Shooting down the highway toward the Mojave Desert, it seemed to Barry that the Gimmelmans might be in the clear. He didn’t realize that Agent Terbert knew we were driving an RV and had put out an APB for miles. We left with the clothes on our backs, Jenny grabbing Seymour, Mom wrapping herself in a pashmina, Steph wiping the puke from her mouth, Barry taking a snort to get us through this last leg. But where could we really go? Barry had our plane tickets, but LAX would be heavily monitored. Now that our identities were revealed, there were no more hiding places. This would be the end.
But you wouldn’t have known that, according to Barry. He played Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth, since Steph had left it in the tape deck. He sang along, not knowing the words but making up his own. The rest of us looked at each other with suspicion. I was tasked to watch out the window for any “pigs,” as he called them. He had shoved a Bren Ten stainless steel in my hand and told me to shoot at anyone trying to take our livelihood. There was no reasoning with the man, and my anger vacillated to concern. I had lost the dad I knew somewhere in Virginia when this all began. To simply be enraged was missing the point. We weren’t dealing with someone who was well.
“How’s your eye look?” Barry called out over his shoulder, maintaining a steady speed so as to not tick off any naïve patrolmen.
By “eye,” he meant my sights on the FBI. Before we left, Uncle Mort gave a blubbering rundown of what we were dealing with: a special agent all the way from Miami to bring us down. He’d been following our heists from the start, us Gimmelmans his brass ring. Mort apologized more, but Barry just slapped him across the face. I wanted to do the same. It would’ve been one thing for us kids to turn ourselves in; it was another for an outsider to tempt our fates. On the way out, I went ahead and slapped Uncle Mort across the face anyway and gave the finger to Aunt Connie, our tires hitting the road as they wandered out to the front lawn with hands on their hips.
Before I was tasked to be the spotter, Barry planted me in the shotgun seat, spoke to me more like a man than he ever had before.
“This is war we’re entering,” he said as the RV turned down suburban streets, past neighbors without a clue of what was unfolding.
“What’s your endgame?” I asked, hoping he might face reality. The potential of escape so minuscule it veered toward impossible. The best we could do was minimize the damage.
“I won’t go out like a chump.” He rubbed his five o’clock shadow. “In all the great movies, they go out in a blaze of glory. Butch Cassidy, Bonnie and Clyde.”
“They die,” I said, the words hanging in a lump in my throat.
“We’re writing this story. We can choose the ending. You fire that great gun of yours on any fucker who tries to bring us down, break up our family. You understand me?”
“I do.”
I felt it was better to agree for everyone’s safety. Barry had to be handled just right. I imagined the RV rearing off the road and us all dying in a fiery crash.
“Then get to work, soldier,” he said, slapping me on the back and pushing me toward the side window. I cocked the gun.
“What are you doing?” Steph asked at my ear.
“It’s called defusing the situation,” I said under my breath. “He’s likely to drive us into a ditch.”
I eyed the highway spilling out behind us, so far, no sign of any police.
“You’re not gonna…?”
“Steph, what is our other option? You wanna wrestle the steering wheel from his hands?”
From the speakers, Debbie Gibson’s “Lost in Your Eyes” blared.
“Go take care of Mom.”
We looked over at Mom, who had huddled in the corner, her pashmina a security blanket. “This has gone too far,” she said over and over. She glanced up, pleading, but Steph shook her head.
“Not my problem.”
“Okay, watch Jenny.”
Jenny, in Jenny-Land, surfed in the middle of the RV with Seymour, dancing along to the song.
“Okay, she’s fine,” I said. “Keep your eyes peeled for police out the window on the other side.”
Steph bit her lip, drew blood, but listened and pressed her face against the opposite window.
I monitored my breathing, keeping my anxiety level low. The Bren Ten maintained in my grasp, still wearing my fucking pastel suit. A vision of everything us Gimmelmans had gone through playing like a movie in my mind. Leaving Jersey, the adrenaline of robbing that first convenience store, when we ate that meal in Virginia and all decided to team up for a bank heist. The first success, hiding out in Boca Raton, meeting Troy, and Heidi of course. I had never sent that letter I wrote, didn’t think I ever would. If a news channel was playing this chase, she’d be spitting at the TV. Rooting for the police to bring us in and justify her brother’s death. We should have stayed in Boca Raton and let Barry and Mom plunge toward their own doom. We didn’t need to get greedy in Houston, take a security guard’s life, lose Troy, get hunted by mobsters here, dump their bodies in a lake.
And then, a blip of a siren piercing the air. The hairs on the back of my neck getting fuzzy. Barry’s gaze caught me in the rearview.
“Aaron, talk to me.”
Out the window, a few car lengths down the road, we were being pursued by a vehicle with a spinning siren on the roof. The man driving had aviator sunglasses and was gnashing his teeth. I leaned out, all Crockett and Tubbs cool, eating bugs as the wind whipped my face.
“Do it, Aaron,” Barry called out. “Shoot him.”
Mom screamed so loud it felt like it rocked the RV, but it was just because Barry slammed on the gas, and we were pushing eighty miles per hour. My finger on the trigger. “Electric Youth” coming on, the police vehicle speeding closer, a few feet away.
“Aaron!” Barry roared. “C’mon, boy. Aim for his tires. He’s the only pig on the road. You can save us, you can save us…”
I wanted this all to end. I really did. Swear to everything, but I likened it to those cult leaders taking hold. You couldn’t defy them. You had gone too far under their teachings. You were one and the same with them. To break away was impossible to compute. I was Barry Gimmelman’s son more than ever right there, his right-hand man, his loyal soldier ready to go down with the ship. Or maybe I was just too much of a pussy to truly stand up to him.
“Aaron, fucking pull that trigger,” the demon at the wheel ordered. My fingers separating from the rest of my body, my mind breaking from reality, as I pulled the trigger and the bullet spiraled into the FBI man’s windshield, shattering it upon impact.
“That’s my boy!” Barry thundered, and I hated to admit it, but at that moment, a shred of me felt complete.
The FBI man had not been hit and whipped out a gun. He brushed away the loose shards of glass and aimed.
“Oh fuck,” I said. “I didn’t hit him. He’s about to fire.”
“Shoot again, shoot again,” Barry cried.
The gun slipped from my hand. I watched it tumble down the road. The FBI man fired at the RV, a few bullets missing but one shooting through the back window, zooming past my face. Mom’s screams erupted again. Glass shards fell in a pool by the back window. I didn’t hear the bullet ping off of anything in the RV. I had no idea where it landed.
Mom’s screams morphed from shrieks to something much darker, deeper, sadder, a cry from within that no one should ever have to utter. I craned my neck around and saw the reason for her torment. Jenny lay on the floor, blood pumping from her chest.
“Jenny!”
I ran over as Steph followed. We squatted at her side. Jenny’s eyes wide in shock as she touched the wound. Little hands so red and bloody.
Another shot came through the back window, pinging off the kitchen stove. Like a wraith, Mom crawled over to Jenny.
“No, no, no, no,” she wailed, heaving for breath.
“Barry!” I yelled. No response. “Barry, Jenny’s been shot.”
I didn’t want to look over at him. If I saw his face, I would’ve mauled it like a bear, but Jenny needed my attention.
“Cover the wound,” I said, bringing Steph’s hands over the wound. “Stop the blood.”
“It’s okay,” Jenny whispered, like she had a secret.
I wrenched off my suit jacket and pressed it over where the bullet hit, trying to recall everything I’d learned in health class.
“Make it stop, make it stop,” Mom cried. She flung herself on top of Jenny, hugging her close.
“It’s okay,” Jenny said, softer this time. “Seymour?”
I could barely see through a wall of tears. My heart a torpedo that kept firing into my chest.
“You want Seymour?” I asked, scanning the floor and seeing a bloody Seymour. “Here, here.”
I grabbed Seymour and pressed him close to Jenny’s face. A trickle of a smile emerged. She brought him to her lips. Said something indecipherable into his tiny ear.
“Stop the RV!” I screamed out, but it seemed like we were going faster. Another bullet shot in, pinging off of the cabinets that held our dirty money.
“Jenny belly,” I said, taking her hand and squeezing. “Hold on, hold on.”
She shook her head in a way that gave me chills.
“No, Jenny belly, you hold on, you hold on.”
Steph and Mom echoed my cries, but Jenny kept shaking her head.
“It’s okay,” she said, but it didn’t come from her mouth, as if she was already gone. She’d stopped shaking her head. Eyes locked on Seymour, no longer blinking. Her final words, dissipating through the RV until they were heard no more.
“Jenny?” I yelled. “Jenny!”
I shook her body, limp like a doll in my arms. I backed away, stunned. The war had taken its first casualty, my baby sister, my Jenny belly.
I left my body as I flew up to the front seat, clawing at Barry’s face, digging into flesh. The RV swerved from lane to lane as Steph ran over to stop me, Mom still collapsed on Jenny.
“You killed her, you killed her,” I said, over and over, as fear stared back at me. Barry let go of the steering wheel, murmuring, “My baby.” Like a ghost, he floated away from my attack, hovering over Jenny and trying to grasp onto any last sliver of life remaining. He seemed emptied out. Stabbed in the heart. A dark cloud exhaled from his lips. He and Mom locked limbs, lost in mourning.
Steph jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the brakes, causing us all to topple over, diverting the RV to the shoulder before we stopped completely. The FBI car braked beside us, Agent Terbert jumping out with his gun trained. We heard him yelling. The door swung open as he burst inside. I ran over to my nook, where I hid the journal I’d written down everything in. I yanked it from under the mattress, held it close. I caught Barry’s stare. Through a veil of endless tears, a confused look appeared. What was so important in that journal that I had to grab it at that moment when an FBI agent was getting out handcuffs and reading us all our rights? Barry could be called many things, but he wasn’t dumb. He understood exactly what was on those pages. And that Jenny’s death would be the impetus I needed to turn on him.
I should’ve done it a long time ago.
Any one of us Gimmelmans could’ve been brave.
All of us with blood on our hands.
Now and forever.
Good night, Jenny belly.
Good night.