What's Eating Gilbert Grape

by Peter Hedges

  I explain that we had a great time and that, for me, watching the rides leave town was almost as exciting as watching them come into town. “Arnie and I learned a new word today,” I say, “but he had his heart set on some private time with the church grounds, so he’s there, and I’m here, and no way in hell am I going back after him.”

  She starts to protest.

  “Amy, who has spent the last four days entirely with the runt?”

  “He’s not a runt!” She takes a deep breath. “But I know what you mean. I appreciate it. You’ve been a big help.” Then she yells, “Ellen. Ellen!”

  The little one appears at the top of the stairs, looks at Amy, and says, “Just know one thing. I am watching this great movie, and don’t ask me the name of it because I don’t know the name, but it’s in black and white, and it is good. Of course I’ll do what you ask. Just know that the movie is great. Be aware of the sacrifice I’m making.”

  “Forget it,” Amy says. “I’ll do it.”

  I glare at Ellen. But since she hasn’t looked at me in ages, she doesn’t notice.

  “I don’t mind doing it—whatever it is….”

  I pantomime breaking her neck. This, too, has no audience.

  “Just so you know that I’m suffering.”

  For Amy, the thought of anyone suffering, even Ellen, is unbearable. So she goes into the kitchen, changes her sandals for tennis shoes, and walks toward the front door.

  The puberty girl screams, “I’ll do it!”

  Amy stops and says, “Momma’s sleeping,” as if it were some new occurrence. “Get back to your movie. Hurry up, you’re missing it.”

  “The movie isn’t all that good, even though the lead actress looks just like me. So, in truth, my not watching the movie is not the sacrifice that it seemed.” She smiles like there was never a problem. Her smile makes you think for a moment that there aren’t any problems, that all is smooth, that Ellen Grape possesses humanity, and before Amy can say anything, Ellen hops down the stairs and shoots out the front door.

  It’s over a minute before she’s back in the house. She walks past me to the kitchen, where Amy is looking up a recipe.

  “Amy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uhm.”

  “What, Ellen?”

  “What was it you wanted me to do?”

  15

  Momma snores from her chair as Amy clears away the breakfast dishes. I drown my cereal with milk and stir it with the least dirty spoon I can find. I’m lifting the first spoonful when Tucker’s truck motors into our drive. Amy looks up, relieved.

  “It’s just the wood,” I say. “It’s still gonna take days to assemble everything.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t think you do.” I stand up and move down the hallway.

  Amy follows. “I understand that this takes time. Just so we’re doing something. Just so we’re trying to make our mother’s life better.”

  It is arguable as to whether installing an entire network of support beams and boards will have anything to do with making her life better. She might live longer. But since when were longer and better the same thing?

  Tucker is kind of tiptoeing toward our house with his red toolbox. I shout through the door screen, “Tucker, she won’t wake up!”

  “You never know, though,” he whispers back.

  “She won’t! She never does after breakfast!”

  It takes him an eternity to make it across our yard. Finally Tucker and his tools are safely in the house.

  It was last Wednesday that Tucker appraised the floor situation. He ordered the wood on Thursday and we picked it up Friday. Saturday was spent carefully measuring and cutting it in his dad’s workshop. Yesterday he drilled holes in the boards so today we can assemble support beams with long screws and bolts. This way there will be no hammering in the basement, no loud noises. This way Momma will never know.

  Working fast, we make three trips down to the basement; half of the wood is on the floor. We’re downstairs, panting and sweating. Tucker says, “Gilbert?”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiles for the first time in four days. “This is going to work.” I don’t know if he’s ever been so proud of anything. He’s starting to sport a new image—one of adequacy.

  “Great,” I say.

  There’s a glorious silence while he struggles to think of a new topic of conversation. He checks one of the boards. “This is warped.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “No one is going to come down here. This is not for show-and-tell. This is purely a functional project we’re engaged in here.”

  “I know this. Don’t you think I know this?”

  I rub my nose with the palm of my hand because hearing this guy talk makes me want to sneeze him into oblivion.

  “I’m a believer in the very best for the very best people. Your mother is one of the best people.”

  I want to say that my mother is a cow. But instead I say, “We should finish, because I work at noon.”

  “Oh. Are you rubbing that in?”

  “Rubbing what in?”

  “That you have a job and I don’t.”

  “No. Not rubbing in anything. Merely saying that I have to work today. So let’s hurry.”

  “I’m planning to get a real job.”

  “Yeah, I know you are.”

  “The Burger Barn could benefit from people like me. I’d like to be an assistant manager. Give me a title, give me power.”

  I say, “Let’s get going,” when Amy flicks the basement light off and on fast.

  Tucker gets twitchy. “What’s going on up there? What’s going on?”

  The basement goes from light to dark to light.

  “She’s awake.”

  “Who is?”

  “The beached whale.”

  “Gilbert.”

  “We’ve got to wait.”

  I lie down and close my eyes. “Hopefully, Momma won’t look outside and see all the wood left in your truck.”

  Tucker paces about. “If you’d just tell her—if you’d just be honest with her…”

  “No.”

  “But isn’t honesty the best…”

  “Sorry, Tucker.”

  “But…”

  “This is the way it’s got to be.”

  The only sounds upstairs are that of the TV changing channels and Amy’s muffled voice.

  “Oh, Gilbert, man oh man. Have I got some news or what? I was going to call you.”

  “Yeah?”

  He kneels beside me. “I drove out this morning to the Future Site of the Burger Barn, you know?”

  “Don’t tell me they’ve already started building it.”

  “Yes! But there is something else that I saw….”

  I say to Tucker that I don’t care about the Burger Barn. “I will never eat there,” I say.

  “This isn’t about the Burger….”

  “Tucker, just thinking about this gives me reason to die. So will you please shut up!”

  At this point, a creaking and cracking noise starts moving our way. Tucker stands, he’s suddenly nervous. “Holy Jesus. Holy God. What is going on up there?”

  I explain that Momma’s heading for the bathroom.

  “No way.” He looks up and starts to hyperventilate. We stare at the basement ceiling. Each step Momma takes makes cracks in the paint. “It’s like she’s drawing a road map.”

  “Jesus,” Tucker says, holding his arms above his head to protect himself from the falling plaster.

  It takes Momma many minutes to get to the bathroom. The creaking stops as she gets situated. Amy turns on Ellen’s stereo with Elvis’s Aloha from Hawaii album and his version of “Suspicious Minds.”

  “That’s our signal,” I say. We sprint up the stairs and grab all the remaining wood.

  ***

  It takes three more trips to get all of it downstairs. As Tucker and I shoot out of the house, Amy turns
off Elvis. We get in our respective trucks. Standing in the doorway, Amy starts to give us the thumbs up but turns away suddenly. Momma must have flushed.

  Our trucks race up the street. We turn left on Vine and pass the Methodist church. I slow down when I see Ellen dragging Arnie by the ankles. The retard is on the ground, clawing at clumps of dry grass, effectively slowing Ellen down. She grabs his hair and pulls up hard. I hit my brakes, jump out of my truck. “Stop it! Stop it!” She lets go of his hair, brushes her bangs out of her face, and smiles in her this-didn’t-just-happen way.

  “You little bitch,” I shout, crossing the street.

  Arnie curls up into a little ball. Ellen starts to cry. “What am I supposed to do? He won’t come home! I’ve tried everything! Candy! Bribery! Sexual favors! Nothing will get him home and I’ve uhm I’ve uhm…”

  “You’ve uhm what?”

  “You know—things to do.”

  “You hit him again…”

  “He’s been eating the leftover bits of popcorn. It’s all muddy and dirty….”

  “You hit him again and I’ll…”

  Ellen holds her face in such a way as to make certain I see her tears.

  As a brother and as a Grape, I put up with a lot. My sisters, my mother, this town. I will endure anything. But one thing I will not allow. No one hurts Arnie.

  I will kill for that kid.

  “I wasn’t hitting him exactly….”

  “You pull his hair or touch him even. I swear I’ll kick your ass.”

  “Aren’t you the tough one?”

  The retard is crawling back across the field like an army man. I walk over, lie down next to him, and say, “I’ve gotta go to work. Somebody has got to be at home protecting Momma and Amy. Even Ellen. Will you be their protector? Will you be their guard? I’m counting on you, buddy.”

  He lies there motionless as he thinks hard; then he nods without looking at me. He stands, gives me a salute, and starts toward our house. Ellen says nothing and follows. Hold his hand or give him a squeeze or something, I want to say. I’m tempted to throw a rock, when she turns and mouths, “Thank you.”

  They walk home, never touching.

  As I go to my truck, I call over to Tucker who has been a spectator to all of this. “And you want to date that monster?”

  “I did want to. Not anymore.”

  Happy days are here. “How great. You’ve finally seen the light. You finally got my point.” Suddenly this is shaping up to be a breakthrough day for Tucker.

  “Let me clarify,” he says.

  I walk right up to his truck. I’ve been waiting years for some clarity from this guy.

  “Your sister is a kind of Miss Iowa material. Sexy, appealing, corn-fed look. Okay? She’s still incredible by every uhm stretch of uhm whatever it is that stretches.”

  “Your imagination.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “For the record—I don’t agree.”

  “I know. Hey, do we uhm have to discuss this in the middle of the road?”

  “Think so. This could be the happiest day of my life.”

  “Okay. You see, I was trying to tell you this earlier. This morning, when I was at the Future Site of…”

  “Yeah, I know where you were.”

  “I saw this girl. On a bike. Jesus, Gilbert. It was religious.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’ve never seen a girl like the one I saw this morning.”

  “You saw a girl?”

  “Not ‘a’ girl, Gilbert. ‘The’ girl. The ‘ultimate’ girl.”

  “Does she have black hair?”

  “That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  “Is she about this tall?”

  He shrugs.

  “Do you know her name?” In desperation I add, “She’s a friend of mine.”

  Tucker throws back his head and laughs like some sea creature. “Yeah, right—a friend of yours?” He cackles and giggles and rips out of there.

  I jump for my truck. It takes a few tries before starting. He is long gone. I accelerate fast, chasing after him.

  16

  Tucker’s truck is at the Ramp Cafe. I pull in and park between it and the McBurney’s Funeral Home hearse. Beverly, the waitress, is taking Tucker’s order when I get inside. She sees me, fakes a smile, and goes back to the chef, who also happens to be her father, Earl Ramp. Beverly never writes down her orders; she has this incredible memory. She can’t seem to forget the numerous cruel things I did to her in grade school. She was one of those tall, bony girls that made a guy feel like a nothing. She also has a cherry-red birthmark on her neck the size of a small Frisbee. One day, when I was in fourth grade and she was in sixth, I wet a paper towel and gave it to her to wash it off. Everybody found it pretty funny except Beverly. She’s never had a sense of humor.

  Tucker is sitting with Robert McBurney, Jr., son of Robert Sr., and heir to the finest mortuary in the county. McBurney’s Funeral Home is located in Motley. They do all the major burials in these parts. They do cremations, too. Bobby, as his intimate friends call him, has been away guest teaching at funeral school and has recently come back and is working hard. He is dressed in a funeral-black suit with a white handkerchief sticking up, his red hair immaculate, his face dotted with pink freckles.

  “Bobby—welcome back.”

  He looks up. “Oh, thanks, Gilbert. How’ve you been?”

  We talk small for a while. Tucker’s pancakes come. Bobby is eating eggs, and Beverly forgets to take my order. “Beverly?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “I’m feeling a little famished. Could I get a slice of toast? Butter, grape jelly. The works.” Beverly walks by without acknowledging my order and under her breath says, “Get it yourself, you fruit.” I want to say, “Fruit is what is on your neck,” but what would be the point?

  Tucker pours his syrup and says, “So you saw her, too, Bobby?”

  “Why do you think I’m over here?”

  “I was wondering…”

  “The talk in Motley is only about this girl.”

  Tucker says, “Not only is she gorgeous and beautiful, she’s not bad-looking either.” Tucker was born backward.

  Bobby says, “I haven’t seen her yet. But I’ve heard plenty.”

  “So,” Tucker continues, “you drove over here to find her?”

  “No, not exactly.” Bobby licks the leftover egg off his fork. “Nobody’s dying these days, and when it’s slow Dad sends me into other towns to drive the hearse around—get some free publicity. Remind people of the McBurney option.”

  I say, “You’re the only funeral home we got around here.”

  “True, Gilbert, but even then you have to remind people that you exist. People forget McBurney’s Funeral Home. They begin to take us for granted.”

  “I know what you mean, Bobby,” I say.

  “Well,” Tucker starts to say. He’s about to put an entire pancake into his mouth. “We’re preventing you from some business, I’m afraid.” Bobby looks confused. Tucker stuffs his face but somehow manages to keep talking. “Gilbert’s momma. We’re fixing the floor so she…” Under the table my shoe finds his shin. He stops.

  Bobby’s interest is piqued. He says, “Go on.”

  “No,” Tucker says. “It’s rude.” He tries to swallow. “You know, talking with my mouth open?”

  Bobby is adamant. “Please don’t go preventing my family from doing business. You know, as Americans we have a duty to die.”

  Thinking quickly, I say, “You guys buried Mrs. Brainer, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yes. We do pretty much all the schoolteachers.”

  Tucker stops. “Mrs. Brainer? She…?”

  I say, “Come on, you knew that she died.”

  “No, I didn’t!”

  “Well, she’s very dead, Tucker, and the McBurney Funeral Home planted her deep, didn’t you?” Bobby nods. “Tucker and me had Mrs. Brainer in the second grade.”

  “She must have been a great teache
r,” Bobby surmises.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Big funeral. Many of her former students were there.”

  Tucker, starting to choke up, says, “I would’ve been there. I didn’t know she died. Damn.”

  “Lots of people, huh?”

  “More flowers, too, than I remember in a long time. Apparently she was a real happy lady.”

  Tucker says, “She had a smile for every student, every day.”

  I change the subject by asking Bobby what the procedure is when a person dies. He explains that he and his dad will drive to get the body. They bring it back to the funeral home. And while the family picks out a casket from their “impressive” selection room, the body is taken downstairs and embalmed. A process that sounds a lot like pickling to me. The dead person is stripped. I ask him what it is like to see someone he might have known, naked.

  “Seeing them, you know, one day walking the streets—waving to their friends—and then, the next day, lying on the slab. It’s harsh. It’s fun, too. You live life differently when your primary contact is with the dead.”

  “You ever, you know…?” Tucker is trying to articulate one of his obscure thoughts. “You ever uhm…?”

  “What?” Bobby is patient.

  “You know, fool around with one of the bodies?”

  “No!”

  “You ever think about fooling around?”

  I go, “Tucker, please.”

  “The worst we do—and I tell you guys this in confidence—the worst we do is take the ugly people—you know, the grotesque ones, and make jokes about them. Harmless jokes, though. I mean, after all, the people are dead. They don’t hear us. My dad and me—we make some great jokes. We’ll just look at their naked bodies and laugh and laugh. But it doesn’t hurt anyone. No one even knows we do it.”

  “Now me and Gilbert know.”

  “Yeah, but who are you guys?” Bobby sets down his fork, having cleaned his plate. He wipes his mouth with his silk handkerchief.

  Tucker says, “You ever worry that the dead are watching, though? You know, from up above somewhere.”

  “No.”

  Tucker says, “Oh.” There’s a lull while he ponders this. Maybe he’ll be quiet for a while.

  I ask, “What jokes did you make about Mrs. Brainer?”