7. Lock Haven Yellow #4
"This is what California is doing to you.
" Diane's voice climbed, interrupting Charlie.
"This is what happens when you go all the way out there, away from your family, away from everything we raised you to be and meet...
fiends." She said the last word as though it disgusted her to have it in her mouth.
"Someone got into your head. Someone influenced you—"
"Nobody influenced me, Mom." Charlie's voice lowered and slowed.
"I thought you'd get it out of your system!
" Diane's voice cracked open, and underneath the anger was something raw.
"I thought you'd go out there, get the education, and come home.
Meet a nice man. Get married, Charlotte.
Have children. That's why we let you go!
We thought—" She pressed her hand to her mouth, then pulled it away. "We thought it was a phase."
The word landed like a slap. Phase. As though everything Charlie had discovered about herself in those years of silence, the wall she'd built at thirteen, California knocking it down, Joss, The Boulevard, every honest moment she'd fought for, it was all something temporary.
Something Diane had been waiting for her to outgrow, the way she'd outgrown the baggy flannels and the hair appointments.
Charlie thought about the driveway the morning she'd left for Caltech.
The way Diane had held on to her for the first and only time.
She understood now that hug had counted for two things.
The love her mother did have for her, but also patience.
Diane's arms around her daughter, waiting for the phase to end and the real Charlie to come home.
"This is me, Mom. This is who I am."
"Who you are?" Diane continued, her composure barely held together.
"Who you are is a beautiful young woman with her entire future ahead of her.
And you're telling me you want to throw all of that away?
" Diane's eyes were wet now, but the tears weren't sadness.
They were anger. "What a waste, Charlotte.
What a waste of your... your exceptionally good looks.
" Diane scoffed. "Looks that came from my side of the family, by the way.
" Ed turned his gaze to Diane but said nothing. "What a waste of such a pretty face."
The words landed exactly where Diane aimed them. Not at Charlie's choices. At Charlie's face, her body. At the thing she had always valued most about her daughter and understood least about who she actually was.
Katie's hand found Charlie's under the table and held it.
Charlie looked at her father. Ed had barely moved. He had not spoken. He continued to sit in his chair with his coffee cup on the table.
"Dad?"
Ed was quiet. Then he spoke, and his voice was flat and final.
"You are not welcome in this house as long as you choose to live like that."
Charlie heard the word choose and understood that her father believed this was a decision she had made, like picking a college or a career.
A checkbox. A preference that could be unchecked if she came to her senses.
She also understood that there was nothing she could say to change what was happening.
She had known that before she sat down. She had hoped for better, but she had prepared for this.
"Then I guess this is goodbye," Charlie said, standing from her chair and pulling her bag across her shoulder. Diane's mouth opened, but nothing came out. Charlie didn't look at her. She didn't look at either of her parents.
Katie stood up beside Charlie as she was gathering her things.
"She's your daughter," Katie said. Her voice was low and shaking and certain.
"Katherine, sit down," Ed barked.
Katie didn't sit down. Her eyes went from her father to her mother. Then she turned to Charlie, and her face held the expression she'd been wearing since she was five years old and climbed into Charlie's bed because her sister was sad and she wasn't going to leave her alone.
"You've never seen Charlie for who she really is. Someone extraordinary," Katie said, taking Charlie's hand. "Remember, later on, when you're old and gray, that this was your fault."
Katie turned to Charlie, face to face. "Can I move to California with you?"
Charlie's eyes went wide. "What?"
"Now, wait just a goddamn minute—" Ed began.
"Yes," Charlie replied with a smile, cutting off her father's tirade. Katie smiled right back.
The girls walked to the front door and stepped out of the Wickett house together. Charlie pulled it closed behind her without looking back.
Behind them, she heard the door open again. Footsteps on the porch. Ed's voice, starting to say something—
Then Diane's voice, quiet and final, from just inside the doorway: "Ed. Let them go."
The footsteps stopped.
The door closed. Not slammed. Closed. Clean, efficient, and in service of the picture. The picture no longer included Charlie. So the door closed, and the night was silent behind them.
They walked down the front path and down the sidewalk. They walked four houses down, to the only door that had ever been open to them. They saw Helen on the step because Helen always knew when someone was coming. She took one look at their faces and opened her arms.
Helen sat them at the yellow table. She made tea, set three mugs down, and sat across from the girls, waiting until they were ready to talk. It didn't take long.
Charlie told Helen what happened. She accentuated the flat words from her father, the words Diane used to describe her, and their eventual decision to remove her from their lives based on her "choice."
Helen listened to every word. Her face, which had been soft and open when they walked in, changed as Charlie spoke.
A tightening around the mouth, a stillness in the eyes, a shift in the way she held her shoulders.
By the time Charlie got to "waste of a pretty face," Helen's hands were flat on the table and her jaw was set in a way the girls had never seen before.
Helen Beckman was angry.
Not the performative anger of Diane Wickett, built for an audience.
This was the quiet, iron anger of a woman who had spent twelve years loving two girls who weren't hers by blood and were hers in every way that mattered, who had just buried her husband, and who was now watching the family she'd built get torn apart by people who never deserved those girls in the first place.
Helen's anger didn't raise its voice. It lowered it.
"Where are my shoes," Helen said. It wasn't a question.
Charlie blinked. "What?"
Helen was already standing. "I am going to walk down that street and I am going to tell Ed and Diane Wickett exactly what I think of them.
" She was moving toward the kitchen door.
"A waste. She called you a waste. And that man," Charlie saw Helen visibly bristle.
"That poor excuse for a man sat in his chair and told his own daughter she wasn't welcome—"
"Helen." Charlie stood and reached for Helen's hand. "Helen, please stop."
Helen turned, and Charlie saw that her eyes were blazing and wet at the same time. She was shaking, like fury held back by a leash.
"Don't," Charlie said. "Please."
"Charlie Wickett, I will not sit in this kitchen and—"
"I know." Charlie's voice was steady, even though her hands were trembling in Helen's.
"I know you won't. I know you want to fight for us.
You've been fighting for us since the day Katie and I walked up your driveway.
" She swallowed. "But going over there won't change their minds.
It'll just give them someone else to hurt.
" Her voice broke for just a moment. "I need...
" Charlie trailed off as the tears finally came, falling down her cheeks. "I need you... to stay."
Helen's face crumpled, and then she sat back down.
She took a breath. And then another. She looked at Charlie, and then at Katie.
The anger didn't leave her face, but it changed.
It went somewhere behind her eyes that Charlie recognized as a place that looked permanent, like a decision that had already been made.
"You know what you are to us, right?" Charlie said. The words came out before she'd planned them, but she realized she'd been carrying them for years. "You and Frank. You know, don't you?"
Helen looked at her. Even Katie looked at her.
"You're our mother, Helen. You have been since the day you set four place settings at that table.
And Frank..." Charlie took a deep, shaky breath.
"He was our father. This house, your house, is our home.
It always has been." Charlie's eyes were burning but her voice held.
"Ed and Diane may have brought us into the world.
But you and Frank are the ones who taught us how to live in it, and how to live in it well. "
Katie reached across the table and took Helen's hand. "She's right," Katie whispered. "You're our mom, Helen. You always have been."
Helen pressed her free hand over her mouth. The sound she made was small and broken and full of twelve years of love that had never asked to be named.
"My girls," she managed. "My sweet, brave girls."
She reached for both of them, and both of the Wickett girls got up and moved to Helen, wrapping their arms around her, all three of them holding each other close around that yellow table in the kitchen that smelled like cookies and lemonade and memories.
They cried together because they were, at last, fully acknowledged.
"I am so proud of you," Helen said when they finally pulled apart. "Both of you. What you did tonight was the bravest thing I've seen in a long time, and I nursed men through a world war."
Katie made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.