The Measure(75)

“It looks like a memorial,” said Nina.

As they approached, Nina recognized the man and woman in one of the framed photographs. The newlyweds who had jumped off the bridge that spring.

“Let’s keep walking,” Nina said, hoping not to dwell in sadness. But whenever she glanced back at the water, she couldn’t help but think about the couple who had leapt in together, and the short-string bride who had drowned. At least she had known a great love in her life. What were the words that Maura had read on that Post-it? Maybe we can invent our own forever.

“What are you thinking about?” Maura asked. “You’re so quiet.”

“The note you read in Italian,” she answered. “Si siempre no existe . . . ?”

Maura laughed. “I think that’s Spanish.”

Another burst of wind blew past, and Nina felt a strange sense of energy lifting her up. She stopped walking and turned to face Maura, her expression suddenly serious.

“You know, for the first few weeks we were dating, I kept waiting for you to break up with me,” Nina said. “I couldn’t imagine that someone so special, so . . . unforgettable . . . would even remember my name.” She paused. “And here we are, two years later, facing the fact that forever doesn’t exist. For anyone. But I still want to invent it with you.”

Rarely had Maura been rendered speechless, but in that instant, she seemed to be.

“I’m asking you to marry me,” Nina clarified nervously.

“I know,” Maura finally said. “And the thing is . . . I would have said yes, if the proposal hadn’t been so cheesy.”

Nina let out a laugh of pleasure and relief. “Will you give me a second chance, then?”

Maura smiled at her. “Yes.”





Ben




Ben’s parents had kept a storage unit in lower Manhattan ever since they sold their family home in New Jersey and moved into their apartment, but in her newfound retirement, Ben’s mother had read one too many books on downsizing and decluttering, and she was convinced that at least half of their stored items were now unnecessary. So, on Saturday afternoon, Ben headed downtown to help his parents clear out the unit.

When he arrived, his parents were already rummaging through towers of sealed brown boxes and tossing items into huge black trash bags.

“Just throw away or donate anything you don’t want to keep,” his mother said.

“Anything that doesn’t spark joy?” Ben teased.

His mom playfully mussed her son’s hair with her fingers, the way she often did when he was younger. Back then he found it annoying and babyish, but now Ben didn’t mind so much.

“I think you need a haircut,” she said, unable to control her motherly impulse.

“Let’s just focus on the boxes, shall we?”

Ben sat down atop an unopened trunk and started combing through cases of old clothing, separating the pieces that would go to Goodwill from those in too rough a condition to salvage. The methodical task allowed his mind to roam untethered, and it didn’t take long for him to think of Amie, of all the truths still untold—about his string, about their letters.

But there was just no obvious answer. Ben liked Amie. He liked her broad smile and her asymmetric freckles, her passion for her job, and the fact that everything just felt so easy between them, as easy in person as it was on the page. And, of course, what Ben truly liked about Amie were the thoughts and fears and dreams that lay beneath the surface. The ones she revealed in writing.

And Ben thought that Amie might like him, too. But what if she only liked the part of Ben that she met this week, the hero who helped a neighbor in need, and not the sad, self-pitying short-stringer who was also, inextricably, a part of Ben?

He looked up at his parents, both in their early sixties now, sorting through the records of their shared life, of decades spent side by side. How could Ben ask any woman to choose him, when he couldn’t give her that?

His last few months with Claire, around his thirtieth birthday, were the first time that Ben actually contemplated marriage and fatherhood in a real, palpable sense, rather than some elusive hypotheticals. And after Claire left him, after he learned about his string, suddenly all of the future steps that he’d always taken for granted—getting married, raising a family, watching his kids grow up as he aged with his wife—were no longer guaranteed.

It was painful for Ben to think that if the strings had never arrived, or if Claire had never opened his box, then he simply would have pursued those steps, no questions asked, no second thoughts. But now those second thoughts tortured his mind.

“Oh gosh, look at this!” His mother lifted a pint-size pumpkin costume from the box labeled Halloween.

Ben leaned over to examine the ensembles in the box: Woody’s cowboy hat, a retractable lightsaber, even the matted faux-beard from his yearlong obsession with Antoni Gaudí after a family trip to Spain.

“These will make some little kids so happy.” His mom smiled, placing everything in the donation bin.

His dad was about to crush the empty box when Ben spotted a small Hallmark card stuck to the bottom. On the front of the card was a cartoon ghost shouting Boo! and on the inside, his parents had written, Don’t be scared! We’re always watching out for you.

“I guess we used to be a little schmaltzy,” said Ben’s father.