Tomorrow's Yesterday

Authors Note: I went to Circuit City yesteday and on my search for JD movies, I knew that I had to buy this one. It was filmed during a rather dark time in his life, and the emotions that he put into Gilbert were his own. Or so I read. But anyway, this is going to be one of those movies that everytime I watch, I'm going to write another fic for it. It's one of those philosophical, life-altering movies that wrench at the heart and pull at the structured ties that bind us.

Today is tomorrow's yesterday. I don't know exactly who said that, but it seems as good a thing to say as any. It's true to a fault. Tomorrow never comes, just keeps on hinting at it, but no matter how many night's I stay up to watch, it never truly reaches us.

Here in Endora, tomorrow is just another empty promise. It's the yesterday's that matter, they're what mean everything. Just to get through another today, it's always the same thing over and over again.

My father hung himself a couple years back, my mother was never the same afterwards. She hid, locked herself away, and didn't let anyone come near her room. For days she would lay there, not saying anything, hardly moving. When she finally emerged she was ravenous.

After not eating for nearly a month it was common logic that she'd be hungry. From that day on she tried to kill herself with food. The only one that could make her smile anymore was Arnie.

Her sunshine-boy.

If truth be told, he's the one that looks least like our father did. He has blonde hair and blue eyes instead of dark-red hair and brown eyes. Like me. I'm like him the most. Appearance-wise at any rate.

The last thing he said to me, I'll never forget it, the last words I heard from him were 'never let anything happen to your brother, boy. You remember that. No one hurts him. You're the oldest, you take care of them, you hear?'

Now, two years later, I look back on those memories with a kind of bittersweet happiness. I've heard tell that there's a difference between good and bad. If there is, I have yet to see it.

The only thing I know how to do is get through another day, doing what I do, and not worrying about anything other than making it to the next. It's been like that for as long as I can remember.

I think, I too, stopped living for awhile and when I finally woke up and looked around, I was so used to the routine that I didn't have the heart to stop it. I became the dependable, reliable, predictable Gilbert Grape.

Need a delivery? Call Gilbert. Something isn't right? Old Gil'll fix it.

Mrs. Carver invited me in one day for cookies and lemonade. I had just delivered the groceries to her. From that Thursday on I made a trip out there at least two times a week to bring her her bags from the market.

Every time I left I felt nauseous, as if I'd sold something of mine that I couldn't bear to part with. I went back, though, because I lacked the heart to hurt her. She told me many times that she wanted her kids to grow up and be like me.

Her kids were smart, funny, and I didn't want them to be anything like me. A hollow, empty, shell that was barely capable of emotions-- not something I wanted anyone to be. I took care of the family, I worked so late, overtime, I could barely keep my eyes open during the day.

I put in longer hours, slowly killing myself, because if I hadn't we all would have starved. The house was falling down around us. It took me and a couple of the guys to fix it up while Mama slept on the ottoman in the living room.

After the first few months things got easier. Half of the money I made went into savings, for medical, the house, anything I thought we'd need was already taken care of. I made sure that if there was an emergency, we would have the cash to go somewhere else.

It was a futile thought. To get out of Endora and see more of the world. This was land that stretched for miles and miles. I wanted to jump in my truck and drive until I reached the ocean, until there was nowhere else to explore.

That's what I thought about every day. Every damn day as I waited for Arnie to finish up with his bath. I would think about leaving everything behind and having nothing but the great open prairie as company.

I wouldn't have to hear that what I did wasn't good enough. The bottom line? We didn't have enough to scrape by on. I did the best I could, but sometimes it seemed such a hopeless endeavor. To buy bread that would last us a week? To scrimp and hope for tips just to buy a few planks of wood for our house. There was never enough and always some new catastrophe to deal with.

Sorry, It was a word that just automatically came to mind when something went wrong. I would say sorry so many times a day that my mind would go blank until I'd be able to think of some solution to the problem.

'Why? Because I'm Gilbert.'

Whenever I said those words I felt something in my stomach wrench.

'We're not going anywhere, Arnie. We're not going anywhere.'

I felt invisible hands come up to wrap themselves around my throat. I was going to live the rest of my life in this little town in the middle of nowhere. It was unfathomable, thats what it was. So I would get into my truck with the false illusion that I was actually going somewhere, knowing that I'd just turn around and go back again later.

Arnie passed on a year ago, he was twenty years old. Ten years older than any doctor expected him to live. He died how he would have wanted. Underneath the tree he always used to hide in. We found him laying there with a smile on his face, as if death was just another game to play.

I never let anyone hurt him, only I ever struck out at him in anger. I never should have hit him. He didn't know any better. There's no excuse for what I did, all I can say is that some days it would have been better if I died in his place.

All I wanted was to be a better person. Someone who could come up with the right answers to everything, someone to give Mama the perfect family that she always wanted. I attempted to be father, I tried to be a brother, but in the end the thing I was best at... was being me. I could watch out for them, make sure anyone who bothered Arnie got what they had coming, and make a living on the side.

I guess I was pretty successful, the house we live in is decent and it won't fall down around us anymore. The girls got a good education, I had my chance at it. I passed all the way through high-school and was going to go to college before dad killed himself.

Everything is different now. Quiet. Almost as if the wind was searching for something and found me. The colors are even brighter than before. It's only now that I can finally open my eyes and see things instead of just blurred figures that I tried my best to ignore.

Becky's going to come back again in a few days, this time I'm going to see if I can go with her. There's nothing that's keeping me here anymore. Both sisters are doing well, Des Moines has worked miracles for them. They can afford their own apartment and have steady jobs in a nice restaurant.

The store's mine now if I want it, I know that it'll always be here and we'll have our same familiar customers every day. I'm not needed here anymore, I don't think I could stay any longer if I had too.

This is my chance to finally do what I could only dream about. 'This place is as good as any,' or so Becky says, but how am I to know if I've never been to those places? If it really is as she says, I'll probably end up coming back here, moving into the house we had built with the savings money, and spending the rest of my life here. Stuck in one place for as long as time goes by.

Becky once asked me what I wanted, just for me. I know the answer now. What do I want? I want to sit here and watch the sun go down. The grass is warm and sweet smelling, I'll just wait until the night clouds cover the sky and wait for tomorrow to come.

Becky will be here sooner then and a whole week of tomorrow's awaits.