1. Bertie (the introduction)

Bertie doesn’t drink and as far as I know she never has. This is probably for the best. If she did drink, she would be a righteous, surly drunk. You can just tell that about her. Her weathered lips would curl upward as she side-swilled a bourbon and coke, slurring a barrage of insults at everyone in particular. In descending and ascending octaves, she’d mutter “I could buy and sell you, don’t ever forget it.” No one could.

Sid, on the other hand, drinks quite a bit. At least he used to. Recently, high cholesterol and what is referred to in hushed tones as a “heart condition” have made him adopt a “one-a-day” drinking plan. When people are watching.

When he’s not drinking, he’s thinking about it. Who can blame him? Sid has lived with Bertie for fifty-plus years. Absolut gimlets are Sid’s antidote, and Bertie the poison that has stained his years. Or is it the other way around?

Together the two have spun a legacy of decadence, dependency and dysfunction. A legacy that spans westward to California and envelops the East coast like a thick, comfortable fog. A legacy of which they are utterly unaware.

The Moraines, Sid and Bertie, didn’t start out wealthy, they ended up that way. Sid has worked hard all his life. The type of hard work that makes a person bitter and angry -- not at all proud. When his children were growing up, he held two jobs. Working as a pharmacist by day and then driving a cab from dusk until the gray crack of dawn. Or so the story goes, depending on who is telling it. It was Sid’s job as a pharmacist that allowed him to get in on the ground level of a newly formed drug wholesale company. With Bertie advising him every step of the way, Sid bought products from shampoos and makeup to toothpaste, aspirin and prescription drugs from drug companies and then sold them to drug stores all over New York and eventually the other tri-state metropolitan areas. He bought out the people who he started the company with and when he sold the company to a competitor in the mid-1990’s, it was worth an excess of $30 million dollars.
Sid doesn’t speak much and when he does it’s with the stifled wit of years spent resenting and sacrificing. Still, he is a good man, loyal and true. Anyone who knows him will tell you: “Poor Sid, what a sweet man … married to that monster, all these years … never saying a word, how does he do it?”

But the truth is, he would be nothing without Bertie.

No one would. Just ask her.

2. Home is where the gallstone is

Unlike all the other rooms in the house, the kitchen at 32 Marshall Street is carpeted. Taut, wooly, industrial carpet that is matted either by design or by the wear-and-tear of 50-plus years of slippered stamping, stomping and skulking.

Green plants, as bright as they are fake, wrap around the black and white television, which sits like a paperweight on the bridge table. The television is perpetually set on channel seven, waiting for Jeopardy. Just like Bertie and Sid. A rectangular window set above a microwave – jam-packed with pots, pans and Tupperware goods – lets in little light and even less air.

A burnt-out tube light sits above the sink, where it once cast a spotlight on a narrow shelf filled with butterscotch-colored bottles of prescription pills, vitamins, supplements, aspirin and other painkillers. Most of the pills expired years ago, but “they’re fine,” Sid will say to anyone who asks. A retired pharmacist, Sid contends that drug companies merely put expiration dates on pills to boost profits. Three dense rows of pills line the single shelf. At the end of the front row sits a clear vial containing a gumball-sized boulder surrounded by several smaller boulder chips. A handwritten label reads: “Muffin’s gallstone, 1988.” Muffin, a barely white, standard poodle, has been dead for more than 10 years.

The rest of their house is more like a mausoleum than a home. Bertie, a collector of porcelain poodles and canned goods, and Sid, the bitter curator. “Look in this closet, isn’t that terrible?” he’ll say with a confusing mixture of pride and pity. Every closet in the house is about to erupt with the congestion of boxes of macaroni and cheese, cans of soup, tomatoes sauce and vegetable medleys.

The smell of Swedish meatballs always looms in the still air. There is something soothing about the pungent aroma of 32 Marshall Street, but that is lost on Elaine, Bertie and Sid’s oldest child. Partly because she was born without a sense of smell, and partly because she was born without a sense of family – at least of her family. In all the times she has vispring03d her parents (about five), she has never taken her coat off or even sat down.

There is nothing calming about this house for Elaine, the familiarity is only jarring. “You don’t know what my childhood was like,” she’ll say and then exhale vigorously. That was when she smoked. She doesn’t anymore. It has been about five years, but there is still a pronounced exhale after anything she says especially if it relates to her parents or is directed toward her two children.

Elaine’s baby sister, Gilda, still smokes. True Blue 100s. She smokes them furiously. Inhaling deeply and then exhaling abruptly. Elaine can’t be around her when she smokes. True Blue’s were her brand too. She misses them. Elaine lost a part of herself when she quit smoking.

Gilda also drinks. White Zinfandel. By the jug. It has gotten her through many lonely nights in her house in California’s Pacific Palisades. She is 47 and unmarried, mostly by choice, although she doesn’t see it that way. Gilda was cursed with the same thing that Elaine was cursed without – a sense of family, with which comes a sense of guilt, attachment, obligation and ire.

Gilda really wants to love her parents, while Elaine just wants to hate them. Gilda, however, has spent the past 30 years with the help of about as many therapists, trying to figure out exactly what there is to love. Mervin, the middle child, has been trying to figure out the same thing. Only without the help of a therapist. If anyone should know what there is to love, it’s Mervin.

Mervin the Messiah. Thrice divorced and twice linked, but not indicted, in connection with workplace thievery. Still Bertie and even Sid continue to defend him, support him and in some ways worship him. Perhaps it is noble for them to defend the one that no one else can, perhaps it’s just a challenge. Or maybe he scares them as much as he does everyone else.

3. The Buffet March

As if she is Leona Helmsley inspecting a Sunday brunch for luminaries, Bertie Morris, frequent guest, appraises what is left at 2 a.m on Saturday night. Ivana would be proud.

Like a soldier in the Nutcracker Suite, her knobby knees clank against one another like cymbals with each careful step when she inspects the hot selections. Beef tenderloins in cream of mushroom sauce. “Elaine would hate that. Mushrooms make her so sick.” Chicken picatta with lemon and green garnish. “Looks like my ass.” Stuffed cabbage drowning in an orangey-red sauce “Not how I make it.” Some type of white fish stops her in her tracks.

Her eyes grow thinner and her lips flat line as she stares at this final aluminum bin. Two strips of flaky white fish are caked to the pan in a puddle of yellow, congealed butter that looks like her sister-in-law’s skin.

“How come there is only one piece of fish left here?” she asks the man in the chef’s hat behind the counter. “Why is that?” she accuses. Bertie does not eat fish. Not even tuna fish.

“Oh Mrs. Morris, I’ll get some fresh, pronto,” he says, signaling the maitre’ d with his left hand and queuing up his walkie-talkie with his right.

But she’s off. Now, she is hobbling toward the lavish 24-hour cold buffet – tables bedecked with salmon, whitefish, sturgeon, bagels and Danish for all the high rollers and an occasional freeloader. Bertie is squinting and smiling, She mutters a muffled “how are you doing?” to no one in particular. She has some chewed-up jelly Danish under her tongue that warps this campaign-like gesture. She grabs a napkin and spits out the Danish cud. The napkin is then folded and put in the pocket of her purple sweat pants – joining several souvenirs from this and other late night meals in The Player’s Lounge. She loads some cheese and jelly Danish on to a plate, one on top of the other, “Excuse me,” she interrupts another preparing special order omelets. “You sometimes make these butter cookies that I love. Do you have any today?”
The server is responsive: “I will have someone check and bring you a care package Mrs. Morris.”

Sincerely, almost gleefully, she says “Thank you dear.” Minutes later, and packed in a box, the cookies arrive and Bertie is off to the room with her portable bakery. Sid is still at their table, slowly eating his strawberry sundae. She doesn’t even say goodbye and he doesn’t know what to say when a waiter ushers over a plate of sautéed flounder “complements of the chef.” He eats it.

Back at their room riding a something-for-nothing buzz, Bertie picks up the phone anxious to tell her family about the cookies. It’s 3 a.m. Eastern time.

4. Crash and Burn

It all went black. Just like that. Black.

The last thing any of them remember was the quiet of a windy ride home.

Sid was full from all the bread he’d eaten before the waiter even took his order. The garlic rolls kept repeating on him. They always did. His shoulders were hunched inward and he squinted – concentrating on the road ahead and Gilda’s every move. Aware of his glare, Gil drove cautiously, but distractedly. She desperately wanted a cigarette, but even at age 39, she couldn’t bring herself to smoke in front of her parents. They knew she smokes, sure, just not how much and she couldn’t do it in front of them. Too bad because nicotine helped her concentrate, especially after a large Italian meal.

Bertie sat in the backseat, her shoes on the floor, her legs lying across the velour seats and her bony back pressed against the side door. Bertie’s stomach was on empty. She rarely eats at dinners in anyone else’s honor – especially Sid’s. Most of the time, she won’t even come. "I’m too sick. You go. Have fun … Don’t worry about me, if my number’s up, it’s just up."

But tonight, she had little choice. She was in California, staying at Gilda’s house in Southern California’s highlands. She hated to be alone in the house after dark when the Coyotes start to howl. She watches them through the sliding glass doors too scared to do anything but stare.
Gilda had left work to pick her parents up and escort them to Dante’s, a 20-minute -drive like careening down a twisted intestine. The kind that makes your ears want to pop and your stomach want to implode.

It was a silence louder than heavy metal and deeper than the crevices in the Santa Ynez canyon.

No radio, just each of them lost in a swirl of intrusive and chaotic thoughts. Why is he watching me? Don’t they know I drive myself everywhere? How can she see where she is going it’s so black? I shouldn’t have eaten that roll. I hope I make it home by nine to see Doctor Quinn. Ingrates all of them. Sure celebrate daddy’s birthday. Mother Fucker, Mother fucker, that’s all anyone ever says. What about Father Fucker? You never hear Father Fucker. Oops, almost ,missed that turn. Damn I wish I could have a smoke. As soon I get home, I’m locking myself in my bathroom, opening the window and having a butt. I wish I had taken my Prilosec before dinner.
“Mam are you OK?,” a California Highway Interstate Patrol officer in a dark tan uniform raps on the darkened window.