A Good Man Is Hard to Find
1953 / Flannery O’Connor Family trip goes awry. It’s Amy’s favorite. (She seems so sweet on the surface, no?) Amy and I do not always have the exact same taste in things, but this I like.
When she told me it was her favorite, it suggested to me strange and wonderful things about her character that I had not guessed, dark places that I might like to visit.
People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?
—A.J.F.
The second week of August, just before Maya starts kindergarten, she gets a matching set of glasses (round, red frames) and chicken pox (round, red bumps). A.J. curses the mother who had told him that the chicken pox vaccine was optional as the chicken pox is indeed a pox on their house. Maya is miserable, and A.J. is miserable because Maya is miserable. The marks plague her face, and the air conditioner breaks, and no one in their house can sleep. A.J. brings her icy washcloths, removes skin from tangerine slices, puts socks on her hands, and stands guard at her bedside.
Day three, four in the morning, Maya falls asleep. A.J. is exhausted but restless. He had asked one of the clerks to grab a couple of galleys from the basement for him. Unfortunately, the clerk is new, and she had picked books from the to be recycled pile, not the to be read pile. A.J. doesn’t want to leave Maya’s side so he decides to read one of the old, rejected galleys. The top one in the pile is a young-adult fantasy novel in which the main character is dead. Ugh, A.J. thinks. Two of his least favorite things (postmortem narrators and young-adult novels) in one book. He tosses the paper carcass aside. The second one in the pile is a memoir written by an eighty-year-old man, a lifelong bachelor and onetime science writer for various midwestern newspapers, who married at the age of seventy-eight. His bride died two years after the wedding at the age of eighty-three. The Late Bloomer by Leon Friedman. The book is familiar to A.J., but he’s not sure why. He opens the galley and a business card falls out: amelia loman, knightley press. Yes, he remembers now.
Of course, he has encountered Amelia Loman in the years since that awkward first meeting. They have had a handful of cordial e-mails, and she comes trianually to report on Knightley’s hottest prospects. After spending ten or so afternoons with her, he’s recently come to the conclusion that she is good at her job. She is informed about her list and greater literary trends. She is upbeat but not an overseller. She is sweet with Maya, too—always remembers to bring the girl a book from one of Knightley’s children’s lines. Above all, Amelia Loman is professional, which means she has never brought up A.J.’s poor conduct the day they met. God, he’d been awful to her. As penance, he decides to give The Late Bloomer a chance, though it is still not his type of thing.
“I am eighty-one years old, and statistically speaking, I should have died 4.7 years ago,” the book begins.
At 5 a.m., A.J. closes the book and gives it a pat.
Maya wakes, feeling better. “Why are you crying?”
“I was reading,” A.J. says.
SHE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE the number, but Amelia Loman picks up on the first ring.
“Amelia, hello. This is A. J. Fikry from Island. I wasn’t expecting you to answer.”
“It’s true,” she says, laughing. “I’m the last person left in the entire world who still answers her phone.”
“Yes,” he says, “you might be.”
“The Catholic church is thinking of making me a saint.”
“Saint Amelia who answered the phone,” A.J. says.
He has never called her before, and she assumes this must be the reason. “Are we still on for two weeks from now, or do you have to cancel?” Amelia asks.
“Oh no, nothing like that. I was just planning to leave you a message, actually.”
Amelia speaks in monotone. “Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail of Amelia Loman. Beep.”
“Um.”
“Beep,” Amelia repeats. “Go ahead. Leave your message.”
“Um, hi, Amelia. This is A. J. Fikry. I’ve just finished reading a book you recommended to me—”
“Oh yeah, which one?”
“That’s odd. Voice mail seems to be talking back to me. It’s one from several years back. The Late Bloomer by Leon Friedman.”
“Don’t go breaking my heart, A.J. That was my absolute favorite from four winter lists ago. No one wanted to read it. I loved that book. I still love that book! I’m the queen of lost causes, though.”
“Maybe it was the jacket,” A.J. says lamely.
“Lamentable jacket. Old people’s feet, flowers,” Amelia agrees. “Like anyone wants to think about wrinkly old feet let alone buy a book with them on it. Paperback re-jacket didn’t help anything either—black and white, more flowers. But jackets are the redheaded stepchildren of book publishing. We blame them for everything.”
“I don’t know if you remember, but you gave The Late Bloomer to me the first time we met,” A.J. says.
Amelia pauses. “Did I? Yes, that makes sense. That would have been around the time I started at Knightley.”
“Well, you know, literary memoirs aren’t really my thing, but this was just spectacular in its small way. Wise and . . .” He feels naked when speaking about things he really loves.
“Go on.”
“Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That’s basically the highest compliment I can give. I’m only sorry it took me so long to read it.”
“Story of my life. What made you finally pick it up?”
“My little girl was sick, so—”
“Oh, poor Maya! I hope nothing serious!”
“Chicken pox. I was up all night with her, and it was the book nearest to me at the time.”
“I’m glad you finally read it,” Amelia says. “I begged everyone I knew to read this book, and no one would listen except my mother and even she wasn’t an easy sell.”
“Sometimes books don’t find us until the right time.”
“Not much consolation for Mr. Friedman,” Amelia adds.
“Well, I’m going to order a carton of the equally lamentably jacketed paperback. And in the summer, when all the tourists are here, maybe we could have Mr. Friedman in for an event.”
“If he lives that long,” Amelia says.
“Is he sick?” A.J. asks.
“No, but he’s, like, ninety!”
A.J. laughs. “Well, Amelia, I’ll see you in two weeks, I guess.”
“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you something’s the ‘best book of the winter list’!” Amelia says.