The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel (10 page)

From the raffle table, A.J. watches the show, exhausted and slightly fluish. As the acts are arranged according to skill, Maya’s group is on first. She is an enthusiastic if not overly graceful mouse. She scurries with abandon. She wrinkles her nose in a recognizably mousy way. She wags her pipe-cleaner tail, which had been painstakingly coiled by him. He knows a career in dance is not in her future.

Ismay, who mans the table with him, hands him a Kleenex.

“Cold,” he says.

“Sure it is,” Ismay says.

At the end of the night, Madame Olenska says, “Thank you, Mr. Fikry. You are good man.”

“Maybe I’ve got a good kid.” He still needs to claim his mouse from the dressing room.

“Yes,” she says. “But this is not enough. You must find yourself good woman.”

“I like my life,” A.J. says.

“You think child is enough, but child grows old. You think work is enough, but work is not warm body.” He suspects Madame Olenska has already tossed back a few Stolis.

“Happy holidays, Madame Olenska.”

Walking home with Maya, he is contemplating the teacher’s words. He has been alone for nearly six years. Grief is hard to bear, but being alone he has never much minded. Besides, he doesn’t want any old warm body. He wants Amelia Loman with her big heart and bad clothes. Someone like her, at least.

Snow is beginning to fall, and the flakes catch in Maya’s whiskers. He wants to take a picture, but he doesn’t want to do the thing where you stop to take a picture. “Whiskers become you,” A.J. tells her.

The compliment to her whiskers sets off a stream of observations about the recital, but A.J. is distracted. “Maya,” he says, “do you know how old I am?”

“Yes,” she says. “Twenty-two.”

“I’m quite a bit older than that.”

“Eighty-nine?”

“I’m . . .” He holds up both his palms four times, and then three fingers.

“Forty-three?”

“Good job. I’m forty-three, and in these years I’ve learned that it’s better to have loved and lost and blah blah blah and that it’s better to be alone than be with someone you don’t really fancy. Do you agree?”

She nods solemnly, and her mouse ears almost fall off.

“Sometimes, though, I get tired of learning lessons.” He looks down at his daughter’s puzzled face. “Are your feet getting wet?”

She nods, and he squats on the ground so that she can get on his back. “Put your arms around my neck.” Once she is mounted, he stands, groaning a little. “You’re bigger than you used to be.”

She grabs his earlobe. “What’s that?” she asks.

“I used to have an earring,” he says.

“Why?” she asks. “Were you a pirate?”

“I was young,” he says.

“My age?”

“Older than that. There was a girl.”

“A wench?”

“A woman. She liked this band called The Cure, and she thought it would be cool if she pierced my ear.”

Maya thinks about this. “Did you have a parrot?”

“I didn’t. I had a girlfriend.”

“Could the parrot talk?”

“No, because there wasn’t a parrot.”

She tries to trick him. “What was the parrot’s name?”

“There wasn’t a parrot.”

“But if there was one, what would his name have been?”

“How do you know it’s a he?” he asks.

“Oh!” She puts her hand to her mouth, and she begins to tip backward.

“Hold on to my neck or you’ll fall off. Maybe she was called Amy?”

“Amy the parrot. I knew it. Did you have a ship?” Maya asks.

“Yes. It had books on it, and it really was more of a research vessel. We studied a lot.”

“You’re ruining this story.”

“It’s a fact, Maya. There are murdering kinds of pirates and researching kinds of pirates, and your daddy was the latter.”

TH
E ISLAND IS
never a popular destination during the wintertime, but that year Alice is exceptionally inclement. The roads are an ice rink, and ferry service is canceled for days at a time. Even Daniel Parish is forced to stay at home. He writes a little, avoids his wife, and spends the rest of his time with A.J. and Maya.

As do most women, Maya likes Daniel. When he comes to the store, he does not talk to her like she is a simpleton just because she is a child. Even at six, she is sensitive to people who are condescending. Daniel always asks her what she is reading and what she thinks. Furthermore, he has bushy blond eyebrows and a voice that makes her think of damask.

One afternoon a week or so after New Year’s, Daniel and Maya are reading on the floor of the bookstore when she turns to him and says, “Uncle Daniel, I have a question. Don’t you ever go to work?”

“I’m working right now, Maya,” Daniel says.

She takes off her glasses and wipes them on her shirt. “You don’t look like you’re working. You look like you’re reading. Don’t you have a place you go where you have a job?” She elaborates, “Lambiase is a police officer. Daddy is a bookseller. What do you do?”

Daniel picks Maya up and carries her to the local author section of Island Books. Out of courtesy to his brother-in-law, A.J. stocks Daniel’s entire body of works, though the only book that ever sells is that first one,
The Children in the Apple Tree
. Daniel points to his name on the spine. “That’s me,” he says. “That’s my job.”

Maya’s eyes grow wide. “Daniel Parish. You write books,” she says. “You’re a”—she says the word with reverence—“writer. What is this about?”

“It’s about the follies of man. It’s a love story and a tragedy.”

“That is very general,” Maya tells him.

“It’s about this nurse who has spent her life taking care of other people. She gets in a car accident, and people have to take care of her for the first time in her life.”

“That does not sound like something I would read,” Maya says.

“Bit corny, eh?”

“Nooooo.” She doesn’t want to hurt Daniel’s feelings. “But I like books with more action.”

“More action, huh? Me too. The good news is, Miss Fikry, all the time I spend reading, I’m learning how to do it better,” Daniel explains.

Maya thinks about this. “I want this job.”

“Many people do, my girl.”

“How do I get it?” Maya asks.

“Reading, as aforementioned.”

Maya nods. “I do that.”

“A good chair.”

“I have one of those.”

“Then you’re well on your way,” Daniel tells her before setting her back on the ground. “I’ll teach you the rest later. You’re very good company, do you know that?”

“That’s what Daddy says.”

“Smart man. Lucky man. Good man. Smart kid, too.”

A.J. calls Maya upstairs to dinner. “Do you want to join?” A.J. asks him.

“Bit early for me,” Daniel says. “Plus I’ve got work to do.” He winks at Maya.

AT LAST IT
is March. The roads thaw, turning everything to muck. Ferry service resumes, as do Daniel Parish’s wanderings. Sales reps come to town with their summer offerings, and A.J. goes out of his way to be hospitable to them. He takes to wearing a tie as a way of signaling to Maya that he is “at work” as opposed to “at home.”

Perhaps because it is the meeting he is most anticipating, he schedules Amelia’s sales call for last. About two weeks before their date, he sends her a text:
Pequod’s OK with you? Or would you rather try something new?

Queequegs on me this time
, she replies.
Did u watch TRUE BLOOD yet?

The winter had been particularly inhospitable to socializing, so at night, after Maya had gone to sleep, A.J. had plowed through four seasons of
True Blood.
The project hadn’t taken him long since he’d liked it more than he expected —a cross between Flannery O’Connor southern gothic and
The Fall of the House of Usher
or
Caligula
. He’d been planning to casually dazzle Amelia with his
True Blood
knowledge when she came to town.

You’ll have to find out when you get here,
he writes, but does not press Send because he decides this text sounds too provocative. He hadn’t known when Amelia’s wedding was supposed to be, so she could already be a married woman now.
See you next Thursday,
he writes.

On Wednesday, he gets a call from a number he doesn’t recognize. The caller turns out to be Brett Brewer, American Hero, who sounds like Bill from
True Blood
. A.J. thinks the accent sounds fake, but obviously an American hero would have no need to fake a southern accent. “Mr Fikry, Brett Brewer callin’ for Amelia. She’s had an accident, so she asked me to tell you she’ll have to change y’all’s meetin’ time.”

A.J. loosens his tie. “I hope nothing serious.”

“I’m always tryin’ to get her to stop wearin’ those galoshes of hers. They’re fine for rain, but kinda dangerous in the ice, y’know? Well, she slipped on some icy steps here in Providence, which is what I told her would happen, and she broke her ankle. She’s havin’ surgery right now. So nothin’ serious, but she’ll be laid up for a spell.”

“Give your fiancée my regards, would you?” A.J. says.

A pause. A.J. wonders if the phone has cut out. “Will do,” Brett Brewer says before hanging up the phone.

A.J. is relieved that Amelia isn’t too hurt but a bit disappointed that she isn’t coming (and also by the news that the American hero is most definitely still in the picture).

He thinks about sending Amelia flowers or a book but ultimately decides to send her a text. He tries to find a
True Blood
quote, something that will make her laugh. When he Googles the matter, the quotes all seem too provocative. He writes
, I’m sorry you’re hurt. Had been looking forward to hearing Knightley’s summer list. Hope we can reschedule soon. Also, and it pains me to say this—“Giving Jason Stackhouse vampire blood is like giving Ho Hos to a diabetic.”

Six hours later, Amelia writes back,
YOU WATCHED!!!

A.J.:
I did.

Amelia:
Could we do the list over the phone or Skype?

A.J.:
What’s Skype?

Amelia:
Do I have to teach you everything?!?

After Amelia explains what Skype is, they decide to meet that way.

A.J. is happy to see her even if it has to be on a video screen. While she’s going through the list, he finds he can barely pay attention. He is fascinated by the Amelianess of the things in the frame behind her: a mason jar filled with dying sunflowers, a diploma from Vassar (he thinks it says), a bobblehead of Hermione Granger, a framed picture of a young Amelia and people he guesses are her parents, a lamp with a polka-dotted scarf draped over it, a stapler that looks like a Keith Haring figure, an old edition of some book whose title A.J. cannot make out, a bottle of sparkly nail polish, a windup lobster, a set of plastic vampire fangs, an unopened bottle of good champagne, a—

“A.J.,” Amelia interrupts. “Are you listening?”

“Yes, of course. I’m . . .”
Staring at your things?
“I’m unused to Skyping. Can I make Skype a verb?”

“I don’t think OED has weighed in on the matter, but I think you’ll be fine,” she says. “As I was saying, that Knightley has not one, but two, short-story collections on the summer list.”

Amelia goes on to describe the collections, and A.J. returns to spying.
What is that book?
It’s skinnier than a bible or a dictionary. He leans in to try to see it better, but the worn gold leaf text is too faded to decipher out over a video conference call. How irritating that he can’t zoom in or change the angle. She is no longer speaking. Clearly, some response is required from A.J.

“Yes, I’m looking forward to reading them,” he says.

“Great. I’ll put them in the mail to you today or tomorrow. So that’s it until the fall list.”

“I hope you’ll be able to come in person.”

“I will. I definitely will.”

“What’s the book?” A.J. asks.

“What book?”

“The old one leaning against the lamp, on the table behind you.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she says. “It’s my favorite. A gift from my father for my college graduation.”

“So what is it?”

“If you ever make it down to Providence, I’ll show you,” she says.

A.J. looks at her. This might have sounded flirtatious except she hadn’t even looked up from the notes she’d been writing when she said it. And yet . . .

“Brett Brewer seemed like a nice guy,” A.J. says.

“What?”

“When he called me to say you were hurt and couldn’t come,” A.J. explains.

“Right.”

“I thought he sounded like Bill from
True Blood
.”

Amelia laughs. “Look at you, casually dropping the
True Blood
references. I’ll have to tell Brett that the next time I see him.”

“When’s the wedding, by the way? Or has it already happened?”

She looks up at him. “It’s off, actually.”

“I’m sorry,” A.J. says.

“It happened a while ago. Over Christmas.”

“I thought because he called . . .”

“He was crashing at my house at the time. I try to stay friends with my exes,” Amelia says. “I’m that way.”

A.J. knows he is being intrusive, but he can’t stop himself. “What happened?”

“Brett’s a great guy, but the sad truth is we didn’t have very much in common.”

“Shared sensibility does matter,” A.J. says.

Amelia’s phone rings. “My mother. I have to take this,” she says. “I’ll see you in a couple of months, okay?”

A.J. nods. Skype clicks off, and Amelia’s status changes to Away.

He opens his browser and Googles the following phrase: “educational family attractions near Providence, Rhode Island.” The search yields no distinctive results: a children’s museum, a doll museum, a lighthouse, and other things he could more easily do in Boston. He settles on the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth. He and Maya had read a picture book with topiary animals in it a while ago, and she’d seemed mostly interested in the subject. Plus it’s good for them to get off the island, right? He’ll take Maya to see the animals, then swing by Providence to see a sick friend.

“Maya,” he says that night at dinner, “how would you like to see a giant topiary elephant?”

She gives him a look. “Your voice is funny.”