If You Can Get It

by Brendan Hodge

  “Katie, what happened?” Jen asked, in her most gentle tone.

  “Nothing!” Katie shouted. “Nothing happened. Nothing, okay? Nothing, nothing, nothing!”

  The pillow was hurled after the phone, and Katie collapsed back on the mattress with anguished sobs, which gradually diminished until Jen heard her say in a very small voice, “Is he too upset even to call?”

  Jen gently rubbed her sister’s back and asked questions in a soothing voice but could get no further explanation. After some time, Katie’s breathing became regular, and her clenched hands relaxed. Jen quietly got up from the bed, retrieved the phone, and put it on the bedside table, within reach. Then she left the room, turning out the light and closing the door softly.

  Back in the living room Jen stood looking at the empty glass she had brought out for her sister. The work victory was still there, still a path to recognition and perhaps promotion. But there was no one to share her triumph with. Her excitement was not Katie’s excitement. Nor would it be.

  If today’s tempest in the new relationship had not overshadowed her sister’s news, Katie would at least have been happy for her. But not with the concern of someone who truly shared a life. That had been an illusion of the last few months. Now it was Paul’s triumphs and difficulties that most concerned Katie. And even if this relationship did not last, another would surely come in time. However close they might remain as sisters, Katie would not be the one to think of Jen’s life as her life. Who would?

  At last, Jen refilled her own glass and took it with her into her room.

  Saturday was a restrained day. Katie slept late the next morning and, when she did rise, stayed mostly in her room. Jen cleaned and organized and even resorted to checking her work e-mail, but although, at most times, such things would provide the satisfaction she desired, what she wanted now was to bask in the familial glow that had been so plentiful over Christmas.

  Noon came. Jen went to check on Katie and found her in bed, the covers pulled up to her shoulders, reading a book.

  “Are you doing all right?” Jen asked.

  Katie shrugged and only half lowered her book. “I’m sorry I went to pieces at you last night. I was really tired. And kind of upset.”

  “What happened? Do you want to talk about it?”

  Katie raised the book again. “No. Not really. It’s just . . . relationship stuff.”

  Jen waited to see if any more information would be forthcoming, but nothing was. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Cocoa?” asked Katie from behind the book. “If you don’t mind. You don’t have to.”

  “Sure. I’ll get you cocoa.”

  In the kitchen, Jen pulled down cocoa, sugar, and vanilla from the cupboard; measured, mixed, heated, and stirred; then brought the steaming cup to Katie, who sat up in bed with her back to the wall, pulled the blankets up over her knees, and sipped.

  “Thanks. This is good.”

  Jen smiled, unexpectedly warmed by the offhand compliment. “Is there anything in particular you’d like for dinner?”

  “Mmmm. It’s so cold today. There’s stew meat in the fridge and onions in the pantry. How about beef stew?”

  “That’ll make the kitchen smell good all day,” Jen agreed. “Maybe I’ll put the rest of that bottle of wine from last night in it. Didn’t you make a stew with red wine once?”

  “Yeah. There’s a recipe in that Black Cat Bistro cookbook of yours.”

  “Okay.”

  Jen returned to the kitchen with a new sense of purpose for the day, found the book, and began chopping ingredients.

  An hour later, with the pot simmering fragrantly on the stove and Jen contemplating the newspaper over an afternoon cup of coffee, there was a knock at the kitchen door. She opened it to find Paul standing on the step, holding a bouquet of flowers.

  “Paul, hi. Come on in. It’s cold! I don’t want to stand with the door open.”

  “Thank you.” Paul knocked the snow off his boots against the doorsill and stepped inside. Jen closed the door behind him. This flurry of activity past, Paul stood awkwardly, still clutching the flowers before him—not, Jen noted, roses, but a mix of gold, yellow, and red flowers with pieces of fern arrayed around them.

  “Are you here to see Katie?”

  “Yes. I . . . want to talk to her.”

  “She’s been in her room all day,” Jen said, circling around the island to the stove, to give Paul an unencumbered path through to the living room and the bedroom beyond.

  Paul seemed to hesitate. “Do you think I should just go back to her room?”

  “She was watching her phone all last night, hoping you’d call or text. I assume she wants to talk to you.”

  Paul set the flowers down on the counter, took his coat off, and hung it on the hook by the door. Jen noted that he was wearing khakis and a blazer, as on Christmas, rather than his usual jeans. He took a slow breath, buttoned his blazer, then unbuttoned it again, started for the kitchen door, then turned back, picked up the flowers, and left the room again.

  “The door on the right,” Jen called after him, unable to repress a slight smile as she did so.

  Time passed, and Jen suddenly began to feel awkward sitting in the kitchen, as if sitting with her newspaper and coffee, waiting, made her a spectator or a spy in relation to whatever was going on in Katie’s room. She went to the stove, stirred the stew, washed the few things that were in the sink, and looked around for something else to occupy her. Stew for dinner. What else would Katie make if she were in charge of the kitchen for the evening? She examined the fridge and then the pantry. In the pantry, a plastic bag full of green apples caught her eye. Pie. Katie would definitely make pie. She pulled The Joy of Cooking off the shelf.

  When Katie and Paul appeared, the dough was chilling in the refrigerator and Jen was occupied in peeling apples.

  “What are you doing?” Katie asked, setting the bouquet of flowers on the kitchen counter and putting on her coat and hat.

  “Apple pie,” Jen responded.

  “Isn’t that on the list of things that make you fat?” Katie asked, grinning.

  Jen shrugged. “I thought you’d like it. And now that you mention it, I haven’t had any lunch today.”

  Katie finished buttoning her coat. “We’re going for a walk. We’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Okay.”

  Rolling out pie crust proved more challenging than Jen had expected—or at least, doing so without the dough either sticking to the counter or developing cracks that caused it to tear apart when she picked it up to put in the pan. At last, the pie was complete, if somewhat lopsided and patched. She put it in the oven and set about washing up.

  It was as she was finishing with the cleanup that Jen noticed that the bouquet of flowers was still lying on the kitchen counter near the door. She searched through cupboards, found a vase, filled it with water, put the flowers in it, and placed it in the center of the island.

  The pie was cooling on the counter by the time the kitchen door opened. Katie stepped in, then paused on the threshold to exchange a brief kiss, which became a longer kiss, with Paul. At last, she stepped back. “Good night, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Katie pushed the door closed with her shoulder and stood leaning back against the door, hugging her arms to her and rubbing them for warmth.

  “You guys were out there for more than an hour. You must be freezing,” Jen observed. “Do you want some tea or something to warm you up?”

  Katie nodded.

  Jen started the electric kettle, and after a few minutes, Katie ducked into the other room to hang up her coat.

  “So,” said Jen, once both sisters were grasping mugs of hot tea. “Did you two make it up? Is everything okay?”

  Katie stared down at her mug rather than meeting her sister’s eyes and took so long before answering that Jen was beginning to think that she would not answer at all. “Things are okay,” Katie said at last.

  12

&n
bsp; There were no more scenes like the one on Friday night. Katie seemed unusually restrained but not visibly unhappy. Paul came and picked her up the next day just after noon, but she was back by nine o’clock. During the following week, Katie either stayed home entirely or else went out for a couple of hours after dinner with Paul. Most nights, however, Jen could hear the low murmur in the next room of late-night phone conversations going long past midnight.

  Katie also seemed to be on a reading tear. Gone, however, were Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and books on farming. Now Katie was working her way through a succession of religious titles.

  “Why all the religion books?” Jen asked one evening, on coming home to find Katie making dinner with a book propped open on the counter. “Didn’t you cover all that stuff in college with your religious studies major?”

  “It’s not the same kind of thing. We studied religion as a phenomenon. That’s not the same thing as understanding the theology and morality and spirituality that people live by.”

  “Did you have some kind of a religious argument with Paul?” Jen asked, looking over Katie’s shoulder at the book, but finding no explanation in the seemingly contradictory title Theology of the Body. “Did he want you to start going to church if you guys are going to stay together?”

  “No!” Katie objected, closing her book loudly. “Paul would never do that. He takes his faith too seriously to try to force it. No, he—” Katie seemed to stop and gather her thoughts, then continued in a quieter tone. “I realized that, being in a relationship with Paul, I’ll be living with the practical implications of his beliefs, so I figured that I needed to understand those beliefs better and decide what I think of them.”

  “Does it make that big a difference? I dated a vegetarian once; I didn’t have to go read a bunch of books about vegetarianism. I just knew when we went out, we had to go to restaurants with good vegetarian options.”

  Katie sighed and opened the book again. “It’s not the same. Paul’s faith doesn’t just affect what he’s willing to do; it informs his ideas about what a relationship is and what it’s for.”

  “I thought religious beliefs were all about God and heaven and what not to do. How can you have beliefs about what relationships are for?”

  “You can’t. Religious people are all crazy,” Katie said, rolling her eyes. “No need to question your assumptions. It’s just something a billion people believe that goes back two thousand years. I’ll let you know when dinner is ready.” She turned her back to Jen and ostentatiously returned to her reading.

  The sarcasm stung. “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be rude,” Jen said.

  “Well, it sounded pretty dismissive from here. Do you think people like Paul are stupid or something? I mean sure, disagree with him. Maybe I disagree with him. I don’t even know yet. But don’t act like there’s nothing there to have beliefs about.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jen turned to go, then stopped. Perhaps honesty was the best amends. “I was being dismissive because I don’t know how to talk about this stuff without sounding stupid. It seems weird to talk about, and I don’t know how, but I’d like to understand. Maybe you can tell me about it?” she asked as a final peace offering.

  Katie smiled. Peace offering accepted. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try.” For a moment she chewed her lip, brow furrowed. Then she turned back to her meal preparations and began cutting vegetables again. “Okay, you’re not such a jerk. It does feel weird to just start talking about God and faith and all that. Go grab a drink and sit down in the breakfast nook or something. Don’t just stare at me like I’m some kind of freak. I’m gonna try, but this is hard.”

  Jen pulled a Diet Coke out of the fridge and obediently sat on one of the breakfast stools, turning herself away from Katie. After a moment’s more vigorous chopping, and a gusty sigh, Katie began.

  “One of the first things I noticed about Paul was how rooted he is. I mean, his handyman work, his farm, his ideas about sustainable living and a sustainable economy, all the stuff he’s trying to do: it comes from a clear philosophy. And I admired that philosophy and wanted to be a part of it.

  “But at first, I kind of thought of his Catholicism as being like a style he’d picked up to express that philosophy—you know, like the suspenders and bowties and Johnny Cash obsession. That’s because I’d always thought of being spiritual as something that was, you know, out there. I mean, sure, religious people try to be nice people (at least the good ones do) but they’re not unique that way. We all try to be good people. So religion seemed like something extra, like a second family you call up sometimes long-distance. I mean, you hear people say, ‘You can’t do that, it’s a sin’, but that seemed more like just a way of trying to prove you were holy or controlling other people or whatever.

  “Well, then there was that miserable night when I thought we were ready to . . . you know. And—actually, I don’t want to talk about that. But the point is that Paul doesn’t think about these things as rules. I’m starting to think that none of the smart religious people do. They see the physical world as shot through with meaning. Like the natural world is actually supernatural. And it all, like, ties together because God made the world a certain way, and so it’s got meaning. There’s a way that things are supposed to be. And most of that is messed up because of sin and stuff. But then they believe that when Jesus came, he kind of tied it all together, because he was both a person and supernatural at the same time. See? So, it’s like he was the perfect person, and so being good is following that model and being like Jesus.”

  What had started as a painfully slow recitation had turned into a verbal torrent, until at the last Katie had become so occupied with articulating these newly forming ideas that she had turned away from her saucepan at the key moment when the butter was melting, and turned back to it with a yelp only as it began to smoke.

  After some decidedly unholy exclamations and frantic efforts at recovery, she got her sauteing back on track. Her verbal rhapsody, however, had been interrupted, and so she concluded in summary form. “So, really, when I’d thought that Paul’s lifestyle was compelling and his spirituality was like an expression of it, I had it totally backwards. For Christians like him, how they live is like a reflection of what they believe, not the other way around. And if I’m going to decide whether I want to be a part of that lifestyle, I need to understand what it comes from and whether it’s true.”

  “I’m going over to Paul’s house for the afternoon tomorrow,” Katie announced on Saturday evening, emerging from her room after a several-hour-long phone call. “I’m going to make dinner for him there, so you’ll be on your own for dinner. I’ll be back around nine.”

  Jen shrugged. “I’ll come up with something.”

  She contemplated the Netflix queue and the prospect of a long quiet afternoon, then went back to her room, shut the door, and called her mother.

  “Jen, this is a surprise.”

  “Hey, Mom. I know it’s kind of last minute, but I was wondering if you and Dad would like to come over for an early dinner tomorrow. Katie’s going off with Paul for the afternoon and evening, and I don’t have much going on. Seemed like it would be nice to do something with family.”

  “Well, sure. We’d be happy to. What time? Is there anything I can bring?”

  “Oh, how about two o’clock and we’ll eat at three or something? Don’t worry about bringing anything. I’ll come up with something.”

  “Sure, that sounds wonderful. How’re you doing? We haven’t talked in a while. Katie told me about your big Home Depot thing at work.”

  “Well, things have been a lot quieter at work since I got the big-box accounts sold. Katie’s been around a lot more the last week than she has been since she and Paul got together. I hope she’s okay. She seems . . . different.”

  “I think she’ll be fine. She’s just . . .” Pat paused, and her tone suggested she was choosing her words carefully. “She and Paul are just working through some religious and moral issues.�
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  “Has she talked with you about it?” Jen asked, surprised that her mother seemed at least as conversant on the topic as she.

  “Well, yes. Katie and I have talked it over a few times.”

  “Wow. I didn’t think—I mean—it’s great that you two are getting along so much better.”

  “I was real glad she felt comfortable talking to me about it. She’s grown up a lot while she’s been living with you. Your father and I are very proud of her.”

  This routine held through the rest of February, with Tom and Pat coming over for dinner with Jen on Sundays while Katie spent the afternoon with Paul.

  The first Saturday in March was unusually warm for Illinois. The sun was so inviting that Jen had gone out to the nursery and returned with several bags full of bulbs, which she spent the afternoon planting in the beds along the front walk. She had just finished one side when Katie, who had been inside reading all morning, suddenly issued from the house and drove off quickly in her red Focus. Almost an hour later, she returned, her eyes red as if she had been crying.

  “Are you okay?” Jen asked.

  “Yes!” said Katie, with a smile that was completely at odds with the redness of her eyes. “Oh, Jen, I feel wonderful!”

  “Umm . . . why?”

  “I realized I was holding back only because I was scared to start. And I looked at the schedule and saw that confessions were going on right now, so I drove down to Saint Anne’s and went to confession. It took twenty minutes, and I cried my eyes out, but I feel so good.” The last two words were delivered with an emphasis that was almost a dance step.

  “You feel good because you went to confession?” Jen asked skeptically. “I remember doing that as a kid. I hated it.”

  “So did I, then, but . . . I just feel new. And clean. And it’s sunny out. And spring. And . . . I’m going to call Paul and see if he’s free to have dinner! I feel like celebrating.”