Page 162 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Marc Erdrich

World War II, when everyone was trying to return to a normal
life, literally and figuratively, when there was little tolerance for
individual differences, a handicapped child was a stigma. Har-
ry remembered his own parents pointing an accusing finger
toward Stu’s mother as if she was the cause of her Stu’s hand-
icaps. If she hadn’t done this or that, everything would have
been different, they said. Harry never knew what those things
might have been. But it always seemed strange to Harry that
just after the war his own Jewish family would have pointed a
finger at another Jewish family in need of support.

A boy like Stu, who looked funny and talked funny was
better kept hidden as much as possible, at home and in school.
There was no such thing as mainstreaming then, and what spe-
cial classes were offered, were nowhere near Harry and Ed’s
classrooms. Out of sight, out of mind. It was the approach Ed
used toward Stu his entire life.
“I really am thinking of killing myself,” Ed repeated, nearly
laughing. It wasn’t so much the trivial manner in which he
threw off the words as the laugh that scared Harry. When peo-
ple fool around about killing themselves, it’s often spoken with
an air of mock seriousness. “If I don’t get this raise, I’m going
to kill myself.” No one laughs when they say that. But if they
did laugh, not a guffaw, but a little laugh, and if they said they
were going to kill themselves, not once, but twice, with a lit-
tle laugh the second time, you might start to wonder if they
weren’t serious. Which is what Harry started to wonder when
Ed said, for the second time, that he was thinking about killing
himself.

“We all think about killing ourselves sometimes, Ed.” Har-
ry said, emphasizing the word “think”. That was actually a lie.

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