Page 19 of Maybe Some Other Time
“What was that?” Thelma asked him.
“I saidyou can’t cook.”
The back of the car was silent. Even Miriam could hardly keep her eyes on the road as she watched the scene unfold in the back.
“My…” Thelma swallowed hollow air. “My word, Robbie… I didn’t think my cooking was that bad.”
“No, no! I mean…” He smacked his hand against his forehead, his thinning gray hair flat against his scalp. “I mean you physically cannot cook in my kitchen. Not yet. You’ve gotta be shown how things work now. It’s too dangerous to go in blind, thinking you can cook like you always did. You could get hurt. Burn the whole place down.”
Miriam’s eyes were back on the road.
“I see. Suppose you have a point.” Thelma glanced out the tinted windows, watching palm trees and bright lights pass by.The buildings are so big now…“I’m sure you and Megan are happy to help. I want to be useful. And I know how to cook. Let me help my family.”
“Your family…” Robbie scoffed.
Thelma let it go, although she bubbled with words she wouldloveto say to her rough and candid son. Even Megan looked ashamed of the way her father behaved, but Thelma had a feeling this wasn’t abnormal for the man she brought into this world.How did he become so cantankerous? Did I somehow do that?Then again, Thelma didn’t know what she expected from one of her children.How would I feel if my mother disappeared when I was a child, only for her to appear when I was seventy?Let alone just as young as she remembered?
This went deeper than shock, though. Something had been fundamentally broken inside of Robbie—Thelma innately knew that, like she glommed onto any of her other motherly instincts.
Megan filled most of the silence on the drive to Thelma’s new home. The girl liked to hear herself talk—or maybe she had learned to keep talking whenever her father was silently pouting about something. But Thelma hitched herself to her granddaughter’s voice as if Megan’s tone was the tether to the future. She knew everything, right? She was young, with the times, and more knowledgeable about what someone of Thelma’s age should say and do in 2018. As grateful as Thelma was to have her son around to take her in—despite his dour disposition—the more she got to know Megan, the more she realized that the twenty-year-old would soon be her closest confidant and best minder in the house.
“You’re gonnaloveDisneyland,” Megan blurted as they passed a colorfully ostentatious billboard advertising the familiar cartoon characters. “Oh, my God, there’s so much Disney for you to catch up on! Dad, do you remember when I was obsessed withFrozenfor two weeks? The only reason I didn’t make it my whole personality is because I was twelve.”
“I always preferred Knott’s Berry Farm,” Thelma confessed.
“Oh, it’s still around.”
Thelma sighed. “How about that? The hardest part is keeping up with what’s still here and what’s gone. There are no rules for how things change in sixty years.”
Over her shoulder, she saw her son glaring at her as if he didn’t know what to make of that.
“I want you to know,” Thelma began, addressing her family, although the words were mostly for Robbie, “I am going to make myself useful. Eventually, I might like a job, but right now I am determined to learn how to use a modern kitchen and all of the amenities you enjoy today. I still know a thing or two about cleaning and laundry. Please, don’t be shy about taking me shopping or whatever you think I need to know to help take care of the house. I have bothered both of you in such busy lives.”
Megan’s jaw slightly dropped. “You don’t have to do all that,” she said, lightly at first. Then, louder, “Besides! Dad doesn’t do shit! Ever since he retired, he just watches TV all day.”
“I donot!” he barked back at his daughter. Thelma was taken aback once again at how her son and granddaughter talked to one another.Nevereverin my house!But this wasn’t “her” house she was heading to. She now treaded on ground fertilized by father-daughter spats and the kind of inter-generational drama she used to only see at her aunt and uncle’s house.They always screamed at each other. My cousins yelled all day.Thelma had looked into her cousins, but none of them were alive.
This was it. This was her living family. And this was how they talked to each other.
“I’ll have you both know that I keep plenty busy,” Robbie continued to defend his honor. “When I’m not making updates to the house now that I finally have thetime,I’m volunteering. Why would you leave that out, Meg? You make me sound like a good-for-nothing loser.”
Megan crossed her arms and shook her head. “Ask him how many questions he gets right onJeopardy!”
“A lot! It’s a good show!” For the first time in a long while, Robbie turned his whole attention to his mother. “You’ll like it! It’s likeTwenty-One.But without the scandals.”
“Is that the one a station rigged?”
“There were many,” Thelma said. “It even got taken up to the Senate.”
“See? Guess you can learn some history from her,” Robbie said. “Because she never listens to me about the old days.”
“Because yousuckat talking about them, Dad.”
Thelma reveled in the silence that ensued once more. Megan was glued to a glowing screen in her hand, and Thelma closed her eyes so she wouldn’t get any more motion sick from the passing scenery. She didn’t recognize these roads, highways, and freeways. She didn’t recognize many of the town and city names on the signs. And the ones shedidrecognize, like Encino and Pasadena, made her tear up from emotions she could hardly regulate.
“We’re here,” Miriam announced after the car pulled down a residential street. “I’ll help with your bags, Thelma.”
She was grateful to stretch her legs and take a look at a Los Angeles neighborhood in 2018.
