Candy and Me (16 page)

Sugar-Free

F
our months after we broke up, Luke told me he wanted to talk to me. I figured he was going to say that he missed our friendship and wanted to see me more. Instead, he informed me that he had begun dating the only person who reported to me at our company. When he told me this, I started hyperventilating. My breath loud in my ears, I stormed across the street, away from him. Then I crossed back and turned on him in a rage of pain and disgust. My voice was high and unfamiliar. Later I realized there was a word for it: I was hysterical. The idea that he couldn’t look farther than the desk across from mine for his next girlfriend was utterly outrageous. The instant he informed me, after work on a Friday, a flip book of painful realizations riffled through my mind. I suddenly knew that they had played hooky together the week before. I realized that the cute “long-distance” romance she had conducted via email over the holidays had occurred while he had been overseas. I remembered the attention he had given her at the Christmas party. He was telling me on the street outside our office, as if he were going beyond the call of duty by letting me know, and I nearly spat at him. “At least now I don’t have conflicting feelings about you,” I snarled, “since all that’s left is hatred.”

My own drama shocked me. He came up to my apartment, where he hadn’t been since we had broken up. I said, “Please, say anything to help me forgive you.” He didn’t apologize—if only for the inconvenience to me—or make any effort to defend his actions by claiming that this was true love. He just waited uselessly, so he could tell himself later that he had done the right thing. I could tell from his shirt selection that he was going to meet up with her after he had delivered his news.

“I think you should leave,” I said. The door closed heavily. I wanted nothing more to do with him.

In the office the next week, Shauna approached me. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

I looked at her. I had been avoiding humans since Luke had dropped the bomb of his new girlfriend’s identity. In my fraught state, I felt extremely vulnerable. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be friends with you anymore.”

“Would you like to take a walk?” she asked.

“Okay.”

We headed out to the Hudson, where the melting snow was deep and wet. We were both wearing inappropriate footwear, but I, at least, was numb. On our walk I explained to Shauna that Luke had done something that I found so reprehensible that I couldn’t deal with having any friends in common with him.

“Hilary, just tell me what happened.”

So I told her, and she said, “That’s a horrible thing to do. I won’t speak to him again.” And that was that.

Shauna never said another word to Luke. Instead, she spent some amount of every day explaining to me that I was too good for him. “You sparkle,” she would say. “He is Beige, and his new girlfriend is Beigette. You are too fabulous for either of them. I’m glad they have each other.” Mutely appreciative, I turned to her for regular ego boosts as each day overwhelmed me.

“You’re my savior,” I told her.

“I think we should send Beige a thank-you note for fortifying our friendship.”

I had nothing against my employee. I was civil to her, acknowledging the situation and expressing hope that it wouldn’t interfere with our work, but I looked through Luke when we passed in the halls. He was dead to me, or at least comatose. They ate lunch together. They talked in murmurs on the phone. They left work together. The only thing that was subtle about them was any effort to be subtle. I went through the motions of my job, but in the evenings I fell to the floor in a heap.

“I don’t even want to date him,” I sobbed to a doctor friend. “What is wrong with me?” He recommended Xanax.

Barely holding myself together, I couldn’t eat candy, or ice cream, or any other major food group for that matter. Much as I was willing to eat however much sugar it would take to break this darkness, the idea of sweets had no appeal. My candy battery was dead. This had never happened before. It had always been self-recharging. And now, in the middle of the storm, there was no candy-light to guide me. More than once I stood in front of the drugstore candy counter contemplating a jump-start. Not even a tiny spark of desire. That’s when I knew I was in a seriously bad way. Every morning I bought a Power Bar and took pains to nibble on it, without hunger, as the day passed. “You are disappearing,” Shauna would say with a girly mix of concern and flattery. We both knew it wouldn’t last, and that I should probably appreciate it while I could. I went to the gym and pretended I was in
Rocky
, or an Ashley Judd movie, where I was building up my strength to take on the adversary. In this case my adversary just happened to take the seemingly harmless form of the back of Luke’s head, and the fight was seeing it every day.

I wasn’t myself, but I knew it was temporary. After some period of time, my employee told me that she had found another job. I congratulated her and hoped it was an excellent opportunity. On her last day, a colleague came up to us to bid her farewell. He asked her how she felt about saying goodbye.

“It’s bittersweet,” she said.

“Well then, I’ll take sweet!” he said jovially.

“I guess that leaves me with bitter,” I said. She and I made eye contact, and we laughed together.

Whenever I eat candy I have some level of guilt. I know from reports that sugar is unhealthy. I could still stand to lose a few pounds. But on the Luke diet I dropped a couple pounds a week without even trying. After six weeks, when I looked in the mirror I couldn’t find any weight to lose. In two months I went down three sizes. Shauna took me shopping. I bought size-two leather pants. For the first time, I knew that I could eat whatever I wanted, and I would still fit into those pants. But I couldn’t even manage to go food shopping. I had no appetite, and I had no joy. Except those buttery leather pants. They fit me for that one terrible winter.

A Heart-Shaped Box of Chocolates

I
am baking cookies on Valentine’s Day. The buzzer buzzes.

Doorman: There’s a delivery for you coming up.

Me: Really?

Doorman: It’s chocolates.

Me: Really??!!

Doorman: Oh, um, is this Hilary? I’m sorry. I have the wrong apartment.

Part Three

Just Desserts

Taffy

I
was committed to my job and had no desire to divorce it for emotional hardship. But then, like an angel, the head of a fascinating new company approached me to do business development and asked me to name my price. When he met it, I put myself in the hands of fate and accepted the position. Getting away from Luke was not the reason, but it was certainly a perk. My spirits lifted immediately, and my appetite returned with them. To celebrate, Shauna and I went on a pilgrimage to Economy Candy, an old-school cheap candy store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We had heard that it was the penny candy store that we were too young to have experienced.

“Meet me outside,” Shauna said. “I want to go in together.”

Beyond the threshold was a pleasantly disordered store with enormous bins of hard candies at low, low prices. Unlike the uniform bins of today’s airport candy stores, the merchandise here was piled and stacked in a few converging systems that ran from floor to ceiling. It was hand-priced, and novelty candies huddled brightly next to gourmet selections.

I wasn’t terribly selective when it came to candy stores. I liked seeing what a drugstore chose to carry. I was fond of the shops where you could fill a bag with assorted candies by the pound. A corner deli suited me fine. And then there was the fancy candy store on the Upper East Side called Dylan’s. Shauna and I had been there. It was the F.A.O. Schwartz of candy stores. A soundtrack of candy theme songs played on a loop. The scent was an intoxicating olio of candies rare and common, old and cutting edge. A rainbow of colors made the two floors confusing and fantastic—like being lost in the center of a spiral swirled lollipop. The stairs were translucent, inlaid with gummy art. There was a larger-than-me Pez dispenser. They had marshmallow eggs at Easter, Flakes, and any color of M&M’s that might ever exist. There was fresh fudge, imported candies, and even candy gift baskets. Some of it was pricey, but I loved Dylan’s, and once it existed it was hard to believe that it hadn’t been there forever.