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MARY IS A PURIST
Mary Flynn has writer’s block. Her analyst says it’s Freudian, her agent says it’s bullshit, but the fact of the matter is that Mary has long believed that it was inevitable. Sooner or later the well would dry up because frankly, she hadn’t had a good idea since she’d been a bright-eyed dreamer, a recent college grad with a shiny new typewriter and a duffel bag. Now she traveled with a matching leatherette luggage set, rarely brought her typewriter, and wondered to herself if she even wanted to write another book. Hadn’t her dream always been to pen the next great American novel? But now that she’d tried, she wondered if she really wanted to try again. The fact of the matter was, Mary worried more that her next book would be passable more than if it would be a complete flop. There was a dignity in abject failure that a modest success never could marshal.
Mary glanced up at the sky. An ominous grey haze had settled over the New York skyline. She had a plane to catch to Chicago, then on to Los Angeles to go to a movie premiere that was sure to curdle her stomach. She pondered how she and her old friends could have diverged so sharply on values. It now seemed that Franklin Shepard was more than willing to be a mediocrity. He was eager to sacrifice all dignity in order to sell tickets. Where had she judged him so incorrectly, to think that she once considered him a kindred spirit? For all of her faults, she had been generous in being there for him, even when he hadn’t deserved it.
MARY’S A NUDGE
“The first step of writing anything, including and especially fiction, is to figure out what you think about the subject, and then write with that opinion in mind,” Professor Callaghan told the class, holding up a greeting card for emphasis. “Say you're writing, congratulations on you marriage, first you have to ask yourself, what do you think about marriage? And from there you ask, what do you want your audience to know about what you think?” She cast a sardonic look at the students, taking in their naïve young faces.
“What you think about marriage might not be suited to a greeting card, mind you.” The class tittered. “But once you set your own opinion out straight, then you will be able to write from a place of confidence, even if you’re arguing against yourself.”
Mary sat, in the first row as always, staring intently at the professor. Having an opinion was the easy part for her. It was convincing people to listen that was the hard part.
“You’re such a noodge, Mary,” her grandfather used to say whenever she pestered him about taking a second helping of pot roast, never mind his weak heart.
“Don’t you dare think you can boss me around, Mary Flynn,” her mother said after she suggested one too many household improvements.
Her father never said anything when Mary dared to express a contrary opinion in his presence. Despite generally encouraging Mary to read and think for herself, her father held on to some level of reservedness when Mary ever asked to many questions, or ever dared to contradict him in discussion.
It was a startling change for Mary to find that at college, her strong mindedness was a sought out quality. “What do you think I should do, Mary?” Her roommate Evelyn was fond of asking her. However, it took several months before she responded with anything other than, “Oh no, I couldn’t do that…” However, she never took Mary’s encouragement the wrong way, even if she rarely heeded Mary’s advice.
A few years later, Evelyn asked if Mary thought she accept Charley’s proposal. “Well, I’m hardly the person who should be making the decision for you,” Mary laughed. “You’re the one dating the poor clod.”
“You always seem so sure of right and wrong, Mary,” Evelyn pleaded, “That’s the trouble with me, I’m not single minded. What do you think? Would you marry him?”
“I’ve never considered marrying Charley!” Mary exclaimed. “I don’t even think I want to get married! I’ve never had to make that kind of decision.”
At Evelyn and Charley’s wedding, Mary wiped her eyes delicately. Congratulations on your marriage, the card in her handbag read. Under that, she had written, I’m sure you’ll both be happy. Still she worried. She hadn’t had the heart to tell one of her dearest friends to break the heart of one of her other dearest friends, but it still worried her that she couldn’t be sure.
Their other classmates were on the whole much less timid than Evelyn. They were cut from the same cloth, Mary often thought, strong minds and strong wills. When she met Sandra, it had been love at first fight. On opposite sides of a debate over dress code in the dining hall, Sandra and Mary had become instant friends the moment the someone had the audacity to question whether it really mattered at all.
“Of course it matters!” Sandra shouted just as Mary shouted “How could you think such a thing!”
From then on, they had been disdainful of each other, critical to the extreme, but always still with a strange respect and friendship. Sandra had become a big shot lawyer in LA, while Mary chased writing jobs around New York, but they stayed in touch, if only to disagree.
MARY’S A FRIEND
“I heard your friend, you know the one, was making a jackass of himself again. Care to share with the class?” Sandra looked up expectantly at Mary.
Sandra was the sort of person who never slouched, in sharp contrast to Mary’s relaxed posture. Here in a trendy café, the difference between them was never so stark. It was comforting, in a strange way, that as friends they had never grown further apart in their mutual opposition.
“Who’s your friend, Mary?” Jean turned her head expectantly.
“Franklin Shepard,” Mary responded tersely.
“Oh, I didn’t know you know Franklin Shepard? I know him too, small world!” Jean exclaimed.
“To know him, is to love him,” Mary sarcastically intoned, raising her coffee cup as if giving a toast.
“Don’t mind Mary,” said Sandra, “She’s been harangued by Franklin Shepherd sucking up all the oxygen in the room for at least a decade.”
“Then why bring him up?” Jean asked, “No offense, Sandra, but you did bring it up.”
“As my most irritating friend in the world,” Mary replied, “Sandra has professed her talent to reading my mind, but only when I’ve got something to bitch about.”
“It’s a privilege dating back to when we were practically in leading strings. Well, back to the first year at Barnard, but at our age that’s practically the same thing. I always know when something is eating her up inside, just by the sound of her voice,” Sandra sighed, “I predicted when her agent was going to drop her, you know. Mary calls me up, long distance mind you, and she says ‘How’s the weather been?’ and I say, ‘Perfect as usual, Mary, it’s LA in October. What’s wrong with the novel?’ and two months and many contracts later, and I can say I knew it was coming.”
“Out of the two, I can’t decide who’s had a worse impact on my life, Frank or Ben,” Mary said, a little wistfully, “One thing I can say for the both of them, they keep me entertaining at cocktail parties.”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” Jean said, “There’s always some jerk who gives you nothing but incredible stories. Usually it’s an ex-husband, but really, some jerk on the subway’ll do. One minute it’s a live horror show, next month it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I think the awful part of it is, he’ll never tell stories about me. I’m just a fly in the ointment, when I’ve been alternately his rock and his the eagle eating his spleen, and I’ll bet it doesn’t even keep him up at night either way,” Mary said.
“Do you ever grow up enough not to dwell on that sort of thing, do you think?” Jean asked.
“I’m not really the one to ask about that sort of thing. Bea Arthur cut me off as I was driving down Sunset. Big black sedan, came out of nowhere. Two years, and I’m still sore about it.” Sandra leaned back into her armchair. “But back to the point, are you going to get a good novel out of Frank or not? You’ve cried too many tears over him not to cash a few checks in on his reputation.”
“I don’t know,” Mary said, “I haven’t made up my mind about him yet.”
MARY IS A DREAMER
In her dreams, Mary is beautiful. She doesn’t really want to look different as much as the fact that no one compares her looks to her younger self. You look like you’ve lost a little weight, darling. Are you sure that skirt’s not too short? In her dreams, she is and always has looked exactly right.
In her dreams, Mary is successful. In her dreams, she wears her reputation like a mink stole. There goes Mary Flynn, the great American novelist. In a review of her first novel, one earnest writer had called her a candidate for the next great American novelist. But in her dreams, next never figures into it. Her success was and always has been inevitable.
In her dreams, she doesn’t ever regret a thing she’s said. In her dreams, she’s not weighed down by the past.
~~~
Once Jean left, Sandra and Mary settled into a comfortable silence. Sandra seemed to still have something on her mind, and Mary quirked an inquisitive brow at her. “Out with it.”
“Have I told you, I’m going to adopt a child?” Sandra said. “I thought it would be a good idea to tell you now in person, since you’re visiting, but it won’t be formal for a while.”
“Wow,” Mary said, stunned. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the maternal type. You’ve certainly never expressed it to me before.”
Sandra smiled. “Neither did I, until one day I woke up and I thought I might never have the chance, and that made me sad.”
“Huh,” Mary said, still a bit shell shocked.
“And,” Sandra continued, “You’re the first person I’m telling because I think you should consider it too.”
“Me?” Mary held a hand to her throat in only slightly exaggerated outrage. “You’ve lost the plot if you think the first and only thing we should do in tandem is raise children.”
Sandra laughed. “No, that came out wrong. I mean, you should try finding a new dream, a new pie in the sky goal to chase.”
“I haven’t had much success with pies in the sky, believe me.”
“So you’ve reached a point in your life where all your dreams have fizzled out, one way or another. Then find a new dream. Commit to something. It may be all wrong for you, but the chase is worth the heartache.”
It was the first ray of hope Mary had felt in a long time.