Candy and Me (7 page)

At some point near the end of this theoretically blissful week, Lucy decided that she was angry with me and stopped speaking to me. I was indignant. We had been doing exactly the same thing every day—lounging by the beach. There simply hadn’t been any opportunity to make a stir. Certain that I had done nothing in particular to incur her wrath, I was annoyed by her irrationality. A day passed. At dinner her parents noticed our silence and teased us. I shrugged at them and rolled my eyes.

“I have no idea what my latest offense was,” I told them, embarrassed at our youth and hoping for allies.

The next day I went to the beach alone. When I closed my eyes, I could make my teenage troubles disappear. The world turned and remade itself with a newfound exuberance. I was suddenly free of tanning oils and self-consciousness, free of being a teenager. The earth’s solidity and timelessness came rolling forward on the ocean. I was reading junky philosophy and imagining that it had changed the way I saw the world. I made notes on my observations and identified my own weaknesses and how I thought life was properly lived. There had been slaves on this island once. I wanted to immerse myself in plantations and spirits and history. Leaving the beach, I biked deep into the woods, got myself lost, felt heroic and wild.

It was for the camp counselor of my obsession that I wanted to be complicated. For him, I would propel my thoughts onto higher ground, keep silent in hope of appearing enigmatic. Two days before leaving on the trip I had gotten a surprise visit from Finn. I replayed the vision of him on my doorstep in my head, how he had winked at my mother when he told her I was safe with him. How he claimed that he had lost my phone number so he’d had to drive all night from New Hampshire to find me. What in heaven’s name was a high school girl supposed to do with that but fall for it, hook, line and sinker?

We had spent the day together, visiting the national monuments and wandering into bookstores. My wish had come true. My love had come to me. Because my fantasies had never gone beyond imagining this sudden appearance, I had no plan for how to behave. It was overwhelming, and I was mute with disbelief. Although I steered us to romantic settings, I was incapable of revealing my devotion to him. All I could do was stare into his eyes, hoping to communicate the depths of my emotion.

I was much better at remembering the visit than I had been at conducting it. Hoarding time by myself, I mooned; I sighed; I felt insignificant; I was all about being in love. This was where I found real pleasure—not in vacation, but in the romantic reveries that Finn fed, and would continue to feed.

On the way home I bought jellybeans for myself and for Lucy. No matter how over-romanticized my visions were, I wouldn’t forget my dose. My boy of choice was elusive, but at least I could select the bean of choice from the Jelly Belly canisters.

Apparently, Lucy had been seething all day. She accused me of “using” her to come to Hilton Head. I
responded coldly. I couldn’t be bothered to summon respect for her position.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. “I’m really not in the habit of going on vacations with people I don’t like.” I handed her the jellybeans and read my book until she gave up.

I Know What You’re Thinking…

W
hat about tooth decay, weight gain, acne, diabetes? I don’t want to talk about any of those things.

Fruit Slices

W
hen I got my first job, I shot the moon. During my junior year of high school I began working at an ice-cream store in Georgetown, behind the chocolate counter. The poor, unsuspecting guy who hired me didn’t even bother to instruct me not to sample the goods. It did not occur to me to try to control myself.
Au contraire
. Here, finally, was the unending chocolate fountain of my fantasies.

The merits of chocolate are well documented. None of them passed me by. Chocolate is a no-brainer. Cheap or expensive, alone or with filling, chocolate has such a full range of executions that it suits any occasion. Many of the candies I exalt are unique combinations of texture and sweetness, with flavor as an afterthought. Chocolate stands alone. It is a flavor and a candy, which is more than a peanut can say for itself. Chocolate is universal. Rivers of chocolate flow in every child’s dreams.

At the ice-cream parlor I had limitless plain chocolate, caramels, turtles, white chocolate, mint chocolate, cream-filled chocolate. I only excluded dark chocolate (too bitter) and chocolate-covered strawberries (since I hadn’t yet come around to fruit as edible). I sampled in unquantifiable amounts. It was a lot of chocolate.

Every day I began with a robust hunger for the contents of the chocolate counter, but the longer I worked in the store, the lower my daily chocolate tolerance fell. Ultimately, what could I do but turn to candy fruit slices? The yellow, green, red, and orange jelly fruit slices, dusted in sugar, were fruity and refreshing. I ate them ceaselessly, restocking them when necessary. Under my watch, the tray needed to be refilled at least once a week. Nobody ever bought them. I may have had no lunch break, but I was eating fruit all day long.

I was just beginning to see that my candy consumption wasn’t ideal, and I thought that by working in a candy store, one of two things would happen to me. Either I would tire of candy, or I would get fat. There was always an undercurrent of hope that one or the other would happen, driving me away from the compulsion of the habit, and leaving me with a more refined candy-eating style. Instead of getting bored with candy, however, I just got bored with the job (and was forever terrified that I would give someone the wrong change). And instead of getting fat, I hovered at a weight that my mother thought was a problem, but she was a size zero.

I wasn’t entirely happy with my body, and I was worried about gaining weight. I was aware that the fruit slices were almost entirely sugar, and therefore potentially less fattening than chocolate. This knowledge may have even contributed to the development of my candy tastes. I always went for the most sugary selections, which tended to have almost no fat. But I made up for that in sheer caloric content. I knew, because my mother had ingrained fundamental diet principles early on: Excess calories convert to fat. My mother had told me that I should have three diamonds of space between my legs when I stood with my feet together: one above my ankles, one between my calves and my knees, and one between my thighs. As far back as I could remember, I had never had the thigh diamond. My mother was certain that it was mine to gain. But I wasn’t motivated to diet or exercise. I was a teenager, and my metabolism was still doing me a few favors. My stomach was flat. My clothes fit me. I was neither thrilled with my body nor unhappy enough to sacrifice candy.

So I snacked through my work hours, and even brought home boxes of candy for after dinner, when my sugar appetite reawakened. I was not the best hire the sweet shop had ever made. When they failed to send my last paycheck, I couldn’t bring myself to complain. It had been idyllic. I owed them.

Fudge

L
auren and I were close friends, and had both won an essay contest that sent us to Oxford for six weeks the summer before our last year of high school. We arrived at New College in Oxford in a daze of excitement. Our rooms were next door to each other, like real college students. Lauren was already collegiate. She carried a Filofax in which she kept meticulous track of all her expenses. She was intelligent and studious, with varied interests and talents. She was tall and slender, with glossy brown hair and alert brown eyes. The preppy clothes that were popular then suited her, while their tailored lines went to war with my curves. No question about it, Lauren had her act together. On the other hand, when I imagined my trip to England, I fantasized about taking advantage of the drinking age (sixteen), and finding a college-age boyfriend with whom I would make out on narrow, charming streets and in the dorm room where I would have unprecedented independence.

I was still mousy. I had been at an all-girls school for many years, and couldn’t talk to men. Not a single word. After lunch in the dining hall Lauren would go to the library to study, and I would wander through town, in and out of bookstores. Every day I bought homemade fudge at the “tuck-shop.” The origins of fudge, invented at the turn of the twentieth century in the United States, are debated. Most fudge historians agree that it was the result of an error in making another candy, probably caramel. I saw no evidence of error.