I was perched up on the Formica counter chatting with my brother Aldo and his eventual wife, Drucilla about Patrick Ewing's chances of being named rookie of the year when the smoke started turning the corner from the hallway to the kitchen.
We didn't give it much thought since we knew Gerty'd been boiling herself in the bath for the last three hours and this was the usual fallout from the pressure-cooked dousings she subjected herself to every evening after work.
She used to get the steam from the hot baths lodged so deeply into her pours that she'd sweat for about two hours after. She had to keep this giant turban-towel around her three-feet of hair to keep it appropriately moist for the next day so it would seem like she washed it in the morning rather than the day before. I'm sure between the wet mop of hair and the steam-filled pours of her body she weighed at least an extra 10 pounds when she finally slo-mo geysered out of the bathing chamber.
So, Aldo, Drucy and I were sitting around yaking it up when Gerty entered the kitchen for a her nightly water-guzzling ritual whereby she stood in front of the open fridge, removed a large soda-bottle filled with cold water and proceeded to suck down the contents until the bottle flattened into a great collapsed origami lung. Once the water was sufficiently expunged, she started searching through the refrigerator. For what? More water? That wasn't enough?
Aldo and I had kind of seen this routine before but Drucilla was new to this scene and kind of grossed out by the sight of my pruned-out bathrobe-wearing sweat-ball turbaned sister inhaling a half-gallon of water in six point five seconds, all the while not even acknowledging our existence though we were three feet in front of her.
Well, she hadn't acknowledged our existence until she realized that what she was looking for in the fridge was in fact, not there.
"What happened to my Diet 7-Up?", Gerty interrogated.
Aldo and I were kind of wrapped up in our conversation and Drucy was just sort of quietly observing the scene as if it she were not really in the room. Since we weren't all that interested in where her Diet 7-Up had gone, we didn't answer.
"Hello? Are you deaf? Where is my Diet 7-Up?"
"Ma must have drunk it", Aldo answered back.
"Well, I need it quickly or I might go into a diabetic coma."
Now, Aldo and I were not so cruel as to allow Gerty to go into a diabetic coma by simply denying her request. We denied her request because we didn't believe that she was going to go into a coma, nor did we accept that she was a borderline diabetic.
You might wonder how we could be so callous...Cruel even. But don't wonder. Just accept that Gerty was and is simply a bit of a sometimes-lovable and sometimes infuriating nutcase.
So, Aldo and I didn't respond at all.
"EJ, I need you to go and get me some Diet 7-Up right now."
"Gerty. It's almost 9. The deli is closing and I am in the middle of a conversation. So, I'm sorry but, no. You'll have to get dressed and go yourself."
"Do you understand that I'm a borderline diabetic and I could go into a hyperosmolar coma? I'm dehydrated and I need to balance out all the sugar I've been eating all day."
"And Diet 7-Up will somehow save you from going into a diabetic coma? Come on, Gerty. Do we look stupid to you?"
"Don't argue with me. I was a Phys-Ed major and I know a quite a few things about the human body, okay. Now, I need Diet 7-Up and I need it now so just go to the store and get it for me and stop being a jerk about it."
"No", was all I replied. Aldo started mocking her, "diet 7-up - like that's friggin insulin or something. Are you retarded?"
Drucilla was still silent, looking very uncomfortable.
Then we started chatting again, trying to ignore Gerty who by this time was on all-fours on the kitchen floor.
Drucy looked a little worried - like maybe it was time for her to go home - when Gerty held her head and let out this annoying moan that I suppose was intended to convince us that she was actually melting into a hyper-super-awesome-molar coma (or whatever it was called) and then she screatched out some words that were at-first hard to identify but which sounded something like, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" which loosely translated to 'if I don't get Diet 7-Up now I'm going to die!' and with that, I jumped off the counter and hiked the two blocks to Roma's deli to get her stupid Diet 7-Up-icilin.
I think when I got back, Drucilla was gone. I was sure she would never be back, but then Aldo must have convinced her that whatever Gerty had wasn't contagious, or maybe that Diet 7-Up really was a cure for dehydrated diabetics.
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