Gilbert's New Girl

By the time I got home from work on Monday evening, it was done. Tally had moved in with us and the neighbors curtains were twitching in anticipation. Of course, the events taking place at the Grape home had provided them with a steady stream of entertainment all day long. Firstly, there was Reverend Chambers marching up the driveway, demanding his daughter be returned to him, and when Tally refused to go home with him, the Reverend called the police. Sheriff Farrell showed up and he talked to Gilbert and Tally for a time and then he left, because there was nothing he could do, except make sure that Tally was in our house of her own free will. Now, Tally might have agreed to come and live with Gilbert, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t a hard thing for her to do. The girl was in tears when I got home, and Gilbert was all het up trying to calm her down. Gilbert is normally a very calm person and he’s usually great at getting other people to calm down, but that day, he wasn’t having much success with Tally. I can’t pretend I was happy about the situation and I certainly didn’t feel familiar enough with Tally to offer her any comfort, so I left Gilbert to deal with the sobbing girl while I retreated to the kitchen to cook dinner.

Nobody ate much that evening, but afterwards Gilbert cleared up the dishes while Tally went out into the backyard to smoke a cigarette. I was sitting at the table drinking coffee when Gilbert thanked me for not making a scene about Tally being here in our house. ‘What good would it have done?’ I asked him cynically. ‘You were determined to bring her here, and nothing I could say would have changed your mind.’ Gilbert stood there, arms by his side and said, ‘Thanks anyway. I know how you feel about all of this, but it’s going to be okay. Things will work out fine, it’s just going to take time, you know?’ I nodded and drained the last of my coffee. Gilbert stared at me for a minute and then said quietly, ‘If it makes you feel any better, Tally is going be in the spare room for the time being.’ I stood up and as I walked past him to the sink, I said, ‘So you aren’t planning on seducing her just yet, and that’s meant to comfort me, right?’ I had my back to him as I waited for his reaction, but he didn’t say anything. He just opened the back door and went outside to be with Tally. I could hear their voices but not their words. Tally sounded distraught, and Gilbert sounded like he could feel a mowing attack looming large.

I was sitting in the armchair watching E.R. when the two of them eventually came into the living room. They sat together on the sofa and Tally seemed calmer but Gilbert was still on edge, but when Tally rested her head on his shoulder and Gilbert started stroking her hair, it was me who felt ready to explode. Of course, I didn’t. Instead, I feigned a headache and the need for an early night just so I didn’t have to watch my brother getting all cosy with a girl less than half his age. Upstairs in my bedroom, I called Tucker, but as usual he had more sympathy for Gilbert than he did for me. ‘It’s not disgusting’ he said when I complained about their behaviour, ‘it’s natural for two people in love---not that you would know anything about that, due to your complete lack of romance.’ I hissed at him down the phone line, ‘Well, when you’re the only prospect a girl has, it doesn’t exactly inspire much in the way of romance.’ Tucker swore at me and then hung up! Now I had a headache after all. I felt like crying, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to let any guy, not Gilbert and certainly not Tucker reduce me to tears tonight. I had cried enough tears last night to last me for quite some time to come.

And so the days went by and gradually the pattern of our lives began to take shape. Every day Gilbert and Tally went to work in the store, and every day they served fewer customers so Gilbert starting closing up early. By the time I got home from my job, Tally would have done the housework and Gilbert would be in the kitchen making dinner. I sort of felt like an intruder in my own home, sometimes embarrassed by notion of them playing house, and sometimes angered by the affection they showed each other. Now, don’t get me wrong; neither of them ever did anything explicit in front of me, I never even saw them kiss, but they still managed to upset me almost every single day. It just didn’t seem right to see my forty year old brother painting a girls’ toenails, or to watch Tally blow drying Gilbert’s hair. But even on days when they barely touched each other when I was around, I still felt annoyed by the way they looked at each other. I guess I just wasn’t used to seeing Gilbert all starry-eyed over a girl. Maybe, he had been this way with Becky, but I had deliberately avoided being in their company, so it was hard to tell. He certainly had never behaved this way in all the time he dated Sally Morrow, but now I could see that he had only ever been in lust with Sally, never in love. Well, at least Gilbert hadn’t followed through on the idiotic notion of marrying Tally; Tucker told me Gilbert had said he didn’t want to put any pressure on Tally. Apparently, he felt she was too young to have to make a decision about marriage! Now isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell him ever since the day he laid eyes on that girl? Still, the proposal being on hold didn’t mean that everything else was too.

Tally was still sleeping in the spare room seven or eight weeks after she moved in, but of course Tucker said it didn’t mean diddily. ‘They’re alone in the store for most of every day,’ he reminded me. ‘If they want to get up close and personal then they got every opportunity to do it.’ Mrs Marshall had gone the way of almost all Lamson store assistants and succumbed to the lure of Food Land, although I think in her case, it was more about getting out of the firing line of the residents of Endora’s wrath, than any weakness for a red and blue striped uniform. Maybe Tucker was right, but it wasn’t really something I wanted to dwell on, you know? I knew I was going to have to deal with it sooner or later, but I also knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Gilbert’s not a virgin, Amy,’ Tucker said whenever I shuddered at the prospect of him and Tally actually having sex. ‘He’s a father, he’s got a child, and he might not have ever been married, but he’s always had a woman somewhere in the background.’ This, I did not need to know! Of course, I had heard the rumours over the years, I knew there was talk about Gilbert and some of the women in Endora and Motley; the women who never went to the store in person, the women who phoned in their orders. But one Sunday morning, late in September, I had no choice but to accept that Gilbert and Tally had consummated their relationship.