Page 29 of Maybe Some Other Time

Thelma’s teeth snapped through a sweet slice of apple.

“Please don’t ask me about my marriage right now.

” Another bite. She talked with her mouth full.

“It’s not polite.” Honestly, the last thing she wanted to talk about was what she and Bill got up to on their honeymoon.

All while I thought about Sandy. She often wondered if Sandy thought about her during those two weeks.

We didn’t talk about it when I came back.

Two months later, Thelma was pregnant with Robbie, and Sandy was excited for her friend.

The most she ever said was how much she missed me at school.

In truth, Thelma missed school as well. Even now, when she confirmed her college no longer existed as she remembered it.

“I never met my grandpa,” Megan said to her girlfriend. “He died like almost twenty years before I was born.”

“He was a good man.”

“Do you miss him?”

Thelma was taken aback by her granddaughter’s inquiry. “Of course I did. He was my husband. I’ve had to mourn him as if he died in real time, you know.”

“By the way,” Emma cut in. “Dinner smells great, Mrs. Van der Graaf.”

“Thank you. Not sure how you smell it already since it’s barely been in the oven for fifteen minutes, but… thank you. I always quite thought I was a good cook.”

Emma held up her wineglass. “Cheers to that.”

The three of them toasted not only Thelma’s cooking, but her style, and the fact that she was there at all.

Emma had a million questions, starting from Thelma’s “beauty routine” to what life had been like in the thirties, since she remembered it well.

Emma was an Asian Studies major who had a special interest in domestic American migrants, and Thelma had insight into not only how people treated Asian immigrants in the LA area in the mid-century, but also had firsthand experience in dealing with Oklahoman refugees.

She also offered to give Emma Pauline’s contact info, but then realized she didn’t know the number off hand.

“You still don’t have a cell phone?” Emma asked.

“No. The FBI doesn’t think I should have one for the first six months I’m here. It’s too much of a security risk, I guess.”

“Don’t let her fool you,” Megan said. “She’s a faster typist than me.”

“I learned on a typewriter in high school and used it quite often in college,” Thelma proudly said. “Mistakes are not allowed on a typewriter.”

Emma’s questions then circled to what Thelma thought of “the future,” but Thelma wanted to ask her a few questions instead. Namely, how it was being an openly homosexual couple in the modern age.

Both girls were shocked by that.

“Sorry,” Thelma said, on the verge of blaming the wine. “I know that’s not the right term to use these days. I struggle to understand all of the words that are out there.”

Megan put a hand on her grandmother’s arm. “It’s gotta be so hard to rewire your brain. For what it’s worth, I haven’t got a whiff of bigotry off you the whole time you’ve been here!”

“Well, isn’t that lovely?” Thelma finished off her glass of wine and decided to check on the roast. “I’m not a bigot.”

She couldn’t blame them, though. Especially Megan.

She doesn’t know about that part of me. Nobody had told her, least of all Thelma, who wasn’t ready.

All she knew was that the way she dressed and curled her hair reminded her granddaughter of 1950s sensibilities.

Bigotry, I suppose. It was true. Things had been quite different in Thelma’s world only two, three months ago.

She cooked in a different kitchen and didn’t have to wear a seatbelt when she drove.

I had two young children who thought I was the center of their universe. Now, she had a daughter with dementia and a son who would have rather she stay dead.

When she returned from the oven, she overheard the girls talking about “Pride,” an event that Thelma had seen advertised everywhere, including the library. Now that she knew the rainbow often represented gay people, she had started to notice it more often.

“Are you going?” she tentatively asked Megan and Emma. “Sounds like fun.”

“Um, yeah…” Megan ran her finger along the rim of her wineglass. “We usually go.”

“There are a lot of performances,” Emma said. “Drag queens. Bands. Cabarets…”

Thelma knew what two of those things were. Bill did love a good cabaret… “Is it just performances?”

“Well, there’s the vendors, too, although it’s so corporatized now it’s basically Ralph’s and Safeway telling you to spend your queer money there,” Megan muttered. “But there are local artists, yeah. You can buy all sorts of queer stuff.”

“Queer,” Thelma repeated. “Is that what you say now?”

“It’s a catch-all term,” Megan explained. “For anyone who isn’t heterosexual. Or their assigned gender at birth. Just anyone who doesn’t quite fit in with the heteronormative world.”

“Interesting. Back ‘then,’ queer just meant you were a bit odd. Or different.”

“Words have changed,” Emma said. “When I was a kid, I used to watch The Flintstones, and the phrase ‘have a gay old time’ really confused me.”

“I’m not familiar with that one,” Thelma said.

“That was the sixties,” Megan told her girlfriend.

“Oh. Well, you know, it’s kinda like the word ‘sapphic’ now means any woman who likes another woman, because ‘lesbian’ doesn’t really include bi and pan women and… we’re losing her, aren’t we?”

“Sapphic.” Thelma knew what was important in all of that. “What a pretty word. Let me guess. Sappho?”

Megan’s eyes widened. “Yeah. From the poet Sappho. You know her?”

“Of course I do. I studied quite a bit of the Classics when I was in college. That included poetry, and she’s one of the most famous poets.

Why shouldn’t she have a word named after her?

Honestly, isn’t ‘Ode to Aphrodite’ required reading in schools these days?

” When both girls gaped at her hopelessly, Thelma laughed it off. “Joking.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever read any of her stuff,” Megan admitted.

“Me neither.”

Thelma was still hung up on the other thing. “Maybe I want to go to Pride. Would you take me with you?”

Once they were over their initial shock, both Megan and Emma jumped into all of the ways it would be the time of their lives.

Just don’t let your father find out. Thelma glanced at the clock. Robbie would be home soon, and she wanted to keep the peace for one more day.

At least until Saturday, because she had a date. Not that these girls got to know about that!