Page 59 of Maybe Some Other Time

Chapter twenty-three

Because what else did one buy a grown man with cancer?

Robbie had been chuffed to receive a toy car he had always wanted as a kid, but the Thelma of then had put off due to the cost. Well, it was priced much higher now because of its collector’s value, but her friend Charity lived up to her name when she resold it to Thelma at a discount.

First, she stopped by Bill and Mary’s graves to tell them Merry Christmas—and to slightly tell off Mary for making Robbie’s life harder, especially in the wake of discovering Thelma’s affair.

Then she drove to Great Oak Acres, which was open to friends and families for lunch, where she hung out with Debbie and gave her a vintage Barbie doll as a present.

Thelma had not dressed up that day outside of her hair and makeup, but Debbie was so used to her mother’s visits by now that she was content to curl up on her bed with Thelma and watch an airing of It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.

Don’t tell her he was her first ever crush…

When Debbie was a baby, she used to stare at the TV whenever Jimmy Stewart was on.

When she was a little older, Thelma and Sandy took her to see The Philadelphia Story, and she wouldn’t stop babbling about it for weeks.

When Debbie drifted off to sleep, Thelma slipped out for a longer drive. It had been a while since she was in far north LA, but near the national forest, there was a nice little cemetery that was perfect for clearing one’s mind with a view of nature.

Exactly the kind of place Sandy would want to be buried.

It wasn’t Thelma’s first time visiting her ex-girlfriend’s grave, but it had been a while, and she waited until Christmas to make the trek since she was already in a somber Christmas mood.

At first, Thelma sat in her Impala, listening to Christmas songs on the radio, but eventually got out to bring a small bouquet of daisies inside the cemetery.

She loved daisies.

Sandy was buried beneath a particularly hefty tree on the outer edge of the cemetery.

A bench was nearby, allowing Thelma to place her flowers, say a prayer, and sit for a while.

Anyone who was inclined to visit a cemetery on Christmas had already come and gone.

It was only Thelma, a few chattering birds, and the ghosts of the past going about their afterlife.

Yet she didn’t jump when she heard a voice behind her.

“Come here often?”

Thelma slightly turned her head, expecting to have manifested Gretchen’s voice as a figment of her imagination. Except there she was, bundled in a heavy winter jacket, hands in her pockets, and hair slightly shaggy on her head.

“Do you?” Thelma asked her.

Gretchen rounded the bench and sat with her. “I get it. I visit my folks on Christmas.”

Thelma realized that Gretchen was actually here with her—all the way out by the canyon near Sandy’s grave on Christmas. Why? How? After a month of them avoiding each other?

“How did you find me?”

Gretchen gazed out across the cemetery, her eyes squinting against the winter sun and her bangs flying in a breeze that stirred up the moment she attempted to talk. “Robert told me what you had planned on doing today. I went by your house, you know.”

“And I wasn’t there.”

“I was surprised. Seemed like something you would have been into.”

“What? Christmas?” Thelma shrugged. “We have reservations at a Chinese restaurant later. I guess it’s what they’ve always done, and I wasn’t in the mood to cook something fancy for three people.”

“After Thanksgiving?”

“They ruined half my food that I forgot to put away. So rude.”

Gretchen jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Someone’s tailing me. On Christmas.”

Thelma followed Gretchen’s thumb. There, all the way over in the parking lot near the Impala and Gretchen’s trunk, was a black sedan. If Thelma focused hard enough, she recognized Agent Ortiz behind the wheel.

“Oh, hey!” she called, waving frantically to get the agent’s attention. “Long time no see! Merry Christmas! Hope you’re getting overtime!”

She had no idea if Miriam saw or heard her. That hadn’t been the point.

“You guys go back, huh?”

Thelma might as well tell her. “Miriam was my assigned agent when I first got here. I have this intense memory of my first night here… she wanted to know what kind of takeout to get me, but I was so overwhelmed that I could hardly understand what she was saying. I didn’t know there were so many cuisines out there.

Did you know I’ve had Ethiopian food recently? My group went.”

“Your group?”

“Yes, my group from therapy at the FBI office. We go out and do things together. Next month, we’re doing a trip to Mt. Shasta. Skiing. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve gone skiing, but I’ve got Nordic genes, so it should be okay, right?”

Gretchen must have been shocked that Thelma could talk to her so candidly after what happened a month ago, for she said, “I don’t know if that’s how it works. Also, I’m sorry, group therapy at the FBI office?”

“What a shame.” Thelma crossed one leg over the other as she leaned her head back and gazed up into the trees. “All that tracking on you, and you still don’t really know anything, huh?”

Scoffing, Gretchen fluffed her coat around her so it could absorb her crash against the bench. “It’s taken a while to let it sink in, you know. Time traveling… all those weird feelings I had about you…”

Thelma wrapped her arms around her green purse in her lap.

“I bought this at Bullock’s in 1956. I had a three-year-old dancing around my legs, and between her whining and the shopgirl’s smug demeanor, I nearly committed homicide at the counter.

But Debbie was a good girl. She just needed a nap.

You see, we had been at the doctor for her checkup and…

” Thelma stopped. “You’re not interested in those details. ”

“I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it.”

A leaf fluttered down from a tree. Thelma’s gaze followed it until it landed a few inches away from Sandy’s headstone. “Me too, and I lived through it.”

“So you just… drove into the future, huh?”

“Yes. Was going out to the store, and the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by FBI agents in the most awful clothing material. They said they don’t know how it works, but they can tell when a fog is coming in, so they shut the whole area down and get ready.”

“So they told me.”

“What else did they tell you?”

Gretchen shrugged. “Things I wish you had told me instead.”

She snorted. “Would you have believed me?”

“No.” Although they sat intimately together on the bench, neither dared to touch the other.

Their relationship, which had made wonderful strides despite Thelma’s prudish reserve, had collapsed in the interim.

Now, we start all over again. If there was a starting point to begin with…

“But, to be fair, the whole cult story didn’t make sense, either. ”

“I still can’t get those details straight.”

“I could tell.”

Her candor made Thelma snort again. “Why did you drive out all this way? You couldn’t have even been sure I was still here.”

“I had a hunch. Besides, it’s a nice day for a drive. Even if you weren’t here, it wouldn’t have been a total waste of time and gas.”

“A hunch, huh?”

“You have this tinge to your aura that says you care a lot about the people who have been a part of your life. So, if Robert said you were visiting Sandy’s grave out here, I figured you’d be here a while. Especially since she meant so much to you.”

“She did. And I guess I meant a lot to her, too.”

“Yeah, I read some of her stuff. The nonfiction about true crime, I mean.”

“Oh? Not the pulp fiction?”

“Not really my thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No. Really. Not my thing.”

“What’s your thing, Gretch?”

“Oh, I don’t know… getting involved with time-traveling housewives, I guess.”

“I’m not a housewife anymore,” Thelma said with a cautious smile. “I’m actually a widow. Although the legal history the FBI set up for me says I’ve never been married. No wonder I can’t keep the story straight. By the way, you know my friend Pauline?”

“Hardass woman who looks like she’s seen some things?”

“That’s because she saw things in the ‘30s.”

“No fucking way.”

“To be fair, so did I! I was born in 1930, Gretch. Grew up in the Great Depression. Came of age during World War II. Was a housewife in what my history classes tell me was the biggest economic boom in history. Now, here I am.”

“Do you miss it?”

That tender question hit Thelma where it hurt most. “My old life? Of course I do.”

“What do you miss the most?”

Nobody had asked her that before, and Thelma had to sort through the myriad of images to float up in her mind. Knowing my exact place. Understanding my budget. Having a smaller world to consider.

“The little things, like nobody being shocked by how I style myself,” she said.

“And the big things. Like making breakfast for my children and every trip being a huge adventure for everyone involved. The first time I went to Vegas with Bill, we were the talk of the neighborhood. You have to understand, Vegas was just getting started back then. Half of our neighbors were too scared or pious to go, and the other half were jealous. They all wanted to know what we thought and what we had done that weekend. I talked about Dean Martin, and Bill bragged about winning fifteen dollars at the poker table. Oh, that was a lot of money back then. Like a hundred today, I swear!”

“Do you miss him?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

Gretchen folded her hands behind her head. “Because this whole time, I thought he died while you were married to him. Then I find out you disappeared. You were married one day, and a widow the next.”

Thelma swallowed. “Yes.”

“Wild.”

“Hm. Yes.”