Encore Presentation

 Flash Fiction by Marianne Szlyk


 
Frankie and Mary

By Marianne Szlyk

Continuing the Saga of Mary Haliburton, these flash fiction pieces tell the story of her friendship with Frankie and his family. Frankie and Mary were never married. They were pals, not boyfriend and girlfriend. They were "just kids." He was 16, and she was an immature 18. In a later story, he refers to her as his "not-quite girlfriend" that his father stole. Frankie is also very much invested in being unlike his father while still emulating him, maybe competing with him. 

He met Kristy when he was in college (19 or 20) out in California. They were about 20 or 21 when they got married and 26 or 27 when they got divorced the first time. About two years later, they remarried and then quickly broke up. They even tried to get together after that, but Kristy's father threatened to sue for their child's custody.

Frankie moved back east and up to Worcester, MA where he first met Aisling and then Bridie, both of whom were a bit younger than he was.(Bridie was five years younger than Frankie.) Frankie married Bridie, and she was his wife until he died--despite this story: https://impspired.com/2025/01/31/marianne-szlyk-4/ Bridie was an East Coast girl. 




 

Frankie, left, with his girlfriend Aisling’s father and brothers.


Christmas in Wormtown, 2006
One nickname for Worcester, MA is Wormtown.

    Lying alone in his bed above the pizzeria on Grafton Street in Worcester on the day after New Year’s, Frankie thought he knew where he went wrong. He should have brought his lovely Aisling down to NYC, to the brownstone, for Christmas. They just had to spend one or two nights there at the house that his stepmom Katy had decorated for her holiday, wrapping everything in tinsel, even the frames of the family photos, even the pots of her flourishing plants, even the heavy frame of the Singer Sargent over the bricked-up marble fireplace. He and Aisling could have stayed in the empty fourth floor apartment, the rooms Katy kept for emergency guests. He would barely have been forced to interact with Jacob, his grim, wizened father, the one thing Katy hadn’t wrapped in cheap silver tinsel from the dollar store. 

    But he didn’t. He stayed up in Worcester where he had been sent after headbutting his father over something or other, maybe his inability to keep his band together or get a good enough job, even at JB’s Music Store. The last time he saw old Jacob, a year and a half ago, he had just collapsed into an armchair, clutching his narrow chest while Katy ran in with oxygen and his teary sister Alicia grabbed his weak hands and pleaded for him to take long, deep breaths. The next day, as Frankie left for Port Authority, Katy informed him that (praise Jesus) they had avoided the hospital. As far he knew, that good luck streak had continued, and old Jake the Fake was flourishing like a plant in her care. Even with his lovely Aisling, Frankie couldn’t have gone back there. He was scared of who he’d become in Jacob’s presence as the gaunt man watched him with his narrowed eyes, as he taunted him between sips of blood-red holiday tea, as he spoke in that charming Liverpool accent that he had relearned as a young man watching the Beatles on his black and white TV in the Village.

    So Frankie and Aisling stayed up in Worcester. Once again he sneaked her into his room over the pizzeria. This time the room was decorated with items from Katy’s Christmas care package. The blank walls glittered with golden tinsel from the bodega with the cat he liked. Tiny red globes weighed down a fake desktop tree that Aisling thought was cute. The angel was too big for the tree, so she stood on the window sill, blowing her tiny horn out to Grafton Street and St. Stephen’s Church. The tree reminded Aisling of the desktop trees on the unit where she worked overnight as a nurse. Hers was probably trimmed with more style and grace, with puffs of fake snow and silver beads. Perhaps she had found a tiny angel or a star at Wal-Mart or Building #19, tiny enough that it could balance on top of the plastic tree. 

    Maybe they should have taken Greyhound down to NYC. She could have switched shifts with one of the Muslim nurses. Aisling would have appreciated the lights they’d see all the way to Port Authority. They could have held hands. She could have leaned her head against his chest. He’d appreciate being a semi-famous man’s son, a former would-be rock star riding incognito with his love. They could have stayed on the fourth floor of the brownstone, too far for old Jacob to climb. There was a little kitchen. He could have made Aisling her scrambled eggs and fake bacon there, maybe even have garnished it with fresh parsley or a strawberry. If only he could have trusted himself around his father. 

    So they went to Aisling’s parents’ house by the lake. While she, her mother, and her nana bustled around, refilling drinks, topping off bowls of candy and nuts, and cooking a vast turkey dinner, Frankie sat with her father and her brothers watching some stupid basketball game. They were moaning about how the Celtics could have used thirty-two year old Rashaun McKay, the same one who rapped “I’m so bored with the NBA.” Hell, they said that the Lakers could have used old Rashaun to play with Kobe who was going to score 70 points again and still lose to the Spurs. Frankie held his tongue. He busied himself drinking soda water and eating salty mixed nuts from the Christmas tree bowl. Aisling’s nana kept asking him if he wanted anything more than soda water or those nuts. He shook his head while the father joked that Frankie didn’t want to lose his sobriety chip over a mere can of Bud Lite. Bring him the Chivas Regal, Ma, Aisling’s dad proclaimed. With a dismissive wave of her manicured hand, the seventyish woman swanned into the clattering kitchen.

    Frankie was sure that Aisling’s family thought he was too old and scruffy for their darling. True, he was a dark little man, seven years older than his light, bright girlfriend, his Christmas tree angel, the girl he’d showered with that morning, even using the fancy spruce soap from Maine. Maybe he should have gotten up to help the women. They could set him to work in the tiny kitchen, chopping up vegetables (even though later Aisling confessed that they were all frozen and that the mashed potatoes came from a box). But there he was, stuck with the men who talked over him, over the commercials, over the announcers on TV while he sunk like a plumb on the fake leather couch.  
    
    Maybe he should have left the house, walked back to his room over the pizzeria, written a thank you note to Katy, or read one of his library books. Fookin’ learned something, as his dad would have said. 
Later that week Aisling broke up with Frankie because she was leaving the city for a new job. An agency nurse, she was moving to Burlington, Vermont, near where her brothers studied business. She said she’d call him when she came back to the city. Maybe she’d invite him up to Burlington he thought. Although he already knew this would never happen. 
    

 
Birdie, Frankie and their kids 


The Limits of Art

After paintings by Wifredo Lam, especially The Jungle (1943)

    This afternoon it is Mary’s responsibility to spend time with Frankie’s youngish widow, Bridie, who hasn’t been a widow that long—maybe a week or so. She has taken her to El Museo, the museum at the northern end of Museum Mile, to the exhibit on Wifredo Lam, a Cuban artist. She supposes that they could have gone to Morningside Park to watch the turtles or to a yoga studio to be in the moment. But it is humid, even drizzling outside. So here they are at El Museo.

    The two women stand in front of Lam’s The Jungle. Mary takes a deep breath. She is not familiar with Lam or his work. She also feels a little put off by Bridie, a woman in her thirties who is always calling herself a mom. She has heard that when Bridie learned of Frankie’s death last week she collapsed to the ground shrieking, pounding the hardwood floor, rending her garments (her flowy but short blouse and her capri pants). Her little girl had to run next door to fetch a neighbor. Mary doesn’t know what to say. She fears setting Bridie off in this empty gallery at two pm on a Friday. 

    “What do you think, Bridie?” she asks brightly, turning to the younger woman.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bridie replies, tucking her hair behind her left ear.
    
            “Says here that the artist was a Cubist—and a Surrealist.”

    “It’s very green,” Bridie states. “I see yellow, black and orange. The ground is black, and the sky is black. It’s not like the Cubist paintings I’ve seen. Not like Picasso. You can tell what Lam is painting.”

    “The painter was Cuban—although he lived in Paris for a time.”

    Mary feels so cautious, reading off the placards in this gallery with tan walls. Her gaze flits to the self-portrait, a bare-chested, hairless, brown-skinned man against a bright background. She worries that this painting will set Bridie off since the artist looks a little like Frankie who had been part Jewish, part British, part Mexican. 

    “Do you like this painting—The Jungle?” Mary asks.

    “It’s so crowded, so noisy. The beings look like bamboo. I call them beings. Not all are human. Bamboo doesn’t grow in Cuba, does it?” Bridie replies.

    “It grows in DC. My boyfriend’s backyard is full of it.”

    “The faces look like African masks.”
    “Yes-s-s,” Mary says. She flinches, remembering the masks that a friend once collected. It has been a while since she thought of him. 

    Mary wishes that she could say something else to Bridie. She could talk about her own children. The son she gave up for adoption almost twenty five years ago. The daughters she hadn’t seen in more than ten years, the daughters her ex-husband’s family has been raising. The younger of these daughters howled the last time she held her. She didn’t stop crying until Mary returned her to her sister-in-law.

    “I knew Frankie so long ago,” Mary admits. “We used to talk and talk as we ate at a diner. We busked in the subway. Even tried to write some songs. What did the two of you bond over?”

    “We met at the gym when he corrected my form.”

    Bridie seems tired. This sentence sounds worn as if she has said it to many, many different people. She returns to the picture, the one new thing she has seen.

    “This painting is glowing. It is full of beings, but the beings look like plants. A city of plants. The orange looks like rust or maybe mold. It is so damp in the jungle.”

    “Would you like to go to Morningside Park next? We could walk. The pond is full of turtles,” Mary interrupts. Almost immediately, she wonders if she should have asked if Bridie had ever been to the tropics, even Hawaii or Puerto Rico or a cruise.

    “No, I’d like to get back to my kids,” Bridie states. “I hate to be away from them now that they’ve lost their father.”

    Leaving the gallery, the women walk past the self-portrait as well as another green picture. This one is of a couple visited by ghosts. For a moment, Mary shivers. She hopes that Bridie’s kids would be okay, that Bridie would not harm herself—or them. Has she even helped Bridie by taking her to this museum? She shivers again, lets Bridie walk ahead of her even 
though she does not know this city.



Dreams To Wash Away the Past

After Rain on the River (1908) by George Bellows
    
Mary is not sure which season it is as the cold rain pours down, soaking her but not Frankie. He wears a rain poncho with a hood, she a baseball cap and a jean jacket over low-rise jeans. She shivers. Perhaps it is spring when the grass and a few yellow flowers, forsythia and daffodils, flourish. Perhaps it is fall when lichen and goldenrod spread. Anyway in this dream, she has never been inside Frankie’s house. She has never gone to hear Chuck Berry at the Apollo, so she has never met Jacob. She is dark-haired, almost nineteen, much younger than in her waking life. And Frankie is alive, also much younger. She doesn’t think that he shaves every day yet. He still wears glasses.

There they are in Riverside Park, a place he has promised to take her even though it is raining and they have left their guitars and micro-amps in her dorm room under the less than watchful eyes of her roommate. She feels so far away from campus as she stands near the rocks and gazes out to the choppy river. If she were on campus, though, she could ignore the rain, just stay in the library, read her art history textbook or struggle through her calculus problems. Something like that. She wonders why Frankie has brought her here. They could always hang out in a diner to wait out the rain. Riverside Park could wait until a sunny day. True, he is more sure footed than she is. She wonders if she will fall on the rocks, injure herself or even die.

Frankie is talking about something else, but then he changes the subject:

“You know Pappy married Katy today. She’s my stepmother now. And . . . she doesn’t want us seeing each other anymore now. Says you’re too old for me.”

She feels like she is falling, about to land on the hard pavement below. If she’s lucky, she’ll never walk again. She’ll have to go back to California. If not . . . she doesn’t want to think about it.

“But we’re just kids,” Mary pleads to him.

“Well, that’s not what Katy told Pappy.”

Mary says nothing, fixing her gaze on the rain.

“Katy wants me to get a job and a GED. I can work with Marty at JB’s Music Store. Or wash dishes at her friend’s restaurant. Or I can stay with my mother like Alicia’s doing. That means I’ll have to go back to school.”

Frankie screws up his face as if he smells something terrible from the river. She knows he hates school. He told her the story of the teacher who got his pet students to gang up on him just because he wore his spiky leather jacket to school. After that, he never went back. He let his pappy pretend to teach him this and that when he was just watching Channel Thirteen or reading various books. Mary shudders, afraid of the height.

“Don’t worry, Mary,” he says. “I’ll get you down. Afterwards, looks like I’ll see you in the funny papers.”

This time, the one time, he takes her hand to lead her down the path. Her knees are buckling so that she can barely move. Her sneakers turn to bare feet turn to flats that slide on the wet rocks. She knows that this is a dream, but she can feel him grasp her wrists to pull her down the hill. She can feel that his hands are warmer and stronger than she expected.




She wakes up older, perhaps wiser, a little stunned in her twin bed in the brownstone. Outside it is raining steadily, not lashing down the way it had in the dream. She strains to figure out what Frankie was trying to tell her. And what would have happened had the dream continued.
In waking life, Frankie never took her to any park. Theirs was a friendship nurtured in diners and subway stations, a truly urban experience. Once, though, they did go to the Cloisters when Frankie said his father had sent him out to “fooking learn something.” In other words, he had kicked him out of the house.

Frankie was always talking. He never touched her, but she never stumbled then. Her knees never buckled as they walked through every side street in their part of Manhattan.

She does remember going to the museum where “Rain on the River” was, but it was with her much older lover Jacob. It was in Providence, a city of hills and old brick buildings, older than the missions back home and older than anything she saw in New York. 

Providence was just two or three hours away from NYC on the train, which meant that it was a weekend trip. Of course, old Jacob, Frankie’s pappy, put his arm around her waist while they scrutinized Bellows’ painting together. It helped him stand long enough to take in the painting. She suspects the exhibit meant more to him than it did to her back then. Maybe the physical closeness did, too. Bellows was known for his manly subjects: boxers fighting, boys jumping into the river, parts of the city no nice girl was supposed to see. He was a painter of the past, not like Braque. And she was not a nice girl. She was the kind of girl old men liked to sketch and touch. Later, when they went to DC, to the Corcoran Gallery, they saw the Lone Tenement, another painting she didn’t appreciate at the time. She supposes she looked empty-headed then, leaning against Jacob but not really looking at the painting he was explaining to her. She appreciates the painting now. Bellows’ skill, his images, their place in time, in art history. The tenement reminds her of where she is now, the last single-family brownstone, the last building not divided into million dollar condos, the building where Jacob and Frankie both lived.

Returning to the waking world, that noisy, sticky place, she listens to Frankie’s widow and the two kids stir in the other room. Mary feels utterly distant from them as they get ready for the new day, as the widow reminds her kids of all that they are going to do, starting with breakfast downstairs and a stroll to the pocket park nearby once the rain stops. Mary turns on her side as if she could return to the dream world.
 
To read more about Mary’s life:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2024/07/ekphrastic-flash-fiction.html