What's eating Gilbert Grape?

by Hedges, Peter

  "One time. Lance Dodge stood up on the stage area. ..."

  "Gilbert. I don't care about Lance Dodge."

  "Yeah, but it's a good story."

  "I don't care about him. He's nothing to me."

  Becky hands me two pieces of chalk she must have found in one of the rooms. "1 want you to do something. " Her voice is suddenly sexy, suddenly very much the sound I've been waiting for. "Will you do it?"

  "Sure," 1 whisper, thinking maybe this is our moment.

  She tells me to go into each room and write "Good-bye" on the chalk board. Write "Thank you" or "Miss you" or whatever. I start to object but she says, "You'll be glad you did."

  1 climb the back stairs and start with my twelfth-grade room where Mr. Reichen taught. He was a toad. 1 look around the room, the green paint has peeled and even the light fixtures have been removed. I write, "So long. Seniors. Gilbert was the last one out." In the junior room, I draw a picture of Tucker farting, which he was always known to do. I write, "Gilbert was here." The sophomore room gets an elaborate "G" which 1 fill in, the freshman room gets a simple "Thanks." I do eighth grade down to kindergarten and only skip one room.

  1 find Becky dancing in the gym/stage/cafeteria and say "I'm all done." She stops moving, her face and arms are sweaty, her hair has started to curl. She shakes her head and her sweat splatters my face. I would like to catch some of it on my tongue but I'm too late.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "Can we go now?"

  Becky smiles, and we walk out and down the cobwebbed, dirty hall. If this whole experience was supposed to move me or touch me in some way, it didn't.

  The school is empty and echoey. I'll be glad to be out in the sun, Wcdking across the brown grass.

  I say, "Apparently, they've got to be careful with the fire because the ground is so dry that the grass could catch on fire. They're taking precautions. ..."

  Becky stops. "You forgot this room," she says. She is standing in front of my second-grade classroom. The room where Mrs. Brainer taught.

  "No, I didn't."

  She opens the door. The blackboard is blank.

  "Let's go, okay? " I say.

  "Come to terms with it."

  "With what?"

  She walks into the room.

  "I suddenly feel sick," I say.

  "I bet."

  I look at Becky. "How do you know about this room?"

  She looks at me and my eyes find my feet. My shoes are a size twelve. In second grade my feet weren't so big. "It was a long time ago," I say.

  "Tell me about it."

  "No."

  "Please," she says, taking my hand in hers.

  I can't refuse her. I approach the chalk board which is the length of one of the walls. I wait for Becky to leave the room. I start writing. Half in cursive, half in block print. This is what I write:

  Mrs. Brainer had a rule cause of Lance Dodge. Rule was—If you have to go to bathroom before break time you forfeit recess rights. So. 10/13/1973. Amy = Senior. Student Council Secy. Larry = 10th grade, Janice = 5th. I was in this room. 2nd grade. Second chair, fourth row. Tucker in front of me. L. Dodge to my left. I had uneasy feeling about my Dad. Had to get home. Wanted to

  PETER HEDGES

  get home. Momma was in Motley with Arnie for tests. Found out he was retarded that August. I had a sick feeling. That morning my dad had been in good spirits. He had been all smiley and picked me up by my ears. Larry said on way to school that Dad was happy. 1 had this sick feeling and made plans to run home during recess. But 1 had to pee so I squeezed my legs so hard. It was 8 minutes till recess when 1 wet my pants. L. Dodge told Mrs. Brainer. I cleaned it up while others went outside. Autopsy determined that about same time my Dad was hanging himself, 1 was peeing in my seat. Ha. Ha ha ha he he he he ha ha ha. He ha.

  I drop the chalk on the floor and it breaks in two.

  I leave by the fifth-grade window as Becky reads what I wrote. I wait by where the slide used to be. I sit on the cement and pull at the weeds that have grown through the cracks. My hand is sore from writing. I covered the entire board.

  Becky climbs out the window and walks my way. I don't look at her. She offers no hug, no consoling.

  "They say you cried so hard. They say you were sitting in the biggest puddle ever seen and you were howling."

  I say nothing.

  "People remember this sound coming out of you. Like a dying animal. People remember it, Gilbert. You could hear it throughout the whole school. Is that correct?"

  1 shrug. Becky sounds like a detective.

  "And Mrs. Brainer made you stay after school, right?"

  I nod.

  "And when you got home, what did you find?"

  I look away from her.

  "They were taking your father out of the house. Is that right?"

  I don't move my head. I stand and rub the pebbles off my legs. They've left an imprint.

  "No one saw you upset at the funeral. No one saw you cry."

  I look at her.

  "You're proud of that. '

  I say nothing, but I am. She stares at me. I close my eyes tight

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  and begin to laugh. A jiggly laugh, high-pitched, my face scrunched.

  "Gilbert."

  I laugh. Oh, 1 laugh and laugh.

  "Gilbert."

  More laughter. The uncomfortable kind.

  "Nobody can remember the last time you cried. ..."

  With that, I start off running.

  "Gilbert, wait."

  I don't even look back. I run fast as I can. I cut through yards, hop the Hoys' fence. I run across Main Street, past Lamson Grocery, the Ramp Cafe. I cut through the Meffords' backyard and tip over their birdbath.

  At home, I run upstairs and shut the door to my room. I wipe the sweat off my legs, my arms—1 dry off my face by dunking my head into my pillow.

  Later, I refuse dinner. As night falls, I keep watch at my window. I've shoved my dresser drawers in front of my door.

  It is night now and I keep my door blockaded. I look out my window for a glowing match, a flaming watermelon, a sign from her, a surrender flag.

  No sign comes and I fall asleep.

  30

  Lt's Saturday, July 1—fifteen days till the retard's birthday—it's seven-forty something in the morning, and I'm on my way to pick up my stewardess/psychologist sister from the Des Moines Municipal Airport.

  I'm maybe a mile out of town when I decide to drive past my old school one last time. I thought yesterday's good-bye was final, but I've this urge for one last look.

  PETER HEDGES

  As I do a U-turn on Highway 13, my tires screech.

  I'm a block away when I see that clusters of people have already gathered to watch. The burning won't start until ten and already there must be fifty people. I feel sick to my stomach, hang a U-turn, and head out of town.

  I'm making great time when I need to stop and stretch my legs a bit. I pull off at a Burger Barn on the outskirts of Ames. The outside is a kind of simulated barn, with a black, red, £ind white sign that lights up at night. 1 walk in and look around. The food has a paper smell about it, the orange and blue colors inside make me dizzy, and a boy with braces stands waiting—he's practiccdly dying to take my order. It occurs to me that this is what Tucker wants to be. The boy snaps at me to order and since he's left his microphone on, it's echoing throughout the store. "Sir, may I take your order? You, sir, your order!"

  I walk out of the store in a daze—a young couple with their pudgy baby in a stroller enter as I'm leaving—and I say, "They're burning down the wrong building."

  It isn't until I'm in my truck that I realize that those people had no idea what I was talking about. My paranoia grows so great that for the next several miles, I check my mirror for the flashing lights of a police car. Maybe the couple reported that a young, unshaven, dirtily dressed man with arsonist tendencies was seen leaving the Burger Barn.

  I drive
for miles and no siren, no lights, no arrest.

  I'm an hour early, so I cruise around downtown Des Moines. I see the giant buildings, the enormous car dealerships and hospitals the size of what I believe Moscow to be. I see the Equitable building, which at one time was the tallest in all of Iowa. My father, brother Larry, and I would take trips to Des Moines and Dad would always explain how it was the tallest building and somehow I always felt special when looking with them at the tallest.

  I see the capitol with its giant gold dome and its four smaller green domes.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  It is so hot that no people are outside. In downtown Des Moines, the surprising place that it is, a walkway has been built from building to building. This way a shopper or businessman won't have to go outside. I pass under one of those passageways and, through the tinted glass, I see people moving along. So—inside, where there's air-conditioning, they all mill about but outside, where I am presently, the streets of Des Moines are mine.

  I pass a big, fairly new theater called the Civic Center, where important people perform. In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet— that's why it's art.

  At the airport, Janice is waiting behind one of those electric doors, still dressed in her polyester stewardess blue. I pull up. She looks disappointed. "Thought Amy was ..."

  "Nope," I say. I put her blue luggage in the back of the truck.

  "Couldn't you have driven the Nova?" Janice hates my truck. She has an aversion to trucks, seeing as she lost her virginity several times in pickups identical to mine.

  I'm about to say "You wanna walk?" when Janice gives me this much-too-fake hug. Her arms about break my neck, but the rest of her stays two feet away.

  "You look good!" she says.

  Of course, I didn't shower this morning, I didn't shave, and I'm wearing the dirtiest clothes I could find. No sane person would say I look good, unless they lie.

  My sister Janice would like to be as pretty as Ellen and she'd like to be as loyal as Amy, but she sits in the middle of all things. This is why she tries so hard, this is why our trip back will feel like an eternity.

  "Can't believe you'd come get me. To what do I owe this honor?"

  I'm about to tell her the truth: the town is burning down our old school and all, but before I can say anything, she says, "You probably want to borrow some money."

  "No!"

  PETER HEDGES

  "Oooo—do not get hostile with me. young man. Your hostility is your own and 1 refuse to take responsibility for it."

  I say nothing. My thoughts race. Yes, 1 could do with some money. A thousand dollars would get me started in Des Moines— a new life, a new name. But I'll never ask Janice.

  Pulling in to get gas, we go over the black cord of a Des Moines gas station. The bing-bing, bong-bong becomes BING-BING. BONG-BONG. Id swear it's in stereo. 1 hit the brakes and cover my ears. Janice looks at me as if I'm nuts. But this is how she always looks at me. She gives the station boy the most colorful of her many credit cards and then carries a garment bag into the ladies' room on the side of the station. As Janice walks away, the oily station boy looks at Janice's butt, studies it, and dreams. 1 fill the tank. Minutes pass and Janice emerges dressed in one of her many country-and-western outfits. Her boots are lizard or rattlesnake or armadillo. She carries a black cowboy hat.

  "There, that's better."

  Says who?

  She lays the garment bag in back and climbs in the truck, all the time aware that a group of men watch her from inside the station. I screw on the gas cap while the boy brings the credit card on one of those portable credit card thingies for her to sign. He gets close and almost gags from the copious amounts of perfume and hair spray that she has applied. Janice signs her name in that elegant fashion of hers, she makes the "J" really big. and instead of dotting the "i" in her name, she makes a tiny heart.

  As we drive. I fill in Janice on family matters. I preface each update with "Your retard brother," "Your walrus mother," "Your ever adolescent little sister."

  "Stop it. They're your family, too."

  "Nope. Don't think so."

  In disgust, she opens her blue purse and pulls out a long, skinny brown cigarette.

  "You find everything about me pretty much repulsive?"

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "Pretty much," I say.

  You don't light a brown cigarette and then ask Gilbert Grape for an opinion. We drive many miles in silence.

  "Amie's still alive?"

  "Yes," I say.

  "Good."

  My sister is digging for conversation matericd. It takes a few seconds for me to register the nature of her question and I say, "Oh my God. I forgot. He did die."

  "When?"

  "About a month ago."

  "How was the funeral?"

  "Lovely."

  "Many people?"

  "The whole town."

  Whenever we imagine Amie's funeral, we picture tons of people.

  I get this clear image of me helping to carry Arnie's coffin, when Janice launches into a tirade about how we must prepare for the inevitable. She explains what I already know, that our little brother has lived way longer than anybody expected.

  "1 know."

  "We'd be fooling ourselves if we thought ..."

  "I know."

  In the air, I'm sure Janice is the best stewardess going, but on the ground, her brain latches onto her body and the psychologist we hoped she'd never be surges forth. She explains why Momma is so fat. "Wouldn't you eat if you were her? Wouldn't you hate living in the house where your husband died? " She provides insights into Amy and how she'll never have a man because she puts the family first. This, too, can be explained because she's the oldest, the "man" in the family, in a certain sense. Larry's behavior is the easiest to understand. "The house is hell for Larry. It was Larry who found Daddy. The house brings all that back. Move to another house and I bet you'd see Larry all the time. Ellen never had a father and she's seeking in all the boys she dates the

  PETER HEDGES

  father she never had. Arnie is retarded and that's reason enough for why he does as he does."

  "That leaves you and me, Janice. How do you explain you and me?"

  "Amy didn't leave, so I did. Larry and I are the breadwinners."

  "I work. ..."

  "The major breadwinners and that's all right. It's the part that makes us happiest. Keeping you cdl supported. It keeps us close."

  I want to tell Janice that because she sent her last check late, we had to go on credit with Mr. Lamson.

  "You're the only one, Gilbert, who defies a kind of definition or comprehension. I mean, one doesn't know what you want. You don't travel, you don't read, you don't expand yourself. I arrange for you to fly to Chicago, but you won't get on a plane. You play it safe in all things and I've never known if it's because you're scared or if it's because you're just lazy. Of course, I love you cind don't in any way mean to hurt you. You need to examine your life on a deeper, more honest level. Quite simply—you don't know what you want and it shows. You're a scared little boy."

  I look at my sister smoking her brown cigarette, her cowboy boots resting on the dash, her makeup melting like chocolate in the heat—I look at her and consider the source.

  Janice blows her brown smoke in my direction and a sudden urge to be anywhere but in this car with this particular sister hits. When the speedometer reaches 80, Janice begins to giggle. When it hits 90, she can no longer laugh. At 100 mph, she says "Not funny" three times. At 110, she digs for her seat belt and finds that its gone. She screams, holds onto her cowboy hat and claws my arm until the skin breaks and I bleed.

  One wonders who's scared now.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  31

  Wfepull into the drive in time for dinner. Janice jumps out before I even get the truck in
park, grabs her bags, and goes upstairs. Amy meets me at the door, sees me holding my bloody arm, and asks, "Did you two fight?"

  "Why would you even think such a thing? We had a marvelous time."

  I get Arnie to help bandage my arm. I've never been so proud of a wound. I hope it leaves a scar.

  As we eat, Janice has lengthy conversations with Amy and Arnie and tosses comments across the kitchen into the dining room, where Momma occasionally grunts or moans in agreement. Janice is a big-city girl, so this gives her the right to tell us all about the "real" world. Amy is worried that the spaghetti isn't done enough and Arnie is much more interested in getting a noodle from between his teeth. I have a great time agreeing with Janice. 1 keep saying "I know" to whatever she says and she does an amazing job ignoring me. Janice is real top-notch about denying what's most obvious. I keep saying, "I know, I know." Amy presses her foot on top of mine to get me to stop it.

  "Ouch, Amy, you're pressing on my foot."

  Amy pulls it off and looks at her beans. Arnie looks up and stares at Janice, squints as if he's looking at something particular about her. He moves his face toward hers, so close that he's about six inches away and this makes Janice even more self-conscious and she says, "What is it, Arnie?" and he says. "Nothin'," and returns to his potatoes and beans.

  After Momma falls back into a loud sleep, we move to the porch for a dessert of Popsicles and fudge bars. Ellen returns from work, and her reunion with Janice, as usual, is teary and screamy. They

  PETER HEDGES

  jump up and down like those little gymnast girls do at the Olympics.

  Amy spoons out a plate of leftovers from the refrigerator. Ellen asks Janice hundreds of questions. Amy brings Ellen her plate, and she forgets to say thank you. The "girls" move upstairs. Their laughter and giggles grow even louder now. I'm convinced it's because they're mocking me and Amy's certain they're poking fun at her.

  Amy and I sit on the porch swing watching Arnie attempting somersaults in the front yard.