Father's Other Umbrella

How it begins

The umbrella was the only thing my father left that nobody wanted me to keep.

By Wednesday, four people had asked for it.

The first was Leon Venn, who used to sell bus tickets through a window so small that his hands had become more familiar than his face.

"Your father borrowed that."

"When?"

"During the flood."

"There were three floods."

Leon considered this.

"The wet one."

I had been repairing a toaster when he came in. The shop smelled of warm dust and the orange somebody had peeled on the bus downstairs. My father's umbrella stood in the corner beside a roll of abandoned carpet.

It was large and blue, with a wooden handle polished smooth on one side.

I had never seen him carry it.

Dad preferred raincoats. He liked to say you could not mend a roof while holding an umbrella, although he had stopped mending roofs long before he died.

Leon picked it up with both hands.

"Are you sure it's yours?" I asked.

"No," he said. "But he was supposed to bring it back."

He seemed satisfied that this answered the question.

After he left, without the umbrella, I opened it over the workbench.

Four different people had repaired the same seam. Black thread, blue thread, a narrow line of red, then something pale and surprisingly fine.

My mother would never have used red.

Tucked beneath the lining was a bus ticket dated nineteen years earlier.

I remembered that day.

Dad had missed my wedding rehearsal because he said the shop roof was leaking.

Outside, Leon was waiting beneath the station awning.

I took the ticket to the door.

He saw it and removed his cap.

"I didn't know," he said.

"Didn't know what?"

"That you'd remember."

Behind me, the open umbrella made a small, patient room in the middle of the shop.

For the first time since the funeral, I wanted to ask my father a question that had nothing to do with dying.