Free The Assembler of Parts: A Novel by Raoul Wientzen Page B

smile and your tea. Your laughter and your soda bread. May God bless you in peace, Carina.” She quieted for a moment and then went on. “And God bless Rose Mary and little Joey. We had such a short time to know you, but loved you in full measure still. Rest in peace.” Ned shifted me to his other hip while everyone stared straight ahead. After a while, Father said, “Amen to that, Lord.” “Yes,” said Mother. Ned shifted me again and coughed a little before he added, “Well said, Mae. Well said.” They waited in silence a while before Nana asked, “Joseph, would you add your prayer to ours?”
    Cassidy looked down to his feet and ran his hand over his bristly gray hair. “Ta the dead of all the days, good and bad, mother and son and mother, God grant you rest.” Even before he had finished his declaration, he was moving to the headstone. He bent down and reversed the position of his flowers. Now the blossoms lay between Rose Mary and Joey, and the stems, cut by the florist on a sharp angle, touched the fringe of Carina’s grass. Nana sighed and opened her book of prayer. She led us in the Act of Faith and three Hail Marys.
    We walked silently back to the cars. As Mother began to arrange my car seat in the back, Cassidy asked excitedly, “Kate, maybe you’d like ta ride with me back ta your place. You and Jess? Give the old folks a little peace on the way. Room ta stretch.”
    Mother looked at Nana with an expression half between sorrow and annoyance. But Ned said, “Aw, Cassidy, if it’s about the brakes don’t go on about it. They’re fine. A little dust in the pads is what it’ll be. Don’t go worrying about it.”
    Cassidy stepped close to him. “Worrying lasts but a minute, Ned. What can come after goes on and on.” Cassidy’s face was black in the hollows in the bright spring sun. “And not just the grief but the anger. The anger, that’s what strikes the heart, Ned. All for want of worrying.” He turned his blank eyes to Nana. “I’ve not had a drink today, Mae. You can believe that.” She touched his arm and tugged the lapel of his jacket, moving it on his shoulders as the wind shrugs the grass.
    “Kate, you and Jess ride with Joe. We need to stop at the bakery on the way anyway. We’ll have a nice cake with our tea.”
    In the early morning hours of Easter, Mother came to my cry to feed me. We settled in the chair and she rocked as I nursed. Between the first and second breast, she grew taut in her frame and said absently, “He needs to stop blaming his dead ma for it. It wasn’t her fault. She was just driving the car.” She burped me and sat me on her lap. “There was no call to move those flowers. None at all.” Her second breast held on to its milk that Easter morning. It resisted the force of my hungry mouth. She put me down and I slept again. Scarcely two hours later I woke to the Resurrection hungrier than ever before.
    There was early Mass in the damp church. Nana had dressed me in my new green sweater and tights. In the pew lying on my back, I watched her pray. She’d turn and look down on me every once in a while, her mouth moving in short bursts like she was chewing words. At one point her lips said, “Maker of Heaven and Earth, all that is seen and unseen.” I held up my hands and clasped them. It made her smile, pinked her cheeks.
    She fed me sugar water from a four-ounce bottle when I squirmed during the long procession to Communion. I helped her hold the bottle. For a step or two down the aisle, she took her hand away. I held the bottle steady between my palms. It was very light. She turned her head to Mother processing behind her and whispered.
    *
    I wonder now* if there weren’t multiple purposes in my unique construction. The Assembler never really told me I’d find only one reason to explain my life, after all. So, yes, why not, then? I was put on Earth to heal both these victims of pain, Cassidy and Nana. A thumb for each, then, and other bones to spare as