Page 24 of Maybe Some Other Time
Indeed, when Thelma stopped in front of a large mirror, she saw a young woman whom she didn’t quite recognize.
The Thelma Van der Graaf—hell, Thelma Erickson— of sixty years ago would have never worn such a frilly dress that hugged her bust and showed off her shoulders, let alone worn a large bookbag full of textbooks and history printouts that she was determined to study that afternoon.
Nor would she have sheepishly followed her own son into an institution of knowledge after being cat-called at a red light.
When she looked at her own reflection like that, sure enough, she was young. And why shouldn’t she be? She was twenty-eight! She was younger than Gretchen, and she looked young as heck!
Very young and… very fetching.
Sighing, Thelma focused on finding a place to put her things and study.
So happened that the only empty table was in front of the catalog computer near the non-fiction stacks.
After the third person stopped by to clack-clack-clack, Thelma looked up from her printouts about Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer and thought about it.
Lesbians from Outer Space…
She had wondered where she could get more of Sandy’s books since coming to the future. Would the library even carry them? Probably not. Yet the more she looked at the computer, the more she bit her lip and thought about putting her typing skills to work.
With her things still within sight, Thelma got up and approached the large mechanical keyboard attached to the flat computer screen.
Let’s see… What was the name Sandy used to write her pulp novels under? It was something like Max Stanley.
When that turned up nothing, Thelma forced herself to type the word lesbian followed by outer space.
Nothing. Just as she supposed.
To heck with it. She confidently typed the name Sandy Westmore. Because hadn’t Sandy finally achieved her goal of becoming a serious author under her own name?
Thelma let out a tiny squeak when she saw something come up on the results page.
“The Missing Angels: Women Who Disappear in LA County” was available right there in the nonfiction section. Thelma hurried to write down the Dewey Decimal number with the small piece of scrap paper and pencil provided before turning a corner and finding herself in the true crime section.
Well, didn’t this make sense? Sandy was more into investigative reporting than anything else. It was only right that she became a big author in the true crime sphere. Like Truman Capote. Thelma grinned to think of it.
When she found the title, she gingerly pulled the large hardcover book wrapped in plastic off the shelf and immediately beheld a picture of Sandy Westmore from 1988, about thirty years after Thelma disappeared.
She still had short, pixie-cut hair, only by the late ‘80s it had silvered.
Her brows were thin and lined in wrinkles.
A black turtleneck made her look like a “serious” investigative reporter, but she still had the same genial smile that Thelma associated with the woman who had befriended her in the dorm hall back in college.
Thelma flipped open the cover and took in the dedication page.
“To Thelma – the one who got away.”
If Thelma had managed to travel through time using nothing but a standard-issue Impala, then did she have the power to stop time as well? Because she swore nobody around her moved or said a thing. It was only her, the heart in her chest, and the thoughts powering her brain.
Sandy…
The first time they chatted. The first time they had a heart-to-heart talk.
The first time Sandy made a move and Thelma was too embarrassed to reciprocate.
The first time they kissed, made love, and promised to always care about each other.
The first time Thelma had to break someone’s heart was because she had a script to follow.
The first time Sandy met Bill, she sized him up and gave Thelma her blessing.
The last time they saw each other on that fateful day…
After Thelma swallowed whatever fears she had, she flipped to the table of contents and scanned the chapter titles until she saw her name toward the end.
“Thelma Van der Graaf—1958.”
She turned to the page that showed her photo, as well as some candids that Sandy must have unearthed from her personal collection.
Right there in the opening paragraph were the words, “This one’s personal…
Thelma was my closest, dearest friend. I was the maid of honor at her wedding.
We went to school together. I was the first person outside of the family to hold her babies.
And I was the first one the police questioned when she went missing in Spring, 1958. ”
Thelma leaned against the stacks, her belongings on the table always in sight as she perused an entire chapter dedicated to her disappearance.
Sandy was one of the first questioned because she was one of the last to see Thelma that day.
Bill was the biggest suspect at first, until eyewitnesses among the neighbors swore to the police that they saw Thelma get into the car—alone—and drive away right before she went missing.
After weeks of investigating, putting up rewards, and terrorizing half of Hemlock Street with questions, Thelma’s case was officially cold.
There was no sign of her or the car. Nobody had been out to get her.
And after she turned off Hemlock Street, there were no witnesses to testify about her whereabouts.
Over the years, it was decided that Thelma had abandoned her family under the guise of going out to get milk.
She was often brought up by the Second Wave Feminists of the ‘60s and ‘70s as an example of the “perfect housewife” who lost her mind and decided to start all over again under a new identity.
Yet Sandy never found this plausible. “First of all,” she wrote in her commentary, “Thelma loved her family. I was her closest friend and never once thought something was brewing beneath the surface. She wasn’t afraid to tell me about whatever stress ailed her.
Just that day, she talked about her children and how, despite them being loud, unruly, and ungracious, she would do anything for them.
Which is why I believe Bill and the children when they say she went out to get milk for her sick son.
I have a distinct memory of her complaining about the milkman being absent for two days.
Of course, this detail has not stopped the gossip mill from making the tired joke about her running off with the milkman.
Which started as a cruel joke and has somehow ended up as an actual theory among the true crime aficionados. ”
There were other mentions of how the case had proceeded through the decades, mostly at Sandy’s behest. Apparently, some TV show called “Unsolved Mysteries” was doing a spot about the Thelma Van der Graaf case.
“You have to understand,” Sandy continued, “Thelma was gorgeous. She was young. Blond. A dedicated housewife with one boy and one girl. Her husband was an upstanding member of the community who worked for the city. They had some status and would eventually have money. Everyone wanted to know what happened to her. She got attention that the other missing women in this book have not. And even I still, to this day, want to know what happened to my dear Thelma.”
The woman in question gazed off into the distance, contemplating what legacy her disappearance had wrought in her community.
Until then, she had purposely avoided information about it, aside from what the FBI and her family told her.
Robbie doesn’t really talk about it. Megan had said that Debbie kept whole scrapbooks about the case and often lamented that she didn’t get more than a handful of memories of her mother. I have plenty of you, honey.
Pensively, Thelma tucked her finger between the pages of the book and sighed into her other hand, which perched atop her mouth while her elbow scraped against the table.
So much time had passed since her disappearance.
For her, it had only been a season since she went for a drive.
I should be making summer plans and clearing Robbie’s summer camp registration.
Bill would be sitting at the Formica table, tracing the roads in a large atlas as he plotted a family trip to the Grand Canyon or the Redwoods, whichever struck their fancy that year.
Debbie would be officially starting kindergarten at the end of the summer.
Thelma had been looking forward to taking the cost of the private daycare schooling out of the family budget.
“Hey.”
Thelma nearly leaped out of her skin, her bones cursing the day they grew to adult size and could no longer hope to expand.
For Gretchen had approached, and her husky voice penetrated the force field Thelma had erected around herself as she briefly pretended to be back in her more familiar, more low-tech library that she sometimes visited to search for recipes and old fiction books she remembered from her childhood.
Our library had a little meeting room… Many housewives gathered there once a fortnight to discuss events in the neighborhood.
Thelma had always wanted to go more often…
“Hi,” she said to Gretchen, her throat dry and useless.
She then did a double-take, for the neighbor was somehow more scantily dressed than many of the other girls in the public library.
Oh. My. A sleeveless shirt showed off the workwoman’s muscles Gretchen had developed and a small, flowery tattoo on her upper arm.
But the shorts! Why the heck was she wearing such short shorts?
Didn’t she know that Thelma could see her skin? And more toned muscles? And skin?
“Some light reading, huh?”
Thelma snapped back to a world where she had to respond with words. Shoot, she had to remember where she was? Public library. 2018. Surrounded by women who showed off their belly buttons and bottoms.