The repo men came swiftly. When the market didn’t recover over the next few months, Barry maxed out the credit cards to pay the mortgage, and once he defaulted on the payments, they swarmed our house, taking everything that wasn’t pinned down. Steph cried when they took her stereo and VCR. She managed to hide her Walkman with a few cassettes under a loose floorboard in her bedroom. Mom’s clothes all went out on hangers as our cul-de-sac neighbors who we rarely saw, came out in droves to observe our punishment. It took four repo dudes to carry all of Mom’s hat boxes, stacked high in towers like spinning plates about to fall in some vaudeville act. Barry cringed once they got his Rolexes, too valued to stealthily hide under the floorboards. The walls barren with white-squared stains of where art used to be. Memories of furniture we had. Only the tire tracks remaining of the Maseratis. They even nabbed my basketball hoop.
The final blow was when they came for our home, forced us to vacate. After Barry got axed, the bank took one look at our finances and refused any loans. We were given the money Barry had spent on the house, a measly five percent of its value, used to pay off the rest of the credit cards that thanked us by canceling Barry’s account with about a thousand bucks remaining. I watched as he cut up his MasterCard, Amex, Visa, Carte Blanche, and Diners Club cards and tossed them in a tin garbage can, which he lit on fire. We had twenty-four hours now left to vacate the premises, and all huddled around the flames because it was cold outside, and the creditors had turned off the fucking heat.
With the few clothes we were left with, we bundled up and roasted Hebrew National hot dogs over the fire.
“Bear-Bear, what are we gonna do?” Mom asked. She had grown fretful in the past few weeks, a shell of the woman I knew. Running her fingers through her hair, searching for a phantom hat.
Barry gave her a look like, don’t break down in front of the children.
She gave him a look back like, you got us into this f’d up situation, and I’ll do what I please.
“It’s either your mother down in Florida or my brother and his family,” he said.
All of us made a sour face at those propositions. Both parties, already notified of the situation, each of them grudgingly offering a place for us to stay. That being said, plane tickets for five and a puppy were too pricey now to consider.
“What about the RV?” Jenny asked.
It was like a ghost had spoken. We all whipped our heads in her direction, the flames licking her dirt-caked face. Jenny spoke so infrequently, usually responding with the grunts and swears of a cave girl.
“Right, the RV,” Mom echoed.
Barry had purchased an RV for the lone road trip our family had taken to Yellowstone National Park. The year was 1984, “Born in the U.S.A.” blasted from every speaker, and Barry was in his Americana phase. We had even hoisted a flag by our front door that was taken down after being ripped to shreds during a blizzard. Now, the RV sat in the back woods because there wasn’t enough room for it in the garage with the Maseratis. It hadn’t even been on the repo men’s list.
“We could drive the RV down to Nana in Florida?” Mom asked, as a question.
“Nana is the absolute worst,” Steph said, biting into a hot dog. “She’s mean and pinches us.”
“That’s just her way of showing love,” Mom said.
“And she’s so into Judaism,” Steph added. “It’s, like, we get it lady, you and God have a bond. We won’t be able to use electricity on Saturdays.”
“We don’t have electricity now,” Barry said, and we all nodded at that.
Johnny Cash ran inside, barking his head off. Barry had named him, refusing any of our suggestions even though the puppy had been a gift for us. A way of softening the blow of that fatal Black Monday. But Johnny Cash wasn’t so great. He howled at all hours, shat everywhere, and had a lazy eye. Jenny seemed to take to him, which wasn’t surprising—unless she was contemplating a way to turn Johnny Cash into a cooked hot dog.
Steph yanked at her hair and let out a shrill cry. This had become common over the last few weeks and usually ignored, since it involved moaning about her stupid boyfriend Kent. Kent, with his parted hair and Lacoste shirts, his apple-scrubbed cheeks, and his Christian words of wisdom. The only reason Steph wanted anything to do with him was to piss off our parents by finding the biggest goy out there.
Sure enough, she went into a diatribe about how her and Kent’s love knew no bounds.
“Great,” I said. “Then we can leave, and you won’t have to worry about breaking up.”
She attacked me by strangling my neck, enough for Barry to get involved by pulling us apart. Jenny watched and licked her lips, thrilled beyond belief.
“Seriously, Aaron,” Steph sniffled. “You want to go to Florida where everyone is a thousand years old, and it’s like totally humid? Ever heard of swamp ass?”
“I’m a realist. We can’t afford our schools anymore, and we’ve become pariahs here.”
“Piranhas? I never know what the fuck you’re saying.”
I gave Mom and Barry a glance like, What are we gonna do about these ridiculous children we have to deal with?
“We are the talk of the cul de sac,” I said. “They all watched with gaping mouths as our possessions got hauled out on a truck. Besides Jesus-y Kent, all your friends are calling you poor behind your back.”
“I haven’t heard that.”
“That’s what ‘behind your back’ means. Everyone feels sorry for us. Drake and Liam won’t come over anymore because I don’t have a basketball hoop, which shows me how good friends they were. Mom, your ladies-who-lunch crowd dropped you.”
“Yes, they have,” Mom said, into her hands over the flame.
“At least in Florida, we can start over,” Barry said, joining in as if we were gathering our troops. I liked this closeness with him, being in sync. The Gimmelman men holding down the fort. He worked so hard and kept such late hours in the city that we rarely had time together. I imagined an RV trip filled with Punch Buggy and I Spy games. A radio tuned to his favorite songs, and us all singing along. Poor but rich in spirit.
“It’s not like Florida has to be our destination,” Barry continued, scooping up Mom’s hands and kissing her fingertips. “We can lick our wounds there, get back on track. We could go anywhere. I can put out job feelers far and wide. And even if I’m not in stocks anymore per se, I could find something adjacent.”
“Stephie?” Mom said, bringing her into the huddle. “I know you think you love Kent—”
“I don’t think I do.”
“But,” Mom said, singing the word, “you must learn that family is the most important thing. We need to stick together. We all have to be on board. And maybe we’ll wind up back in New Jersey…”
We all gave each other a look like None of us wants to wind up back in New Jersey. The state of big hair and fake-tanned skin, Guidos and Guidettes, and views of a better land. We had put in our time and were done.
I wasn’t sure if Steph actually agreed, but she at least shut the fuck up so we could eat our hot dogs in peace. Even Johnny Cash was acting all cute and trying to catch his tail. And Jenny left the dog alone and was humming and munching, always weirdly content.
I hadn’t seen Barry smile since the crash, hiding his pearly whites, but now they grinned wide, a beacon in the dark.