The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

She looks across the venue at Maya. What a pretty girl she is, and she’s smart, too. Ismay waves to her, but Maya has her head in a book and she doesn’t seem to notice. The little girl has never particularly warmed to Ismay, which everyone thinks is odd. In general, Maya prefers adult company, and Ismay, who has been teaching for twenty years, is good with children. Twenty years. Jesus. Without even noticing it, she has gone from the bright new teacher whose legs all the boys stare at to old Mrs. Parish who does the school play. They think it’s silly how much she cares about these productions. Of course, they are overestimating her investment. How many years can she be expected to go on, one mediocre production blending in with the next? Different faces, but none of these kids ever turns out to be Meryl Streep.

Ismay pulls her wrap tighter around her shoulders and decides to take a walk. She heads down the pier then takes off her kitten heels and walks across the beach, which is empty. It is late September, and the air feels like fall. She tries to remember the name of the book where the woman swims out to sea and kills herself in the end.

It would be so easy, Ismay thinks. You walk out. You swim for a while. You swim too far. You don’t try to swim back. Your lungs fill up. It hurts for a bit, but then it’s over. Nothing ever hurts again, and your conscience is clear. You don’t leave a mess. Maybe your body washes up some day. Maybe it doesn’t. Daniel wouldn’t even look for her. Maybe he would look for her, but he certainly wouldn’t look very hard.

Of course! The book is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. How she had loved that novel (novella?) at seventeen.

Maya’s mother had ended her life in the same fashion, and Ismay wonders, not for the first time, if Marian Wallace had read The Awakening. She has thought a lot about Marian Wallace over the years.

Ismay walks into the water, which is even colder than she thought it would be. I can do this, she thinks. Just keep walking.

I may just do this.

“Ismay!”

Despite herself, Ismay turns. It’s Lambiase, that annoying cop friend of A.J.’s. He is carrying her shoes.

“Cold for a swim?”

“A little,” she replies. “I came out here to clear my head.”

Lambiase walks over to her. “Sure.”

Ismay’s teeth are chattering, and Lambiase takes off his suit coat and puts it over her shoulders. “Must be hard,” Lambiase says. “Seeing A.J. married to someone other than your sister.”

“Yes. Amelia seems lovely, though.” Ismay begins to cry, but the sun has mostly set and she is not sure if Lambiase can see it.

“The thing about weddings,” he says, “is that they can make a person feel lonely as hell.”

“Yes.”

“I hope I’m not out of line here and I know we don’t know each other that well. But, well, your husband’s an idiot. If I had a nice-looking professional woman like you—”

“You are out of line.”

“I’m sorry,” Lambiase says. “I got no manners.”

Ismay nods. “I wouldn’t say you have no manners,” she says. “You did lend me your coat. Thank you for that.”

“Fall comes fast on Alice,” Lambiase says. “We should go back inside.”

DANIEL IS TALKING up Amelia’s maid of honor by the bar under Pequod’s whale, which has been wrapped with Christmas lights for the occasion. Janine, a Hitchcock blond in glasses, came up through the publishing ranks with Amelia. Daniel doesn’t know this, but Janine has been given the task of making sure the great writer doesn’t get out of line.

For the wedding, Janine is wearing a yellow gingham dress that Amelia had picked out and paid for. “I know you’ll never wear this again,” Amelia had said.

“Hard color to pull off,” Daniel says. “But you look great in it. Janine, right?”

She nods.

“Janine the maid of honor. Should I ask you what you do?” Daniel says. “Or is that boring party talk?”

“I’m an editor,” she says.

“Sexy and smart. What are your books?”

“A picture book I edited about Harriet Tubman was a Caldecott Honor Book a couple of years ago.”

“Impressive,” Daniel says, though in fact he is disappointed. He is on the hunt for a new publishing home. His sales aren’t what they once were, and he believes the people at his old publisher aren’t doing enough for him. He’d like to leave them before they leave him. “That’s the top prize, right?”

“It didn’t win. It got an honor.”

“I bet you’re a good editor,” he says.

“Based on what?”

“Well, you wouldn’t let me think your book won when it was only a runner-up.”

Janine looks at her watch.

“Janine looks at her watch,” Daniel says. “She is bored with the old writer.”

Janine smiles. “Strike the second sentence. Reader will know. Show, don’t tell.”

“If you’re going to say things like that, I need a drink.” Daniel signals the bartender. “Vodka. Grey Goose, if you have it. And a little seltzer.” He turns to Janine. “For you?”

“Glass of rosé.”

“ ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a complete crock of shit, Janine the maid of honor,” Daniel lectures her. “It comes from Syd Field’s screenplay books, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with novel writing. Novels are all tell. The best ones at least. Novels aren’t meant to be imitation screenplays.”

“I read your book when I was in junior high,” Janine says.

“Oh, don’t tell me that. It makes me feel ancient.”

“It was my mom’s favorite.”

Daniel pantomimes getting shot through the heart. Ismay taps him on the shoulder. “I’m going home,” she whispers in his ear.

Daniel follows her out to the car. “Ismay, hold up.”

Ismay drives because Daniel is too drunk to drive. They live in the Cliffs, the most expensive part of Alice Island. All the houses have views, and the road that leads to them is uphill, twisty with many blind spots, poorly lit, and lined with yellow signs imploring caution.

“You took that turn a little fast, darling,” Daniel says.

She thinks about driving them both off the road and into the ocean, and the thought makes her happy, happier than she would have been if she’d only killed herself. She realizes in that moment that she doesn’t want to be dead. She wants Daniel to be dead. Or at least gone. Yes, gone. She’d settle for gone.

“I don’t love you anymore.”

“Ismay, you’re being absurd. You always get like this at weddings.”

“You are not a good man,” Ismay says.

“I’m complex. And maybe I’m not good, but I’m certainly not the worst. It’s no reason to end a perfectly average marriage,” Daniel says.

“You’re the grasshopper, and I’m the ant. And I’m tired of being the ant.”

“That’s a rather juvenile reference. I’m sure you can do better.”

Ismay pulls the car over to the side of the road. Her hands are shaking.

“You are bad. And what’s worse is, you’ve made me bad,” she says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A car whizzes by them, close enough to rattle the walls of the SUV. “Ismay, this is an insane place to park. If you want to argue, let’s drive home and do it properly.”

“Every time I see her with A.J. and Amelia, I’m sick. She should be ours.”

“What?”

“Maya,” Ismay says. “If you’d done the right thing, she’d be ours. But you, you can never do anything hard. And I let you be that way.” She looks steadily at Daniel. “I know that Marian Wallace was your girlfriend.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Don’t lie! I know that she came here to kill herself in your front yard. I know that she left Maya for you, but you either were too lazy or too much of a coward to claim her.”

“If you thought that was true, why didn’t you do something?” Daniel asks.

“Because it isn’t my job! I was pregnant, and it wasn’t my responsibility to clean up after your affairs.”

Another car speeds past, nearly sideswiping them.

“But if you’d been brave and come to me, I would have adopted her, Daniel. I would have forgiven you and I would have taken her in. I waited for you to say something, but you never did. I waited for days, then weeks, then years.”

“Ismay, you can believe what you want, but Marian Wallace was not my girlfriend. She was a fan who came to a reading.”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

Daniel shakes his head. “She was a girl who came to a reading, and a girl I slept with once. How could I even be sure the child was mine?” He tries to take Ismay’s hand, but she pulls away.

“It’s funny,” Ismay says. “Every last bit of love I had for you is gone.”

“I still love you,” Daniel says. At that moment, headlights catch the rearview mirror.

The hit comes from behind, knocking the car into the center of the road so that it is crossing both lanes of traffic.