Page 48 of Maybe Some Other Time

As the wine flowed and they all got more comfortable, Thelma teased the girls about dating for two years but never getting “more serious,” and they teased her for caring so much about that.

She informed them that, back in her day, it was fine to date around while looking for something steady, but once that was locked in?

An engagement was expected after some time.

“I only saw Bill privately about twenty times before we got married.”

“Do you mean before you got engaged? ”

“No. Married.” When their faces fell off their heads, Thelma had to explain, “I said privately. There were plenty of occasions we were having cookouts and watching shows with each other’s families, or out together with friends…”

“Still! You barely know a person after only hanging out with them twenty times!”

“I knew enough to know he was fine to marry.”

They still could not believe this. To Megan and Emma, you only really get to know a person once you start living together, and that wasn’t feasible for them right now.

They both lived with their parents and couldn’t afford a place together.

Thelma had to inform them that living with your significant other before marriage was a major taboo back during “her” time.

“But…” Megan began, hesitant. “What if your significant other were a woman? How would they even know?”

Thelma’s mouth twitched a little more than she would have liked. “In that case, you counted God’s blessings that nobody thought anything else about you two. The fallout would have been astronomical.”

“Is that why you didn’t stick with a girl, instead?”

Megan may have asked that from an innocent place, but she had kicked Thelma right where it hurt.

“Back then, that was never a consideration,” she said.

“That’s all there was to it. If you could stomach marrying a man even a little bit, you did that.

Even women who couldn’t stomach it still did it.

It was what we did. Few women had the constitution to make it on their own.

There were very few jobs that could support you if you didn’t have family to rely on. ”

“Right! You couldn’t open your own bank account before the seventies!” Emma said.

“Now, hang on…”

“Shit, you couldn’t get an abortion before then, either.”

“Megan!”

“What? My mom’s had one.”

Thelma would probably miss the blood from her face, but right now, she didn’t need it. She was too shocked by what her granddaughter so glibly said.

“Uh-oh, you broke her…” Emma whispered over the table.

“I’ll have you know that abortions existed in the ‘50s,” Thelma softly informed them as she plucked her wineglass off the table and helped herself. “Every woman knew where to go if she needed one. Now, if she had the money, on the other hand…”

Something about that had made the birthday girl uncomfortable.

And rightly so! After one more second of disquiet, Thelma would let it go.

She already knew that topics like abortion were more common in the modern age, but that didn’t make it any less shocking to her when someone just brought it up like that.

And, goodness, how easily those two girls jumped back into other topics as if nothing had happened. Yet Thelma couldn’t shake how their reactions to her “quick” marriage to Bill and her forsaking women affected her.

In this era… In this era, Thelma could have been someone else. She could have at least taken her time deciding what was best for her. She could have had birth control. She could have had a career before becoming a mother if she had wanted to try it.

Except she didn’t know what she might have wanted.

Her whole life, she “knew” she would get married and probably have children.

It was a foregone conclusion, like getting old, going to church, and watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

She never dreamed about being a schoolteacher, a nurse, or a secretary, the first three “careers” she thought of that wouldn’t have been too hard to get into with her looks and skills.

As for being someone like Sandy, who was fiercely independent and forged her own career in writing and journalism?

No. I didn’t have the stomach for that. That Thelma of back then wanted her creature comforts and to claim her preordained place in society—a middle-class housewife in the Los Angeles suburbs.

But what about the Thelma of today?

Emma and Megan told jokes to one another and lightly flirted with some of the young men sitting at one table over who had noticed Megan’s birthday tiara. Thelma didn’t hear a thing they said. She was too lost in the eggplant lasagna that arrived and matched well with the red wine they shared.

The Thelma of today…

When she looked at women like Pauline and Jo, two time travelers from times long before her—especially in Jo’s case—she saw those same fiercely independent women who had carved their own destinies while dealing with the pain and trauma that came from accidentally ending up in the future.

Pauline never got to see most of her family again; Jo had entered a brand-new country and learned a new language.

Both were, more or less, thriving in the modern America they found themselves in.

They both found love. They both got married and are doing their own things outside of therapy.

Pauline worked part-time at a home goods store for extra cash, and Jo was a pre-war historian who had spent the past twenty years learning English so she could not only understand modern America, but relate it to the Spanish pueblo she had left behind in the 1700s.

What could Thelma do? Besides take this all one day at a time?

One year ago, I was a housewife with two kids. Now, she was an aimless woman with one grown son and one daughter with dementia. She had a granddaughter who was about to embark on her own life.

Thelma was still in the crossroads. There may be checkered tablecloths and candles before her and Dean Martin’s “Mambo Italiano” playing on the speakers, but this wasn’t Las Vegas, 1954.

This wasn’t her on baby break with her husband, who would inevitably stop at the poker table to smoke cigars and gamble a little after escorting Thelma back up to their room, where she would stare at the lights outside the window and wonder about the possibilities.

Perhaps that quiet part of her had always been there. The one whispering but what if?

She was louder now. Even in a busy restaurant one block off the Strip, Thelma heard that voice inside of her that had begged to be heard since she was a teenager, establishing her own identity. The good Christian girl who wanted to be in love.

She pulled her phone out of her purse due to some crazed instinct that told her to see if Gretchen had finally texted her back. Indeed, she had. “Wait, you’re in Vegas?”

There was that voice. Still screaming in the back of her mind, telling her to wake up.

But.

What.

If?

She felt the need for more sunscreen out in the Nevada desert than she did in Los Angeles, but the girls were happy to trot ahead in nothing but T-shirts and baseball caps to keep their youthful skin protected.

Even Megan laughed Thelma off for handing over some sunscreen before they left the hotel to go touristing early the next day.

They stayed together, although Thelma felt more like the third wheel as they toured through museums, shopped in a local mall, and had lunch at a diner that pretended to look like a soda shop from Thelma’s childhood.

Yet the jerk behind the fountain didn’t have the same customer service skills, and the milkshakes were runny.

Still, Megan was delighted to get one to share three ways.

They took so many pictures, and Thelma couldn’t avoid them all.

She was still getting used to the concept of “selfies” and posting pictures to public social media platforms. No, thank you.

She didn’t think anything of Megan posting their pictures to Instagram.

If anything, she was grateful she took extra time that morning doing her makeup and hair while the girls lazed about in bed and eventually dragged themselves to the shower together.

While they sat in the soda shop, surrounded by international tourists speaking languages Thelma had never heard of before, she received a text from Gretchen.

A concept that still left her feeling somewhat tingly—and confused, because handling written communication of gadgets was still very new to Thelma, who always had to mentally walk her way through opening her notifications and hitting “Reply.” Never mind how long it takes me to write one of these things out with my stupid thumbs…

“Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night,” Gretchen wrote on one message—then, another came in while Thelma was reading.

“I was beat from the conference. Anyway, I am also in Vegas. Staying in the Paris. I think we’re right across the street from each other. What are the odds? Like, Vegas levels.”

None of that made any sense to Thelma. Nothing besides the fact that they were in Vegas on the same weekend!

“If you have some time tonight, we can get dinner. I’m done with conference stuff at 3 and have the rest of the day off. Get me away from these sweaty construction bros.”

Thelma glanced at the girls, who huddled together on the other side of the table while staring at something on Megan’s phone.

“Believe it or not,” she said, catching their attention, “one of my friends from LA happens to also be in Vegas this weekend. Why don’t I go see them for a few hours so you two can be alone this evening? ”

Megan’s face fell, but Emma was somewhat relieved.

It can’t be super comfortable bunking with me for the weekend.

They were heading out the next afternoon, but wouldn’t it be nice if the birthday girl could canoodle her girlfriend of two years?

Thelma already felt like she was holding back the festivities by not having her own room.

Besides… maybe she wanted to canoodle someone that weekend!

“Who?” Megan asked. “Someone from your FBI group?”

Thelma’s nose wrinkled at the implication.

“I do have friends from group therapy and my history classes, you know. You’ve met Pauline.

” She had been to the house with her husband for dinner a couple of times.

And Megan sat there asking about the twenties all evening.

No, Pauline had not been a Flapper. No, she didn’t know how to dance the Charleston!

Nodding, Megan timidly agreed that it might be nice to have dinner with just Emma. They had reservations at Nobu—a gift from Robbie—and Thelma wasn’t even sure she could handle it that night. Sounds like quite the thing.

Thelma hurriedly replied to Gretchen, agreeing to meet with her in the Bellagio lobby in an hour. They weren’t too far, and Thelma wanted to freshen up in the room before heading back down now that she knew her way around the hotel, at least. And she had her phone, so nobody had to worry about her.

Even so, Megan was overly involved in ensuring her grandmother’s safety as they headed back to the room.

“Everything’s a scam, Thel,” she said in the elevator. “If they take your picture, it’s a scam. If they give you something, it’s a scam. Absolutely don’t follow anyone any—”

Thelma cut her off. “Do you think I was born yesterday, sweetheart? Just because I Jitterbugged after the war doesn’t mean I don’t know how to watch out for a scam. In fact, I think it makes me more aware of them! Do you even know what the Jitterbug is?”

“Something we’re too fat and heavy for now?” Emma asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say it out loud like that…”

She changed into a dress but kept her denim jacket, a look that Megan declared was tres chic.

Thelma swapped her makeup from red lips and bright eyes to a more demure, natural look since she was now more acquainted with modern fashion.

The hair doesn’t change. Short of taking a shower, there wasn’t much else she could do with it, anyway.

Her flats from earlier completed the look.

“You girls have fun tonight,” she said before grabbing her green purse and heading out. “I’d tell you to be ‘safe,’ but that’s the thing about two girls. Thank God you can’t get pregnant.”

Emma fell over on the bed laughing; Megan looked mortified. “Thelma!” she exclaimed.

But Thelma was already gone, tucking her keycard into her purse and heading toward the elevator, a smile of mischief on her freshly made face.