The Assembler of Parts: A Novel (36 page)

It looks like a rose window from a medieval cathedral.

But Cassidy can’t see this; he’s unconscious. He cannot see, as well, the old car seat impaled by a jagged lance of door metal.

Eleven minutes later Mother and Father pass the scene on their way home. Cassidy has already been evacuated and is in transport by ambulance to the University Hospital ER. But they are so engrossed in rehearsing their answers— Mother has just sadly recounted Burke’s insensitive words in the ER—that they note merely a slight slowing of the few cars driving in front of them and two DC police cruisers parked with lights flashing in front of the public library.

“Ah, my most excellent friend, Mr. Cassidy,” says Dr. Zacharia Vinik as the EMTs wheel the stretcher into the trauma room. “Get neurosurgery stat,” he intones to his nurse, “and hang a bolus of mannitol. We need a head and a c-spine CT. And add a blood alcohol level to the admission bloods.” He throws Cassidy’s wallet to the pale medical student at the foot of the bed. “See if you can find the next of kin,” Vinik says.

Cassidy’s lips are parted almost an inch by the endotracheal tube in his mouth. He looks to me the way I looked the night of my death when they breathed for me with those black bags. But his tube angles up jauntily away from his face.

A different day, a different hospital room, it would have been a cheap cigar tooth-bit in his mouth, a celebration of another birth, another life. But today, a plastic tube for air, for breath. His parted lips almost seem to smile.

I note, too, he has a collar around his neck affixed at the scene by the EMTs to stabilize his spine in case it had been injured in the crash. The collar is white and not even the blood from his scalp wound has marked it.

That is how I know he will not die. He looks just like a priest; he looks just like a new father, too alive to the joy of the moment, its spirit and its flesh, for anything as jarring as death. As I watch with this realization, his right arm rises as if in benediction, startling me. Then his right leg begins to twitch and the extended arm jerks rhythmically. “Seizure!” yells the nurse. “Dr. Vinik, in here stat! He’s seizing!”

*

He comes to stand before me. He should be in shadow; He should be dark as sorrow. Instead, He’s light itself. “It’s happening,” He says with excitement in His voice. “The future. Your creation.”

I turn my eyes from Him, but the light is everywhere. Except in my heart.

Catastrophe befalls those I love most dearly. My parents, weak and changeable and full of anger, now at the turning point in their life’s understanding of who I was. Cassidy on a ventilator, needing emergency surgery for massive head trauma, the consequence of his protective love of me and my memory.

The light is everywhere, but it drives darkness deeper into my heart. The blackest of thoughts grow there: my missing fingers and stone ears, my wormy heart, my nubbin kidney, were somehow not even defects
for
me, but were lures instead, means to bring forth even more sorrow in the world. My life made me not a new Moses, not Ezekiel, not Isaiah. I’m the Minotaur reassembled, love affixed to hate, joy to sorrow, good to evil.

To my healing past he sews a raging, hateful future. He makes me a monster, and I cannot find forgiveness for what He has done. I cannot forgive myself for letting Him do it through me. To forgive the prodigal God who made this— evil coming from good, hate from love, vengeance from justice—is too much.

He hears my dark thoughts, but the glow of a thousand supernovas never dims.
“Your
creation,” He repeats loudly.

I turn my eyes back to Him but He is gone. And gone with Him is the light.

It is for the best. Darkness would be my only solace now*, but it is a torment instead: the film plays on in it.

Mother cries, Father shouts, Nana sits, sad. Only Ned seems in control of his feelings. He stands in the kitchen with Jeanine’s arms wrapped around his neck, her legs around his waist. He pats her back and whispers in her ear. When he puts her down, she walks quickly out of the room. “Ford, stop your shouting. You too, Mae. You’re scaring the kids. We can talk about this quietly, civilized. No need for yelling.”

Father stops his ranting. The moment he and Mother had stepped into the house, Nana had accused them of lying under oath, of turning me in an “ugly, stupid monster” with their untrue words. What Nana said made Jeanine cry, and Ned picked her up in his arms and held her. He whispered in her ear, loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear, “Jess is fine, Jeanine. She’s just not here. She’s happy and the same and she is no monster. Nana was just talking.” That’s when Mother broke into tears.

Father speaks again, his hoarse voice just loud enough to hear over the sound of Mother’s sobs. “Brandon D’Woulfe explained to us why it was important to testify like we did. That it wasn’t lies, as such, just not . . . just not doing something the jury wouldn’t buy because of their . . . their prejudice. And then he would redo us all at the end. Make Jess come back together again as she was. As she really was. That way we’d win against the biggest lie, the one those docs committed when they let her die like that. Mae, I’m telling you, this is D’Woulfe’s strategy, and he said it wasn’t a lie. We’ll win the case and it will all come out right.” He looks at Mother and holds up his hands. “Kate, tell her it’s as I say.”

Mother stares at him for a moment, then looks to Nana and Ned and back again to Father. “Ford,” she says slowly, “yes and no.” Before she can go on, the phone rings.

“Cassidy, probably,” Nana says. “He left an hour ago looking for you at the lawyer’s. Hot. Very hot.” She shoves the portable phone into Father’s hands. He shakes his head, sighs once, and speaks, “Hello? . . . Speaking.”

Mother, Nana, and Ned watch Father’s eyes narrow as the caller goes on. After a minute, Father says, “We’ll be right there. Oh, God. We’ll all be right there.” He puts down the phone and buries his face in his hands like a child ashamed of what he’s done. “He’s in the ER,” he says from behind his hands. “Car crash. His head. It’s smashed. They’re going to do surgery, but they don’t know . . . They don’t know if . . .”

Nana grabs him by the elbow and pulls hard at an arm. Her face is drained of color, but her words are red hot. “This!” She holds out the transcript of Father’s deposition with her other hand. “This is what you’ve done!”

All Father can do is take away his hands, look at Mother, and say, “Kate?”

Before Mother can speak, Nana shouts, “No! This is what you
both
have done!” She shakes the pages so violently they blur.

I close my eyes. I will see no more. But my new perfect ears hear the pages flap loud as Harpies’ wings. My bones rattle.

*

“I am done with the tape,” I tell the Assembler when He reappears. “You can take it away.” I try to avert my eyes from His brightness, but there is no evading it. My eyes seem made of it. It presses on them like the sea on fish. And now*, for the first time*, the scenes of my family’s drama play out in the light. I look without looking, see without seeing. Mother and Father leading the way into the ER, walking quickly along the central corridor toward the nurse’s desk, then turning left and right and left again in the maze of hallways, Nana and Ned, each carrying a child, eight, ten feet behind them, as if distance were an accusation. Each child is crying. Each adult looks ready to.

“What do you see?” He asks.

I have had enough of His theater. “This was never about putting the pieces of my life together to see its meaning, was it? All these movies don’t reveal a thing about any of that, do they?” I know I sound angry, but I no longer feel solicitous about His feelings.

“What do you see?” He asks again patiently, unmoved by my grief.

I have no choice about seeing. The images are the undimmable light of my inner world. Now* Dr. Vinik is leading them to Cassidy, talking about the CAT scan findings, the plan for surgery. The risk of death. Brain damage. Vegetative state. He draws the curtain to Cassidy’s room, stands aside to let them enter. “I doubt Mr. Cassidy will know you are here,” he says. “But, in these matters, one never truly knows what a patient senses. So be gentle. Be strong.”

“I see more sadness and anger than I can bear,” I tell the Assembler. “And it’s my fault. And it’s Your fault. And it is all wrong.”

“No, what do you see?” He asks a third time.

The images burn in brightness. I see my family gathered in a knot at the entrance, each reluctant to approach Cassidy’s side. I see their fearful faces, their wet cheeks, their wild eyes. The cool light from the fluorescent bulbs bathes Cassidy’s face the bluish color of old snow. An IV drips tiny clear drops. A machine bigger than I ever was whooshes air. Before I can answer again in my anger— “Nothing. I see nothing.”—Nana steps across the threshold into the room, Jeanine in her arms. She goes to the bedside and touches Cassidy’s shoulder. Jeanine laughs. The child who cries at anything laughs at Cassidy in a hospital bed, his head bandaged, his eyes closed, his face lax. Before the echo of that laugh fades, his left hand twitches. Those broad fingers with thick yellow nails rise off the bed, try to touch the source of laughter. Or it’s another seizure. I cannot tell. But Nana moves her hand from Cassidy’s shoulder to his rising wrist. “It’s us, Joe,” she says. She looks toward the entrance. “All of us. We’re here.” His hand comes to rest in midair then slowly lowers to the sheet. She pats it twice, straightens, carries Jeanine back to the entrance.

“It’s AceyDee,” Jeanine says gaily. At this announcement, everyone is completely still for a few moments, as if they are considering the truth of her statement. Then Nana moves. She extends her free arm around Mother’s shoulders and pulls her close. “It’s alright,” she whispers. “Whatever it is, it will be okay.” Father leans against Mother, puts his arm around her. “I’m sorry, Mae. We never meant—” But Ned has joined the scrum, BJ in his left arm, and he interrupts. “Ford, we’re with you and Kate on this. It’s all of us here together. It’s going to be okay.”

Mother snuffles her drippy nose and wipes a teary eye. Father rumbles, “Hm-hm,” and pulls her tighter. Ned clears his throat. Jeanine says again, “AceyDee.” Baby BJ breathes. Then there is silence as heavy as gold.

I am about to repeat my denial, to tell the Assembler, “Nothing. I see nothing,” when I notice the silence. It is unlike other silences, or perhaps like every silence, for the ventilator whooshes like a noisy bellows, the monitors beep and ping, the patients and doctors in adjoining spaces talk, a man in a distant room shouts for a nurse, BJ breathes again, noisily through his nose. But in their souls too there is silence, as real and expandable as space itself. It is a stillness amidst the tug of the world’s noise like mine at birth, at death. It is beautiful.

“You see,” the Assembler says.

I do. I do see. I see forgiveness in that inner silence. I see the love they have for each other, and I see it come together, healed and whole. I see love made perfect by forgiveness, as a hand by a thumb. And I see there can be no forgiveness without loss, grief, chaos. Without His chaos, my chaos, there is a hole like a cave in love. Only through chaos can forgiveness exist, can forgiveness touch everything with healing, the past*, present*, future*, all people, all creation, the Assembler Himself. Only through imperfection can forgiveness make love perfect.

“I see,” I tell Him. “I do see.”

He takes my hands. Never before has He touched me. But now He takes my hands in His. They are big, soft, warm hands, hardly those of a carpenter or a tinker or a mechanic. More the hands of a mother. More the hands of a postal worker. He brings my hands to His lips and kisses them. He slowly breathes on them. It is as if mountains move under my skin and deserts bloom. My new-made hands grow full. The hollowness at the base of the new thumbs He gave me solidifies, warms, fills in. The cave in my being is gone. This sense of fullness somehow unleashes all the stored memories of Mother in my mind. They flash by now* in God’s instant; and those of Father and Nana and Ned and Cassidy and Jeanine and Tina and Burke and Garraway, and, and, and, and

He makes me full of my life.

In that instant*, He makes me full of my life the way a woman at term is full of life. It squirms for room inside me. All the caring, smiling faces; all the sneering, jeering faces; all the songs and sweet words, the sighs and whispers and insults; all the voices at once slurred and perfect, full of air and water, light and shadow, sugar and salt; all the stars in the night skies of plaster and black eternity; all the animals stuck in stucco and running the beach sand; all the gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, alive inside me. All growing and stretching and kicking with the possibility of love, the
necessity
of forgiveness.

Something inside me tightens. All my bones become one bone.

I am full of joy that I am and that I love and that I am loved, that I forgive and am forgiven.

He releases me with a last caress of my thumbs, but my hands, my being, continue to register His touch. “That which most makes you human, also makes you divine,” He tells me.

I know in my fullness what He means. He does not mean my thumbs. Forgiveness is all we know of God, and in the end, it’s all He cares to know of us.

Then, He is gone. He has taken the tape, the last unfinished tape. I have seen enough. No, I have seen it all. What was hidden from the wise, I remember Him telling me at the very beginning*, has been revealed to the blind.

I
know their lives on Earth now* without seeing, without the constraint of time*. Images, information can come at once, or at length. Cassidy makes a slow recovery. His brain has been injured—subdural bleeding, neurosurgery, weeks in the intensive care unit—but he lives. His right side is paralyzed for a year. But the post office welcomes him back. He weighs packages, doles out stamps and change, uses the tape dispenser to secure boxes, all with his left hand. He walks with a limp and a lurch like some big ape, his body dodging left, then right, then left as he tries to go in a straight line. His guitar sits unused in his closet these months. With time and physical therapy, strength returns to his arm and he can thrum his notes. He sings with a slight droop to the left corner of his mouth. Surprisingly, his voice is the better for it. The slight weakness in his vocal cords intensifies his lower range. When he sings a lullaby to Joey, as they now call my brother, the density of his song throws a blanket of sleep over the tired baby that takes him full through the nights. Mother is happy for this. She is expecting again. Irish twins, their many friends tease, what with that little Joey still a baby. She is expecting again and needs the rest.