The Measure(16)

At the close of his shift, Hank told his supervisor that he would be resigning from the hospital at the end of the month.





Amie




May was unusually warm that year, the early morning sunshine hinting at the sticky summer heat to come, and Amie decided to walk across Central Park to her school on the east side instead of waiting for the crosstown bus.

The park was one of the few places that felt rather unchanged. Sprinters and bikers still rushed by, while joggers pushing strollers swerved past Amie on the walkway. Children climbed atop playground equipment and slid down plastic yellow slides, their parents and nannies watching from nearby benches.

Unfortunately, the beautiful weather did not go unnoticed by Amie’s students.

“Can we have class outside today?”

As soon as Amie walked into her classroom, the predictable question came from a predictable culprit, a precocious boy with a smattering of freckles. His constant requests—Can we eat lunch during class today? Can we watch a movie in class today?—always roused the others, though Amie secretly admired his tenacity.

She looked at the entreating eyes of her fifth-graders. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, since the pollen outside can make some of your classmates sneeze and cough, and we wouldn’t want that,” she said.

Her explanation sufficed for most, though a few sneered or rolled their eyes.

Truthfully, she wouldn’t have minded leading class outdoors. She sometimes dreamt of herself as a college English professor, inspiring devotion in her students like Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile. She pictured herself surrounded by a ring of eager scholars, seated on the quad with open novels in hand, notebooks and coffee cups strewn through the grass.

But bringing a rowdy group of ten-year-olds outside just wouldn’t do.

“All right, now, who wants to talk about the ending of The Giver?” Amie asked.

She called on Meg, who was seated near the window as usual, though the desk next to her, once occupied by her best friend Willa, was now empty. Amie had been informed by the principal that Willa’s mother, upon learning she had only a few years left to share with her daughter, took Willa out of school for an indefinite sabbatical abroad.

“I guess I felt . . . hopeful,” Meg said. “Jonas’s world is scary and unfair and confusing, but he gets to escape it in the end. And even if we don’t really know what’s waiting at the bottom of the hill, those lights down below make me feel like it’s someplace nice. So, maybe, I don’t know, whenever things feel scary and unfair and confusing for us, there’s another, nicer place that we could find, too.”

Amie wasn’t quite sure what to say. Her students were young, they didn’t use fancy words or figures of speech, they didn’t quote philosophers or historians, but sometimes they simply left her speechless.

“That’s beautiful, Meg, thank you. How does everyone else feel?”



On her walk home from school, Amie called her sister. Even when Nina was busy, she always answered for Amie.

“What are you working on?” Amie asked.

“Um, a piece about the airline industry’s response to the strings,” Nina said vaguely.

“Is now a bad time?” Amie could sense her sister’s distraction, her eyes skimming the pages on her desk. Amie wondered, what exactly was the industry’s response to the strings? Perhaps the airlines would suffer, too many short-stringers fearful of a fiery crash. Or maybe the strings would spur more people to travel, to explore the world while they still could.

“Sorry, no, now’s fine,” Nina said.

But Amie was still thinking about planes. “Do you remember when I wanted to date a pilot?”

“Of course.” Nina laughed. “You went on, what, two dates with the guy from Delta?”

“Because I hoped the third date might’ve been in Paris,” Amie said wistfully.

“I’m guessing that’s not what you called to talk about.”

“I’m trying to think of a book for the kids to read over summer break,” Amie explained. “Preferably something historical, but relatable.”

“Hmm, well, what did we read in fifth grade? Something about the Salem witch trials? Honestly, now might be a good time to talk about how people react to something they can’t understand.”

“I guess I’m just a little wary of bombarding them too much with the string stuff,” said Amie. “I know they’re aware of so much more than we give them credit for, but . . . they’re still just kids.”

“I get it,” Nina said, then both sisters fell quiet.

“You, um, you would tell me if you changed your mind, right?” Nina asked timidly.

“Of course, you’d be the first to know. But I probably don’t even have to look,” Amie said cheerfully. “Yours was super-long, and you and I must share the majority of our DNA, so I’m sure mine’s pretty similar.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Nina said. “And there’s still no stopping Mom and Dad.”

Amie smiled at the thought of her parents, thankfully still healthy in their early sixties, who had chosen, like Amie, not to look at their strings. To focus instead on the blessings in their latter half of life, filling their weekends with gardening and book clubs and tennis, those simple pleasures made all the more pleasurable for feeling so ordinary in an extraordinary time.