Maybe Some Other Time, page 9
“I’ve seen her photos.” Debbie had grown up into a lovely young woman with short, curly brown hair and a sweet, round face. Thelma didn’t appreciate how much older her husband had been when they married, but he had an amiable smile that suggested their meeting at a modeling agency where Debbie worked as a backroom clerk was fate. She was his second—but final—wife. And it was through those photos that Debbie had grown stepchildren from her husband’s first marriage. No wonder she truly didn’t want any of her own. Between being a secondary mother to her husband’s older children and the kids she helped teach at the local school… even Thelma was exhausted.
But, no… she supposed these sepia-toned and crisp-colored photographs of an aging Debbie did not accurately portray how she looked now. Mid-60s with dementia…
They pulled into the shadiest part of the parking lot. Thelma unbuckled her seatbelt but didn’t hurry to get out. She waited for Megan to leave the backseat and stretch her arms over her head before getting out as well.
Robbie acted like he wasn’t going in.
“Mister…” Thelma peered at him through the passenger side window, which was still halfway rolled down. “That’s your sister in there. Let’s go.”
That grown, elderly man looked at her as if he had just been grounded. And, no, he couldn’t believe it.
“Did she go to your wedding?” Thelma asked. “Was she there when your daughter was born?” No, she actually had to ask these questions because she hadn’t been to those events.
Robbie muttered something, arms crossed in front of the steering wheel.
“What was that?”
“I said what does it matter?”
Yet he got out with a huff, locking the car as the three of them approached the main entrance of Great Oak Acres.
“Who’s this?” the receptionist on duty asked after welcoming Robbie and Megan by name, as if that was how they shamed the rarer visitors around there. “Why, you look a lot like Mrs. Pearson!” She referred to Debbie’s married name. “It’s the cheeks, love. Actually, you look a lot like…”
As she narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, Thelma froze. Does she recognize me from an old picture in my daughter’s room? Robbie had mentioned that Debbie claimed many of Thelma’s things when they grew up, which might have included her wedding and graduation photos.
Robbie cut in. “This is Thelma. Debbie’s daughter.”
The receptionist, who bore the nametag Carlotta, blinked in rapid succession at the older man standing before her counter. “Debbie has a daughter? That’s new to us.”
Thelma knew she needed to direct this ship before it crashed into an iceberg. “Yes. I’m Debbie and Paul’s daughter. Thelma Van der Graaf. Named after my grandmother.”
“Oh, that’s who you look like! We know all about your grandma here. Debbie’s told us the story of how she went missing so many times. Poor thing. I always wonder what happened.”
A nurse appeared, this one more calcitrant than Carlotta. “What’s up, Car?”
The receptionist addressed her directly. “This is Debbie’s family. Including her daughter! Did you know she had one? She ever mention it?”
The nurse, whose nametag heralded Linda, raised one stiff brow and shook her head. Her hands remained firmly in her cozy sunset-pink sweater she wore over her turquoise scrubs. Curly brown hair was held high on the back of her head as a ponytail bounced with her movements. “Never heard her say anything about a daughter. Considering I’m the one who takes care of Debbie and cleans her room every day…”
Oh, Thelma was ready for this, too. She and Megan had come up with it during a Chrononaut & Family class. “They gave me up for adoption when I was born,” she said. “Couldn’t take care of me, financially speaking. Of course, my adoptive parents told me about it when I got older, and I managed to reach out to my birth mother, Debbie, a couple of years before I got sick. Now I’m living with my uncle and my cousin, so I thought I could finally come visit her here…”
Robbie glanced between her and Linda, as if he didn’t know this lie would work.
“Cool,” was all Linda said as she motioned for them to follow. “You’re in luck. She just got up from her nap. I’m sure she’d be happy to have some visitors.”
Thelma’s heart thundered in anticipation of what she would see when she finally held her daughter again. How bad is she? Is she gaunt? All of Thelma’s interactions with dementia were through her grandparents, and she was never around them much. Back then, such people didn’t live as long, she garnered. Now they’ve got places like these to keep them alive with some dignity. Maybe. It could always be worse than Thelma surmised.
They were sat at a table in the lounge, where they were instantly surrounded by elderly women whose mouths always hung rictus as they inched forward in wheelchairs and old men who shuffled along the metal grip bars attached to the walls. A large, white cat prowled the hall, purring, growling, and chirping at whoever paid it any attention. Thelma held her green 1950s purse in her lap as she anxiously awaited her daughter’s arrival. Megan was glued to her phone as Robbie’s eyes glazed over while staring into the distance.
“Here they are!” Linda’s voice took on new life as she escorted someone toward them. “It’s your brother, Robbie, and your little niece Megan!”
A woman with no teeth and wrinkles that sagged her whole face down toward her chin attempted to grin. Thelma held back a gasp. That’s not my daughter… It couldn’t be. Even when compared to pictures of Debbie as an adult, this woman looked nothing like her. Where was the body fat? The chestnut brown hair? Or even the rigid shoulders and perfect posture like she had in all of her photos?
“And I’m told this is your daughter, Thelma.” Linda stood Debbie in front of the table. Megan put down her phone but couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact. Robbie nodded to his sister, sighing. As for Thelma?
She continued to hold her breath, gazing into big blue eyes that knew her.
“Debbie…”
“Ma?” That was the first full word Debbie uttered when she arrived at the table. “Mama!”
Tears gushed from her closing eyes. Linda steadied her, but Debbie was neither falling over nor running away. Instead, she braced against the chair, mouth attempting to speak in gasping breaths as she reached a wrinkled hand out toward Thelma.
“Mama…”
She wasn’t the only one crying. Despite whatever confusion or discomfort the others might feel, Thelma let her tears flow freely as she pushed herself out of her chair and rushed into her daughter’s arms.
She was thin and frail. But she was Thelma’s daughter. And they embraced like it was a new morning to greet, a new breakfast to be made before school.
Thelma still hadn’t quite recovered after they returned to Van Nuys. Her heart was full of a mother’s love, but her soul told her not to get her hopes up. After all, Debbie was quite ill. They had sat in the manager’s office after Debbie lost interest and wandered away, all so they could hear her medical update that said, “She’s slowly declining. We don’t know when it will be, but she may be tested for cancer soon.” Thelma discovered that dementia and cancer often went hand-in-hand, and often it was the cancer that killed someone before malnutrition or an accident did. To keep herself from crying out of grief, Thelma told herself that it was at least a blessing that she got to see her daughter before she passed. At least she got to see me again. So far, Debbie was the only one who truly saw her as Thelma, a woman who had loved her children.
“Fine,” Robbie said halfway home. “It’s on the way.”
Thelma hadn’t said anything for a while, but knew what he meant. He whipped into a florist’s shop and said he’d treat Thelma to whatever flowers she wanted. While Megan waited in the car, still glued to her phone, Thelma politely asked the florist for a few white peonies, and after hearing what they were for, the florist tossed in some baby’s breath and greens. Thelma held the small bouquet in her lap when they got back in the car.
She didn’t know what she expected, since Bill had been buried at the National Cemetery in West Los Angeles, a place of honor for a war vet like him. And, indeed, he had been buried in a plot that Thelma would have never found on her own, even knowing the name William Van der Graaf.
Seeing his gravestone wasn’t what stabbed her in the throat, though—it was seeing that the spousal spot next to his was taken up by a Mary Van der Graaf.
“That was our stepmom,” Robbie said as they stood out in the full sun, gazing down at the clean and plain burial spots. “I always hated that he remarried, but I also understood why he did it.”
It was one of the only personal things Robbie had said since Thelma came back into his life, and she held the bouquet of white flowers and greens to her chest as she saw Bill’s date of death in 1983 and imagined him spending those precious final years with a woman she had never met. And now I never will. A part of her desired that—to know the woman Bill had fallen in love with after losing Thelma. Was she pretty? Was she kind to him? And was he kind to her? Had Thelma’s disappearance hardened him? Or did he get on with his life the best way he knew how?
“You couldn’t have been buried here anyway,” Robbie said before going off to look at something else. “You’re legally dead, but there’s no body. Now you’re legally somebody else.”
Thank you, Robert. Thelma kept that comment to herself. There was no point antagonizing him after he had already extracted himself from her quiet moment.
The bouquet rustled against her sweater.
“Hello, Bill.” Why was it so awkward to talk to a man she had just kissed a couple of months ago? “Surprise. It’s me. Thelma.”
She inhaled a whiff of the peonies and baby’s breath. The scent almost soothed her.
“Maybe the dead have insight into these things, but the reason I went missing that night is because I somehow time-traveled into the future. Yes. Me and the Impala. Just drove right into a fog that brought us forward into 2018. Can you believe it? I had no idea that was a thing. Oh, Bill, if only you had seen what happened. I’ve just been in such a state since then. Having to shut down all of my emotions so I can…”
She sniffed.
“…So I can carry on and pretend that everything is all right. That I’ll learn everything there is to know about this modern world while I see our son old enough to be my grandfather and our daughter on her last leg because of dementia. I’m so glad you didn’t have to see this, Bill, but I guess you also didn’t get to meet our granddaughter, Megan. She’s a very lovely young lady. You have no idea she’s Robbie’s daughter until she’s standing up to him and putting his cranky behind back into place.”
After a few minutes of silence, Thelma swallowed the lump in her throat and knelt in front of her late husband’s grave. She pulled out the cover for the flower receptacle and gently shoved the bouquet inside. Once she was done ensuring it looked nice, she remained kneeling on the grass, grateful for denim jeans.
“There’s something else. Maybe you figured it out in the wake of my disappearance, but there was someone else that I loved besides you. I’m sorry, Bill. Maybe it’s for the best I was gone. You were able to move on with someone who could be fully devoted to you.”
She knelt there for a long while, neither staring at Bill’s grave nor taking in the entire cemetery around her. Not the large American flag flapping in the Los Angeles breeze. Not the bright blue sky full of invisible angels. And not the carefully manicured grass beneath her legs.
She stared into the past. Into a decade that seemed like it should be right in her grasp, but was whisked away on the wind before she had a chance to close her fingers on the tail-end of the 1950s.
Her childhood.
Her adolescence.
Her motherhood.
They were right on the tip of her tongue, because to her, they had happened all in the span of a few years. From watching her mother make flavorless fried dough to give to the Okies who lived in shanty towns on the edge of Californian farms, to giggling with her friends at school, to getting into trouble with Sandy, to meeting Bill and deciding to embrace the safer, easier life…
Ah, there it was. The reason she knew God had sent her this adversity.
“You thought you could avoid it. You thought you could pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. You cheated on your husband. You sinned with another woman. You risked your children’s futures if anyone found out. You harlot. You devil woman. You Jezebel.”
Maybe Thelma had died that night. Gotten into a brutal car accident just outside the supermarket and died instantly.
This was purgatory. This was hell. Her just punishment, where she faced what her actions had wrought to those she loved.
Her husband was dead. Her lover was dead. Her daughter was feeble and dying. Her son?
Her son wanted nothing to do with her.
Thelma found herself gazing into the empty blue sky again. It was her only calm, Godly companion. It didn’t judge her like the trees and the grass could.
If this is purgatory… Then there was a chance. She could make things right. She could set everyone free. Including herself.
Thelma delicately pulled back the paper wrapping on the bouquet she left in Bill’s grave. She extracted one small peony and sniffed it before turning toward Mary’s final resting place.
She said nothing to the woman as she placed the peony on the marker. Then, “Thank you. For being there for Bill. He always deserved someone better than me.”
Thelma accepted her fate. She accepted Bill moving on and loving another woman. Knowing that he had this woman named Mary, someone he loved enough to have buried next to him, meant that Thelma was free.
She stood, brushing debris from her knees as she openly thought of Sandy, who would have laughed to know all of this had happened to her dear Thelma.
“You got yourself into trouble again!” she imagined someone behind her saying. “If I wrote a story about this, nobody would believe it. Yet leave it to Thelma Erickson to find a time-traveling fog and decide to cheat her way into a better life! Welcome to the future, honey!”
Thelma laughed into the back of her hand. If this were purgatory, then it wasn’t so bad.
“What the…”
“Uh…”
Thelma gasped, finger pointing to the windshield.
There it was. The Impala.
It wasn’t any worse for wear than the night she drove it into the future. Besides the ancient license plate and a couple of new dents from where the FBI researchers banged it up a bit, the Chevy Impala would soon be the biggest hit on the block, which happened to boast quite a few residents who were vintage car aficionados.
Agent Wilcox stood on the sidewalk near the Impala. Not too far away, a black FBI SUV was parked with Agent Thornwood behind the wheel. He was the first to greet the Van der Graafs as they got out of Robbie’s car and took in the scene before their house.
“We’re done with it,” Agent Wilcox said after nodding to the family and shaking Robbie’s hand. “Put our prints all over it. Had our nerds sniff through every corner, looking for any evidence of time travel for us to research. Eh, nothing. S’how it always goes.” He cleared his throat before handing Thelma her keys. “It’s yours. Just make sure you get your license updated before driving it. Oh, and!” He stopped himself on his way to the SUV, where Agent Thornwood waited. “Get some seatbelts in that thing! It ain’t legal as-is!”
Megan let out a low whistle before running up to inspect the Impala. She cupped her hands around her eyes to get a better look inside the window. Thelma jangled the keys in her hand. They felt exactly the same as the night she collected them for a drive to the market.
“Good God,” Robbie said next to her.
Thelma closed her hands over the keys. “What?”
He continued to stare in disbelief at the Impala. “Jesus, it’s true, isn’t it?” He turned his head toward her. “It really happened like they said. You just drove into the fucking future like you were on a milk run.”
Thelma kept her thoughts to herself as she placed the keys in her purse and sighed. Now you’re getting it? She knew her son was reluctant to accept reality, but…
God, he was such a man! Couldn’t simply believe what he was being told! Had to seek out his own evidence and wait until…
Thelma started laughing.
“What?” Robbie barked at her.
There was no use halting her mirth just to answer him. He could figure it out on his own, couldn’t he?
He’s just like his father.
Thelma headed inside, still laughing. She’d inspect her car after she put down her things and took a little time for herself. It had been a long day, after all.
Chapter eight
Group
Therapy as a concept was still something Thelma had to get used to, after a life of associating therapists and psychologists with “crazies” and the severely mentally infirmed. It just wasn’t done. That was something she had to get through Megan’s skull every time her granddaughter wondered why Thelma put up a fuss about therapy… let alone group therapy.
The government made it clear that these sessions were mandatory. Had Thelma had a job, she would have been excused to go to the biweekly gatherings held in the FBI annex building, the same location as her history classes. For convenience, these often stacked on the same day, giving Thelma an excuse to get out of the house without any of her family breathing down her neck.
The classes were insightful, if not overwhelming. Thelma was aghast at everything related to Vietnam and now spent her weeks learning about the “Summer of Love,” The Beatles, and the first moon landing. She was granted a front row seat when the instructor played the recording for the class and went over the impact it had on American culture. Everyone knew where they were when they watched it. Just like everyone knew where they were when JFK was shot.
Except for Thelma. Technically, she was nowhere. Merely a chrononaut traveling to a when.
In group, Jed from history class often talked about how he hated coming up with bullshit backstories about “where he was” when some big deal happened.
