Candy and Me Read online

  One morning on the way to school, Lucy and I found a Bible on the sidewalk. We figured it was a sign, and launched a full week of piety. We would slip into a basement chapel, find the Bible where we had stowed it, and flip through it, feeling Chosen. Our passion was fevered, but directionless. Would it settle on God or academia, boys or poetry (or horses)? Being religious was a possible future identity that we tried on for size before discarding it for the next. That is, as soon as the Bible disappeared from its hiding place in the crypt, we moved on.

  I consumed the illicit cocoa with the same fervor with which I wanted to believe that life wasn’t accidental. As we added rituals and volume to our consumption, it seemed that my life might take shape. That is, the sugar elevated my mood and gave me purpose, and if I kept eating it in increasing quantities, then maybe I would be magically transformed into the embodiment of that sugar high. Four packs, five packs, six packs a day. There was no limit to the happiness and fulfillment I might find.

  Unlike our fleeting Bible studies, cocoa held our attention for most of that year. We hid out in small chapels, downing dry gulps of the stuff. My secret longing for a sign of hope, for confidence and faith, accompanied each hastened swallow. I may not have found the social grace I craved, but at the height of the obsession cocoa provided an even greater release. When we heard footsteps approaching our hideout, we would burst into laughter, and billows of cocoa would escape out into the air. The sight of each other’s brown-laced mouths and tongues put us over the edge, and there we would be found by one clergyman or another, consoled, enlightened, rapt in ecstasy, rolling on the stone floor of the crypt in silent brown laughter.

  Ice Cream

  Ice-cream consumption was a problem in our household. Whenever my mother bought a carton of ice cream, I would eat most of it right away. This wasn’t fair to the other members of the family. My mother didn’t want to increase the quantity of ice cream that I ate, but she wanted everyone to be able to have some. She decided that she would buy three half-gallon cartons at a time. One for me, one for my brother, and one for the parents. She would make this purchase once every three weeks, so I could make my half-gallon last for three weeks, or I could eat it all right away, but that was my ration.

  I always got mint chip, and, never one to waste time, I ate my half-gallon in the first two days. My brother made his last, eating a scoop or two every three days. This drove me mad. One afternoon, long after my supply had dried up, I opened his carton. He hadn’t eaten any yet. I figured that if I just ate around the edge, he wouldn’t notice. I traced a light canal around the perimeter of the carton with my spoon. Rocky Road. After three or four laps around the carton I determined that my invasion was still undetectable. I sealed it back up and scurried upstairs.

  The next afternoon, I returned to the scene of the crime. Again, I furrowed delicately around the edge of the carton. The ice cream still reached the top; it just had a neat moat around it that was certainly no cause for alarm. But that night my brother opened his ice cream.

  “Mom, doesn’t this ice cream look weird?” She agreed that there was something wrong with it. They stood over the carton, trying to figure out what might have happened.

  “Maybe it melted in the store?” Eric suggested.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I’ll take it back. I don’t think you should eat it. Something is wrong with it.”

  Taking it back to the store? I panicked. If they took it back to the store, I would surely be discovered and possibly arrested. When I confessed to my crime, I was cut out of the next few rounds of ice-cream purchasing.

  Some months later I came up with a new approach. Again, my mint chip was long gone, leaving me to gaze longingly at my brother’s half-gallon of Oreo, which sat nearly full in the freezer. It was in a rectangular box, which opened at the small top instead of the wide side. My brother had taken a few nibbles, but the rest was intact. I spooned out a bit from the top, but knew I couldn’t go much further without detection. Then I had an idea. I opened the bottom of the box and began a rear-entry sneak attack. It was subtle at first, but as the week passed, I grew bolder until I had eaten about a third of the carton, from the bottom.

  Then my poor brother, in the ordinary course of scooping his ice cream, broke through to the gaping vortex that should have been the remainder of his supply. This time there were no mysteries. My gall astounded my mother. My brother was genuinely curious.

  “Did you truly believe that I wouldn’t figure it out?”

  I kind of did. Actually, I had hoped that the ice cream might slide down to fill the void as he served himself, the way it creeps further into an ice-cream cone as you eat it. But that was the end of ice cream in our household. From then on, when we wanted ice cream, we went out to the parlor. One scoop each, no thievery, no plotting, no fun.

  The ice cream in my adult life comes in pint-size cartons and is oozing with various forms of caramel, fudge, and peanut butter. (Whether it is labeled low-fat or frozen yogurt—I have spent whole years limiting myself to one or the other—makes no difference in my weight.) At first the pint seemed like a curse—it had to be polished off regardless of whether there was help from a lover’s spoon. But remembering the struggles I had had with the half-gallons of my youth, I became grateful for the pint. The size is right. To my delight, finishing a pint by myself is a bit too difficult. I can do it on occasion, but it takes hunger, time, and determination. Leftover ice cream always makes me proud. But the pint is also just enough to share without sparking competitive consumption. It feels like one-and-a-half servings each. The only challenge is the rush for whatever buried candy nuggets must be unearthed. This is a real test of character: What better way to display true love than to mine a luscious peanut butter cup, only to offer it to your mate? Believe me, it took me a long time to get there.

  Flake

  My father kept coffee nips in his den, but I couldn’t stand the taste of coffee. The only other time I saw him eat candy was when he was skiing. Then he would keep a gourmet chocolate bar in his jacket. On the ski lift, he would eat a single square at a time and offer us as much. He had no idea of how it tortured me. My father worked long hours and then came home to work more. My mother painted in her studio, reared us, and learned to cook elaborate dinners, which wilted on the stove while my father ran late at work. He took frequent business trips to England, or to even farther countries with stopovers at Heathrow Airport. Whenever he went through Heathrow, he brought us Cadbury Flakes. These were stubby chocolate sticks made of compressed flakes of chocolate, invented by a machine operator who watched the excess chocolate gather in ripples at the edge of a chocolate machine. I imagine him fingering those tasty leftovers, dreaming his way out of the chocolate factory. The Flake TV advertisements, which started in the late 1950s, always showed “The Flake Girl” in some exotic locale. My father fed that escapist theme, returning home with Flakes from distant lands where they were common.

  My Flake would crumble into its yellow wrapper as I ate it, and when it was gone I would lick up every last crumb. We didn’t see my father much, but we loved those Flakes.

  The Assortment

  Candyland was full of suitors—I had to interview many before committing to relationships. When I was twelve, I would go to W. C. Murphy’s, a vast convenience store on Wisconsin Avenue. My experimentation called for variety, so when I bought candy, I always spent a dollar and bought four different kinds. As candy’s would-be bride, I devised my own tradition of something chocolaty, something sugary, something fruity, and something new—to eat too much of one kind made my tongue go raw. I brought home combinations such as Three Musketeers (chocolaty), Lik-m-Aid Fun Dip (sugary), Starburst (fruity), and caramel creams (new). I had it down to a science.

  My brother and I agreed that purples were the best. Purple SweeTarts (Giant Chewy), purple Bubble Yum, purple Volcano Rocks, purple Zotz, purple gumdrops (not to be confused with spice drops)—purple was the alpha candy of any phylum. We considered saving all the pur
ples of all the candies into one big purple collection, but it was clear to both of us that I would just eat it in a single day regardless. Still, I loved the idea of so much purple, the best of the best. Strange as it may seem, I never associated the concept of purple candy with the fruit it was designed to imitate: grapes. I despised any and all fruit and refused to eat a bite of it.

  During this affair with the assorted candy meal, three friends and I started creating candy cornucopias for each other. I was, naturally, the ringleader. We would each buy collections of candy, sort them, and bundle them in napkins for delivery the next morning to the others. The surprise of unwrapping someone else’s composition far surpassed the humdrum purchase of the same selections in the store. It also gave me reason to buy far more candy than I could have justified for myself alone. As I created the gift bundles, I would sample liberally. Then I would place the laboriously balanced napkin lumps into my backpack, where they emitted an intoxicating scent. Often I was compelled to sneak a piece or ten out of one of the designated gifts and then (rats!) I would have to eat from the others to even it out. The next morning, during our first classes of the day, we would devour the goods while our classmates looked on with envy.

  I never got sick from eating too much. I had no cavities. I was a skinny kid. I was built for candy.

  One friend, Laura, had a slumber party in her basement that year. I didn’t know by what cultural code the other girls understood which records to buy, or which clothes were cool. So for her birthday gift, I succumbed to the universal urge to get a person what one wants most: I filled an entire large shoebox with candy. A pounder of M&M’s formed a base. Smarties were unwrapped and shaken into the mix. Candy corn heads and tails peeked brightly through the crowd. Nerds poured out of boxes like salt into a stew. Swirls of licorice snaked through the rainbow jubilee. Tart ‘n’ Tinies huddled in clusters. And still-wrapped caramel cubes lumbered heavily to the bottom. As I gazed at my creation, it seemed to me a dream come true.

  Later, during the gift opening, I worried that the candy medley wasn’t a significant-enough present. But when Laura unwrapped it, everyone oohed and aahed and dug in. The box was passed around, and it wasn’t depleted for hours. But as we all feasted, I secretly knew that I was the most enthusiastic. For everyone else this indulgence was a novelty that came and went, but I was acutely aware of where the box was in the room, how much candy remained, and how soon it would make its way back to me. I wouldn’t stop eating until it was empty, and feared that someone would notice my single-mindedness. It was the first time I had an inkling that others were easily distracted from sweets by more central events, where for me the distraction of sweets was the main event.

  Conversation Hearts

  It was the winter of eighth grade, and I thought that I was on the cusp of being discovered by boys. Like a Midwest starlet getting off the bus in Hollywood, I knew that being discovered would change the course of my otherwise dull-looking future. I had been at an all-girls school for over three years and hadn’t managed to have any contact with boys. I couldn’t even imagine how a conversation with a boy might proceed. When I pictured my ideal encounter, it consisted of an initial dreamy gaze, filled with a silent understanding of mutual attraction, which led immediately to making out. If the interaction required other skills, like dialogue, I surely wouldn’t make the grade. Even the concept of mutual attraction was for the most part theoretical. It was hard to tell which boys were cute, so I safely agreed with the other girls. Any boy who was socially acceptable would have been fine by me.

  The eighth-grade ski trip was coed. It involved a crack-of-dawn bus ride to the nearest ski resort in Pennsylvania, a day pass, and then the bus ride home. The idea of getting onto a coed bus without a pre-established seating partner was inconceivable, so Lucy and I signed up together, and promised to sit next to each other. I brought a large bag of conversation hearts as our bus snack. Even though we had gotten up ridiculously early for a sixA.M. departure, we started in on the hearts as soon as we reached the highway. Lucy kept pace with me, and by the time we had gotten to the New Jersey Turnpike, the bag was empty. The candy kicked in. I felt good. I was ready to hit the slopes. I was black diamond material. But Lucy didn’t fare as well. In an almost too-perfect delivery, halfway through the sentence “I don’t feel well,” she vomited between her knees, onto the floor of the bus. We looked at each other in utter mortification. We both knew that this wasn’t just about Lucy feeling sick. This was a social fiasco.

  “Please don’t tell anyone this happened,” Lucy whispered to me as she got up to go back to the bathroom.

  As she went, the smell also made its way through the bus. Kids started to yell disgustedly, “Gross! Who threw up?”

  Lucy had vanished, and I was now sitting alone with the incriminating, odorous evidence. I was loyal, so I certainly wasn’t going to make any announcements, and I knew that any false move on my part would give us away. So I sat reading quietly, ignoring the murmur as Lucy was gradually identified as the culprit. I wouldn’t affirm anything. After a while, however, I couldn’t help but notice that Lucy still hadn’t returned. I peered down the aisle and saw that she had managed to find an empty seat. Of course this made sense, but somehow I had expected her to return to her befouled seat—to pretend nothing had happened. Now I was stuck enduring her mess, being a faithful friend, alone. She was riding in relative comfort, but under the unrelenting taunts of the other eighth graders. Our position was precarious. We were seriously outflanked. My greatest fear was that the others would shift their attack to me, figuring that because I was the one dutifully manning our original posts, I must have been the perp. I shrank down into the seat. There was vomit underfoot. I looked back at Lucy, and she looked away. She was angry with me, I could tell. For bringing the candy? For not getting sick? I had no idea what I had done wrong, but I wasn’t surprised. This was eighth grade, and Lucy was frequently angry for unpredictable reasons. I closed my eyes and waited for it all to be over.

  So much for being noticed by the boy creatures. The romantic promise of the conversation hearts was a complete flop. There would be no conversations with boys, not even polite ones—not even any eye contact. There would be no cartoon hearts sketching themselves between my profile and that of a young lad. Discovery was elusive.

  In spite of my success rate, which hovered constantly at zero, I was to stick with my fervently silent strategy for meeting boys for all the remaining years of high school. In fact, that morning, when I sat for hours trying to hunch into invisibility, was probably the closest I ever came to being discovered.

  Spree

  I was going to be fat. I was going to be sick. I was going to get cavities. I was already getting fat (I wasn’t). My mother tried all tactics to curb my habit. No matter, I may have had to be home by curfew, but I could eat whatever candy I wanted. A teenager can make her own decisions. Nonetheless, the quantity I consumed was often so vast, so embarrassingly inhuman, that I could not bring myself to eat it out in the open. During October, I ate an entire pound bag of candy corn, or miniature pumpkins, on a daily basis. In February it was a pound bag of conversation hearts. By March there was Easter candy. In those months of heavy consumption, I would spend hours reading in bed and plowing mindlessly through acres of sugar.

  Bulk consumption of candy was not all it was cracked up to be. There was an initial thrill, as the candy delivered on its promise of immediate, unqualified sweetness. Then, after the first few bites, came the secondary pleasure of indulgence. This was combined appreciation for the texture of the candy and recognition that the supply was good—there was plenty more. Finally, I would succumb to mechanical consumption. Taste lost relevance. The rapture receded, and I just kept going. When I had eaten so much that my mouth grew thick with sugar and I couldn’t swallow, I would drink glasses of water or milk—skim, ha!—and then return to the task at hand. By the end of a bag, I would slip into a sugar coma, a hallucinogenic slumber as my insulin spiked and sugar level c
rashed.

  Somehow I could not bring myself to throw incriminating wrapper after incriminating wrapper in the small yellow wastebasket that matched my desk. Instead, I pushed the evidence between my bed and the wall, down where trouble disappeared. But this was a time when my mother changed our sheets every week. In the course of doing so, she would move the bed out from the wall to tuck in the sheets, discover my trash trove, and express her disgust. She had given up on disciplining the candy habit. All she did in response was to say, with weary disappointment in her eyes, “Hilary, please use the trashcan. I’m not going to throw away your wrappers every week.”

  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I always hid the candy. When I read, I propped myself up against my headboard, with my knees crossed and the book leaning against them. I kept the candy under the covers. When I went down for dinner, I would leave the book splayed out with the candy huddled beneath it.

  One time I was eating a Cadbury egg. These eggs were new discoveries, and I loved the sugary goo that was meant to represent raw egg. (I wouldn’t discover the beneficial effects of refrigerating Cadbury eggs until much later.) I generally ate three at a sitting. On this particular day I was relishing the first egg of the season with such focus that my ever-present book was upside down against my knees. My mother came in without knocking, saw the upside-down book and the heightened look on my face and apologized for her intrusion. I could tell that she thought I had been reading a dirty book that was hidden behind the upside-down one, or otherwise exploring my adolescent sexuality. I let her believe what she would. It was better than the truth.