Page 20 of Maybe Some Other Time

Did I say the wrong thing? “Do you know what all of the rainbow stuff is for? It wasn’t there a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s everywhere! Little rainbow flags on the businesses, and all these banners hanging from the light posts. It’s very pretty, but I don’t know much about it.”

Gretchen continued to stare at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” Thelma powered through that prolonged eye contact as she drank more tea. “Why would I be kidding? I like colors. I just don’t know why…”

“For Pride. It starts next week.”

“Pride?”

“Uh, you know…” Gretchen prompted her, but Thelma had nothing. “ Pride. LGBT Pride.”

“LGBT?”

“Holy shit, how isolated were you?”

Thelma shrugged. She was used to people being shocked at her apparent lack of knowledge, but she had rather hoped not to commit such a faux pas in front of Gretchen. “I’m sorry, I’m way out of my wheelhouse here.”

“I’d say. Don’t worry. Megan told me about your background.”

Ah, there it went. Thelma’s brain, right down her throat and into her stomach. “Excuse me?” she whispered, heart pounding and fingers sweating around her mug. “My background?”

“Yeah. I get it. I see stuff about that on YouTube all the time. Kinda went down this rabbit hole for a while about it. It’s crazy how prevalent it is in this day and age.

Then again, the past couple of years kinda taught me that people aren’t what they always seemed.

I’m not surprised religiosity is what it is now. ”

Thelma was utterly lost, but she couldn’t let Gretchen know that she didn’t know her own history. “Of course. It really is.”

Gretchen tensed again. “Sorry. Was I not supposed to bring it up?”

If only I knew what “it” was! “Guess that depends on what you think it is. Are we on the same page, Gretch? What did my gra… I mean, my cousin tell you?”

“Um, well…” Under other circumstances, Gretchen would have been adorable as she cleared her throat and attempted to backtrack.

She has these little dimples that are just…

Thelma wasn’t against pinching a woman’s cheek pink, but she supposed this wasn’t the right time.

After all, they barely knew each other. “She mentioned something about a… cult…”

Oh, she had to go with that story! Sighing, Thelma dropped any pretense that she had control over her own tale.

It didn’t help that Megan was fantastic at making up stories on the fly.

How many iterations of this cult has she told now?

Sometimes, Megan forgot her own backstory for her grandmother and still referred to Thelma as “the granny I never had,” implying that Thelma was insufferably “old-fashioned,” despite how well she had adapted to modern fashion styles.

It’s my hair, isn’t it? Thelma still curled it like she always had.

I won’t change my hair. It was her hair, damnit!

“Megan likes to make it sound worse than it was.” Thelma drummed her fingers against her tea mug with a sigh. “In truth, I grew up in a place trapped in the past. There was church, but it wasn’t the way Megan makes it sound.”

“This is the family that adopted you, right?”

“Right. Adopted me.” At least Megan kept that part consistent. “My mother—not Debbie, the woman who raised me—was a devout Lutheran, I’ll have you know. I know my Bible inside and out and quite like James 1 lately.”

Gretchen’s eyes were glazed over.

“You know.” She was ready to recite it. (From the Revised Standard Version, of course, with all respect to King James.) “ Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Slowly shaking her head, all Gretchen could say was, “Wow.”

“What’s your favorite Bible verse?”

With her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose and her elbow digging into the table, Gretchen was on the verge of…

something. Thelma couldn’t quite place it.

Suppose she’s either trying to remember Sunday school or about to argue with me.

Gretchen was aware that secularism was on the rise in the modern world, but surely, Gretchen was old enough to have a favorite Bible verse!

“Can’t say I have one,” Gretchen said through laughter. “Never read the Bible.”

“Really?” Thelma leaned back in her seat.

“I cannot fathom that. I had to read it forward and backward so many times. Heck, when I was a kid, that was one of the only books we still had to read in full. That and a few volumes of Dickens. You see, my dad was a collector of first editions and after the Depre…” She stopped.

“After he lost his job, he had to sell most of them. I learned to read from the Bible.”

“Whoa. You couldn’t go to a library?”

“There weren’t many back then. I mean, there.”

“That’s wild. So, I’m guessing they didn’t have Pride there.”

“Nope.”

“What about gay people?”

Are they related somehow? “I had one friend. She was a lesbian.” Thelma had to turn her face away and gaze at the succulents lined up on Gretchen’s windowsill.

Most of their rubbery leaves were soft, but one was a cactus with spikes that looked primed to prick.

Like Sleeping Beauty. Thelma had watched that movie with Megan, who insisted on showing her grandmother all of the Disney animated films she had missed.

Starting with Sleeping Beauty… The movie had come out mere months after Thelma’s disappearance.

She felt like Princess Aurora now. I pricked my finger on the spinning wheel and fell asleep for sixty years. Yet where was Prince Charming to wake her up from this strange dream?

“Was she treated okay?” Gretchen asked.

Thelma was still choked by the last memory she shared with Sandy.

She wasn’t even necessarily thinking about the sex, although that clutched her heart as well.

Instead, she dwelled on the cucumber sandwiches and the iced tea they shared in the backyard while talking about their families and Sandy’s work.

I never realized how much I actually loved her.

Like “that.” Now, in this environment where Thelma had learned homosexual couples could get married…

Was she a little jealous? That girls like her granddaughter had the option? I thought Bill was my only option… Sandy didn’t even put up too much of a fuss. She knew.

“You know how it is. As long as you don’t rock the boat and make too many waves, people leave you well enough alone.” Thelma paused. When Gretchen said nothing, she continued, “She had to keep it secret. I was one of the only ones in the area who knew.”

“Must’ve been hard for her.”

Although she had never really been a smoker, Thelma would have killed for one right now while drinking her tea in this shrine to a grown woman’s childhood memories.

“It was hard for me, too, you know.”

Unspoken words danced on Gretchen’s lips.

She leaned forward, arms encircling her tea as her hands came together atop the dining table.

Thelma wondered if she had said too much—if she had confused Gretchen, who rang some bells in Thelma’s head, but she could never be too sure.

I usually know. Sandy once said that her friend could spot a Tommy before she saw her own reflection in the mirror.

It’s true. I have a type. Sandy had been more like Gretchen when they were in school.

Back then, it was easier for tomboyish women like her to wear male clothing and style without getting too much flak from their fellow students.

Once Thelma married and Sandy graduated, however, the latter had gravitated toward popular style trends for women that would help her blend in more easily.

She would never give up the hair and pants, but she would wear the feminine makeup if it kept her looking “of the times” and out of crosshairs.

Besides, Gretchen knew about Megan’s girlfriend. That counted for something, right?

“What was hard for you?”

That tender tenor in Gretchen’s voice hit Thelma in a place that hadn’t been touched in weeks. Months, really. Not even Sandy had penetrated that vulnerable part of her in a long time.

“Oh, honey…” Thelma couldn’t help it as she searched her own soul for an answer. “What hasn’t been hard? I’ve been living a lie my whole life.”

At least it felt good to get that out. Thelma had spent most of her existence questioning a silent authority that bore the weight of a familiar oppression upon her.

No, she wouldn’t say it was the life she willingly entered with Bill, although Megan had implied that a time or two.

Instead, the young woman who had gone by Thelma Erickson had desperately wanted something that she didn’t even know would be possible one day.

All of that… but with another woman.

“Did any of them tell you about my husband?”

That was a pale depression on Gretchen’s face. “N… no. You…” Gretchen blinked, hard, a hand chopping against her table. “You have a husband? ”

“Had. He passed away a while ago.”

“I see…”

“We had two children together. A boy and a girl.”

“Oh, my God. Where are they?”

“Well…” Thelma had to be careful. As much as she wanted to dump everything she had been through, the sum of all her truth on Gretchen…

it wasn’t safe. Not just for Gretchen, but for Thelma, who could get in big trouble with the FBI.

Besides, she wouldn’t believe me. For the best. “My daughter Debbie…” When Gretchen choked on her tea, Thelma claimed to have named her daughter after her birth mother.

“She got really sick. She’s not around anymore. ”

“Holy shit. You’ve got a dead kid?” Gretchen waved her hands before her face, as if that erased what she had just said. “Sorry! So sorry! I didn’t mean…!”

“It’s okay.”