Page 80 of Every Almost

She looked out over the congregation and saw so many of the faces that she'd seen countless times around the Beckmans' home. Smiles and shining eyes filled with tears, but tears of remembering an incredible man, and the mark of love he left on their community.

"The best lesson Frank ever taught me came the night before I left for college. He told me to 'take something far.'" She paused, and smiled as her tears finally broke and trailed down her cheeks. "When I asked him what it was he wanted me to take far, he looked at me and said, simply?—"

"Life."

Charlie stepped back from the lectern, readying to raise her voice up loud in the acoustic sanctuary. "To Frank. For taking life far."

Charlie stepped down from the lectern. The church was silent for a long moment except for Helen's quiet crying. And then the church's guests began to applaud, with shouts of "To Frank!" heard here and there. Charlie walked back to her seat and Katie took her hand when she sat down. Helen reached over and gripped Charlie's other hand, not letting go for the rest of the service.

After the service,people came to the Beckmans' house. Helen's kitchen was filled with casseroles and pie plates and neighbors saying the things neighbors say. Charlie stayed, accepting condolences from people who remembered her as the girl who fixed their toasters, shaking hands and nodding and saying "thank you" until the words lost all their meaning.

Eventually, she escaped into the garage.

The Cutlass was there, right where it had always been. Helen's car now. Charlie stood in the doorway and breathed in, and she felt her chest constrict hard enough that she gripped the doorframe to hold herself up.

She took off Frank's coat and hung it carefully on the hook by the door. She rolled up the sleeves of her white shirt, walked to the Cutlass, opened the hood, and looked at the engine.

She could see what Frank had been working on. A loose hose clamp on the radiator line he'd been tightening. Surface corrosion on the battery terminal he'd started to clean, she could even see the wire brush still sitting on the fender where he'd set it down. And a new serpentine belt, still in its packaging on the bench, waiting to replace the one with the hairline crack he'd spotted.

Frank's last project. The things he'd been in the middle of when he sat down in the lawn chair and didn't get back up.

She found Frank's toolbox under the bench, right where he always kept it. She picked up where he'd left off.

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 lockedit, 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.