What's eating Gilbert Grape?

by Hedges, Peter

  Outside Becky stands between my truck and me with the bike between her legs. She rolls the front tire over the black cord thing and bing-bing and ding-dong and binga-dinga ring out and I want to scream. Turning to Buck, I try to say with my eyes that what is happening here is not my fault. But Buck is standing up, staring at her, gnawing on his tongue. He likes the noise.

  Becky moves the bike slightly from side to side up underneath her. 1 shake my head and climb into my truck. I turn on the radio, kick into gear, but as I pull out, she pedals out in front of me. I hit the horn long, and she holds up a finger like she's saying "One minute," so I shift into park. She coasts to my window and says, "Just one more thing."

  "Yeah?"

  "It's the insides of a watermelon that are best. Maybe if you expressed an interest in getting to know my insides." She giggles like those girls on "The Dating Game," her head cocks back, and she laughs with her mouth wide open. I move close to her and look quick in her mouth. Her teeth are shiny and straight, pure white. Perfect. Damn. So I reach across my truck, open the pas-

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  Sanger door, and roll the watermelon off the seat. It kind of bounces over to the gas pump. I drive off. I look in the rearview mirror and see her standing there. No more giggle, no more laugh. The watermelon at her feet. Perfect.

  19

  X hanks for doing that, Gilbert."

  "Sure thing, boss."

  "It's that extra-special care we take of our customers ..."

  "My feeling exactly," I say. The less said about the melon, the better. I put on my apron, clip on my name tag.

  "Your sister was by," Mr. Lamson says.

  "Amy, I hope."

  "Yes. And she brought you this." He gives me a white envelope and I notice the confidence of his hands, his gold wedding band secure. I want to say, "Mr. Lamson, you and your wife are the only known proof that marriage is a reasonable life option, "but instead I just say, "Thanks."

  "You know, Arnie stayed in the car while your sister came inside. I told Amy that he could pick out any gum or candy bar he liked for free. She went out and told him but he ducked below the dashboard."

  "Arnie's not your normal guy," I say.

  "It used to be he'd come here and follow you around at work. He'd cry when it was closing time. Remember that honorary name tag we made for him?"

  I nod. Mr. Lamson has always gone out of his way for Arnie. Free candy, store tours, pennies for the gum-ball machine.

  "Did I do something?" Mr. Lamson asks. "Did 1 hurt his feelings in some way?"

  PETER HEDGES

  "No, sir. Not you."

  "He won't even come into our store, for Christ's sake."

  "I know. But, boss, it's not you." I whisper, "It's those electric doors at the . . . uhm . . . other establishment. The conveyor belts, too."

  "Nooo." Part of Mr. Lamson just died.

  "But fortunately he's been banned from their store."

  "What!"

  "Well, not banned actucdly. They want him to be supervised from now on. Last Saturday he pocketed about three dollars' worth of candy. Amy tried to explain that he's used to getting it for free."

  "Arnie always gets free candy. ..."

  "I know, sir."

  "He's always welcome here! Hell, I'll put his picture right up there, right next to Lance!"

  A color 8 by 10 photo of Lance Dodge, autographed, hangs framed next to the Wonder Bread clock. Lance is enshrined in many of the stores and shops in Endora. He smiles with teeth that aren't as nice as Becky's.

  "Your brother has free rein! He can dig the prizes out of whatever cereal! You tell him!"

  "He knows. It's just his particular interest in those electric doors, the conveyor belts. And now—with the lobster tank."

  "Fine. It's fine. Whatever the boy wants. " Mr. Lamson moves out of view. He's gone into the stockroom for some time alone. My boss can deal with the declining business, the almost total absence of customers, and the rejection of the masses. But it's Ar-nie's refusal of free candy that has wounded him. When my boss is in pain, he goes to the stockroom. When he aches, he does so quietly.

  Inside Amy's envelope is the grocery list for the next few days. It is two and a half pages long. She writes:

  I've reduced the list to the necessary items. The coffee can had only thirty-six dollars and something cents. Here's thirty. Do you think he'll credit the rest till we have more money? Be charming.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  If anyone can do It, you can. I love you and will make you fried chicken soon for dinner. Oh, get an extra jar of peanut butter. That's all Amies interested in eating these days. Thanks, little brother. Love, Amy. P.S. Blue Hawaii is on TV tonight. It's one of his best movies. You want to watch?

  I look over the shopping list. You'd think we had an army or a football team living at our house. Five loaves of bread, countless bags of potato chips, cases of diet ginger ale, mayonnaise, tubs and tubs of butter—the list is endless. She didn't have the strength to ask me to my face. I've worked for years for this stellar husband-and-wife team and I've never had to beg for charity for me or my family. But since our combined incomes cannot keep up with our increased appetites, I have no real choice in the matter.

  It takes until six-fifteen for me to muster up enough courage. Mr. Lamson is sweeping under the cash register and the store is empty.

  "Boss?" 1 say, walking up to him.

  "Yes." He stops sweeping and says, "What is it, son?"

  "Uhm."

  "Is everything all right?"

  "Amy dropped by a grocery list."

  "Well, we're stocked to the brim. We're only out of canned peaches and pears. So—go to it." He smiles, happy that his food will soon be ours.

  I can only look at my feet. "It seems that with uhm Ellen getting her braces off and uhm some emergency construction work that we have to do on the house and uhm . . . she only gave me thirty dollars. ..."

  "I'm ashamed you'd even ask. You can credit whatever you like. And, Gilbert, you'll pay us when you can. I know that."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Is that all, son?"

  I nod.

  "Get shopping, then. " Mr. Lamson walks away whistling.

  PETER HEDGES

  I get a cart and systematically start checking off each item and it's an hour and three cartfuls later when I finish. Mr. Lamson rings it all up and it comes to twenty-three grocery sacks worth $314.32 total.

  1 start to say, "I'm sorry," when he says, "No need to be."

  It takes an eternity for me to secure all the bags in back of my truck. As I'm squeezing a sack of eggs and milk into place, the Carver family station wagon pulls into the parking lot. Mrs. Carver rolls down her window, turns her headlights off. but keeps the engine running. This will be one of those talk-fast meetings.

  "Hi," she says.

  "Hi," I say.

  I go about my work.

  "Guess what Thursday is?" she says fast.

  I shrug and place another sack.

  "A certain anniversary. Seven years. It will have been seven years since your first . . . visit."

  "You don't say," I say slowly.

  "Ken has many appointments Thursday. I can drop the boys off at the pool. How about an anniversary picnic?"

  "Uhm," I say. I stop and look at her. I'm sweating from all the groceries.

  "I'll make all your favorites," she says, talking even faster now.

  "It's a little hard for me to think about food right now. I haven't got much of an appetite. " I point to all the sacks but she doesn't seem to get the correlation.

  She only seems to notice me. Suddenly her lips scrunch together. "What's the matter, honey?"

  My back hunches up when she says "honey." For seven years I've been her honey, her secret, her little toy. I've never even gone on a date. It's only been Mrs. Betty Carver. These secret meetings— enough.

  "What is it?"

  I turn and look at her. She sees the coldness in m
y eyes.

  "Oh, just like that," she says. "Is it that easy for you?"

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "It's not easy—no."

  The last bag is in place. I turn the lights out at Lamson Grocery and lock the door. I walk toward her and it starts pouring out. "Why'd you choose me? Huh? You could have had anybody. You could have had Lance Dodge! But you chose me. Even now there are any number of young guys in this town who would love to uhm learn from you. Good-looking guys. Muscular guys. Farm-boy types. Why the hell you chose me I'll never know!"

  "I'm choosing to ignore this outburst. You've had a long day."

  I kick a tire.

  "Picnic. Our spot. Thursday is our anniversary. You're there or you're not."

  I don't answer.

  "Yes. 1 could have had others. But I chose you."

  "Why? Why did you do that? Huh?"

  "Because."

  "Go on. Say it."

  "Because I knew you'd never leave your family. I knew you'd never leave Endora."

  I stare at my truck. The back window is dirty.

  "Picnic, Gilbert. Our spot. Thursday. I do hope you'll be there." She stops her speed talking and in an almost different voice says, "Or is this how you say good-bye?"

  I look at my tennis shoes. 1 need a new pair.

  She says, "I can say good-bye, too. 1 can. "

  "Listen," I say. "The milk is getting warm. I got ice cream that's melting."

  "Huh?"

  "The groceries." I don't look in her eyes.

  She shifts into reverse and whispers, "Good-bye."

  "That must make you really happy to say that!" 1 shout.

  "No. I'm so far from being happy!"

  "You're smiling, though!"

  "That's how it is sometimes, huh? Funny."

  She backs out of the parking lot and starts to drive away. 1 wave for her to stop. She rolls down her window. "What is it? "

  PETER HEDGES

  "Your headlights."

  Her face stays fixed on me as her left hand reaches to the knob and her lights flick on. I stand there until her car is out of view.

  I guess I'm supposed to feel sad. Or at least feel.

  I look at all the groceries and an image of starving children comes to me. Their bony bodies, puffy stomachs, and the dry breasts of their mothers. Something is not right about all this food going to my house. Something is wrong inside me, I start to think, but I change the subject. I drive home and sing along with the radio.

  Her words "I knew you'd never leave Endora" keep echoing in my head. I'll show them, I think to myself, I'll show them all. Endora's middle stoplight turns from green to yellow to red. I pull to a stop. And I wait. I've enough gas to make it to Illinois or Kentucky, and I've enough food in my truck for a lifetime. I could start fresh.

  The stoplight turns green. This is my chance. But I turn at the top of my street and flash my brights. The retard is standing on the curb, waiting for my signal. He runs to the house, convinced it's me. Before I'm even in our driveway. Amy and Ellen are out the front door.

  "Thank you," Amy says as she grabs two sacks.

  "Yeah, thanks," Ellen says.

  I load Arnie up with the breakfast cereals. "Go to it, kid."

  Amy is back for her second load. She's moving fast and puffing. "Ellen just broke a nail."

  "Oh," I say. Am I to grieve over this? I want to ask.

  "Momma is getting punchy. She wants to eat. Did you get the potato chips?"

  "Yes."

  "Six bags, I hope."

  "Whatever's on the list. I got what's on the list."

  "See, though, I wrote five—then I wrote six over ..."

  "I don't know, Amy—just take the groceries."

  Arnie runs back out and says "Peanut butter" ten times fast.

  "Yes, Arnie, I got you peanut butter."

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "Chunky, chunky, chunky, chunky, chunky?"

  "Yes, chunky."

  He falls down next to the mailbox. He's about to orgasm. Ellen emerges with a fresh Band-Aid where her nail used to be. "You get me my yogurt?"

  "Yes."

  "You have a use, after all," she says, lifting up the smallest, lightest bag she can find.

  All the sacks are inside, and while Amy and Ellen are in the kitchen putting everything away, Arnie marches up and down the front hall stomping on little black ants. Momma is asking for tonight's dinner menu and Amy says something about chicken pot pie. Momma goes, "Hoooowwwwww nice!"

  Amy approaches me, a jar of mayonnaise in each hand, and whispers, "We've got to meet for a bit later, okay?" I'm about to say "I'm busy" when she squeezes my arm and says, "It concerns Arnie's party." She smiles as if she expects me to say "Yippee."

  "Okay, I'll be at the meeting."

  She says, "Good."

  "But," 1 continue, "my appetite was lost somewhere along the way, so no dinner for me, okay?"

  "Gilbert ..."

  "I gotta pee."

  I'm about to shut the downstairs bathroom door when Amy shoves her way in. Because of her increasing size there is barely room for the two of us. I sit on the sink as she says, "Is it the money? Is it because you had to ask for credit? Is that it?"

  "I don't know anymore."

  "Sorry about the money. We'll have it soon. I know it was hard for you to ask. You don't know what it means to be able to buy on credit like this."

  I say, "It's no big deal," when in truth it is a big deal. I'm about to scream that maybe she should budget our money better when she says: "Both of them are late with their checks."

  I shrug like "It's not my problem."

  "What can I do when both of them are late?"

  PETER HEDGES

  "I really have to pee, okay?"

  Amy says, "Don't let me get in the way of nature," as she shoves her way through the bathroom door.

  So. It's time that you know.

  There are other Grapes. One sister, one brother.

  The sister is Janice. She is three years older than me. We send her to this amazing college, she majors in psychology, and what do you think she does now? What do you think she does that utilizes her immense and profound talents? She is an airline stewardess. Do you believe this? It is the truth. Janice is ideal stewardess material because she has a fake face. She's perfected the kind of phoniness that gives the majority of people comfort. The smile full of teeth that makes Joe businessman breathe easy because Joe businessman knows that even though life is hard at least he's not a stewardess. This makes him feel better about who he is; helps him justify the drinking without ice cubes, the taking of liquor straight.

  Janice visits every so often. She lives in Chicago and flies out of O'Hare airport. She says that while O'Hare airport isn't the prettiest or the cleanest, it has the most character. In terms of what, I ask her—airports? It's hard for me to describe what it is that stewardesses do. I've ignored Janice every time she's tried to explain her work. And I've never flown in a plane because I don't believe in the idea of flight. So.

  Five years older than Janice, eight years older than me is my brother Larry. Each month he sends a substantial check with no letter or note and no return address on the envelope. Janice sends two smaller checks each month, so along with Amy's work at the elementary school and my grocery income, we're able to get by. Larry must be very successful in a money sort of way. He returns only once a year and it's always on the same day—^Arnie's birthday. He'll arrive sometime in the early morning bearing gifts, like Santa, and on the same day, before the stroke of midnight, like Cinderella, he leaves. He does this every year; his annual arrival and departure are like clockwork.

  Get a couple of beers in Amy and she'll tell you Larry stories.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  For instance, the first time he wiped out on his bike, his skin was ripped off his face, dangling like strips of bacon, his knuckles all opened up with bone sticking out—^you or me, we'd be screaming and crying, sobbing
. Not Larry. He walked into the house, blood dripping everywhere, with no expression on his face.

  When he found Dad hanging in the basement, as Amy tells it, he walked nonchalantly up the stairs and dialed the phone in front of Momma and Amy, who were baking bread. He told the operator to send an ambulance. "My dad has hung himself."

  Janice says that there are deep, psychological reasons why Larry will only return home once a year. As a self-proclaimed expert in psychology and the only Grape to hold a college degree, Jainice says that none of us will ever understand the impact that finding Dad hanging had on him. She says that just because he didn't scream and cry and freak out doesn't mean he wasn't affected. On the contrary, she says, the wounds are so deep, too deep for a layman's comprehension.

  All I know is that Arnie's big eighteenth birthday is going to be something else. And if Momma hasn't fallen through the floor and if Arnie hasn't died in his sleep and if Ellen isn't pregnant and if the other Grapes haven't gone further off the edge, maybe, maybe we'll be okay.

  I wash my face in the bathroom sink. I look in the mirror. I've these lines around my cheeks from pretending to smile too much, little webs around my eyes. Early signs of aging.

  I dry my face using my T-shirt. I flash on this afternoon and my tcdk with Mrs. Betty Carver. Her saying "I knew you'd never leave Endora" returns to haunt me. "I knew you'd never leave." 1 lean over the sink, form a ball of spit with my lips, and let it drop.

  PETER HEDGES

  20

  A, velvet painting of Elvis playing a white guitar hangs above Amy's headboard. Countless posters of "the King" plaster the other walls in her room. Each picture is of him when he was young and thin. The pudgy, piglet look that he got later in life is not documented here. Amy's stereo is an old model. Our father bought it for her when she started seventh grade. The system has speakers that have been pencil-poked by Arnie. She has a collection upward of thirty Elvis albums and a purple container thing which holds all sorts of his 45s, including an original of "Love Me Tender." Also hanging on the wall, in a shiny gold frame, is the Des Moines Register headline announcing Elvis's death. The newspaper has faded to yellow.

  Unable to stomach any more of this Elvis museum, I flip off the light switch, fall back on her bed, and wait in the dark. My sister is thirty-four but her room is thirteen.