Marianne Szlyk - Issue 36

Marianne Szlyk’s books include Why We Never Visited the Elms (Poetry Pacific, 2022),  On the Other Side of the Window (Pski’s Porch, 2019), and I Dream of Empathy (Flutter Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Verse-Virtual, Red Eft Review, One Art, Scurfpea Press’ anthologies Green Elephant and Dream, and Pure Slush’s anthology Loss, among others. Her stories have appeared in Impspired, Piker's Press, and Mad Swirl.  She hopes that this summer will be a good summer for poetry (and prose).

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The Family Museum, 2029

David’s father Art, a stiff, once-tall man in a white sweatshirt, sweatpants, and slippers, is giving Mary a tour of the prints on the walls of the one-bedroom apartment. She barely recognizes this crowded, busy place from the weekend she spent there ten years ago, when it was a blindingly white room with a marvelous view. There she found out that David was seeing another woman, the eventual mother of his child, his first wife, Alicia. 

David and his child Jimmy sit on the floor. Or rather, David leans against the dingy white leather sofa where he sleeps and that his cat likes to scratch, while they play a board game, roll dice, collect cards, and move objects around. Mary prefers to listen to the elderly man describe the prints and explain how they were made. It’s the least she can do when she drops off her son for his weekly visit. Art gives her enough time to scrutinize each print, one of many that blanket the walls. She listens to him tell how he had to keep the prints locked in cabinets while his wife, David’s mother, was alive. Like her son in his prime, she preferred to keep the walls pristine. The elderly man, nearly ninety, says that she did not want to look at mediocre art. Mary knows better.

“But these birds are so peaceful. The colors are harmonious. This is not mediocre art,” she says as they stop by Yoshiharu Kimura’s “Moon and Stars” for several minutes. “Trust me. I was an art history major. At Columbia.”

She wonders if he sees the pair of doves as himself and his wife. She did not know them well until after she divorced David two years ago. Art’s late wife always hated her, though. She wanted to make sure that her son David had full custody of Jimmy. Indeed, when the massive stroke killed her, she was on Zoom with a lawyer who had vowed she’d win the case. 

Father and son let the case go. They even moved to New York, to this apartment, once one of their Airbnbs, just to be close to her and Jimmy, per the custody agreement. Mary was sure that Art saw only the best in his wife. They were married for over fifty years. Like a pair of doves on a branch, they lived together peacefully despite their quirks.

As Art recalls first seeing “Moon and Stars” at a gallery of Asian art in Soho, Mary turns to glance at her ex-husband. David does look like a different man, not who she was married to. Despite his receding hairline, his light brown hair sprouts in all directions. He is no longer clean-shaven; several days’ growth, part brown, part gray shadows his puffy face. He must have gained thirty or forty pounds since their divorce two years ago. She watches him munch on gluten-free chocolate chip cookies from a box. The crumbs fall as they may on his black jeans, his shapeless dark green shirt, and his cat who sprawls at his feet. It is all Mary can do not to interrupt Art and hunt for the dustpan and brush. Not that she’ll be able to find it. This is not her apartment. With all of David’s board games—Catan, Outpost, Terraforming Mars, and more—stacked throughout the few rooms, the dustpan and brush may be under a table, on top of the games wedged into the closet, or in the shower. Who knows. She doesn’t.

By now, Art has moved on to Kimura’s “Owlet,” a brown, green, and mustard print of an owl. Its two halves are mismatched. He tells her that this owl reminds him of his only son, her ex-husband.

“What happened to David?” the older man asks. “He was so confident, so sure of himself. Did you have an affair with someone? Was it a man or a woman?”

Wanting to laugh, Mary shakes her head gravely. She asks herself if he knew how controlling his son could be, how much he assumed and expected of her, how much he womanized. She, too, had fallen for his nerdy charm and his kind eyes. His first wife, the poet, probably likened them to the sun through autumn leaves. She had fallen even more completely than Mary had. Mary, however, thought that she knew what she was getting into. Anyway, she did not love David. She loves their son, the one his first wife died giving birth to.

“I wish you were still married. We could be in Greenbelt, by the park, by the lake. What a shame he had to sell that beautiful house before moving up here. I can imagine strolling past the lake now. I can’t imagine strolling in this busy city where the drivers and bicyclists will run you down. I walk so slowly now.”

She turns her head again to see David laugh, reveal his too-perfect front teeth. Or rather the implants he had after that man, his first wife’s friend, had punched him in the mouth years after her sudden death as if he had saved up all of his anger for that one moment on Pleasant Street. David hated those implants. She remembers him rigidly sitting in an armchair before he sprang up and went on a week-long walkabout, leaving her and Jimmy in a strange city. She cannot believe that now he is laughing at his son’s puns. She wonders if he still goes out walking when the stress gets too much. Can he do that since he is his father’s caregiver?

“Perhaps he is himself now,” she kids herself and Art.

“Making sure that my socks match? Sitting with me in the doctor’s exam room?

Reminding me what year this is? No more math except for the algebra classes he teaches online. No more science fiction. All he can do is play his games while I look at these prints or do my puzzles. He’ll even play solo. I wish you two were still married.”

To avoid telling the truth, Mary offers to take her ex-father-in-law for a walk, even if it’s just around the block. He can tell her what used to be in each storefront. With a wave of his hand that reminds her of David’s hands that once cradled her perfect feet, he dismisses her and retreats into the bathroom. She offers to pick up soap, toilet paper, anything at the store downstairs. He does not respond to her. She leaves anyway. She is just dropping Jimmy off for his weekly visit. She’ll come back when he texts her. There is nothing for her here in this family museum, once a room with a marvelous view.