The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry(45)

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.

The Tell-Tale Heart

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.