It’s “The Reaper’s Image” by Stephen King. Try this for a basic plotline and such.

Keep rockin’ The Vine!

Briana

Dear Briana,

Thanks!

King also has a pretty cool story in, I believe, Everything’s Eventual, about a painting with a similar provenance; it’s called “The Road Virus Travels North.”The concept is patently ridiculous and yet it’s stayed with me.

The overwhelming majority of responses agreed that it’s “The Reaper’s Image,” but one reader also suggested Gerald Durrell’s “The Entrance.” While I don’t think that’s it, it could still be a cool story, so I’m including it here.

Hey Sars,

At the height of the late sixties and early seventies my parents were your typical couple of hippies. Free love, nickel beer, dime bags galore. More specifically, my dad used to deal weed on the side. I promise that part is relevant.

Thirty years later my parents are (predictably) upstanding members of the community, white-collar, never in trouble with the law beyond a speeding ticket, you get the idea. My little sister Zoe is a wonderful, smart girl in her mid-twenties and putting herself through nursing school. It’s been tough, because my parents aren’t rich, so while they help out when they can, Zoe’s bank account rarely, if ever, climbs out of the double digits. But our whole family is so proud of her for where she is and how hard she’s working and how much she’s succeeding in school, especially since she has to grapple with a pretty severe learning disability.

I knew she was looking for a summer job, and I called her last night to see how she was doing. In the course of the conversation she revealed that since she hasn’t yet found a job she’s been supporting herself by selling pot to “just a few of [her] very close friends.” In fact, this little side business of hers has been going on for nearly a year now.

My emotions went from disbelief to vaguely amused to pretty damned pissed off at her in about .03 seconds as the reality of what she was actually doing sank in.

I know, I know. Grown-assed voting adult. Making her adult choices. And possibly having to face the consequences of those choices if she ever gets caught. I hear you.

It just kills me, though, because since she’s pursuing a career in health care, if she ever got tagged that would be it for her nursing career. Done. Finito. Someone getting their MBA and gets caught dealing? Still pretty freaking serious, but it doesn’t necessarily make them outright unemployable. But try getting a hospital to hire you to do anything other than laundry if you’ve been busted for possession with intent to distribute. So in my estimation, anyway, the consequences that she’d face are far, far more serious than someone on another career path.

The parental history part factors in here because I know she romanticizes my dad’s previous dealing history because a) he’s our dad, and we all lionize him in our own way, b) he always has been, and still is, pretty damned cool, and c) he never got caught. But Jesus, he was working for his dad during all that time and if he had gotten busted he wouldn’t have been in danger of nuking his career by any means.

Anyway, once Zoe told me about her side gig the conversation went rapidly downhill, and it ended the first time by my hanging up on her in a fury, her calling me back and sarcastically thanking me that “we can have such open conversations without [me] judging [her],” my saying that goddamned right I was going to judge her because she was DEALING DRUGS, and then her hanging up on me.

And that’s where things stand right now.

Again, I know. Voting adult, choices, et cetera. And I don’t mean to get all pearl-clutchy about drugs, because Lord knows my own college years were not without the occasional bong hit or four. But Sars, she’s my sister and I’m just terrified and heartsick for her. She’s on the verge of entering a highly lucrative career and those choices are putting all of that in danger. It’s an insult to all of her hard work and to all the love and trust that our family has placed in her.

How do I ever begin to talk to her again and get past this, especially since she really didn’t see what the big damned deal was? I’m so tempted to talk to my dad — he and I are very close and we really do talk about nearly everything, and I want so badly for him to de-romanticize the world of dealing for her. But that would violate the Sibling Code in a big way, and dammit, I’m in my thirties and way too old to be tattling. Plus, while I’m 90 percent sure he wouldn’t completely hit the roof, there’s a small part of me that worries he would and cut her off entirely, and then I’d be the asshole who lost her the small bit of parental funding she does get and thereby push her even further into that seedy world.

Any suggestions you could make here would be great, because I just don’t know what I can do for her — if anything.

Signed,
Didn’t that girl see Traffic?

Dear Traff,

You can’t really do anything, at least as far as getting her to stop dealing.What you can do is call her up and tell her that you’re sorry if she felt judged, and then tell her what you just told me — judgments aside, you’re worried for her and you wouldn’t feel right about not saying anything when she’s jeopardizing her safety, her future career, and so on.

You need to make the point to her that you still love her and care about her even if/when she does things you wouldn’t, or that are illegal, or that are stupid.And while her dealing drugs doesn’t mean that you don’t love her and support her, by that same token, your love and support for her don’t mean you don’t think she’s showing bad judgment.If she can’t separate these things — or won’t, because she’s defensive about your disapproval — well, she can’t.

I think you also need to make it clear to her that, if you’re asked about her activities, you aren’t going to lie for her.Putting you in a position where you have to cover felony possession with your parents is not acceptable on her part.

But you can’t tell people things, sometimes.Sometimes they just have to learn for themselves.I don’t know how that’s going to happen here; I hope it’s not a lesson that sinks in post-arrest.Short of expressing your discomfort with it, and your feeling that she should not, and should not have to, stoop to this, there’s not much else you can do aside from dropping a dime on her to the cops, which…

Dear Sars:

I broke up with Joe about a year and a half ago, citing, among other things, his immaturity (at the time, I was 26, he was 22).I handled it pretty well because I knew, without a doubt, that I was making the 100 percent right decision.

After going on a few terrible dates and spending the last 16 months acting like sex just doesn’t exist, I had a dream about the ex.It wasn’t a particularly good one, but it did a good job of lodging him in my brain, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him.So, I emailed him (phone numbers had been smartly destroyed in case of post-break-up drunkenness).Pretty cazh, just “hey, what’s up, had a dream and thought of you, thought we might be friends,” that sort of thing.I had no idea what I wanted when I did this; I even said to a friend, “What am I doing?”He emailed me back with his phone number, suggesting we meet to catch up sometime that weekend.So I called him Friday night, and we spent two hours on the phone, culminating with him confessing that he hadn’t dated anyone since me and he hadn’t slept with anyone either, because he didn’t see the point; it had been so good with me, how could it ever be the same with anyone else?(No shit, Sars, it was really REALLY good.)And he said he had started to call me several times but had lost his nerve.

I confessed that I missed him as well, and that I hadn’t made any headway in the love department; by the time I went over to his house the next night, we were back together, almost as if we had never broken up, though I saw some concerted efforts at change on his part.He admitted to having been at fault the night we broke up, and I was happy to be back together with him.

Fast forward to 11 days later, when he is supposed to be at my apartment at 8.He doesn’t show, and I call him, finally just letting his home phone ring unti he picks up.He claims to have fallen asleep, he sounds groggy, I tell him to go back to bed.I’m a little pissed, but I can’t be too mad, since he’s in school full-time and works full-time; he’s bound to be tired.I go to bed and awaken the next day (a holiday) at 10:30 AM, expecting a message from him.Nothing.

I manage not to call him until 3:00 PM, no answer.I call him at 7:30, leaving a vmail telling him I’m really worried and I’m going to his house to make sure everything’s okay.He’s gone, his truck’s gone, his dogs are gone.I drive back home, and once I get there, start calling his cell and home every 20 minutes; at this point, I’m absolutely terrified that he’s dead in a ditch or in the hospital or something.Finally, at 10:30, he answers his home phone, telling me to leave him the fuck alone, he’s trying to sleep.I emailed him the next day, pissed, of course, shocked that somehow this is the end of our relationship after having just reconciled.No answer.I called him and left a vmail; no answer.What on earth am I supposed to think?

Thanks,
Confused and More Than a Little Pissed

Dear Pissed,

You were terrified that he was “dead in a ditch”?…Really?Or is just the excuse you used to get all up on him to see where he was?What was the real likelihood that he’d suffered some sort of bad end, versus the possibility that he knew he was in dutch for standing you up, and either had done so for sketchy reasons and didn’t want to deal with you…or had no good reason, but didn’t want to hear it from you?

I think you’ve got two issues here: 1) he’s a flake, and 2) you can’t let him breathe.It’s bullshit that he blew you off, but you probably should have bitched him out for that that night, then let it sit until either he had the grace to apologize or it became clear that he wasn’t going to, in which case you deal with that then.The call-out-the-bloodhounds reaction was over the top, a little, and the fact that you had to do it at all — that he blew you off again — should have told you something.

I think what you’re “supposed to think” is that your first instinct with this guy was correct.He isn’t where he’s supposed to be, you don’t feel secure enough to wait and see what his deal is…this isn’t a good fit.

[10/17/06]

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