The Assembler of Parts: A Novel (28 page)

They go to the reception desk and ask to see Dr. Burke.

“Do you have an appointment?” the young girl asks politely. Father recognizes her voice.

“Yes,” Father lies.

“Patient’s name.”

“Jessica Mary Jackson,” Father replies.

The receptionist types into her computer. “I’m sorry. I don’t see her on our roster. Are you sure it’s for today? Maybe . . .” She suddenly appreciates there is no child with the two men. “Is this for a child or are you here for counseling?”

“The child is dead. And we’re here to find out why,” says Father, loud enough for the two mothers queuing behind him to hear.

“Please have a seat in Waiting Room One, and I’ll let him know you are here. Mr. Jackson?”

Father nods. “We’ll wait right here, thanks.” Ned and Father step a few feet to the side and stand watch for Burke. He emerges from the corridor leading to the examining rooms a few seconds later. He looks worried and tired. He offers his hand. Ned shakes it and Father refuses it, choosing instead to pull his shoulders back, raise his head, grow stiff-spined. “Mr. Jackson,” Burke says. “Let’s slip into an empty exam room where we can talk privately.”

To me, the chaos in the office late on a Friday afternoon in the busy flu season is palpable, even on the tape. Babies getting weighed cry on scales, toddlers fight nurses over shots and throat cultures, older children in the waiting rooms squabble over the stand-up toys while mothers pretend to be amused. But Ned and Father neither see nor hear any of this. Their minds are focused like lasers on the script they discussed in the car.

“So,” says Burke after he closes the door to Room Eighteen. “What can I do for you?”

Father hands him a copy of the autopsy report. “First thing you’re gonna do is call Beatrice Smith and tell her you advised us, based on this report, to quit the parenting classes she registered us in. And then you call Mattingly and tell him to go fuck himself.”

“Ford—” begins Ned.

“This the autopsy report?” Burke interjects looking at the first page. “Huh, I haven’t gotten my copy of it yet. Let me peruse this.” Burke’s face is like a young boy’s now, open and guileless. Father knows it’s a ruse.

“Benton Ridgely faxed it to me this morning. He said you got your copy faxed this past
Monday.
So don’t act all surprised. You know what the medical examiner found. He found that we didn’t cause Jess’s death. That you and your team never found a major anomaly in her chest. That’s what killed her. That’s why she died. Because of
you,
not
us. You.”
Father points with an index finger. It shakes with rage.

“Mr. Jackson, wait a second.” He picks up the phone from its cradle on the wall. “Beth? Beth, would you please bring me Jessica Mary Jackson’s chart? We’re in Eighteen. Date of birth, February, ninety-seven. Thanks.” He turns to Father again. “Mr. Jackson, I do know about that lesion. Dr. Ridgely called me to the autopsy room to see it the day after Jess died. But that’s not the same as knowing in its entirety the results of his evaluation. And I assure you I hadn’t seen this report until you handed it to me. Please, give me a minute to read it.” The door opens and my chart arrives. He hands it to Father while he reads the autopsy. “Please, check through Jess’s record. If there is a report there, it’s something never brought to my attention.”

Burke reads and Father checks through my chart. He sees his phone message of the prior morning with Burke’s notation. He flips through the pages. There is no autopsy report. The emptiness of the chart drains energy out of him like a storm growing weak. It seems Burke hadn’t received the report, that maybe Burke is in the clear about the past five days of their purgatorial life after all.

Burke looks up from the page. “Mr. Jackson, I’m glad you came by this afternoon. What I read here is exactly what I hoped Ridgely would find. Jess’s death was a natural, unpredictable event. I agree fully with your request concerning the police investigation. I will call Officer Mattingly as soon as we finish up. And, yes, I implore you, do not attend any further parenting meetings. They are not anything you and Kate need to sit through, now that the reason for Jess’s death is fully clear. I will call Ms. Smith and explain it all. What we need to do now is find a time for us all to meet and fully review these autopsy results. For me, the sooner the better. I can clear my schedule during the noon hour this Monday. And I’m pretty sure I can get the major players in Jess’s care to attend. We’ll go through this document page by page, explain it all. Answer all your questions. How’s that?”

Father is mute. The ebb of his anger has met the flow of his sadness rising up in a tide of memory, me limp on my bed, his breath failing us both, our lips unsealed by forces both too weak and too strong. He looks to Ned and shrugs his shoulders. Ned says to Burke, “We’ll all be here at noon Monday.” Father wants to say good-bye but something is stuck in his heart. The ebb of his anger is somehow not complete. He
wants
to be mad, to have something with which to push back the sorrow. Anger gives him breath. Sorrow drowns him.

They leave the office and walk to the car. It is night.

Father’s anger refloats during the ride home. He and Ned at first sit silently in the car, immersed in their new thoughts—Ned that there be found some middle ground in Father’s search for justice; Father that if Burke’s not to blame for Jess’s death, then the cardiologist Marshall must be. He muses about the lost fax and is almost feeling apologetic about his belligerent confrontation of Burke, when he remembers what Benton Ridgely had told him. That he had conversations with both Burke and Mattingly Monday morning, stressing his written conclusions that my death was the natural result of my anatomy and mild croup. Father says to Ned, “It’s a ruse, Ned. It’s a bullshit ruse that Burke is trying to pull on us. Medical examiner told me today he talked to Burke on Monday about the autopsy results that he was faxing. Burke knew all his findings and conclusions right then.

“So even if that fax did get lost, he knew it all. So why then doesn’t he call us up? Why doesn’t he
call the medical examiner up
and tell him to resend, that he never got it? You know why? Because he did get it. He got it and didn’t want to deal with it because it put the blame square on them, Burke and Marshall and the lot of ’em. I think that fucker was hoping we’d be so cowed by CPS and Mattingly that when he finally got around to telling us what was in the report, we’d just be happy to be done with it all. That we’d just walk away, meek as lambs. That’s what’s goin’ on here, Ned.”

“Ford, you don’t know that for sure. That’s just speculation. Faxes get misplaced and sent wrong all the time. You know that. He’s a busy doctor taking care of lots of sick kids day in, day out. Maybe he was just waiting for that report to arrive to move into action. Fact is, we don’t know, Ford. We can’t know.”

“Ned, no. No. The only thing I got to know is this: Whose side are you on? The family’s or his? He didn’t know about that artery and he should have. He knew the autopsy stuff and did nothing to help us. That’s all the knowing we need to do.”

“To be fair, Ford, I know he took good care of Jess for all those years. I know he cared about her. And about you and Kate. That’s got to count for something, those seven, seven and a half years. You got to hold them up next to all this stuff now and be fair.”

“Ned, I’m going to tell you this, but you’re not to let Kate know you know.”

Ned looks at Father and nods, just a slight twitch of the head.

“Those parenting classes. They weren’t . . . benign or anything. They weren’t just an inconvenience to our evenings at home. One of the guys in that class threatened sexual violence on Kate. And Ned, he punched her. He punched her in her pregnant belly. I had dropped her off so she wouldn’t have to walk from where we had to park, and she was alone with this guy and his girlfriend. First they took her winter coat and stuffed it in the toilet. Then he threatened her and he hit her. She thought her water broke right there when he struck her. Kate was so scared she couldn’t sleep all that night. Up and down, all night long. That’s the kind of thing Burke could have prevented by deciding not to hide the results of the autopsy. And another guy in our group assaults me on the street after class, steals our binder with the reading assignments. He comes to the post office two days later and extorts forty bucks from me to get it back. That’s on Burke, too. But we’re not going there anymore, Kate and me. We’re not because
I
decided to take action this week, find out what we should have known Monday. So I ask you again, Ned, whose side are you on? You got to decide.”

Ned’s face flushes at the thought of his pregnant daughter, my mother, made to suffer the affront Father has just revealed. Such a violation of decency, he thinks. He turns to look at Father. The new look on his face, first seen at the 7-Eleven, is manifest again. It’s tainted with anger in the creases by the eyes, but it is a face of something else. Not haughtiness or smugness. Something else. It’s the face of the judge who has already decided the case and passed judgment even if the evidence has yet to be fully presented. Self-righteousness. A face nauseatingly full of self-righteousness. Ned doesn’t much like what he sees.

“Ford, I’m with the family on everything. You know that. But I’m not
against
anyone, either. Let’s start with that and let it all play out. Fairly. For everyone. Us, Burke, Marshall, the rest. Fairly.”

“Deal,” Father says loudly as they pull into the driveway. But his word sounds empty again.

There is a sense of gaiety in the house later that night. But first Mother reads the autopsy report, the conclusions only, and cries. She can’t read beyond those first few lines because her eyes have scanned the rest of the first page and noted the words “body,” “lividity,” “thoracic cavity,” “glistening,” and “aorta,” and they freeze. Involuntarily, her hands shake and the word “aorta” seems to burst into blurred, spurting letters. Father takes the report from her, places it on the kitchen table and steadies her hands in his. He tells her of their meeting with Burke, that they have been absolved of any complicity in my death and, as a consequence, are advised to quit the evening classes. She is so relieved by the double dose of good news, she picks BJ up and holds her against her chest for as long as it takes for BJ to start to protest, which is about ten seconds. Her tears cease in these few moments, and she closes her eyes against the glaring white pages on the table. The family lingers over dinner, savoring every bite of the baked cod and boiled potatoes. Nana does not cook meat on Fridays, even now. They good-naturedly chide Ned over his failed attempt to rejuvenate his old snowblower; they compliment Nana on her cooking; they tease Father over the drip of butter on his shirt. No one teases BJ, but they do get her to sing the new songs she learned in school that week.

Cassidy is not there and no one mentions his name. They are too happy to be free of their guilt, of their investigations, of their false penance performed to protect BJ. It is the first night BJ does not ask where I am. All four adults notice that. All four go about the rest of their evenings— the dishes, the bath, the reading, the TV shows—and marvel inside their hearts, BJ is getting through it, getting better.

Cassidy is not there and no one mentions his name.

C
assidy swallows two Valiums and half a glass of water at seven thirty. He has sat in the gloom of his living room on the couch that was his grandmother’s watching the ghosty TV and picking at a piece of stale pizza since he came home. The TV’s reception is particularly bad tonight, all the images blurred and doubled.

For twenty minutes, he has the recurring idea to rummage through the junk drawers in the kitchen for an old pair of 3-D glasses, thinking it will clarify the forms. Inexplicitly, the screen comes sharp and clear, the images tighten. He sits watching the crisp forms for a minute. His left hand slowly rises to his face. Tentatively, he feels around his eye sockets for the glasses. Now he knows. He did not leave the couch.

The ancient timer switch his mother used turns the corner lamp on at eight thirty with a loud
click!
He takes the light coming into the flicking gray-dark room as a signal for his bedtime.

The Valiums tumble into his hand, slowly go to his mouth. He drinks water again. The last two in the vial. He shakes it to be sure, then holds it up to the light to watch the amber plastic turn warm and molten. He shakes the empty container again, then replaces the cap and shakes it a third time. Satisfied, he holds it to his chest and flops back lengthwise onto the couch. He doesn’t close his eyes. They close themselves. He lies there trying to calculate the number of days since his last drink. He sees numbers that seem friendly, like kittens. The numbers call a vision of me to mind. “Four crows,” he sees me say, “attempted murder.” He thinks he smiles, but in the act of bringing his hand to his lips to check, he sleeps.

The light clicks off at eleven. The TV plays through the night. He has found the best way to chase away the dreams.

The next morning he wakes to find the empty Valium vial on the floor. He shakes his head, trying to remember when he last dosed himself. The Valium was to last for four weeks, Dr. Vinik told him.

It is gone in less than two.

He takes an Antabuse pill from the other vial that sits on the table and swallows it down with the inch of water still in his glass. He makes coffee and drinks it and waits for the unpleasantness to come.

But it disappoints.

Yes, there is the knot in the lower belly and his mouth does partly overflow with saliva that tastes like rusty metal as that knot tightens and relaxes and tightens, and a slight nausea creeps up his gullet to his throat where it deposits its sour juice that makes him gag. But then it stops.

Today there is no retching, no residual nausea, no sweats, no panting for breath, no stars in the black of his brain. He moves his bowels and is at peace. The swirl of the water carries it all away in a moment of remembering.