Page 82 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Marc Erdrich

3. Don’t Look Back

“Don’t look where the feet grow,” Harry’s mother always
reminded him. Put another way it meant, if it’s not broken,
don’t fix it.

It was a favorite phrase of Harry’s mother, and it served her
well for more than 90 years. Despite Harry’s attempts to dis-
sociate himself from anything having to do with his mother, he
had unconsciously adopted the expression himself. He hadn’t
been to a doctor in seven years, a dentist in 10. And he hadn’t
changed the oil in his car for 80,000 miles. Why take chances
when there’s nothing wrong, he always said.

Harry thought about his mother’s old cliché as he sat on
the edge of the bed in the nursing home watching her stare
lifelessly into space. What would she say now if she could, he
wondered? He leaned closer to her face and yelled into her ear.

“Mom, can you hear me?” She mumbled inaudibly. “It’s
your son, Harry,” he said. Her jowls rose and fell and she
smacked her lips approvingly. He took her spiritless hands
from her lap and held them. They were limp.

“Hold my hand,” he said. Her head rolled from one side to
the other, but the hands remained lifeless. “Take my hand!” he
ordered here again, but there was no response.
He sat up and looked around the room. Pictures of children
and grandchildren — some she never knew — adorned the
walls. Her belongings, all that remained after nearly a century
of living, were stored in the drawer of a small night table next
to the bed. An 8x10 framed picture of his brother and sister-
in-law taken 30 years earlier occupied a prominent place on the

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