My neighbor Liz.

The first time I ate a fig was in my neighbor’s backyard in West Virginia.

My neighbor’s name was Liz. She was a 60-something former art teacher and activist (she’d been to many a protest in her day) who was adamant that I earn my own money because “women should always have a way out of their marriage.” Not because she thought ill of my husband, nor her own—but because earning your own money gives you a kind of freedom that is required in this world.

Liz was the most exuberant, irresistible, remarkable older woman I’d ever met, and have still ever met. She’d curse like a sailor, gossip like we were on an episode of Real Housewives, and had an absolutely refreshing lack of filter. She was quick-witted, kind, smart, always ready to help anyone and willing to listen to their story. Liz loved public art and was constantly coming up with ideas for how to make it happen in our town—and then she did make it happen; a giant, colorful mural designed by Isaiah Zagar, the guy who created Philly’s Magic Gardens. Speaking of gardens—Liz was perpetually at war with the local groundhogs, those beasts who made a home under her shed and ate every vegetable she planted. She had battled lung cancer despite never smoking a day in her life, and once she drove me miles into the countryside to pick up a dozen fresh eggs for $2 (which we could have easily gotten at the farmer’s market for the same cost, but I digress) from a friend who made beautiful woven baskets and treated her chickens like royalty. Liz had a sense of humor that didn’t favor fragile egos and an energy only rivaled by her youngest grandchild, who was not yet double digits.

Most importantly, Liz liked to talk. A lot. I can’t remember now how we ended up back by her fig trees, pulling the knobs off from their big frumpy leaves and bendy spaghetti branches; but likely, we’d been conversing about the library or the arts council (both of which we were members, the former of which I was also staff) or perhaps we’d been discussing my poetry, or Liz’s next art project (she made paper cuttings, the most impressive being a lifesize bookpage wedding dress—which was displayed in Nora Roberts’ bookstore, rightfully so).

In any case, somehow we had meandered quite purposely to the sudden-ripe figs resting between the shadows of Liz’s monstrous maple tree, mingling with patches of lazy late afternoon sun. Liz snapped off the little fruits and handed me about five of them, all lopsided and green. (Why had I not known figs could be green?) And then we climbed the porch steps back to her kitchen to wash and cut them open.

I took a bite and waited. Liz was on the topic of her eldest daughter now, who had just debuted a stylish new hair salon in the city. Besides her adamance that women earn their own income (learned from her father, an early feminist), Liz’s other adamance was that I not have children—which I found utterly comical, given she’d had her firstborn before she was married, if I remember the scandalous story correctly, announcing her pregnancy by walking into a family gathering wearing a bikini. This was probably the ‘70s, mind you. Liz had something like three or four kids, all of whom had multiples of their own, and despite her feigned vexation, she seemed to secretly enjoy the commotion and drama they caused. So I heeded this last bit of advice with caution.

The fig was not as I expected. It was better. I quite liked it, actually. I’d always thought a fig would taste like a Renaissance painting, overly rich and mushy. But it was sweet and gummy. This was back when I was on some extreme diet and worried about the sugar content of fruit; but I couldn’t resist indulging. I grabbed one more from the little ceramic bowl (made by a local potter Liz knew, of course) where she’d dropped the others, precariously positioned between our cups of tea—we were always drinking tea, preferably black; her mother was British so it was only appropriate.

“What do you think?” she interrupted herself for a moment. 

My hands felt sticky. I gave a thumbs up, mouth full.

I wrote a poem about the figs after I left her company. Which was probably hours later, since I could never break away from her delightfully rambling conversations. I preferred it that way, honestly. There was always so much news to go around in a small town. The woman across the way had supposedly disappeared to another state after years of being neighbors, without so much as a goodbye. The husband in the blue house was constantly at the bar, but his wife wouldn’t leave him. The priest and his pious wife next door really needed to trim their trees goddamnit, it was becoming a problem. Oh, and there was a young seamstress down the street who lived with the nuns and was having a baby with the contractor renovating the monk-owned coffee shop, but we agreed she shouldn’t marry the guy.

Now when I read the poem, I’m transported back to that day. Liz and I have kept in touch here and there since I moved away, and sometimes I wonder if she remembers us eating figs together on an ordinary spring day when we were neighbors. I wonder if she remembers me finagling the lock on the gate of her enormously high fence—to deter the three teenage boys who lived directly behind her from kicking their soccer ball into her garden beds—so I could cut through the backyard and poke my nose into her art studio to spy on her newest project or vent about the library (whose director was a hoarder, so help me god). I wonder if she laughs thinking about the time she impulsively installed purple carpet in her living room, how my mother and I rescued her from the disaster by finding new furniture to match. Or if she misses how we’d exchange Tupperware containers of leftovers and baked goods, if she still makes those shortbread cookies with two sticks of Kerrygold butter because “that’s how the English do it.” I wonder if she remembers lecturing me on the importance of knowing how to drive as we sped down back roads in her husband’s bright red convertible with the top down, and I felt like Audrey Hepburn, headscarf tied under my chin, grinning behind big sunglasses (she’d be proud to know I drive in cities frequently these days). I wonder if she remembers forcing me to take two-hour walks with her around the same ten-block stretch of houses in late winter, when I was so very depressed I thought it might just be the end. And I wonder if she remembers telling me I was a great writer, saving copies of my articles in The Observer like I was her own daughter—believing in me when I wasn’t so sure there was a reason to keep going.

Yes, Liz was, without a doubt, the best part about living in West Virginia.