What's eating Gilbert Grape? (8 page)

"I missed my appointment—I'm sorry—I'll do it today. Really sorry, Mrs. Carver!"

She holds out the box of brown sugar and says, "How much?"

"Huh?"

"There's no price on the box. How much?"

"Oh."

Mr. Lamson says, "The sticker must have fallen off, because Gilbert doesn't miss a box."

"I'm not here to scold or condemn, " she says. "I'm only here for the sugar."

Mr. Lamson takes the box and they go to ring it up. As she walks out the door, she looks back my way and I shake my head.

"Don't worry, boss, I'll be using my lunch hour to go to my appointment."

"Of course, son."

"I messed up on Wednesday, sir, and now it's getting way out of hand."

"Life's like that."

PETER HEDGES

It's my lunch hour. The clock on the outside of the Endora Savings and Loan blinks out 1:55. then 97 degrees, 1:55, 97 degrees, 1:56. 1 drive by the insurance office and see Mr. Carver's car. 1 keep on driving, though, down Elm Street and two miles out the south end of town. 1 turn left at Potter's bridge, make a right at the shingled mailbox and do it all in record time. I pull into the driveway of a two-story farmhouse with green shutters. The door to the red brick garage opens—eager to swallow my truck and me. I pull into the garage. Using my fingers like a comb, I try to make my hair nice. She is watching me from the side porch, looking lovely, holding the controls for the garage. She pushes the button and the door begins to close. I have to crouch to get out in time.

"Your hair looks fine." she says, turning and going back inside.

1 smile, but my thoughts are "Here we go again." We're in the house fast. All these precautions seem absurd now, but when we began all those years ago. it was the only way. When the Carvers moved to the country. I thought the need for secrecy would lessen. But Mrs. Betty Carver respects tradition, and this, I'm afraid, is ours.

She has changed to work-around-the-house clothes. Her hair looks as if she took a brush and unbrushed it. Her lips are made up bright red. She smells like expensive soap and her teeth are shiny white. She does not in any way look like her name. It's not her fault that she was born in a time when people believed in names like Wanda, Dottie, and Betty. She's more of a Vanessa or Paulina.

"You got dough and stuff on your fingers," I say.

"I'm making cookies. " She washes her hands, then dries them off with a flower-patterned towel. She takes out a food timer and sets it for eighteen minutes.

1 say, "Cookies take that long?"

"This Isn't for cookies. You know that."

"I know. Isn't eighteen minutes an odd time, though?"

"I like odd times. " Mrs. Betty Carver has never looked so ready. It's been a while since our last uhm whatever you want to call what we're about to do here.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

"What kind you making?"

"Oatmeal. ■

"Oh," I say. That explains the Quaker Oats from Wednesday and the brown sugar from this morning.

"I was a good actress today, wasn't I? And Wednesday, too. Really believable. They don't suspect a thing. Nobody does. Nobody ever will."

I tell her that she should have given me more notice.

"Wednesday. I was expecting you Wednesday."

The timer ticks.

I start to say "I'm here now, aren't I?" when Betty, who-doesn't-look-like-a-Betty Carver, wife of the only remaining insurance man in Endora, mother of two little snotty boys, Todd and Doug, covers my mouth with her now clean, soap-smelling hands. Talking is not the idea of this.

She points to a slip of paper on the counter. As 1 dial the number written down, she unhooks the barrette in her hair. She unbuttons her shirt. She takes it off. She lifts my T-shirt and kisses my stomach—leaving the red shape of her lips like a scar.

"I'm dialing," 1 say, hoping she'll wait till I'm done.

She unzips my pants. Kissing my tummy, she licks lower. I dialed wrong, I think. I hang up and she giggles. I dial again as she pulls down my underwear.

"The phone is ringing," I say. But there is no stopping Mrs. Betty Carver. She holds me in her hand. She puts me in her mouth.

"Carver's Insurance, good afternoon."

"Melanie, yes uhm . . . this is Gilbert Grape . . . two sharp, I know . . . I'm going to be late . . . I've been held up. ..."

Mrs. Betty Carver is moving her mouth slow and soft.

"Gilbert, I should have known." Melanie is mad at me, 1 can hear it. "Well, when might Mr. Carver expect you?"

"Soon, very soon."

"How soon? We run a tight ship here. I need a specific time. I'm very disappointed in you."

"You're not the onlv one."

PETER HEDGES

Mrs. Betty Carver is bobbing up and down now, her hair all in her face.

Melanie says, "This a repeat of Wednesday? This your pattern? Mr. Carver has family obligations later today, you know? So?"

I make an "Oh God" sound—Mrs. Betty Carver just hit the spot.

"No, not God. Gilbert—you. You have to make up your mind. I'm waiting."

"It might take longer than I think."

"Gilbert, come on!"

"Okay, okay. Eighteen minutes!"

"Good boy, Gilbert. We 11 expect you at two twenty-four sharp then."

Mrs. Betty Carver is working harder than ever, making slurpy noises. Her lipstick is smeared all over me, I bet. I put my free hand on top of her head and wish that the mouth on me was not hers but rather the mouth of that Michigan girl, that Becky from Ann Arbor, the people eater. Melanie is droning on about my responsibilities and I'm about to hang up when Mrs. Betty Carver's teeth get a piece of me.

"Ow!" I say.

Melanie asks. "Is something the matter?"

"No. Nothing is wrong."

"Is it a family matter?"

"Is what?"

"Is what's keeping you a family matter? Everything okay at home?"

Mrs. Betty Carver takes me out of her mouth and checks to see if I'm cut. She whispers, "You're okay—no blood," and she puts me in her again.

"Melanie, I'm okay. I've got to go."

"But if I can give Mr. Carver a reason, he would be most pleased. He always appreciates a reason."

"Tell him it's all my fault."

I hang up.

Mrs. Betty Carver looks up and with apologetic eyes says, "I'll be gentler." She starts in again.

"Please stop."

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

"Sometimes it takes longer, that's aU."

"Stop."

"Is it me? Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Tell me."

"Its not you."

"Give me a little more time, you'll see." She wets her hand by spitting in it and she is about to start up when I firmly say "Stop!" Her hands move to her side and she stays on her knees. I kneel down and wipe the hair out of her face. Her lipstick is gone.

"It's not you." I say.

The timer says eight minutes. She slumps over on the floor. This will be all for today. 1 guess. I lean over and kiss her forehead. She wants a hug. but it's hard for me to when all my thoughts are of the new girl.

She whispers, "Do I make you happy?"

I shrug like "Yes, you do, kind of."

We hold an awkward hug for the remaining eight minutes, and when the buzzer goes off she bursts into tears.

"I gotta go."

"I know."

"Please stop crying."

"I will.

"Your husband will be home soon."

"I'll stop."

As I'm leaving, she whispers, "I hope I make you happy. I want to make somebody happy. Just once. Somebody happy just once."

The screen door shuts. Mrs. Betty Carver fights to wave as 1 drive off.

I wonder if I'll remember her fondly when I'm eighty. I think so. I'll probably consider her one of the best things that ever happened to me. I'll probably want these days back.

PETER HEDGES

13

VJilbert, good to see you. Good to see your face." Mr. Carver looks mad as he waves me into his office. He signals me to have a seat in one of the two brown leather chairs that face his desk. He does this in a manner that makes me wonder if at one time he directed traffic.

I say, "Your hand gestures are really something, Mr. Carver."

"You think?"

"I know, sir."

"Well, 1 love the human hand. There's nothing 1 admire more." He holds his hands out and moves his fingers in all directions. This goes on until Mr. Carver is chuckling and chortling at the sight of this. "When Betty and 1 lived in Boone, before the boys were born—^you, of all people, will find this interesting—there was a boy, a prodigy. This kid was eight or nine years old. He was Chinese or Japanese or whatever it is that you are when you can play the piano really well. This boy was a genius and he had white parents. He had been adopted. And these parents insured this boy's hands for half a million dollars. Can you imagine?"

He looks at me for a response, and all 1 want to do is apologize.

"Isn't that a splendid example of the possibility of the human hand? And is it not remarkable what some people will insure? Proof that it's important to protect that which is special! Jesus, 1 feel necessary. Would you like to feel necessary, Gilbert? Have you ever thought about a career in insurance? 1 could get you started. You could kiss those grocery bags good-bye."

"Uh," is all I can say.

"It's good work. I have a house and two kids. We have two kids. Two boys, even. We are buying a trampoline. You'll have to come over and try it out. We ordered it for the Fourth of July. My boys

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

wanted a swimming pool and even though I can't provide that, I can come through with a trampoline. I mean, I'm not a doctor, for Christ's sake—Dr. Harvey could provide a pool. At my house, a trampoline will have to do."

As Mr. Carver drones on about how this new trampoline is much easier to insure than a swimming pool and any other topics that leap into his great, cavernous mind, I just stare at him. Might he be what I'm becoming?

Behind his desk, hanging in a brown wooden frame, is a recent Carver family picture. Each Christmas season the Endora Savings and Loan offers its customers a family portrait. We haven't had one taken in years, due in large part to Momma's inflation and, I guess, because we think that families are what other people have.

In the picture, Mr. Carver sits with his teeth exposed, a boy on each side. The boys curl their lips, forcing out smiles. Mrs. Betty Carver stands behind them, her face expressionless, her eyes sad.

I want to take him by his shirt collar and say, "Do you ever look into your wife's eyes, you asshole?" but I don't. He talks on and on. The phone rings and he stops mid-sentence. He says, "One second, Gilbert," leans back in his chair, and closes his eyes. He waits as Melanie answers it out front. The phone ringing must be such a rare occurrence that he has no choice but to savor it.

Melanie's fake fingernails drum lightly on the office door. "Mr. Carver?"

"I'm talking with Gilbert. You know that."

"I know, sir."

"It better be important."

"It's your wife."

"Tell her I'm in a conference. ..."

"It sounds important."

"Okay. Okay. Gilbert, one moment, is that all right?"

I shrug like "no problem," but inside I think "oh shit."

He picks up. "Yes, Betty. What is it?"

I look around like I'm not listening.

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Calm down. Calm down!" He swivels his chair so as to face away from me. "No. Yes, I'm in a conference.

PETER HEDGES

With Gilbert Grape, yes." Mr. Carver pauses and, without turning back to look at me, says, "Gilbert, my wife wants to know how you are?"

"I'm uhm fine."

"He's fine. Uh-huh. What has Gilbert got to do with this?" There is another silence. "Honey, don't start crying again. Please. Talk to me."

Mr. Carver's voice is barely audible now. The back of his neck is turning red.

"Of course I'm disappointed. Of course I'm sad."

He is drenched in sweat. A strong man, surely he could pull off my arms with relative ease.

"Well, my concern is the boys. What are we going to tell the boys? They are the reason for all of this. The boys are who I'm thinking about. That just won't be the same. Calm down, Betty, or I'm coming home. That's it. I'm coming home. Right now. We can't do this over the phone." He hangs up and sits there motionless. Oh God. With his feet he kicks his chair around. Mr. Ken Carver stares at me with a smile like the one in the picture. "Something has come up. You will excuse me."

He moves out of the office fast—I stand and follow in a daze. Melanie is saying something about rescheduling, but I don't hear her. I open the door to leave and the bell rings or dongs. The heat outside slaps me confirming that this is no nightmare.

"Gilbert," Mr. Carver says, standing next to his Ford Fairmont. "Would you drive me home?"

I stop and stand there, hesitating to answer. My heart starts racing. I feel sweat forming.

"I'm in no state to drive," he says, smiling like I have no choice.

"But ..."

"If it wasn't an emergency ..."

We climb into my truck and he looks for his seat belt. "I took them out," I explain. "They always got in the way."

He takes a moment to lecture me about the safety risk. "If you don't have them put back in, we'll have to raise your rates."

"Okay," I say, "I'll put them back in."

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

We're on the highway with the windows rolled down. Mr. Carver starts speaking, or shouting, rather. She told him about us. He knows. I know that he knows.

"Women, Gilbert. I'm married to a woman." He pauses here for effect. What effect exactly I do not know. "And God knows 1 love her—God knows it. And we have two boys, but you knew that. And Todd and Doug—they are at church camp and they miss their parents, their house, and I thought when we picked them up, you know, today—this afternoon—I thought we'd bring them a reminder. Something that states our love without saying it. So my wife—God love her—this afternoon something happened to my wife—do you know what . . . ?"

"Uhm."

"You'll never guess."