If You Can Get It

by Brendan Hodge

  The priest was raising the host. Katie, beside her, was watching raptly. Jen thought she could see the gleam of tears in her eyes.

  “Behold the Lamb of God,” he said. “Behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

  The congregation responded with words that were unfamiliar and seemed out of place in the situation: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Had they changed the words, leaving lapsed Catholics like her to feel even more out of place at Mass? Or had she forgotten even more than she realized?

  As Jen sat watching Katie and Paul and her parents join the rest of the congregation in going up, row by row, to receive Communion, she found herself reflecting on the odd phrases.

  The blessed did seem to be the ones going up to the supper of the Lamb. Having all these people come under her roof over the last year had brought her soul a certain healing and inspired in it a hunger for more.

  Lord, she thought, in an unfamiliar, prayer-like mode. I’m really not sure I’m ready to have you under my roof. I’m not even sure what that would mean. Or if you exist. Or if I’d like you if you did. But I need someone under my roof if my soul is going to be healed. That much I’ve learned this year, whatever else is to come.

  Mass concluded, and the family went their separate ways: Pat and Tom to their apartment; Katie and Paul, to whose happiness midnight still seemed early, to find somewhere to talk for another hour or two before parting for the night; and Jen back to her empty house.

  Sitting on her bed, she thought over the string of memories and desires that had been crystalizing in her mind since that hesitant half prayer as she watched the rest of her family go up to Communion.

  Jen pulled out her phone, scrolled through the contacts, and for several minutes sat contemplating the name long familiar but with a new possibility of significance. At last she pressed Call and waited, half hoping, half fearing, that there would be no answer.

  “Jen? It must be late out there.” There was an edge of concern in his voice. “Is everything okay?”

  “Hey, Dan. Yeah, everything’s fine. I know it’s late. I just wanted to talk.”

  “Sure. Sure. It’s not nearly as late here, so if you want to talk, I’m happy to.”

  The difficulty was how to begin, and now that Dan was on the phone, that difficulty seemed of a sudden to be extreme. A pause stretched out, and that, too, was painful. Jen launched into what came easiest, which was news.

  “Big events here tonight. Katie and Paul got engaged.”

  “Oh. That was sudden. Haven’t they been together only a few months? Are you feeling okay?”

  “Okay?”

  “I know you were originally interested in Paul yourself. It must have been hard to see all this happen so suddenly.” His tone seemed strange: concerned, certainly, but a hint of something else. It might have sounded like bitterness, had that not seemed such an uncharacteristic thing to hear from him.

  “What? Oh, no, I’m fine. I don’t think he was the guy for me. I’m happy for them. Though, like you say, it is awfully quick. And I’m going to miss having Katie here. I suppose at least it’ll be a while. I don’t think they’d move in while engaged, the way they are about those things.”

  She was babbling, and this was not why she had called. She struggled to make herself begin, but silence stretched on again. How was it that she could be so good at things that others found difficult, such as addressing a large business audience on a complicated topic, and yet this simple conversation turned her into a blushing high schooler?

  “It was Easter Vigil here tonight,” she offered, then suddenly wondered if this was a bad topic to bring up with a Jewish friend. She forced a laugh. “Which is a much bigger deal for everyone in the family except me.” But as soon as she made this attempt to defuse the previous blunder, she realized that it, in turn, served only to emphasize that she was not religious and he was.

  “Actually,” she went on, in a more somber tone, “that was one of the things that left me thinking tonight. It’s like I was doubly alone: Katie and Paul now an engaged couple and everyone so wrapped up in the service, while I was the outsider. Feeling on the outs from everything left me to really listen to the words they were saying and to think about them. And that got me looking back at the last year, and my life, and some of the decisions I’ve made. Or not made.”

  Her wont had never been intentionally to expose what might be seen as weakness, to ask for that which might justly be refused. It was a struggle to push past that long-trained reticence. But at least she was talking. And perhaps, now talking, she could make herself go through with the task she had set herself.

  “What?” Dan asked, his tone one of searching curiosity, clearly aware that she was hesitating over something.

  The words from earlier that night ran through her mind again: Enter under my roof. Say the word and my soul shall be healed.

  She drew herself together. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. I’ve been thinking back through my life. About what’s important to me. And I realized that one of the things that’s most important to me, and that I’ve taken for granted far too much, is having you around.”

  Memory is by turns harsh and merciful. For Jen it was the latter. The sentence fragments and run-ons of her first jumbled attempt to tell her friend all the things she knew now that she should have told him long before never came clearly to her memory. What she could always remember in later days was when he said, “I’m embarrassed to tell you how long I’ve wanted to hear you say this. And how many times I thought you never would. When we met, you were with someone else. And then I was. And then we were such established pals, and it seemed to me that you’d never think of me as anything else. Late last year, when you were back from China, it seemed like perhaps that was finally changing, but then you said you were moving away, and I gave up hope entirely.”

  It was not for any great eloquence that she recalled these words. Indeed, it was not exactly the words themselves that were so etched in her mind. It was the tone of his voice, caring as always, but with an edge of hope that only now made her realize how often those caring tones had masked an underlying disappointment. He cared for her, had done so as long she had cared for him, and without the blindness that had left her seeing him as merely a comfortable friend until now.

  With that realization, the painful awkwardness of her declaration was gone. The blood was singing in her ears as her words continued to tangle up against each other on her tongue in the happy rush to express everything that should have been said long before.

  And so, once they had found themselves to think the same way about the one thing that now clearly mattered, to both of them, it became necessary to discuss and rediscover many other things.

  It was in the small hours of the morning, long after Katie had returned from her evening of bliss and gone to bed without Jen hearing her at all, that they at last recognized the necessity of ending the call.

  “What are we going to do about this? We live two thousand miles apart,” she said.

  “They have these things called planes. I’ll buy a ticket and come see you.”

  “I have a job. And I kind of like it.”

  “I know. So do I. But they have lawyers everywhere. And product managers, come to that. We’ve taken this long. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I want to figure it out soon.”

  “We will. It is not good that Jen should be alone. I will make a suitable help meet for her.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an old story.”

  Acknowledgments

  There are a great many people to whom a first-time novelist owes thanks. First and foremost, I owe more than I can express to my wife, Cat, for the many hours she spent with me discussing the plot and characters, for being the first eyes on each new chapter I wrote, and for her constant encouragement. And on top of all of that, I can't
thank her enough for cheerfully excusing me from helping with household tasks night after night while I was in the first rush of composition. I'm also grateful to my younger sister, Rosamund Hodge, who set an example by preceding me into print by many years and who provided encouragement and advice as I sought to follow. I owe a debt to my first readers, who encouraged me as I worked, particularly Lois, Entropy, Melanie, Amber, Clare, and my mother, Mary Hodge. Thanks also to Sherwood Smith, who provided insightful comments on the initial draft. Finally, my heartfelt thanks to Suzanne Fortin, who provided a fresh eye and some needed encouragement at a point when this project might have gone no further, and to Laura Pittenger, who provided advice and encouragement at key moments.

  “A bold critique of modern challenges to the American family and a morality tale about the complementarity of the sexes. It’s a defense of fatherhood, especially, but also of motherhood and homemaking as honorable occupations.”

  — Dorothy Cummings McLean, Author, Ceremony of Innocence

  READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM The Accidental Marriage by Roger Thomas

  Chapter One

  Scott was in the house again, the house with the rice-paper walls. He was wandering from room to room, admiring the prints and the delicate branches painted on the walls—branches in bloom with flowers of some sort, blood-red at the center but fading to delicate pink toward the edges of the petals. As always, every room was a model of perfection: every piece of furniture in perfect proportion, utensils and other items arranged in harmonious order. A light rose glow suffused the rooms. He felt completely at peace.

  Then, somehow, Scott was outside, but still among flowering branches. These weren’t pink flowers painted on walls but real flowers on branches waving in the breeze. He recognized them: they were apple blossoms, just like there had been at the orchard on the farm where they’d lived when he was a boy. They’d rented a dingy old farmhouse from Mr. Martin, who kept his orchard and had let Scott run all over it. Scott had hated the cramped, drafty house, but he’d loved wandering around the orchard, especially when the trees were flowering. He fondly remembered the sound of Mr. Martin’s tractor rumbling about the farm.

  Why, here came Mr. Martin now! Rounding the end of the row, the old blue Ford turned to come between the trees. Mr. Martin was driving, but—no, this was all wrong. He was towing the sprayer, fogging the trees as he came. This was all wrong. He couldn’t spray when the trees were in bloom. He’d kill the bees, and the flowers needed the bees to pollinate, or there’d be no crop. Scott ran down the row waving his arms. This was all wrong.

  Mr. Martin saw Scott coming, and waved back, but kept driving and spraying. Scott came alongside the tractor and shouted up to him, but the engine was too loud and Mr. Martin kept leaning over and calling, “Hey? Hey?”

  “The bees!” Scott shouted, jumping as he ran alongside the tractor. The sprayer roared behind, misting the branches with poison. “Your spraying will kill all the bees!”

  “I got to, son”, Mr. Martin called back above the engine’s roar. “I got to!”

  Scott was running beside the tractor, leaping to get Mr. Martin to pay attention even though the long grass whipped his shins painfully. It was Mr. Martin who’d told him about how important the bees were, and now he was killing them.

  “Not now, Mr. Martin!” Scott hollered over the sprayer fan. “Not while they’re in blossom! After the fruit forms, when the apples will need protection against scale and bugs!”

  “I got to, son”, Mr. Martin repeated as he kept driving. “I got to.”

  “But. . . you’ll kill all the bees, and there won’t be a crop”, Scott cried, ceasing his jumping and standing in the grass, tears streaming down his face. Mr. Martin kept driving, and Scott was too distressed to attend to the howling behind him. It finally grew loud enough to demand his attention, and in alarm he turned just in time to see the sprayer almost upon him. He opened his mouth to scream, and—

  Woke up. The sheets were twisted all around Scott where he’d thrashed them into knots, so he started to extricate himself. He was accustomed to stressful dreams; at least it hadn’t been. . . that one.

  Scott was alone in the bed, which meant Greg hadn’t yet returned from wherever Greg had gone off to. Just as well. Scott padded to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, where he grabbed a pint of ice cream out of the freezer. The microwave clock said 2:35—great. Wolfing spoonfuls of ice cream, he sat down to check his e-mail. Nothing important, and nothing of interest on any sites. He brushed his teeth and headed back to bed, knowing it was probably futile.

  It was. He lay there for ten minutes, trying to relax, until it became clear that it was to no purpose—he was awake. He sighed and threw back the covers. He may as well head to the office as lie here staring at the ceiling. He could at least get a few hours’ work in before the most recent “helper” whom Brian had assigned showed up and started getting underfoot. By 3:30 he was showered, dressed, and turning the Jetta toward the office.

  About midday, Scott’s phone chimed. It was a text from Megan.

  “Lunch?”

  Scott smiled, and texted back.

  “Sure. Usual, .5 hr?”

  “OK”, came the response.

  Meeting Megan for lunch would be a good break. He’d already put in a full day on little more than energy drinks and candy bars. He saved his work and headed out.

  Megan was a great pal. She worked for the assessor’s office, just a block or two away from his office. They’d first met at a local bistro one crowded lunch hour when he’d asked if he could sit at an unoccupied seat at her table. They’d hit it off immediately, sharing stories and frustrations about work and home situations.

  Megan lived with her partner Diane. They weren’t married. They’d planned to marry during the brief period when it had been legal, but then the window had closed. Diane had insisted on going through with the ceremony anyway, with the rings and vows and certificate and all, and Megan wore a wedding ring, but the relationship had no legal standing. Life with Diane was. . . well, complicated, and often a point of stress for Megan.

  As it proved today. Scott noticed that Megan was wearing her “haunted” look as she sat down, so he decided to dispense with the pleasantries.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Pardon?” Megan responded.

  “Something’s bothering you. I can tell by your eyebrows. Spill it”, Scott insisted.

  Megan sighed. “It’s Diane. You’ll never guess what she wants now.”

  Scott grinned. Diane always had a new thing. Her most recent thing had been paleo dieting, and Megan had had to get rid of all her cookware and learn to use cast iron. Before that, it had been feng shui, and life had been nothing but acquiring new furniture and then endlessly rearranging it to make auspicious arrangements.

  “Soul food?” Scott gibed.

  “Ha, ha”, Megan replied, unamused. “She wants a baby.”

  Scott cocked an eyebrow but checked the urge to make a smart remark. This was clearly distressing Megan, and he didn’t want to make it worse.

  “Specifically, she wants me to give her a baby”, Megan continued, her petite face falling further.

  Scott had repeatedly been told that he had the social skills of a rhino, but even he could grasp that the situation called for tact.

  “Okay”, Scott acknowledged. Situations like this were unusual but not unknown, particularly among lesbian couples. “Is there some, ah, problem with her having the baby?”

  “She’s older, so the risks are higher”, Megan explained. “At least that’s what she said, and the fertility specialist concurred.”

  Ah. That answered Scott’s next question, which was whether they’d sought medical help. “So that leaves you”, Scott said. “Do you want a baby?”

  Megan made a wry face. “Well, I think that every woman, deep down, wants a baby at some point.”

  This was news to Scott. He’d known plenty of women who seemed to have no interest in children. But M
egan was continuing.

  “The question is whether I want a baby now, under these circumstances. But Diane is convinced that she wants a baby, so that settles it. You have no idea how determined she can be when she sets her mind on something.”

  Actually, Scott did have an idea. Reading between the lines of their lunchtime conversations over the past year, he got the impression that Diane was a manipulative, overbearing woman who viewed Megan as a combination pet, life-sized doll, and housemaid.

  “But now”, Megan said, her voice catching, “not only does she want me to carry the baby, but she’s complaining about the cost of the fertility clinic. I wish she’d thought of that when she was insisting on the granite countertops and inlaid cupboards.”

  “But”, Scott asked, mystified, “doesn’t your insurance—”

  “Insurance doesn’t cover fertility services”, Megan interrupted, giving him what he called the “silly boy” look. “It’s voluntary medical treatment, so it’s all out-of-pocket. In this area a simple consultation runs about three hundred fifty dollars. A full treatment involves several visits, plus testing, AI, and sperm-bank costs, and—oh, excuse me.” Megan suddenly stood and dashed down the hall.

  Scott knew what that meant. Megan had anxiety problems, and one of the manifestations was irritable bowel syndrome. She would be back shortly, so he munched his sandwich and thought. She’d tossed out some jargon that he didn’t understand. To him, “AI” meant “artificial intelligence”—but it would be easy to research. Shoving aside Megan’s cranberry and pecan salad, he pulled out his phone and searched on “AI” and “fertility”.

  “Oh, my—Artificial Insemination?” Scott mumbled under his breath and continued researching.

  By the time Megan returned, Scott was more knowledgeable about fertility matters than he had been—or wanted to be, for that matter (he’d never heard of “sperm washing” before). He had some thoughts that he was hesitant to offer, but Megan’s distress gave him courage.