The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“So it’s basically like a book party.”

“Yeah, sure.” Lambiase has never been to a book party.

“I hate book parties,” A.J. says.

“But you run the bookstore,” Lambiase says.

“It’s a problem,” A.J. admits.

MAYA’S NOT-CHRISTENING PARTY is held the week before Halloween. Aside from several of the children in attendance wearing Halloween costumes, the party is indistinguishable from either a christening christening or a book party. A.J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it’s love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. It’s completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.

No, the most annoying thing about it is that he’s even started to like Elmo. There are Elmo paper plates on the folding table with the coconut shrimp, and A.J. had blithely gone to multiple stores to procure them. Across the room in Best Sellers, Lambiase is giving a speech that consists of clichés, albeit heartfelt and applicable ones: how A.J. has turned lemons into lemonade, how Maya is a silver-lined cloud, how God’s closed door / open window policy really does apply here, and so forth. He smiles at A.J., and A.J. raises his glass and smiles back. And then, despite the fact that A.J. does not believe in God, he closes his eyes and thanks whomever, the higher power, with all his porcupine heart.

Ismay, A.J.’s choice for godmother, grabs his hand. “Sorry to abandon you, but I’m not feeling well,” she says.

“Was it Lambiase’s speech?” A.J. says.

“I might be getting a cold. I’m going home.”

A.J. nods. “Call me later, okay?”

It is Daniel who calls later. “Ismay’s in the hospital,” he says flatly. “Another miscarriage.”

That makes two in the last year, five total. “How is she?” A.J. asks.

“She’s lost some blood and she’s tired. She’s a sturdy old mare, though.”

“She is.”

“It’s a bad business all-around, but unfortunately,” Daniel says, “I’ve got to catch an early flight to Los Angeles. The movie people are buzzing.” The movie people are always buzzing in Daniel’s stories, though none of them ever seem to sting. “Would you mind going to check on her at the hospital, make sure she gets home all right?”

Lambiase drives A.J. and Maya to the hospital. A.J. leaves Maya in the waiting room with Lambiase and goes in to see Ismay.

Her eyes are red; her skin, pale. “I’m sorry,” she says when she sees A.J.

“For what, Ismay?”

“I deserve this,” she says.

“You don’t,” A.J. says. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Daniel’s an asshole for making you come out,” Ismay says.

“I was glad to,” A.J. says.

“He cheats on me. Do you know that? He cheats on me all the time.”

A.J. doesn’t say anything, but he does know. Daniel’s philandering is not a secret.

“Of course you know,” Ismay says in a husky voice. “Everyone knows.”

A.J. says nothing.

“You do know, but you won’t talk about it. Some misguided male code, I suppose.”

A.J. looks at her. Her shoulders are bony under the hospital gown, but her abdomen is still slightly round.

“I look a mess,” she says. “That’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, I was noticing that you’re growing out your hair. It’s nice that way.”

“You’re sweet,” she says. At that moment, Ismay sits up and tries to kiss A.J. on the mouth.

A.J. leans away from her. “The doctor says you can go home right now if you’d like.”

“I thought my sister was an idiot when she married you, but now I see you’re not that bad. The way you are with Maya. The way you are now, showing up. Showing up is what counts, A.J.

“I think I’d rather stay here tonight,” she says, flipping away from A.J. “There’s no one at my house, and I don’t want to be that alone. What I said before is true. Nic was the good girl. I’m bad. I married a bad man, too. And I know that bad people deserve what they get, but oh, how we hate to be alone.”

What Feels Like the World

1985 / Richard Bausch

Chubby girl lives with grandfather; trains for elementary school gymnastics exhibition.

You will be amazed by how much you care whether that little girl makes it over the vault. Bausch is able to wring exquisite tension from such a seemingly slight episode (though obviously this is the point), and this should be your takeaway: a vaulting exhibition can have every bit as much drama as a plane crash.

I did not encounter this story until after I became a father so I cannot say if I would have liked it as well P.M. (pre-Maya). I have gone through phases in my life when I am more in the mood for short stories. One of those phases coincided with your toddlerhood—what time had I for novels, my girl?

—A.J.F.

Maya usually wakes before the sun comes up, when the only sound is A.J. snoring in the other room. In footed pajamas, she pads across the main room to A.J.’s bedroom. At first, she whispers, “Daddy, Daddy.” If that doesn’t work, she says his name and if that still doesn’t work, she yells it. And if words are not enough, she jumps on the bed, though she would rather not resort to such shenanigans. Today he wakes when she has only reached talking level. “Awake,” she says. “Downstairs.”

The place Maya loves most is downstairs because downstairs is the store, and the store is the best place in the world.

“Pants,” A.J. mumbles. “Coffee.” His breath smells like socks wet from snow.

There are sixteen stairs until you get to the bookstore. Maya slides her bottom down each one because her legs are too short to manage the flight with confidence. She toddles across the store, past the books that don’t have pictures in them, past the greeting cards. She runs her hand across the magazines, gives the rotating stand with the bookmarks a spin. Good morning, magazines! Good morning, bookmarks! Good morning, books! Good morning, store!

The walls of the bookstore have wood panels up to just above her head, but beyond that is blue wallpaper. Maya can’t reach the paper unless she has a chair. The wallpaper has a bumpy, swirling pattern, and it is pleasing to rub her face against it. She will read the word damask in a book one day and think, Yes, of course that’s what it’s called. In contrast, the word wainscoting will come as a huge disappointment.

The store is fifteen Mayas wide and twenty Mayas long. She knows this because she once spent an afternoon measuring it by lying her body across the room. It is fortunate that it is not more than thirty Mayas long because that is as far as she could count on the day the measurements were taken.

From her vantage point on the floor, people are shoes. In the summer, sandals. In the winter, boots. Molly Klock sometimes wears red superhero boots up to her knees. A.J. is black sneakers with white toes. Lambiase wears finger-crushing Bigfoot shoes. Ismay wears flats that look like insects or jewels. Daniel Parish wears brown loafers with a penny in them.

Just before the store opens at 10 a.m., she goes to her station, which is the row with all the picture books.

The first way Maya approaches a book is to smell it. She strips the book of its jacket, then holds it up to her face and wraps the boards around her ears. Books typically smell like Daddy’s soap, grass, the sea, the kitchen table, and cheese.

She studies the pictures and tries to tease story out of them. It is tiring work, but even at three years old, she recognizes some of the tropes. For instance, animals are not always animals in picture books. They sometimes represent parents and children. A bear wearing a tie might be a father. A bear with a blond wig might be a mother. You can tell a lot about a story from the pictures, but the pictures sometimes give you the wrong idea. She would prefer to know the words.

Assuming no interruptions, she can make it through seven books in a morning. However, there are always interruptions. Maya mainly likes customers, though, and tries to be polite to them. She understands the business she and A.J. are in. When children come into her row, she always makes sure to stick a book into their hands. The children wander up to the cash register, and more often than not the accompanying guardian will buy what the child is holding. “Oh my, did you pick that yourself?” the parent will ask.

Once, someone had asked A.J. if Maya was his. “You’re both black but not the same kind of black.” Maya remembers this because the remark had made A.J. use a tone of voice she had never heard him use with a customer.

“What is the same kind of black?” A.J. had asked.

“No, I didn’t mean to offend you,” the person had said and then the flip flops had backed their way to the door, leaving without making a purchase.

What is “the same kind of black”? She looks at her hands and wonders.

Here are some other things she wonders about.