The Measure(70)

“Ciao,” she said. “Where are you visiting from?”

“New York,” Nina answered.

“Ah, the Big Apple,” the woman said with a laugh. Her English sounded well practiced, if heavily accented. “Do you know about the history of our masks?”

Both Nina and Maura shook their heads.

“Well, everybody knows that we wear masks during the famous Carnival, but there was also a time before, when the people of Venezia wore masks ogni giorno, every day. Not only for celebrations.”

With her free hand, the woman gestured to the world outside the window. “If you were just outside walking on the street, you could wear a mask, and nobody would know who you were.”

“It sounds very . . . freeing,” said Maura.

“Freedom. Sì.” The woman said solemnly. “In Venezia, the old social classes were very strict. But with the mask, you could be . . . anyone. Man, woman, rich, poor. It’s a bit like your New York, yes? You go there to be anyone you want.”

Nina nodded in agreement. “Then why did people stop wearing them?”

“Well, what’s the word . . . anonymous? Sì. Being anonymous has a price. You feel like you can do anything. You drink, you cheat, you gamble . . .”

The woman tipped her head back toward the ceiling, smiling at the rows of endless faces gazing down upon her. “At least we kept the Carnival.”



Maura wanted to pick out a mask to hang in their apartment, and Nina modeled a handful of different options before her, each more flamboyant than the last. It was almost shocking how every mask rendered her unrecognizable, and Maura found herself thinking about what the shop owner had said, about the freedom that masks afforded the wearer. The sense of invincibility. Perhaps that was how long-stringers felt, she realized.

And although their time in Italy had been beautiful thus far, a distraction from life back at home, Maura couldn’t help but wonder about the chance to don a mask, to become someone new temporarily, someone with a different string. To feel that relief, that peace, for one day.

Maura watched the shop owner daintily lift a mask off Nina’s face. “What happened here in Italy when the boxes came?” she suddenly asked. “Did most people look?”

The woman nodded, like she had been expecting the question.

“Some did, but I think most did not. My sister, she is very traditional Catholic. She did not look, because she says she will go whenever God calls her back. And I did not look because . . . I am happy with my life.” The woman shrugged. “I hear of these Americans, they say the strings have made them think again about their lives. How do you say, their . . .”

“Priorities?” Maura offered.

“Sì, sì. Their priorities. But, in Italy, I think we already knew. We already put the art first, the food first, the passion first,” she explained, a sweep of her arm encompassing the entire shop. “And we already put the family first. We did not need the strings to tell us what is most important.”





Jack




The last of Javier’s duffels had been dragged to the front hall, ready to be loaded into his father’s van and begin the fourteen-hour drive to the army post in Alabama, where he was due to start his training in aviation. But Mr. and Mrs. García were still a half hour away, so Javi was sitting atop his suitcase, waiting.

He wasn’t supposed to be leaving this early. He and Jack were supposed to spend their last week together. But after their fight, Javi decided to spend his remaining time with his parents.

Of course Javi wanted to be with his family, Jack thought. He actually liked his family. As far as Jack knew, the only lie that Javi had ever told his parents was about his string. And he spared them that truth out of love.

Jack had never been that honest with his own family, at least not when it mattered most. After his wife left, Jack’s father became utterly devoted to his career, overseeing Department of Defense contracts. He dated a few well-heeled, well-bred women, at his sister Katherine’s request, but his work stole all his attention. Jack could sense that his father needed to succeed in order to maintain their status in the family, to erase the stain that his mother had inflicted—and needed Jack to succeed, too.

Grandpa Cal was perhaps the only one who might have understood Jack, who wouldn’t have mocked or berated him for speaking his mind. But there was just no way that Jack could have walked into his grandfather’s oak-paneled living room, where three of his ancestors’ nineteenth century muskets were mounted on the wall, alongside a framed Bronze Star, and confessed that he couldn’t do what so many Hunters had done.

He simply couldn’t admit that maybe there was another path for him, one that wouldn’t give him chills in the middle of the night or tension headaches when he thought of the future. And he certainly couldn’t say it without proposing an alternative, something respectable like law or politics. Yet as much as Jack knew that he wasn’t meant for the army, he didn’t know what he was meant for. He had no real passion, no sense of direction (outside of where his family had steered him). He wasn’t like everyone else—Grandpa Cal, Javier, the rest of the army, that doctor who died at the protest. Even Anthony and Katherine had a goal, albeit misguided. And now, after his “short string” had effectively demoted Jack to a low-level desk job in D.C., he felt more aimless than ever, his uniform merely an ill-fitting costume.