Sitting on a sun lounger, sipping iced tea, Thelma watched while Henry instructed Laura and Chris in self-defense.
He was forty years old, with a well-developed upper body and wiry legs. He was a master of judo and karate, as well as an expert kick boxer, and he taught a form of self-defense based on various martial arts, a system which he had devised himself. Twice a week he drove out from Riverside and spent three hours with Laura and Chris.
The kicking, punching, poking, grunting, twisting, throwing, off-the-hip rolling combat was conducted gently enough not to cause injury but with enough force to teach. Chris’s lessons were less strenuous and less elaborate than Laura’s, and Henry gave the boy plenty of breaks to pause and recoup. But by the end of the session, Laura was, as always, dripping sweat and exhausted.
When Henry left, Laura sent Chris upstairs to shower while she and Thelma rolled up the mats.
“He’s cute,” Thelma said.
“Henry? I guess he is.”
“Maybe I’ll take up judo or karate.”
“Have your audiences been that dissatisfied lately?”
“That one was below the belt, Shane.”
“Anything’s fair when the enemy’s formidable and merciless.”
The following afternoon, as Thelma was putting her suitcase in the trunk of her Camaro for the return trip to Beverly Hills, she said, “Hey, Shane, you remember that first foster family you were sent to from McIlroy?”
“The Teagels,” Laura said. “Flora, Hazel, and Mike.”
Thelma leaned against the sun-warmed side of the car next to Laura “You remember what you told us about Mike’s fascination with newspapers like the National Enquirer!”
“I remember the Teagels as if I lived with them yesterday.” ” Thelma said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s to you—this guardian, the way he never ages, the way he appeared into thin air—and I thought of the Teagels, and it all seems sort of ironic to me. All those nights at McIlroy, we laughed at nutty old MikeTeagel . . . and now what you find yourself in the middle of is a prime bit of exotic news.”
Laura laughed softly. “Maybe I’d better reconsider all those tales of aliens living secretly in Cleveland, huh?” “I guess what I’m trying to say is … life is full of wonders and surprises. Some of them are nasty surprises, yeah, and some days me as dark as the inside of the average politician’s head. But just the same, there are moments that make me realize we’re all here for some reason, enigmatic as it might be. It’s not meaningless. If it was meaningless, there’d be no mystery. It’d be as dull and clear and lacking in mystery as the mechanism of a Mr. Coffee machine.”
Laura nodded.
“God, listen to me! I’m torturing the English language to come up with a half-baked philosophical statement that ultimately means nothing more than ‘keep your chin up, kid.”
“You’re not half-baked.”
“Mystery,” Thelma said. “Wonder. You’re in the middle of it, Shane, and that’s what life’s all about. If it’s dark right now . . .well, this too shall pass.”
They stood by the car, hugging, not needing to say more, until Chris ran out from the house with a crayon drawing he had done for Thelma and that he wanted her to take back to LA with her. It was a crude but charming scene of Tommy Toad standing outside a movie cheater, gazing up at a marquee on which Thelma’s name was huge. He had tears in his eyes. “But do you really have to go, Aunt Thelma? Can’t you stay one more day?” Thelma hugged him, then carefully rolled up the drawing as if in of a priceless masterwork. “I’d love to stay, Christopher but I can’t. My adoring fans are crying for me to make this Besides, I’ve got a big mortgage.”
“What’s a mortgage?”
“The greatest motivator in the world,” Thelma said, giving him a last kiss. She got into the car, started the engine, put down the side window, and winked at Laura. “Exotic news, Shane.”
“Mystery.”
“Wonder.”
Laura gave her the split-finger greeting from Star Trek.
Thelma laughed. “You’ll make it, Shane. In spite of the guns and all I’ve learned since I came here on Friday, I’m less worried about you now than I was then.”