Free Candy and Me by Hilary Liftin

bump down the conveyor belt would believe it. What I hope for, one day, is to be free of the need for willpower. I didn’t need willpower to avoid heroin. I had no natural desire for it. I didn’t need willpower to avoid meat. I ate it when I wanted, in whatever quantity I desired. Willpower is a denial of desire. It can be partial (“I’m not having dessert today”) or absolute (“I’m not having dessert ever”), but it is always self-denial. I don’t want to curb desire. I want either to indulge it or to eradicate it.
     
    I wish I’d indulged the frosting fantasy as a girl. Rather, I’ve only purchased pre-made frosting twice, ever. A remarkable show of control, but it would be wrong to go to my grave like this. On the other hand, I would like to live to a ripe old age, which probably means that this foolish self-torture must go on. There is only one clear solution. I’m going to establish an assisted-living residence called Home Sweet Home, where we’ll ice our frosting and top our toppings. Children will look longingly through the windows as we play Jelly Belly bingo. We’ll provide custom candy bouquets to our residents. We hope you’ll join us for the nightly ice-cream social. And the onsite dentist will provide daily plaque removal. We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams. Willy Wonka, eat your heart out.

The Assortment, Revisited

    N eal and I set up a bite-size apartment in Manhattan’s Murray Hill. It was a miracle that the bed fit in the bedroom. He taught guitar, and I found a job as an entry-level assistant. We earned just enough to pay rent. We had been there for almost a year when Lucy called me. We hadn’t talked often since high school, but she was phoning to tell me that one of her closest friends, a woman who had gone to school with us, was missing. It was Laura, at whose basement birthday party I had first become self-conscious about my unwavering focus on candy.
     
    The candy tones of that night are forever singed in my memory. I was an insecure seventh grader. My teeth were crooked, but not yet mature enough for braces. My hair was better than it would ever be, enjoying a final year of being long and wavy before it went to frizz, but I didn’t know that. What I knew was bad enough: I had a squawky voice and bug eyes. I was not tall, blond, or properly attired. Knickers were riding an appropriately brief wave of popularity, but my mother had refused to buy me a pair. After opening presents that night, we went to a knickers-dominated dance where I didn’t dance, only stood stiffly in the corner holding one wrist with the other hand so as to have something to do with my hands. There were rumors that the seventh-grade boys had beer in the courtyard; only the girls who apparently had something to say to boys went out to investigate. I lay low, harboring no hopes of actually having fun. I preferred to set achievable goals: my aim was to be perceived as a person who was having fun. Our birthday party crowd stuck together until it was time to head back to Laura’s basement in Bethesda. There we sucked in helium and sang in high voices. We stayed up late, trading bracelets and loyalties. Balancing with invisible desperation on whatever footholds I thought I had achieved, I was afraid that the winds of friendship would shift at any moment and I would plummet, rejected and alone. But through the insecurity I also almost believed that it would all pass, that I would blossom into a beautiful, smart, popular girl, that we all would, and that this night would be buried among many fun, miserable pre-teen parties.
     
    A few days after telling me of Laura’s disappearance, Lucy called again. In that same house in suburban Maryland, she told me, a horrifying event had taken place. Upstairs from where our circle of sleeping bags had been, Laura, the birthday girl, who had just graduated from Harvard, was murdered while she slept in her childhood bed.
    In my head the two events