The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry(56)

“You seem remarkably unconcerned about my brain.”

“Your brain’s toast. We both know that. But what about me?”

“Poor Amy.”

“Yes, before I was a bookseller’s wife. That was pitiable enough. Soon I’ll be the bookseller’s widow.”

She kisses him on every place of his malfunctioning head. “I liked this brain. I like this brain! It is a very good brain.”

“Me too,” he says.

The attendant comes to wheel him away. “I love you,” she says with a resigned shrug. “I want to leave you with something cleverer than that, but it’s all I know.”

WHEN HE WAKES, he finds the words are more or less there. It takes a while to find some of them, but they are there.

Blood.

Painkiller.

Vomit.

Bucket.

Hemorrhoids.

Diarrhea.

Water.

Blisters.

Diaper.

Ice.

After surgery, he is brought to an isolated wing of the hospital for a monthlong course of radiation. His immune system is so compromised from the radiation that he isn’t allowed any visitors. It is the loneliest he has ever been and that includes the period after Nic’s death. He wishes he could get drunk, but his irradiated stomach couldn’t take it. This is what life had been like before Maya and before Amelia. A man is not his own island. Or at least a man is not optimally his own island.

When he isn’t throwing up or restlessly half sleeping, he digs out the e-reader his mother had given him last Christmas. (The nurses deem the e-reader to be more sanitary than a paper book. “They should put that on the box,” A.J. quips.) He finds that he can’t stay awake to read an entire novel. Short stories are better. He has always preferred short stories anyway. As he is reading, he finds that he wants to make a new list of short stories for Maya. She is going to be a writer, he knows. He is not a writer, but he has thoughts about the profession, and he wants to tell her those things. Maya, novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. Master the short story and you’ll have mastered the world, he thinks just before he drifts off to sleep. I should write this down, he thinks. He reaches for a pen, but there isn’t one anywhere near the toilet bowl he is resting against.

At the end of the radiation treatment, the oncologist finds that his tumor has neither shrunk nor grown. He gives A.J. a year. “Your speech and everything else will likely deteriorate,” he says in a voice that strikes A.J. as incongruously chipper. No matter, A.J. is glad to be going home.

The Bookseller

1986 / Roald Dahl

Bonbon about a bookseller with an unusual way of extorting money from customers. In terms of characters, it is Dahl’s usual collection of opportunistic grotesques. In terms of plot, the twist is a latecomer and not enough to redeem the story’s flaws. “The Bookseller” really shouldn’t be on this list—it is not an exceptional Dahl offering in any way. Certainly no “Lamb to the Slaughter”—and yet here it is. How to account for its presence when I know it is only average? The answer is this: Your dad relates to the characters. It has meaning to me. And the longer I do this (bookselling, yes, of course, but also living if that isn’t too awfully sentimental), the more I believe that this is what the point of it all is. To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect.

—A.J.F.

It is so simple, he thinks. Maya, he wants to say, I have figured it all out.

But his brain won’t let him.

The words you can’t find, you borrow.

We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.

We are not quite novels.

The analogy he is looking for is almost there.

We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.

In the end, we are collected works.

He has read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some hits. Some misses. If you’re lucky, a standout. And in the end, people only really remember the standouts anyway, and they don’t remember those for very long.

No, not very long.

“Dad,” Maya says.

He tries to figure out what she is saying. The lips and the sounds. What can they mean?

Thankfully, she repeats, “Dad.”

Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became. The father of Maya. Maya’s dad. Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! He is crying. His heart is too full, and no words to release it. I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less.

“No, Dad. Please don’t. It’s okay.”

She puts her arms around him.

Reading has become difficult. If he tries very hard, he can still make it through a short story. Novels have become impossible. He can write more easily than he can speak. Not that writing is easy. He writes a paragraph a day. A paragraph for Maya. It isn’t much, but it’s what he has left to give.

He wants to tell her something very important.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

No, he thinks. The brain has no pain sensors and so it can’t hurt. The loss of his mind has turned out to be a curiously pain-free process. He feels that it ought to hurt more.