What If?

My college roommate wore a purple hat. Always. Everywhere. 

Innocent enough stylistic choice, you might think, but here is the thing. My roommate was an eighty-three-year-old near-sighted lady who, on most days, needed the help of her massive walking stick – and often yours truly – to get from the sofa to the kitchen table. She was bald, missing three front teeth, and bent so low she must have once been twice her height. Those qualities would have been more than enough to differentiate Liliana from the rest of the student body at our university, and yet, she still wore the purple hat to stand out in a crowd; wide-rimmed and eye-wrenchingly bright.

“It brings out my eyes, Charles,” she said when I’d made the mistake of asking. “You are too young to appreciate my beauty, but I assure you gentlemen my age drop dead when they see me on the street.”

Most gentlemen Liliana’s age dropped dead on the streets regardless of her presence, but I swallowed the dark remark. And that was exactly the problem. No matter what Liliana did or said, I could never find it in myself to oppose her. 

To both of our detriment. 

No kooky idea of Liliana’s – and I heard a dozen or twenty of those every day – had ever ended well. But… well, my conservative parents didn’t know I’d be stuck with an eccentric fashion disaster of a grandmother as a roommate when they had been diligently teaching me to be respectful of my elders. If anything, they had hoped that housing their socially awkward shy home-schooled son with a senior citizen would provide some check on his first exposure to the vices of college life. The joke was on them. Liliana was the one who had bought me my first beer and then later my first condom. Again, both acts might seem somewhat innocent, but the beer was borderline toxic and the condom was both pink and bacon-flavored. To this day, I haven’t found a partner kinky enough to use it.

All in all, Liliana got me sick at least five times, bankrupted – twice, and arrested – thrice… that I remember. The most insane adventures of my misguided youth started with her grinning her gap-toothed smile and saying, “Charles, what if we…” – insert your favorite idiocy here.

She left me angry, exasperated and annoyed a million times. 

She left me heartbroken only once. The day I sent her a long-deserved gift, but the package was returned with a label “Deceased. Returned to the Sender.”

*****

“It’s a full moon, Charles,” Liliana announced one night in my sophomore year as I was preparing for bed, “What if we went to the roof to watch it?”

I glared at her over my toothbrush, “It’s the middle of the night!”

“Did you hope to watch the moon in the middle of the day?”

“We have an early lecture tomorrow.”

“Perfect!” she clapped her hands. “We can sleep then.”

“Some of us actually need to listen to the professor to pass exams.”

Liliana gave me a flat look, “It’s O Chem, Charles. The professor there can’t tell moles from molecules.”

“Neither can I, apparently.” My last test didn’t go well. “And I can’t just innocently bat my eyelashes, say,” I raised my voice to imitate hers, “‘Oh, son, I’m so so sorry I dozed off, it’s hard to stay awake at my age, you understand,’ and get a perfect grade for participation anyway.” 

“Of course, you can’t. You have ridiculously short eyelashes, Charles.”

“Ah, that’s my problem.”

“Among many others. Stop making excuses. Roof. Moon. Now!”

I glared some more, but there was no use arguing. I rinsed my mouth, put down my toothbrush, and threw on my favorite coat – in addition to being the middle of the night, it was also smack middle of the Canadian winter. Liliana was already waiting by the door, hat on her bald head, cashmere shawl on her bony shoulders.

“Sure you don’t need a wheelchair?” I asked.

She relied on her walking stick to move around the apartment, but I usually wheeled her to the campus at the beginning of each day. Slow as that was, it was still faster than the days she decided to ‘promenade’ with me, i.e. magnanimously let me half-drag her to her building. On most of those occasions, she wore her favorite sneakers. A red and polka-dotted monstrosity that didn’t even have a label – apparently, in the only wise decision they had made, the designers chose not to attach their names to that particular item.

“I’m fine,” Liliana said. “We only have to walk to the elevator.”

“Does it even go the the roof?”

“It does now. I bribed the security guard,” she winked, “Let’s go.”

So we did. Liliana didn’t take my proffered arm, so the ‘short’ trip took us about half an hour. For once, I might have rebelled at the waste of sleep, but Liliana took the time to walk me through the main points of chirality and stereoisomers, which were the expected topics of tomorrow’s O Chem lecture. Age and minimal effort notwithstanding, Liliana was the most brilliant student in our class. My peers had all secretly agreed that she must have been a chemistry professor in her younger years, but Liliana denied all such rumors with a dismissive shrug: “If you kids need an excuse for why I outsmart you all, I can confess to being Curie herself. Whatever lets you sleep at night.” I didn’t prod about her past any further, pathetically grateful for her impromptu lectures, even if they usually happened on the way to the roof, the attic, or the underside of a bridge where “I’ve heard there is the most wonderful graffiti”. My grades were nowhere near the beginning of the alphabet.

“Ah, here we are,” Liliana said when the elevator finally spat us out onto the roof, “Lovely, isn’t it?’

I looked up, scrunching my face against the snow that started to lash at my face with frenzied enthusiasm. The sky was hopelessly overcast.

“Err… sure. Weren’t we supposed to watch the moon?”

She shrugged, “I’m too near-sighted to see anything but a blob of light, anyway. We will watch the sky instead.”

I shuffled from one quickly freezing foot to another, annoyed, “Mmm… for how long?”

“Until it’s not enjoyable anymore.”

“In that case…” I took a suggestive step back to the elevator.

“Why are you a chemistry major, Charles?” Liliana suddenly asked and I paused, turning to face the small dark lump of cashmere that was my roommate. There was only one source of light on the roof – a glowing white exit sign with faded green letters above the elevator – and it made silver embroidery out of the snowflakes gathering on the wide ridge of her hat.

“What kind of question is that?”

“An important one for a student, I should think.”

“It’s a STEM major,” I shrugged, “Good job opportunities.”

“Opportunities…” Liliana chewed on the word, “No. A certainty. A certainty of hating the job you will get up every morning for.”

“I don’t hate chemistry!” Liliana’s knowing dark eyes found mine and I added deflatedly, “... too much.”

“Any amount is too much, Charles. You are about to dedicate years of your life to it.”

“I’ll manage.”

Liliana raised her walking stick and poked me in the gut. Hard.

“Ouch!”

She poked me again. I tried to duck, but Liliana had an expert aim.

“What the—”

She landed another hit.

“It’s an Armani coat! Stop ruining it!” I bellowed.

Liliana lowered her cursed stick back to the ground, grinning. 

“What?!” I snapped, raising my voice at Liliana for the first time since we had met, “It’s not funny!”

“Most people would have worried about their skin before their clothes, you know,” she said smugly.

“Most people don’t have Armani coats. It’s a virgin wool blend, with all-over rhinestone strands and satin lapels!”

Liliana nodded. “What else?”

“What else what?!”

“Tell me more about the coat.”

Suspicious, but eager to keep that stick where it was, I said, “It’s double-breasted closure, which adds a certain panache I like; and the rhinestones branch vertically along the entire length, making me look taller. The button cuffs—”

By that point Liliana was smiling so wide, I could see she was missing a molar too. I scowled, “Do you want the coat or something? It will be too long for you…”

Liliana’s stick flew up again, this time to land on my right foot.

“What was that for?!”

“For fun. You have a very expressive cringe, Charles.”

“Let me guess. Because of my short eyelashes?” 

Liliana shook a bemused head, “You an idiot, Charles.”

“Of course, I am. I am standing on a roof in a snowstorm. At night!” But, for a minute, my by-now-thoroughly-congealed brain stopped chanting, “God, it’s cold! Cold, cold, cooold!” and started processing Liliana’s line of questioning.

“You want me to switch majors,” I said flatly. “In the middle of the year. No. Change schools?! There is no design major in this university.”

“So there isn’t.”

“Then you want me to…?” 

She sighed, “Charles, what if we stopped asking obvious questions and started thinking tonight?”

“If you think anyone can predict what you consider obvious – ever – the age might have finally caught up with you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I shook my head. “Just tell me and we can go back to warmth and bed.”

“Start wearing a purple hat.”

Now that was beyond even my freshly thawed mind. 

“That hat won’t bring out my eyes, I promise you that.”

“You never know,” Liliana said, a strange softness to her voice now. Slowly, she walked over to the edge of the roof and looked over the sleeping city. The houses and pavement were wrapped in a somber blanket of grey snow. It would probably be sparkling white in the morning, but the churning clouds seemed to leech the color from every snowflake except for those perching in the light of the exit sign on Liliana’s hat, “I was never a chemistry teacher, much less a professor. But I did live in this apartment before. Six decades ago.”

*****

The roof of Liliana’s apartment was bathed in the crystalline light of the fall’s first full moon. The breeze had shaken off swaths of golden leaves off the branches of nearby trees and now they covered the concrete floor with a soft rustling carpet. 

Illogically, Liliana wished the leaves didn’t rustle. She feared the whispering sounds would wake someone up. What would people think if they found her with Jack on a secluded roof? Alone? This late?! And with all the rush he’d whipped her into, she didn’t even have time to properly button her jacket or brush her disheveled hair!

Jack, however, had never been much for following rules. He was the person who had made her understand why the worst of storms were named after people. Having blown into her life only a month ago, just before her eighteenth birthday, he had already uprooted every belief Liliana had methodically cultivated in the good soil of reason, decency, expectation, and propriety. There was no eye of the hurricane when it came to him. No peaceful place to hide. Jack was a force of nature that shoved and pulled and pushed at people just by being. Liliana had to fight the force of that invisible whirlwind even now, as he quietly stood behind her. Watching. Waiting.

“You need to say something eventually, love,” Jack prompted when she failed to find words for five straight minutes. His voice was so loud. Much louder than the leaves.

“I can’t say what you want to hear.”

“Oh?” crunching footsteps announced his approach. “Then repeat after me,” he placed a gentle hand on her waist, “I.”

She smiled, despite herself, “I.”

“Will.”

“Will.”

“Marry Jack Pierce and move to Europe.”

Liliana remained silent, frozen again. 

“Is it the Europe part?” Jack asked tentatively. “Because we can go to the States. Or stay here. Or go anywhere else you like. I think you will look deliciously pretty in one of the Russian kokoshniks or Parisian berets. We can make it all purple and as ugly as you like…” he trailed off suggestively.

Damn this man for remembering how much she loved hats! Like every other secret she had once kept, her pretentious favorite color included, the strength of his magnetism pulled it out of her the moment he’d asked. And he had asked. Despite his sweeping into her heart so recently, Jack knew everything there was to know about Liliana. She knew everything about him. Loved everything about him.

Still, she didn’t turn to meet his eyes, “Jack, my parents—”

The hand on her waist tightened, unnaturally pale in the autumn moonlight, “Your parents make you study table arrangements and cross-stitching! You! The smartest person I have ever met! You should be studying math or physics, or chemistry, like me. I see how your eyes light up when I mention my classes!”

My eyes light up no matter what you are talking about, Liliana thought and blushed. Her father would be so disappointed. And her mother… she would be heartbroken if Liliana ran away with a boy of no means, no family connections, of a different religion. And if Jack and Liliana stayed… that would be even worse. A disgrace. A constant reminder of her parents' failure.

“I am sorry, Jack,” she whispered, finally turning to look at him, “I just can’t. I—”

His hand dropped away from her waist, his eyes darkening with pain. Liliana’s own eyes had long since been filled with tears.

“There are expectations. Duty…” she tried to explain.

But Jack didn’t listen further. He whirled around, heels rubbing the frail yellow leaves into jagged dust, and left the roof. Liliana watched him go, wishing he didn’t stomp so loudly.

*****

“I didn’t change overnight,” Liliana in a bright purple hat whispered into the snowstorm, “Not at all. But unlike chemical reactions, most thoughts are irreversible. Every time I would hear someone speak French, see a bold clothing choice, or come across a math problem I couldn’t solve…” for the first time since I knew her, Liliana stumbled over words. “The falls were the hardest, Charles. I learned to hate yellow.”

Awkwardly, I wondered if I should put my hand on Liliana’s shoulder. I wanted to, but… I knew instinctively that we stood at the exact spot where she and Jack had parted sixty years ago. Would my touch only remind her of his? Wasn’t the howling raging tempest around us a reminder enough? I had an uncomfortable feeling that it was Jack Pierce’s spirit, not the snow-threaded wind, that was clawing at the rooftop tonight. 

The old woman huddled on herself, “The funny thing is I ended up in Europe anyway. And the States. And Russia. Eventually. I don't even know how. One day I stopped cross-stitching and the next – I was in Paris, buying the most outrageous beret I could find. Living. Enjoying living. Step by hesitant step, I let myself try everything I wanted. Do the things I loved, not things that were expected of me,” she looked up at me, “Can you say the same, roomie?”

By now, I had expected the question. “It’s not that easy, Liliana.”

“Didn’t you listen?!” she poked my foot with her stick again, “I know it’s not! But I didn’t spend the last two years getting you in trouble so that you were still scared of a little challenge. And for a boy who had been so coddled that you were afraid to cross the road on yellow, you have gone a long way,” She laid an age-spotted hand on my arm and leaned in conspiratorially, “Charles, what if you don’t wait until you need a walking stick before doing things that you love?”

She left me then, standing alone in the cold. In truth, I didn’t hear her go. 

I wish I could say I remember what I was thinking about that night. Remember exactly what sequence of calculations, assumptions, and pros/cons lists had brought me to the decisions I took later in life. 

But I don’t remember. There was snow. And wind. And darkness. Fear and doubt and the long irreversible chain reaction of newborn hopes. 

Irreversible doesn’t mean fast.

I did graduate with a chemistry degree – the dreams kindled to life amid a winter night by a stubborn crazy wonderful storm of a woman were still too new to shove me off my path back then. 

Yet, I didn’t wait for the walking stick either. 

I sold the Armani coat and all my other brand clothing. Worked for five years in a chemistry research lab – predictably hating every moment of it – to save the money for tuition.

Four more years later, I graduated from L'Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne with a collection of handmade hats, one of which was sent to Canada with a note, “What if you wear one that is in vogue for once?” 

That was the package Liliana had never received. 

I cried, drank a can of near-toxic bear, and spent the night on my roof, alone with my sorrow and the moon. There was no snowstorm that day, but the wind was tossing the trees in silent fury, already longing for a kindred soul that had left it – us – behind.

About halfway through the night, I unwrapped my own package and took out the elegant purple beret I had designed for Liliana. Sniffling softly, I raised it above my head and just… let go. 

The wind snatched at it immediately. Almost greedily. I let it.

A silly gesture, you might say, but here is the thing.

My college roommate wore a purple hat. Always. Everywhere. 

It was only right that she brought it with her to the next “what if” adventure.