by Peter Hedges
When I pull up at the Dairy Dream, I notice three girls. Two of them are chubby and plain and they are walking toward the Dream. They look familiar. The third girl doesn’t. She is straddling a boys’ bike, standing motionless, staring at something. The third girl my eyes can’t deny.
She has black hair, thick and full. It drapes her shoulders. She has legs. Oh my. From where I’m sitting, she is not to be believed. She is the moon.
I put my truck in park, turn off the engine, take the headlights out, and roll down the window—all in slow motion. I breathe with great difficulty. Certain that I must be imagining this, I look around to see if this is Life that is happening. This is my truck. These are my hands. That’s my little sister scraping the insides of the fudge machine. Yes, this is Life.
The other two girls go inside to order, but the one I’m aching for doesn’t move. The bell clinks or clanks or dings, and one of them holds the door, thinking the girl on the bike is coming in. She’s staring at something on the dirty white stucco wall of the Dream, however, and waves them off with a “No, thanks.”
Now, Gilbert, get out of your truck now.
I remember my beer breath and find some Bazooka in my glove compartment and chew rapidly. I close my truck door slowly; my heart is pounding now, firing blood bullets. Minutes ago I was calm, a walking coma practically, and now, in seconds, I’m so glad to be alive. And so scared.
She’s looking at some insects or maybe a spider. I move closer, trying to look at what she’s looking at and trying not to look at her. I get close enough to smell her hair and make out the slope of her nose, the shape of her pillowlike lips. The round black glasses. The creamy skin, perfect skin.
I have seen God and he is this girl.
I better say something fast. My mouth is drying out. As I step up behind her, she says, “Praying mantis. The male is sneaking up on the female. He wants to mate. If he’s not careful, she’ll turn around and bite off his head. His instinct will keep on mating. But when the rest of him is done, she’ll eat what’s left. That’s how praying mantises mate. Interesting, huh? My name is Becky.”
She turns, pulls down her glasses, and looks at me.
“Uh,” is all I can say.
“I’m from Ann Arbor. My grandma lives here and I’m only here for that reason. My grandma’s old, her hair is blue, and she’ll die soon. Want to smoke?”
“No, thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
“Really. Why?”
“Makes my skin gross? My teeth gross?”
“If you think it does, then I guess it does.” She puts a cigarette between her perfect lips. “Smoking makes me feel alive. Helps me get through it. You know, the bullshit?”
I nod because I’ll agree with anything she says. She lights her cigarette, looking like a magazine ad.
“You like me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m beautiful.”
I fight nodding but lose.
“I might be now, but one day I’ll have blue hair and blotched skin and plastic teeth and maybe one breast left. If the thought of that appeals to you, then we might talk about hanging out. But if you’re into the surface thing, the beauty thing, then I might just have to turn around, snap off your head, and eat you.”
I laugh but don’t know why. This Becky girl doesn’t even crack a smile. She goes inside and when that piss of a bell clinks or chimes, I fall back on the stucco of the Dairy Dream. I’m thinking, was the wind just knocked out of me or what?
It’s then when I hear a soft crunch, a chomping of sorts. Turning, I see that the female mantis has caught the male, and his head has been snapped off. She is munching, he is squirming, and I run to my truck and drive out of there fast. She expected me to follow her. I guess I told her.
As I pull out, I see Ellen pressing her face against the take-out window. Oh God, I left Ellen. I’ve got to go back.
Oh God.
9
“What about the third girl, who came in after them…?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“She… she… come on… you saw her!”
Ellen turns on my radio and says for me to speed up.
“Her eyes. She’s got these eyes. Dark brown. And her hair is uhm and her nose… slopes….”
“What was she wearing?”
“I don’t know that. I’m no fashion expert.”
“Then I can’t help you out.”
“You just served her! She…”
Ellen lets out this high-pitched giggle and it pierces the night air. I check to see if her door is locked. It isn’t, and a big part of me wants to reach over, open the door, and shove her out onto the street.
Instead I say, “Thanks a million, Ellen.”
“Why yes, brother dear, and a big thank-you for this morning.”
“You’re welcome.”
Did I do something this morning? It seems so long ago—like 1983.
“It was perfect tanning weather,” Ellen continues with her eyes closed. “Thank you for ruining my morning….”
Oh. The lawn chair. “Well, what is family for.”
Her sound changes to a gentle, kind of throaty just-had-sex voice. “I’ve never known what you have against me, really, except maybe the regret that you are my brother, and being my brother just means that you can’t date me. You can’t kiss me or ever know me in a sexual way. Could that be what’s keeping you in Endora?”
I won’t honor that with an answer.
“We all expect the floor to be fixed. After all, you are the man in the family.”
“What does that mean?”
“Men fix things.”
“What?”
“Women cook things. Men fix things.”
“Oh.”
“This is the way in America. Men have their thing and we women have our thing but you, Gilbert, you will have NO-thing if you don’t fix the floor.”
I drive faster.
“Ellen, we’re home.”
She opens the passenger door. The overhead light kicks on and she sees my sunburn for the first time.
“Oh, rub it in, why don’t you!”
“What?”
“You can have sun. But not me. Real fair. Fine!” She stomps into the house.
I’ll sit for a bit.
From my truck I can see Amy and Momma are watching TV. There are no lights on in the house except for the flicker from the screen. Upstairs, the light comes on in Ellen’s room. She starts to take off her white polyester Dairy Dream top. She doesn’t pull down her shade and part of her probably wants me to watch. I don’t. Instead, I study our house. It is big and sort of white. The roof needs replacement shingles, all the floors are sagging, and the porch is on a slant. The outside and inside both beg for a paint job. My father built this house with his own hands the year he married my mother, in honor of their nuptials. No wonder it all droops.
I’m walking to the porch, when Ellen lifts her window to ask if I want to see the tragic remains of the lawn chair. “No interest in dead things,” I say as I go in the front door.
“So that’s why you’ve no interest in yourself.” Ellen thinks I heard her say that but I didn’t.
Inside, the TV is on a commercial break, but it’s commercials that Amy and my mother like best on television. I head back to the kitchen but don’t know why, so I turn around and move fast toward the stairs hoping to make it up to my room without any familial contact. But I come across Arnie asleep in the coat closet with a ring of chocolate around his lips. Instead of waking him, I struggle to scoop him up in my arms. The kid is getting porky and lifting him pinches my sunburned arms.
Up we go.
My foot pushes open the door to his bedroom. He has bunk beds and sleeps on the top because he believes that’s where heaven is. There was a time when we shared this room. But I got my own when one of the other Grapes moved out. Arnie’s room is full of toys. There’s a path that winds and curves to his bunk. Amy makes his
bed every morning.
I set him on the bottom bunk, yank back the sheet up top, pull off his shoes and socks, and begin to lift him, when a giggling starts. I pretend to ignore it, because that’s the way Arnie wants it. But he says, “I wasn’t sleeping. I fooled you.” I tuck him in. “I fooled you!” he shouts.
I turn the light out on him, not saying a thing. I go downstairs to say goodnight. Ellen is in the kitchen stirring her yogurt with a plastic spoon. Even she can’t eat off the dishes she rarely cleans.
I go in the living room, where Amy is using the remote control to change between Channel 5 and Channel 8. Momma is mumbling, “…let me see my boy turn eighteen. That’s not too much to…”
“No, Momma,” Amy says.
“Let me finish what I’m saying.”
“Sorry.”
Momma stops, her big tongue pushes out of her mouth like on those “National Geographic” specials when a whale rises out of the water for air. “Now I forgot what I was saying.” She looks up and seeing me, her eyes bulge for a second, her head snaps back, and then her face softens. “Jesus!”
“What?”
“Gilbert, my God. For a second…”
“What is it?” Amy says as she turns the TV to mute.
“For a second I thought you were Albert. I almost called you Albert. I almost did that.”
“It’s okay, Momma,” Amy says. “Gilbert kind of looks like Daddy.”
“Kind of? He’s the spitting image.”
I shouldn’t have come down to say goodnight. Whatever possessed me?
Momma’s lips stretch out as she sticks the next cigarette between her teeth. Her big fingers are eager to light a match. She can’t get one going, so she tries a second. Amy reaches her ever-growing hands in to help, but Momma clutches the matches, hacks out a laugh, and stomps both feet on the floor. The table jiggles, a picture falls.
“Don’t stomp like that!” I shout.
Momma stops. She puts out her unlit cigarette, glares at me, and takes a new one from the pack.
“Is this my house, Gilbert?”
I nod.
“I believe it to be. Amy? Is this my house?”
“Yes, Momma.”
“Ellen? Come here, honey.”
Ellen appears with her yogurt. “Yeah?”
“This is your mother’s house, is it not?”
“It’s our house.”
“But I’m the mother, right?” They nod. “Amy—Ellen—girls—tell me it’s okay for me to stomp in my house.” Momma talks with the cigarette in her mouth. It waves up and down. “Tell me that I can do whatever I want in my house. And why is that? Why do you think I can do whatever…”
“Because it’s your house,” they both say fast.
Momma looks at me.
I say, “Sorry, I’m sorry,” as I move to the stairs.
“Your father always said that. Sorry. I used to think ‘sorry’ was his middle name. And you can see where ‘sorry’ got him!”
I want to scream, Momma, stomp all night. Punch yourself right through the floor. Instead, I simply say, “Good night,” and climb the stairs two at a time.
***
The mute is taken off the TV and the sound of studio audience applause for some talk show can be heard. In the bathroom mirror, I study my face. The burned skin, the almost purple redness of it. I squirt some skin cream into my hands and cover my face, hoping it will cool me down. My cheeks and nose and chin are slippery now. The sound of applause from the TV grows, and I take a bow.
10
Arnie is in bed, Ellen is playing records in her room, and downstairs Amy is setting out the assortment of snacks and little cakes for Momma to nibble on during the night. I’m sitting on the upstairs toilet with the lid down, talking on the phone.
“What, Tucker, what?”
“Gilbert. It’s grim.”
“What is?”
“The floor.”
I don’t know what to say.
“It’s all changing,” Tucker says. “Your mother is like twice the size of when I last saw her.”
“I know.”
“She’s like a balloon. I swear.”
“I know this, Tucker. Don’t you think I know this?”
Suddenly there comes this violence at the bathroom door. “Gilbert? Gilbert!”
The return of Ellen.
“Open up, please. Hurry!”
“Go downstairs.”
“What I need isn’t downstairs!”
Even Tucker is startled by the screaming. “Who is that yelling?”
“My little piss of a sister.”
“Which reminds me. You ever gonna set me up on a date? Get me a date.” Tucker has wanted to date Ellen since she was nine. For years, when I’ve needed something, I’ve bribed him with the promise that one day he could take her out.
“Gilbert. Please open the door. You don’t understand. It has to do with hygiene!” Ellen screams at the top of the stairs, “Amy! Amy!” She pounds on the door, she kicks at it. She is quite loud.
So I go, “And you want to date this girl? This noise? My sister is all noise.”
He listens, but it will have no impact.
Arnie is screaming now, too. So much for him all tucked in bed.
“Girls my age! We… bleed!”
I reach under the sink. I locate the blue-and-pink box, lift out one of those tubes wrapped in white, and slowly push it under the bathroom door. Ellen makes it disappear fast and runs off. All she had to do was ask.
“About the floor, Tucker. You got any ideas?”
“I got a plan. But I’m scared. For your mother. For your house. For you.”
“Yeah, well, we can only do so much.”
I hear the pitter-patter, titter-tatter of Arnie’s fingers on the bathroom door. “One second, Tucker.” I open it, let him in, and shut the door, locking it fast. Arnie smiles like he’s just been made a member of a secret club.
I say, “You were saying?”
Tucker continues. “I’ve designed what I think to be the only possible solution that can save her.”
“Okay, great.”
“Tomorrow we’ll get the wood.”
“Fine.”
“It’s gonna cost.”
“We’ll pay you whatever it takes.”
“Oh, I don’t want any money. The materials are what’s gonna cost. My services are donated.”
Arnie pulls at my T-shirt. I shove his hand away. He pushes down the toilet handle and the bathroom fills with that flush sound. Tucker says, “You taking a dump?”
“No.”
“Liar. I heard the flush. You were taking a dump.”
“But I…”
“I just wish you’d admit it. We got to be honest with each other.”
“But…”
“I heard the flush, Gilbert. You can’t fool Tucker Van Dyke.”
“See ya tomorrow, Tucker.” I hang up.
Arnie taps me on the arm. “Gilbert? Hey…?”
“What, buddy?”
“Can’t sleep.”
“You got to.”
“But I can’t.”
“Tomorrow is a big day. We’re going to ride the horses tomorrow.”
“Lots of times, right?”
“Yep.”
“Uhm. Maybe we could go now and ride ’em. Ride ’em now.”
“The horses are sleeping, buddy. Like you should be.”
“Oh.”
“You know they gave me the day off from work tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“You know why? Because Mr. Lamson wants you to have a good time. He even chipped in for some tickets.”
“All ’cause of the horsies?”
“Yep.”
He turns and heads for bed.
“Good night, Arnie.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good night, Arnie. It’s not good-bye. It’s good night.”
“Yeah.”
“Good-bye is for when you’re going away.” H
e mixes those words up. “And you’re not going anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
He walks down the hall. I watch his wide feet and his messy hair. He farts. I’ll wait for the smell to clear.
Last Christmas I made him a sign that says “Arnie’s Place” on it with my woodworking kit. I nailed it to his door so he’d know which room was his.
I check on him—he’s lying in bed pressing his feet to the ceiling. I turn his light out.
“Good night,” he says from the dark.
“That’s right, buddy. Good night.”
***
It’s later. I’m not getting any sleep because Arnie’s bapping his head to a steady beat. If you wake him to explain that it’s bad for him, he’ll nod like he agrees. Then, though, within the hour (I promise) you’ll begin to hear the pulse or punch or pound of his head into the bed, and you realize that what you tried to teach him has not and cannot be learned. So. You want to die. No, I mean, you don’t even want to go through the hassle of dying. You wish you didn’t exist. If only you could disappear.
I don’t have a clock in my room, so I can’t tell you the exact time. But it must be the middle of the night. My sunburn has made my arms and face dry out. I’m longer than my bed, so my feet hang over the edge. I lie on top of the sheets in my underwear. The night is dry and hot. The farmers are worried about the weather these days. There has been no rain in weeks. My boss, Mr. Lamson, says it’s what we’ve done to this planet. He says that it’s the car fumes and air conditioners in buildings and the chopping down of some rain forest.
I’ve often thought that my dad killed himself because he could see the future. They say he was the most hopeful man ever. He was apparently a constant supporter, compliment giver, and always had a kind word for everyone. I was seven when he hung himself, and I don’t remember all that much, and anything I did remember, I’ve managed to forget.
Amy says you could count on him to smile even after the hardest, longest of days.
Him hanging in the basement had the same kind of impact in our town as President Kennedy’s death. That’s what Amy told me once.
In the last two weeks at least five people have called me “Al.” I always say that I’m Gilbert Grape, not Albert, but people believe what they want to believe. They stare and gawk at me like I’m some freak of genetics. “Okay,” I want to scream, “so I look like him—that doesn’t make me him.”
