Page 33 of Every Almost

"That's what you do when people need you."

Katie thought about that for a long time. She didn't know the wordxenoanthropologyyet, or that she would one day study how cultures sustain themselves through crisis. She just knew Helen Beckman was someone who stayed when things were hard, and that felt like the most important thing a person could ever do.

It wasno surprise that Helen was someone who noticed things. She'd spent years reading patients and understanding the words underneath the sentences spoken to her when she was treating men in the hospital.

She never lost the skill.

That's why she noticed the mornings that Charlie came to the house with shadows under her eyes, her hands not quite steady around the hot chocolate Frank always handed to her when she and Katie walked in together. She noticed the way Charlie moved slower on those days, like her body hadn't quite caught up with her decision to be awake.

Helen never asked about it. She just made sure there was a plate of something warm waiting, and that the kitchen was quiet so that if Charlie wanted to sit at the table with her and Katie and not talk for twenty minutes before going out to the garage, that was fine. The chair was there. The milk was there. Helen and Frank and Katie were there.

One afternoon, Katie was at the yellow table doing homework and Charlie was staring out the window, not really seeing anything with her fingers wrapped around a mug of cocoa she hadn't touched. Helen sat down across from her but said nothing, instead, sitting the way you sit with someone when you know they're carrying something but they're not quite ready to put it down.

Charlie looked over at her after a while. Helen smiled, and that smile said everything to Charlie that it needed to without a single word.

It was a Sunday afternoon,a few weeks after the Cutlass and the hot chocolates and the stories had started, when Frank put on the television in the living room and said, "Girls! Come on in here." At that moment, the sound of elephants stampeding alerted Frank that the girls were on their way in from the kitchen, Helen following just behind them with a bowl of popcorn in her hands for them.

"I want to show you somethingspecial." He instructed each of them all to sit on the sofa, including Helen, taking a seat against the left side himself. Katie sat in the middle of everyone and held the bowl of popcorn, hands reaching around her and over her to grab pieces. Katie liked this because any stray pieceswould always fall right into her lap, up for grabs, and she had a prime spot to grab first.

As they finished settling, a crescendo of music started on the television screen.

The something special Frank wanted to show them was a television show calledStar Trek.Reruns came on every Sunday on a local channel, and Frank had picked this exact one that he'd seen before specifically because it had a good look at the infamous ship captained by James T. Kirk of Starfleet under the United Federation of Planets. Charlie and Katie sat mesmerized by the images flashing across on the screen. Frank beamed at their excitement.

The Starship Enterprise appeared on screen for the first time, sweeping through stars, and Frank leaned forward.

"Now. Do you know what that ship's called?" Frank watched as Charlie scanned the television screen, using her knowledge of Frank's stories that every ship and every plane and every military vehicle always identified itself on its hull. Charlie tried to catch the hull markings against the ship flying up and down and fast through space. When her eyes went wide, he knew she had seen it. She spun around against Katie so fast the popcorn bowl nearly went flying.

"That's theEnterprise!" She looked at Frank with her mouth open. "'The Big E!'" Charlie exclaimed, remembering the nickname Frank had told her time and time again about the beloved warship of the United States Navy. "You served on therealEnterprise, Mr. Beckman?!"

Frank grinned wide, his smile taking thirty years off his face. "You betcha. And it was a hell of a ride."

Helen swatted his arm. "Language, Frank."

"They're going to hear worse, Helen."

"Not from you they're not."

Katie was already glued to the screen, watching the crew walk through corridors that looked nothing like a real ship but everything like an adventure. Charlie was just as absorbed. She studied the way the ship moved, the way the nacelles glowed, the way the whole thing was designed to look like it could work. Her engineer brain was already pulling it apart, already askinghow.

It may have been the best Sunday of all, for all of them.

After that, they watched a rerun every Sunday. It became a ritual, right alongside the garage and the kitchen table and the cookies and cocoa and popcorn bowl in Katie's lap. Frank and Helen and Charlie and Katie on the Beckman sofa, Star Trek on the television, Helen providing commentary on the medical inaccuracies ("That is NOT how you treat a plasma burn, for heaven's sake") and Frank pointing out every time the Enterprise did something his Enterprise had done first.

After one of those Sundays, Charlie spent the next few days building a communicator out of a transistor radio and a flip-top cigarette case she'd found at a yard sale. It didn't communicate with anything, but it looked just like the ones the crew of the Starship Enterprise had, and that wasclose enough. She presented it to Katie with great ceremony, and Katie carried it around for a week, flipping it open in the grocery store and the backyard and once, disastrously, in church, making phaser sounds that echoed off the vaulted ceiling while Diane went a shade of red that Charlie didn't know human skin could produce. But boy did it make for a good story to tell Frank and Helen a few days later.

When Frank decidedit was time to show Charlie the plane, he went to talk to Ed and Diane first. Charlie walked with him tospeak with her parents, nervous, rubbing her fingers inside her jeans pocket to try to channel her anxiety.

Frank's voice, measured and polite, explained that he'd like to take the girls out to the municipal airport to see the plane he'd had for almost twenty years, the one he'd been working on for the same amount of time. He explained that it would be a nice afternoon trip, educational, and that he'd have both girls back before dinner.

There was a pause. Then Ed's voice, flat and already moving on, "Sure, fine."

And Diane's, in the particular pitch she reserved for neighbors, "That's so nice of you, Frank. The girls will love that."

Charlie waited for the follow-up.What kind of plane? How far is the airport? Will you be flying it? Will my daughters be flying 10,000 feet in the air with a neighbor?!Any of them. Literally any of them. A twelve-year-old could come up withone question.But the follow-ups never came, because in this house, inquiry was treated like a luxury item, only used on special occasions and never on the daughters. Charlie noticed it. And she wondered if Frank did, too.

Frank said thank you, and walked back across the driveways, Charlie right beside him as she heard her front door close.

When they got back to the garage, she stared at the Cutlass's engine block for a long time after that. Frank looked at Charlie as she stared at the engine. He could see it on her face that she noticed the lack of conversation that had occurred between him and her parents. He didn't comment on it, not then. He just said, "We're going Saturday. I'll make sure Helen tells your sister."