When Adis bought a good umbrella for the first time, his wife Mirna filed the receipt among their important expenses. Their income was respectable, but she had grown up in a home where every unexpected cost was felt for weeks. Adis often joked about it instead of asking what still frightened her.
On the third evening, he came home with a small hole in the black fabric. Mirna noticed it while the umbrella dried in the bathroom. It looked like a cigarette burn. He did not smoke. He said he did not know how it had happened, which was true, but he used the voice with which he sometimes avoided conversations.
Mirna immediately thought of a colleague who smoked outside his building. Once, Adis had held an umbrella over her while she searched for her keys. Now an ordinary memory became evidence. Mirna asked where he had been, who he had had coffee with and why his phone was on silent.
They argued. The next morning, Adis noticed another small hole, made while the umbrella was leaning against an old heater. He showed Mirna the hot metal projection. She was silent, then said their home insurance might cover heat damage. Apparently, filling out a form was easier than saying she was sorry.
At the insurance office, she described a spark and a possible fire. The clerk asked her to write down exactly what she had seen. Mirna looked at the blank form. She had seen no spark. There had been no fire. There was a heater, an umbrella and an argument she was now trying to turn into a refund.
She crossed out the first sentence and handed back the form. "I'm not sure I have anything to report here," she said. The clerk gave her the address of a man who repaired umbrellas. Mirna left without any money, but for the first time that morning, she could breathe more easily. She called Adis and asked him to meet her at the repair shop.
The repair cost less than lunch. While they waited, she apologized for the accusation. She also said she feared the moment when one expense would leave her having to ask other people for help. Adis stopped looking in the window. He told her how exhausting it was to experience every broken thing as a personal failure.
They set up a small repair fund and agreed on an amount each could spend without explaining it. Two neat seams remained on the umbrella. The next time it rained, Mirna took it to meet Adis. They stood close together beneath it, concerned only that they both fit, not whose side was drier.