Normally, Amie relished all the “what ifs,” she dreamt in the conditional mood. But this was one question she couldn’t invite, one box she just couldn’t open. Whether the answer was fifty or ninety, she didn’t want any number in her head. Amie’s refuge was found in her fantasies, in her musings about the future. A number would destroy all of that. It would ground her. She simply had to live her life in oblivion, as if her string were somehow infinite. It was the only way she knew how.
And she honestly had trouble understanding how so many people—Nina and Maura and the author of her letters—had the ability to live any other way.
“Sometimes, I think about everything you and Maura have to contend with,” Amie said, “and I don’t know how you deal with it all.”
Nina thought about it for a moment. “I guess I just try to remember, as hard as it is for me, it’s so much harder for Maura. That’s why I planned this whole trip for us.”
“Well, maybe I’m not as strong as either of you are.” Amie sighed.
“You mean because you haven’t looked?”
“No, not just that . . .” Amie thought about the unanswered note in her purse. “I’m sort of a pen pal for a short-stringer, and it’s getting difficult for me to keep writing back when I know they’re going through something so awful.”
Nina looked confused. “Who are they?”
“Well, the thing is,” Amie said hesitantly, “I don’t actually know. We’ve never exchanged names.”
“How did this start? When?”
“It started through school,” Amie said. It felt too strange to explain in depth. “Back in the spring. And I thought it might taper off during the summer, but every week that I checked on my classroom, there was another letter.”
“Do you know how long this person has left?”
“About fourteen years, I think.”
“And how old are they now?”
“Well, that’s something else I don’t know. But I think around our age. They mentioned a friend who turned thirty. And I know I’m not technically a long-stringer, since I haven’t looked,” Amie said, “but I still feel guilty. And so sad for them.”
They passed by a couple curled together on a bench, folded into one another, and Nina looked at Amie’s anxious face.
“Would you date a short-stringer?” Nina suddenly asked.
“Um, yeah, I’m sure I would date them,” Amie answered, though she hadn’t dated anyone since the time before the strings.
Amie’s tendency toward daydreams led to an unfortunate habit of picturing her wedding by only the second or third date, and her imagination had a knack for exaggerating even a man’s most minor flaws. In her visions, the guy who cut her off in conversation was now interrupting her vows at the altar, and the man who seemed uncomfortable around mothers breastfeeding in public now refused to take care of their own fictive baby.
And sometimes, as hard as she tried, she simply couldn’t see the future with a particular man. The images just wouldn’t take shape in her mind, or they showed up fuzzy and dark, blurring the poor man’s face. That was even less promising than the bad ones.
Only two men had managed to pass muster so far, Amie’s ex-boyfriends from her early twenties: a lawyer who didn’t have time to commit and a poet more fanciful than Amie.
“So maybe you would date a short-stringer, but would you marry them?” Nina asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Amie said slowly. It wasn’t the first time she had considered the question. “I’m sure it would be different if I were already in love with the person, like you and Maura, but if we were just starting out? I mean, I know you guys don’t want kids, but I’m pretty sure I do, so it wouldn’t just be about me. I’d be knowingly putting my family through such a horrible loss. Choosing to give them a future without their father.”
“I understand,” Nina said.
“It’s just that life is already hard enough, and that would bring even more sadness into it,” Amie said. She turned to face her sister directly. “Do you think that makes me a terrible person?”
“I think it just means that you don’t know what you’re capable of,” Nina said. Nearby, a troupe of street performers, a jazz quartet, struck up a tune.
“Do you remember when ‘the strings’ just referred to the string section of an orchestra?” Amie asked, as if the gap between then and now spanned many years, instead of months.