Megan’s mouth dropped open, her chest suddenly rising up and down at breakneck speed beneath her T-shirt. Her cheeks had never been so pale around her grandmother.
“Gretch,” she hissed. “I will fucking kill you.”
I’ll take that as a yes.The only way Thelma could parse this moment was if she offered a friendly laugh. “I’m not judging. I knew quite a few lesbians back inmyday. I mean, my college was almost nothing but them! I was the only one who wasn’t!” That was half a lie. Thelma knew that she couldn’t be a lesbian if she also didn’t mind her husband. At least she was nothing like Sandy and a bunch of their friends, who decried marrying men and demanded a world where they could marry women instead.Wouldn’t that be nice?
“Wow,” was all Megan said.
“Perhaps you should introduce me to your girlfriend,” Thelma gently said. “I’d love to know her.”
Finally, Megan’s body relaxed as she inhaled a deep breath. “Okay, so you really are the coolest 1950s housewife ever, huh?”
As they backed out of the parking space, Thelma looked out the window, shaking her head.You have no idea, honey.The seatbelt snapped against her shoulder as Megan gunned it out of the parking lot and toward Raymer Street.
What a world I’ve come into.At least the women were as free and fabulous as Sandy always dreamed.I hope you got to see some of it, San.
Thelma gazed up toward the sun, imagining that her old love was an angel in the sky. She didn’t even cry at the thought. She’d rather laugh.
Chapter seven
Peonies & Baby’s Breath
Her therapist warned her that she might not yet be ready, but the only response Thelma had was,“I’m her mother. She’s my daughter. Wouldn’t you go?”
Except Thelma’s therapist wasn’t a parent. She would never know what it was like to lose a child, let alone likethis.
Robbie was against it as well, but after some gentle prying, Thelma realized it was because of how uncomfortable the whole thing made him—not some belief that his mother should be spared any pain.I don’t think he sees me as his mother.To be fair, Thelma sometimes struggled to recognizehimas her son, but it wasn’t because she was in denial.
He’s in denial. Still.
The therapist said that was normal for descendants who remembered the time traveler. Honestly, how would Thelma have felt if her mother had gone missing when she was a child and suddenly showed up, completely unchanged and confused, decades later?It would be difficult to process, yes.Except Robbie still refused to attend counseling with his mother, andshe was keenly aware that he was preventing them from moving on as a family unit.
Honestly, why amIthe one taking this so seriously?She was the time traveler! The stranger in a strange land!
So, they went to Great Oak Acres, the “memory care facility” where Thelma’s daughter Debbie currently resided.
With everything else going on in her life, Thelma hadn’t had much opportunity to process the news about her daughter. She knew what dementia was. She knew it ran in their family. Yet hearing that her youngest child had it in her mid-60s was as big a shock as hearing that she had already passed away. Everything Thelma knew about Debbie’s life had been distilled through Robbie, who spoke of one husband and no children. The husband was older than her and died ten years ago. Before getting sick, Debbie balanced between being a housewife and an assistant schoolteacher who claimed to have gotten her “fill of children” and relied on the wonder drug of birth control to avoid being a mother herself. She and her husband had made a home in Sherman Oaks, which was recently sold (at quite a tidy profit) to pay for her end-of-life care, however long it would be.
Megan was the one who told her grandmother that they rarely visited Aunt Debbie. In fact, when Megan called ahead, she discovered that nobody had been by to see Debbie since the last visit seven months ago. Thelma swallowed that information as they loaded up in Robbie’s car and trekked to the facility together.
“She’s not gonna remember you,” Robbie said no fewer than five times between his house and the memory care facility. “She doesn’t remember any of us. Just lives in her head all day.”
Thelma glared at him through the corner of her eye. Still, all those weeks later, she enjoyed watching Los Angeles go by wherever they drove. Slowly, she came to recognize the modern world, from the bright, LED lights to the smaller, sleeker carsthat traversed wide freeways and cozy tree-lined streets. The billboards were raunchier than she would have liked, but so was the color television that showed pimples on models’ faces while also captivating Thelma’s attention as she watched nature programming in “ultra clarity.”
At least she was allowed to ride in the front of the car now.Still not allowed to cook how I’d like…But she was getting there.
“She’s my daughter,” Thelma said. “I won’t be able to rest until I know I’ve seen her.”
“She doesn’t look how you remember at all.”
“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 howmucholder 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.”
