What's eating Gilbert Grape? (19 page)

"Hey, Ellen!" 1 call back to her. "I'd like you to meet ..."

"I'm in the middle of an article ..."

"I want you to meet someone."

"In a minute."

Becky pulls at my shirt for us to go. I look at her, she stands with her feet crossed and the cone pressed to her mouth.

"Bye. Cindy." 1 say.

"So you coming to our Bible study? Huh?"

Walking backward. 1 shrug like "We'll see. but doubtful."

We walk away. I ask if the cone is her breakfast. She says nothing. When she finishes, she takes a sip of my drink and says, "That wasn't nice."

"What?"

"You know."

I look at Becky like "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Gilbert, please. All the girls in this town think of me as some threat, some rival, which I'm not. Your sister needs to feel beautiful and special. I'm happy for her to feel that way." She walks on. "I know you've been hurt. But I don't want to be a part of your cruelty."

We walk on in silence.

It takes fifteen minutes for me to admit my mistake. "Sorry," I say.

We're on North Main by the time I finish my drink. I say. "One second." to Becky and jog over to Carver's Insurance to throw away my cup. Mr. Carver's Ford Fairmont is out front, but a sign on the door says "Closed." How odd. I hear noise inside and press my face to the office window. The shade isn't all the way down and I look through a crack. I hear a woman's moan, a man's groan. I press closer to see better. Melanie's desk light is on. Melanie is

PETER HEDGES

lying on her back, on top of her desk, her skirt hiked up. Mr. Carver is standing, his pants dropped, his back to me. He's ramming hard and her body jiggles with each thrust.

Becky says, "What are you looking at?"

I lift my arm like "Shhhh."

She starts to walk my way to see for herself.

At that moment, Melanie throws her head back, and lets out a deep moan. Her hair falls from her head, and it dangles by a bobby pin or two. It's a wig. Christ. Melanie wears a wig.

Mr. Carver is plunging deeper and deeper and the slap of that gets louder.

Becky touches my shoulder. 1 jump. She says, "What is it?"

"I'm just seeing if anybody's here. You know, to throw away my cup. Let's go." 1 leave my cup on the hood of Mr. Carver's car.

The next several minutes, Becky is talking about her house back in Ann Arbor, her friends, her parents and how they're professors at the university. 1 don't hear much of it, though, because my thoughts are totally on what 1 just witnessed.

"What was going on in there?" she asks. "Tell me the truth."

So 1 do. I describe what 1 saw. She asks if I'm all right. I just say I'm fine and that I'd really like to keep on walking.

Becky says, "Okay,"' like it's no problem. For her, true feelings never seem to be a problem.

As we walk on, the haunting image of Mr. Carver, Melanie, and her wig clogs my thoughts.

"Is something the matter, Gilbert?"

"Oh, nothing."

"What is it?"

"It's just that Mr. Carver has a wife. I feel bad for her, that's all."

"That's sweet of you to care so much for another person's feelings."

Funny—I don't feel sweet.

We walk up and down practically every street in Endora. At the self-serve V-shaped car wash, I put in three quarters and Becky

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

stands there while I spray her with water. Her T-shirt gets wet and sticks to her chest. I dig my fingers into the backs of my legs to keep from ripping off her shirt. She sprays me with water, too, and we end up cleaner than any car.

After the washing, we sit on the wet pavement to dry out in the sun. She asks about my previous girlfriends and I say that there has been only one and that it's long in the past and that I don't want to talk about it.

"Sounds like you regret it."

"Yep."

Becky says. "I never want to regret. 'Regret' is the ugliest word."

To me, the ugliest words are "family," "Endora," "Jesus Christ." So I say, "I don't have a problem with 'regret.' "

Becky stretches out, her eyes closed. I sit Indian style, looking down at her smooth skin, her angel face. She breathes in and out slowly. Her eyes are closed while mine remain open and stay fixed on her.

The cement under us is no longer wet. We've been baking in the sun for over an hour and Becky hasn't said a word.

She stands up suddenly, stretches her arms above her head. She feels that her shirt is almost dry. I cup my hands in front of me in an effort to hide my erection.

"I want to walk."

"Okay," I say, sitting there a moment, hoping my bulge will go away.

"Your nose is turning pink, Gilbert Grape."

"Oh well. "

Tucker drives past in his truck. He sees us first. I wave—he doesn't even honk.

We're walking in silence when suddenly Becky sprints ahead. I notice how smooth she runs, how it's as if she's floating. She skips a bit, picks a dandelion and puts it behind her ear. I keep her in sight—walking at a steady pace—refusing to speed up, unable to slow down.

PETER HEDGES

29

L hat's my old school!" I call out.

Becky is walking toward the old building with its red brick and green tin roof. 1 have to run to catch up. "Pretty ugly building, huh?"

"I like it."

"You didn't have to go there for thirteen years."

Becky moves toward a window and looks through the dusty glass. Many of the windows are broken, and for the most part, the school has been boarded up since it closed seven years ago, the summer I graduated.

"They're burning it down tomorrow," 1 say.

"1 heard."

"Practice for the Volunteer Fire Department. Can you imagine?"

"It's the most interesting building in this whole town. So it gets burned down. Some justice." This is the first time Becky has sounded anything like angry.

"Well, we live in a time of Burger Barns."

"Very true, Gilbert. How old is this building?"

"Nineteen hundred something."

She moves to another window.

"My sister says they're anticipating quite a crowd."

"Crowd?"

"Yes, hundreds of people are expected. The Methodist Church is selling popcorn. Mayor Gaps is going to start the fire."

"How morbid."

"Welcome to Endora."

I go on to explain that I'd rather pick up my sister in Des Moines tomorrow than be around Endora to smell the burning and listen to the cheering masses. "They're making a celebration out of it."

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Becky looks in a second window, a third.

"That was the fifth-grade room," I say.

She lifts up a window and tries to climb in.

"What are you doing?"

"Good-byes are important. You've got to learn to say good-bye."

"To a building?"

It's the middle of the day and Becky has disappeared into my old school, the day before its death. 1 have no choice but to follow. "I haven't been in here in years," I say, pulling myself through the now open window. 1 scratch my stomach on the bricks. Inside, I lift my T-shirt and show her my scrape in hopes that she'll kiss it to make it feel better.

"Ouch," she says.

"Yes," I say, trying to look as if I were in pain.

She turns away from me, no kiss. She crosses to the wall and says, "So this was fifth grade?"

"Yep."

She runs her nails lightly down the dusty blackboard. My hands are on my ears and I shout, "Don't!" I see her laugh. "Not funny," I say.

She walks out into the hall, which is dark and hot. She opens the doors to other rooms—she looks in where the old library was, where Melanie and her red hair would stamp everyone's books.

"So this was it?"

"Yep, you're seeing where my entire education took place."

She looks at me. "Are you saying that you've stopped learning?"

"Something like that." I laugh. Becky doesn't.

I show her where my locker was for grades seven through twelve. "Lance Dodge was six lockers down," I say. Becky doesn't seem too impressed. "Lance often would call out to me. He'd say 'Hey, Grape. How'd you do on the quiz? How'd you do on the Iowa Basic skills test? How'd you ...?'" I look to Becky, but she's writing on an empty, dusty trophy case.

"What are you writing?"

PETER HEDGES

She steps away from the trophy case and I walk to it. Written in the dust are these words:

HELPING GILBERT SAY GOOD-BYE

We walk toward where the gymnasium/stage/cafeteria used to be. This part of the building is higher than the other part and the light pours through windows that have been broken. Several golf balls lie on the tile floor—they were the glass breakers, 1 decide. The basketball hoops have been removed, the championship banners and fold-up tables, too.

"One time. Lance Dodge stood up on the stage area. ..."

"Gilbert. I don't care about Lance Dodge."

"Yeah, but it's a good story."

"I don't care about him. He's nothing to me."

Becky hands me two pieces of chalk she must have found in one of the rooms. "1 want you to do something. " Her voice is suddenly sexy, suddenly very much the sound I've been waiting for. "Will you do it?"

"Sure," 1 whisper, thinking maybe this is our moment.

She tells me to go into each room and write "Good-bye" on the chalk board. Write "Thank you" or "Miss you" or whatever. I start to object but she says, "You'll be glad you did."

1 climb the back stairs and start with my twelfth-grade room where Mr. Reichen taught. He was a toad. 1 look around the room, the green paint has peeled and even the light fixtures have been removed. I write, "So long. Seniors. Gilbert was the last one out." In the junior room, I draw a picture of Tucker farting, which he was always known to do. I write, "Gilbert was here." The sophomore room gets an elaborate "G" which 1 fill in, the freshman room gets a simple "Thanks." I do eighth grade down to kindergarten and only skip one room.

1 find Becky dancing in the gym/stage/cafeteria and say "I'm all done." She stops moving, her face and arms are sweaty, her hair has started to curl. She shakes her head and her sweat splatters my face. I would like to catch some of it on my tongue but I'm too late.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

"Can we go now?"

Becky smiles, and we walk out and down the cobwebbed, dirty hall. If this whole experience was supposed to move me or touch me in some way, it didn't.

The school is empty and echoey. I'll be glad to be out in the sun, Wcdking across the brown grass.

I say, "Apparently, they've got to be careful with the fire because the ground is so dry that the grass could catch on fire. They're taking precautions. ..."

Becky stops. "You forgot this room," she says. She is standing in front of my second-grade classroom. The room where Mrs. Brainer taught.

"No, I didn't."

She opens the door. The blackboard is blank.

"Let's go, okay? " I say.

"Come to terms with it."

"With what?"

She walks into the room.

"I suddenly feel sick," I say.

"I bet."

I look at Becky. "How do you know about this room?"

She looks at me and my eyes find my feet. My shoes are a size twelve. In second grade my feet weren't so big. "It was a long time ago," I say.

"Tell me about it."

"No."

"Please," she says, taking my hand in hers.

I can't refuse her. I approach the chalk board which is the length of one of the walls. I wait for Becky to leave the room. I start writing. Half in cursive, half in block print. This is what I write:

Mrs. Brainer had a rule cause of Lance Dodge. Rule was—If you have to go to bathroom before break time you forfeit recess rights. So. 10/13/1973. Amy = Senior. Student Council Secy. Larry = 10th grade, Janice = 5th. I was in this room. 2nd grade. Second chair, fourth row. Tucker in front of me. L. Dodge to my left. I had uneasy feeling about my Dad. Had to get home. Wanted to

PETER HEDGES

get home. Momma was in Motley with Arnie for tests. Found out he was retarded that August. I had a sick feeling. That morning my dad had been in good spirits. He had been all smiley and picked me up by my ears. Larry said on way to school that Dad was happy. 1 had this sick feeling and made plans to run home during recess. But 1 had to pee so I squeezed my legs so hard. It was 8 minutes till recess when 1 wet my pants. L. Dodge told Mrs. Brainer. I cleaned it up while others went outside. Autopsy determined that about same time my Dad was hanging himself, 1 was peeing in my seat. Ha. Ha ha ha he he he he ha ha ha. He ha.

I drop the chalk on the floor and it breaks in two.

I leave by the fifth-grade window as Becky reads what I wrote. I wait by where the slide used to be. I sit on the cement and pull at the weeds that have grown through the cracks. My hand is sore from writing. I covered the entire board.

Becky climbs out the window and walks my way. I don't look at her. She offers no hug, no consoling.

"They say you cried so hard. They say you were sitting in the biggest puddle ever seen and you were howling."

I say nothing.

"People remember this sound coming out of you. Like a dying animal. People remember it, Gilbert. You could hear it throughout the whole school. Is that correct?"

1 shrug. Becky sounds like a detective.

"And Mrs. Brainer made you stay after school, right?"

I nod.

"And when you got home, what did you find?"

I look away from her.

"They were taking your father out of the house. Is that right?"

I don't move my head. I stand and rub the pebbles off my legs. They've left an imprint.

"No one saw you upset at the funeral. No one saw you cry."

I look at her.

"You're proud of that. '

I say nothing, but I am. She stares at me. I close my eyes tight

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

and begin to laugh. A jiggly laugh, high-pitched, my face scrunched.

"Gilbert."

I laugh. Oh, 1 laugh and laugh.

"Gilbert."

More laughter. The uncomfortable kind.