What's eating Gilbert Grape? (20 page)

"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!"

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"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.

"So how was today?" 1 ask.

"Arnie loved it. There must have been a thousand people there."

"Oh God."

"The fire got so hot and I had this rush of memories. I thought of walking to school. All of us walking to school. Funny."

"Not rccilly."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah."

"They let Arnie sit in one of the fire trucks. He wore a hat and everything."

"That's nice."

"He kept asking for matches on the way home and I said, 'No, matches are bad.' After lunch, he dumped out the junk drawer on the kitchen floor, and I said, 'Arnie, what are you doing?' and he said, 'Matches.' But you know how it is when he gets something into his head ..."

Upstairs this summer's hit song plays on Ellen's cassette deck. Their girlie screams accompany it.

"They're having fun," Amy says.

Arnie unearths a big rock and runs around the yard with it, threatening insects and shrubbery.

"Arnie!"

He stops and turns, his lips and chin covered with brown from the fudge bar.

"Arnie, what are matches?" I ask, my voice firm.

He smiles.

"What are they?"

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

He shakes his head.

"Put down the rock and come here. Put it down."

He drops it. Amy flinches because the rock just misses his bare feet. Arnie runs to us, his drool splashing the porch floor. "Matches are . . ."he says, searching for the words.