C.T.'s office, Hal's drinking

The dipsomania traced two generations up in one clause. Avril's worry about Hal's weekend beers is framed here as a fear of inheritance — Hal might drink "the way his father had drunk," and the father drank the way his father before him did, out in AZ and CA. It's the theme's transmission-belt stated flat and early: the addiction runs grandfather to father to (the feared) son down the male line, a bequest nobody chooses, the same three-generation shape scene 162 later gives from the wraith's side ("driven to the bottle... early cerebral hemorrhage"). Everything else in the passage is maternal management; the load-bearing fact for this theme is the drink coming down the paternal line like the name.