The Measure(28)

Gertrude and her soldier, perhaps. Reunited and happily retired in Manhattan.

—A





Dear A,

Here’s a little thing: About a year ago, I was walking home around midnight, when an old song started playing out of nowhere. “Que Será, Será.” The original Doris Day version. My grandma used to hum it sometimes. The song got louder and louder, until I turned around to see a bicyclist riding down the middle of the empty street, wearing this outrageous purple jacket, with a stereo strapped to the back of his bike. And he just pedaled slowly past me, playing his music, as if he were any other cyclist.

I had forgotten about him until, just a few months ago, I heard the same music on the street, again in the middle of the night. “Que será, será. Whatever will be, will be . . .” And there he was again: the same man, the same song, even the same jacket.

Some might think New York is a greedy, selfish, aggressive place, and they’re not entirely wrong, but it’s also a place filled with generous people who share their spirit with the world. Maybe this man is on some sort of rotation, spending the quiet hours of every evening bringing music to a different corner of the city. And every few months, he ends up in mine.

It’s possible that he’s changed his choice of song since then, after the strings arrived, and the future now is ours to see, at least partially. But I like to think that he still does it. That maybe he believes in music, in its power to uplift and unite. Maybe he knows that we’ve always needed that—and we need it now more than ever.

—B





Jack




Jack’s mother loved music. It was one of the few things he remembered about her, the fact that she would whistle to herself in the kitchen and sing to him at night, both of them equally mesmerized by the sound of her soft, soothing voice.

After she left, Jack’s father said that he was too old for lullabies and refused to indulge his requests. His aunt Katherine at least attempted to sing to him, on the evenings she put him to sleep, but she only knew the same half dozen hymns from church, and eventually Jack stopped asking.

But it was still those memories of his aunt, perched politely on the side of his bed and crooning, shrilly, about God’s love and Jesus’s sacrifice, that made Jack feel like he had to say yes, when she asked him to attend the rallies.

“Uncle Anthony and I would so appreciate if you could join us onstage,” she had said. “You’ll look so handsome up there in your cadet’s uniform.”

And Jack had agreed, despite the knot in his stomach. In the Hunter family, “Yes” was the only acceptable answer.

Several cousins or in-laws usually joined him onstage, but Jack was the sole member of the Hunter clan who seemed embarrassed to be up there, squirming in his combat boots. He typically tried to position himself directly behind his aunt or uncle, blocked from the prying lenses of the cameras, wishing himself as invisible as possible.

Unlike the rest of his family, Jack had no interest in sweating under the beams of the national spotlight. He was simply trying to survive his final year at the military academy without drawing any more attention to himself. And Anthony Rollins wasn’t helping.

Jack’s roommate Javier was the only person he could confide in.

“I just don’t know how to get out of it,” Jack complained, as the two of them entered the gym to practice the obstacle course.

“Why can’t you tell them you’re uncomfortable?” Javier asked, pulling the pair of dangling ropes toward them. “Can’t you say you have stage fright or something?”

Both boys hoisted their bodies up on the ropes and began to climb.

“Fear is no excuse with them.” Jack panted as the prickly fibers of the rope dug into his palms.

“But they are your family,” Javier said.

Jack sighed, looking up at the soles of Javier’s sneakers inching along the rope above him, already two feet higher than Jack. “Yeah, that’s how I know they won’t understand.”

Javier pulled himself off of the rope, onto the wooden platform above, and nodded at Jack, just as two members of the rugby team entered the gym below.

“Hey, Hunter! Don’t look down!” one of the boys jeered.

“Yeah, it’s too bad your uncle isn’t president yet,” said the other. “Maybe he could’ve gotten you out of the ropes course.”

Jack’s anger flared, his fists tightening around the rope, but Javier shot him a discouraging look from the landing above: It’s not worth it.

It wasn’t the first time that Jack’s family had caused him trouble, and it sure wouldn’t be the last. The Hunter reputation was well known both on and off campus. They had the rare distinction of claiming an actual Revolutionary War soldier as an ancestor—the original Captain Hunter—and every generation since the 1770s had sent at least one family member into the military. Only a shattered kneecap during a high school soccer game had kept Jack’s father from enlisting, too.

Indeed, the only blemish in the Hunter family history was Jack’s own mother, who left when he was young. From the scraps of information gleaned from his family—and his own scattered memories—Jack had reasoned that his mother was always too independent, too free-spirited, for the Hunters. She may have loved Jack’s father once, perhaps even softened his edge, but his wasn’t the life she wanted. An accidental pregnancy and a hasty marriage had simply forced her into it. When she finally told him she was leaving, Jack’s father refused to give up his heir, and her lawyer was no match for the Hunters’ longtime attorney. Jack’s dad was granted full custody, Jack’s mother was granted her freedom. The last Jack heard, she was somewhere in Spain, living with a fellow expat, trying to make it as a musician. And Jack’s father made it clear that his son’s enrollment at the academy was never even a question.