A STORY by VANESSA WOLOSZ
Palindrome
If there are infinite parallel universes echoing our own, then there must be a reality where umbrellas cannot close—even if you’ve never really thought that far. One where the flexible metal mechanism that enables an umbrella to open won’t allow it to hiccup itself back up. In that reality, your rich aunt’s house doesn’t have a mudroom; it has a brolly room—where gape-mouthed umbrellas lean against the wall, at rest until they’re needed once again. They huddle awkwardly in the corner, and your mom considers getting rid of them entirely whenever a drought hits. She never does.
In that world, hardly anyone in their 20s even owns an umbrella, their hamster-cage apartments (small, stale-smelling, exercise equipment tucked away in the corner) too unforgiving for umbrella storage. They ask for rain jackets and windbreakers for Christmas; in that reality, 20-somethings are still mostly poor, and they still depend on better-off family members to fill in their necessity gaps with holiday and birthday presents. Before you ask: yes, in that reality, Jesus was born and died, was resurrected and then ascended into Heaven on the 40th Day. According to those who believe in that sort of thing, at least.
Naturally, some people in the open-umbrella reality make valiant attempts at storing their umbrellas more conveniently. They invest in finicky infomercial contraptions that consist of suspension wires and dangly hooks to keep their umbrellas up and out of the way in thresholds, foyers, and attached garages. The first of these products to make market headway was the Parapluee back in ’92. Extantly popular among the over-50 crowd, it looks like a cross between an indoor clothes rack and a giant plant hanger. But these things tend to be more trouble than they’re worth, and the umbrella canopies often end up tangled amidst the gen pop of waxy cords and three-tined fasteners. So, most people don’t bother with them, opting instead to place their umbrellas in dust-ridden corners or to try hiding them away in utility closets and overcrowded attic spaces.
Children are generally warned against taking umbrellas to school. The middle school lockers, in that reality, aren’t any more spacious than ours. There, teachers have been known to send umbrella-accompanied students home with slips calling for parental acknowledgment of the umbrella rules. Most parents in the open-umbrella reality barely even skim-read these notes before penning their loopy, slapdash initials. Half of the kids just forge their parents’ signatures anyway. Children are not better behaved in the open-umbrella reality. But there, it’s generally accepted that umbrellas are more of an adult accessory, anyway. Like an acetate claw clip or a pair of Spanx or a kitchen apron.
That being the case, the open-umbrella reality doesn’t have much of a market for children’s umbrellas. There’s no such thing as one of those duck umbrellas, the kind with the added visor that makes the cartoonish orange duckbill stick out past the canopy. Or even a green froggy one with a thin smile printed onto the nylon panels. In the open-umbrella reality, you and I will never raise a daughter who splish-splashes into yucky puddles while clad in a matching set of black-spotted crimson wellies and a bright red raincoat, her white-knuckle grip choking the handle of a ladybug umbrella complete by its pictorial eyes sticking straight up from the top of the canopy. Maybe we won’t in this one, either.
There, the girl illustrated on the label for Morton Salt isn’t carrying her iconic straight umbrella. Instead, she dons a butter-yellow slicker, à la Georgie from It. For all intents and purposes, that book actually remains relatively unchanged in the open-umbrella reality.
In the open-umbrella reality, Mary Poppins still descends toward 17 Cherry Tree Lane using a black umbrella. For the rest of the movie, viewers can see her open umbrella in the corner of the foyer of the Banks’ residence. And she and Bert still dance at the racetrack, except Mary grabs the closed parasol of one of the animated characters (having opened her own earlier in the runtime).
When someone buys an umbrella in that reality, it does, in fact, come neatly closed up. After all, drug stores can’t be using entire aisles just to host enough umbrellas to serve everyone who forgot to grab their own and ended up stranded out and about when unexpected rainclouds roll in. And… what? The Amazon delivery driver is just supposed to transport a giant box around the city for each individual who orders an umbrella online? Rather, the smaller ones come origami-folded into themselves, the creases spiraled inwards. And the bigger golf umbrellas come with their pleats overlapping like a morning glory bud.
The beaches of that reality are virtually umbrella-less. Hauling an already-open beach umbrella along with a chair and towel just isn’t in the cards for most vacationers. In lieu, they mostly rely on pop-up beach tents and sunshades. The postcards tourists buy in the beach town shopping districts show images completely void of those iconic beach umbrellas with canopies resembling beach balls, each panel a contrasting color.
Many things stay the same between the open-umbrella reality and our own, though. Whenever you board public transit in the morning, you always spot at least a couple of other passengers reading, the jaws of their books stretched wide between their hands. Even so, you’ve never actually seen someone finish a book during your commute. Likewise, both here and there, the yearly rounds of Celebrity Jeopardy! feature easier questions than normal Jeopardy!—which still gets under your skin. Jeopardy! has the potential to be the great equalizer, you’ve told me in both realities. Why must it, too, kneel at the feet of the Hollywood Elite?
Both here and there, my mom would walk me to kindergarten on rainy days. She carried her umbrella above us both. It had one of those transparent vinyl canopies that I could see the rain through. It made me feel like an ocean explorer in one of those old-timey diver helmets. I was the opposite of a fish in its tank. Sometimes, my mom would let me hold the umbrella for her. She wouldn’t bother trying to keep her head covered as she passed its handle off to me. The waterlogged strands of her hair were always pasted to her forehead by the time we arrived at my school. Like in our reality, everyone always looks the most beautiful doused in rainwater.
Both here and there, you still believe that time travel is theoretically possible, but only in one direction. We can only travel to the future, never to the past, you argue. It’s all about entropy! Then, only in the open-umbrella reality, you continue, Traveling backwards in time would be like trying to close an umbrella.
In the open-umbrella reality, it’s possible to un-water a plant. And to retract a letter you’ve already sent. To uncrumple a tissue and lay it perfectly flat, no trace of a single crease remaining. Depending on what they’re made of, certain dishware can be un-shattered.
There, you can un-unpeel a clementine (not an orange, though). Sometimes, the open-umbrella version of me anxiously un-and-re peels the same piece of fruit over and over, a habit I picked up as a nervous fidget. Open-umbrella me often plays a little solitary game that involves seeing how many different ways I can strip off that skin all in one singular ribbon–until it’s all creased and grotty and nearly melts between my citrus-scented fingers.
In the open-umbrella reality, you can un-kiss someone.
Laptops are un-close-able there. Messenger bags and backpacks are designed to accommodate these devices when they’re placed inside, butterflied open.
And there, the endings of books and movies can recalibrate even years after release, completely unprompted. Heather, Mike, and Josh find their way out of the woods. Rosemary pushes the bassinet over. A real cop pulls up as the Armitage house goes up in flames. Meursault is acquitted. Mu Bai gets the antidote in time. No matter which way the ending goes, Eraserhead never makes any sense.
In the open-umbrella reality, doors can still swing both open and closed. And they can also slam, which is what happened to mine as you stormed out. In the open-umbrella reality, your laptop remains unshut on top of my bed from when you’d sat there hours before, criss-cross-applesauce, searching it for that song you’d been waiting to play for me. You forgot it at mine in your haste. Don’t worry, I’ve kept it charged. A different song trickles from its now-worn speakers, all lukewarm and staticky.
Or maybe, in the open-umbrella reality, you never had the chance to sit on my bed. No criss-cross. No applesauce. There, I never met you at all. I never stood beneath the eaves of my building those months ago, never lowered and closed my umbrella just in time to notice you crossing the street in my direction. I never took the time to hold the lobby door open as a very wet you hustled inside, desperate to get in from the downpour. You never thanked me, and I never lingered downstairs to remain in your warmth while you shivered from the cold.
In the open-umbrella reality, there’s a chance that neither of us was ever even born. In the open-umbrella reality, what lay between us melts away like something sweet in the rain.
Vanessa Wolosz is on a mission she will never complete that involves visiting every permanent museum in New York City. She writes so that her parents have something vaguely interesting to say about her when other people ask. Likes: Jeopardy!, beanbag chairs, air-drying her clothes, walking home, crossing the street, and Youtube video essays. Dislikes: Wheel of Fortune, getting her hair cut by other people, the process of sharing her screen during a video call, the shape of her eyebrows, the Apple store in Grand Central Station, and the concept of carbon credits/offsets. Twitter / Instagram