Page 40 of Maybe Some Other Time
Only then did she allow herself to crumple against the steering wheel, hands folded, hair shielding her from the world.
My daughter’s dying… It was an uncomfortable fact she had to face every time she visited Debbie.
But she did it. Not just because it was the right thing to do, but because she needed to know that her child would die having been held by her mother at least one more time.
Like she told Linda, it was the least her daughter deserved.
And my son is… Thelma sat up, grabbing her purse, and getting out of the car.
Robbie was at the kitchen table, going over bills.
He looks just like his father when he sits like that.
He and Bill had the same cock of the left shoulder as their right hands moved pen over paper.
She had always wanted to ask how their relationship ended.
Were Robbie and Bill on good terms? Did Robbie and Debbie work together to take care of Bill’s estate?
Had they grieved all there was to grieve, now that they found themselves orphans?
Well, they were orphans no longer. Except that Thelma, despite her youth, was in the weaker position. She had no authority here. She was as good as a stranger—an interloper.
A ghost from the past.
She approached her son, removing her jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair.
“Anything I can help with? How about dinner? It’s about time to start something. What time do you think Megan will be home?”
Robbie glanced at her through seemingly frameless reading glasses. “No need for any of that. I’m going out tonight.”
“Oh. And Megan?”
“With that girl, Emma.”
“I see. So, it’s just me.” There were a few things Thelma could whip up for herself. Nothing exciting. Unless she wanted a ton of leftovers for the next day… “That’s fine. You have fun tonight.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Who are you going with? Anybody I know?”
He slammed a particular bill down on the table. “You sound just like you did when talking to him.”
Thelma kept her cool as she asked, “Who?”
“You know. Dad. ”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know! You’d nag him every Thursday night when he was talking about why he’d be home late Friday. He’d go drinking with his coworkers, come home drunk as a louse, and need your help getting to bed. You thought I didn’t know about it, but I did. Could hear the ruckus every time.”
Thelma sighed. “Oh. To be fair, your father wasn’t ever quite so drunk that he couldn’t get up the stairs without help. But he did like to have a drink with the boys at the end of the week. Most of the husbands did on our street. Some of them joined him, you know."
Robbie leaped up from the table as soon as she sat down. This, too, wasn’t unusual. He can’t stand to sit near me for too long. Not unless they were actively doing something, like going to the store or making dinner.
“I’m heading out.”
Thelma turned in her seat, watching him leave the kitchen. “There’s something I need to talk to you about first!”
He stopped, but didn’t face her.
“Next week, my therapist, Ms. Myers, wants you to come with me. She says it would do us good to talk this animosity between us through in a safe but mediated space.”
He glared at her from over his shoulder. “You’re talking to the damn shrink about me?”
“I talk to her about everything going on in my life. And you’re one of the things going on in my life!” And I just started a sentence with a conjunction because of you! She kept that part to herself. “Please, Rob. I think it would do us good. This is a lot for both of us to handle!”
“You seem to be handling it just fine.”
“Dare you believe I actually am? Robbie, I’m dealing with life as God throws His curveballs. Speaking of which, Pastor Liz wants you to…”
“Oh, no, I ain’t going to church.” Robbie stumbled as he attempted to quickly pivot toward his mother. “You got that? No church.”
Thelma folded her hands in her lap. “Fine. You’re a grown man, and you can decide if you want to go to church or not.”
“Damn straight. Been working out just fine for forty years!”
Sure, Rob. “Tell you what. I will never bring up church like that again if you promise to come to therapy next week.”
He looked like he had been tricked into this whole conversation. “I can’t believe you…”
“That’s the deal, Rob.”
“Can’t believe it. All these years later, like a damn ghost, you come screaming out of the past to make me do shit again!”
“Could you please watch your language for two seconds? I am your mother.”
“Oh, yeah? Whose mother is forty years younger than them?”
“Someone whose mother was just living her life when she traveled through time!”
“And who the hell does that? ”
Thelma blew at the hair that had fallen into her face. “Thelma Van der Graaf, thank you!”
“You fucking know what Van der Graaf means in Dutch?” There he was, still cursing. “I looked it up in junior high! It means from the grave! Which is exactly where you came from!”
Before his mother could defend herself at all, he kept going.
“I’m not convinced I ain’t dead! This is purgatory! We’re all stuck in it together, living out our last years of existence before God judges us! You died that night, and here you are, haunting me!”
“Robbie!”
“ What? Tired of my ‘cussing?’”
She slung one leg over the other as carefully as she ever did in the ‘50s—after all, not even her son should see more than her calves as she readjusted her posture. “Our name can also mean from the count! Don’t be so morbid!”
“She just can’t stop correcting me…” Robbie grabbed a jacket off the coat rack by the front door. “Forty fucking years, and she’s still correcting my grammar and my facts…”
All Thelma could do was shake her head after he slammed the door shut. All the manners of a bull in a china shop… Thelma didn’t like to blame her husband’s second wife for anything, but Mary dropped the ball in mitigating Robbie’s anger issues!
As for Bill… Like father, like son. Except Bill had been a happy, silly drunk. As much as it annoyed her to help him undress for bed on Friday nights, his antics were so amusing that Robbie probably heard more laughing than “nagging.”
“I don’t nag,” she said to herself. “Do I?”
She supposed she would never truly know.