The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry(20)

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.





A Good Man Is Hard to Find


1953 / Flannery O’Connor Family trip goes awry. It’s Amy’s favorite. (She seems so sweet on the surface, no?) Amy and I do not always have the exact same taste in things, but this I like.

When she told me it was her favorite, it suggested to me strange and wonderful things about her character that I had not guessed, dark places that I might like to visit.

People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?

—A.J.F.





The second week of August, just before Maya starts kindergarten, she gets a matching set of glasses (round, red frames) and chicken pox (round, red bumps). A.J. curses the mother who had told him that the chicken pox vaccine was optional as the chicken pox is indeed a pox on their house. Maya is miserable, and A.J. is miserable because Maya is miserable. The marks plague her face, and the air conditioner breaks, and no one in their house can sleep. A.J. brings her icy washcloths, removes skin from tangerine slices, puts socks on her hands, and stands guard at her bedside.

Day three, four in the morning, Maya falls asleep. A.J. is exhausted but restless. He had asked one of the clerks to grab a couple of galleys from the basement for him. Unfortunately, the clerk is new, and she had picked books from the to be recycled pile, not the to be read pile. A.J. doesn’t want to leave Maya’s side so he decides to read one of the old, rejected galleys. The top one in the pile is a young-adult fantasy novel in which the main character is dead. Ugh, A.J. thinks. Two of his least favorite things (postmortem narrators and young-adult novels) in one book. He tosses the paper carcass aside. The second one in the pile is a memoir written by an eighty-year-old man, a lifelong bachelor and onetime science writer for various midwestern newspapers, who married at the age of seventy-eight. His bride died two years after the wedding at the age of eighty-three. The Late Bloomer by Leon Friedman. The book is familiar to A.J., but he’s not sure why. He opens the galley and a business card falls out: amelia loman, knightley press. Yes, he remembers now.

Of course, he has encountered Amelia Loman in the years since that awkward first meeting. They have had a handful of cordial e-mails, and she comes trianually to report on Knightley’s hottest prospects. After spending ten or so afternoons with her, he’s recently come to the conclusion that she is good at her job. She is informed about her list and greater literary trends. She is upbeat but not an overseller. She is sweet with Maya, too—always remembers to bring the girl a book from one of Knightley’s children’s lines. Above all, Amelia Loman is professional, which means she has never brought up A.J.’s poor conduct the day they met. God, he’d been awful to her. As penance, he decides to give The Late Bloomer a chance, though it is still not his type of thing.