Borrowed for Posterity
Part One: Vancouver
Sasha's landlord kept asking about "all the people" in her garage, which was worse than explaining they were made from raincoats nobody wanted anymore.
"What... what are you doing?" Mei asked, watching her mother stuff newspapers into a knockoff Oyparaploo coat (the brand where they'd spelled it wrong on purpose to avoid lawsuits).
"Tuesday," Sasha said, which wasn't an answer.
It was November and Vancouver was doing that thing where the rain felt personal, like it had read your diary and was disappointed. Everyone walked around in their protective shells—those identical black Arc'teryx jackets that cost a mortgage payment, or the Mountain Equipment Co-op ones from before the bankruptcy, when we all still believed in cooperatives.
She'd found the Oyparaploo at the 14th Avenue bus stop, sitting on the bench like someone had just evaporated. Arms spread wide, shoulders slumped. She stuffed it with her ex-husband Derek's tax returns from 2018 (the year he'd said "I need space" and then moved two blocks away) plus newspapers from the week her dad died that she'd been meaning to recycle for eleven months.
Wednesday: umbrella bones, no skin. All the metal spokes perfect but naked. She grabbed it from beside a trash can that already had two broken umbrellas in it—this one was somehow more broken by being structurally intact. In her notebook she wrote "full seriously wounded skeleton" then looked at it. What? But she left it.
The umbrella fit perfectly in the raincoat's sleeve. Now it looked like someone holding the memory of staying dry.
"Mom, are you having a... thing?" Mei asked. They were eating Kraft Dinner on the good plates because all the regular plates were dirty.
"A thing?"
"Dad says you're having a thing."
"Dad says a lot of—" She stopped. "Yes. I'm having a thing."
Seven figures by December. One wore a toddler's Paddington Bear raincoat over a woman's Lululemon rain jacket over a BC Ferries poncho she'd found still in its packet. Another figure she'd made from just hoods—seventeen of them safety-pinned together into roughly human shape. It looked like how she felt at parent-teacher conferences.
Marcus, the gallery guy who'd said no twice, came by because she'd threatened to leave the figures at his gallery overnight like abandoned babies.
"This is..." He stood there in his expensive raincoat (Veilance, she could tell by the way it whispered when he moved).
"Weird. I know."
"I was going to say disturbing. That one—" pointing at hood mountain "—made my chest tight."
"Good."
"Not good. But... yeah. Two weeks. December. Nobody comes in December."
"Perfect. Nobody's my target demographic."
Part Two: Warsaw
The email came while she was scraping dried glue off her kitchen table with a butter knife at 1 AM.
"I see your rain people on Instagram. I make furniture that remembers. You come? —Tomasz"
Attached: a cabinet filled with amber-colored resin, holding a suspended 2003 Nokia phone, three grocery receipts, and what looked like a child's drawing of a dog or possibly a war.
Mei was at Derek's. Sasha had $1,700 from selling hood mountain to a woman who'd stood in front of it crying quietly for twenty minutes. Flight to Warsaw: $873 on LOT Polish airlines, which made her laugh. LOT. Parking lot. Vacant lot. Her lot in life.
Tomasz's studio was in a building in Praga that looked like it had been through things. Literal things. Wars. The stairwell smelled like cabbage and resignation.
"My babcia, she hide in wardrobe. Not second war. First. She was six, didn't know hiding schedule yet." His English was like his resin work—clear enough to see through, cloudy enough to be interesting.
He showed her a medicine cabinet with his mother's unused prescriptions suspended in resin. Still in their foil packets. Xanax from 2009. Blood pressure medicine from 2015. The final prescriptions from 2019, unopened.
"Should you... is that legal?"
"Is art. Art is always legal, no?"
"That's definitely not true."
"In Poland, everything is legal until someone notices."
They worked in his studio, which was too cold except right next to the radiator, where it was too hot. She taught him to make figures that stood up using hotel coat hangers ("they're built for disappointment"), he taught her resin pouring while drunk.
"Secret is: don't care too much. Caring makes bubbles."
His current piece: his childhood raincoat from 1987, suspended in layers. Each layer marked something—"First school. When dog died. When father stopped coming home. When we stopped mentioning father."
"That's—"
"Sad? Yes. But also funny. Look—" He pointed to a layer. "Here I added glitter. Because why not? Life is terrible, might as well sparkle."
They drank Żubrówka from mugs. His said WORLD'S OKAYEST TATA. Hers had a faded picture of Pope John Paul II that appeared when the vodka warmed it.
"Your rain people, they're like my cabinets. We make the inside visible. Show what protection looks like when it stops working but we keep..."
"Wearing it anyway."
"Was going to say 'hoping' but yes."
Her phone buzzed. Mei texting from Derek's: "Mom where's my yellow raincoat"
Shit. She'd used it in a piece about dissolving childhoods. "Dad will buy you a new one."
"MOM you can't just take my stuff for art"
"Borrowed for posterity."
"That's not what any of those words mean"
"Language evolves."
"MOM"
Back in Vancouver, her opening. Twelve people, one bottle of wine, somebody's emotional support dog that kept trying to hump the raincoat figures.
A woman stood in front of her new piece—two umbrella skeletons holding handles. For forty minutes. Finally: "This is my marriage."
"It's about weather," Sasha said.
"Sure it is."
She bought it. Sent photos later of it in her bathroom. "My therapist says it's 'confrontational placement.' I say it's Tuesday."
Mei came with Emma, her friend with the pink-green hair that looked like a bruise healing.
"Which one's about Dad?" Mei asked.
"None of them."
"Mom. Come on."
"Fine. That one." She pointed to a figure wearing a raincoat backwards, hood facing the wrong way.
"That's literally perfect," Emma said. "My dad's like that but with emotions."
They all laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that hurt a little.
Packing up, Mei found Sasha's newest piece. A jewelry box, the kind with the spinning ballerina, filled with clear resin. Nothing suspended in it. Just resin and absence.
"Oh," Mei said, quietly.
"It's not—"
"Mom. It's everything."
Outside, Vancouver was being Vancouver—wet, apologetic, constant. Someone had left a working umbrella by the door. Red, barely used, probably forty dollars originally.
Sasha picked it up, opened it. One spoke immediately popped out of place, but it still sort of worked. She held it over Mei as they walked. Water dripped steadily through the broken part onto her shoulder. Her left shoulder blade got soaked in exactly one spot.
She kept holding it anyway.
"Mom, you're getting wet."
"Only partially."
"That's worse than completely."
"Is it though?"
Mei looked at her. Really looked. "You're being weird again."
"Still. I'm being weird still."
They walked to the car like that—partially covered, specifically wet, carrying protection that wasn't.
