The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Page 33“You knew me four years before you asked me out.”
“True.”
“You were so mean to me the day we met.”
“Also true.”
“I’m so screwed up. How will I ever find someone else?”
“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.
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.
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.
Not of dying, he thinks, but a little of this part I’m in. Every day, there is less of me. Today I am thoughts without words. Tomorrow I will be a body without thoughts. And so it goes. But Maya, you are here right now and so I am glad to be here. Even without books and words. Even without my mind. How the hell do you say this? How do you even begin?
Maya is staring at him and now she is crying, too.
“Maya,” he says. “There is only one word that matters.” He looks at her to see if he has been understood. Her brow is furrowed. He can tell that he hasn’t made himself clear. Fuck. Most of what he says is gibberish these days. If he wants to be understood, it is best to limit himself to one word replies. But some things take longer than one word to explain.
He will try again. He will never stop trying. “Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.”
Maya is shaking her head. “Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”
She is still shaking her head. “I can’t understand you, Dad. I wish I could. Do you want me to get Amy? Or maybe you could try to type it?”
He is sweating. Conversing isn’t fun anymore. It used to be so easy. All right, he thinks. If it’s gotta be one word, it’s gotta be one word.
“Love?” he asks. He prays it has come out right.
She furrows her brow and tries to read his face. “Gloves?” she asks. “Are your hands cold, Dad?”
He nods, and she takes his hands in hers. His hands had been cold, and now they are warm, and he decides that he’s gotten close enough for today. Tomorrow, maybe, he will find the words.
AT THE BOOKSELLER’S funeral, the question on everyone’s mind is what will become of Island Books. People are attached to their bookstores, more attached than A. J. Fikry ever would have ever guessed. It matters who placed A Wrinkle in Time in your twelve-year-old daughter’s nail-bitten fingers or who sold you that Let’s Go travel guide to Hawaii or who insisted that your aunt with the very particular tastes would surely adore Cloud Atlas. Furthermore, they like Island Books. And even though they aren’t always perfectly faithful, even though they buy e-books sometimes and shop online, they like what it says about their town that Island Books is right in the center of the main strip, that it’s the second or third place you come to after you get off the ferry.
At the funeral, they approach Maya and Amelia, respectfully, of course, and whisper, “A.J. can’t ever be replaced but will you find someone else to run the store?”
Amelia doesn’t know what to do. She loves Alice. She loves Island Books. She has no experience running a bookstore. She has always worked on the publisher side of things and she needs her steady paycheck and health insurance even more now that she is responsible for Maya. She considers leaving the store open and letting someone else run it during the week, but the plan isn’t tenable. The commute is too great, and what it really makes sense to do is move off the island altogether. After a week of heartsickness and bad sleep and intellectual pacing, she makes the decision to close the store. The store—the building the store is housed in and the land it sits on, at least—is worth a lot of money. (Nic and A.J. had bought it outright all those years ago.) Amelia loves Island Books, but she can’t make it work. For a month or so, she makes attempts at selling the store, but no buyers come forward. She puts the building on the market. Island Books will close at the end of the summer.
“End of an era,” Lambiase says to Ismay over eggs at the local diner. He’s brokenhearted over the news, but he’s planning to leave Alice soon anyway. He will have twenty-five years on the police force next spring, and he’s got a fair amount of money saved up. He imagines himself buying a boat and living in the Florida Keys, like a retired cop character in an Elmore Leonard novel. He’s been trying to convince Ismay to come with him, and he thinks he’s starting to wear her down. Lately she’s been finding fewer and fewer reasons to object, although she is one of those odd New England creatures who actually like the winter.