Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (ii)
The wraith says almost bitterly that when he’d stand up and wave his arms for them all to attend to the fact that his youngest and most promising son was disappearing, they’d thought all his agitation meant was that he had gone bats from Wild Turkey–intake and needed to try to get sober, again, one more time. […] ‘You tried to get sober?’ he thinks, rolling his eyes over to the wraith. ‘More than once, you tried? Was it White-Knuckle? [n.343] Did you ever Surrender and Come In?’
Context
The warning dismissed as DTs — and Gately, hearing "get sober," instantly stops being a haunted man and becomes an AA interviewer, grilling the ghost on its program. The comedy is doing real work: the wraith's family read his truest perception as his Disease, exactly as Gately now has to decide whether this whole visitation is his.