The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel (19 page)

Ismay shakes her head. “It has, hasn’t it?”

“The way I see it,” Lambiase says, “you saved A. J. Fikry’s life when you stole that manuscript. That’s the way I see it.”

“What kind of cop are you?” Ismay asks.

“The old kind,” he says.

THE NEXT NIGHT,
like every third Wednesday of every month for the last ten years, is Chief’s Choice at Island Books. At first, the police officers felt obligated to join, but the group has grown in genuine popularity over the years. Now it’s the largest book meetup that Island has. Police officers still make up the bulk of the membership, but their wives and even some of their children, when they get old enough, attend. Years ago, Lambiase had had to institute a “leave your weapons” policy after a young cop had pulled a gun on another cop during a particularly heated discussion of
The House of Sand and Fog
. (Lambiase would later reflect to A.J. that the selection had been a mistake. “Had an interesting cop character but too much moral ambiguity in that one. I’m going to stick to easier genre stuff from now on.”) Other than this incident, the group has been free of violence. Aside from the content of the books, of course.

As is his tradition, Lambiase arrives at the store early to set up for Chief’s Choice and talk to A.J. “I saw this resting on the door,” Lambiase says when he comes inside. He hands a padded manila envelope with A.J.’s name on it to his friend.

“Probably another galley,” A.J. says.

“Don’t say that,” Lambiase jokes. “Could be the next big thing in there.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s probably the Great American Novel. I’ll add it to my stack: Things to Read before My Brain Stops Working.”

A.J. sets the package on the countertop, and Lambiase watches it. “You never know,” Lambiase says.

“I’m like a girl who has been on the dating scene too long. I’ve had too many disappointments, too many promises of ‘the one,’ and they never are. As a cop, don’t you get that way?”

“What way?”

“Cynical, I guess,” A.J. says. “Don’t you ever get to the point where you expect the worst from people all the time?”

Lambiase shakes his head. “No. I see good people just as much as I see bad ones.”

“Yeah, name me some.”

“People like you, my friend.” Lambiase clears his throat, and A.J. can think of no reply. “What’s good in crime that I haven’t read? I need some new picks for Chief’s Choice.”

A.J. walks over to the crime section. He looks across the spines, which are, for the most part, black and red with all capitalized fonts in silvers and whites. An occasional burst of fluorescence breaks up the monotony. A.J. thinks how similar everything in the crime genre looks. Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.

He selects one and holds it out to his friend. “Maybe this?”

Lot 2200. A last-minute addition to the afternoon’s auction and a rare opportunity for the vintage books connoisseur.
Tamerlane and Other Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe. Written when Poe was eighteen and attributed to ‘A Bostonian.’ Only fifty printed at the time.
Tamerlane
will be the crown jewel in any serious rare-books collection. This copy shows some wear at the spine and is marked in crayon on the cover. The damage should not in any way spoil the beauty or diminish the rarity of this object, which cannot be overstated. Let the bidding begin at twenty thousand dollars.”

The book sells for seventy-two thousand dollars, modestly exceeding the reserve. After fees and taxes, this is enough money to cover A.J.’s copay on the surgery and the first round of radiation.

Even after he receives the check from Christie’s, A.J. has doubts about whether to go through with treatment. He still suspects that the money would be better spent on Maya’s college education. “No,” Maya says. “I’m smart. I’ll get a scholarship. I’ll write the world’s saddest admissions essay about how I was an orphan abandoned in a bookstore by my single mother and how my adopted dad got the rarest form of brain cancer, but look at me now. An upstanding member of society. People will eat it up, Dad.”

“That is awfully crass of you, my little nerd.” A.J. laughs at the monster he has created.

“I have money, too,” the wife insists. Bottom line is, the women in A.J.’s life want him to live, and so he books the surgery.

“SITTING HERE, I
find myself thinking that
The Late Bloomer
really was a bunch of hokum,” Amelia says bitterly. She stands up and walks over to the window. “Do you want the blinds raised or lowered? Raised, we get a spot of natural light and the lovely view of the children’s hospital across the way. Lowered, you can enjoy my deathly pallor under the fluorescent lights. It’s up to you.”

“Raised,” A.J. says. “I want to remember you at your best.”

“Do you remember when Friedman writes how you can’t truly describe a hospital room? How a hospital room when the one you love is in it is too painful to be described or some such crap? How did we ever think that was poetic? I’m disgusted with us. At this stage in my life, I’m with all the people that never wanted to read that book in the first place. I’m with the cover designer who put the flowers and the feet on the front. Because you know what? You totally can describe a hospital room. It’s gray. The art is the worst art you’ve ever seen. Like stuff that got rejected by the Holiday Inn. Everything smells like someone is trying to cover up the smell of piss.”

“You loved
The Late Bloomer
, Amy.”

She has still never told him about Leon Friedman. “But I didn’t want to be in some stupid play version of it when I was in my forties.”

“Do you think I should really have this surgery?”

Amelia rolls her eyes. “Yes, I do. Number one, it’s happening in twenty minutes, so we probably couldn’t get our money back anyway. And number two, you’ve had your head shaved, and you look like a terrorist. I don’t see what the point is in turning back now,” Amelia says.

“Is it really worth the money for two more years that are likely to be crappy?” he asks Amelia.

“It is,” she says, taking his hand.

“I remember a woman who told me about the importance of shared sensibility. I remember a woman who said she broke up with a bona fide American Hero because they didn’t have good conversation. That could happen to us, you know,” A.J. says.

“That is an entirely different situation,” Amelia insists. A second later, she yells, “FUCK!” A.J. thinks something must be seriously wrong because Amelia never curses.

“What is it?”

“Well, the thing is, I rather like your brain.”

He laughs at her, and she weeps a little.

“Oh, enough with the tears. I don’t want your pity.”

“I’m not crying for you. I’m crying for me. Do you know how long it took me to find you? Do you know how many awful dates I’ve been on? I can’t”—she is breathless now—“I can’t join Match.com again. I just can’t.”

“Big Bird—always looking ahead.”

“Big Bird. What the . . . ? You can’t introduce a nickname at this point in our relationship!”

“You’ll meet someone. I did.”

“Fuck you. I like you. I’m used to you. You are the one, you asshole. I can’t meet someone new.”

He kisses her and then she reaches under his hospital gown between his legs and squeezes. “I love having sex with you,” she says. “If you’re a vegetable when this is done, can I still have sex with you?” she asks.

“Sure,” A.J. says.

“And you won’t think less of me?”

“No.” He pauses. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the turn this conversation has taken,” he says.

“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.

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.

I
t 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.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

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.

“I hoped they’d find someone else to run the store. But the truth is, Island Books wouldn’t be the same without A.J., Maya, and Amelia anyway,” Lambiase says. “Wouldn’t have the same heart.”

“True,” Ismay says. “It’s gross, though. They’ll probably turn it into a Forever 21.”

“What’s a Forever 21?”

Ismay laughs at him. “How do you not know this? Wasn’t it ever referenced in one of those YA novels you’re always reading?”

“Young-adult fiction isn’t like that.”

“It’s a chain clothing store. Actually, we should be so lucky. They’ll probably turn it into a bank.” She sips at her coffee. “Or a drugstore.”

“Maybe a Jamba Juice?” Lambiase says. “I love Jamba Juice.”

Ismay starts to cry.

The waitress stops by the table, and Lambiase indicates that she should clear the plates. “I know how you feel,” Lambiase says. “I don’t like it either, Izzie. You know something funny about me? I never read much before I met A.J. and started going to Island. As a kid, the teachers thought I was a slow reader, so I never got the knack for it.”

“You tell a kid he doesn’t like to read, and he’ll believe you,” Ismay says.

“Mainly got C’s in English, too. Once A.J. adopted Maya, I wanted to have an excuse to go into the store to check on them, so I kept reading whatever he’d give me. And then I started to like it.”

Ismay cries harder.

“Turns out I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I’ve seen movie people on vacation and I’ve seen music people and newspeople, too. There ain’t nobody in the world like book people. It’s a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ismay says.

“I don’t know, Izzie. I’m telling you. Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.”

Ismay kisses him. “You’re the funniest sort of cop I ever met.”

“I worry about what Alice is going to be like if there isn’t a bookstore here,” Lambiase says as he finishes his coffee.

“Me too.”

Lambiase leans across the table and kisses her on the cheek. “Hey, here’s a crazy thought. What if, instead of going to Florida, you and me took over the place?”

“In this economy, that
is
a crazy thought,” Ismay says.

“Yeah,” he says. “Probably so.” The waitress asks if they want dessert. Ismay says she doesn’t want anything, but Lambiase knows she’ll always share a little of his. He orders a slice of cherry pie, two forks.

“But, you know, what if we did?” Lambiase continues. “I’ve got savings and a pretty good pension about to come in, and so do you. And A.J. said the summer people always bought a lot of books.”

“The summer people have e-readers now,” Ismay counters.

“True,” Lambiase says. He decides to let the subject drop.

They are halfway through their pie when Ismay says, “We could open a cafe, too. That would probably help with the bottom line.”

“Yeah, A.J. used to talk about that sometimes.”

“And,” Ismay says, “we turn the basement into a theater space. That way, the author events don’t have to be right in the middle of the store. Maybe people could even rent it as a theater or meeting space sometimes, too.”

“Your theater background would be great for that,” Lambiase says.

“Are you sure you’re up to this? We aren’t super young,” Ismay says. “What about no winters? What about Florida?”

“We’ll go there when we’re old. We’re not old yet,” Lambiase says after a pause. “I’ve lived in Alice my whole life. It’s the only place I’ve ever known. It’s a nice place, and I intend to keep it that way. A place ain’t a place without a bookstore, Izzie.”

A FEW YEARS
after she sells the store to Ismay and Lambiase, Amelia decides to leave Knightley Press. Maya is graduating from high school soon, and Amelia is tired of traveling so much. She finds a position as a book buyer for a large general retailer out of Maine. Before she leaves, as her predecessor Harvey Rhodes had done, Amelia writes up notes on all her active accounts. She saves Island Books for last.

“Island Books,” she reports. “Owners: Ismay Parish (ex – school teacher) and Nicholas Lambiase (ex – police chief). Lambiase is an exceptional hand seller, especially of literary crime fiction and young adult novels. Parish, who used to run the high school drama club, can be counted on to throw an A+ author event. The store has a cafe, a stage, and an excellent online presence. All this was built on the solid foundation established by A. J. Fikry, the original owner whose tastes ran more toward the literary. The store still carries a ton of literary fiction, but the owners won’t take what they can’t sell. I love Island Books with all my heart. I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time. —Amelia Loman”

Amelia feels a bit embarrassed about those last several sentences and cuts everything after “the owners won’t take what they can’t sell.”

“
. . .
THE OWNERS
WON’T
take what they can’t sell.” Jacob Gardner reads his predecessor’s notes one last time, then clicks off his phone and disembarks the ferry with long, purposeful strides. Jacob, twenty-seven years old and armed with a half-paid-off master’s degree in nonfiction writing, is ready. He can’t believe his luck in landing this job. Sure, the pay could be better, but he loves books, has always loved books. He believes that they saved his life. He even has that famous C. S. Lewis quote tattooed on his wrist. Imagine getting to be one of those people who actually gets paid to talk about literature. He’d do this for free, not that he wants his publisher to know that. He needs the money. Living in Boston isn’t cheap, and he’s only doing this day job to support his passion: his oral history of gay vaudevillians. But this isn’t to take away from the fact that Jacob Gardner is nothing short of a believer. He even walks like he has a calling. He could be mistaken for a missionary. In point of fact, he was raised Mormon, but this is another story.

Island is Jacob’s first sales call, and he can’t wait to get there. He can’t wait to tell them about all the great books he’s carrying in his Knightley Press tote bag. The bag must weigh almost fifty pounds, but Jacob works out and he isn’t even feeling it. Knightley’s got a remarkably strong list this year, and he’s certain his job will be easy. Readers are going to have no choice but to love these titles. The nice woman who hired him had suggested he start with Island Books. The owner there loves literary crime fiction, eh? Well, Jacob’s favorite from the list is a debut about an Amish girl who disappears while on Rumspringa, and in Jacob’s opinion, it’s a must-read for all serious lovers of literary crime fiction.

As Jacob passes over the threshold of the purple Victorian, the wind chimes play their familiar song and a gruff, but not unfriendly, voice calls, “Welcome.”

Jacob walks down the history aisle and holds out his hand to the middle-aged man on the ladder. “Mr. Lambiase, have I got a book for you!”