The Dropped Pie

Selecting recipes, careful supermarket browsing, going to class with a bag full of digestive biscuits, waking early to start cooking: the pie was a huge thing in my mind long before its actual creation. It was to be an emblem of love, presented to Tim on his birthday. I pictured it on a pedestal, with little white wings and a halo, encased in a gleaming glass cabinet.
We picked our only pumpkin from the garden, peeled it with the cleaver (surely one of the most annoying vegetables to peel, too tough and curved for a close, easy peeling), chopped it, steamed it. Mashed, spiced, stirred. Smashed biscuits into crumbs, melted a knot of margarine, pressed into a dish, blind baked, added filling, baked again. Set oven timer to scream in an hour, ran water, washed up.
"Its perfect!" we breathed over the golden pie. Set it on the bench to cool. Pulled the metal clip on the side of the springform pan, grimaced over the slight crumbling of the crust. The smell of baking made the air so sweet it felt possible to float away on the scent.
Out of the oven five minutes, it’s cool enough. Picked up a board to transfer it onto.
The pie falls.
I cannot remember how it happened, it was a moment like a car accident, it needed witnesses and surveillance cameras to fill in for memory.
The pie falls and I catch some of it on a chopping board. Half the filling splats to the ground in hot piles of brown mush. I scream and immediately start crying as I haven’t since I was a child. I wail as if I have fallen over and skinned my knee. I’m holding the squashed remains of the pie, and tears are spitting from my eyes.
It’s a mud pie, it’s a big brown mess, the perfect pie has taken its wings and halo and departed, leaving this splatter.
Tim makes me put it down, I wail into his shoulder. He tells me he loves it. Loves it more than a perfect pie. I want to be the kind of person who can laugh at such a mishap but instead I’m thinking I worked so hard and then this happens I wanted it to be perfect but oh its too terrible to think about I’m giving up and going back to bed.
We eat it anyway, with ice cream thats almost liquid due to our malfunctioning freezer. It tastes wonderful.