Death's Poster-Child and her mother the lush
which it turned out was a deadly impression of her own Mom, who it turned out this lady made Gately's own Mom look like Carry Nation by comparison, lush-wise: the only four times Gately ever met Mrs. H.-J. were all at E.R.s and sanitaria.
Context
The disease running downhill through a family, glimpsed in a party impression: Pamela's languid "bring Mommy a highball" turns out to be a dead-on copy of her own mother, a lush who outdrinks even Gately's mother and whom Gately only ever meets in emergency rooms and sanitaria. The daughter who spends her whole life passing out is doing, gesture for gesture, what the mother did — the swoon inherited along with the accent, one more transmission running quietly on schedule underneath the comedy.