She slipped back into bed, and her husband reached for her body in his sleep, mumbling something she couldn’t make out. Carefully she laid his limp hand back under the comforter, as a hint of a distant tenderness flowed through her. For a second, she felt as much searing emotion as she could ever feel for another person, not including her mother. Recently, Egon had often yelled about getting a divorce, said that he wasn’t going to stay married to a broom handle, but words slung at her that way passed right through her as through a sieve. Her parents had always yelled like that when they fought. It didn’t mean anything, and she was used to it. All that mattered to her was that the neighbors didn’t hear. She was never much for arguing; she just figured that other people were so inclined, and she wasn’t. She defended herself in another fashion. There was no way of knowing when it would surface. Maybe Egon had never cheated on her at all, but that didn’t matter anymore.

The next morning they both acted as if nothing had happened. That was how their lives were. Helga made her husband’s lunch, made him coffee, and kissed him on the cheek as he left. Exactly as usual. Then she went shopping, filled with light, expectant thoughts. And there was no one to tell her that she looked beautiful that morning, in the way that perfectly regular people can, once in a while, when they are feeling happy. She brightened the November day like a pale, delicate morning star, trembling gently and devotedly before it is extinguished. She wasn’t the same person that she had been the day before. She was a woman walking into shops looking at umbrellas. It took a long time to find the right one. And she carried it awkwardly on the way home, like a man who isn’t used to carrying a bouquet of flowers.

Once she was inside, she opened the umbrella and skipped around the apartment with it. Her joy was pristine. She walked just like the woman in the yellow dress from her childhood. She walked past piles of dirty dishes, through large, bright rooms with palm trees in the corners and paintings on the walls. She entered an illuminated ballroom and remembered her first dance. She lifted the hem of her invisible dress and danced a few steps. The shaft of the umbrella was cool, thin, and strong, something to hold tightly, something to admire, to believe in, to acknowledge. Now she could say to her girlfriends: I bought an umbrella. And it would still be all hers. She shut it, studying the way it functioned: the shiny ribs, the tiny, adorable silk buttons, and the durable yet translucent cloth, against which the rain would someday thrum its melody of forgotten and lost times.