The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry(53)
“Okay, Izzie,” he says.
“The first time Marian Wallace came to see me, I was five months pregnant. She had Maya with her, and the baby was about two. Marian Wallace was very young, very pretty, very tall with tired, golden-brown eyes. She said, ‘Maya is Daniel’s daughter.’ And I said—and I’m not proud of this—‘How do I know you aren’t lying?’ I could see perfectly well that she wasn’t lying. I knew my husband after all. I knew his type. He had cheated on me from the day we were married and probably before that, too. But I loved his books or at least that first one. And I felt like somewhere down deep inside him the person who wrote it must be there. That you couldn’t write such beautiful things and have such an ugly heart. But that is the truth. He was a beautiful writer and a terrible person.
“I can’t blame Daniel for all of this, though. I can’t blame him for my part in it. I screamed at Marian Wallace. She was twenty-two, but she looked like a kid. ‘Do you think you’re the first slut to show up here, claiming to have had Daniel’s baby?’
“She apologized, kept apologizing. She said, ‘The baby doesn’t have to be in Daniel Parish’s life’—she kept calling him by his first and last name. She was a fan, you see. She respected him. ‘The baby doesn’t have to be in Daniel Parish’s life. We won’t bother you ever again, I swear to God. We just need a little money to get started. To move on. He said he would help, and now I can’t find him anywhere.’ This made sense to me. Daniel was always traveling a lot—visiting writer at a school in Switzerland, trips to Los Angeles that never resulted in anything.
“ ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to get in touch with him and see what I can do. If he acknowledges that your story is true—’ But I already knew that it was, Lambiase! ‘If he acknowledges that your story is true, maybe we can do something.’ The girl wanted to know how she could best contact me. I told her I’d be in touch.
“I talked to Daniel that night on the phone. It was a good talk, and I didn’t bring up Marian Wallace. He was solicitous of me, started making plans for our own baby’s arrival. ‘Ismay,’ he said, ‘once the baby’s here, I’m going to be a changed man.’ I had heard that before. ‘No, I’m serious,’ he insisted, ‘I’m definitely going to travel less. I’m going to stay at home, write more, take care of you and the potato.’ He was always a good talker and I wanted to believe that this was the night everything was going to change in my marriage. I decided right then and there that I would take care of the problem with Marian Wallace. I would find a way to buy her off.
“People in this town have always thought my family had more money than we actually did. Nic and I did have small trust funds, but it wasn’t a ton. She used hers to buy the store, and I used mine to buy this house. What was left over from my side, my husband spent quickly. His first book sold well, but the ones after less so, and he always had champagne tastes and an inconsistent income. I’m only a schoolteacher. Daniel and I always looked rich, but we were poor.
“Down the hill, my sister had been dead for over a year, and her husband was steadily drinking himself to death. Out of obligation to her, I would check on A.J. some nights. I’d let myself in, wipe the vomit off his face, and drag him to bed. One night, I go in. A.J. is passed out as usual. And Tamerlane is sitting on the table. I should say here that I was with him the day he found Tamerlane. Not that he ever offered to split the money with me, which probably would have been the decent thing to do. Cheap bastard never would have been at that estate sale if not for me. So I put A.J. to bed, and I go out to the living room to clean up the mess, and I wipe everything down, and the last thing I do, without even really thinking about it, is I slip the book into my bag.
“The next day, everyone is looking for Tamerlane, but I’m out of town. I’ve gone into Cambridge for the day. I go to Marian Wallace’s dorm room, and I throw the book on her bed. I tell her, ‘Look, you can sell this. It’s worth a lot of money.’ And she looks at the book dubiously, and she says, ‘Is it hot?’ And I say, ‘No, it belongs to Daniel, and he wants you to have it, but you can never say where it came from. Bring it to an auction house or a rare-books dealer. Claim you found it in a used-books bin somewhere.’ I don’t hear from Marian Wallace again for a while, and I think maybe that’s the end of it.” Ismay’s voice trails off.
“But it isn’t?” Lambiase asks.
“No. She shows up at the house with Maya and the book just before Christmas. She says she’s gone to every auction house and dealer in the Boston area, and none of them want to deal with the book because it doesn’t have a provenance, and the cops have been calling about a stolen copy of Tamerlane. She takes the book from her bag and hands it to me. I throw it back at her. ‘What am I going to do with this?’ Marian Wallace just shakes her head. The book lands on the floor, and the little girl picks it up and starts flipping through it, but no one’s paying any attention to her. Marian Wallace’s huge amber eyes fill with tears, and she says, ‘Have you read “Tamerlane,” Mrs. Parish? It’s so sad.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s a poem about this Turkish conqueror who trades the love of his life, this poor peasant girl, for power.’ I roll my eyes at her, and I say, ‘Is that what you think is happening here? Do you fancy yourself some poor peasant girl, and I’m the mean wife who is keeping you from the love of your life?’