Page 23 of Maybe Some Other Time
Chapter ten
Checking Out
“ D amn.” Robbie cursed some more under his breath as the Impala slowly drove out of the auto garage. “There she is. Just like I remember.”
The mechanic swung the car around the lot before pulling it up in front of Robbie and Thelma, two people who still weren’t getting along after the fallout a few days before.
Yet he was required to help her pick up the Impala from the garage, where he helped pay for it to be brought up to modern standards, which included brand-new seatbelts.
The mechanics, who purported to specialize in “classic” cars, salivated over the “like new” Impala with its original interior and fixtures, imploring to know how they kept it so perfect after so many decades.
“It wasn’t used that much,” Thelma claimed, to which the mechanic replied, “Obviously! We’ve seen the odometer! ”
That same mechanic now got out of the driver’s seat and dangled the keys in front of Robbie.
“Good as new! Even better!” He shook Robbie’s hand, as giddy as a boy with his first working dump truck in the sandbox.
“You’re one lucky family! You all got any idea how much that thing is worth? I took the liberty of looking it up.”
Thelma didn’t want to know. Robbie awkwardly took the keys and thanked the man.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Thelma had to ride in the passenger seat since her license was not yet updated.
It’s on the docket. She was nervous to take the new driving classes, but admitted the freedom would be perfect for getting herself to the FBI field office and anywhere else she needed to go.
It was also the first step toward possibly getting a job somewhere.
Los Angeles is as friendly to a person without a car as ever…
Still, it gave her a sour taste to see her son behind the wheel. Outside of its trip from the FBI field office, the Impala had not been driven since that fateful night.
She wondered if the car had any idea what it had done. Of course not. It’s a car. It wasn’t sentient. It didn’t give a flying shit.
They did not head straight home. The pickup was right before one of Robbie’s shifts at the library branch, and Thelma wanted to go back now that she had been in 2018 long enough to figure out what was what.
My first time there, I was so overwhelmed.
Between the homeless people, the screaming children in a supposedly quiet place, and the digitization of everything, she felt like she had fallen behind what a library was capable of.
Now, though? She had some history class reading in her bag and was more confident in using computers.
Especially those with singular functions, like looking up books in a “system.” The internet still scared the crud out of her, and Thelma still didn’t have a phone, but she was less shy about asking strangers for help and more confident that the machines wouldn’t start smoking if she typed something into a search bar.
But wasn’t it awkward how she couldn’t talk to her own son? The man who didn’t even bother to fiddle with the radio knob as they drove in silence back to Van Nuys?
“Wooo!” Thelma nearly jumped out of her skin as the car next to them at a red light revved its engine and honked. She looked over to see a young man hanging out of the driver's window, the hat on his head backward, and his arm covered in garish tattoos. “That’s a sweet ride! Lookin’ good, sexy!”
Thelma gasped, keeping her window up. Robbie grunted and ignored the other driver.
“How about you come over here and ride with me?” The man stuck out his tongue between his fingers. Even Thelma knew what that meant.
“Hey!” Robbie barked at Thelma’s window, the glass bouncing his voice right at her. She hurried to roll the window down so that at least he wouldn’t be right in her face. “That’s a lady you’re talking to! Show some respect!”
“Yeah, pops, lady my dick! Which is what a young hot thing like that should be riding on instead of your old, leathery balls!”
Before Robbie could say something equally crass, Thelma flung her head out the window, seatbelt straining against her chest as her fingers curled on the hot metal of the chassis.
“I am not a thing, young man!” she screeched. “And kindly keep your little boy baby ‘balls’ in your pants!” She brushed her buxom bangs out of her face as the hot, dry wind blew her way. “And I’ll have you know that this man is my son! ”
Confusion swept right over the other man’s face. “Uh… okay!”
“So, I’d appreciate it if you weren’t an even worse example on him than every other man apparently has been!” Thelma had to spit more of her own hair out of her face. I just curled it last night, too! “He cusses enough as it is! Go wash your mouth out with soap!”
The light turned green, and Robbie stepped on the gas. Thelma’s head remained hanging out the window as she stared down the ruffian with his tattooed arm hanging out of his window.
“Honestly!” Thelma flung herself back in her seat, adjusting the seatbelt strap so it didn’t choke her. “Who talks like that to a woman in public?”
She earnestly rolled the window back up with a huff. Robbie continued to drive, only with a grin on his face.
“You just confused the crap out of that kid.”
“I’m just so tired of all the cussing! The tattoos I can adjust to.
” Thelma wrestled with her purse to get out her compact and fix up her hair.
“All of the skin hanging out? Fine.” She would be a hypocrite, anyway.
She rather liked showing off a little more leg and her shoulders in the heat.
The dress she wore that day revealed more of both than she would have ever dared back in the ‘50s.
“But the verbal disrespect? So many people cannot even say a full grammatical sentence. What is happening with education in the 21 st century?”
“Eh, not much.” Robbie smacked his lips together. “Which is the problem.”
“People used to have a lot more respect for each other,” Thelma asserted once more. “Even if they didn’t like each other, they would still be polite out in public. Why, the one time a young man made a bold and crass pass at me out in public, I thought your father was going to bloody his nose.”
Robbie was quiet for a second as he turned right onto another road. “Who do you think taught me to be polite?”
Thelma glanced at him as she put her compact away again. “I had quite a bit to do with that, I like to think. You would have never spoken to a girl like that.”
“Oh, you might be surprised.” They pulled into the library parking lot. “The last time Dad whipped me was because another man said I had been rude to his daughter at school.”
Thelma contemplated that as they parked near the entrance. “Well?” she said after the engine was cut off. “Were you?”
“In his defense,” Robbie said, referring to Bill, “he knew whipping my bottom would be especially effective at sixteen.”
Sixteen! What kind of hellion had Robbie become in the wake of her disappearance?
There was no chance to discuss this since they had to hurry inside because Robbie was late for his shift.
As he said hello to everyone and introduced his “niece” to the other volunteers and employees again, Thelma kept to herself, reveling in the scent of books and grateful that nobody around her had their breasts on display or their bottoms hanging out of cropped shorts.
Nobody should be more exposed than I am.
She hypocritically thought that as she broke away from her son and perused the stacks with her bookbag over her shoulder and her purse dangling from her hand.
She adjusted both as she looked at the new releases, intrigued by the interestingly colorful text-based covers, cute illustrations, and titles like Mrs. Brown’s Nervous Beagle.
(It was #8 in a cozy mystery series that featured a dog rescue.)
She next wandered to the staff recommendations.
Sure enough, there was Robert Van der Graaf’s handwriting explaining why “every red-blooded American” should read more Zane Grey.
A well-worn copy of Riders of the Purple Sage was available for checkout.
He always loved Westerns. Thelma recalled a small but important argument she had with Bill over their son being allowed to watch Gunsmoke due to the more mature subject matter.
But Robbie had been obsessed since he was five, so it was tradition for the three of them to watch it every Saturday night, Bill holding their young son in his lap to explain what was happening and why some people were “like that” while Thelma went from nursing Debbie before bed to putting her down for the evening so she could watch the television unmolested.
Little things like that had a habit of catching her off guard in the middle of public places. Which was why one impatient woman had to ask her to move out of the way twice before Thelma heard her.
Her therapist had sympathized with Thelma’s need to compartmentalize the past with the present.
Whenever Thelma got wrapped up in those cozy memories of being back in the ‘50s—back in familiar territory where she wasn’t a lost traveler—she had to stop, take a deep breath, and refixate her attention on the present.
Loud noises. Crass language. An older, cranky son who would rather she stay dead.
And many beautiful women. The same number that had existed in Los Angeles back in the ‘50s, but they were so much more… more now.
“But you look so young.” That was how she remembered Gretchen’s words from a few nights ago.