by Peter Hedges
Blood rushes to my face; my heart races. I say, “Oh, come on.”
“I’m sorry, son.”
I whisper, “But he’s retarded.”
Sheriff Farrell says, “Seems pretty clever to me,” as he moves the toothpick from side to side.
So Arnie, my retard brother, who cries because he killed a grasshopper, is taken in the police car and driven off to jail. As they put him in the back, I hear him say, “Be sure to flash the lights and play the siren. Okay?” Arnie waves to the crowd like he’s in a parade, the car drives off. But there is no siren or lights. No hoopla.
The people watching are whispering to themselves and two young girls are laughing. They are Tom Keith’s little sisters, and the sight of them in their pink dresses and plastic barrettes pisses me off. I flip them the bird. Some mother says, “Real good example you’re setting, Gilbert Grape.” I don’t respond to supermom. I just get in my truck and hurry on home.
As I’m pulling out, I see the Becky girl standing there in a pair of white shorts and halter top. She’s with an old lady who must be her grandma. She’s holding a peach. She takes a bite and half smiles. I spin out of there and race home. I just flipped off two ten-year-olds, I think to myself. Surely that looked real impressive to Becky. Oh, fuck her. She eats people.
***
At home Amy stands waiting on the porch. When she asks, “Where’s Arnie?” I start laughing and not because it’s funny. I say, “They took him to jail.” Amy can’t believe it, and then, from inside the house, we hear, “They did what?”
Amy says, “Nothing, Momma.”
“I thought she was asleep,” I whisper.
“I heard you,” Momma says. “What did they do to Arnie?”
Amy and I look at each other. “We’ve got to tell her,” Amy says.
So we do, and when Momma hears, she hits her fist on the table, spilling the milk from her Cheerios. “Get my coat.”
I look at Amy with a face of “What did she just say?” We plead with her to stay home, but she won’t hear of it. “Maybe you should…”
“Get my coat!”
Amy gets Momma’s black coat, which looks more like a pup tent. Working fast on the shoe problem, I come up with a solution. I dig my winter boots out of the hall closet. Momma stuffs her feet in them. She’s ready for snow.
Amy says, “You’d think the police would have something better to do than pick on some poor boy who likes to climb water towers.”
Momma doesn’t say a word. Her face has turned bright red—she is practically growling.
I bolt down the stairs and explain to Tucker that Momma is on the warpath. I urge him to work quickly. “Maybe you can finish by the time we get back.”
“Maybe,” Tucker says.
The creaks and plaster cracking indicate that Momma has begun her journey across the living room to the front door.
I’m up the stairs fast.
Outside I clean out all the wrappers and cups and papers from the floor and dash of Amy’s Nova. I jam the front seat back as far as possible. Momma oozes out of the house. Amy follows. I hold open the passenger door like a chauffeur as Momma squeezes in. It must be ninety-five degrees out and Momma is dressed for winter. I’m wanting to ask her if she realizes how long it’s been since her last “public” appearance, but I say nothing. Amy climbs in back and I’m set to drive. With Momma in the car we all tilt to the right. I look back at Amy and try to say with my eyes that I don’t know if the car can make it. Amy looks back and with her eyes says, I know what you mean. Momma demands her cigarettes so I run back inside and bring three packs. It could be a long day.
***
The county jail is in Motley. It’s a twenty-minute drive in ideal circumstances but with the added baggage, the trip could take thirty-five, forty minutes.
We’re driving through town to get to Highway 13, when Momma says, “Get Ellen.” I say, “She’s working,” and Amy says that we can handle this alone, but Momma won’t hear of it. She repeats, “Get Ellen,” and when Momma repeats, you can bet it’s done.
We lurch on toward the Dairy Dream.
Ellen is giving change to two little boys with ice cream cones when she turns and sees us pulling into the gravel parking lot. Her mouth drops open and anyone can see the blood leave her face. I get out of the car and approach the take-out window.
“Come on,” I say.
She says, “What happened?” and I say it’s Arnie and that he’s all right but that she’s got to come with me because Momma wants her in the car.
Ellen is working this particular day with a certain Cindy Mansfield who is not only a born-again Christian but, at seventeen years of age, also the assistant manager. She has hopes of owning the Dairy Dream someday. As Ellen walks out and the bell makes its noise, Cindy asks in a panic, “Did anybody die?” I want to say, My sincerest hope is that you, Cindy, might die within the day. Instead I say, “No one died. Not yet.”
***
So most of the Grape family is driving down the highway. Amy has moved behind Momma. Ellen sits behind me looking like a nurse in her white polyester outfit. She tries to check her makeup in the rearview mirror. Amy presses the tips of her fingers together and smiles, a sure sign that she’s worried. I roll down the window a crack because, quite honestly, Momma hasn’t bathed in some time and the smell is too much.
Amy says, “Gilbert, the radio.”
Momma grunts something.
I spin the dial, checking stations when I come across Elvis singing “In the Ghetto.”
“Turn that up,” Amy asks. I do. She mouths the words and I’m grateful she doesn’t sing.
No one is talking, and after the song it’s the news—Momma moves her hand in a turn-off motion. The inside of our car is silent now. Amy says that a person can take only so much news and that she hopes Arnie is okay. She quickly adds, “Of course he’s okay. They’re probably just trying to teach him a lesson.”
Ellen, having recently completed her lip-gloss touch-up and eye-shadow check, says, “Would someone be so kind as to inform me of what is going on here, what has happened to our Arnie?” Sometimes I wonder who taught Ellen how to talk. Where she gets off sounding like some big-city girl is beyond me. She is from Endora, I want to remind her. She’s not royalty, for Christ’s sake. She’s a Grape.
I condense the sequence of events and recount them for the little princess. Amy adds comments and Momma just sighs and moans during the bad parts.
***
Motley, Iowa, is the county seat. It is a town of over five thousand and is loaded with fast-food establishments, a discotheque/bowling alley, and two movie theaters. The police office/county jail is smack downtown and the only parking spot I can find is across the street. I’m hoping Momma will wait in the car, but when she throws open her door, all hope dies. As she struggles to her feet, the passing shoppers and the kids on bikes all stop and stare. A dog barks. A dog runs away. Momma stands her ground though, her black coat and my winter boots there to support. The girls and I walk toward the station. Traffic slows. Motley is silenced. It takes five minutes for Momma to make it across the street.
***
County Sheriff Jerry Farrell had, or so the story goes, proposed to Momma the same summer my father did. And after Daddy killed himself, Officer Farrell would patrol by our house and wave to us kids. At one of Larry’s Little League games, you might look over and see him in uniform, sitting on the hood of his police car by left field, cheering my brother on. The one time Larry got a hit, Officer Farrell flashed the police lights. You can bet that Arnie squealed. Officer Farrell was so in love with my mother.
They haven’t seen each other in years.
When I open the police-station door for Momma, a bell rings or dings and she squeezes through. I watch as Sheriff Farrell looks up from his desk and the expression on his face turns to one of sudden death. His eyes are stuck open; it’s like they’ve filled with milk.
Momma says, “I’ve come for my son.”
<
br /> The radio dispatcher stops in mid-sentence, two secretaries look up, mouths drop open, and a young officer stares at Sheriff Farrell with a look that says “What do I do?”
While looking at his black shoes, the sheriff says, “You’ll need to fill these papers out.”
“No. I don’t fill out papers.”
“Police procedure requires…”
“No, Jerry. Give me my boy.”
“But, Bonnie…”
“My boy. I want my boy.”
Sheriff Farrell looks at the young officer who disappears down the hall fast. In a matter of seconds Arnie rounds the corner. The young officer says he’s free to go.
As we’re leaving and the bell is tingling or dingling, I look back and see Sheriff Farrell slumped in his chair, not able, I guess, to digest the sight of Momma. I shut the glass door hard, making the bell chime out in hopes that it might snap the sheriff out of it. He doesn’t even twitch.
***
We’re driving back home. Arnie sits in the middle, sandwiched between Momma and me. Amy and Ellen are in back. I have the gas to the floor but the car can’t break 40 mph. There is no radio. Momma is holding on to Arnie so tight that his face is turning blue. Imagine a harmonica and that is the noise Momma’s making. I’ve always thought she sounded like a harmonica when she cries.
In my rearview I see Amy fighting a smile. She looks around at all of us, happy, for once, that we appear to be a family. “We’re hardly a family,” I want to say. Cars and trucks are having trouble passing so I turn on the hazard lights and drive close to the shoulder.
The Endora water tower is in the distance.
Momma’s holding on to Arnie so hard you can see her finger imprints forming on his left arm. She’s dropping so many tears into his hair that a person might think Arnie had gone swimming.
We drop Ellen off at the Dairy Dream and then drive home. Amy fries up some pork chops for dinner. I set the table as Arnie clings to Momma’s feet.
24
My mother has become Endora’s own Loch Ness Monster. It seems those who saw my mother told those who didn’t and each day since everybody hopes for a glimpse. The sudden run on camera film at ENDora OF THE LINE is due solely to a desire of many to be the first to document the new and improved Bonnie Grape.
Within hours after she freed Arnie from the county jail, the Town Council went behind closed doors to try and decide what to do. Yesterday morning a basket of diet books, wrapped like baby Moses, appeared on our doorstep, signed, “The City of Endora—With Love.” I told Amy to show Momma the books, but she said she didn’t dare. Instead, she hid them in her room, behind her Elvis records. Elvis certainly could have benefited by anything dietary—a shame about Elvis.
The Elks Lodge, made up of aging men with hairy noses and fleshy ears, passed a hat at their weekly meeting. A whopping seventy-two dollars and something cents was contributed. This is an astronomical figure, considering most of the Elks are farmers, and for them, with the absence of rain, these look to be tough economic times. Many of the men—Harley Barrows, Milo Stevens, Johnny Titman, Jerry Gaps—had a love thing for my mother when they were younger. They often ask about her. Each will tell, if asked, his particular version of how my mother broke his heart. Milo Stevens said, “Your mother, Gilbert, broke us open the way a hailstorm will shatter glass.” Filby Baxter told me, “Bonnie Watts was the eighth wonder of the world.” He whispered that in the store to me once while his wife was buying paper plates. The seventy-two dollars and something cents appeared mysteriously in a white envelope with BONNIE spelled out in block printing. Inside along with the cash was the name and number of a dietitian in Motley. Amy returned the cash to them with a note which read, “Thanks but no thanks.”
I do not mind the Elks Lodge doing as they have done. It’s purely a natural desire on their part to recapture their lost whatever it is they’ve lost that propels them to help in the reduction of my mother. Maybe if she gets thin, they’ll get young.
And I have no anger at the countless women who, since the sighting of my mother, have gathered in clusters at Barb’s Beauty Shop and Endora’s Gorgeous, the town’s two rival beauty parlors, and gloated and sung about how Bonnie Grape is no longer the beauty she once was.
Amy and her watery eyes spoke to me yesterday afternoon as I was washing my truck. “The women in this town are laughing at our mother.” Amy said it in such a way that she expected me to be upset. I said, “It doesn’t bother me.” She threw her hands in the air and stormed back inside.
My mother spent several years deciding who she would marry. All of the men in town hoped for her hand and she kept her preference a secret for so long that when she finally chose Albert Lawrence Grape, the other men scrambled for their second, third, and sometimes fifth or sixth choices. Nobody likes to feel like a consolation prize.
Momma has, by tripling in size, given the other ladies in town the sense that justice has been served.
I spent one fun hour yesterday outlining the best idea I’ve ever had. I decided to commission Tucker to paint a giant sign that said “BONNIE THE BIGGEST!” I’d rent billboard space for several miles on Highway 13 & I-35 heralding the most amazing family in these parts. I’d post signs like “DISCOVER THE GRAPES,” “WATCH ARNIE DANCE,” “ELLEN GRAPE, TASTY AND GOOD.” Amy would run a concession stand serving popcorn and lemonade; Ellen would convert her pink-and-blue bedroom into a kissing booth; Arnie would sit in a chair and look at people and they could guess which eye was glass; Janice would lead a carefully scripted tour of the house while revealing pertinent historical tidbits. She’d wear a uniform and smile her stewardess smile, gesturing in that stewardess way. In the basement, I could hang the stuffed version of my father. Larry would stand there, frozen like, staring up at my dad, exactly the way he did the day it happened. The tour would culminate with a viewing of my mother. The people would all write down their prediction of her weight. I’d wake her up and she’d struggle to stand, the customers would applaud, she’d step onto a scale, her weight would appear on a digital readout. Whoever was the closest would win a prize of some kind.
In that brief hour, I saw a family business that would rival any other. I pictured this struggling town experiencing a financial rebirth; people from all over driving to see us. Here was an idea that would allow us to work together, celebrate our past, and share it with the world. I explained it all to Arnie and he loved the idea.
At dinner last night, when Arnie was gargling his Kool-Aid and Momma was screaming, “I WOULD RATHER EAT CIGARETTES THAN THIS STEW,” I burst out laughing. Amy looked cross at me; Ellen almost stuck a fork into my hand. How could I tell them what I had spent the afternoon picturing?
Okay, anyway, I’ve survived and there’s a certain dignity in surviving. Currently I keep on going by indulging in frequent fantasies of the girl from Michigan. Her black hair, her skin, her smell all haunt me. But it’s her eyes that look through me, that seem to know my every secret. The last time I saw her was at the water tower as they were taking Arnie off to jail. She’s waiting for me to make the next move, but I can’t top her watermelon-in-the-sandbox routine. So I’ll wait. I’m older than she is and this means that I’m to act more mature, be more patient. I’ll starve her out.
It’s almost lunchtime—Thursday, June 29—seventeen days till Arnie’s party. I’m at work. Mr. Lamson is in a particularly sporty mood today. He’s been moving and spinning up Aisle Two with the mop. I finally ask, “Why so happy?”
He says, “Sometimes it occurs to a person all the blessings of this life.” His optimism is so overflowing that on this particular morning I begin to enjoy rearranging the dry dog-food section.
Minutes go by. The dog food has never looked more appealing. I smell like Purina Puppy Chow now. Mr. Lamson is whistling a tune I don’t recognize, when Mrs. Rex Mefford steps out from behind the bread rack and says, “Gilbert, come here.”
“I’m uhm uh busy….”
Mrs. Rex Mefford smiles that I-kno
w-you’re-afraid-of-me-Gilbert-Grape smile and I’ve this sudden urge to tape her mouth shut. Mrs. Rex Mefford is a staunch member of the Baptist church and every year she makes the butter cow Endora sends to the state fair.
“I need you for just a second.”
“Mr. Lamson would be glad to help….”
“It concerns the eggs. Gilbert, you’re to help us customers.”
So I follow Mrs. Mefford and her perfume that smells like a certain laundry detergent. She wears a puke-green polyester dress with black shoes and a plastic hat on her head in case it rains. It hasn’t rained in weeks, though, and I can’t decide if she wears it to keep others hopeful or if she wears it just in case.
I study her. She must be almost sixty. Her hair is dyed brown and it’s been curled into these little curls. It has that helmet look hair often has in this town. The kind of hair that can withstand any weather, the kind that stays facing front when a person looks from side to side.
I follow her past the milk, past the cheese, to the egg section. She lifts up a carton and pops up the Styrofoam lid. “These eggs are broken. Cracked.”
“Yes, ma’am. That happens sometimes.”
“Does it?”
“Yes, it’s the unfortunate part of being an egg.”
I dig lower, hoping to find a carton with only unbroken eggs.
“You know, Gilbert, eggs are like people.”
Oh boy, oh no. I start to move away. She grabs my arm. This woman is strong.
A couple of kids have entered the store and are buying candy from Mr. Lamson. I want to scream, Rape!
“We’re all little broken eggs till we turn to Christ.”
I say, “You will let go of my arm. You will let go of my arm.”
She does. I back away—smacking into the canned fruits and vegetables. She smiles. “Gilbert, turn to God. Turn away from false idols, prophets. God loves you. He always has.”
“Well, tell him thanks anyway.”
At this point, Mrs. Rex Mefford goes off, speaking as if what she says is memorized, planned, as I dig frantically for some better eggs. Her words are not her own. I listen, trying to appear open, and when I think she’s finished, I say, “Here are some fine eggs. Some fine Christian eggs. Perfect. White. Round. Shells intact.”
