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Show head the table was well enough to ._ A at his family's Thanksgiving Day feast. When the teen-aged offender hung back from join ing the family at dinner, Isaac went to him. "I have endured my surgery, son," he said quietly, so that the others could not hear. "Now you must endure yours." My father never played pinochle again, although I once forgot about his covenant with God and pleaded with him to play a few hands. I continued to play with Brian and Danny and his wife, clinging to the game as though it was the only vestige of family togetherness left to me. I had associated it with good sportsmanship and intellectual stimulation and, thinking of the months when Brian was AW5L, with courage. But now it became a mere backdrop for another game of which I was only vaguely aware, the appearance of doing something ordinary and familial, while the bonds of kinship were dissolved. "A person should be able to do anything he wants to do," Danny insisted. "And the relationship should make room for him. If there isn't room for the individual, then the relationship should die. The relationship or marriage is there for the individual, not vice versa." It seemed curious to me that Danny could believe this, yet still condemn my father for having pursued his individual vision of marriage. But 1 only listened, believing anything I said would be mocked. "That's why these open marriages are a good idea," Danny's wife put in. "It leaves plenty of room for growth." I considered this and couldn't keep my tongue. "What happens to marriage then?" I queried. My hell remained, a |
