The Italian restaurant instantly hit her in the familiar nostalgia of the old days when she and Bill came to Vegas for two separate vacations.Back then, we drove.That had been half the fun as they traversed the desert and saw the bright, blinking lights of Vegas in the distance.Now a lot of people simply fly, it seems.How decadent! They even let Thelma have the window seat!
“Oh, cannoli!” Thelma squeaked to say it, momentarily embarrassing herself as she sat with her back to a wall covered in mid-century crooners. Some of them sported signatures, although she wasn’t so sure that it was actually Judy Garland’s autograph. “I haven’t had that in so long.”
“Then get one!” Megan slapped her menu down onto the checkered tablecloth. “It’s my birthday. Indulge a bit, Thel.”
“You’re right. I should.” Yet between the number of combination possibilities and the sheer amount of food piled onto plates, Thelma kept looking at the salads as if that were the better option.Modern food wants me to gain weight like crazy.Maintaining some semblance of her usual figure had helped Thelma feel more like herself, but… it was inevitable, wasn’t it?
Eventually, the knowledge that Thanksgiving was the following week made her decide on eggplant lasagna with a saladon the side instead of bread. She agreed to help the girls drink a bottle of wine, and Megan proudly ordered it through the waitress, who congratulated her on her birthday before taking their orders to a computer on the side of the room.
“This reminds me a lot of the old Vegas I remember,” Thelma said, while Emma and Megan exchanged a giggly look.They do that every time I reminisce.Robbie pretended not to hear her half the time, and Megan still treated her like a novelty that had yet to wear off. Group had informed Thelma that this was normal for living relatives.The younger they are, the more infatuated they are once they learn you’re a time traveler.It was better than being treated poorly, Thelma decided, so she indulged it whenever the girls fawned over her and called hercoolmore than they ever cared to explain what it actually meant.
“Was it really run by the mob?” Emma asked. “That’s what my dad and uncles always said. My grandpa worked in Vegas in the ‘70s and used to say that everything was the mob.”
“Suppose that was possible, but when we visited, it really was just like this. You arrived, you got the service you paid for, you had some fun, and you went home. I never knew anyone who got caught up in any mob shenanigans.”
“Did you see Frank Sinatra perform?” Megan asked.
“No. I was more of a fan of Dean Martin, so we saw him and Jerry Lewis at the Sands both times we came.”
The girls clapped their hands over their mouths and giggled some more. The waitress, who had returned with their wine bottle and three glasses, looked at Thelma as if she were losing her marbles in public, but went on her way.
“You have to understand,” Thelma continued after they were alone again, “that Vegas was a brand-new distraction back then. I mean, it had been around for ages, of course, but as adestination?That was new. Boys were always coming for the gambling and rabble rousing, but once you added thecrooners and other shows? Suddenly, every housewife on my street wanted to go for a weekend. It was the place for young honeymoons and rekindling romances when you were sick of the kids.”
“I bet Dad was a real…” Megan’s mouth curled. “Kid.”
Emma poured the wine into the three glasses. As Thelma took hers, she said, “Robbie was a good boy. Could get a little excited during his baseball matches, but for the most part, did what he was told. Granted, I only got to see one baseball season of his…” Before she fell into the pit of her feelings, Thelma held up her wineglass. “Enough about that. It’s your birthday, Meg. Happy birthday!”
They toasted to that, Megan smiling wider than she had all day—and she had been smiling since they all met up at LAX, and Thelma swallowed her fears of the TSA she had heard so much about.Very rude. Very unhelpful. We got through it, though.
As the wine flowed and they all got more comfortable, Thelma teased the girls about dating for two years but never getting “more serious,” and they teased her for caring so much about that. She informed them that, back inherday, it was fine to date around while looking for something steady, but once that was locked in? An engagement was expected after some time.
“I only saw Bill privately about twenty times before we got married.”
“Do you mean before you gotengaged?”
“No. Married.” When their faces fell off their heads, Thelma had to explain, “I saidprivately.There were plenty of occasions we were having cookouts and watching shows with each other’s families, or out together with friends…”
“Still! You barely know a person after only hanging out with them twenty times!”
“I knew enough to know he was fine to marry.”
They still could not believe this. To Megan and Emma, you only really get to know a person once you start living together, and that wasn’t feasible for them right now. They both lived with their parents and couldn’t afford a place together. Thelma had to informthemthat living with your significant other before marriage was a major taboo back during “her” time.
“But…” Megan began, hesitant. “What if your significant other were a woman? How would they even know?”
Thelma’s mouth twitched a little more than she would have liked. “In that case, you counted God’s blessings that nobody thought anything else about you two. The fallout would have been astronomical.”
“Is that why you didn’t stick with a girl, instead?”
Megan may have asked that from an innocent place, but she had kicked Thelma right where it hurt. “Back then, that was never a consideration,” she said. “That’s all there was to it. If you could stomach marrying a man even a little bit, you did that. Even women who couldn’t stomach it still did it. It was what we did. Few women had the constitution to make it on their own. There were very few jobs that could support you if you didn’t have family to rely on.”
“Right! You couldn’t open your own bank account before the seventies!” Emma said.
“Now, hang on…”
“Shit, you couldn’t get an abortion before then, either.”
“Megan!”
