9. On a Thursday #2
"You're not too old," Charlie said. "Besides, you still haven't seen where we live.
It's really nice this time of year. I mean, the beaches are incredible.
Blue water just like Frank used to talk about.
" Helen smiled at the mention of Frank, and Charlie could see that she was starting to win the debate.
"We'd love to show you everything we're doing out there.
I could show you UCLA, Charlie could take you to Caltech's campus and show you all the buildings.
It's actually really pretty there. Maybe not as nice as UCLA, but it stands a chance.
" This time, it was Charlie who rolled up her napkin and threw it at her sister.
Katie stuck out her tongue when Charlie clearly missed. Helen laughed at the pair of them.
"Oh, girls, you know I would love that," Helen said. "I just don't know if I can handle that big of a trip. It's a lot of miles and a lot of time, and I don't know how much more of either I can add to my ol' speedometer."
Charlie grinned.
"That's a mechanic joke!"
"Well, I've been surrounded by one, if not two, for the better part of fifty years!" Helen quipped. Charlie grabbed her hand across the table and kissed it, Helen gripping her fingers tightly.
"Please, Helen," Charlie said. She could see Helen debating it in her own mind, but still teetering on the precipice, not seeing a clear landing quite yet. Then Charlie got an idea.
"What if you just come with us on the trip back? In the car?"
"In the car?" Helen asked, her eyes going wide.
"Oh yeah!" Katie added. "We could go back altogether in the car!
Motels and diner stops for meals; find random roadside attractions and see them for ourselves!
Charlie! Remember how we wanted to stop and see the world's biggest ball of twine?
And I mean, I know there are others, like—" Katie was heading down a rabbit hole, but Charlie loved her enthusiasm.
Helen, on the other hand, looked a bit queasy.
"A road trip. Just us," Charlie said, pausing Katie's list of things like the world's smallest cheese cutter as possible stops.
"Yeah. Just us. All the way to California," Katie added.
"Please say 'yes.'"
Helen's eyes bounced back and forth between Charlie and Katie and saw the pleading look in both their faces. Charlie watched as the argument battled in Helen's mind. But in a single instant she saw her expression change when Helen relented, and Charlie knew they had her.
"Oh, all right, girls," Helen said, causing Katie to jump in place and Charlie to stand up from her chair, move to Helen, and wrap her in a hug. Moments later, Katie was there, too, arms around both of them. "But does it always have to be diner meals?" Charlie and Katie laughed.
Within an hour, Helen was packing a suitcase while muttering about the indignity of being strong-armed by these children.
When they talked about this moment during the holidays later that year, Charlie and Katie mentioned that they knew Helen was always going to agree with them.
When Helen asked how it was they knew so assuredly, Charlie said they had learned their persuasion skills from Helen herself after all, so it was bound to work.
Helen smiled at Charlie with a twinkle in her eye, patted her on the cheek, and responded with "That's damn right. "
The drive back was three days. Helen sat in the back seat of the Plymouth, and Katie twisted around from the front to talk to her for most of the way.
They played Katie's mixtapes and Helen tolerated them.
They played Rumours and Helen actually liked it.
They stopped at diners and Helen critiqued everything, as expected.
So Charlie tried to look for restaurants with a bit more variety and, though they did find some and ate better, Helen still believed that no restaurant on Earth could match her kitchen, and she was probably right.
In California, they showed Helen everything.
The apartment, which Helen walked through slowly, touching the countertops and looking at the pictures on the fridge and the textbooks stacked on every surface.
She didn't say anything, just stood in the middle of the small living room and looked around.
Then she turned to the girls and said, "You built this together. "
It wasn't a question, but a recognition. One of many that had happened within the walls of that very apartment.
Within the hour, Helen had her sleeves rolled up and was teaching them to clean behind the refrigerator, scrub the inside of the oven, and attack the tile grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush and baking soda.
"If this is your home," she said, on her knees beside the bathtub with Charlie handing her supplies like a surgical nurse, "then you take care of it properly. "
They visited the Caltech campus, where Helen stood in the quad and looked at the buildings and said, "Frank would have loved this."
They went to UCLA, where Katie walked her through the anthropology building and introduced her to the professors.
Charlie could see Helen ensure that she shook the hands of each of those professors and lectured them about the importance of teaching Katie properly.
The professors took it well, at least in Charlie's opinion. Katie turned the color of a tomato.
They took Helen to the ocean. She stood at the edge of the water, barefoot, her shoes dangling from her fingers, and she looked out at the Pacific for a long time. Charlie and Katie both stood next to her, looking out at the water and absorbing its sounds and sights before them.
"Frank always said the Pacific was the most beautiful thing he ever saw," she said. "After me, of course."
Charlie and Katie smiled at that.
"That sounds like Dad," Katie said, and the word landed in the air between them like something that had been waiting a long time to be said out loud.
Charlie looked at Katie. Katie looked at Charlie. They'd been doing this for a while now, calling Frank and Helen "Mom" and "Dad" when it was just the two of them. Whether they were in the apartment or in conversation, the words had simply started fitting one day and never stopped.
Helen turned to look at Katie. "What did you say?"
Charlie jumped in. "It's how we've started talking about you two," Charlie said. "It just... happened. And it stuck. Do you mind?"
Helen stared at her. Then Charlie saw tears well in her eyes.
"Do I mind?" Helen whispered. A single tear rolled down her cheek.
But then her face scrunched up and her brows knitted together.
"But are you both sure?" Her voice was barely above a whisper, smaller than Charlie had ever heard Helen Beckman speak.
Katie sniffled and nodded. "It's what I want."
"It's what I want, too," Charlie said. Then, a deep breath. "Mom."
Helen grabbed Charlie and wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulders before turning them both and reaching for Katie.
Katie rushed in and they embraced one another on the shore of the Pacific.
Basking in the completeness that came from this official recognition; another one.
They could even feel Frank was there in the roll of the waves, splashing against their feet, tickling them with his approval.
"I love the both of you, so very much," Helen said.
"We love you too, Mom," Katie replied, trying the word on for size. Helen squeezed them both tighter, and the three of them stayed like that, holding each other on the sandy edge of California with the sun setting over the horizon, bathing them in sparkling gold.
Helen flew home at the end of the week. Charlie and Katie drove her to the airport, and Helen held them each in turn in the terminal, hugging them tightly and kissing their cheeks.
"Thank you," Helen said. "For showing me your lives."
"Thank you for always being an important part of them," Charlie said.
On the drive back from the airport, Charlie battled with feelings she couldn't understand.
She felt an immense sense of love and belonging, knowing that Helen was now a piece of her she could hold forever in their way.
But, at times, she gripped the steering wheel and swallowed hard, because something about that hug in the terminal had felt off, and she didn't know why.
A hunch you could call it. But over what?
"You okay?" Katie asked after Charlie had battled between the emotions a couple of times over.
Charlie nodded. A moment passed before she decided to ask Katie.
"Did you... get the feeling something was different when we hugged Mom goodbye?" Katie's face fell flat.
"Yeah, I did, but I thought it was just me, so I didn't say anything."
"What do you think it was?"
"I don't know..."
They both stared out the windshield, Charlie watching the traffic and Katie watching the skyscrapers of Los Angeles pass by.
"Maybe it's because we've spent so much time with her, and now we had to say goodbye?"
"Maybe," Charlie said.
"Do you think we should ask?" Katie turned towards Charlie. Charlie thought about it, but figured that if Helen hadn't said anything to them, there probably wasn't anything to worry about. She said as much to Katie.
"We can make sure to call her every day, though, if you'd like."
"Yeah," Katie replied. "I think that would make me feel better. At least in the beginning." And then the conversation ended, nothing more to say, nothing more to discuss. But something still sat in the back of Charlie's mind, unresolved. She chose not to look at it.
That fall, Charlie finished her doctorate and spent the winter sending applications to every propulsion lab in the country.
Most of them sent back polite rejections.
Caltech's career office told her to be patient.
Charlie had never been patient about anything in her life and wasn't exactly prepared to start now.
Then JPL called.