The Assembler of Parts: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

fatigue with feeds, soaking sweats. Other than that, there was no problem with my cardiovascular system. The Assembler had hooked up everything quite properly.
    Properly, perfect, smart, the residues of my day.
    On the way home I sat in my infant car seat under a borrowed hospital blanket, quiet except for an occasional couplet of hiccups, and watched the sun compete with long winter shadow. Mother laughed as we drove, amused by the startled look that took my face with each surprise attack. My scratchy sack had been stuffed into the baby carryall, never to be seen again. The hiccups passed in a while, and the light and shadow flecked my eyes hypnotically. I sat most of the trip in a trance, content to breathe the splashing light. In a near whisper, Mother said, “I think we will be real glad to have the doctors we have for Jess. They all seem to know what they’re doing. Especially Dr. Garraway. He has such a nice way with Jess. It’s like he already knows her as a person.” Father nodded and drove. “Dr. Burke is nice, too. I think they’ll make quite a pair of doctors for her.” She swiveled to face me. “You like that nice Dr. Burke, Jessy baby? He your favorite, little girl? Hmm?”
    Father drove on, letting his eyes occasionally glance into the mirror to see us. He started to say something twice, but each time his lips moved a little and stopped. Mother began to hum. The song reached him in the front seat, and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” began to saw into his brain. He wanted to tell her to stop, that I couldn’t hear any of her notes now, or her words when she pushed her face into mine and spoke. He wanted to tell her to stop because he couldn’t stand to see her treat me as if I could. He wanted to tell her to stop because she was wasting her breath. He wanted to tell her to stop and to listen to him, how uncertain he felt about it all—the missing parts, the future surgery, the need to learn sign language, a family burdened with a defective baby. And not just uncertain. Scared. Scared and angry both. And often more angry than scared. And that his anger spun around from place to place like the finger of Final Judgment, sometimes pointing to God and fate for making his baby so goddamned imperfect, and sometimes to himself for being so goddamned imperfect that he couldn’t accept her life, and sometimes to Mother, simply for bearing the thumbless, deaf mutant child. And when this last thought blackly coalesced in his brain, he returned to being angry at himself for his own failings, the greatest of which was to blame the woman he loved for the baby they made. He wanted to tell her all this, but the tranquility in her song stung his reeling heart into silence. Let her be, he said to himself. Let her be.
    Finally, he remembered what the geneticist had told them, twice now. He asked, “Do you think Garraway really knows how to predict if a baby with a genetic syndrome is smart? I mean, was he just saying that to cheer us up or did he sense something in Jess that’s special?” He turned his head partway to look at us directly. His gaze lasted only a second, but I could see by the arch of his eyebrows the earnestness with which he wanted an answer. It was the one good thing about me that he could hold on to. He was wearing his ski cap in the car, the red one with white reindeer on the sides, and the movement of his forehead seemed to rattle their antlers a little. I felt Mother’s hand caress my head through my cap.
    “I think doctors have an ethical duty to tell the truth. I believe he meant what he said,” she replied, nodding. Then she strained against her shoulder harness so her face was right in front of mine. “You a smart little girl, my angel Jess? Are you, baby?” and she ruffled my cheek with the back of a finger. “You have a little head full of thoughts, child of mine?” My hands and feet were wrapped so tight, I couldn’t move them at all. So instead, I fixed her eyes with mine and watched