The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry(15)

“Love me? You don’t even know me,” A.J. says. “Little girl, you shouldn’t go throwing around your love so easily.” He pulls her to him. “We’ve had a good run. This has been a delightful and, for me, at least, memorable seventy-two hours, but some people aren’t meant to be in your life forever.”

She looks at him with her big blue skeptical eyes. “Love you,” she repeats.

A.J. towels her hair then gives her head an appraising sniff. “I worry for you. If you love everyone, you’ll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you’ve known me a rather long time. Your perspective of time is really very warped, Maya. But I am old and soon, you’ll forget you even knew me.”

Molly Klock knocks on the door to the apartment. “The woman from the state is downstairs. Is it okay for me to send her up?”

A.J. nods.

He pulls Maya into his lap, and they wait, listening as the social worker ascends the creaky stairs. “Now don’t be afraid, Maya. This lady’s going to find a perfectly good home for you. Better than here. You can’t spend the rest of your life sleeping on a futon, you know. The kind of people who spend their lives as permanent guests on a futon are not the kind of people you want to know.”

The social worker’s name is Jenny. A.J. cannot recall ever having met an adult woman named Jenny. If Jenny were a book, she would be a paperback just out of the box—no dog ears, no waterlogging, no creases in her spine. A.J. would prefer a social worker with some obvious wear. He imagines the synopsis on the back of the Jenny story: when plucky Jenny from Fairfield, Connecticut, took a job as a social worker in the big city, she had no idea what she was getting into.

“Is it your first day?” A.J. asks.

“No,” Jenny says, “I’ve been doing this a little while.” Jenny smiles at Maya. “What a beauty you are.”

Maya buries her face in A.J.’s hoodie.

“You two seem very bonded.” Jenny makes a note in her pad. “So it’s like this. From here, I’ll take Maya back to Boston. As her caseworker, I’ll fill out some paperwork for her—she obviously can’t do that herself, ha ha. She’ll be assessed by a medical doctor and a psychologist.”

“She seems pretty healthy and well adjusted to me,” A.J. says.

“It’s good that you’ve observed that. The doctors will be on the lookout for developmental delays, illnesses, and other things that might not be obvious to the untrained eye. After that, Maya will be placed with one of our many preapproved foster families, and—”

A.J. interrupts. “How does a foster family get preapproved? Is it as easy as, say, getting a department store credit card?”

“Ha ha. No, of course, there are more steps to it than that. Applications, home visits—”

A.J. interrupts again. “What I mean to say, Jenny, is how do you make sure you aren’t placing an innocent child with a complete psychopath?”

“Well, Mr. Fikry, we certainly don’t start from the point of view that everyone who wants to foster a child is a psychopath, but we do extensively vet all our foster families.”

“I worry because . . . well, Maya’s very bright, but she’s also very trusting,” A.J. says.

“Bright but trusting. Good insight. I’ll write that down.” Jenny does. “So after I place her in an emergency, nonpsychopathic”—she smiles at A.J.—“foster family, I go to work again. I try to see if anyone in her extended family wants to claim her and if that’s a no, I start trying to find a permanent situation for Maya.”

“You mean adoption.”

“Yes, exactly. Very good, Mr. Fikry.” Jenny doesn’t have to explain all this, but she likes to make Good Samaritans like A.J. feel like their time has been valued. “By the way, I really have to thank you,” she says. “We need more people like you who are willing to take an interest.” She holds out her arms to Maya. “Ready, sweetie?”

A.J. pulls Maya closer to him. He takes a deep breath. Is he really going to do this? Yes, I am. Dear God. “You say that Maya will be placed in a temporary foster home? Couldn’t I just as well be that home?”

The social worker purses her lips. “All our foster families have gone through an application process, Mr. Fikry.”

“The thing is . . . I know it’s not orthodox, but the mother left me this note.” He hands the note to Jenny. “She wanted me to have this child, you see. It was her last wish. I think it’s only right that I should keep her. I don’t want her moved into some foster home when she has a perfectly good home right here. I Googled the matter last night.”

“Google,” says Maya.

“She’s taken a fancy to that word, I don’t know why.”

“What ‘matter’?” Jenny asks.

“I’m not obligated to turn her over when it’s the mother’s wish that I should have her,” A.J. explains.

“Daddy,” says Maya as if on cue.

Jenny looks from A.J.’s eyes to Maya’s. Both sets are annoyingly determined. She sighs. She had thought the afternoon would be simple, but now it’s starting to get complex.

Jenny sighs again. It is not her first day, though she only finished her master’s in social work eighteen months ago. She is either bright-eyed or inexperienced enough to want to help them. Still, he’s a single man, who lives above a store. The paperwork is going to be ridiculous, she thinks. “Help me out here, Mr. Fikry. Tell me you have a background in education or child development or some such.”