The Blackberry Pie Thief

The moment the ferry from Anacortes rumbled and began to move away from the dock, Elinor Curtis felt the tight knot in her chest holding her to her life cast off too. She stood in the prow and watched the wake bubble, froth, and disappear — just like that — and she thought, why not? Why shouldn’t all change be that simple? Organic. Why couldn’t she change like that?

She closed her eyes, breathed deeply of the salt air, and, when she looked around again, she was surrounded by green humped islands floating serenely on the water. One by one, they seemed to call to her, and, for once in her life, she knew she was going to answer not “Why?” but “Yes.”

After all, this was only what she’d been telling her lonely, frustrated, conflicted, depressed, isolated, bored, spoiled, and lazy clients from 9 to 5, five days a week, for the past 12 years. “You don’t need to search for what’s right for you. You only need to listen. Yield to your inner wisdom. All the answers are there.”

Last Christmas, her boyfriend of eight years, if you could call a man of 58 a boyfriend, had given her a plaque that said, “Physician, heal thyself!” and then he’d left her on New Year’s Day. Elinor had spent the next seven months holed up in her Los Angeles apartment mourning Harold and slowly giving in to sloth and despair. After a while, she didn’t even care, and secretly she reveled in the irony that her clients, seeing her on Zoom, had no idea of the mess to whom they were confiding their woes.

She might have gone on like that forever, except her sister sent her a postcard from the San Juan Islands, where she’d gone for a spiritual drumming course or some such thing. It was a place Elinor had assumed was in the Caribbean or possibly off the coast of South America. The evergreen islands with their background of snow-capped mountains took her by surprise. Washington, the postcard said. They would speak English there, she thought, and her pilot light flickered.

Her future “yes” began to reveal itself when she decided to look into how to get there herself. By ferry, it turned out. Coming from Los Angeles with its gazillion-laned highways, clogged with traffic, the very idea of traveling by ferry tickled her. She bought her fare, then rented a cottage with a view of the water.

By the time the ferry reached Orcas Island and pulled into the dock by a charming small town, Elinor thought she was going to be hard put to come up with a reason ever to go back.

After all, what had she left behind? A well-appointed high-rise apartment with no mortgage; a wardrobe, including short skirts, painfully high-heeled shoes; lacy bras and nightgowns; and a bathroom full of beauty products, drugs, and health supplements. To say nothing of those overwhelmingly needy clients, loving friends and family she never saw in person, and social media accounts, which she now considered a ball and chain she’d been dragging for as long as they’d existed.

It was no doubt a sign of weakness that she stowed her laptop on the top shelf of her new tiny closet rather than toss it into the nearest trash can, and she didn’t let go of her iPhone either. After all, even on an island, you might need to call 911. Assuming the service existed there.

 

Stripped down to an old denim shirt and jeans last worn in the previous century, she looked at herself in the wavery mirror over the bathroom sink and saw a 40-year-old woman, still reasonably pretty, with intelligent but worried dark eyes and chestnut-colored hair that was already becoming scraggly, three weeks post-cut. Is this really me? she kept asking herself. But rather than answering the question, she stopped looking. Like her once-pristine Volvo, which was accumulating dust in the driveway, she let herself be.

It proved harder than she expected to give up the pursuit of perfection, not only in herself, but also in everything around her­­ — which now meant a four-room cottage and a garden full of furiously prickly blackberry bushes, as well as a tiny patch of waterfront that needed several truckloads of white sand before it would qualify as a beach, in her opinion.

Amazingly enough though, she did nothing. She lay for hours on her damp, lumpy couch and looked out the window at the floating islands, majestic trees, clouds, water. She would never have imagined this could be a totally absorbing activity, but it was. And slowly she began to appreciate the sights, sounds, and smells of the island. Its silence.

There was no other cottage in sight, and not a single person. She heard no voices. No traffic noise. No lawnmowers or generators. An occasional boat went by, and the ferry moved distantly back and forth between the islands, a reminder that there remained a link to the past. Once she saw a deer come through the yard. Another time, a rabbit. There were birds, but she had no idea what they were, except for the seagulls.

Elinor expected, at first, to be afraid, especially at night, but she wasn’t. She slept. She woke. And she began to notice more things. Like those blackberry bushes, for example. They developed exquisite tiny lavender flowers, which miraculously turned into small green berries that slowly became fruit. This was exciting.

Gray day followed gray day, then there was a bit of rain, and still Elinor did nothing. She was, she told herself, achieving a zen state of acceptance and openness. Then she awoke to a clear sunny morning, and the sight of the dazzling snow-peaked Olympic Mountains along the horizon felt like an electric shock. A sign, she was sure, of all she had misunderstood about life … she had taken the cool water lapping the shore at her feet as the whole story, when all along the mountains, just waiting to be seen, were reaching for the sky.

This was good. She took a shower, changed her clothes. Wished she had a client she could use this metaphor on, but she didn’t. Instead, she drove her car into the little town, where the sight of people and shops made her feel as if she had returned to Earth from a spell of space travel.

She wandered through the grocery and found herself picking out the kind of food that you don’t eat — you use it to make something else: flour, sugar, salt, rice, eggs, milk, butter. She bypassed the cases of brightly colored ready-mades and couldn’t imagine how she’d once lived on that stuff. The picture on the label was always so much more than what was inside. What you consumed. Another metaphor. Really. Her brain seemed to be waking up. She hoped there was a cookbook in the cottage because, when she checked out, she had two bulging bags and no idea what she was going to do with what she’d bought.

Outside, she encountered a small group of smiling women and children who looked as if they’d been raised on fresh air, standing behind a long table displaying baked goods. All homemade. The sign said: Help Support the Orcas Island Outing Club.

Elinor was simultaneously attracted and repelled. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what an Outing Club was, much less support it. But the pies, latticed with pastry that gave glimpses of the fragrant gooey purple fruit within, spoke to her. The label “blackberry pies” confirmed her suspicion.

And suddenly, she had a plan. A small but nonetheless real ambition. Not to buy a pie made by the dubiously named Outing Club, but to make one of her own. How hard could it be? She drove home as fast as she dared.

* * *

The first thing she discovered was that it would have been good to have gloves. She considered the blackberries in her yard to be hers, but the bushes did not always agree. By the time she’d picked what looked like enough berries for a pie, her hands were purple with berry juice and stinging from all the pricker wounds she’d incurred. Nonetheless, she was undaunted.

A pie crust, according to the recipe in the battered cookbook she found in her spartan kitchen, was the simplest of all pastries to make. A mere matter of mixing flour, butter, cold water, and a dash of salt. However, it didn’t take Elinor long to discover that this was false advertising. One person’s mix of the above could produce a masterpiece of golden flakiness, and another’s would end up as a glob of greasy gunk. Clearly another metaphor. You could not blame the mess of your life on the ingredients.

It took her three tries to produce a dough that could be rolled out into the two circles so optimistically shown in the book and get one into the pie pan without it completely falling apart. The filling was less problematic. Elinor wisely decided against attempting a lattice and dropped her second circle of dough on top with something like a prayer. Then she put the pie in the oven and fell asleep on the couch.

The smell of burning blackberries awakened her, but fortunately it was not the pie burning, only the goop that had dripped out and fallen to the bottom of the oven. She took out the pie and opened all the windows to get rid of the smoke. The pie itself didn’t look half bad, but the smoke was unbearable, so she set the pie on the sill of the open window to cool.

Perhaps this was the not the best thing to do, but it was an example of how you can never know the meaning or the possible consequences of any act, large or small.

Elinor was sure she remembered that the best place to cool a freshly baked pie was on the windowsill. This was probably an idea she had absorbed from old movies, because she had no idea why unless it was to prevent the pastry from tasting of smoke. Regardless, she left the pie there and went for a drive on the island’s woodsy narrow roads to recover from her hard day’s work.

* * *

Now, Elinor was from Los Angeles and no stranger to crime. She’d spent three hours hiding in a department store dressing room during a live-shooter lockdown at a shopping mall. Her purse had been snatched, and her car had been broken into twice and stolen once. On top of that, her phone had been hacked, her credit cards stolen, and her social media accounts cloned. Consequently, she considered herself a seasoned citizen of 21st-century America.

But none of that had prepared her for returning to the cottage and finding her pie gone. Not her computer. Not her jewelry, not even her bottle of Valium. Her pie.

She rushed outside to see if a sudden gust of wind might have knocked it off the windowsill onto the ground. But no. There was so sign of it.

She rechecked the oven, in case she’d only dreamt she’d taken the pie out. An unpleasant smell of burned fruit still lingered, but no, the pie was not there. Outside again, she walked all the way around her yard, as if the blackberry bushes might have taken back their own.

She was on her second time around when she realized that not only was the pie gone, but also the pan. That gave her pause.

She went down to her stony beach and searched that too, but there was no sign of pie or pan there either. Having exhausted all of the obvious options, she sat down on a sea-whitened tree trunk to think.

Aside from being miffed that she was not going to enjoy the fruit of her day’s labors, Elinor was mystified. In the whole time she’d been at the cottage, she had never seen another human being and was unaware of any other dwellings nearby. It was unsettling to think that there might be someone she did not know about, who was close enough to observe her without being seen. And rude enough to steal her pie!

She sat there, watching the water lap at her feet, and considered calling the police. After all, on an island like this, the theft of a pie might be the most dramatic crime of the day, and the police might be glad to hear from her. Then again, they might think her a stupid woman from the city who left a pie out on the sill of her open window. She should consider herself lucky to have lost no more, they might say with a sneer.

Unwilling to give up or give in — that was not the stuff she was made of — Elinor decided to stop looking for the pie and look for evidence. In the past seven months, she’d watched hundreds of crimes solved on television. She knew how to go about it.

And from that moment, she felt a fresh wave of adrenaline. Not the kind that comes with a shocking loss or a new plan, but the kind that comes with a blazing sense of purpose.

She went back to the cottage and studied the window sill carefully. The perpetrator had to have been at least six feet tall to reach it. There were no chairs, trash cans, wood piles, or ladders to assist a climbing thief, so this was a solid fact.

Having stolen the pie (she hoped the pan was still hot enough to burn!), what had the perpetrator done? She closely examined the graveled area that stood in for a patio, looking for signs — crumbs of pastry, blobs of blackberry — but she saw nothing.

Momentarily, Elinor was discouraged. Then she realized the thief couldn’t have known how long she would be gone. It would be risky to stand right there, scarfing up her pie, in plain sight, when the woods offered privacy only a few feet away.

She surveyed the trees beyond what she now saw as the fiercely protective fence of blackberry bushes. So far, she had never been tempted to venture into the woods. And, in fact, her belief that no one lived nearby was based only on the fact that she had never seen or heard them. Or smelled them, she added to herself, realizing this was another metaphor. Or perhaps a tenet of philosophy for life: Never base your assumptions or beliefs only on what you can see and hear. Or smell.

On closer examination, she discovered a gap in the bushes. Not one a person would notice right off, but a definite space where you could slip through without being mauled. Holding her hands over her head, Elinor wriggled through and found herself on the other side. Her shirt was torn, but she was in the woods. And, lo and behold, there was something like a path ahead. This must be a metaphor too. The way forward is right there, but you can’t see it unless you risk fighting your way through the prickers to find it.

Elinor looked around at the dense overlapping layers of greenery and thought maybe what she should really do was write a book. These insights were too good to waste on Zoom clients. She might become rich and famous. Beloved. She could already see herself on the talk shows describing how the inspiration for How to Get Through the Pricker Bushes of Life had come to her. Perhaps that title was too clunky, but her publisher could change it.

Meanwhile … she needed to focus on her mission. To catch a thief.

She studied the path, certain that no one could have eaten that whole pie without dropping crumbs. The thief must have carefully carried the pie through the woods to their lair, where it would be consumed with a knife and fork. That would explain the missing pie pan.

Elinor was wondering where she’d have to go to buy a replacement for the lost pan when she noticed a paw print on the path in front of her — a large round indentation in the soil with five smaller ones arranged around one side and deep holes made by what had to be five sharp claws. She crouched down to look more closely, but when she realized what she was looking at, she was so surprised she lost her balance and sat down hard.

The print looked fresh … and there were undoubtedly more that she hadn’t noticed. She tried to look around without moving her head, because she couldn’t remember whether you were supposed to stay still or jump up and down shouting and waving your arms if you met a bear. Her sister had gone to Alaska to study spiritual drumming and had read every story she could find about horrific bear encounters beforehand.

Of course, nothing happened to her. She didn’t even see a bear. But somehow it made sense that it would be Elinor who would be eaten, thanks to following her sister’s example by coming here. At the same time, she wondered how a bear could get to a little island like this. Surely not by ferry.

She was not going to argue with evidence, though. She’d come looking for evidence and here it was. She imagined a six-foot bear handily lifting her pie off the windowsill. What he did with the pan was a mystery, but it was surely in the bushes somewhere. She was not going to look for it.

Instead, Elinor listened carefully and watched for movement, half expecting to see the bear watching her, before she began to slide on her bottom toward the blackberry bushes. She hoped she was aiming for the opening she’d come through before, but she was afraid to turn her head. One thing for sure was she would not attempt to outrun a bear. That would undoubtedly shorten the span of her new life plan.

When she finally made it back to the cottage, she took two Valium and drank a glass of whiskey straight. Then she lay down on the lumpy couch, waiting for her pulse to slow and watching the clouds turn gold and pink as the sunset led to darkness.

* * *

In the morning, she was determined to continue her investigation and was rewarded by the discovery of fresh evidence. She spotted traces of bear tracks in the yard that looked as if the bear had waited impatiently all night for another pie. Or for Elinor, if she were on the menu.

As if! she thought and settled down to make a practical plan of action.

First, she searched for information about bears on the island and discovered there had been several sightings in the past. Even more amazing was how the bears got there. By swimming! From Canada! Her bear, who had grabbed the low-hanging fruit of her pie, took on a new dimension of both reality and danger. She thought about the meaning of a “bear hug” and felt a frisson of fear as she remembered her sister’s stories. A grizzly can pop your skull like a grape with its teeth.

The articles she read urged anyone sighting a bear to call the Sheriff’s Department, but she hadn’t seen the bear yet, and she realized that, in this new life of hers, she would much prefer to see a bear at her window than a police car in her drive.

Instead, she drove back into town to find another pie pan and more flour, butter, and blackberries. The Outing Club’s fresh-faced women and children were still outside the grocery peddling their baked goods, so Elinor approached a young mother with long braids and a baby in a sling across her chest — someone it was hard to imagine went around outing people as a hobby — and casually chatted her up, first about pies … and then about whether she’d ever seen a bear on the island.

“A bear? No way,” she said and laughed. Her question caught the attention of the other women, who laughed too. Elinor could tell from their expressions that, despite her blackberry-stained shirt and old jeans, she was recognized as a rank outsider.

“There was a bear here,” she said. “I saw photos. A story.”

“Oh, that bear,” said the woman. “He left.”

“Oh,” said Elinor and decided not to challenge her. She bought a peanut butter cookie instead to eat on the way home.

But nature, she thought, does not deal in ones, unless you were talking about human beings, who seemed increasingly unable to connect with each other. One bear five years ago had swum over to the island and that was it? He left? He didn’t come back? Bring friends? Procreate? Coming from a city with a human population of 3.85 million, Elinor could not fathom this idea. On the other hand, she felt a sympathy with the idea of the lone bear. She herself was alone here. She hadn’t swum from Canada, but she had struck out on her own to see if life on the island would suit her. Is that what the bear had done too?

As she drove, she understood that stronger than her fear was now a growing desire to see this bear who’d stolen her pie. She was going to make another pie. Maybe several, if that’s what it took.

As she chopped cold butter and mixed it with flour, added a pinch of salt, and sprinkled on cold water, she thought about what it would be like to see a six-foot bear looking at her through her window.

She would be safe inside, of course, but there would be a moment when they would look into each other’s eyes. And then the bear would say, as he took the pie, “Thank you.”

And she would say, “My pleasure.”

“This one is better than the last,” he would say.

And she would say, “I agree. But do you prefer lattice?”

“No,” the bear would say. “The more crust the better. I need the calories, you know.”

Elinor would nod. She had read this on the internet.

* * *

This time, when she put her pie in the oven, she swore she wouldn’t fall asleep, but she did lie down on the couch to watch the clouds, and as they drifted by, she drifted too until, half-asleep, she found herself still talking to the bear’s wise and sympathetic face: “After Harold left,” she told him, “I thought could I never bear to have another relationship. But now I understand, my problem has always been that I have never bared my soul to anyone.” And the bear nodded in agreement.

This romantic scene ended abruptly with the drumming sound her sister had put on her phone timer, and Elinor leapt to her feet. This time, the pie smelled delicious, and she was tempted to eat some herself. But instead, she opened the window, set the pie on the sill, and waited.

And waited.

But the thief did not return.

In fact, nothing came except a storm that blew in gusts of rain before she could get the window closed. The pie was ruined, and she threw it away.

Disappointed and unable even to read with the pounding of rain on the cottage roof, Elinor decided to drive back into town. She had noticed a bookstore; hopefully, there she could find a book on bears that would further her investigation.

By the time she’d parked and made her way to the store, she was drenched. Living in L.A., Elinor had never worried about having a raincoat, and she’d lost so many umbrellas she’d given up on them too. Being drenched was a new experience, like showering with your clothes on. The bookstore clerk glanced at her, but she seemed unconcerned by the fact that Elinor looked as if she had swum over from another island to come to the shop.

It took only a few minutes to find a handsome guide to North American bears full of facts, maps, and photographs, but what excited Elinor even more was a pamphlet titled “Awaken Your Sleeping Bear: A Guide to a Wilder Way of Being.” This discovery felt as momentous as seeing the paw print. Another metaphor. Always be alert for the paw prints that show you the way forward. They may not look the way you expect.

When she set her purchases on the counter, Elinor took a chance and asked the clerk, “Have you ever seen a bear here? On the island?”

This woman laughed too, but in a friendly way, and said, “No, most visitors I talk to are more interested in whether I’ve seen a Sasquatch.”

“A what watch?” asked Elinor.

“A Sas-quatch. Big Foot. Washington is famous for them.”

Elinor wrinkled up her nose. “Well, I’m talking about a bear. Definitely not a whatever-you-call it. I’ve seen tracks.”

“Really? Where do you live?”

Elinor felt gratified to have found someone who listened. This was a reminder that having anyone listen to you is a big deal. Worth money. And helpful. She suddenly thought better of herself and her profession. Her former profession.

“In Olga,” she said.

“Olga. A small cottage? Isolated and right on the water?”

“Yes,” said Elinor, amazed that you could live in a place where people knew every house. In L.A., she wouldn’t be able to recognize the buildings on her own block if she saw photos of them. “Have other people seen bears there?”

The girl nodded. “You’ve seen tracks, right?”

She didn’t seem surprised, and Elinor’s heart sped up.

“Yes. I didn’t call the sheriff, though. Somehow, I didn’t want to. I rather liked the idea. Of the bear, you know.” She considered mentioning the theft of her pie but decided against it.

The girl seemed to be holding back another laugh anyway. “That’s good, because, you know, I expect it was Charlie.”

“Charlie?” The bear had a name! “That’s what he’s called?”

“Yes. Charlie Metterlein. He’s your landlord.”

“What?” If it were possible to feel your face fall, Elinor knew it had happened to her then.

“Charlie Metterlein. He has bear shoes. He wears them around in the woods.”

“Bear shoes!” The picture that filled her mind was of a man wearing boots made out of a bear’s feet.

“It’s just a joke. I mean, most everybody knows we don’t have bears here.”

“I see. Very funny,” said Elinor, snatching up her books. She suddenly remembered Charlie Metterlein then — she’d seen his photo on the rental website. A large, rather goofy-looking, bearlike bearded man, as she recalled. She wanted to say that he was not only a pervert but also a thief, and she was going to press charges, but she didn’t.

Instead, she drove home too fast, and, when she skidded to a stop in front of the cottage, she was shaking. Life had only begun to be bearable again, she thought, and absolutely no pun was intended. But the loss of the bear she would now never meet felt like a bigger hole in her heart than the sight of Harold’s empty closet.

She thought about packing her bags and leaving. But she had done that many times before and always with the same result. She landed in another place to leave.

She thought about not paying her rent, something she had never done before. After all, she had not only rented the cottage but also a space for peace and quiet. For zen awareness and openness to her future. This pseudo-bear-robber-landlord had stolen all of that, as well as her pie.

She thought about marching through the woods to this Charlie’s cottage, banging on the door, and telling him off. But that was nothing new either, and never satisfying. She’d told Harold off countless times, and he’d only stared at her and then left.

Instead, she dropped her purse and books on the kitchen table and watched from the window as the ferry to Anacortes moved steadily across her line of vision with its promise of escape.

She sighed. She did not want to leave. So, what did she want to do?

Open the cupboards, take out the flour and salt, get the butter from the fridge, and make a pie. As she worked, she thought about bears. Real, imagined, and fake. You couldn’t always know which you were dealing with, but that was no reason to give up hope.

For all anyone knew, a bear might be swimming toward the island right now, and the smell of baking blackberry pie might draw him from the beach to Elinor’s window. And maybe he’d stop on the way to eat Charlie and his bear shoes. A crime solved should always end with justice, and Elinor thought this would be the perfect end for her pie thief.

This time, she didn’t fall asleep, and the pie didn’t burn. She made herself some tea while it cooled, and then she cut herself a piece. The crust was not half bad, and, while the berries were both tart and sweet, that was another metaphor. There was no use in either saying all life was too tart or in waiting for it to become all sweet, so she ate every bite and enjoyed it, down to the crumbs.

Then she set the rest of the pie on the windowsill and watched. A few birds came by for a taste, including a seagull who knocked it to ground. In the morning, the pie was entirely gone, but the pie pan — and Elinor — were still there.