"Tomato Soup"

edit: Title has been changed because I like this better.

"Maury," was often the tired response, "forget about it, okay?"

Forget About It was usually in reference to I Got An Idea, or Wait Hear Me Out, or Ma Don't Hang Up. In the case of Tuesday, it was an arrow into the bouyant heart of his Hot Air Balloon idea, which had been slowly inflating in Maury's head since earlier that very same Tuesday. On a Sunday the month before, he was advised to Forget About a website business that charged churches a nominal fee for the invaluable service of publishing their weekly sermons on the Internet. A week or so before that, it had been something Maury had by now effectively forgotten, something about rickshaws, he thought.

"Motor. Bike. Taxi-cabs," his mother reminded him. "Maury, you wanted-"

"It wouldn't be me driving the motorbikes, Ma. I would get other guys, guys who know how."

"You don't even know how to ride one of those things. "

"Ma-!"

It was beside the point, anyway, because right now Maury was doing his best to maintain his composure at the dining table, staring down Ma, and within stangling distance, he figured. If the woman, My God I Love Ya Ma, could simply wrap even part of her mind around the balloon venture, he would have a crack at The Damn Money, also known as Rightfully My Cash or What Uncle Isidor Bequeathed Me. It was a windfall in the waiting, money earmarked to Maury by a man who had no idea what a shlub his only nephew would turn out to be. This is how Ma explained it to him, since Maury had never met Isidor. Nonethless, the old guy had left a sizable chunk of his nest egg to be divvied up amongst his sister and her children. Was it Maury's fault he was the only living son left?

"Maury, please, I am begging now. Forget about this. I told you, the money is in Safe Keeping."

Safe Keeping is First Trust downtown, where Ma has always kept her money, and is now doing her best to stand between her son and the squandering of a small fortune. Neither mother nor son will come right out and say so, though they both know this is the reason Maury has yet to receive Rightfully his Cash in the fifteen years since uncle Izzy (who probably would have liked to be called that) passed on somewhere in northern Florida. This is why Maury's line of reasoning strays from the You Know I'll Get That Money Anyway When You Pass On. It's just as well - as long as she's not alive to see the money wasted, the poor woman could die happy. Never mind afterward, when she'll have plenty of room to roll over in the spacious grave her half of the money will provide.

"Ma, have you seen that commercial, the one where they make Tennessee out to be Paradise?"

"Yes, Maury."

"It's mostly Memphis. And lousy with those damn hot air balloons."

"Maury, please."

"I'm sayin', ma. When have you seen a hot air balloons place around here? I don't think I've ever even seen one in real life."

"Which is part of my point, Maury-"

"If this commercial, Ma, does what I think it'll do...people are going to come to this state and expect to see those things...everywhere."

With the last word, he left enough breathing room to spoon in some tomato soup. His mother, meanwhile, was ruminating on what he hoped was the most viable plan he had floated since he realized his mother would want him to do something good with the money. Something useful, and something to make Tennessee seem like a nice place.

The move from Jersey had been rough on her , he could tell - she'd lived in the same house her whole married life, until Dad passed on back in 1985. A cute little yellow brick bungalow they'd got right after they married, just right for newlyweds with twins on the way. Dad ran the Garage downtown six days a week, and Ma kept house. Five months into their happy union, she gave birth to Maury and what would have been a twin sister, had she survived. When he was ten years old, they explained it to him, the umbilical cord had wrapped around the poor thing's neck, but Bless Us, we were given a son that day who received all the love we'd saved up for two children.

Maury had worked down the tomato soup, which was now a shallow pond in his bowl, a tiny island of dissolved crackers just breaking the surface. He pressed it down with his spoon, and then let the utensil drop soundly against the side of the bowl. He looked up, hoping the noise would be Ma's cue to start talking already.

She had the look on her face of a woman who's just watched that episode of the show where they killed off the main guy, who she loved. Like she wasn't just trying to reason with her son anymore, she was in mourning because she'd out-and-out gone and lost something. She hadn't looked like this since 1985, at least.

"Maury, when I am gone, that money...that's going to be yours. You can do with it what you want and I won't stand in-"

"Ma..."

"I won't stand in your way, Maury. Because I will be dead. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, yes Ma."

"When I am dead. And when I am in the ground. You may have that money." while she was speaking, Maury noticed that she hadn't touched even a bit of her tomato soup. "You may do whatever you wish. All I hope to do in the time I have left is to instill in you a sense of responsibility. Because if you throw away the better part of a million dollars, Maury, on a balloon business or motorcyle taxis or, what was it, custom microwave covers...if you do that, Maury, I fear that I will come back and haunt you. And I don't want that. I don't want anything to do with some crazy business idea. I want my soul to be at rest, I want to spend my afterlife with your dear father, who didn't even live through Chanukah that year."

She pushed her bowl of soup forward, and leaned closer to her son, something like a fire in her eyes.

"If you cause my soul unrest, Maury, by God I am going to make you regret ever asking me for that money after the very first time, when you didn't even have the sense to tell me why you needed it!"

He sniffled, and this was when Maury realized he was crying a little bit.

"I'm sorry, Ma." he said, and he looked down at the table. He wished he was crying a little more, because this was probably helping to make his case. "I'm sorry you don't think my idea's any good. I just wanted to, you know, be a success for you. Before you do go. I want to make a lot of money and make sure everything's taken care of. It's all I ever wanted to do. I think this money from Uncle Izzy, it was a sign. Coming like that, only a few years after dad goes? You don't think so?"

"I don't think," she said, having unfortunately lost none of that fire Maury hoped his tears had doused, "that anyone in their right mind would care if there were hot air balloons in Tennessee or not. And I don't think anyone in their right mind would even open up a hot air balloon business. But if you want that money so badly, Maury, then I will give you what's owed, and you will not hear from me again. Do you understand? That will be it."

It didn't matter what Maury said to her, one way or another, because it was only a day later that Ma passed on. He got the call from the hospital that she'd suffered a stroke in the night, and after calling her own ambulance from the phone on her nightstand, she turned back over onto the pillow, leaving the phone receiver dangling there, a white plastic pendulum with the 911 operator still on the other end. The old woman sobbed once, at first panicked and troubled by the thought of dying, and then realized that there was not much else left for her to do. New Jersey was over twenty years and a thousand miles gone, and Tennessee was just another place, now that her sister was dead, and God, that had been almost fifteen years ago itself when she passed. Almost just before Isidor. She thought of her last vacation, a trip to Nevada with her friend Ethel (1931-2002) in which they completely avoided Las Vegas because it intimidated them, but in the end so did the thought of walking along the Hoover Dam.

Lastly, she thought of Maury, her only child, and she thought of what it would have been like to have a little girl to take care of, too.

She could hear the operator's voice, calmly but loudly squawking out of the dangling receiver that was almost done swinging around in the open air next to the bed. She couldn't make out what the operator was saying. Because of the stroke, she couldn't speak, but she wanted to tell the operator to tell her son that the balloons business, that was still a bad idea, please don't use the money for that.

© 2009 Andy Cole