The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry(12)

“Ha,” says A.J.

BY THE TIME they arrive at the apartment, Maya is full-on crying, a sound somewhere between a New Year’s Eve party horn and a fire alarm. A.J. deduces that she is hungry, but he has no clue what to feed a twenty-five-month-old. He pulls up her lip to see if she has teeth. She does and she uses them to try to bite him. He Googles the question: “What do I feed a twenty-five-month-old?” and the answer that comes back is that most of them should be able to eat what their parents eat. What Google does not know is that most of what A.J. eats is disgusting. His fridge contains a variety of frozen foods, many of them spicy. He calls his sister-in-law Ismay for help.

“Sorry to bother you,” he says. “But I was wondering what I should feed a twenty-five-month-old child?”

“Why were you wondering that?” Ismay asks in a tight voice.

He explains about someone having left the baby in the store, and after a pause Ismay says that she will be right over.

“Are you sure?” A.J. asks. Ismay is six months pregnant, and he doesn’t want to disturb her.

“I’m sure. I’m glad you called. The Great American Novelist is out of town, and I’ve had insomnia these last couple of weeks anyway.”

Less than a half hour later, Ismay arrives with a bag of groceries from her kitchen: the makings of a salad, a tofu lasagna, and half an apple crumble. “The best I could do on short notice,” she says.

“No, it’s perfect,” A.J. says. “My kitchen is a fiasco.”

“Your kitchen is a crime scene,” she says.

When the baby sees Ismay, she bawls. “She must miss her mother,” Ismay says. “Maybe I remind her of her mother?” A.J. nods, though he thinks the real cause is that his sister-in-law frightens the baby. Ismay has stylishly cut, spiky red hair, pale skin and eyes, long, spindly limbs. All her features are a little too large, her gestures a little too animated. Pregnant, she is like a very pretty Gollum. Even her voice might be off-putting to a baby. It is precise, theater-trained, always pitched to fill the room. In the fifteen or so years he has known her, A.J. thinks Ismay has aged like an actress should: from Juliet to Ophelia to Gertrude to Hecate.

Ismay warms up the food. “Would you like me to feed her?” Ismay asks.

Maya eyes Ismay suspiciously. “No, I’ll give it a go,” A.J. says. He turns to Maya. “Do you use utensils?”

Maya does not reply.

“You don’t have a baby chair. You’ll need to improvise a structure so she won’t topple over,” Ismay says.

He sets Maya on the floor. He builds three walls out of a pile of galleys then lines the galley fort with bed pillows.

His first spoonful of lasagna goes in without any struggle. “Easy,” he says.

The second spoonful, Maya turns her head at the last moment, sending sauce everywhere—on A.J., on the bed pillows, down the side of the galley fort. Maya turns back to him with a huge smile on her face, as if she has made the most fantastically clever joke.

“I hope you weren’t planning to read those,” Ismay says.

After dinner, they put the baby to bed on the futon in the second bedroom.

“Why didn’t you just leave the baby at the police station?” Ismay asks.

“Didn’t seem right,” A.J. says.

“You’re not thinking of keeping it, are you?” Ismay rubs her own belly.

“Of course not. I’m only watching it until Monday.”

“I suppose the mother could turn up by then, change her mind,” Ismay says.

A.J. hands Ismay the note to read.

“Poor thing,” Ismay says.

“I agree, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t abandon a child of mine in a bookstore.”

Ismay shrugs. “The girl probably had her reasons.”

“How do you know that it’s a girl?” A.J. asks. “It could be a middle-aged woman at the end of her rope.”

“The voice of the letter sounds young to me, I guess. Maybe the handwriting, too.” Ismay says. She runs her fingers through her short hair. “How are you holding up otherwise?”

“I’m okay,” A.J. says. He realizes that he hasn’t thought about Tamerlane or Nic for hours.

Ismay washes the dishes even though A.J. tells her to leave it. “I’m not going to keep her,” A.J. repeats. “I live alone. I don’t have much money saved, and business isn’t exactly booming.”

“Of course not,” Ismay says. “It wouldn’t make sense with your lifestyle.” She dries the dishes then puts them away. “It wouldn’t hurt you to start eating the occasional fresh vegetable, however.”

Ismay kisses him on the cheek. A.J. thinks that she is so like Nic but so unlike her. Sometimes the like parts (the face, the figure) seem hardest for him to bear; sometimes the unlike parts (the brain, the heart) do. “Let me know if you need more help,” Ismay says.

Although Nic had been the younger sister, she had always worried about Ismay. From Nic’s point of view, her older sister had been a primer on how not to live her life. Ismay had chosen a college because she had liked the pictures in the brochure, had married a man because he looked splendid in a tuxedo, and had started teaching because she’d seen a movie about an inspirational teacher. “Poor Ismay,” Nic had said. “She always ends up so disappointed.”