Chapter 93

As soon as Bertie’s wider-than-it-used-to-be ass hit his chair, my dad waved the Eisenbraun dinner green flag, saying, “Let’s eat.”

We dug right in. Around my parents’ dinner table, Bertie gets the best of whatever he wants, because he’s the baby, and he’s the son at home running the family business. If you reach for the chicken leg or the potato or the piece of pie that he had his eye on, he just yanks it off your fork or eats it right off your plate. None of the rest of us are allowed to display these deplorable table manners, but we’re used to having to race Bertie to every bite, so elbows are flying and conversation is typically confined to monosyllabic questions and answers and the occasional grunt of “yum.”