Maybe Some Other Time, page 10
“So, they all think I’m this ‘Gen X’ shit or whatever,” he said, sitting right beside Thelma in the circle. At first, she had been put off by his cussing and other brash mannerisms, but over the weeks that added up to months, she came to find his honesty charming. Reminds me of my cousin, Sam. He had died before Thelma disappeared. Pacific Theater. Before he went off to the Navy, though, he used to be one of Thelma’s favorites because of how easily he spoke to people and made new friends. Something she always aspired to do, too. “That means I’m supposed to be able to say what happened when the Challenger exploded. Oh, and let’s not forget where the hell I was on 9/11!”
The others in the circle nodded. Even Thelma, who didn’t know what a Challenger was, but had heard plenty about the terrorist attacks in New York City. One of the very first things I learned about from recent history. Like Jed, Thelma was pressed to come up with where she was when it happened. Luckily for her, the FBI provided a script for her to follow. In fifth grade. At home. Eating breakfast while my mother watched the news on TV. Unlike Jed, Thelma was classed as a “Millennial,” something that sounded “cool” to her ears. Although she did rather prefer the “Silent Generation” moniker she had when she looked it up in her textbook.
“Nobody cares that I actually saw Billy the Kid,” Jed muttered. “Whatever.”
Part of group was going over these little gripes, but everyone was also required to check in and talk about “how it was going.” Thelma was still the most recent addition, so most of the focus was on her and everyone giving her sagely, experienced advice, such as how to talk to people and even dating, something that Thelma was not thinking about at all.
Especially since they all assumed she might want to move on from her husband—with another man.
Dating within group was not unheard of. Jo from the 18th century was married to a young man named Damien Whitlock, a chrononaut from 1996 who always sat beside her and held her hand when they came and went. Jed was steadfastly single, claiming that he never got along with modern women and that they terrified him on a sexual front. Girls like Lizzie didn’t talk about it, and everyone goaded her for those “Victorian” mores, when in truth she eventually confessed in class that she liked the idea of never having to marry at all.
“Just watch out for Frank,” everyone told her at some point, including the group leader, therapist Crystal Myers. “He wants to date every young woman who comes through group. Only one to turn him down was Lizzie, and she gave him the fattest swollen lip you’ve ever seen.” Jed pointed to the corner, past Frank’s narrowing eyes as she gruffly stared down the rest of the group. “Right in that corner, huh, Frank?”
There were other new faces to meet in group. Faces that either graduated from history classes or went on different nights. Almost immediately, Thelma got along with a 1930s chrononaut named Pauline, with whom she would quote some of their favorite pre-code movies and gush over their mutual love for Katharine Hepburn. Thelma thought it a grievous crime that the fog had taken Pauline before Bringing Up Baby was made, and they vowed to watch it together some night.
Then there was a family that had traveled together in their car, much like Thelma had. Marie and Lyle Keeler had a six-month-old son named Adam when they drove into the fog sometime in the early ‘70s. Now, Adam was eleven and had adapted to modern life since it was all he remembered. Marie and Lyle often talked about how hard the time traveling had been on their relationship, but were committed to staying together, not only for the two other children they had, but for the families that were still around and because “who else do we have in this, besides each other?”
Some strangers became fast, trauma-bonded friends because they all happened to be standing on the same block when a fog rolled in. Some small children were suddenly orphaned and forced to grow up beneath the government’s thumb, let alone during a time they didn’t recognize. There were tales of older people who had passed on but left behind legacies of working with the FBI to create better programs for unwitting chrononauts. One had gotten into a bit of trouble because he used his natural writing talent to publish several science fiction novels about a “time-traveling” fog that made the FBI quite angry with him.
Because there was only so much governments could do to keep this all a secret from the public. Conspiracies littered the media and the internet. Talk show hosts treated it like an open secret. TV shows alluded to it.
Families of time travelers had talked, after all. People had written about it, after all.
It was those families—and relationships with them, if chrononauts still had some around—that defined many of the group discussions. Something Thelma could more readily weigh in on as the weeks went by and she got to know the man her son had become.
“There are times when I catch him looking at me,” she shared one afternoon, with half the circle listening attentively and the others nodding off. “I mean, really looking at me. He can’t believe I’m real. But it’s not in that… you know… ‘blessed Father, thank you for this miracle’ kind of way. He thinks I’m a ghost. He treats me like a ghost. Or a child! A childlike ghost. My own son. I get that he’s lived much longer than I have now, but you’ve got to be kidding me. He knows I would have smacked his bottom before his father even heard about it if he had ever talked to me like that just a few months ago. You know, my few months ago.”
Many nodded. Crystal leaned in, pen flicking between her fingers.
“Sometimes, I think he’s angry that I’m here. That this happened. He spent his whole life thinking that something terrible had happened to me. That I was dead. Maybe he’s mad that I came back when he was this old, and so much has happened. I don’t know. I just know that I get more respect and humanity from my granddaughter, who never knew me back then.”
Grumbles and mutters percolated among the others. Crystal was about to give her input when Frank, who seldom said anything when not put on the spot, spoke up.
“It’s ‘cause he resents you. No sense dancing around it. It’s exactly as you said.”
Everyone else quieted down, with some like Jed and Jo glaring at him for being so blunt.
“What do you mean?” Thelma asked with a thin breath.
“The same thing happened to me with my brother.” Frank sniffed and rubbed his nose. As his foot recommenced its jittery dance against his knee, he explained, “We never got along well, you know. I was brains, he was brawns. When we were kids, we could never agree on something to do. Pretty soon, he was beating the crap out of me, and I was taking punches at his lack of wit. Well, I went off to college. He went into welding. Pretty soon, I was making so much money that I started paying for our parents’ bills. Keep in mind that my brother lived down the street from them. He could afford his own home back then, but he couldn’t afford to take care of our parents—and he was the older one.
We fought about it constantly. Got to the point where I hated coming home because he was always there, half-drunk, ready to call me every name in the book because he felt so inadequate next to me. Well, that went on for years. I was smart enough to draw up a will because I was single and making all that money on stock trading, so I wanted to make sure my money went to the right people if I died. Apparently, a couple of years after I ‘disappeared,’ my will kicked in and my brother discovered I left him half and my parents the other half.
When I reappeared here, he was still alive. The FBI contacted him and asked him to take me in. It lasted about four weeks because we were always fighting. Back to taking swings, only now he was thirty years older and beating up someone half his age. Cops got involved. FBI got involved. When we had to go to therapy together, I asked him why the fuck he couldn’t be grateful that I was alive. He even got to keep my money! Do you know what that bastard said?”
Thelma silently urged him to keep going.
“He said, right in front of the therapist, that I was dead and should have stayed dead. People aren’t supposed to come back from the dead. We’re supposed to lie still under the ground or go sing hymns for God. See, my brother spent thirty fucking years grieving me. The rumor was that I killed myself, and nobody wanted my family to know. Drug overdose, jumping off a building, I dunno. They had convinced themselves I was dead. Got me a burial plot and everything. My brother took it so hard that he couldn’t even spend the money he got from me. Just spent the next thirty years taking care of our parents until they also died, and then lived in our old house. He used their share of the money to cover their funerals and to fix up the house. Pay some bills, I dunno. All I know is that after that trip to the therapist, my brother tied a rope around his neck and left me all that I left him. I got all my money back, but now I have no fucking family.”
Someone reached over and attempted to pat Frank’s shoulder, but he shrugged them off. Jo pensively stared at the floor in the center of the circle. Lizzie rolled her attention away from Frank and back toward the nearest window.
Thelma lowered her hand from her mouth.
Does Robbie… resent me?
Crystal’s attempts to get the group back on a more positive, more productive track fell short of any accomplishment. The session ended on such a somber note that the usual invitations to go to the café across the street, near the park, were not heard for a full five minutes until Pauline approached Thelma and asked if she would like to join “everyone” that week.
Usually, she hung around the building until it was time for class. Today, though, she eagerly agreed and ensured she had some cash Megan had offered, so nobody would have to buy for her. She still couldn’t get used to how much a coffee cost in the modern world. Never mind all of the styles and types there are…
The funniest thing wasn’t the gaggle of disparate people making their way across the wide boulevard to take over a local coffee shop. It was instantly recognizing FBI employees who, in turn, recognized them. In a way, wasn’t that comforting? Thelma could be herself around these people: awkward, excited, and exhausted. Nobody questioned why she needed half the menu explained to her or why she sat with people across so many generations and ethnic backgrounds. She could slap her green 1950s purse on a table and have nobody comment on it. Likewise, if she accidentally spilled some water in her lap, nobody cared that she leaped up shouting, “Golly gee almighty!” I’m so tired of Megan hooting and hollering at how I talk when I’m surprised. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that Thelma saved the cuss words for when she really meant it. Maybe modern people were more attuned to swearing whenever they felt, but Thelma swore she would never get used to hearing a barista mutter “stupid bitch” when dealing with irate customers.
Well, at least she wasn’t shocked by it anymore. She heard all manner of potty language while at the supermarket with her granddaughter.
“Have you tried the oat milk yet?” Pauline asked while they stood in a long line and gazed up at the menu hanging from the ceiling. “You’d never guess it, but it’s quite good! I guess it started as an alternative for people allergic to dairy. Or for the vegans. You met any vegans yet? They’re everywhere in Los Angeles in this era.”
Thelma tilted her head as she looked at how expensive the milk substitutions were. “Not yet. I’ve got that Norwegian stock in me. Never had a problem with dairy.”
“Your family doesn’t carry it now?”
She must have meant the dairy alternative. “No. It’s just milk in the fridge.” Actually, come to think of it… There hadn’t been any at all when Thelma arrived. Not until she started going to the store with her son and granddaughter and put it into the cart without thought. Am I the only one using it? Whenever she went to grab it out of the fridge, it was always pushed into the back, as if the rest of the family had other things to prioritize.
What the heck had they been cooking with?
Lately, Thelma had been favoring “cappuccino,” which not only delighted the part of her brain that glommed onto cute things, but was (to her) the perfect meld of sweet and bitter. Maybe it’s that milk drinker in me. Steamed milk was her new favorite thing. Add in the espresso? Well, it made her quite jittery later, but she liked it!
She sat back down at the table as soon as the others started gossiping about the group session. “…Can you believe he blames his brother like that?” hissed Olive Krasinski, a chrononaut from 1834. She was older than many of the others in group and had been in the “modern” era for the past thirty years already. One of her favorite jokes is that she should be suffering through the Civil War right now. “Like, we blame a lot of people for our predicament, but ultimately, we know it’s nobody’s fault. Nobody knows when the fog will come or who will get caught in it. I could be blaming my mother for sending me out to shoo the feral cats away from our house, but she had no idea I would go missing that night!”
“It’s easier for you to say, Olive,” said Ted Minsk, from the ‘90s. “None of your family was alive by the time you came here. You don’t know what it’s like to be put in a home with people who have suddenly aged twenty years and thought you were dead that whole time.”
Olive pretended to zip her mouth shut, but kept talking while her elbow came precariously close to hitting her cup of coffee. “The real problem is that we no longer have a sense of community in this country. Even back under Mexico, we always knew where our neighbors were and what we would do for those who wandered back a few years later. Now what? Even in Tennessee, the chrononauts have become a local legend that says they should be basically worshipped as Gods.”
“Nobody can be responsible for what Appalachia does,” Pauline mused. “My parents were actually from West Virginia. Born eight to a shack before getting the heck out of Dodge and making their way here. My bottom was born in the back of a Model-T somewhere in Arizona. Right on the side of the road when it was hotter than Satan’s ass.” She sipped her macchiato with oat milk. “They would have taken me in, no questions asked, if I showed up twenty years later instead of eighty. Frank’s brother just wasn’t right in the head.” She turned her own head toward Thelma, who sat beside her. “I’m sure your son will come around. It’s just been so long. He’ll soon be grateful to see his mama again before he goes. You’ll see.”
Yet their reassurances that Frank’s case was isolated didn’t make Thelma feel any better. I know what I see in his eyes. The way he avoided her as much as possible, even going as far as to pick up extra volunteer shifts at the local library branch. How he wouldn’t even look at her when they were at the same dinner table, after Thelma had gone out of her way to make his favorite Salisbury steak with macaroni and cheese. Something that was not easy to create in that modern kitchen without Megan’s help!
“I should give him space,” she said as dead air hit the table. Outside of the loud pop music playing on the speakers and the hum of FBI agent conversations around them, it was unbearably quiet. “The poor thing must blame himself. He was the reason I went out that night and drove into the fog.”
A few heads silently turned toward her. She knew what those looks meant.
“Robbie was sick, you see, and I felt really bad that I didn’t let him stay home from school. The boy was always pulling our legs, trying to get out of school.” She explained that directly to Pauline, for some reason, as if Thelma needed to defend herself to her closest friend in the group. “So, when I noticed we were out of milk and that it was shopping night… I went out. He wanted milk.” Her voice trailed off as it hit her how Robbie must have thought of the whole thing as he grew older and wiser toward the world. “Oh, my God. He spent his whole life thinking it was his fault I disappeared, didn’t he?”
Pauline put a hand on her shoulder while the others reassured her that there was rarely any rhyme or reason for these things. Robbie had taken her in, yes? He didn’t fight the FBI about it, like some people’s families. He didn’t treat her too badly. She had that lovely granddaughter—most of them had met Megan in some fashion by now. See? Even she had to raise her voice at that man, and it had nothing to do with Thelma, including her disappearance or how she raised him. What kind of man was Bill? Did she think he would do a well enough job raising a boy on his own, let alone through the ‘60s?
Based on what Thelma now knew about the ‘60s… she had no idea.
Bill was a good man. A good father. She told herself that as the group slowly broke up as some went home, others to work, and others to run errands before class that evening. Pauline and Jo remained behind, Jo’s husband taking the car to go to work while she was at class, and Pauline promising to drive them both home later.
“Do you have any pictures of him?” Jo asked. “Of your son when he was a boy.”
“Actually…” As it so happened, Thelma carried in her wallet a picture of her family that she had stolen out of a family album she discovered in Robbie’s attic. While Thelma didn’t recognize the album cover itself, it was hailed to have been Debbie’s and salvaged by Megan when they cleaned out her house two years ago. Thelma certainly recognized some of the pictures that Debbie had painstakingly added to an album sometime back in the ‘80s.
“Oh, wow.” Pauline lifted her sunglasses to take the square black and white photo into her hands. It was a picture taken the summer before Thelma disappeared, the four of them standing in front of the house in their “block party” best. She recognized the toys from other neighborhood kids in their yard, as well as the big brown dog that lived two houses down. I look so happy… Thelma stood with her hands around Robbie’s shoulders, her young boy in a collared shirt and shorts, and a model airplane in his hands. He grinned at the camera while his sister sat in the grass beside him, her lopsided smile matching the shaggy hair around her shoulders and the big bow on top of her head. Bill was behind her and beside Thelma, his hands in his front pockets and his face turned toward his wife the moment the camera went off.
“Wow,” Jo echoed. “What a handsome family. You four look fantastic. Like a storybook of old Americana.”
