What's eating Gilbert Grape?

by Hedges, Peter

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to: Sydney Sidner, who believed in this book and without whom it would not exist; Marc H. Click for seven years of everything and everything else; Tim Guinee, Carole Hedges, and Robert Krueger who supplied cash at the most critical of times; Tom Hulce, Mary Clare Evans. Mark Reichenbach, and Lise Horton for undying support; the members of Edge Theatre who performed my plays and taught me how to write; the Manhattan Class Company, Circle Rep. and the "Cherubs" at the National High School Institute, years '86-'88, who listened and encouraged; my teachers, especially Jim and Cindy Lamson. John Mitchell, and the late Charles Clark; my friends and teachers at the North Carolina School of the Arts; my agents. Perry Knowlton, Jeannine Edmunds, Jeff Melnick, and Jess Taylor; my editor and publisher Ann Patty, and the other Poseidon goddesses, Fonda, Connie, Laura, and Elaine; and finally, thank you to the polar bears for showing me Susan, and to Susan, for the best year ever.

  for my family for the 1113-23rd Street days

  for July 14, 1977 and in memory of that little boy

  Part

  One

  ^tanding with my brother Arnie on the edge of town has become a yearly ritucd.

  My brother Arnie is so excited because in minutes or hours or sometime today trucks upon trailers upon campers are going to drive into our home town of Endora, Iowa. One truck will carry the Octopus, another will carry the Tilt-A-Whirl with its blue and red cars, two trucks will bring the Ferris wheel, the games will be towed, and most important, the horses from the merry-go-round will arrive.

  For Arnie, this is better than Christmas. This beats the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny; all those stupid figures that only kids and retarded adults seem to stomach. Arnie is a retard. He's about to turn eighteen and my family is planning an enormous party. Doctors said we'd be lucky if he lived to be ten. Ten came and went and now the doctors are saying, "Any time now, Arnie could go at any time." So every night my sisters and me, and my mom too, go to bed wondering if he will wake up in the morning. Some days you want him to die, some days you don't. At this particular moment, I've a good mind to push him in front of the oncoming traffic.

  My oldest sister, Amy, has fixed us a picnic feast. In a thermos was a quart of black cherry Kool-Aid, all of which Arnie drank in such a hurry that above his top lip is a purplish mustache. One of the first things you should know about Arnie is that he always has traces of some food on his face—Kool-Aid or ketchup or toast crumbs. His face is a kind of bulletin board for the four major food groups.

  Arnie is the gentlest guy, but he can surprise this brother. In the summertime, he catches grasshoppers and sticks them in this metal tab on the mailbox, holding them there, and then he brings down the meted flag, chopping off the grasshopper heads. He al-

  PETER HEDGES

  ways giggles hysterically when he does this, having the time of his life. But last night, when we were sitting on the porch eating ice cream, a countless sea of grasshopper bodies from summers past must have appeared to him, because he started weeping and sobbing like the world had ended. He kept saying, "1 killed 'em, I killed 'em." And me and Amy, we held him close, patted his back and told him it was okay.

  Arnie cried for hours, cried himself to sleep. Makes this brother wonder what kind of a world it would be if all the surviving Nazis had such remorse. I wonder if it ever occurs to them what they did, and if it ever sinks in to a point that their bodies ache from the horrible mess they made. Or are they so smart that they can lie to us and to themselves? The beautiful thing about Arnie is that he's too stupid to lie. Or too smart.

  I'm standing with binoculars, looking down Highway 13; there is no sign of our annual carnival. The kid is on his knees, his hands rummaging around in the picnic basket. Having already eaten both bags of potato chips, both peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and both chocolate donuts, he locates a green apple and bites into it.

  By trying to ignore Arnie's lip-smacking noises, I am attempting the impossible. You see, he chews as if he's just found his mouth and the sounds are that of good, sloppy sex. My brother's slurps and gulps make me want to procreate with an assortment of En-dora's finest women.

  It's the twenty-first of June, the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. It isn't even 7:00 a.m. yet and here I stand, little brother in tow. Somewhere some smart person still sleeps.

  "Gilbert?" "Yeah?"

  Bread crust and peanut-butter chunks fall off Arnie's T-shirt as he stretches it down past his knees. "Gilbert?" "What is it?" "How many more miles?" "I don't know."

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "How many, how many till the horses and stuff?"

  "Three million."

  "Oh, okay."

  Arnie blows out his lips with a sound like a motorboat and he circles the picnic basket, drool flying everywhere. Finally, he sits down Indian style and starts quietly to count the miles.

  1 busy myself throwing gravel rocks at the Endora, Iowa, town sign. The sign is green with white printing and, except for a divot that I left last year at this time with my rock throwing, it is in excellent condition. It lists Endora's population at 1,091, which I know can't be right, because yesterday my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Brainer, choked on a chicken bone while sitting on her porch swing. A great loss is felt by no one.

  Mrs. Brainer retired years ago. She lived half a block from the town square, so I'd see her pretty much every day, always smiling at me as if she expected me to forget all the pain she'd inflicted. 1 swear this woman smiled all the time. Once, as she was leaving the store, her sack of groceries ripped. Cans of peaches and fruit cocktail dropped out onto the floor, cutting open her toes. My boss and I saw this happen. She pushed up a real big grin as the tears fell off her cheeks. I resacked her cans, but she couldn't stop smiling and crying, and her toes couldn't stop bleeding.

  I'm told that when they found her on the porch, her hands were up around her throat, and there were red scratch marks on her neck, in her mouth, and pieces of flesh under her fingernails. I wonder if she was smiling then.

  Anyway, they took her body to McBurney's Funeral Home in Motley. They'll be planting her tomorrow.

  "Gilbert?" "What?" "Uhm." "What?"

  "Uhm. The horses, the rides, the horses are coming, right? Right?" "Yes, Arnie."

  PETER HEDGES

  Endora is where we are, and you need to know that describing this place is like dancing to no music. It's a town. Farmers. Town square. Old movie theater closed down so we have to drive sixteen miles to Motley to see movies. Probably half the town is over sixty-five, so you can imagine the raring place Endora is on weekend nights. There were twenty-three in my graduating class, and only four are left in town. Most went to Ames or Des Moines and the really ambitious made it over to Omaha. One of those left from my class is my buddy. Tucker. The other two are the Byers brothers, Tim and Tommy. They stayed in town because of a near fatal, crippling car accident, and they just kind of ride around the square racing in their electric wheelchairs. They are like the town mascots, and the best part is they are identical twins. Before the accident no one could tell them apart. But Tim's face was burned, and he's been given this piglike skin. They both were paralyzed but only Tommy lost his feet.

  The other day in our weekly paper, the Endora Express, pigskin Tim pointed out the bright side in all of this. Now it is easy to tell which is which. After many years Tim and Tommy have finally found their own identities. That's a big thing in Endora these days. Identities. And the bright side. We got people here who've lost their farms to the bank, kids to wars, relatives to disease, and they will look you square in the eye and, with a half grin, they'll tell you the
bright side.

  The bright side for me is difficult on mornings like these. There's no escaping that I'm twenty-four years old, that I've been out of Iowa a whopping one whole time, that you could say about all I've done in my life to this point is baby-sit my retard brother, buy cigarettes for my mother, and sack groceries for the esteemed citizens of Endora.

  "Gilbert?" says Arnie. He has frosting all around his mouth and a glob of jelly above his good eye.

  "What, Arnie?"

  "You sure they're coming? We've been standing such a long time."

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  "They'll be along any second." I take a napkin from the basket and spit in it.

  "No!"

  "Come here, Amie."

  "No!"

  "Come here."

  "Everybody's always wiping me!"

  "Why do you think that is?"

  "Because."

  For Arnie, that is an answer.

  I give up on spring cleaning his face and look down the road. The highway is empty.

  Last year the big rides came pretty early. The trailers and the campers came later. Arnie is really only interested in the horses from the merry-go-round.

  I say, "Hey, Arnie, there's still sleep in my eyes," but he isn't interested. He nibbles on his bottom lip; he's working on a thought.

  My little brother is a somewhat round-looking kid with hair that old ladies always want to comb. He is a head shorter than me, with teeth that look confused. There's no hiding that he's retarded. You meet him and you figure it out right away.

  "Gilbert! They're not coming!"

  I tell him to stop shouting.

  "They're not coming at all, Gilbert. The rides got in a big crash and all the workers hung themselves. ..."

  "They will be here," 1 say.

  "They hung themselves!"

  "No, they didn't."

  "You don't know! You don't know!"

  "Not everybody hangs himself, Arnie."

  He doesn't hear this because he reaches into the basket, stuffs the other green apple inside his shirt, and starts running back to town. I shout for him to stop. He doesn't, so I chase after him and grab his waist. I lift him in the air and the apple drops out onto the brown grass.

  PETER HEDGES

  "Let me go. Let me go."

  I carry him back to the picnic basket. He clings to me, his legs squeeze around my stomach, his fingers dig into my neck. "You're getting bigger. Did you know that?" He shakes his head, convinced I'm wrong. He's not any taller than last year, but he's rounder, puffier. If this keeps up, he'll soon be too big for me to pick up. "You're still growing. You're getting harder and harder for me to carry. And you're getting so strong, too."

  "Nope. It's you. Gilbert."

  "It's not me. Believe me, Arnie Grape is getting bigger and stronger. I'm sure of it."

  I set him down when I get to the picnic basket. I'm out of breath; beads of sweat have formed on my face.

  Arnie says, "You're just getting little."

  "You think?"

  "I know. You're getting littler and littler. You're shrinking. "

  Stupid people often say the smartest things. Even Arnie knows that I'm in a rut.

  Since I don't believe in wearing a watch, I can't tell the exact time—but this moment, the one when my goofy brother rips the bandage off my heart, is followed by a yelp. Arnie's yelp. He points east, and with the binoculars 1 locate a tiny dot moving our way. Several dots follow.

  "Is it them? Is it them?"

  "Yes," I say.

  Arnie's jaw drops; he starts dancing.

  "Here come the horsies. Here come the horsies!"

  He begins howling and jumping up and down in circles; slobber sprays from his mouth. Arnie is entering heaven now. I stand there watching him watch as the rides grow. I just stand there hoping he won't sprout wings and fly away.

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  Lt's the same morning of the same day, and I'm asleep on the couch in the family room.

  I'm truly savoring this period of rest, this catnap, when a rude smell comes dancing up my nose and starts screaming in my head. My eyes smack open. I look around, fuzzy at first, only to find my little sister sitting there in shorts and a halter top, painting her nails. The smell of that—Jesus.

  My little sister's name is Ellen. She turned sixteen last month. She also just got her braces off, and for days now she's been walking around the house, running her tongue all over, going "Oo-ah"—like she can't believe the feel of teeth.

  Ever since Ellen got her braces off she has been one big pain in the butt. And now with a sudden penchant for lip gloss and painting her toes red, she has bumped to the big time—becoming even more of an already impossible thing.

  The smell of the polish forces me to rise up and look her in the eye. She stays fixed on the toe of the moment, so 1 say, "Little sister, must we?" She keeps painting, coating toe after toe. No response, no answer. So I say, "CAN T THIS BE DONE SOMEWHERE ELSE?"

  Without looking at me, my sister dishes this shit: "Gilbert, some of us are only sixteen. Some of us are trying to do something with our one chance at life. 1 am trying something new, a brand-new color is being applied, and I could use your support and your encouragement. When that is there 1 might consider moving, but you are my brother, and if you don't support these new steps, who will? Who will? Tell me, who will!"

  She breathes a few times fast through her nose, making a whistly noise.

  "I'm at such a difficult age. Girls my age bleed. We bleed every

  PETER HEDGES

  month and it's not like we did anything wrong. Just to be sitting there in church ..."

  "You don't go to church."

  "Hypothetical, Gilbert."

  "Don't use big words."

  "Okay. I'm at work, mixing the toppings or making cones. And suddenly I feel it coming, and I didn't do anything. You are a guy. So you don't know how this feels. You should be understanding, and let me in peace do the one thing that brings me joy and a sense of completion. So thank you, Gilbert, thank you sooooo much!"

  I stare at her trying to decide the most discreet way to murder. But she turns suddenly and stomps out of the family room leaving only the smell of her new toes. I decide to smother myself, as it is my most immediate option. Covering my face with an old orange sofa pillow, I begin the process. It gets to the interesting part where my lungs want air and my heart doesn't, when I feel this poking on my arm. This family. If it's Ellen, I'll smother her, first thing. And if it's Arnie, we'll have a pillow fight, laugh a bit, then I'll do the smothering.

  But this time the voice is that of my big sister. Amy. She's whispering, "Gilbert, come here."

  I don't move.

  "Gilbert, please ..."

  I'm almost dead. Surely she can see this.

  "Gilbert!"

  I give in to the idea of air and say, "I'm busy" from underneath the pillow.

  "You don't look busy."

  Amy pries off the cushion and pulls it away from me. My eyes adjust to the sudden light. She's wearing a worried and concerned look. But what else is new? This look of terror is most often her face of choice, and I've grown fond of it. I find its predictability somehow comforting. It's only when Amy smiles that you know something is wrong.

  Amy is the oldest of us Grape children. At thirty-four, she's ten years older than me. Most of the time she feels more like a mother

  What's Eating Gilbert Grape

  than a sister. During the school year she works for the Clover Hills Elementary School in Motley. As assistant manager of the cafeteria, she serves the little ones green beans, frankfurters, and sugar cookies. She also works as a teacher's aide, spending her nights drawing elaborate smiley faces on the papers of those students who make no mistakes. Most important, though, is this— Amy doesn't work in the summers. Since, during the school year, our family finds a way to fall apart, she uses June, July, and August to put us back together.

  "I'm sleeping," I say.
"I'm trying to sleep."

  Amy puts the pillow between her fleshy arm and her light blue Elvis T-shirt. She squints, her eyes searing into mine.

  "Amy, please. God, if there's a God, please. I took the kid to wait for the rides. We got out there at four-thirty something. I need sleep. I work at ten. Please, Amy. Please! Don't stare at me like that!"

  "You might think about Momma."

  1 want to say that I think about our mother all the time, that every move 1 make is made with her in mind, but before 1 can say anything. Amy grabs my wrist and jerks me up. "Ouch. I'm coming already."

  Amy pulls me toward the dining room.

  "This house stinks," 1 say. "The smell, God!"

  Amy stops. We're standing in the kitchen, buried in several days worth of dirty dishes and numerous sacks of trash. She whispers, "What do you expect? No one helps around the house. Ellen is good for nothing, you're working all the time or never home. I can't do it all."

  She takes a deep breath and then turns around in a circle like those fashion models do.

  "Look at me. Look."

  "Yeah?" I say.

  "Don't you see?"

  "New outfit? Uhm. I don't know. What do you want me to see?"

  "I'm starting to get like Momma."

  I lie and say, "You're not."

  "My skin is rolling over my clothes. I can't fit into chairs so well."

  PETER HEDGES

  "Momma's on a whole other level. You're nowhere near ..."

  "These are the early stages, Gilbert. What you see here is the early phase." Amy wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands and smiles.

  Oh boy.

  Okay.

  It's time for you to know the rarely spoken truths about my mother, Bonnie Grape.

  There is no nice way to break it to you. My mother is a porker. She started eating in excess the day our dad was found dead seventeen years ago. Since that day, she's been going at it nonstop, adding pound upon pound, year after year, until now we have a situation where no one knows her actual weight. No household scale goes high enough.