The Assembler of Parts: A Novel (26 page)

There is a ten-minute break at eight thirty. Mother and Father stay in their seats and pretend to be interested in looking through the nutrition lesson in their folder while the rest of the participants leave the room to descend the stairs and smoke outside in the cold night air. Just before eight forty, a shadow falls on the picture of a green salad. “Hello,” says the man called Eduardo. He offers his hand and Father takes it, not surprised it is cold, but very surprised it is soft. “Don’t pay them any mind,” he says nodding toward Carlos and Erika retaking their seats. Father nods. “We done nothing wrong, either,” Eduardo continues. “Baby fell from the couch.” He touches the back of his head three times. “Laughing like crazy at something and falls. Now we’re here.” He shrugs his shoulders and walks to his seat.

The final hour is a review of infant nutrition. Breast or bottle. Feeding on demand. The introduction of solids. Burping. Mother’s eyes close over briefly near the end. Shaniquia Russell calls her name. Mother startles awake and Erika laughs.

They are the last to leave. Mother walks slowly down the dark stairs. There is a single light bulb illuminating the landing between the first and second floors. Father says the place should be condemned.

The car is a block away parked in the shadows between two streetlights. As they walk, the wind penetrates their cloth coats. Father opens the door and Mother gets in. As he is unlocking his own door, Robert Hill appears at his side. Father removes the key before he turns it and has the quick hope that Mother will lock her door from the inside.

Robert Hill holds up his hands as an assurance of his peaceful intent. “Didn’t mean to scare you none,” he says. “Just wanted to borrow your folder, is all. Bitch took mine. I need yours.” Father had tucked his folder under his arm as they walked to the car. It is still there, the blue cover barely visible in the dark against his black coat.

“Well, I need it too,” he says. “Come to the post office on Macomb tomorrow and I’ll give you a copy.” He turns and begins again to use his key. In a deft movement, Robert Hill pushes Father against the car, wrenches the folder from under his arm and begins to walk away. Father recovers his balance and takes a step after him. “Ford! Stop, Ford!” Mother screams, half out of the car. He turns to her and, in the car’s dome light, sees the fear pressed into her face. “Don’t,” she says pointing to Robert Hill walking away. “Just take me home.” Father looks at the retreating form of Robert Hill. His stride is a loping jitterbug, a sort of victory dance in the dim light.

“I’ll find you on Macomb, Mr. Postman,” he sings from half a block away. “Mr. Postman,” he repeats joyfully again. “Don’t go writin’ no letters to anyone about any of this. Lot can happen to a nice car parked on a dark street hereabouts. Mr. Postman.”

Father wants to quit the classes. He wants to call Beatrice Smith in the morning and complain about the lack of safety, the threats and intimidation, to which they have been subjected. Mother begs him not to. “Five more classes, Ford. Just five. Then we’re done with it. Done with it all. We can go on, mourning Jess, loving BJ and our new one. Like Dad says, pick up where we left off. Please, Ford, five more classes.” She puts her hand on his shoulder. They are in the foyer of their house, hanging up their coats. They are finally warm. The house is quiet. It is well after ten and all are asleep.

“Well, going to the sessions won’t do us any good if we don’t have our manual. What are we going to do about that? The quizzes and readings and all.” Father wants to fight the “fucking system,” play hardball, be a man. Increasingly he feels that what they did the night of my death was what any parent would have done. It has taken almost two weeks of remorse and self-recrimination to arrive at this brightening clarity: she was hardly sick at all and then she died.
How
could they have known what to do about that?
Who
in the world could have known what to do about that?

Mother says, “We’ll call Ms. Russell in the morning. Get another folder from her. Or find one of the participants in the phone book and copy their pages. Dad and I can do it while you’re at work. Please, Ford. Five more evenings.” Her face is transparent and stretched out the way the sky appears just before dark. Her tired eyes flare with a little remnant of energy. He realizes he has never once in these years of marriage said no to a serious request from her. Nor would he now. “Five more sessions,” he says wearily. “Five.”

“Yes,” she says, “five.”

Shaniquia Russell does not return the message they leave on the phone-mail system of the Public Health Department the next morning. They leave another at noon. That, too, is unproductive. When Father finally reaches a secretary, he learns no one has access to the list of participants for the parenting classes and, even if they did, privacy law would prevent its disclosure. There are dozens of R. Hills and Robert Hills in the Montgomery County phone directory, and just as many Riveras. They realize no one else was identified by last name. They leave more messages throughout the day on Tuesday. Shaniquia Russell does not return them.

Tuesday night at dinner, Mother allows they are certain to know the answers to the questions to be faced the following evening at the next session simply by virtue of their parenting experience. They knew all about nutrition when it was presented, didn’t they? So shouldn’t they be able to pass a quiz on other general topics on parenting? Father chews his chicken and says, “I hope so.”

The post office is unusually quiet in the late afternoon of the next day. Father has worried since awakening what would happen if they did fail the quiz this night. He knows it would then be too late to come forth with any of his legitimate reasons for quitting the sessions—the robbery of his folder, Kate’s advanced pregnancy, the unsafe environment. No, if they fail the quiz, they thereby fail the course and thereby announce their unfitness to be parents of BJ and thereby . . . “Thereby,” he mumbles with a shake of the head. He looks up and Robert Hill is standing at the counter in front of him.

“Mr. Postman,” he says. Father looks at his hands. One rests, palm side up, on the counter, holding nothing. The other holds the blue folder. He looks at Robert Hill’s face. It holds meanness and contempt.

“Mr. Hill.”

“I’m bringin’ you the folder. Read it real good for tonight, now. Pages eleven to twenty-three inclusive. And thank you for the loan.”

Father extends his hand to receive it. “And two twenty-dollar rolls of stamps while you’re at it,” Hill says. Father hesitates but then gets the stamps. Hill takes them and hands Father the folder. He turns and leaves. The walk is the same.

Father has no cash with him. He borrows forty dollars from Cassidy to reconcile his drawer. “Forty dollars,” Cassidy says blankly. It is his second day back at work after his leave of absence. He’s done well but the strain of the day—all the weighing of parcels, all the numbers, all the counting out of change—has drained away his mental energy. He opens his wallet and stares at the bills. He removes them all from the billfold and gives them to Father. Father takes two twenties and returns the rest.

Outside the entrance to the post office, Robert Hill sells the stamps for twelve dollars a roll. “Services industry,” Father says, watching him through the plate-glass window.

While Nana cooks supper, they huddle at the kitchen table and review the folder’s assigned pages. Mother had been correct. None of the reading material contains anything new. It deals with the normal visits to the pediatrician’s office during the first two years of life. It lists the important features of the physical and developmental exams that the physician will be especially concerned with, reviews the immunizations that are given, and lists safe and effective approaches to “the crying baby” and “the willful toddler.”

“Jess never cried much,” Mother says at the table. “She was so sweet-tempered.”

“She let her sister take care of that,” Father says. At that moment BJ lets out a loud wail from the living room where she plays Old Maid with Ned.

“No!” yells BJ. “N-O-O-O-O!”

It’s bath time and BJ has voted against it. Mother and Father laugh, their first real laugh since my death.

BJ’s shouts grow fainter as Ned carries her up the stairs. They hear the report of one well-placed kick against the banister. They both laugh a second time at that, and then Mother cries. It is more a brief shower than a storm; her hands stay calm on the tabletop. “It’s all so mixed up inside me. The sadness with Jess still so heavy. But the new baby inside me kicking like a new hope, and the fear about BJ, all of it so sharp in me. It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s . . .” She wipes her cheek with her finger. “There seems to be just too many parts for one thing. Am I . . . Is it . . . ?” Father thinks her face is that of a child awakened by a bad dream, straining both to remember and to forget. He takes her hand, and Nana comes over from the stove to stand behind her. She places her wet hands on Mother’s shoulders. No one knows what to say. They all have too many parts to construct one single, simple emotion. They hear the upstairs pipes clunk as Ned turns on the bathtub tap.

“Cold and then hot,” Father says. Mother cheers a little at this attempt to focus on the here, the now, the practical.

“Cold and then hot,” Mother echoes. They haven’t read that in a book anywhere. They just know how to fill a tub safely.

Father deposits Mother in front of the building and finds a parking place two blocks away. Mother walks the flights of stairs alone. Her back aches with each step, her breath quickens with the effort. But she is grateful none of the other participants enters the building and makes his way up the dark staircase with her. The conference room door is locked. She checks her watch. It is ten after seven. At the far end of the hall, light—the only light—shines out of an open doorway. She can hear music coming from there. Heat is pumping out of the radiators along the wall, and Mother feels warm. She removes her coat and hangs it on the conference room doorknob. She walks the length of the hall hoping to find Shaniquia Russell. Mother’s thought is that Shaniquia could open the door, switch on the lights, maybe be made to understand a little more about Mother and Father and their situation, something more than the awful and incomplete confession the last time. Possibly even become their ally. The room at the end of the hall houses four work cubicles. Shaniquia Russell is alone and sits at her desk eating Cup Noodles soup with a plastic spoon. Mother gently knocks on the doorframe. Ms. Russell looks up and Mother says, “Ms. Russell. Good evening. We got here a little early and were wondering if you could unlock—”

Shaniquia Russell holds up a hand as a signal for Mother to stop. Mother complies. “I’m eating my supper now. Go back down and wait.” She returns her attention to her soup. Mother walks slowly back to the locked door. Her coat is gone. Carlos and his girlfriend walk into the hall from the stairwell. “Ma-Ma-Ci-Ta!” he says with a sneer. He casts his eyes around to be sure Father is absent. “After you push that fuckin’ baby out of your pussy, you know what? You come see me and I will put another one inside of you. You like that? A little fuckin’ gift from Carlos.” The girl’s laugh frightens Mother as much as the young man’s threat does. He steps to Mother. She can smell a sickening mix of stale sweat, cologne, and cigarette smoke clinging to him. He smiles and delivers a sharp jab to her belly. The shock of it doubles her over and steals her breath. She feels the baby shift and squirm. There is the feel of wetness between her legs. For a second, she thinks her water has broken. Still bent over, she steps back. She smells the odor of urine in the low air and knows what liquid the punch has produced. Anger, relief, embarrassment wash over her. From the stairwell come the sounds of foot scrape and echoing words. Then she hears the boy and girl both laughing, and it is only anger she feels.

After Father arrives, she goes to the ladies’ restroom to remove her underwear and blot her dress dry. Her coat is jammed in the toilet.

There are ten questions to the quiz. It is the first order of business. Mother and Father work through the questions quickly and easily. They are the first to finish. Father carries their answer sheet to Ms. Russell. On his return, Carlos glares at him and tries to trip him as he passes. “Hey! Man! Watch where you stepping,” Carlos yells. He is the last to turn in the quiz and then only after Ms. Russell has started counting to ten. At ten, she will accept no more papers returned. “Why you have to make it so hard on me?” he tells Shaniquia Russell at the three-count. “It is not fair you don’t test me in Spanish. I think you violate my rights. I should read these in Spanish.” He waves the paper in the air. “Yeah,” says the girlfriend. “We gonna sue.”

“Eight,” says Shaniquia Russell, and Carlos is on his feet and moving fast to the table in the front of the room.

They spend the remainder of the session on pediatric poisonings and how to childproof the home.

“Hey, gringo, this how you did it with the kid? A little poison? What did you use, man? Come on, share it with us. We all good friends now. We won’t tell nobody. Was it the rat poison? Huh? Did you put it in her milk, amigo? Come on, Papi, open up. This is like question number eleven: What’d you use, man?”

Even Shaniquia Russell pauses, looking like she would like to know, too.

Mother stares at the floor. Father feels his heart pound in his chest and something soft and weak in his heart grows hard as rock. He knows he won’t be able to suffer this abuse much longer. Four more sessions, he thinks. Four. No, he thinks. No.

The next morning Father calls Dr. Burke’s office to find out if the autopsy results are ready. Burke is tied up with a heavy clinic load and can’t come to the phone. The receptionist takes Father’s name and number. At five o’clock, shift’s end, he has heard nothing. He calls again. A taped message informs him the office is now closed. Father is irritable at home that night. He makes little dinner conversation. He reads to BJ in the evening without intonation. Mother is exhausted and retires at eight thirty. Father declines Ned’s invitation to help him with his garage project and takes a long walk in the cold instead.