his guardian angel

Irony in this story.

I think the ending might be dramatic irony.. The mom tucks the boy to bed and says "It was God did it you were there. You were his guardian angel." She doesn't know that Larry just drank the drink out of curiosity.. not out of protection. He didn't intentionally stop the father from drinking, but it worked.

But now that I'm thinking about it, I might be wrong. She says that "it was God did it you were there".. Maybe she is saying that God saved the father through the husband. It was like intervention from God through the angel(Larry). That might not be true.

Another ironic thing was simply that Larry got drunk and not the father. We all knew he was an alcoholic in the beginning of the story and that funerals set him off, so.. It was weird when the little boy actually ended up drunk.