She hugs him tighter. Over her shoulder, A.J. notices an Elmo doll sitting on the floor with a note attached to his matted red chest by a safety pin. He sets the baby down and picks up Elmo, a character A.J. has always despised because he seems too needy.
“Elmo!” Maya says.
“Yes,” A.J. says. “Elmo.” He unpins the note and hands the baby the doll. The note reads:
To the Owner of This Bookstore:
This is Maya. She is twenty-five months old. She is VERY SMART, exceptionally verbal for her age, and a sweet, good girl. I want her to grow up to be a reader. I want her to grow up in a place with books and among people who care about those kinds of things. I love her very much, but I can no longer take care of her. The father cannot be in her life, and I do not have a family that can help. I am desperate.
Yours,
Maya’s Mother
Fuck, A.J. thinks.
Maya cries again.
He picks up the baby. Her diaper is soiled. A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper. Back when Nic was alive, Island used to offer free gift wrap at Christmas, and he figures that diaper changing and gift-wrapping must be related proficiencies. Next to the baby, sits a bag, which A.J. sincerely hopes turns out to be a diaper bag. Thankfully, it is. He changes the baby on the floor of the store, trying not to dirty the rug or look at her private parts too much. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes. Babies move more than books and aren’t as conveniently shaped. Maya watches him with a cocked head, pursed lips, and a wrinkled nose.
A.J. apologizes. “Sorry, Maya, but it wasn’t exactly a pleasure cruise for me either. The quicker you stop shitting yourself, the quicker we don’t have to do this.”
“Sorry,” she says. A.J. immediately feels awful.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about any of this. I’m an ass.”
“Ass!” she repeats, and then she giggles.
A.J. puts back on his running shoes, and then he hoists up the baby, the bag, and the note, and heads for the police station.
OF COURSE, CHIEF Lambiase would be on duty that night. It seems to be the man’s lot to be present for the most important moments of A.J.’s life. A.J. presents the baby to the police officer. “Someone left this in the store,” A.J. whispers so as not to wake Maya who has fallen asleep in his arms.
Lambiase is in the middle of eating a doughnut, an act he tries to hide because the cliché embarrasses him. Lambiase finishes chewing, then says to A.J. in a most unprofessional way, “Aw, it likes you.”
“It’s not my baby,” A.J. continues to whisper.
“Whose baby is it?”
“A customer’s, I guess.” A.J. reaches into his pocket and hands Lambiase the note.
“Oh, wow,” Lambiase says. “The mother left it for you.” Maya opens her eyes and smiles at Lambiase. “Cute little thing, ain’t she?” Lambiase leans over her, and the baby grabs his mustache. “Who’s got my mustache?” Lambiase says in a ridiculous baby voice. “Who stole my mustache?”
“Chief Lambiase, I don’t think you’re showing an adequate amount of concern here.”
Lambiase clears his throat and straightens his back. “Okay. Here’s the thing. It’s nine p.m. on a Friday. I’ll place a call to the Department of Children and Families, but with the snow and the weekend and the ferry schedule, I doubt anyone will make it out here until Monday at the earliest. We’ll try to track down the mother and also the father, just in case someone is looking for the little rascal.”
“Maya,” Maya says.
“Is that your name?” Lambiase says in his baby voice. “It’s a very good name.” Lambiase clears his throat again. “Someone’ll have to watch the kid over the weekend. I and some of the other cops could take turns doing it here, or—”
“No. It’s fine,” A.J. says. “Doesn’t seem right to keep a baby in a police station.”
“Do you know anything about child care?” Lambiase asks.
“It’s only for the weekend. How hard can it be? I’ll call my sister-in-law. Anything she doesn’t know, I’ll Google.”
“Google,” the baby says.
“Google! That’s a very big word! Ahem,” Lambiase says. “Okay, I’ll check back with you on Monday. Funny world, right? Someone steals a book from you; someone else leaves you a baby.”
“Ha,” says A.J.
BY THE TIME they arrive at the apartment, Maya is full-on crying, a sound somewhere between a New Year’s Eve party horn and a fire alarm. A.J. deduces that she is hungry, but he has no clue what to feed a twenty-five-month-old. He pulls up her lip to see if she has teeth. She does and she uses them to try to bite him. He Googles the question: “What do I feed a twenty-five-month-old?” and the answer that comes back is that most of them should be able to eat what their parents eat. What Google does not know is that most of what A.J. eats is disgusting. His fridge contains a variety of frozen foods, many of them spicy. He calls his sister-in-law Ismay for help.
“Sorry to bother you,” he says. “But I was wondering what I should feed a twenty-five-month-old child?”
“Why were you wondering that?” Ismay asks in a tight voice.
He explains about someone having left the baby in the store, and after a pause Ismay says that she will be right over.
“Are you sure?” A.J. asks. Ismay is six months pregnant, and he doesn’t want to disturb her.
“I’m sure. I’m glad you called. The Great American Novelist is out of town, and I’ve had insomnia these last couple of weeks anyway.”
Less than a half hour later, Ismay arrives with a bag of groceries from her kitchen: the makings of a salad, a tofu lasagna, and half an apple crumble. “The best I could do on short notice,” she says.
“No, it’s perfect,” A.J. says. “My kitchen is a fiasco.”
“Your kitchen is a crime scene,” she says.
When the baby sees Ismay, she bawls. “She must miss her mother,” Ismay says. “Maybe I remind her of her mother?” A.J. nods, though he thinks the real cause is that his sister-in-law frightens the baby. Ismay has stylishly cut, spiky red hair, pale skin and eyes, long, spindly limbs. All her features are a little too large, her gestures a little too animated. Pregnant, she is like a very pretty Gollum. Even her voice might be off-putting to a baby. It is precise, theater-trained, always pitched to fill the room. In the fifteen or so years he has known her, A.J. thinks Ismay has aged like an actress should: from Juliet to Ophelia to Gertrude to Hecate.
Ismay warms up the food. “Would you like me to feed her?” Ismay asks.
Maya eyes Ismay suspiciously. “No, I’ll give it a go,” A.J. says. He turns to Maya. “Do you use utensils?”
Maya does not reply.
“You don’t have a baby chair. You’ll need to improvise a structure so she won’t topple over,” Ismay says.
He sets Maya on the floor. He builds three walls out of a pile of galleys then lines the galley fort with bed pillows.
His first spoonful of lasagna goes in without any struggle. “Easy,” he says.
The second spoonful, Maya turns her head at the last moment, sending sauce everywhere—on A.J., on the bed 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.