The Last Hand Read Online Free PDF

a Jew,” Salter said, adopting a mock-solemn stance as a way of being serious as well as a defense against it if he sounded silly. “The next best would’ve been one of those evangelical women you see on TV, the black ones from the U.S. South. See, most of the Jewish women I know are better cooks than … our people, mine, anyway. And a singing black daughter-in-law would liven us up. Apart from those, I don’t have any preferences. What’s the difference? For a while, you could tell the Catholics by the size of their families. Then they stopped having big families any more, never mind the Pope. Tatti like that?”
    â€œWe practice birth control, sure …”
    Salter moved to cut off any further discussion of his son’s sex life. “Good.” As he said it he realized again that this kind of thinking
regarded pregnancy as if it were a sexual disease, to be avoided by practicing contraception, and he gained an insight into how it might sound to a devout Catholic; yet, certain that he could not offer any alternative, he changed the subject, or rather, pursued the original question. “Is there enough room?”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œAt Tatti’s. I thought she lived in one room over a store near Honest Ed?”
    â€œYes. No. There isn’t enough room in her place. She just has a single futon. We would have to find somewhere else.”
    â€œCan you afford it?”
    â€œWe could get a small place for five hundred a month. Tatti’s working pretty regularly now, and I made eighteen thousand last year. I’m hoping to beat that if I get the call from Stratford. If that happens we’ll still need a place here because of Tatti’s work, and I’ll buy an old car and commute. I think I would get off two days in six, something like that. Is there a problem?” he ended, looking at Salter’s face.
    Salter had begun to pick at one of the elements of his unease, one he tried not to think about, certainly not reveal to his son. It had to do with the function of marriage. At some time he had heard marriage described as “a trap baited with sex that is snapped on consummation,” which it certainly had been to some of his father’s generation, and this attitude had left its mark on his own. But not many, these days, got married just to get laid regularly, did they? And yet the times, which had eliminated this necessity, and with it a lot of wedding night misery, also got rid of something else: the positive, romantic side celebrated by, as far as Salter could remember, some early poets, though not many in the last two hundred years.
    Salter had no doubt that Seth’s life in this arena was much to be preferred over the anxious fumbling experience of his own generation, but did that mean that the whole Old World of sacraments, and blessings-on-your-union, and virginity and all that was simply mumbo-jumbo, created and perpetuated by a gang of self-loving celibates who had no direct interest in the matter other than making a living out of it?

    â€œWhat are you thinking about, Dad?” Seth asked, reminding Salter that he was waiting for an answer.
    Salter said immediately, “I was just thinking that I will miss you around the house. Does your mother know what you’re thinking of doing?”
    Seth blushed faintly. “I already talked to her. She said when she comes back, if we still don’t have a place she’ll help us look for one.” He changed the subject. “How are things at work, Dad? Everything okay?”
    â€œSure.” The response was automatic. “Why?” Salter and Seth had lately started to move into a newer adult relationship, Seth taking upon himself the right and duty to ask after Salter’s welfare, one adult to another. Salter found it exhilarating to discover Seth as a friend while being conscious that it was one more diminishment of his paternal role. Soon, he would be left with just