ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 41: The Idiot

One of the most revealing things Ernie ever said to me, he said only once. “Because you don’t have feelings, you don’t think anyone else does.”

When I said to him: “But I’m beginning to,” he said: “Watch out. You may be sorry.”

I didn’t ask him the obvious follow-up question: Why, Ernie? Why will I be sorry?

What would he have said? Whatever he said, maybe it would have been the opening we needed, one little opening into the darkness within each of us.