The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel (11 page)

“It’s cool, Maya. You remember that book we read with the topiaries?”

“You mean, when I was little.”

“Right. I found this place with a topiary animal garden. I have to go to Providence anyway to see a sick friend so I thought it would be cool for us to see the animal garden while we were there.” He gets out his computer and shows her the website with the topiary animals.

“Okay,” she says seriously. “I would like to see that.” She points out that the website says that the topiary garden is in Portsmouth, not Providence.

“Portsmouth and Providence are really close,” A.J. says. “Rhode Island is the country’s smallest state.”

It turns out, however, that Portsmouth and Providence are not all that close. Although there is a bus, the easiest way to get to there is by car, and A.J. doesn’t have a driver’s license. He calls Lambiase and asks him to come with them.

“Kid’s super into topiaries, huh?” Lambiase asks.

“She’s mad for them,” A.J. says.

“Seems a weird thing for a kid to be into, that’s all I’m saying.”

“She’s a weird kid.”

“But is the middle of winter the best time for touring a garden?”

“It’s almost spring. Besides, Maya’s into topiaries right now. Who knows if she’ll be as interested come summer?”

“Kids change quick. It’s true,” Lambiase says.

“Look, you don’t have to come.”

“Oh, I’ll come. Who wouldn’t want to see a giant green elephant? The thing is, though, sometimes people tell you you’re on one kind of trip, but it turns out to be another kind of trip, you know what I mean? I just want to know what kind of trip I’m on. Are we going to see topiaries, or are we going to see something else? Maybe that lady friend of yours, say?”

A.J. inhales. “It crossed my mind that I might stop by to see Amelia, yes.”

A.J. texts Amelia the next day:
Forgot to mention that Maya and I are going to be in Rhode Island next weekend. Instead of you mailing the galleys, I could pick them up.

Amelia:
Don’t have them here. Having them sent from NYC.

So much for that ill-conceived plan,
A.J. thinks.

A couple of minutes later, Amelia sends another text:
What are you doing in Rhode Island anyway?

A.J.:
Going to the topiary garden in Portsmouth. Maya loves topiaries!
(He is only slightly mortified by that exclamation point.)

Amelia:
Didn’t know there was one. Wish I could come with you, but I’m still only semimobile.

A.J. waits a couple of minutes before he texts:
Are you in need of visitors? Maybe we could stop by.

She does not immediately respond. A.J. takes her silence to mean that she has all the visitors she needs.

The next day, Amelia does text back:
Sure. I’d like that. Don’t eat. I’ll make something for you and Maya.

“YOU CAN KIND
of see them if you get on your tippy toes and look over the fence,” A.J. says. “There, in the distance!” They had left Alice at seven that morning, taken the ferry to Hyannis, then driven two hours to Portsmouth only to discover that the Green Animals Topiary Garden is closed from November through May.

A.J. finds that he cannot make eye contact with either his daughter or Lambiase. It is twenty-nine degrees, but shame is keeping him warm.

Maya stands on her toes and when that doesn’t work, she tries hopping. “I can’t see anything,” she says.

“Here, I’ll get you higher,” Lambiase says, lifting Maya onto his shoulders.

“Maybe I can see a little bit,” Maya says doubtfully. “No, I definitely cannot see anything. They’re all covered.” Her lower lip begins to quiver. She looks at A.J. with pained eyes. He doesn’t think he can take any more of this.

Suddenly, she smiles brightly at A.J. “But you know what, Daddy? I can imagine what the elephant looks like under the blanket. And the tiger! And the unicorn!” She nods at her father as if to say,
Clearly this imaginative exercise must have been your point in taking me here in the middle of winter.

“That’s very good, Maya.” He feels like the worst parent in the world, but Maya’s faith in him seems to be restored.

“Look, Lambiase! The unicorn is shivering. She’s glad to be wearing the blanket. Can you see it, Lambiase?”

A.J. walks over to the security kiosk, where the guard shoots him a sympathetic expression. “Happens all the time,” she says.

“Then you don’t think I’ve scarred my daughter for life?” A.J. asks.

“Sure,” says the guard. “You’ve probably done that, but I doubt from anything that happened today. No child ever turned bad from not seeing topiary animals.”

“Even if her father’s real purpose was a sexy girl in Providence?”

The guard doesn’t seem to hear that part. “My suggestion to you is that you tour the Victorian residence instead. Kids love those.”

“Do they?”

“Some of them. Sure. Why not? Maybe you’ve got the kind that does.”

AT THE MANSION,
Maya is reminded of
From the Mixed-Up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler,
a book Lambiase hasn’t read.

“Oh, you must, Lambiase,” Maya says. “You will love it. There’s this girl and her brother, and they run away—”

“Running away’s no laughing matter.” Lambiase frowns. “As a police officer, I can tell you that kids don’t do well on the streets.”

Maya continues, “They go to this big museum in New York City, and they hide out there. It’s—”

“It’s criminal is what it is,” Lambiase says. “It’s definitely trespassing. It’s probably breaking and entering, too.”

“Lambiase,” Maya says, “you are missing the point.”

After an overpriced lunch at a mansion, they drive to Providence to check into their hotel.

“You go visit Amelia,” Lambiase tells A.J. “I was thinking me and the kid would go to the Children’s Museum in town. I’d like to show her the many reasons it would be impractical to hide out in a museum. In a post – September eleventh universe at least.”

“You don’t have to do that.” A.J. had planned to take Maya with him so that the visit to Amelia’s would seem more casual. (Yes, he was not above using his beloved daughter as a prop.)

“Stop looking guilty,” Lambiase says. “That’s what godfathers are for. Backup.”

A.J. gets to Amelia’s house just before five. He has brought her an Island Books tote filled with Charlaine Harris novels, a good bottle of Malbec, and a bouquet of sunflowers. After he rings the doorbell, he decides the flowers are too obvious and he stows them under the cushions of the porch swing.

When she answers the door, her knee is supported by a wheelie cart. Her cast is pink and has been signed as much as the most popular kid in school’s yearbook. She is wearing a navy blue minidress with a red patterned scarf tied jauntily around her neck. She looks like an airline stewardess.

“Where’s Maya?” Amelia asks.

“My friend Lambiase took her to the Providence Children’s Museum.”

Amelia cocks her head. “This isn’t a date, is it?”

A.J. tries to explain about the topiary garden having been closed. The story sounds incredibly unconvincing—halfway through telling it, he almost decides to drop the tote and run.

“I’m teasing,” she says. “Come in.”

Amelia’s house is cluttered but clean. She has a purple velvet couch, a smallish grand piano, a dining-room table that seats twelve, many framed pictures of her friends and family, several houseplants in various states of health, a one-eyed tabby cat named Puddleglum, and of course, books everywhere. Her house smells like what she’s cooking, which turns out to be lasagna and garlic bread. He takes off his boots so as not to track mud into her house. “Your place is just like you,” he says.

“Cluttered, mismatched,” she says.

“Eclectic, charming.” He clears his throat and tries not to feel unbearably corny.

They are through with dinner and into their second bottle of wine when A.J. finally gets up the nerve to ask her what had happened with Brett Brewer.

Amelia smiles a little. “If I tell you the truth, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

She finishes the dregs of her wine. “Last fall, when we were corresponding all the time . . . Listen, I don’t want you to think I broke up with him for you because I didn’t. I broke up with him because talking to you made me remember how important it is to share a sensibility with someone, to share passions. I probably sound silly.”

“No,” A.J. says.

She narrows her pretty brown eyes. “You were so mean to me the first time we met. I still haven’t forgiven you, you know.”

“I’d hoped you’d forgotten that.”

“I haven’t. My memory is very long, A.J.”

“I was awful,” A.J. says. “In my defense, I was going through a bad time.” He leans across the table and brushes a blond curl off of her face. “The first time I saw you, I thought you looked like a dandelion.”

She pats her hair self-consciously. “My hair’s such a pain.”

“It’s my favorite flower.”

“I think it’s actually a weed,” she says.

“You’re rather stunning, you know.”

“They used to call me Big Bird in school.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There are worse names,” she says. “I told my mother about you. She said that you didn’t sound like good boyfriend material, A.J.”

“I know. I’m sorry for that. Because I like you enormously.”

Amelia sighs and moves to clear the table.

A.J. rises. “No, please. Let me. You should sit.” He stacks the dishes and moves them into the dishwasher.

“Do you want to see what that book is?” she says.

“What book?” A.J. asks as he fills the lasagna dish with water.

“The one in my office that you asked about. Isn’t that what you came to see?” She rises to her feet, swapping out her rolling device for crutches. “My office is through my bedroom, by the way.”

A.J. nods. He walks briskly through the bedroom so as not to seem presumptuous. He is almost to the office door when Amelia sits on her bed and says, “Wait. I’ll show you the book tomorrow.” She pats the place on the bed next to her. “My ankle hurts, so apologies if my seduction lacks some of the subtlety it might usually have.”

He tries to be cool as he walks back across the room to Amelia’s bed, but A.J. has never been cool.

AFTER AMELIA HAS
fallen asleep, A.J. tiptoes into the office.

The book leans against the lamp, unmoved since the day they talked over the computer. Even in person, the cover is too faded to be made out. He opens to the title page:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
by Flannery O’Connor.

“Dear Amy,” the book is inscribed, “Mom says this is your favorite writer. I hope you won’t mind that I read the title story. I found it a bit dark, but I did enjoy it. A very happy graduation day! I am so proud of you. Love always, Dad.”

A.J. closes the book and sets it back against the lamp.

He writes a note: “Dear Amelia, I honestly don’t think I could bear it if you waited until the Knightley fall list to come back to Alice Island. —A.J.F.”

T
hat spring, Amelia takes to wearing flats and finds herself making more sales calls to Island Books than the account, strictly speaking, requires. If her boss notices, he does not say. Publishing is still a gentleperson’s business, and besides, A. J. Fikry is carrying an extraordinary number of Knightley titles, more than nearly any other bookstore in the Northeast corridor. The boss does not care whether the numbers are driven by love or commerce or both. “Perhaps,” the boss says to Amelia, “you might suggest to Mr. Fikry a spotlight on Knightley Press table in the front of the store?”

That spring, A.J. kisses Amelia just before she gets on the ferry back to Hyannis and says, “You can’t be based from an island. You have to travel too much for your job.”

She holds him at arm’s length and laughs at him. “I agree, but is that your way of asking me to move to Alice?”

“No, I’m . . . Well, I’m thinking of you,” A.J. says. “It wouldn’t be practical for you to move to Alice. That’s my point.”

“No, it wouldn’t be,” she says. She stencils a heart on his chest with a fluorescent pink nail.

“What hue is that?” A.J. asks.

“Rose-Colored Glasses.” The horn sounds, and Amelia boards the boat.

That spring, while waiting for a Greyhound bus, A.J. says to Amelia, “You couldn’t even get to Alice three months of the year.”

“It would have been easier for me to commute to Afghanistan,” she says. “I like how you bring this up at the bus station, by the way.”

“I try to put it out of my mind until the last minute.”

“That’s one strategy.”

“I take it you mean not a good one.” He grabs her hand. Her hands are large but shapely. A piano player’s hands. A sculptress. “You have the hands of an artist.”

Amelia rolls her eyes. “And the mind of a book sales rep.”

Her nails are painted a deep shade of purple. “What color this time?” he asks.

“Blues Traveler. While I’m thinking about it, would you mind if I painted Maya’s nails the next time I’m on Alice? She keeps asking me.”

That spring, Amelia takes Maya to the drugstore and lets her choose any polish color she likes. “How do you pick?” Maya says.

“Sometimes I ask myself how I’m feeling,” Amelia says. “Sometimes I ask myself how I’d like to be feeling.”

Maya studies the rows of glass bottles. She selects a red then puts it back. She takes iridescent silver off the shelf.

“Ooh, pretty. Here’s the best part. Each color has a name,” Amelia tells her. “Turn the bottle over.”

Maya does. “It’s a title like a book! Pearly Riser,” she reads. “What’s yours called?”

Amy has selected a pale blue. “Keeping Things Light
.
”

That weekend, Maya accompanies A.J. to the dock. She throws her arms around Amelia and tells her not to go. “I don’t want to,” Amelia says.

“Then why do you have to?” Maya asks.

“Because I don’t live here.”

“Why don’t you live here?”

“Because my job is somewhere else.”

“You could come work at the store.”

“I couldn’t. Your dad would probably kill me. Besides, I like my job.” She looks at A.J., who is making a great show of checking his phone. The horn sounds.

“Say good-bye to Amy,” A.J. says.

Amelia calls A.J. from the ferry, “I can’t move from Providence. You can’t move from Alice. The situation is pretty much irresolvable.”

“It is,” he agrees. “What color were you wearing today?”

“Keeping Things Light.”

“Is that significant?”

“No,” she says.

That spring, Amelia’s mother says, “It isn’t fair to you. You’re thirty-six years old, and you aren’t getting any younger. If you truly want to have a baby, you can’t waste any more time in impossible relationships, Amy.”

And Ismay says to A.J., “It isn’t fair to Maya to have this Amelia person be such a big part of your life if you aren’t really serious about her.”

And Daniel says to A.J., “You shouldn’t change your life for any woman.”

That June, the good weather makes A.J. and Amelia forget these and other objections. When Amelia comes to pitch the fall list, she stays for two weeks. She wears seersucker shorts and flip-flops adorned with daisies. “I probably won’t see you much this summer,” she says. “I’ll be traveling for work and then my mother’s coming to Providence in August.”

“I could come see you,” A.J. suggests.

“I really won’t be around,” Amelia says. “Except for August, and my mother is an acquired taste.”

A.J. puts sunscreen on her strong, soft back and decides he simply can’t be without her. He decides to contrive a reason for her to come to Alice.

The minute she’s back to Providence, A.J. calls her on Skype. “I’ve been thinking. We should have Leon Friedman come sign at the store in August while the summer people are still in town.”

“You hate the summer people,” Amelia says. She has heard A.J. rant on more than one occasion about the seasonal residents of Alice Island: the families who come into his store right after buying ice cream from Captain Boomer’s and let their toddlers run around touching everything, the theater festival people with their too-loud laughs, the reverse snowbirds who think going to the beach once a week suffices for personal hygiene.

“That isn’t true,” A.J. says. “I like to complain, but I sell them a fair number of books, too. Plus Nic used to say that, contrary to popular belief, the best time to have an author event was during August. The people are so bored by then, they’ll do anything for distraction, even go to an author reading.”

“An author reading,” Amelia says. “My, that is substandard entertainment.”

“Compared to
True Blood,
I suppose.”

She ignores him. “Actually, I love readings.” When she was starting out in publishing, a boyfriend had dragged her to a ticketed Alice McDermott event at the 92nd Street Y. Amelia thought she hadn’t liked
Charming Billy,
but she realized when she heard McDermott read from it—the way her arms moved, the emphasis she placed on certain words—that she hadn’t understood the novel at all. When they left the reading, the boyfriend had apologized to her on the subway, “Sorry if that was kind of a bust.” A week later, she ended the relationship. She can’t help thinking how young she’d been, how impossibly high her standards.

“Okay,” Amelia says to A.J. “I’ll put you in touch with the publicist.”

“You’ll come, too, right?”

“I’ll try. My mother’s visiting me in August so—”

“Bring her!” A.J. says. “I’d like to meet your mother.”

“You only say that because you haven’t met her yet,” Amelia says.

“Amelia, my love, you have to attend. I’m having Leon Friedman for you.”

“I don’t remember saying I wanted to meet Leon Friedman,” Amelia says. But that’s the beauty of video calling, A.J. thinks— he can see that she’s smiling.

FIRST THING MONDAY
morning, A.J. calls Leon Friedman’s publicist at Knightley. She’s twenty-six and brand new like they always are. She has to Google Leon Friedman to figure out what the book is. “Oh, wow, you’re the first appearance request I’ve had for
The Late Bloomer
.”

“The book is really a store favorite. We’ve sold quite a few copies of it,” A.J. says.

“You might be the first person to
ever
host an event with Leon Friedman. Like seriously, ever. I’m not sure.” The publicist pauses. “Let me talk to his editor to see if he’s up to doing events. I’ve never met him, but I’m looking at his picture right now, and he’s . . . mature. Can I give you a call back?”

“Assuming he’s not too mature to travel, I’d want to schedule it for the end of August before the summer people leave. He’ll sell more books that way.”

A week later, the publicist leaves word that Leon Friedman is not yet dead and available in August to come to Island Books.

A.J. has not hosted an author for years. The reason being, he has no talent for such arrangements. The last time Island had an author event was back when Nic was still alive, and she had always organized everything. He tries to remember what she had done.

He orders books, hangs posters in the store with Leon Friedman’s ancient face, sends relevant social media dispatches, and asks his friends and employees to do the same. Still, his efforts feel incomplete. Nic’s book parties always had a gimmick, so A.J. tries to come up with one. Leon Friedman is OLD, and the book flopped. Neither fact seems like much to hang a party on. The book is romantic but incredibly depressing. A.J. decides to call Lambiase. He suggests frozen shrimp from Costco, which A.J. now recognizes as Lambiase’s default party-throwing suggestion. “Hey,” Lambiase says, “if you’re doing events now, I’d really love to meet Jeffery Deaver. We’re all big fans of his at the Alice PD.”

A.J. then calls Daniel, who informs him, “The only thing a good book party needs is plenty of liquor.”

“Put Ismay on the phone,” A.J. says.

“This isn’t terribly literary or brilliant, but how about a garden party?” Ismay says. “
The Late Bloomer
. Blooms, get it?”

“I do,” he says.

“Everyone wears flowered hats. You have the writer judge a hat contest or something. It will lighten the mood, and all the mothers you’re friends with will probably show up, if only for the chance to take pictures of each other wearing ridiculous hats.”

A.J. considers this. “That sounds horrible.”

“It was only a suggestion.”

“But as I think about it, it’s probably the right kind of horrible.”

“I accept the compliment. Is Amelia coming?”

“I certainly hope so,” A.J. says. “I’m having this damned party for her.”

THAT JULY, A.J.
and Maya go to the only fine jewelry store on Alice Island. A.J. points out a vintage ring with a simple setting and square stone.

“Too plain,” Maya says. She selects a yellow diamond as big as the Ritz, which turns out to be roughly the cost of a first-edition mint-condition
Tamerlane.

They settle on a 1960s era ring with a diamond in the middle and a setting made out of enamel petals. “Like a daisy,” Maya says. “Amy likes flowers and happy things.”

A.J. thinks the ring is a bit gaudy, but he knows Maya is right—this is the one Amelia would pick, the one that will make her happy. At the very least, the ring will match her flip-flops.

On the walk back to the bookstore, A.J. warns Maya that Amelia could say no. “She’d still be our friend,” A.J. says, “even if she did say no.”

Maya nods, then nods some more. “Why would she say no?”

“Well . . . Lots of reasons, actually. Your dad is not exactly a catch.”

Maya laughs. “You’re silly.”

“And the place we live is hard to get to, and Amy has to travel for her work.”

“Are you going to ask her at the book party?” Maya asks.

A.J. shakes his head. “No, I don’t want to embarrass her.”

“Why would it embarrass her?”

“Well, I don’t want her to feel cornered into saying yes because there’s a crowd, you know?” When he had been nine years old, his father had taken him to a Giants game. They had ended up sitting next to a woman who was proposed to at half-time over the Jumbotron.
Yes
, the woman had said when the camera had been on her. But as soon as the third quarter started, the woman had begun to cry uncontrollably. A.J. had never much liked football after that. “And maybe I don’t want to embarrass myself either.”

“After the party?” Maya says.

“Yes, maybe if I work up the courage.” He looks at Maya. “Is this okay with you, by the way?”

She nods and then she wipes her glasses on her T-shirt. “Daddy, I told her about the topiaries.”

“What about them exactly?”

“I told her that I don’t even like them and that I was pretty sure we had gone to Rhode Island to see her that time.”

“Why did you tell her that?”

“She said a couple of months ago that you were ‘a hard person to read sometimes.’ ”

“I’m afraid that is probably true.”

AUTHORS NEVER LOOK
that much like their author photos, but the first thing A.J. thinks when he meets Leon Friedman is that he
really
doesn’t look like his author photo. Photo Leon Friedman is thinner, clean-shaven, and his nose looks longer. Actual Leon Friedman looks somewhere between old Ernest Hemingway and a department store Santa Claus: big red nose and belly, bushy white beard, twinkly eyes. Actual Leon Friedman looks about ten years younger than his author photo. A.J. decides maybe it’s just the excess weight and the beard. “Leon Friedman. Novelist extraordinaire,” Friedman introduces himself. He pulls A.J. into a bear hug. “Pleased to meet you. You must be A.J. The gal at Knightley says you love my book. Good taste on your part, if I do say so myself.”

“It’s interesting that you call the book a novel,” A.J. says. “Would you say it’s a novel or a memoir?”

“Ah, well, we’ll be debating that until the cows come home, won’t we? You wouldn’t happen to have a drink for me. A bit of the old vino always makes these kinds of events go better for me.”

Ismay has provided tea and finger sandwiches for the event but not alcohol. The event had been scheduled for 2 p.m. on a Sunday, and Ismay hadn’t thought liquor would be necessary or suit the mood of the party. A.J. goes upstairs for a bottle of wine.

When he gets back downstairs, Maya is sitting on Leon Friedman’s knee.

“I like
The Late Bloomer,”
Maya is saying, “but I’m not sure I’m the intended audience.”

“Oh ho ho, that is a very interesting observation, little girl,” Leon Friedman replies.

“I make many of them. The only other writer I know is Daniel Parish. Do you know him?”

“Not sure that I do.”

Maya sighs. “You are harder to talk to than Daniel Parish. What is your favorite book?”

“Don’t know that I have one. Why don’t you tell me what you’d like for Christmas instead?”

“Christmas?” Maya says. “Christmas isn’t for four months.”

A.J. claims his daughter from Friedman’s lap and gives him a glass of wine in exchange. “Thank you kindly,” Friedman says.

“Would you mind terribly signing some stock for the store before the reading?” A.J. leads Friedman to the back where he sets him up with a carton of paperback books and a pen. Friedman is about to sign his name on the cover of the book when A.J. stops him. “We usually have the authors sign on the title page if that’s fine with you.”