Three Days of Rain
By Richard Greenberg

Nan is "the sane one" in her family. Here she tells her bittersweet version of her parents' life stories. Her parents are Lina and Ned.

NAN:

My parents married because it was 1960 and one had to and they were there. And I don't think that's a contemptible thing - for people who have reached a certain age and never found anything better.

I mean, forget what happened later, think of the moment. My mother was lovely, but not as young as she should have been, my father was virtually silent, and they found each other and I don't think that's so cynical. He was presentable and serious and he must have seemed calming to her, and solid, and easy to ignore, but not in a bad way. And he was from New England and later New York, so he probably thought she wasn't crazy, just Southern. And if it was calculating, it was a calculation against loneliness, against... the possibility of no life at all.

Nan tells her childhood friend Pip about the moment when she realized her brother, Walker was alive.

NAN:

What was hard was when he finally called, what was hard was to realize he was still alive. For the first... nine months, I think, every day I woke up in a panic - if I'd slept - with this unbearably vivid pictures of what had befallen him. And I'd go through most of the day mourning. Then it would occur to me that what I was so certain had happened to him almost certainly had not happened to him - the mere fact of my inventing it had made it unlikely - and there would be a momentary, I don't know, rest, I suppose. And I'd go on to imagine some other horrible thing. Then... it stopped. I don't know how. I realized it afterward - some weeks afterward - I was on to other things. I was back... with my children. I was back in the day. At home. In Boston. And it was sad, but better. It was much better.

What I mean is... when I heard his voice the main feeling was not relief.

Today, when he asked for the house, I thought, oh God, yes, take the house, let him have it, the house will take care of him. And I'll be free.

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