Constance Cobbler

From Views from the Carrot Condo by Trista Cornelius

September 1, 2010

It’s only a little after seven, but it’s already dark enough outside that we turn on the dining room light, a nostalgic feel after long, bright summer days. It happens so fast, the shortening and darkening of the days. I try not to think about it and turn my attention to our dessert.

My man leans back in his chair, curves his right hand around his bowl, and with his left hand holds his spoon straight up in the air. He closes his eyes. The back of the spoon faces me, reflecting in miniature a woman, elbow on the table, chin leaning into hand. She looks like a Modigliani painting sort of stretched and swerved, languid. Behind her, warped by the spoon’s reflection, floats an image of a large etching of a poppy flower framed in blue.

If I could paint this scene—the man contemplating his last bite and the tiny reflection of his dining company—I would title it “The Eater,” but secretly call it “The Chef and the Artist” because for this moment I feel like a real chef as I recognize myself in that spoon-mirror, and see my mom’s etching behind me which reminds me that I come from artists, that it’s in my blood, blood being something I’ve thought a bit about today.

My man opens his eyes and aims the spoon at the last bite of dessert, hesitant for someone so practiced at detachment, he clings to the bowl, wishing it not to be over, then scoops up the black, lavender, and cream morsel and savors.

Since living in this house, I’ve battled the ivy—tenacious climbing vines embedding themselves in the fence and looping over to the lattice, threatening to reach the roof. It grows in our absent neighbor’s back yard. Three times a year I pull out ladders, climb up, and rip, cut, and pull until the ivy remains only on her side, still clinging with its millions of gripping feet, crouching behind the fence until I turn away then stretching itself back over. It’s invasive. It’s non-native. It must be eradicated. I know I sound like a savage dictator; even so, I am relentless.

Then, this year, during the third cutting of the ivy, I found thick, thorned berry vines weaving their way through to our side of the fence along with the ivy. I cut them out just as mercilessly. Unlike the ivy, however, the vine fought back and drew blood at first strike. Thorns the size of candy corn, curved and sharp like a cat’s claw, fit into my flesh like a toothpick into play-dough and sliced rough, easy lines down my arms, filing back layers of flesh beaded with blood. I grumbled and lamented the absent neighbor and these invasive weeds becoming my problem.

However, one berry vine escaped my shears until a hot August afternoon when I noticed a crown of bees dizzying themselves around some white blossoms, small green berries, and large black ones. The air near this vine smelled like pie, fresh, hot, berry pie. The vine turned out to be a blackberry, a Himalayan blackberry, just as invasive and non-native as the ivy I am told, but armed with weapons to defend and sweet gifts to woo.

A fully ripe Himalayan blackberry, soft to the touch, falling off the stem and warm from the sun pressed between tongue and roof of mouth oozes a rich syrup comparable to nothing but itself that wakens the body like a magic potion. Celestial ingredients swirl around the digestive tract, reminding the body’s particles and parts of their solar system origins until it feels like your feet may very well lift off the ground and return the body to its source.

I wrote a polite letter to the absent neighbor, void of any angry sentiments about her ivy, suggesting nothing but a breezy, friendly request that I enter her backyard to pick her beautiful blackberries. I hoped the mail would be forwarded to wherever she resides. Before sending the letter, I walked to the front of her house and knocked in spite of half a dozen locks on the outer and inner doors as well as the gate to her backyard, heavy shades drawn over all the windows, paint peeling, and that soundless sound of a house not lived in. I mailed the letter expecting no response and watched longingly as the berries ripened and fell.

Then, Monday morning, the answering machine light blinked. An unfamiliar voice drawled unclearly and my finger hovered over the “stop/erase” button to cut off some unwanted solicitation. Then I heard the word “blackberries”:

“I’ll be in town this afternoon. I’ll unlock the gate. You can come pick between showers. I’ll lock the gate again Wednesday. You have today and tomorrow to pick the berries.”

A few minutes later, my cell phone rang. “Hello.” Nothing. “Hello” I said annoyed. “Yes, this is 2830, I’ll be by later today to unlock the gate. You can pick the berries between showers today or tomorrow. I’ll be back Wednesday to lock the gate.”

Her voice waivered in a way that suggested she might be older. I envisioned someone short, but no other characteristic came through the phone lines. I thanked her enthusiastically and offered to leave her some berries on her back porch. “No thank you” she said and hung up.

It was a mission if I chose to accept it. The little gate would be unlocked for just over 24 hours. I plotted and planned. Tuesday morning it rained. I waited impatiently for a break. Even though I had all day to pick the berries, I felt antsy. I had to get to them before someone else did. I’d learned that another neighbor, apparently with his own key to the gate, picked the berries when he pleased. “He’s older,” I told myself, “he’ll only pick the easy ones.” I packed a small ladder to get to the hard-to-reach ones, covered my arms and legs in denim and thick cotton, and went out into the rain.

It was weird being in someone else’s back yard, like entering a different zone with different weather patterns. My house, just on the other side of the fence, seemed far away and unfamiliar. In her backyard, I heard nothing. No sound of the birds I hear in my backyard, no buzzing of bees, no squeaking bicycles, no wagons of toddlers pulled by parents rattling by. Maybe it was the rain, dampening ground and sound, but her yard vibrated with an intense privacy, cloistered and hiding something ethereal. Nothing moved back there. No wind. No squirrels. No birds. I felt relieved to see a few tiny ants on the fallen berries rotting into the grass.

I approached the berries studiously. Vines wove around each other in tall arches creating dark empty spaces deep inside the brambles. Greener vines reached out to inspect me. I felt watched. I picked the low berries, but even though they were black, most were not ready. Anything but the softest Himalayan tastes bitter and poisonous. The ripest ones were few and spread out, high up or deep inside the darkness.

My mind cleared. I was nothing but patience and concentration. I crouched, stretched, tucked, kneeled, and maneuvered through the vines. Sometimes the best berries tumbled out of my hand as I backed up to put the berries in my stainless steel bowl. Thorns that had curved away from me when I reached in now dug deeply into my shirt, jeans, and gloves on my way out. I ignored the pain, even when thorns sliced into the softest, whitest skin of my stomach and ribs, my cotton shirt as useful as gossamer against these knives. I let myself be violated by these sinewy ropes, let them pull me into their musky den because the berries were worth it.

I stood on the top step of my little ladder and leaned toward our side of the fence, grasping for a huge, thick berry. I feared falling in. I’d brought my cell phone in case I got stuck, but I knew now a knife and shears would have been more useful. Vines ranged from pencil-thick to one as wide in diameter and as solid as the post for a stop sign. The thorns varied in thickness too, but all stayed tight on the vine and hard, ready to gauge repeatedly.

When I finally left, brushing off seeds and debris, I could not tell the difference between blackberry juice and dried blood. Turns out, most of it was juice, but a few wounds remain on my right arm and torso, enough to justify my feeling that I’d entered a jungle and navigated a foreign land, not simply turned the corner of my block and entered a yard separated from mine by only a thin, tall layer of wood.

That afternoon, I mixed fresh peaches with the blackberries, a tablespoon of sugar and lemon juice, and covered the shimmering black gems with a lemon-poppy biscuit topping. As it baked, the hot blackberries emitted bewitching fumes, their sinister sweetness so black and deep I thought for sure they would turn my pale hair into sleek raven feathers, but no such luck.

We ate the cobbler while it was still warm, only detecting the peaches by their different texture since the shadowy juice had stained the peaches an inky slate color.

Still relishing his last bite, my man notices my note from the answering machine message on the table.

“What’s her name?” he asks about our absent neighbor.

“Constance,” I said.

I looked out the dining room window over the fence to her two empty upstairs rooms, the only windows without shades pulled. I’d never seen anyone in those windows, anyone in the house or in the backyard, and yet, I have always felt watched by that house. Watched in a shy, inquisitive way, like the backyard produced those berries just for me, having come to know me and know what I would like, like an apology for the ivy, like an understanding, like a timid, guarded friendship.