Ernestine made us a butternut squash soup with chunks of green apple and pear. She blended the ingredients with a hand mixer and simmered it while Sam and I cleared the table. The table was covered in old receipts, photographs, cords and clamps, playing cards, notes scrawled in pen with unsteady hands, and brown-ringed teacups. We asked her where it all went but she didnāt know anymore. She couldnāt remember much, but she remembered how to make the soup.
The produce came in a thick metal box with a clamp. There was a button that defrosted the contents. Ernestine gets all her produce from an outpost near Ganymede, and her meat from a station on Io. Her freezer is all blocked up with maple sausage patties; she says theyāre for me, that she remembers how much I like them. Iāve been allergic to the coloring agents in them for nearly a decade now.
Sam helps her take the pot off the stove and holds the bowls steady while she ladles them.
āGet us some bread why donāt you?ā Ernestine asks. She does not look up at me.
I open the refrigerator. I see unopened mustard, a shampoo bottle, and two beers. āThereās nothing,ā I tell her.
She shakes her head with grave disappointment. āNot there.ā She takes a long time before speaking these days, gathering her wool and stitching it out. āThereās a lady down on Complex 5, by the fountain. Sheās got a little bakery there, cute little place. Thatās where I get it.ā
āWhat, you want me to go buy some now?ā
Her head shakes when it nods. She has trouble holding it steady.
āMy cardās on the coffee table,ā Sam says. Heās going into the dining room with the bowls.
āI have money, Samuel.ā
My hand is on the door. Complex 5 isnāt far, but itās 16:30 UST, and everything closes early as shit on this station. Itās a glorified retirement community. I might get there and find out the sweet old lady who bakes the bread has been dead for a week. Our mom wouldnāt know.
Iām on the stoop when she says, āThatāll be fine, weāll just need to get some bread later. Youāre still growing, canāt just have you sippinā soup.ā
Ernestine locks her watery gaze on Sam, who smiles and taps the table with his fork. āYes maāam!ā
His smile intensifies and pleads at me. So I sit down beside our mother. Her hand shakes the spoon through the surface of the soup and clinks all the way to the bottom of the bowl. But she makes it back up and takes a sip with no problem.
āThe doctors have me on this nectar diet,ā she says, after she swallows. āFive days a week, just the nutrient juice. Itās like mucous, the stuff. But Iām so pleased to have somebody to cook for.ā
āItās wonderful, Mom.ā
And Iām not bullshitting her when I say it. I wouldnāt. The soup is delicious, tart and sweet like early fall on the surface of I-2367. They donāt grow apples like these so close to the sun. Not anymore. The old bird mustāve paid a small fortune for the shipment, and then she went and pulped āem.
Click here to read the rest of Tiangong Park over at The Future Fire.Ā Illustrations by Robin E Kaplan.Ā
