Hope to Die by Block Lawrence

Author:Block, Lawrence. [Block, Lawrence.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-10-27T02:44:41+00:00

158

LAWRENCE BLOCK

“I know we can afford it.”

“We wouldn’t have to liquidate assets, or tighten our belts. We’ve got it in the bank.”

“I know.”

“But then again, you just said it. It’s not the money.” I drank some coffee. I said, “He’s the one that looks like me, you know.”

“I know.”

“Michael takes after his mother. He’s heavyset, too, like the men in her family. Andy looks like his father.”

“He could do worse.”

“I think he drinks like his old man, too. I wonder how many DUIs he’s had, how many cars he’s cracked up. I don’t know what the hell I should do.”

She poured herself some coffee, sat down across the table from me.

“If he had to take after me,” I said, “it’s a shame he didn’t go all the way and get on the cops. Then he could steal with both hands and not worry about the consequences.”

“You were never a thief.”

“I took money that wasn’t mine. I generally found a justification for it, but people generally do. Look at Andy. He was just borrowing it, he was going to pay it back. You know, all I do is keep going around in circles. I don’t want him rotting in an Arizona jail, and I don’t want to buy his way out of it, either.”

“It’s tricky,” she said. “But it’s your call.”

“What if it were yours?”

“That’s hard,” she said, “because it’s not, and it shouldn’t be.”

“What would they tell you at Al-Anon?”

“Not to be an enabler,” she said without hesitation. “That I’d be doing him no favor by getting him out of a jam. That all I’d really achieve would be to keep him from getting the lesson. That he’d never be able to change his behavior until he experiences the consequences of it. That, wherever he was supposed to go, he’d get there faster without my help.”

“So there’s your answer. You wouldn’t send him the money.”

“No, I’d send it.”

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