Free Candy and Me by Hilary Liftin Page A

continue to happen, at the same time. From my perspective on the middle floor of the split-level house, I see down into the rec room, where we are seventh graders, giggling and passing around a box of assorted candy. At the same time I see up into Laura’s bedroom, the dark shape of an intruder heading in toward her. The innocent memory battles the dark, sad outcome, as if both truths can’t exist, and it feels like the darkness had to be there at the time, that we knew in some way that our innocence would be ruined. While we sampled candy stew, and listened to horrid LPs, we had a sense, not in our minds but in our souls, that life would not be simple, that tragedies of varying degrees would befall us as individuals and as a group. Parents would divorce, planes would crash, hearts would break, our health and happiness would fall away in pieces. And much as we tried, we could not bring enough sweetness into our world to prevent the worst from happening.

White Chocolate Breakup

    M y relationship with Neal, having endured my Eastern European hiatus, was petering out, but we didn’t know it yet. I took my job very seriously, and my boss, Sam, took the term “full-time” literally. When I wasn’t on the phone with Sam, who worked from exotic vacation spots around the country, I went to industry events. I was reserved at work, but I had a strange, increasing feeling that I wanted to meet people and understand what they did. I later identified this feeling as the first glimmerings of ambition.
     
    Neal was a hard-core musician: he claimed that his skill level was such that if he did not practice for at least six hours every day, his ability would decline. He stayed home, teaching lessons, fending off the landlady’s noise complaints, and cooking himself discount chicken. We were probably too young for cohabitation. We were more like roommates. We didn’t own a vacuum cleaner. While we spoke to each other on the phone most days, I don’t remember ever coordinating grocery shopping or evening activities. After we broke up, Neal would tell me that we had had a serious cockroach problem that he successfully hid from me.
     
    Pete was Neal’s former roommate. It wasn’t strange that I went to visit Pete and his family in Wisconsin for a week without Neal. In fact, Neal and I had never taken a vacation together. What money he did earn he spent on musical equipment and on his half of the rent. Besides, travel cut into practice time. By the time I went to Wisconsin, I had been dating Neal for so long that it seemed perfectly normal to me that we never took trips, much less went out to dinner or to the movies. I did those things with my friends instead.
     
    Pete’s place in Door County was on a flat, clear lake. Every day we ran down to the water and Pete plunged straight into it, yelling, “I’m the fastest swimmer in the lake.” He was the only swimmer in the lake. On the second night Pete took me to the Confectionery. It was a candy Shangri-la—an enormous, octagonal store with every imaginable species of candy. I focused on white chocolate breakup: When you took a bite, the flavor wasn’t immediately apparent. It emerged slowly, sweeter than brown chocolate and not as rich. Of course, white chocolate isn’t officially chocolate, since it is made with cocoa butter, not cocoa beans. But who am I to quibble? The full, wholesome flavor went well with the clear Wisconsin air. It felt healthy and revitalizing. I also stocked up on Pixy Stix and other miscellany. But by the next day my whole stash was gone. Pete’s car was a stick shift, which I couldn’t drive. I wasn’t about to demand that we make a daily trip to the Confectionery. It didn’t seem right. But everytime we went to a bar, or out to dinner, Pete knew enough to swing by.
     
    The night before my birthday, another friend of ours was meant to arrive. After dinner, Pete and I set up a cribbage board at the picnic table near the driveway and decided to play