If You Can Get It

by Brendan Hodge

  “It’s not hard,” averred Katie. “You just have to be patient and do it like on YouTube.”

  The Thanksgiving dinner, too, was a success. Katie devoted herself to the turkey, which she had brined for two days. Jen took charge of the mashed potatoes. Tom and Pat arrived just after noon, bearing the two signature family dishes: green-bean casserole topped with french-fried onions and a concoction involving Cool Whip, green Jell-O, and marshmallows. Conversation was ebullient. The sisters showed off their new house, and the parents were in the throes of their own real estate excitement, having put their house on the market three days before.

  “The way the market is these days,” Pat explained. “You really can’t list too soon. If we’re lucky, it’ll sell within the next six months or so. After New Year’s, we’ll get into doing some serious looking for a new place closer to you girls.”

  The moment, however, that all would remember in years to come did not come until late in the evening, after the dishes had been put in to wash and the football game was concluded, when Pat and Tom were making noises about getting on the road. Pat’s cell phone rang, and as she answered it, her shock became obvious to all those in the room.

  “Yes? Oh. Really? Well, that’s—”

  She turned off her phone at last and tucked it away carefully in her purse before facing the rest of her family. “That was Susan, our real estate agent. A couple emailed an offer on the house to her this morning. A full-price offer. I never—I don’t know what we’ll do. I hadn’t even thought we’d start looking till after Christmas, but they want to close as quickly as possible.”

  Silence reigned for a moment, and then Jen heard herself saying, “Well, you’re always welcome to stay here for a few weeks until you can get into a new place.”

  8

  “What were you thinking?” Katie demanded later that night, after their parents had left. “They’re a lot easier to get along with as visitors than they were as . . . as parents, but that’s no reason to invite them to move in.”

  “They’d just be staying for a couple weeks between when their house closes and when they get into a new place,” reassured Jen, who was reclining on the couch while drinking an after-dinner Manhattan. “They wouldn’t be running the place.”

  “No, Jen, you don’t get it. You haven’t lived with them in more than ten years. It’s going to be terrible.”

  “You won’t be living with them. They’ll be visiting us. It’s my house, and I’m sure they’ll be mindful of that.”

  “You’ll see,” Katie predicted darkly. “I’m going to go get a beer before the Gestapo moves in.”

  “Oh, come on. You want any melodrama with that beer?”

  Katie returned with a bottle and sprawled on the easy chair. “Where are we going to put them?”

  “That,” Jen conceded, “is a much better objection. I feel like we have all kinds of space because I’ve never had a stand-alone house before. But with two bedrooms and one bathroom, it will definitely be tight.”

  “How about that little room you set up as your office? We could put them in there.”

  “That’s awfully small to put a full-size bed in.”

  “If we put them here in the living room, we could never do anything at night.”

  “I think we’d have to give them your room, and you’d have to move in with me.”

  Katie made a humphing sound.

  “Look, it’s nothing personal. I just don’t see what else we could do.”

  “I just painted that room.”

  “It’d be for only a week or two, if it even happens. Trust me, they’re not going to be eager to be crowded into this house with us for any longer than they have to be. And remember, it may not even happen. This is just if this offer goes through and they close before they’re able to get into a new place. And if they want to. Heck, they may be talking in the car right now about how they don’t want to be crammed into this tiny house with us.”

  “I bet they’re not,” Katie prophesied darkly.

  Perhaps as a distraction from her fears, Katie spent the rest of the long weekend throwing herself into her next project, the bungalow’s one bathroom, which had both the charm and limitations of not having been visibly updated since the fifties. She took Jen’s credit card to Sherwin-Williams in downtown Johnson and bought paint at the Black Friday sale, then braved the crowds at Home Depot to return with a new showerhead and what seemed, for such a small room, a vast array of drop cloths, tapes, caulks, fillers, and other supplies.

  “Will I be able to take my shower in here tomorrow morning?” Jen demanded Sunday night, as Katie was recaulking around the bathtub.

  “That’s why I’m doing this now,” Katie explained. “It has to cure overnight before it can get wet.”

  “Okay. I’m happy to fund all these projects, and you’re doing great work, but keep in mind that we have only one bathroom.”

  “How about if while I keep that in mind, you go get me a can of Coke,” Katie suggested, carefully smoothing the line of caulk with one finger.

  Jen considered a retort but instead fetched her the Coke.

  It was thus with concern but not complete surprise that Jen received a text from Katie on Monday afternoon: “make sure you go to the bathroom before leaving work”.

  She called Katie instantly. “Katie, what happened?”

  “Uh, this isn’t a good time,” Katie informed her. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. Just make sure you use the bathroom before leaving.”

  “Katie . . .” Jen warned.

  “Bye!” Katie hung up.

  When Jen got home, she went straight to the bathroom to see the damage. Katie was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, doing something on her iPhone. In the center of the room stood the toilet, resting on a pile of newspapers. Where the toilet had stood, was a disturbing hole in the tile.

  “What is this?” Jen demanded.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Katie said defensively.

  “But . . . why did you take it out?”

  “I was going to caulk around it. But then it was bugging me that it rocked a little bit. I tried to tighten the bolts, but they were really rusty, and one of them broke. And the book said replacing the bolt was really easy.”

  “And it wasn’t?”

  “Once I got it off, the connection wasn’t like the one in the book.”

  “Katie, this is serious. What are we going to do? Crouch over the hole?”

  “It’ll be fine: I’ve already got a guy coming. He promised he’d be here tonight.”

  Jen relaxed slightly. “So, who’s the guy you’ve got coming?”

  “I’ll show you,” Katie said, leading the way into the kitchen. “I couldn’t find anyone good online here in Johnson. There are plumbers, but this isn’t exactly a plumbing problem. But then I found this.” She held out a church bulletin from Saint Anne’s that their parents had left behind.

  “You called the church?”

  “No, look, there are ads on the back. See? This one.” She pointed to a larger square that said, in a chiseled font that would have seemed more appropriate to a classical ruin, “Paul Burke, handyman” and then noted in smaller letters, “Bathroom and Kitchen Renovations; Cabinetry and Carpentry; Painting. Historic home specialist. Fair prices. (Parishioner).”

  “He said he’s finishing up another job, but I told him we had nothing but a hole in the floor for a toilet, and he said he’d come tonight. He doesn’t think it’ll take long to fix.”

  Jen was not sure what she had expected—perhaps a heavy man in his fifties—but when she answered the door about an hour later, what she found was a man her own age, or perhaps a little younger, with black hair and a full beard, battered work boots, a flannel shirt tucked into paint-spattered jeans, and suspenders.

  “Hello, my name is Paul Burke,” he said. He spoke slowly, but in a way that conveyed an instinctive formality rather than a dull wit. “I believe we spoke earlier about a toilet?”

&nb
sp; “That was my sister, Katie. She went out to pick up dinner and find a bathroom. I’ll show you the problem.”

  She led him to the bathroom and pointed to the toilet and the gaping hole. “Katie said she was trying to tighten the bolts, and one broke, so she decided to take it off and replace the bolts like in the Home Depot book, but it wasn’t put together the way she expected.”

  Paul nodded and bent down next to the hole to look more carefully.

  “Yes. I see. The floor under the tile is cement, and the bolts are set into that. You see that often in houses this age. Nineteen twenties?”

  “Nineteen nineteen. It’s a Sears kit house.”

  “Those are good. Very well laid out.” He poked at the remaining bolts. “None of these are very solid. They ought to be replaced. That will take some time, however. Let me show you what I can do.”

  He pulled a round package out of his bag and unwrapped a ring of black rubber and some disgusting yellow compound.

  “I can put a new wax ring on it tonight and set the toilet on it with the remaining bolts. It will be stable enough for you to use if you are careful with it. Tomorrow afternoon I can come back with a brass plate that will fit this hole and put that down with epoxy. Then I can slot modern bolts into that and fix the toilet down permanently.”

  “So long as we can use it tonight.”

  “It will be fine. The work tomorrow will take a couple of hours to dry, but you will be able to use the toilet tomorrow night.”

  “That would be great.”

  Paul pressed the ring into place over the hole, then set the toilet down on it and replaced the nuts on the remaining bolts.

  “Thank you so much for coming tonight,” Jen said. “I was ready to kill Katie when I saw the toilet up and that hole in the floor. How much do I owe you for tonight?”

  “You don’t need to pay anything until I finish,” Paul assured her. “Let me give you one of my cards.”

  The card was magnetic and featured the same classical lettering as his ad, in this case complemented by a line drawing of a Doric column. Jen put it on the fridge.

  “May I ask how you heard about me?” Paul inquired.

  “My parents brought home a church bulletin from Saint Anne’s when they were here visiting a few weeks ago, and my sister saw your ad on the back.”

  Paul nodded.

  “It says that you do kitchen renovations. We have one of those in our future. Katie was talking about trying to do it herself, but after this fiasco with the toilet, I don’t want to let her try to build cabinets.”

  Paul looked around the kitchen with consideration. “What kind of renovation do you have in mind?”

  “It seems like it should have an island, to be a little more modern. And new lights and maybe replacing these old cabinets. I left aside a fair amount of money for working on the kitchen when I bought the house.”

  Paul moved around the kitchen, opening cupboard doors, trying the drawers, peering at the plumbing under the sink. “It would be an interesting project,” he said. “I see you have new appliances. Do you want to make a place to put in a dishwasher?”

  “Yes!” said Jen. “I don’t know how the previous owner never had one. Do you work on designs as well as doing the work?”

  Paul nodded.

  “I’d love to get an estimate on all this.”

  “The kitchen will require some planning. I can help you with that for free.”

  “I’d be happy to pay. I’m sure the design is a lot of work.”

  Paul shrugged. “I’m not a professional designer. I think of drawing plans as a sort of detailed estimate. I am happy to just charge for the actual labor. We could talk about it after I finish with the toilet.”

  “If you’re putting work into making a plan, it seems like you should charge even if you don’t call it ‘designing’. There’s no reason to be providing value you don’t monetize,” Jen said, her work instincts kicking in.

  “What do you do?” Paul asked.

  “I’m a product-line manager at Schneider and Sons.”

  Paul nodded. “That’s a very good company.”

  “Do you use their tools?” Jen asked.

  “I would if I could afford them.”

  Jen thanked him again as she showed him to the door. Katie was coming up the walk, balancing several bags. Paul stopped on the porch to hold the door open for her.

  “Was that the repair guy?” Katie asked. “He’s younger than I expected from the phone.”

  Jen nodded.

  “Kind of cute too,” Katie added in an undertone. “In a hipster kind of way.”

  Paul was finishing up work in the bathroom by the time Jen got home from work the next day.

  “This should be pretty well set up,” he said. “I used a fast-drying epoxy and let it sit for two hours before bolting the toilet to it. I told Katie to give it a day or two before caulking it.”

  “Jen,” Katie interjected. “Paul does electrical work too. I want to get a nicer light for this bathroom, and he could put it up for us. Do you mind? And he says it would be easy to replace the old two-prong outlets with three-prong.”

  “Do you mind?” Jen asked.

  Paul shrugged. “It’s an easy job. If you pick up the fixture and outlets you want, putting them up is a matter of a few hours.”

  “When would be a good time for you?”

  Paul’s brow furrowed slightly. “This week I am very busy. And I will need to turn the power off, so it should be during daylight. Would you mind if I came Saturday morning?”

  “I certainly don’t mind,” Jen said. “You don’t have to work the weekend just for us, though. Next week is fine if that’s better for you.”

  Paul shrugged. “I usually work six days a week. This time of year especially, people are in a rush to get projects done before Christmas. Then there will be a few weeks when no one calls unless it is an emergency, until the new year.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind Saturday, that’s fine with us. Let me get you a check for this job,” Jen led the way into the kitchen and got her checkbook out of her purse. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Seventy-five dollars.” Paul pulled a yellow receipt pad out of his bag and wrote out a bill, which he handed her.

  “Is that all? You had to come two times.”

  “It was really a small job.”

  “Okay. No wonder you’re busy. People must love your rates. I was sure it would be at least a few hundred.”

  Paul spread his hands. “Too many people overcharge. It isn’t right to charge people more than it’s worth just because they don’t know how to do the work themselves.”

  “Well, there’s a lot that we don’t know how to do, and I’d be happy to have you back for lots more hours. Let me give you my phone number.” Jen retrieved one of her business cards from her purse and wrote her and Katie’s cell phone numbers on the back of it. “Let me know if your schedule changes, and otherwise we’ll expect you Saturday morning. No matter how lazy we are, we’ll be up and about by nine.”

  “I will see you then.”

  Katie spent the week doing an impressive job of painting the bathroom—creamy-white beadboard and cabinets, pale teal walls—as if determined to redeem herself after the toilet incident. By Saturday, it was finished and pristine, except for the box sitting on the floor with the new light fixture she had picked out.

  Jen awoke early Saturday and went for a run in the frosty, early-morning light of the first day of December. When she got back, Katie had the coffee on and was mixing muffin batter.

  “You better go get your shower now,” Katie advised. “You don’t want to be tying up the bathroom when Paul gets here in half an hour. I’ll have these muffins in the oven in a few minutes. Do you want chocolate chips or blueberries?”

  “You’re hopeless,” Jen complained. “I get out of bed early to try and stay fit, and you’re mixing up muffins.”

  “If you want to go gnaw on some celery instead, be my guest. I don’t
see you passing up anything I cook.”

  “I can’t! It’s so good.”

  “Then why are you complaining? You’re thinner than I am.”

  “Only because I work out and watch what I eat. At my age, if I ate like you, I’d look like Mom. Genetics bite, kiddo, and I’m not ready to settle into a comfortably soft middle age.”

  “And if I knew what was good for me, I’d get in shape now because it’s harder later. Blah, blah, blah. Blueberries or chocolate chips, Miss Taut Thighs?”

  “Blueberries.” Jen stalked off toward the shower, feeling that moral victory had somehow remained elusive.

  Paul arrived just when the muffins had gotten cool enough to come out of the papers cleanly.

  “We’re having a late breakfast,” Jen explained. “Can we get you anything? Cup of coffee? Muffin?”

  “I already ate,” Paul excused himself. “Really, I can just start work.”

  “Oh, come on,” objected Katie. “You must at least want coffee.” She poured him a cup. “Here.”

  Paul accepted the cup that was thrust into his hands, and Katie put a muffin in front of him, which he eyed speculatively.

  “I’m sorry there’s nowhere to sit in here,” Jen said. “That’s one of the things I want to change with the new kitchen design. Right now, we just kind of stand around if we don’t go to the dining room.”

  Paul took a bite. “Mmm. You make them from scratch?” he asked.

  “Always,” said Katie with some pride.

  “You said things are usually slow for you during the holidays,” said Jen. “Would that be a good time to work on some kitchen plans and get started on that?”

  Paul nodded. “In another couple weeks, people will stop calling, and I will have a lot of time on my hands. That would be a good time for planning a big project. The last few years, I’ve just used that time to catch up on projects around the farm if the work isn’t too bad.”

  “You have a farm?” Katie asked.

  “A very small one: seventy acres. Eventually it will be a full-time sustainable livestock farm, but right now, I just have a couple dozen goats and some chickens. I want to get cows, but cows take a lot more attention.”