My Mysterious Family: The Bernsteins

Gary Bernstein walked briskly up to the counter. “My wife and I need to go to the Golden City”. “I’m sorry” the clerk answered, “You’re going to have to wait until next month”. Gary very rarely swore, but at that moment, he cursed to the Gods with such rage, that a dense fog suddenly rolled over the already depressed city of Warsaw, Poland. In Warsaw, everything was grey; the buildings, the people, the sky. Everything just blended into one grey mass of zombified land. Gary eventually calmed down. He could never put up a good fight. He just wasn’t assertive or aggressive enough to get what he wanted. That was one problem that his wife nagged him about over and over again. “Jesus Gary, you just have stand up for yourself once and a while”. Gary couldn’t even count the number of times she said that famous line. Once again he would not fight back. He was not going to create any sort of conflict with the young clerk in the ticket booth. He was going home, trying to think of an excuse to tell to his soon-to-be fuming wife. It was her idea to flee to the Golden City of New York anyway. He wasn’t that eager to go, but to his wife, the streets, rumored to be filled with gold, was like the alluring smell of warm, fresh-baked bread on a chilly Saturday morning. He slowly and deliberately walked up his apartment steps, hoping that maybe in that time, Linda would leave for an errand. Gary opened the small, walnut door, hoping to find Linda taking a nap or busily multi-tasking in the kitchen. There she was, with her arms open, grinning in almost a deranged way. Gary would have to break it to her right away. Before he could make a sound, Linda shouted, “Oh Gary, I can’t believe we’re finally leaving this wasteland of a city!” She squeezed him with all her might, picking him off the ground. As he gasped for air, he wheezed, “No problem honey”. “I must call the portrait company. Get some nice clothes on Gary, as ugly as this city is, I want to have some way of remembering our life here.”Gary uttered under his breath. “God”.