Soup and Sex

Con•sum•mate: verb ˈkänsəˌmāt/ make (a marriage or relationship) complete by having sexual intercourse.

“Well I was married once before. But it was never consummated,” our mother would tell us.

Thus began my lifelong association of soup and sex.

My mother and father did a stellar job of holding big secrets. I have no idea the inner workings of how they were such successful secret keepers. I do know that they had a tremendous amount of respect for each other and would go to great lengths to have each other’s back.

That’s why this one night in Miami was so surreal. Mom and dad got into a major fight, which was rare for them. There was a lot of yelling in our house, but generally not at each other. It usually involved sports or gambling, but this time was different. They knew how to push each other’s buttons, but some things were off the table. There were some buttons that were never to be pressed. Never. Until that night.

My sister and I were both there when the fight happened. I was just five at the time; my sister was thirteen.

“Oh yeah, Peg. Why don’t you tell them. Tell them about yourself Peg,” Dad yelled. He looked at my sister. “Your mother, she’s no saint. Tell’ em Peg.”

The next thing I know I’m on a bus with my mother and sister. She grabbed my stuffed monkey, because my mom knew better than to leave it behind. I would hold my breath until I passed out if monkey wasn’t there. I had done it before and I am sure I would have done it again. So the faded yellow monkey with the plastic face came with us.

That was it. We were gone. She just grabbed us and left. For the first time ever, she left. No warning, no words. I didn’t even have time to get shoes. We snuck out the back door, slid quietly along the waterfront walkway until we reached the bridge, and hopped a bus.

My sister Toni pressed on. “What did he mean Mom?” What was dad talking about?”

After some persistence mom shut her up by confessing something that shocked us. I was too young to grasp the magnitude of her words, but the look on Toni’s face said it all. She told us that she had been married once before to a local boy at the beginning of the war. She was quick to add that the marriage was never consummated.

I can still hear those words ringing in my five-year-old brain. “It was never consummated.”

We spent the next few nights at the house of a friend of our mother’s and I saw a side of my dad I had never seen before. Mom’s friend’s husband, probably out of fear of what my father would do to him if he found out he was hiding us, called to let him know where we were. Dad was a mess. He couldn’t function without her. Mom let him sweat for a few days, and after several phone calls that involved tears, begging, and endless apologies, we finally went home.

And that was that. Dad never brought it up again. And my sister and I discovered one of their secrets. Maybe not the one he was referring to that night, but we now knew she was married before.

His name was Herb Fenton. He was a local boy who played the horn. They both wanted out of their small town. They had a thing for each other but they were young and suddenly draft notices were being delivered throughout her neighborhood. They decided to get married before he shipped off. They would figure out the details later. He left, and my mom from that day forward would take his name.

It was with that name that Peggy Fenton would fall in love, get engaged to a celebrity, have a child, and finally get married again for good to our father.

The wedding certificate that we would see through the years would read: Evelyn Margaret Hamilton married Andrew Anthony Celentano in New Haven, Connecticut. But like all of the other truths that aren’t worth the paper they are written on, the marriage would actually be recorded on the civil records that Andrew Anthony Celentano married Peggy Fenton in Miami Beach.

And as far as the consummating, we may never know, but somehow my sister and I can’t imagine mom sending her young husband off to war without at least one for the road.

As for me, that story made a deep connection that would always in one way or another stay with me.

Consommé.

What does soup have to do with getting married? I wondered for years.

When two people love each other very much they decide to get married and then they eat soup together and it’s super romantic and hot.

That would explain the cans of Campbell’s Consommé in the cupboard. Mom used it not only as a base for soup, but for other stews and dinners she would lovingly prepare. As long as there were Consommé cans in the cupboard I knew Mom and Dad were fine. They were consummating.

Sharing soup has always seemed intimate. Something soothing and comforting, made with love. It was the gateway meal to the naked stuff. But it’s always best when started with soup. While Consommé might really mean “a strong, clear soup that resembles a broth,” for me, it will always have a different, much dirtier meaning.