Tomato Soup

Matt prepared dinner - home cooked butter chicken with a generous glass of sauv blanc, a longtime favourite of his and his wife, Chrissie; the recipe hadn’t changed in years, though dining alone somehow left the spices weakened and the wine watered.

In an hour or so he would prepare Chrissie’s meal, a small bowl of tomato soup. It was all she could hold down of late and tomato was the only flavour she ever ate. With the metallic slop! of every tin opened, Matt was reminded of their very first (and last) camping trip together. He had been charged with shopping duties and bought ten tins of soup (none of which were tomato) and a loaf of bread. Between this and a mid-way car breakdown that ended in a delayed bus journey the rest of the way, tempers were on edge. Chrissie made him walk four miles to the nearest shop all by himelf. Returning, blister footed and heat exhausted, he could barely move for two days. Words between them were sparse for the rest of the trip.

It was only after that minor road bump that they later discovered they both hated camping and only agreed as they each thought the other loved it. The memory of it fifty years still brought a smile to Matt.

They were eighteen when they met. When Matt first saw Chrissie, he just knew she was the one; even at so tender an age he wasn’t ignorant to this doting cliché, but he didn’t care. He pursued this tough-looking brunette in the faux-leather biker’s jacket with everything he had. But it took time and persistence on his part, for although Chrissie seemed the embodiment of strong will and determination, she was actually quite shy. So, four bunches of flowers and three trips to the cinema later they had their first kiss. Chrissie swooned, or at least that’s what she told Matt, and he certainly wasn’t one to dismiss a compliment. The truth of it was, she loved a gentleman and Matt had been just that. Six months later they married and never parted again.

When times were hard, Chrissie had always been the strong one; always the one to clap her hands and say, “What’s done is done” and get on with things. All the dilemmas they’d encountered over the years and she’d never once given up.

Then why now? Matt thought bitterly, as he stared into his unfinished wine glass. No answer came forth from that golden abyss.

The only thing it offered was the memory of the last time he got really drunk. Important enough to remember but much too long ago to stamp an exact date on it, Matt got really drunk and allowed himself to be talked into a bird-brained business scheme that cost them their entire savings. He went behind Chrissie’s back knowing she’d say no, but certain it would work. The outcome in his head saw him surprise her with an exotic trip overseas. Instead, she had to settle for a consolation prize of a meal at the local Indian restaurant with the last of their money.

“Well,” Chrissie said calmly, studying the kingfisher on her beer bottle. “I guess you’re going to have to learn to make butter chicken at home from now on.”

And that was that. Of course, Matt spent a fortnight on the couch and never touched another drop of alcohol.

The radio was playing some of Matt & Chrissie’s music from way back, when they both glistened like new things; it amused him to think that what would once upon a time have been considered ‘edgy and innovative’ to the pop-counterparts of their youth, had become nothing more than, at best, retro bordering on forgettable cliche. Still, it was enough to conjure up blissful moments of fun nights out and quiet nights in with his beloved partner in crime. Tapping his foot to the beat he ate alone at the kitchen table. Suddenly a cough emitted from the bedroom – Chrissie – his ears pricked up but she quickly settled again. It pained him to watch her suffer like this. Three weeks now she’d been bedridden, not a month after being diagnosed. Matt couldn’t understand it. Chrissie had been as healthy as any woman her age could be, then one day she complained of a sickly feeling in her stomach. A visit to Ben, their doctor and closest friend of thirty years and a dozen scans later and it was his dark duty to give them the bad news. No sooner had they returned home and, to everyone’s surprise, Chrissie’s health rapidly degraded. Ben had told them six months, maybe even a year, but weeks? It just didn’t make any sense.

“Chrissie’s a fighter,” Matt said, part pleading and part demanding of Ben. But Ben was honest only the way a true friend could be. His silence said it all – Prepare to let her go.

Finishing dinner, Matt washed and put away the dishes before checking on Chrissie. He sat on the bed’s edge and watched her sleep. He leaned in and kissed her forehead and she stirred slightly, mumbling something incoherent.

A soft breeze blew in the open window, gently lifting the curtain. It’s refreshing cool whisper on the already hot day pulled Matt back twenty-five years and halfway across the globe to India. Chrissie had taken ill then, getting so sick they had to stay an extra fortnight. He really thought the worst at the time as she lay in their room feverish and delirious in an obscure town, unable to hold any food down. Managing to find a good doctor everything worked out in the end. They never returned to India, though not because of Chrissie’s illness but because of the amount of poverty around them – the downside to avoiding resorts and wanting to see the real world, Chrissie noted when they returned home. Within a year she had sponsored five children.

That’s one of the qualities Matt loved most about his wife – her generous nature; she’d say she couldn’t stand children but when it really came to them, she loved them. They never had any of their own, though Matt wouldn’t have minded one or two, but Chrissie had said from the start that she would be too selfish a mother. In their mid-thirties it was discussed briefly but Matt knew it would have only been for his sake so the matter was dropped completely; he never really told Chrissie how hard that decision was for him. In the end, Matt decided that life with children would be unbearable if it meant life without Chrissie.

By their mid-forties Matt was running a small publishing company and Chrissie owned a modest but fruitful antique’s store; they had also managed to cross most of Europe and Asia off their travel map hanging in their home study. As for the absence of children, Matt had the occasional daydream of a different path taken, though it never evolved into any form of regret. Nor did he regret a single argument or fallout they may have had; truth be told, he even enjoyed them when they weren’t serious.

Chrissie could be so feisty and loved to raise her voice, while he would just sulk and wander off to his study. An hour later and they would be best friends again. But they hadn’t argued in years, not properly.

No, as an inseparable couple they had this shared, unspoken mantra: Accept the decisions you make and make the best of your decisions.

Matt sat with Chrissie another while before going back to the kitchen. He would make her dinner soon, after doing a few last things. First, a nice cup of tea and half-read the newspaper without taking much in. When faced with real issues very little else in the world seemed to hold any sincere importance. One article that did grab his attention was on a possible cure for cancer, or at least, a slowing down.

Why get peoples hopes up, he thought bitterly. Or worse still, rub it in for those too far-gone. Frustrated, he folded the paper and tossed it aside.

The radio harassed him with another song they loved. The memory of a party together – Chrissie’s 30th maybe. One too many memories of good times with Chrissie caused him to half-lunge at the radio and switch it off, almost sending it flying off the dining table in the process. Memories were one thing, but the seed of doubt and hesitation there simply could be no room for. Not today.

With an anxious sigh, Matt moved to a cupboard stuffed with shopping bags. Feeling around behind the mess pf plastic he withdrew victorious, holding a long churchwarden pipe, a small bag of tobacco clinging to it dubiously by means of a worn rubber band. ‘Officially’, He had given up smoking long ago, however, unofficially he would steal the odd puff when the need arose. It was his only secret from Chrissie and even then, it was a well-known secret. Playfully, they both took sides in this little game of secrets as though it were real. Why? Matt never asked and Chrissie never said.

With a ritualistic air, he packed the smooth bowl tightly with a clump of the damp tobacco. Lighting up, the soft smacking of his lips was the only thing to break the silence. He hated the quiet; it was never like this when Chrissie was up and about. There were always plates clattering, a phone ringing, or Chrissie humming cheerfully as she found something to do; never silence.

Closing his eyes, Matt leaned back in his chair and meditated on the soft, woody smoke of his pipe. For the first time in a long time he allowed his mind to clear. Finishing his pipe, Matt gently set it on the table before discarding the half-full tobacco pouch into the bin.

Having made the tomato soup, Matt reached into a drawer and produced a small glass vial of clear liquid. With a steady hand he twisted the top off and waved the contents below his nose and sniffed cautiously - odourless, just as Ben had explained. He was about to pour the liquid into the soup, but suddenly the fragment of a memory flashed across his mind, something deep in the pockets of time gone. A conversation, barely worthy of a footnote in their life together, and yet, here it was springing to the forefront of all other memories with such urgency.

Decades stripped away with the ease of pages wafting as you flip through a book. There it was. They lay naked on a bed, breathless and satisfied in each other’s embrace. They were young and beautiful and eternal. Entwined, the words shared between them were limitless; where they’d been, where they were going, their passions, their dislikes, their future together, which, inevitably, led to its natural conclusion.

“I don’t want to wither away,” Chrissie had told him. “I watched my grandmother wither, propped up by pillows and my mum spoon-feeding her until even something as simple chewing became too much. Out of everything that’s what frightens me most, not being able to perform the most basic functions, like feed myself.”

Matt remembered her voice being distant, sincere and afraid. At the time, youth had not cause for such worries, so he made some joke or other and successfully lightened her mood, and then, like so many other thoughts, the moment was gone, disappeared into the abyss of memory; exiled for some fifty-four years.

Guilt grabbed hold of him now. How many times had he already fed Chrissie by his own hand since she too ill? Twenty? Thirty? Fifty? Angry with himself for not remembering this until now, Matt pushed the soup aside with contempt. In its place he poured a glass of water, tipped half the vial into it and stirred it around. He watched as a minor cloudiness dissipated into nothing.

Such a harmless looking thing for something so powerful.

“There’ll be a numbing sensation,” Ben told Matt when handing him the vial, unaware the poison was destined for more than one person. “Then…sleep.”

Closing his eyes, Matt breathed in deeply and sighed, as though reinforcing his decision. Next, he took a second glass and repeated the process with the remainder of the liquid.

Without further hesitation he carried both glasses to their bedroom.

Matt gently lifted Chrissie’s head and helped her drink from her glass. Laying her down softly he then drank his own water before setting the glasses neatly together on the bedside table. Gently, he lay day beside his wife, the woman he’d shared his life with for more than half a century and closed his eyes.

Till death do us part, he promised Chrissie a long time ago. But our bond had passed beyond even that vow.

Wrapping his arms around her, Matt recalled the first time they spent as one. It was physical and spiritual experience that only naïve youth can provide.

He was grateful at how shiny and new this ancient memory still was. Remembering how youthful and beautiful and eternal they were, he smiled.