FICTION  -
    With the Theme of Making or Breaking Bread

" (peas? there was no resemblance in color or texture,
even considering they might be dried,
to peas as she knew them) and then the water added."

​                                   Photo by Weebly.com                                    

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Soup
by  Jackie Davis Martin

​​​Helen shuffled cans of black beans and pumpkin puree and tomato sauce around, knocking one off the wire rack, predictably. The cans of course didn’t fit this way and she knew the whole damn cabinet had to be cleaned and sorted, but she shuffled and pushed nonetheless, a few old tins of spices tumbling onto the floor in front of her.
 
“I have chicken-rice and vegetable-beef; the Progresso stuff,” she called to her husband in the next room. “Which do you want?”
 
“Neither,” Harry called back. He said neither sounded good. Okay, then, she thought, you figure it out for yourself. What should she have? Last month she’d had Ramen she bought at Walgreen’s—the idea of the gummy noodles suddenly having an inordinate appeal. Four for a dollar—how could you beat that? They used to be ten cents each, Harry had said.
 
Well, everything used to be something else. Including them.
 
Harry hadn’t wanted the Ramen, although once she fixed it, he regarded the soup with longing, sitting there with his cold cuts and mustard, making bread-less sandwiches.
 
Today she shoved back the tins of spices—young Laura, next door, said she didn’t know spices came in cans: how old were they?—and discovered one of those cardboard cups of dried soup, popular, she supposed, with secretaries and teachers who could put them in a microwave. This container was labeled Split Pea. Surely she didn’t buy that? Maybe her son gave it to her, getting rid of his overflow from time to time. “You can probably use this stuff,” he’d say.

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​She read the directions—far too faint, far too small. Why would anyone put small beige print on a pale green background? Marketing directors must all be young. Design was all. Directions didn’t matter. Not that it was difficult to guess at. Add water (how much?), place in microwave (how long? with or without lid?), and stir.
 
The pea soup had an added step—a flavor packet. Good lord, could she ever use a flavor packet. She’d like to sprinkle one over her whole existence, her marriage, spice it up, create something beyond routine. The flavor packet was to be sprinkled into the dried whatever-it-was (peas? there was no resemblance in color or texture, even considering they might be dried, to peas as she knew them) and then the water added.
 
So she did. She put the mixture-in-a-cup into the microwave and waited for the timer bell. Something like onions wafted into the air and she tapped her fingers abruptly on the microwave as though reprimanding it. She hadn’t wanted onions. She’d been willing to try Split Pea (as opposed, she supposed, to Whole Pea) soup, but there had been no mention of pea-and-onion soup. And how could any of this be trusted? Were there peas in there at all? Or flavor buds made chemically to taste like peas. There was a thought:  imagine the taste of peas. Harry would say, Are you kidding? They have no taste.
 
Imagine it anyway.
 
Either the real or the chemical onions, dried into the pea-powder or the flavor packet, took over the kitchen with fragrance. She removed the steaming cup and stirred. It was the consistency of wet cement—not that she’d ever worked with wet cement, but she’d watched the men slather and sculpt the new sidewalk squares out front—a rather unpleasant shade of green. Still, she’d take the dried soup company’s word for it: if she’d followed the recipe, it was ready to eat. Recipe. That was a word worth thinking about considering this product.

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She scooped the green paste, like watery mashed potatoes, from its cardboard container into a gleaming white ceramic bowl where it assumed more dignity. And then, to her surprise and pleasure, it tasted just fine.
 
“What smells so good?” Harry asked, drawn from his reading in the living room. He stood at the kitchen door.
 
“Pea soup. That dried stuff.”
 
“Pea?” He squinted. “Where did you get it?”
 
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was in the cupboard. In a cardboard cup.”
 
“Pea? Was it reconstituted or something?”
 
“I guess. I just added water.” They both looked at the emulsion in the white bowl and laughed lightly.
 
“Is there any more?” Harry asked.
 
Helen shook her head.
 
He glanced at the cupboard. “Maybe I’ll have one of those other ones after all, the ones you mentioned earlier.”
 
“Easy enough,” she said. “I’ll open a can.”
 
“I can do it,” he said. “But can I just have a taste of that? Who knew?” 

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​​Jackie Davis Martin’s stories have been published in anthologies, including Modern Shorts, Love on the Road, and Road Stories, as well as in print and online journals; A memoir, Surviving Susan, was released in 2012 and her novel, Stopgaps, came out in May of 2021.  She recently completed a new memoir. Martin has been a teacher all of her adult life, most recently at City College of San Francisco and at OLLI. When she is not writing or teaching, Martin has enjoyed, along with her late husband, Bruce, full seasons of San Francisco’s Opera, its Ballet, and its Symphony as well as performances at many of Bay Area’s many theatres.

​Editor's Note:  Jackie Davis Martin is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways.

Other works in this issue:
Fiction:
​Little Bins
A Poem, A Desk

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