The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin Read Free Book Online

pillows, down the side of the galley fort. Maya turns back to him with a huge smile on her face, as if she has made the most fantastically clever joke.
    “I hope you weren’t planning to read those,” Ismay says.
    After dinner, they put the baby to bed on the futon in the second bedroom.
    “Why didn’t you just leave the baby at the police station?” Ismay asks.
    “Didn’t seem right,” A.J. says.
    “You’re not thinking of keeping it, are you?” Ismay rubs her own belly.
    “Of course not. I’m only watching it until Monday.”
    “I suppose the mother could turn up by then, change her mind,” Ismay says.
    A.J. hands Ismay the note to read.
    “Poor thing,” Ismay says.
    “I agree, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t abandon a child of mine in a bookstore.”
    Ismay shrugs. “The girl probably had her reasons.”
    “How do you know that it’s a girl?” A.J. asks. “It could be a middle-aged woman at the end of her rope.”
    “The voice of the letter sounds young to me, I guess. Maybe the handwriting, too.” Ismay says. She runs her fingers through her short hair. “How are you holding up otherwise?”
    “I’m okay,” A.J. says. He realizes that he hasn’t thought about
Tamerlane
or Nic for hours.
    Ismay washes the dishes even though A.J. tells her to leave it. “I’m not going to keep her,” A.J. repeats. “I live alone. I don’t have much money saved, and business isn’t exactly booming.”
    “Of course not,” Ismay says. “It wouldn’t make sense with your lifestyle.” She dries the dishes then puts them away. “It wouldn’t hurt you to start eating the occasional fresh vegetable, however.”
    Ismay kisses him on the cheek. A.J. thinks that she is so like Nic but so unlike her. Sometimes the like parts (the face, the figure) seem hardest for him to bear; sometimes the unlike parts (the brain, the heart) do. “Let me know if you need more help,” Ismay says.
    Although Nic had been the younger sister, she had always worried about Ismay. From Nic’s point of view, her older sister had been a primer on how not to live her life. Ismay had chosen a college because she had liked the pictures in the brochure, had married a man because he looked splendid in a tuxedo, and had started teaching because she’d seen a movie about an inspirational teacher. “Poor Ismay,” Nic had said. “She always ends up so disappointed.”
    Nic would want me to be nicer to her sister, he thinks. “How’s the production coming?” A.J. asks.
    Ismay smiles, and she looks like a little girl. “My word, A.J., I wasn’t aware that you even knew that there was one.”
    “
The Crucible,”
A.J. says. “Kids come into the store to buy copies.”
    “Yes, that makes sense. Awful play, really. But the girls get to do a lot of screaming and yelling, which they enjoy. Me, less so. I always come to rehearsal with a bottle of Tylenol. And maybe in the midst of all that screaming and yelling, they accidentally learn a little about American history. Of course, the real reason I picked it is because there are so many female roles—less tears when I post the list, you know. But now, with the baby coming, it’s starting to seem like, well, a
lot
of drama.”
    Because he feels obligated to her for coming over with the food, A.J. volunteers to help. “Maybe I could paint flats or print programs or something?”
    She wants to say
How unlike you,
but she resists. Aside from her husband, she believes her brother-in-law to be one of the most selfish and self-centered men she has ever met. If one afternoon with a baby can have such a refining influence on A.J., imagine what could happen to Daniel when the baby is born. Her brother-in-law’s small gesture gives her hope. She rubs her belly. It’s a boy in there, and they’ve already chosen a name and a backup name if the original name doesn’t suit.
    THE NEXT AFTERNOON, once the snow has stopped and even begun to melt away into mud, a body washes up against the small