Read The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel Online
Authors: Gabrielle Zevin
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel (15 page)
If Maya wins, maybe she will donate the gift certificate to charity. To, like, underprivileged kids or orphanages.
If she loses, it will be okay. She didn’t write the story to win a prize or even complete an assignment. If she’d wanted to complete the assignment, she could have written about Puddleglum. Creative writing is graded pass/fail.
The third story is announced, and Maya grabs A.J.’s hand.
1948 / J. D. Salinger
If something is good and universally acknowledged to be so, this is not reason enough to dislike it. (Side note: It has taken me all afternoon to write this sentence. My brain kept making hash of the phrase “universally acknowledged.”)
“A Trip to the Beach,” your entry for the county short-story contest, reminds me a bit of Salinger’s story. I mention this because I think you should have won first place. The first-place entry, which I believe was titled “My Grandmother’s Hands,” was much simpler both formally, narratively, and certainly emotionally than yours. Take heart, Maya. As a bookseller, I assure you that prizewinning can be somewhat important for sales but rarely matters much in terms of quality.
—A.J.F.
P.S. The thing I find most promising about your short story is that it shows empathy. Why do people do what they do? This is the hallmark of great writing.
P.P.S. If I have a criticism, perhaps it’s that you might have introduced the swimming element earlier.
P.P.P.S. Also, readers will know what an ATM card is.
A Trip to the Beach
By Maya Tamerlane Fikry
Teacher: Edward Balboni, Alicetown High School
Grade 9
Mary is running late. She has a private room, but she shares the bathroom with six other people, and it seems like someone is always using it. When she gets back from the bathroom, the babysitter is sitting on her bed. “Mary, I have been waiting for you for five minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary says. “I wanted to take a shower, but I couldn’t get in.”
“It is already eleven,” the babysitter says. “You’ve only paid me to be here until noon, and I have somewhere I need to be at 12:15 p.m. So you better not be late getting back.”
Mary thanks the babysitter. She kisses the baby on the head. “Be good,” she says.
Mary runs across the campus to the English department. She runs up the stairs. Her teacher is already leaving by the time she gets there. “Mary. I was just about to leave. I didn’t think you were going to show. Please come in.”
Mary goes into the office. The teacher takes out Mary’s homework and sets it on the desk. “Mary,” the teacher says. “You used to get straight A’s, and now you are failing all of your classes.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary says. “I’ll try to do better.”
“Is something happening in your life?” the teacher asks. “You used to be one of our best students.”
“No,” Mary says. She bites her lip.
“You have a scholarship to this college. You are already in trouble because your grades have been bad for a while, and when I tell the college, they will probably end your scholarship or at least make you leave for some time.”
“Please don’t do that!” Mary begs. “I don’t have anywhere I can go. The only money I have is my scholarship money.”
“It is for your own good, Mary. You should go home and sort yourself out. Christmas is in a couple of weeks. Your parents will understand.”
Mary is fifteen minutes late getting back to the dorm. The babysitter is frowning when Mary gets there. “Mary,” the babysitter says. “You are late once again! When you’re late, it makes me late for the things I have to do. I’m sorry. I really like the baby, but I don’t think I can babysit for you anymore.”
Mary takes the baby from the babysitter. “Okay,” she says.
“Also,” the babysitter adds, “you owe me for the last three times I babysat. It’s ten dollars an hour so that’s thirty dollars.”
“Can I pay you next time?” Mary asks. “I meant to go to the automated teller machine (ATM) on my way back, but I didn’t have time.”
The babysitter makes a face. “Just put it in an envelope with my name on it and leave it at my dorm. I would really like the money before Christmas. I have presents to buy.”
Mary agrees.
“Bye, little baby,” the babysitter says. “Have a great Christmas.”
The baby coos.
“Do you two have anything special planned for the holidays?” the babysitter asks.
“I’ll probably take her to see my mom. She lives in Greenwich, Connecticut. She always has a big Christmas tree, and she makes a delicious dinner, and there will be tons of presents for me and for Myra.”
“That sounds really nice,” the babysitter says.
Mary puts the baby in the baby sling, and she walks to the bank. She checks the balance on her ATM card. She has $75.17 in her checking account. She takes out forty dollars and then she goes inside to get change.
She puts thirty dollars in an envelope with the babysitter’s name on it. She buys a token for the subway and rides to the last stop on the train. The neighborhood is not as nice as the neighborhood where Mary’s college is.
Mary walks down the street. She comes to a rundown house with a chain-link fence out front. There is a dog tied to a post in the yard. It barks at the baby, and the baby starts to cry.
“Don’t worry, baby,” Mary says. “The dog can’t get you.”
They go inside the house. The house is very dirty and there are kids everywhere. The kids are dirty, too. The kids are noisy and all different ages. Some of them are in wheelchairs or disabled.
“Hi, Mary,” a disabled girl says. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to see Mama,” Mary says.
“She is upstairs. She is not feeling well.”
“Thank you.”
“Mary, is that your baby?” the disabled girl asks.
“No,” Mary says. She bites her lip. “I’m just watching it for a friend.”
“How is Harvard?” the disabled girl asks.
“Great,” Mary says.
“Bet you got all A’s.”
Mary shrugs.
“You are so modest, Mary. Still swimming on the swim team?”
Mary shrugs again. She walks up the stairs to see Mama.
Mama is a morbidly obese white woman. Mary is a skinny black girl. Mama cannot be Mary’s biological mother.
“Hi, Mama,” Mary says. “Merry Christmas.” Mary kisses the fat woman on the cheek.
“Hi, Mary. Miss Ivy Leaguer. Didn’t expect to see you back here at your foster home.”
“No.”
“Is that your baby?” Mama asks.
Mary sighs. “Yes.”
“What a shame,” Mama says. “Smart girl like you, messing up her life. Didn’t I tell you to never have sex? Didn’t I tell you to always use protection?”
“Yes, Mama.” Mary bites her lip. “Mama, would it be okay if the baby and I stayed here a while? I’ve decided to take a leave from the school to get my life organized. It would be very helpful.”
“Oh, Mary. I wish I could help, but the house is filled up. I don’t have a room for you. You are too old for me to get a check from the state of Massachusetts.”
“Mama, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Mary, here is what I think you should do. I think you should contact the baby’s father.”
Mary shakes her head. “I didn’t really know him that well.”
“Then I think you should put the baby up for adoption.”
Mary shakes her head again. “I can’t do that either.”
Mary goes back to the dorm room. She packs up a bag for the baby. She puts a stuffed Elmo in the bag. A girl from down the hall comes into Mary’s room.
“Hey Mary, where are you going?”
Mary smiles brightly. “I thought I would take a trip to the beach,” she says. “The baby loves the beach.”
“Isn’t it a little cold for the beach?” the girl asks.
“Not really,” Mary says. “The baby and I will wear our warmest clothes. Plus the beach is really nice in the winter.”
The girl shrugs. “I guess.”
“When I was a little girl, my dad used to take me to the beach all the time.”
Mary drops off the envelope at the babysitter’s dorm. At the train station, she uses her credit card to buy tickets for the train and boat that go to Alice Island.
“You do not need a ticket for the baby,” the ticket taker tells Mary.
“Good,” Mary says.
When she gets to Alice Island, the first place Mary sees is a bookstore. She goes inside so that she and the baby can warm up. A man is at the counter. He has a grumpy demeanor and he wears Converse sneakers.
Christmas music is playing in the store. The song is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
“This song makes me so sad,” a customer says. “This is the saddest song I have ever heard. Why would anyone write such a sad Christmas song?”
“I’m looking for something to read,” Mary says.
The man gets slightly less grumpy. “What kind of books do you like?”
“Oh, all kinds, but my favorite kind of book is the kind where a character has hardships but overcomes them in the end. I know life isn’t like that. Maybe that is why it is my favorite thing.”
The bookseller says that he has the perfect thing for her, but by the time he gets back, Mary is gone. “Miss?”
He leaves the book on the counter just in case Mary decides to come back.
Mary is on the beach, but the baby is not with her.
She used to swim on a swim team. She was good enough to win the state championships in high school. That day, the waves are choppy and the water is cold, and Mary is out of practice.
She swims out, past the lighthouse, and she doesn’t swim back.
THE END
“Congratulations,” Maya tells John Furness at the reception. She is clutching her rolled-up T-shirt in her hand. Amelia has Maya’s certificate: third place.
John shrugs and his hair flops back and forth. “I thought you should have won, but it’s pretty cool them picking two stories from Alicetown as finalists.”
“Maybe Mr. Balboni is a good teacher.”
“We can split my gift certificate if you want,” John says.
Maya shakes her head. She doesn’t want it that way.
“What would you have bought?”
“I was going to give it to charity. To underprivileged kids.”
“Seriously?” He does his newscaster voice.
“My dad doesn’t really like us to shop online.”
“You aren’t angry at me, are you?” John says.
“No. I’m happy for you. Go Whales!” She punches him on the shoulder.
“Ow.”
“I’ll see you around. We’ve got to catch the auto ferry back to Alice.”
“So do we,” John says. “There’s plenty of time for us to hang out.”
“My dad has things to do at the store.”
“See you at school,” John says in the newscaster voice again.
In the car on the way home, Amelia congratulates Maya for placing and for writing an amazing story, and A.J. says nothing.
Maya thinks that A.J. must be disappointed in her, but just before they get out of the car, he says, “These things are never fair. People like what they like, and that’s the great and terrible thing. It’s about personal taste and a certain set of people on a certain day. For instance, two out of the three finalists were women, which might have tipped the scales toward the male. Or maybe one of the judges’ grandmothers died last week, which made that story particularly effective. One never knows. But here is what I do know. ‘A Trip to the Beach’ by Maya Tamerlane Fikry was written by a writer.” She thinks he’s about to hug her, but instead he shakes her hand, the way he would greet a colleague—perhaps an author visiting the store.
A sentence occurs to her:
The day my father shook my hand, I knew I was a writer.
JUST BEFORE THE
school year ends, A.J. and Amelia make an offer on a house. The house is about ten minutes away from the store and inland. Although it does have four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the quiet A.J. believes a young writer needs to work, the house is no one’s idea of a dream house. The last owner had died there—she hadn’t wanted to leave, but she hadn’t done much to maintain the house in the last fifty or so years either. The ceilings are low; there are several different eras of wallpaper to be stripped; the foundation is shaky. A.J. calls it the “in ten years house” meaning that “in ten years, it might be livable.” Amelia calls it “a project” and she sets herself to working on it immediately. Maya, having recently made her way through
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy, names it Bag End. “Because it looks as if a hobbit might live here.”
A.J. kisses his daughter on the forehead. He is delighted to have produced such a fantastic nerd.
1843
/ E. A. Poe
True!
Maya, perhaps you don’t know that I had a wife before Amelia and a profession before I became a bookseller. I was once married to a woman named Nicole Evans. I loved her very much. She died in a car accident, and a large part of me was dead for a long time after, probably until I found you.
Nicole and I met in college and married the summer before we entered graduate school. She wanted to be a poet but in the meantime was unhappily working toward a PhD in twentieth-century female poets (Adrienne Rich, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop; how she hated Sylvia Plath). I was well on my way to a PhD in American literature. My dissertation was to be on depictions of disease in the works of E. A. Poe, a subject I had never particularly liked but had grown to truly despise. Nic suggested that there could be better, happier ways to have a literary life. I said, “Yeah, like what?”
And she said, “Bookstore owners.”
“Tell me more,” I said.
“Did you know my hometown doesn’t have a bookstore?”
“
Really? Alice seems like the kind of place that should have one.”
“I know,” she said. “A place is not really a place without a bookstore.”
And so we quit grad school, took her trust fund money, moved to Alice, and opened the store that would become Island Books.
Does it go without saying that we did not know what we were getting into?
In the years after Nicole’s accident, I often imagined what my life might have been like if I had finished that PhD.
But I digress.
This is arguably the best known of E. A. Poe’s stories. In a box marked ephemera, you’ll find my notes and twenty-five pages of my dissertation (most of it concerning “The Tell-Tale Heart”), if you’re ever interested in reading more about the things your dad did in another life.
—A.J.F.
