The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

How do you learn to read?

Why do grown-ups like books without pictures?

Will Daddy ever die?

What is for lunch?

LUNCH IS AROUND one and comes from the sandwich shop. She has grilled cheese. A.J. has a turkey club. She likes to go to the sandwich shop, but she always holds A.J.’s hand. She would not want to be left in a sandwich shop.

In the afternoon, she draws reviews. An apple means the book’s smell is approved. A block of cheese means the book is ripe. A self-portrait means she likes the pictures. She signs these reports maya and passes them on to A.J. for his approval.

She likes to write her name.

maya.

She knows her last name is Fikry, but she doesn’t know how to write that yet.

Sometimes, after the customers and the employees have left, she thinks that she and A.J. are the only people in the world. No one else seems as real as he does. Other people are shoes for different seasons, nothing more. A.J. can touch the wallpaper without getting on a chair, can operate the cash register while talking on the phone, can lift heavy boxes of books over his head, uses impossibly long words, knows everything about everything. Who could compare to A. J. Fikry?

She does not think of her mother almost ever.

She knows that her mother is dead. And she knows that dead is when you go to sleep and you do not wake up. She feels very sorry for her mother because people who don’t wake up can’t go downstairs to the bookstore in the morning.

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.

“I am eighty-one years old, and statistically speaking, I should have died 4.7 years ago,” the book begins.

At 5 a.m., A.J. closes the book and gives it a pat.

Maya wakes, feeling better. “Why are you crying?”

“I was reading,” A.J. says.

SHE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE the number, but Amelia Loman picks up on the first ring.

“Amelia, hello. This is A. J. Fikry from Island. I wasn’t expecting you to answer.”

“It’s true,” she says, laughing. “I’m the last person left in the entire world who still answers her phone.”

“Yes,” he says, “you might be.”

“The Catholic church is thinking of making me a saint.”

“Saint Amelia who answered the phone,” A.J. says.

He has never called her before, and she assumes this must be the reason. “Are we still on for two weeks from now, or do you have to cancel?” Amelia asks.

“Oh no, nothing like that. I was just planning to leave you a message, actually.”

Amelia speaks in monotone. “Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail of Amelia Loman. Beep.”

“Um.”

“Beep,” Amelia repeats. “Go ahead. Leave your message.”

“Um, hi, Amelia. This is A. J. Fikry. I’ve just finished reading a book you recommended to me—”

“Oh yeah, which one?”

“That’s odd. Voice mail seems to be talking back to me. It’s one from several years back. The Late Bloomer by Leon Friedman.”

“Don’t go breaking my heart, A.J. That was my absolute favorite from four winter lists ago. No one wanted to read it. I loved that book. I still love that book! I’m the queen of lost causes, though.”

“Maybe it was the jacket,” A.J. says lamely.

“Lamentable jacket. Old people’s feet, flowers,” Amelia agrees. “Like anyone wants to think about wrinkly old feet let alone buy a book with them on it. Paperback re-jacket didn’t help anything either—black and white, more flowers. But jackets are the redheaded stepchildren of book publishing. We blame them for everything.”

“I don’t know if you remember, but you gave The Late Bloomer to me the first time we met,” A.J. says.

Amelia pauses. “Did I? Yes, that makes sense. That would have been around the time I started at Knightley.”

“Well, you know, literary memoirs aren’t really my thing, but this was just spectacular in its small way. Wise and . . .” He feels naked when speaking about things he really loves.