Evergreen

by Belva Plain

  “No,” she said, “I’m not backing out.”

  “Great!” He straightened up from the machine. “Just sit back comfortably, Nana, and begin at the beginning.”

  The beginning? Sometimes it was so cloudy and far away that she thought it had never been like that at all. Then again, it was like the morning of today, so that you could reach out and touch it, could feel it and smell the air. Soft, foggy, fragrant air of Europe. Keen American air. Beautiful America, more wonderful, painful, generous, difficult and kind than she could have dreamed when she had been a child and longed so much to see it

  “Just say whatever comes into your head, as far back as you can remember. It doesn’t matter what Only don’t leave anything out.”

  She wanted to laugh, but the boy-face was so earnest, so eager.

  “Relax, Nana. I’ll tell you when I’m about to start.”

  She closed her eyes. The lamp light shone through her lids, making a tracery of red. Veins, like a design in lace. Yes, think. All a brilliant muddle, a heap of flowers, or colored paper blown in the wind. Eric, coming bravely toward them over the grass. Maury in the Yale processional and Maury on the kitchen floor, eating an apple. Iris, frail child, holding Joseph’s hand. Birdsong over Eric’s grave. And Joseph’s whisper: How lovely you are.

  A jumble and a flickering, far, far back. Do I really remember that my mother wore a dark blue shawl with a small white pattern? Can it be possible that I remember her voice at prayer, that it was low for a woman? Blessed be Thou O Lord, King of the universe, she said, in that childhood room for whose warmth and safety we search all the rest of our lives and never find again.

  “Are you ready, Nana? I’m starting the tape.”

  “There was a town. Yes, that’s a good beginning.” The words were rapid and clear. “It was on the other side of the world and not much of a town, just one wide, muddy street running to the river. It may be there still, for all I know, although my people are long gone. There was a board fence around my father’s house, and in the kitchen a black iron stove. There were red flowers on the wallpaper, and my mother sang.”

  BELVA PLAIN is the internationally acclaimed author of seventeen bestselling novels. She lives in northern New Jersey.