The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel (7 page)

“Hey, pretty girl. How you doing?”

“Adopted,” she says.

“That is a very big word.” Lambiase looks at A.J. “Hey, is this square? Did this really happen?”

The process had taken the average amount of time, concluding the September before Maya’s third birthday. The major strikes against A.J. had included his lack of a driver’s license (he had never gotten one on account of his seizures) and, of course, the fact that he is a single man who had never raised a child or even a dog or a houseplant. Ultimately, A.J.’s education, his strong ties to the community (i.e., the bookstore), and the fact that the mother had wanted Maya to be placed with him had outweighed the strikes.

“Congratulations to my favorite book people!” Lambiase says. He throws Maya in the air, then catches her and sets her on the ground. He leans across the counter to shake A.J.’s hand. “Naw. I gotta hug you, man. This is hug-worthy news,” the cop says. Lambiase moves behind the counter to embrace A.J.

“Let’s have a toast,” A.J. says.

A.J. hoists Maya to his hip, and the two men go upstairs. A.J. puts Maya to bed, which takes forever (the intricate affairs of her toilet and two entire picture books), and Lambiase gets the bottle started.

“You gonna christen her now?” Lambiase asks.

“I’m neither Christian nor particularly religious,” A.J. says. “So no.”

Lambiase considers this, drinks a bit more wine. “You didn’t ask for my two cents, but you ought to at least have a party to introduce her to people. She’s Maya Fikry now, right?”

A.J. nods.

“People should know this. You gotta give her a middle name, too. Plus, I think I ought to be her godfather,” Lambiase says.

“What would that entail exactly?”

“Well, let’s say the kid’s twelve and she gets caught shoplifting at the CVS. I’d probably use my influence to intervene.”

“Maya would never do that.”

“That’s what all parents think,” Lambiase says. “Basically, I’d be your backup, A.J. People should have backups.” Lambiase finishes off his glass. “I’d help you with the party.”

“What would a not-christening party entail?” A.J. asks.

“It’s not a big deal. You have it in the store. You buy Maya a new dress from Filene’s Basement. I bet Ismay can help with that. You get food from Costco. Those big muffins, maybe? My sister says they’ve got a thousand calories a piece. And some frozen stuff. Nice stuff. Coconut shrimp. A big hunk of Stilton. And since it’s not going to be Christian—”

A.J. interrupts. “For the record, it’s not going to be un-Christian either.”

“Right. My point is you can serve booze. And we invite your brother-in-law and sister-in-law and those ladies you hang out with and everyone else who has taken an interest in little Maya, which I’ll tell you, A.J., is just about the whole town. And I’d say some nice words as the godfather, if you decide to go that way. Not a prayer, ’cause I know you’re not into that. But you know I’d wish the little girl well on this journey we call life. And you’d thank everyone for coming. We all raise a glass to Maya. Everyone goes home happy.”

“So it’s basically like a book party.”

“Yeah, sure.” Lambiase has never been to a book party.

“I hate book parties,” A.J. says.

“But you run the bookstore,” Lambiase says.

“It’s a problem,” A.J. admits.

M
AYA’S NOT-CHRISTENING PARTY
is held the week before Halloween. Aside from several of the children in attendance wearing Halloween costumes, the party is indistinguishable from either a
christening
christening or a book party. A.J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it’s love.
Fucking love,
he thinks.
What a bother.
It’s completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.

No, the most annoying thing about it is that he’s even started to like Elmo. There are Elmo paper plates on the folding table with the coconut shrimp, and A.J. had blithely gone to multiple stores to procure them. Across the room in Best Sellers, Lambiase is giving a speech that consists of clichés, albeit heartfelt and applicable ones: how A.J. has turned lemons into lemonade, how Maya is a silver-lined cloud, how God’s closed door / open window policy really does apply here, and so forth. He smiles at A.J., and A.J. raises his glass and smiles back. And then, despite the fact that A.J. does not believe in God, he closes his eyes and thanks whomever, the higher power, with all his porcupine heart.

Ismay, A.J.’s choice for godmother, grabs his hand. “Sorry to abandon you, but I’m not feeling well,” she says.

“Was it Lambiase’s speech?” A.J. says.

“I might be getting a cold. I’m going home.”

A.J. nods. “Call me later, okay?”

It is Daniel who calls later. “Ismay’s in the hospital,” he says flatly. “Another miscarriage.”

That makes two in the last year, five total. “How is she?” A.J. asks.

“She’s lost some blood and she’s tired. She’s a sturdy old mare, though.”

“She is.”

“It’s a bad business all-around, but unfortunately,” Daniel says, “I’ve got to catch an early flight to Los Angeles. The movie people are buzzing.” The movie people are always buzzing in Daniel’s stories, though none of them ever seem to sting. “Would you mind going to check on her at the hospital, make sure she gets home all right?”

Lambiase drives A.J. and Maya to the hospital. A.J. leaves Maya in the waiting room with Lambiase and goes in to see Ismay.

He
r eyes are red; her skin, pale. “I’m sorry,” she says when she sees A.J.

“For what, Ismay?”

“I deserve this,” she says.

“You don’t,” A.J. says. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Daniel’s an asshole for making you come out,” Ismay says.

“I was glad to,” A.J. says.

“He cheats on me. Do you know that? He cheats on me all the time.”

A.J. doesn’t say anything, but he does know. Daniel’s philandering is not a secret.

“Of course you know,” Ismay says in a husky voice. “Everyone knows.”

A.J. says nothing.

“You do know, but you won’t talk about it. Some misguided male code, I suppose.”

A.J. looks at her. Her shoulders are bony under the hospital gown, but her abdomen is still slightly round.

“I look a mess,” she says. “That’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, I was noticing that you’re growing out your hair. It’s nice that way.”

“You’re sweet,” she says. At that moment, Ismay sits up and tries to kiss A.J. on the mouth.

A.J. leans away from her. “The doctor says you can go home right now if you’d like.”

“I thought my sister was an idiot when she married you, but now I see you’re not that bad. The way you are with Maya. The way you are now, showing up. Showing up is what counts, A.J.

“I think I’d rather stay here tonight,” she says, flipping away from A.J. “There’s no one at my house, and I don’t want to be that alone. What I said before is true. Nic was the good girl. I’m bad. I married a bad man, too. And I know that bad people deserve what they get, but oh, how we hate to be alone.”

Maya usually wakes before the sun comes up, when the only sound is A.J. snoring in the other room. In footed pajamas, she pads across the main room to A.J.’s bedroom. At first, she whispers, “Daddy, Daddy.” If that doesn’t work, she says his name and if that still doesn’t work, she yells it. And if words are not enough, she jumps on the bed, though she would rather not resort to such shenanigans. Today he wakes when she has only reached talking level. “Awake,” she says. “Downstairs.”

The place Maya loves most is downstairs because downstairs is the store, and the store is the best place in the world.

“Pants,” A.J. mumbles. “Coffee.” His breath smells like socks wet from snow.

There are sixteen stairs until you get to the bookstore. Maya slides her bottom down each one because her legs are too short to manage the flight with confidence. She toddles across the store, past the books that don’t have pictures in them, past the greeting cards. She runs her hand across the magazines, gives the rotating stand with the bookmarks a spin. Good morning, magazines! Good morning, bookmarks! Good morning, books! Good morning, store!

The walls of the bookstore have wood panels up to just above her head, but beyond that is blue wallpaper. Maya can’t reach the paper unless she has a chair. The wallpaper has a bumpy, swirling pattern, and it is pleasing to rub her face against it. She will read the word
damask
in a book one day and think,
Yes, of course that’s what it’s called.
In contrast, the word
wainscoting
will come as a huge disappointment.

The store is fifteen Mayas wide and twenty Mayas long. She knows this because she once spent an afternoon measuring it by lying her body across the room. It is fortunate that it is not more than thirty Mayas long because that is as far as she could count on the day the measurements were taken.

From her vantage point on the floor, people are shoes. In the summer, sandals. In the winter, boots. Molly Klock sometimes wears red superhero boots up to her knees. A.J. is black sneakers with white toes. Lambiase wears finger-crushing Bigfoot shoes. Ismay wears flats that look like insects or jewels. Daniel Parish wears brown loafers with a penny in them.

Just before the store opens at 10 a.m., she goes to her station, which is the row with all the picture books.

The first way Maya approaches a book is to smell it. She strips the book of its jacket, then holds it up to her face and wraps the boards around her ears. Books typically smell like Daddy’s soap, grass, the sea, the kitchen table, and cheese.

She studies the pictures and tries to tease story out of them. It is tiring work, but even at three years old, she recognizes some of the tropes. For instance, animals are not always animals in picture books. They sometimes represent parents and children. A bear wearing a tie might be a father. A bear with a blond wig might be a mother. You can tell a lot about a story from the pictures, but the pictures sometimes give you the wrong idea. She would prefer to know the words.

Assuming no interruptions, she can make it through seven books in a morning. However, there are always interruptions. Maya mainly likes customers, though, and tries to be polite to them. She understands the business she and A.J. are in. When children come into her row, she always makes sure to stick a book into their hands. The children wander up to the cash register, and more often than not the accompanying guardian will buy what the child is holding. “Oh my, did you pick that yourself?” the parent will ask.

Once, someone had asked A.J. if Maya was his. “You’re both black but not the same kind of black.” Maya remembers this because the remark had made A.J. use a tone of voice she had never heard him use with a customer.

“What is
the same kind of black
?” A.J. had asked.

“No, I didn’t mean to offend you,” the person had said and then the flip flops had backed their way to the door, leaving without making a purchase.

What
is
“the same kind of black”? She looks at her hands and wonders.

Here are some other things she wonders about.

How do you learn to read?

Why do grown-ups like books without pictures?

Will Daddy ever die?

What is for lunch?

LUNCH IS AROUND
one and comes from the sandwich shop. She has grilled cheese. A.J. has a turkey club. She likes to go to the sandwich shop, but she always holds A.J.’s hand. She would not want to be left in a sandwich shop.

In the afternoon, she draws reviews. An apple means the book’s smell is approved. A block of cheese means the book is ripe. A self-portrait means she likes the pictures. She signs these reports
maya
and passes them on to A.J. for his approval.

She likes to write her name.

maya
.

She knows her last name is Fikry, but she doesn’t know how to write that yet.

Sometimes, after the customers and the employees have left, she thinks that she and A.J. are the only people in the world. No one else seems as real as he does. Other people are shoes for different seasons, nothing more. A.J. can touch the wallpaper without getting on a chair, can operate the cash register while talking on the phone, can lift heavy boxes of books over his head, uses impossibly long words, knows everything about everything. Who could compare to A. J. Fikry?

She does not think of her mother almost ever.

She knows that her mother is dead. And she knows that dead is when you go to sleep and you do not wake up. She feels very sorry for her mother because people who don’t wake up can’t go downstairs to the bookstore in the morning.

Maya knows that her mother left her in Island Books. But maybe that’s what happens to all children at a certain age. Some children are left in shoe stores. And some children are left in toy stores. And some children are left in sandwich shops. And your whole life is determined by what store you get left in. She does not want to live in the sandwich shop.

Later, when she is older, she will think about her mother more.

In the evening, A.J. changes his shoes, then puts her in a stroller. It is getting to be a tight fit, but she likes the ride so she tries not to complain. She likes hearing A.J. breathing. And she likes seeing the world moving by so fast. And sometimes, he sings. And sometimes he tells her stories. He tells her how he had a book called
Tamerlane
once and it was worth as much as all the books in the store combined.

Tamerlane,
she says, liking the mystery and the music of the syllables.

“And that is how you got your middle name.”

At night, A.J. tucks her in bed. She does not like to go to bed even if she is tired. The offer of a story is the best way for A.J. to persuade her to sleep. “Which one?” he says.

He’s been nagging her to stop choosing
The Monster at the End of This Book,
so she pleases him by saying, “
Caps for Sale
.”

She has heard the story before, but she can’t make sense of it. It is about a man who sells colorful hats. He takes a nap, and his hats get stolen by monkeys. She hopes this will never happen to A.J.

Maya is furrowing her brow, clutching A.J.’s arm.

“What is it?” A.J. asks.

Why do monkeys want hats?
Maya wonders. Monkeys are animals. Maybe the monkeys, like the bear in the wig who is a mother, represent something else, but what . . . ? She has thoughts but not words.

“Read,” she says.

Sometimes A.J. has a woman come to the store to read books aloud to Maya and the other children. The woman gesticulates and mugs, raising and lowering her voice for dramatic effect. Maya wants to tell her to relax. She is used to the way A.J. reads—soft and low. She is used to him.

A.J. reads, “. . . on the very top, a bunch of red caps.”

The picture shows a man in many colored caps.

Maya puts her hand over A.J.’s to stop him from turning the page just yet. She scans her eyes from the picture to the page and back again. All at once, she knows that r-e-d is red, knows it like she knows her name is Maya, like she knows A. J. Fikry is her father, like she knows the best place in the world is Island Books.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Red,” she says. She takes his hand and moves it so it is pointing to the word.