What's eating Gilbert Grape?

by Hedges, Peter

I don't say anything.

  She reaches below the table, lifts up a bag of potato chips that must have been resting against her feet, and gently tears open the top. She sets the bag down and for the next several minutes, while 1 sit on a stool in the corner, she eats the chips, handful after handful. The chips vanish fast. Momma crumples the bag and smacks her lips. I don't look at her, my eyes stay fixed on the TV static.

  "The next president of the United States?" she says. "He has got to be out of his mind." Momma laughs, clearly so proud of Arnie, so grateful that Lance could be so kind. "Just want to see that boy turn eighteen, that's all 1 ask."

  I nod like 1 know what she means. 1 sit there saying nothing while she unwraps a box of Hostess cupcakes.

  Working at the store, I think to myself, I bring the food home, 1 do the shopping and get whatever Amy asks for, 1 beg for credit from Mr. Lamson and each time Momma eats, 1 know that I'm an accomplice to the crime.

  She grunts. 1 turn to her and see that she's pinched off a part of one of the black-and-white cakes and is extending it my way. I shake my head like "No, thanks." She opens her mouth, almost happy that I refused, and inhales the fingerful with a sound resembling our vacuum.

  Five cupcakes later and Momma's still going strong. What keeps me here, 1 decide, is the odd hope that if I sit here long enough, breathing her smell and looking at her enormous head, maybe I can learn to love her.

  She goes for the final cupcake in the box and 1 stand up, wiping my mouth while wanting to wipe hers. This sitting in silence and listening to her noisy mouth has been a virtual bust.

  "Momma, you should get some sleep."

  "What?"

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "Get some sleep. Close your eyes and sleep."

  "Huh?"

  "Sleep. Rest. You deserve to rest."

  "Gilbert. You ever seen a robber here? Has a killer ever gotten in here? To the best of your knowledge?"

  "No, Momma."

  "Why do you think that might be?"

  The light from the television keeps on flickering.

  "I don't know. Momma."

  "Don't shake your head like that. Makes you look like your father."

  "You were saying?"

  "Yes, 1 was. I was saying that nobody has broken in here because I stand watch. They will have to get by me before they can get to you. 1 dare someone to try and get by me."

  She's right. No way is any criminal or killer even going to think about coming into our house as long as she sits in her chair. Momma is our sentinel.

  "There are entire families where an intruder, a night stcdker, just wanders by. Picks out a house. Stakes it out. Enters with rope and guns, proceeds to tie down all the family members and shoots each and every one. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to let some mystery person enter my house and in a single night kill all that I've created."

  She takes the last cigarette from her current pack and lights it.

  "One day you might understand what it means to create. To know the feeling of looking in a person's eyes and know that you are the reason for those eyes." Momma thinks for a second. "I'm going to say something 1 know I'm not supposed to say. I see you and I know that I'm a god. Or a goddess. Godlike! And this house is my kingdom. Yes, Gilbert. This chair is my throne. And you, Gilbert, are my knight in shimmering armor."

  "Shining, I think, Momma, is what you mean."

  "No, I know what I mean. You don't shine, Gilbert. You shimmer. You hear? You shimmer! Now good night."

  "What?"

  "Good night. " She blows smoke my way, it clouds around my

  PETER HEDGES

  face and I'm able to fight coughing until I make it to my room. Up there, alone, I cough until my stomach hurts and my throat feels torn.

  35

  X wake up early because 1 need to pee. I'm about to flush when 1 hear some sloshing come from the bathtub. Through the glass shower door, 1 see the shape of a person. Sliding it open, I see him there. Arnie. His boats and plastic fish are floating—the bubble bath has long since disappeared—his eyes are bulging out and he can't move. The retard fell asleep and spent the night in the tub. His fingers and his feet have all shriveled up, raisinlike, and he'll undoubtedly think it's permanent. Being in the water is hard enough, but the thought of being in it all night just must destroy him. I help the poor guy out of the water. 1 take his dinosaur towel and begin to dry him off.

  "It's okay, Arnie. It's okay."

  He's quivering and shaking. He doesn't utter a sound. And as I'm drying the water out of his ears, a different kind of water fills his eyes.

  "It's okay."

  At breakfast he ignores his toast. I shake on even more cinnamon sugar, but still he won't eat. Amy, who is scrambling eggs, looks at me, concerned. I shrug. Then I make what I think to be an incredibly insightful analogy about how food is like gas and that "if you, Arnie, were a car you would be stalled in the driveway. Arnie needs gas." This has no impact. He sits with his face scrunched and his back rounded like a rock, staring at the waves in his fingers. "Arnie, they'll go away." He shakes his head. "They will. I promise that your wrinkly fingers will go away."

  Amy says, "Gilbert knows about these things. You can trust Gilbert."

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  There is nothing more depressing than toast that no one eats. So, in a last-ditch attempt, I say, "Arnie, think how the toast must feel. I mean, if you were this toast, how would it feel to be unwanted, unloved?" He usually has sympathy for such things. But not today.

  So I reach to throw the toast in the trash, when his arms and hands extend like springs and grab both slices. He scrunches each slice into a little ball and throws one at Amy, one at me, yelling, "I coulda drownded! I coulda drownded!" Then he runs out of the kitchen, out of the house.

  Amy looks at me, I look at her. Usually one of us checks on him in bed and, for whatever reasons, we both forgot. But it was me who left him in the tub.

  Ellen strolls into the kitchen and Amy says, "Could you go get Arnie?"

  "Be glad to. And then what? What comes after that? What will be next?"

  "Get Arnie, please."

  "It's a good thing I'm here, isn't it? Good thing that someone does the dirty work around here. What would you people do without me?"

  I say, "Be happier."

  She doesn't hear this because she dramatically hits the kitchen closet door, lets out a sigh that sounds like a winter wind, stops off at the bathroom for a makeup check, and finally after all that, stomps outside. She screams "Arnie! ARNIE!"

  In a minute she's back, saying, "Our Arnie has disappeared and no mortal can save him and maybe if we raised him differently, if we taught him to . . ."

  Amy takes the eggs she has been scrambling and dumps them in the trash. She uses a paper towel to wipe her mouth and she leaves the kitchen.

  Ellen says, "What about my eggs? " as Amy opens the back door. Amy says nothing as the screen door crinks shut. She goes out to the backyard and sits at our once red, now very weathered, picnic table.

  PETER HEDGES

  Ellen whispers, "This family," as if she deserves better. She looks on the shelf where we keep cereals and there are three boxes of Momma's cereal. "Oh, great, only Cheerios. What a day this is shaping up to be. I shouldn't have even woken up. "

  I want to say maybe you shouldn't have even been born, Ellen. But I know that living is no one person's fault. There are those who say that we choose to be bom, that we make out some request and it is granted, that we're put on this planet because we want to be alive. 1 think not. It's the luck of the draw. Some people have to live while others get to sit this living thing out.

  "Gilbert?"

  Some days I hate all those who know my name.

  "Gilbert?" Ellen says again and again, speaking it nine times before getting to the point. Nine is nothing, fourteen is her record.

  "Get to the point, Ellen," 1 say.

  "Look at me."

  "1 know what you look like,"
I say, looking out the back window where Amy still sits at the picnic table.

  "Gilbert? Look at me. Gilbert?" There she goes again, saying my name in that way.

  I snap and turn. "WHAT DO YOU WANT!"

  Ellen half smiles, she is startled by my tone but happy for the eye contact. She flutters her eyes and whispers. "Jesus cmd 1 both love you."

  This I did not expect. Before 1 can think of what to say back, she takes a large bowl and pours it full of Cheerios and along with a big salad spoon and a half gallon of milk, she carries it to Momma in the dining room.

  "Ellen, how nice of you. You love your mother, don't you, Ellen?"

  "Yes, Momma, 1 do. And so does Jesus."

  I hear a spoon hit the wall. Momma has thrown it at Ellen. Momma has missed.

  I look out the window and see from the shape of Amy's back that she's in about the same condition as our lawn furniture. You can tell the idyllic nature of a family by the upkeep of its picnic table. Ours is its own indictment. We are splintered and peeling. We rot.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  Out the back door and across our yard, I'm standing a good five feet from her. "I'll go find the kid, okay?" Amy doesn't say anything, but I can tell that my doing this has shifted her feelings. For her, the saddest times are those when she feels that she's fighting the war alone. I walk around the house to my truck, not explaining that Ellen might be born again. She'll find that out soon enough.

  As I start up my truck, I wonder if Amy tries to forget about Mufiy as often as I try to forget Becky.

  The retard is nowhere to be found, so when I get to work, I call home to tell Amy.

  "Did you check the water tower?"

  "He wasn't there. But don't worry—he'll show up."

  "Dam it," Amy says. "We're going to have to go through this water thing again."

  "No, he's bigger now, he'll be fine. He'll take a bath tonight or I'll take him swimming. It'll be fine. Amy."

  "I can't go through the water thing again."

  I hang up when we finish our talk. As I struggle with my apron— it won't stay tied in back—Mr. Lamson calls out, "Is everything all right?"

  "Everything is great," I say. He walks back into his office cubicle and I mutter to myself. "Everything is peachy. I've got a mother who would eat her arm if she had enough barbecue sauce, a dork-ass older brother and a wicked sister who got out of this town, a little bitch of a sister who very likely made love to Jesus last night, an ever-fattening older sister who deserves a decent man, and a retard brother who, we have reason to believe, has gone into hiding and is once again terrified of water."

  "What are you saying, Gilbert?" Mr. Lamson has poked his head out the office door.

  "Nothing, sir."

  "I heard you, though. You were saying something. Gilbert, you know you can talk to me."

  "I was just talking about how you're right. Mr. Lamson. Life."

  He looks puzzled.

  PETER HEDGES

  "Life is full of surprises. Just the darndest. most nifty surprises. That's all 1 was saying."

  "That a boy. son. That's the way to look at it."

  36

  L'vefilled the mop bucket with hot water and detergent. Staring down at the warm suds, 1 think of Arnie, convinced that the key is to get him in the bathtub pronto. As 1 push the gray bucket to Aisle Four, 1 check the floor for dust balls. I dunk the mop, press out the excess, and slap it on the linoleum tiles.

  "Gilbert Grape!" a booming voice says.

  I don't look up because I'm afraid to gaze at the source of such a sound.

  "It's good to see Gilbert Grape!"

  "Yes," Mr. Lamson agrees. "Look who's stopped by for a visit."

  I can't look up.

  "Gilbert, you can stop your mopping. Look who's here."

  The mop goes in the bucket, I dry my hands on my apron and glance up to see if it's true.

  The sun glares through the store window. Showered in a golden-yellow light, wearing a sport coat and a blue tie, nice pressed slacks with clean white tennis shoes, a red carnation pinned to his lapel, hair immaculate, and with a smile that rivals those found in beauty pageants is that one-of-a-kind freak of nature, Mr. Lance Dodge.

  "Hi," I say, trying not to seem surprised.

  "And a dandy hello to you, too," Lance replies with one of those hearty male chuckles used to dispel tension. "He's not happy to see me, Mr. Lamson."

  "Sure he is."

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "No slrree. Gilbert always was his own kind of guy."

  "Still, he's happy you came by. Aren't you, Gilbert?"

  I nod because Mr. Lamson wants me to.

  A pack of Endora's children run across the parking lot in search of the town hero. There are at least fifteen of them and they're laughing and screaming and screeching as if Lance were one of the Beatles.

  Realizing the kids are coming his way. Lance has a sudden change from confidence to panic. "Oh Christ," he cries. This leaves me with a smile. "Is there somewhere I can hide?" he asks, clawing Mr. Lamson's shoulder.

  "Here—back here," I volunteer, guiding Lance toward the stockroom, where he hides.

  The kids enter the store, all of them shouting at the same volume, "Where is he? Where is he? Mr. Lamson? Is he here? We want to meet him! We've GOT to meet him!"

  The kids pull and tug at his apron, they jump up and down like popcorn. Mr. Lamson wants to protect Lance's privacy, but he's also incapable of deception—I've never known him to lie. Taking in a deep breath, he says, "Lance Dodge is an old friend of Lamson grocery. I can remember when ..."

  "Where is he? We know that he's here! His mother told us!" The kids start searching the aisles. I stand by the stockroom door, appearing to be reorganizing the dog food but serving more of a guard/protector function. This situation will soon be unmanageable.

  "All right, kids, kids!"

  They stop for a moment.

  "A person of Lance's status has a lot of pressures. A lot of demands are made of him."

  "Where is he? Where is he!"

  "LANCE MUST BE RESPECTED!"

  "He's in the back, 1 bet," a scrawny boy suggests.

  "Okay, yes, but you must respect ..."

  The kids surge toward where I'm standing. They see me and stop for a time. Drooling and eager, they are the wolves—Lance

  PETER HEDGES

  is the deer. I sense the inevitability of it, and as I step out of their way, they rush past. Mr. Lamson throws his arms in the air.

  "What could 1 do?" 1 ask.

  "1 know."

  I'm thinking Lance should be an easy catch when I hear a pounding on the front door. It's the hero with his hair everywhere. Out of breath, he throws open the door and shouts, "Get me outta here!"

  Mr. Lamson waves for me to help Lance. Taking my keys out and leaving my apron on, I sprint the thirty feet to my truck. Lance hides in the bed of it as the kids come around from the back of the store. He stays hidden as I slowly drive away.

  When I've gone a few blocks and no kids are in sight, I roll down my window and shout, "We're in the clear!" Lance climbs up front and we cruise the streets.

  "Thank you. My God, thank you."

  "No problem," I say.

  He is breathing like he's about to die. "It is so hot. Damn heat."

  "I know."

  "Whew."

  He has these beads of sweat on his top lip. The same kind of sweat he would get during recess in grade school.

  "Where can I take you? "

  He stops for a second. He suddenly looks depressed. "Uhm. Dammit."

  "Can I drop you off at your house?"

  "No. NO!"

  "OK."

  "My mother has invited all the women in town over for a luncheon in my honor. I couldn't take it. I had to get out. I swear to God, she invited the entire female population of Endora."

  None of the Grape women were invited, I want to say. But it is commonplace at the important socicd functions to leave an
y and all Grapes off the guest list.

  "You got a minute, Gilbert?"

  "Uhm. I'm supposed to be working. ..."

  "Let me buy you a burger. How's that sound?"

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  Lance Dodge, the most famous citizen in this county, wants to buy me, Gilbert Grape, a hamburger. If I were any less a man, I would probably pinch myself, convinced this was a dream.

  Beverly with the birthmark is our waitress, and I ask for the corner booth in an attempt to give Lance some privacy.

  "Can we sit here?" Lance asks, referring to the center, most visible table.

  "Everyone will see you here," I start to say, taking my apron off and holding it on my lap.

  "Oh well. That comes with being, you know ..."

  "A celebrity?"

  "A newsman."

  Lance sits facing the window, more aware of those who might pass by outside than he's aware of me. A part of him wants to flee the hungry crowds, but a larger part must love the attention and still worry that one day it will all be gone. Lance asks for a menu and two glasses of water for himself, three ice cubes in each glass. As Beverly listens, without thinking she covers her cherry-red birthmark with her left hand. She must feel that Lance shouldn't have to see such a thing.

  From the back, Ed Ramp, wearing a chef's hat, peeks out of the kitchen and nods in disbelief.

  We order. I go for a simple cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke. Lance orders a strawberry milk shake, thick, with no whipped cream, the cherry on the side.

  The milk shake is there in minutes. My burger, fries, and Coke take an eternity. Lance downs his shake in two long sips and when my food arrives, he takes the biggest french fry, dips it in the ketchup I just pounded out, and says, "Just one." He takes a bite. "Do you mind?"

  "No."

  I should thank Lcince for giving Arnie the next-president award. But I make a point to not say thanks. Maybe he'll respect me more if 1 don't appreciate him. So 1 eat. And as 1 do, the most famous person 1 know sits across from me, eyeing my food.

  "You like Endora, huh?"

  PETER HEDGES

  I shrug.

  "Obviously, you're still here. Every day that I've been in Des Moines doing my thing—^you, Gilbert, you've been back here. In the seven years since high school, I've seen and done much. All you've done is Endora. Funny—how two lives can be so different."