by Robert Levine

Created on: November 09, 2011

A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION

            You’re a teenager.  Your father tells you and your mother that the man he sued a few years ago for rear-ending the car wants to kill him in revenge.  He reveals he’s hired a private investigator who has found irrefutable proof that the man recently bought a handgun, though he won’t tell your mother or you what that proof is.  You warn your father not to be too trusting—the P.I. could be telling him what he wants to hear to get hired again in the future—but he won’t listen.  Your mother says only, “Do whatever you have to, dear.”

            Maybe your father does know what he needs to do to protect you.  He didn’t seem too concerned when a rash of burglaries struck your block the year before last; sure enough, eventually the burglar broke the lock on the front door and snuck in, but tripped in the dark of the living room and crashed into the window.  Awakened by the noise, your father ran into your room and grabbed your baseball bat, then charged downstairs and chased the burglar away.  You drop the subject.

                                                                        §

            Having staked the man out, the P.I. has learned he usually takes a walk through his neighborhood after dinner.  Your father follows him in the car one night and, as he crosses the street, runs him over.

            Your father never shows remorse, but to assure the widow he didn’t mean her to suffer, he moves the family in with her.  The widow’s house looks abandoned:  missing shingles, leaky pipes, a broken furnace, warped wood floorboards.  He spends the family’s savings to make the improvements the widow’s late husband wouldn’t, and demands that you and your mother pitch in during evenings and weekends.  He decides this

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