the room, giving our names and what we do, and why we are in this group.” She consults a list on a paper. “Esmeralda and Alberto Rivera. Esmeralda?” Esmeralda stands like a schoolgirl before a nun and begins.

Three couples are in attendance because of suspected child abuse. Leon and his girlfriend are in this group, as are Esmeralda and Alberto and Eduardo and Lucida. One attends because it is a requirement of his recent parole from prison, where he served eighteen months for assault and battery. His son was born while he was “away.” This is Robert Hill, the folder dropper. His girlfriend, Erika, is newly pregnant. It is she who accounts for their presence. When it is Robert Hill’s turn to speak, he merely adds, “My line of work is in the services industry. That’s what I provide, services. And there ain’t no way they sendin’ me back to prison over this.” He sweeps his hand over the seated group. “I know how to be a daddy.” Carlos, the boy who spoke to Mother, is seventeen, “a carpenter, just like Jesus.” He is already the father of two children. His attendance is mandated by the juvenile court system if he is to remain out of detention over gang-related activities. His girlfriend, also seventeen, proudly tells the group she has lived away from her parents’ home for a year. She helps her aunt clean houses.

Mother and Father present last. Mother begins from her chair. “I am Kate Jackson. This is my husband Ford. I’m a homemaker. He works for the postal service. We’re here because our oldest child just . . . She died at home from something and then CPS came and looked us over and thought . . .” She tears over and Father takes her hand.

“What, you kill the kid?” Carlos taunts. “I do that and they put me in jail, man. You do it, man, and wham! They send you to school. Bullshit, man. Bullshit.” His girlfriend laughs again. Father glares at him and he glares right back.

The curriculum for the first evening includes a review of nutrition during pregnancy. Many of the pages in the handout are simply unembellished drawings of composite meals that provide optimal nutrition for the developing fetus. It’s as if a drawing of a bowl of oatmeal or a turkey sandwich should stick in the memory while the written description on a page should not. Mother gives Father a look of surprise at the simplicity of the information; he returns a shrug. They sit through a discussion of snacks: potato chips, sugary drinks, fried pork rinds. Father whispers, “Fruit bowl,” and Mother nods. Ms. Russell asks for a show of hands: Who drinks during pregnancy? All the women’s hands rise but Mother’s. Marijuana? Ms. Russell asks. Erika begins to bring her hand above her head, but Robert Hill takes her arm by the elbow. Russell begins a discussion of the effects of drugs on the fetus. She directs the class’s attention to page six of the handout, a picture of a newborn baby suffering a seizure from drug withdrawal, its tiny pink limbs stiffened straight, its spine arched to form an impossible C shape, its mouth open in a cry. “You do drugs, your baby does drugs,” she says, looking at Erika. Mother stares at the picture. “Oh, Ford,” she whispers. My father shakes his head and sighs. He covers the picture with his hand.