7. Lock Haven Yellow #3
Her hands moved of their own volition, finding problems and fixing them while talking to the engine.
"Okay, show me what's going on with you.
" Charlie dug her arms into the engine, elbows deep, just like Frank taught her, and began using her hands to find the problems. "Oh, here we go.
Yes, yes, I know, I see it. He really did take care of you right up to the end, didn't he?
" Charlie twisted and pulled, wrapped and tightened, bringing the engine back to tip-top condition.
"There we go. Now it's getting better, isn't it? "
The rhythm she fell into was familiar, her hands doing what they did best to help her mind stay focused. But as time moved forward, Charlie found it more and more difficult to keep her eyes away from the empty lawn chair behind her.
As she worked, the part of her she had been holding back since Helen's phone call crept forward from where she'd locked it, in the space behind her heart, not allowed to see the light of day.
She thought about Frank in the garage, teaching her how a four-cylinder engine breathes. She thought about his hand on her shoulder the day she left for Caltech, and the pin he'd pressed into her palm.
She thought about the conversation they would never have.
The one where she would sit across from him at the yellow table and tell him the truth about herself, and he would say something that made it okay, or he would say nothing and it would be worse, or he would surprise her the way he had surprised her a hundred times before.
But what Charlie locked away was that, now, she would never know.
She would never get to tell Frank Beckman that she was gay, share that piece of herself that was true and full and good, and she would never get to hear what he thought about it. That absence was a vast, open hole that she couldn't fix with tools or a song or ten minutes of patience.
She didn't know how long she'd been lost in her thoughts, working, when Helen appeared in the doorway.
"Charlie, honey. What are you doing?"
Charlie didn't look up. She was elbow-deep in the engine bay, her white shirt smudged with grease, her hands moving fast.
"The radiator hose clamp is loose. And the battery terminal needs cleaning, it's corroded enough to affect the starter.
And there's a crack in the belt that'll snap if someone doesn't—" She stopped.
Her hands stopped. "I want to make sure it's all taken care of before I leave.
I want to make sure you're safe. I want to finish because Frank—"
Her voice broke.
"Because Frank won't be here to—"
The rest of the sentence didn't come. Charlie bent over the engine and pressed her forehead against the inside of the hood, and the tears came in a way they hadn't come at the funeral, on the phone, or in the car.
They came the way water breaks through a dam that doesn't have the strength to hold it any longer.
Helen crossed the garage and wrapped her arms around Charlie from behind, pulling her away from the engine and turning her around. Charlie didn't return the hug at first. She stood there rigid, her greasy hands at her sides, her body shaking. Helen held her anyway, swaying gently.
"It's going to be okay, honey," Helen said, stroking Charlie's hair back from her face. "I promise you. It's going to be okay."
Charlie's tools hit the concrete with a clatter. Her arms came up and she gripped Helen, holding on to her like a lifeline, the way you hold on to the last solid thing in a world that's come apart.
They stood there in the garage for a long time, both of them crying, because Helen was allowed to cry here too.
When they finally pulled apart, Helen cupped Charlie's face with both hands and looked at her. Charlie's eyes were red and her shirt was ruined and there was a mark on her forehead where she'd pressed it against the hood.
"He was so proud of you," Helen said. "You know that, right?"
Charlie pressed her hands against her eyes, and Helen's face shifted.
"Sweetie." Helen tilted Charlie's chin up. "What's wrong?"
The same thought that had been circling her all week, about the conversation she'd never get to have, the answer she'd never get to hear, pressed so hard against her chest she was worried she wouldn't be able to breathe.
She did finally look up at Helen. The timing was wrong, she knew that.
It might even seem selfish and the last thing she wanted to do was make this about her when the whole day was supposed to be about Frank.
She considered waiting. Driving back to California and calling Helen in a week, or a month, or when it felt right.
But in a single instance, she knew it was never going to feel right.
And the truth was, the reason it was pressing so hard right now was because of Frank.
Because she would never get to say it to him, and that was eating her alive.
Helen was standing right in front of her, expecting a reason as to why Charlie didn't think Frank was proud of her.
How could she know if he would have been after knowing the truth?
But then it occurred to her that, of all people, Helen was probably the only other person in the world who could give her the answer she'd never get from the man she'd lost.
"There's something I need to tell you."
Helen searched Charlie's face, some of the concern disappearing but not gone. "What is it, sweetheart?"
Charlie took a breath. She closed her eyes for just a moment. Then she opened them and looked directly at Helen.
"I'm... gay." She said it with stoicism, but the tears still fell down her cheeks.
Helen's face didn't change. There was no flinch, no tightening, no flash of something unreadable. Helen just looked at her, the same way she'd looked at her across the kitchen table a hundred times. Then she nodded, just once.
"I know, dear."
Charlie's breath caught. "You... know?"
"I've known for a while. Or suspected, at least. I notice things, Charlie.
It's what I do." Helen's hands were still on Charlie's face, radiating such warmth against her skin, as she began to wipe the tears from Charlie's cheeks.
"It's what I've always done." Helen didn't let go, but she concentrated more on Charlie's gaze.
"And Frank knew, too. We talked about it once, a few years ago. "
The ground shifted under Charlie's feet. "He knew?"
She could hear it in her own voice. The desperation and the need for an answer to the question that had been destroying her.
The question of what Frank would have thought.
The one she'd been carrying through the drive and the eulogy and every minute she'd spent under the hood of his car in the last 30 minutes, trying to fix the things she could because the thing that mattered most would never know. Or so she thought.
"He didn't need to be told. He saw you the way he saw everything, honey. Clearly, and with his whole heart." Helen's eyes were bright. "Frank would never have even thought of you being gay in any other way than just being another part of you. And he loved you, through and through."
A held breath she'd been carrying for years finally allowed out.
She bent forward and Helen caught her, and this time the tears were different.
They were relief, vast and flooding, the kind that comes when you've been carrying something alone for so long that you forgot it had weight until someone helped you set it down.
Helen held her through this one, too.
Charlie made plans to have dinner with Katie and her parents the next evening. She and Katie had been staying with Helen, but Charlie was set to return to California the next day, and she knew it was time to tell her parents.
She was done hiding. Frank was gone and death had made her intolerant of lies. Helen had accepted her, fully and without condition, and that acceptance had given her enough ground to stand on.
Katie wanted to go with her as soon as she knew Charlie was going to tell Ed and Diane. She understood what Charlie was about to do, and she was not going to let her do it alone.
They sat at the kitchen table after dinner. Charlie sat next to Katie and was wearing Frank's sport coat to feel a part of him with her. Ed was in his chair, Diane clearing plates with a particular efficiency that made the kitchen feel like a set being struck after a performance.
"I have something I need to tell you," Charlie said.
Diane stopped clearing. Ed looked up from his coffee.
Charlie said it the way she said everything that mattered. Plainly. Without apology. Without preamble.
"I'm gay." She took a quick pause before continuing. "I've known for a long time and I'm telling you because I don't want to lie to you anymore."
The kitchen went quiet. The clock on the wall ticked and the refrigerator hummed.
Ed set down his coffee cup. His face didn't change at all. He looked at Charlie and waited, the way he waited through presentations at the plant, letting the other person finish before deciding.
But instead, Diane spoke first. Her voice was thin and high and shaking in a way that Charlie had never heard before, because Diane Wickett did not fall apart.
"What did you just say?"
Charlie took a deep breath again. "I said I'm gay, Mom."
"No." Diane's hand went to the counter, her voice weak but stern. She steadied herself. "No, you are not."
She said it as though she'd made the decision for Charlie, for everyone listening in the room.
As though what was being presented to her was false information that didn't make a lick of sense.
Something she had to refuse because it was so atrociously out of line that she had to kick it away before it infected her picture-perfect family.
"I am, Mom. It's not something you can chang—"