Miso Soup (Revised) (standard:other, 944 words)
Author: Robert L. Revland	Added: Jul 30 2001	Views/Reads: 3569/2281	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A young couple converses over soup and braves a hard winter in New York City

A few months ago, I happened upon a small, clandestine soup shop in
SoHo, run by an old Japanese woman who refused to serve anything but 
soup.  The woman spoke no English and understood almost nothing that 
was said to her.  She spent the whole day sitting behind a counter, 
knitting next to an old, clunky radiator.  Once in a while she would 
get up and whack the radiator with a cane, scolding it in Japanese. 

The soup shop itself was a simple affair.  Plain, cracked white walls
enclosed a small room with a few tables in it.  The room was lit by two 
big, harsh lights on the ceiling.  The door was nearly invisible from 
the outside, masked by the darkness of the narrow street. 

It was the middle of a freezing winter blizzard.  Janet and I sat at a
table under the stark light, sipping hot miso soup from small red 
bowls.  I smiled at her. 

"Good soup," she said. 

I nodded slowly in response.  "Janet?" I said after taking a sip of my
soup. 

"Yes?" 

"Do you have any idea of how you’re going to get home?"  Janet lived in
the far corner of the Bronx, twenty blocks from the nearest Subway. 

"Sure.  I’ll take the Subway." 

"And then walk twenty blocks through the freezing, blinding storm."  I
gave her a questioning look. 

"No.  I’ll take a bus." 

"You’d freeze to death waiting.  I don’t even think the buses are
running." 

She sat on that for a second, sipped some soup and shrugged.  "Well, I
guess I’ll have to walk then." 

"Janet, stop kidding yourself.  Come home with me." 

"What?  No, my mom would kill me."  Janet’s mom was the most oppressive,
overprotective woman I had ever met.  When Janet told her we were 
having a relationship, she didn’t show up at school for two days, and 
when she did, it was obvious that they had had a fight.  And I mean a 
real fight.  There were scratches on her arms and bruises on her face.  
It was horrible.  That was the last time I had asked Janet to stay with 
me.  She had freaked out and yelled at me.  Janet was always jumpy and 
paranoid, but she had calmed down since then, thankfully. 

"Your mom would say it’s the smartest thing you’ve done in weeks." 

Janet laughed, a hint of nervousness in her voice.  "I doubt that. 
Besides, that wouldn’t mean much, coming from my mother.  I’m going to 
go home." 

"Come on, Janet!  Stop being ridiculous.  You can’t go out in this
weather and walk twenty blocks!  That’s suicide!" 

"Well, I’m glad to know you care, but I’m going to do what I think is
the right thing to do." 

"You’re going to do what your mother thinks is the right thing, not what
you think." 

"Don’t tell me what I think.  That’s the problem with you, you always
think you can tell me what to do.  Well, I’m sick of it!  We’ve been 
together for three months and as sweet and sensitive as you may be, you 
still can’t figure out that I don’t like that!  You’re almost as bad as 
my mother!"  That was a blow.  Being compared to Janet’s mother was 
like having a museum exhibit done of "Amazing Similarities" between me 
and Machiavelli. 

"Janet, I’m sorry if you feel that way, but you’re overreacting.  You’re
right, I probably do that a lot, and I’m sorry, but right now, I’m not 


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