9. On a Thursday #3
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA. America's space program. And in the same city she'd spent her time in since arriving in California, right in Pasadena. Ten minutes from her and Katie's apartment.
This was the place that had sent Voyager past the rings of Saturn, the place that was building the machines that would someday put wheels on Mars, and they wanted Charlie for the Advanced Propulsion Concepts group.
Charlie hung up the phone and sat on the kitchen floor for five minutes. Katie found her there and thought something was wrong until she saw Charlie's face.
"Charlie?" Katie asked, sitting on the floor next to her, a mixture of trepidation and interest on her face, as though her emotions were going to overtake her at any moment. "Who was that on the phone?"
"JPL," Charlie said in a daze. Katie's eyes went wide, but Charlie didn't continue.
"And...?" A moment passed between them, Charlie still sitting on the floor, staring straight ahead, Katie practically bouncing. "Charlie!"
A smile spread across Charlie's face. "I start in two weeks."
Katie screamed so loud the neighbors knocked on the wall, and she hugged Charlie so tight she thought a rib might crack.
But Katie's excitement triggered her own, and they spent the better part of the evening on into the early hours of the morning celebrating with takeout, Fleetwood Mac, and laughter.
The neighbors knocked on the wall a total of three different times that night, but the girls couldn't care less.
Charlie started at JPL in February of 1989.
She walked onto the campus for the first time and looked up at the San Gabriel Mountains rising above the buildings.
She thought about Frank and the garage and the day he told her she belonged near engines bigger than his.
This was the place. These were the engines.
This was where she was always meant to be.
And somewhere beneath the pride, she felt the quiet weight of the Challenger.
She reminded herself that the reason she was here wasn't just to build, but to build safely.
She had taken her first step toward making sure no one else's dream ended seventy-three seconds after ignition.
And lo and behold, she ended up being good at it.
Hell, she was better than good. Within weeks, her supervisor had moved her off routine analysis and into experimental work because Charlie kept solving problems that weren't assigned to her.
She stayed late, she came in early, she volunteered for projects nobody wanted because they were too hard or too strange, and she made them work.
The lab started calling her "the mechanic" because she insisted on getting her hands on hardware instead of just running simulations.
She couldn't help it. She needed to feel the way a machine breathed or hummed or pulsed to understand them. She always had.
She and Katie called Helen every Wednesday and they ate dinner together most nights, trading stories about their days about Katie's graduate cohort and Charlie's lab.
She went to The Boulevard on Saturday nights with friends and played Rumours on the turntable often.
She cooked terrible pasta while Katie critiqued her technique from the couch.
The apartment was small and noisy and full, and Charlie was happy.
It was the first time in her life she could say that without a qualification. Not happy despite. Not happy except. Just happy.
Then the call came. Almost three years to the day since Frank had passed.
It was a Sunday in March, only a few weeks into Charlie's time at JPL. Helen's voice was steady, but it was the same steadiness Charlie had heard once before, the night Helen called about Frank. The kind that's steady because it has to be in order to get through a conversation.
"I need to tell you girls something."
The cancer had been growing for a while, it turned out. The routine tests the year before showed nothing had been there yet, but the doctors thought it had been hiding the way cancers sometimes do, quiet and patient, waiting for the body to stop looking before it moved.
By the time they found it, it was advanced.
The doctor in Shelbyville referred Helen to a specialist in Indianapolis, and the specialist confirmed what the doctor suspected.
Treatment was possible but unlikely to change the outcome significantly.
Helen had listened to all of it, asked her questions, and then told the specialist she'd think about it.
She wanted to talk to her girls before she finalized her decision, but she told them that she didn't have to think long about what she wanted.
"I'm not going to spend what I have left sick from treatments that might buy me a few months," she told Katie and Charlie on the phone.
Her voice was calm and final, the voice she used when she'd made a decision and wasn't interested in arguments.
"I'm going to spend it living. With my girls, when I can.
And in my kitchen, my garden, and my home. "
Charlie had the phone in her hand, held between her and Katie. She closed her eyes then, knowing there was nothing she could do, nothing Katie could do. And truthfully, there wasn't anything she wanted to do. This was Helen's decision, and she understood her reasons.
Katie was next to her, listening. She leaned against Charlie and Charlie put her arm around her.
The girls spoke at the same time.
"Okay."
"Okay, Mom."
"Thank you, girls."
"We love you," Katie said.
"I love you, too. It will be okay, girls. I promise." Charlie believed Helen. It would be okay, someday. She just wished it didn't have to be after such pain to come for all of them so quickly. But she knew it was the way it had to be.
Because Helen had made her decision, and Helen Beckman didn't change her mind.
Through the rest of 1989, they kept Helen close.
They called more than Helen wanted them to.
They sent letters. Katie drove to Shelbyville twice, staying for a week each time, sleeping in her room, cooking meals that had gotten significantly better under Helen's years of supervision.
Charlie came when she could, but JPL was new and demanding, and the guilt of not being there ate at her in ways she tried not to show.
Helen waved it off every time. "You have a job to do, Charlie.
An important job. I want you to be there, changing the world.
Frank didn't raise you to sit around worrying about an old woman.
" The invocation of Frank's name was deliberate, and it worked, because Charlie couldn't argue with Frank even when he was gone.
Katie and Charlie passed the Wickett house on every visit, it was inevitable. Ed's car was sometimes in the driveway and sometimes not. Helen mentioned once that Diane had asked about the girls at church. Charlie changed the subject, and Helen let her.
Helen came to California one more time, in early October, timed so she could be there for Charlie's birthday on the third.
She arrived with a card signed 'Love, Mom,' the first time she'd written the word in her own hand, and a small wrapped package that turned out to be a framed photograph of Frank standing next to the Cub, squinting into the sun, grinning.
Charlie held the photograph for a long time before she could speak.
She kept that birthday card with her from then on as well, never leaving her bag.
It was a short trip, but one where Helen got to tour JPL, ensure the girls had kept up with the cleaning in the apartment, and to dip her toes into the Pacific one more time. The water was perfect, but Helen couldn't stand for long, though that didn't stop her from enjoying it while she could.
"This is worth it," she said, closing her eyes against the setting sun. "Completely worth it."
She tired faster than before, often needing breaks or naps in the day.
On the last night, all three of them sat together in the apartment eating chicken piccata that Charlie had finally learned to make from Helen's recipe.
It wasn't as good as Helen's; it never would be.
But Helen ate every bite and said nothing about the seasoning, which was how Charlie knew it was close.
Helen flew home, and Charlie and Katie drove her to the airport.
This time the hug in the terminal lasted longer.
By mid-autumn, Helen's decline was visible. Not dramatic, but noticeable. She was slower on the phone. She mentioned the neighbor bringing her groceries. She fell asleep during their Wednesday calls and would wake up mid-sentence and pretend she hadn't, and both girls pretended to believe her.
Katie went to Shelbyville over her late October break. She called Charlie the night she arrived, and her voice was different.
"She's smaller," Katie said. "I don't know how else to describe it. She's just... less of her fills the room."
Charlie pressed her hand over her eyes. "How much time?"
"I don't know. She won't talk about it. She just keeps making me casseroles." Charlie felt a laugh erupt out of her at the sentiment, and before they knew it, they were both laughing, until it turned on them and changed to silent tears.
When Katie returned after that trip, she had a proposal for Charlie.
"After Thanksgiving, I want to stay in Shelbyville until she's gone."
Charlie heard the words, but it took her time to slow it down and process what Katie was saying. Once it made sense, she knew it was the best plan, but that feeling in the pit of her stomach continued to eat away at her, and she tried her best to ignore it.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
Charlie looked up at Katie, her eyes sad, but all the understanding in the world written on her face. "Okay."
? SHELBYVILLE, INDIANA, UNITED STATES?
Before they left to drive to Shelbyville for Thanksgiving, there was no question the end was near.