“Now listen here, kid. If you don’t keep your mouth shut this time there won’t be a next time, you got that?”
Len is full of clichés. Her threats are too predictable to take seriously anymore. The two do their best to suck in as if they are part of the wall they are standing against. Bev’s palms are clammy, leaving handprints of condensation on the textured room. She drowns herself in the thrills of illegality. Since she could sit up on her own she would spend hours every weekend watching westerns and bank robbery movies with Dad. She remembers Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Here she is now, a real heister. Bev turns to look at the early morning moonlight streaming in through the open window. The nights were gradually getting warmer, and the spring air seemed to grab onto light so much better than in the winter. She squinted in the glow, wondering if the man on the moon felt as bright as he looked. And what would he say to her if he could give her advice? His pure light brushes Bev’s cheek. She loves it so much she wants to hug him, even just for the familiarity of something genuine. He is so far away, so untouchable, but seems so real.
Len interrupts Bev’s reflection, “Now don’t you go gettin’ all emotional on me, ya hear? You hear a door open down that hallway I don’t want none o’ ya screamin’.” Oh, so we’ve turned southern, now. Bev just rolls her eyes. Len proceeds, “They’ve got them funny handles on them doors, bu—”
“You’re driving me nuts, Len. Would you just be real with me and tell me your plan?”
“Listen here, kid. I’m the brains of this here operation and I don’t—”
Bev stops listening and starts army-crawling toward the door to the hallway. Her older sister concedes and drops to her stomach and elbows, following right behind. Len was right—the handles on the doors have a childproof mechanism. They’ll be tricky to open without making too much sound. They must be in a child’s old bedroom, Bev deduces; a child with a habit of getting out of bed. Len has a small screwdriver. Three or four twists, and the mechanism is off. She turns the handle, returns to her prone position, this time in front of Bev, and slides the door slowly open across the carpet. Bev gets a lion toy stuck to her elbow and almost squeaks out a whimper of pain, but Len shoots her a “Zip-it” glare.
Sometimes Bev can’t stand Len, or any other person, really. Perhaps that is what fuels her need to rebel against them. If all Len can do is speak in clichés and idioms, and all people can ever say when they meet is “Where are you from? How long have you been married? I like your shoes. She’s so cute, how old is she?” then Bev sees no need to waste her intellect on them. When Bev was younger there was a time when she was in a stroller at the grocery store with her mother and she overheard a teenage girl on the other side of the isle talking about how she was obsessive-compulsive about the radio volume not being set on an even number. Her friend said she loved football and all her best friends were guys. It so frustrated her to be amongst such fake people that she began to cry. Her mother bought her a bag of jalapeno cheese crackers to calm her down, and she chose to forget about the teenagers.
Being her sister, she is quicker to forgive Len for faux conversation. The girls’ mother is one of the rare ones, Bev thinks. She is sincere and creative. She always sings them an eerie song on their birthdays, and Bev loves her for it.
Bev picks the lion off her indented skin and throws it behind her. It strikes the wall. Thick silence and aching dread to follow. Bev, feeling the need to redeem herself for such a judgment lapse, pulls Len’s ankle across the shag, regains her commander position, and signals she will be the first to clear the coast. She angles her head around the door into the dark hallway.
“I think the man and woman stay down that way,” she whispers, pointing to her left. “But I know for sure the goods are down that way,” pointing to her right. “The woman pulled them out yesterday while I was talking to her.” They inch into the hallway, Len daring to get on her feet. Bev follows suit. She tries advising Len to slow down, but Len is hardly paying any attention to her. She has started using hand signals to communicate her next intended moves. The two tip-toe in white socks through the drafty hallway toward the wood floors at the end.
“What do you think Dad would say if he knew what we were doing?” Len asked. “I think he’d just think we were funny. He’d probably call us regular Steve McQueens or Robert Redfords.”
“You remember those movies?” Bev whispered.
“Duh.”
“Gosh, I thought for sure you hated them.”
“I do. But I liked spending the time with Pops.”
“I don’t know what mom would do. She’s unpredictable.” Bev thinks her mother is cool for that.
They reach the threshold between carpet and wood with trepidation. It looks old.
“Let’s do this,” Bev nudges Len then quickly covers her own mouth. She hates how typical she sounds.
Len holds her arm across Bev’s chest and stretches her leg out above the wood floor like a ballerina. Slowly lowering her pointed big toe to the slats she finally puts the pressure on and straddles the two territories. Not a sound. They both step further onto the floor together, inching their ways farther into the room. Sunrise begins to overtake the moonlight.
Bev looks up at the shelving, specifically the one with the jewel. “Those cases are so high,” she laments. She thinks she might cry. The highest one must be at least six feet above her head. Len is already heading toward the corner of the room to pick up a chair. “What are you doing?” Bev’s sharp eyes pierce Len.
“We’ve got to get up there, somehow. I’ll give you a boost.” Len wraps her arms around the chair, walking it over to the corner case. Her left foot hits a soft spot in the wood with a rusty nail, paying it no mind. She’s running out of time and she knows it. Bev keeps a searching eye on the door at the other end of the hallway for any sign of opening. She hears a bit of wind and turns to see Len waving her arm in gesture for Bev to come over to the chair.
Len has Bev by the right foot, ready to hoist her onto the ledge. Another shove under the rear, and Bev was up. As soon as she was situated, Bev turned to Len “You know, I’m fairly able to get up on my own. I won’t need your help for much longer.”
“I’ve taught you everything you know.” Sure, Len has been the mastermind up to this heist, but she is too classic. She is all about leaving traces and trademarks; a marked coin here, a piece of cereal there—too risky, too predictable.
Bev remembers one time when she and Len were younger and they were playing in their room while their mother sewed a quilt of the world in the other room. Len asked Bev if she could live on any island of the world, which one she would choose. Bev thought that kind of a question was atypical of Len. She responds, “The Galápagos Islands.” She and her sister giggle about how funny it would be to say you live on an island with a name like that. Bev remembers how Len’s eyes sparkled while they clutched their stomachs and snorted like pigs on the carpet. She remembers thinking Len was so perfectly silly that she could never be anything but real. She had forgotten about that until just now.
Bev turns and opens the kitchen cupboard, revealing a container of birthday frosting with sprinkles in it. It glows like the moon. Her mother is saving it for Len’s birthday today. She is turning three. Bev removes the lid, takes a swipe with four of her fingers, then hands the jar to Len. The sun breaks, they hear a door creak at the end of the hallway. Len begins to laugh uncontrollably. Bev thinks Len is cool for that.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday.
Sin and sorrow fill the air.
People dying everywhere.
Why were you born?
It’s your birthday.