The Assembler of Parts: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

right to me that such a fresh-looking man would be so dour in his speech. He told Mother and Father that he would try to construct a middle ear that would transmit sound to my brain; that he would fit me with “acoustic amplifiers” to boost what sound made it through; that he was doubtful I would ever be able to master normal speech; that we, the entire family, should enroll in the state-sponsored programs for the deaf and learn American Sign Language. He shook his head as he concluded, “But it’s worth a try for the surgery when she’s a few months old. Assuming her general health permits it. That’s Burke’s call.” He scratched the tip of his nose with the eraser of a pencil and nodded in Burke’s direction.
    Both my parents had known this before we had left the hospital—Garraway had said as much to Mother after he examined me. But the news coming from this surgeon’s mouth—that there was little hope of bringing sound into my brain to prompt the development of intelligible speech—seemed somehow harsher, more final, than the geneticist’s earlier remarks. Father looked to Mother and put his hand on her shoulder. Mother’s heart raced against my head, and I could no longer feel the separation of her staccato beats. Her heart moved like a fast-running river, waveless and solid, pouring itself out into some unmoved delta. She bobbed my head, though, with her sighs.
    There was quiet in the room after O’Neil finished. It went on for a minute. Finally, Vincent Garraway turned his head to ask his ENT colleague, “What about the rest of the upper airway? Any problems with that?” It was a question to which he already knew the answer. He asked it out of kindness, in the way of many of his questions. Though the question was important because one of the dangerous conditions associated with Hilgar syndrome is a malformation of the upper airway—the larynx and the trachea. Narrowing can be life-threatening and in need of aggressive reconstructive surgery.
    “Oh, thank you for reminding me, Vinny. It’s fully clear, the upper airway. The trachea is in the normal range but on the small side. But it shouldn’t pose a problem and probably will grow relatively larger over time. So that’s good news—her defect is limited to the auditory apparatus only. Her CAT scans are good, perfect really.”
    As if the word “perfect” were a gong or the report of the starter’s pistol, Vincent Garraway began to roll his eyes again, but now with a cyclonic fury. Round and round they went in his narrow sockets, quickly round and round. I was so excited my legs stiffened like bands of taut rubber before releasing themselves in a dyskinetic barrage of kicks that practically dislodged me from Mother’s lap. “AAAAGHNNNN!” I proclaimed through the self-jostling. “AAAAGHNNNN!” Garraway gave me his crooked, coy smile.
    Father asked about the process of learning sign language. Mother wanted to know if she could use Q-tips to clean my ear canals until the surgery. Even now* as I watch the tape’s images flash by, I can’t follow O’Neil’s answers very well since Garraway wouldn’t stop making faces at me. Even now* my legs twitch and tighten and twitch again. When finally his turn came to discuss my case, my legs were aching and limp from a baby marathon.
    I would be smart, very, very smart, he said. “Already, Jess is doing things—motor and cognitive skills, the use of muscle and brain—at least four to eight weeks ahead of schedule. It’s like she was born with the developmental level of a two-month-old.”
    “AAAAGHNNNN,” I replied, trying to make his eyes roll again. But I think he was tired, too. Mother felt not fatigue, but relief, just then. The pressured clasp of her hands relented. But when Eileen Marshall began in on my holey heart, once more I could feel on my skull the discrete tap-tap-tap from within her breast.
    They were to watch for signs of heart failure, my parents were. Hard breathing,