Chapter 1 - Nine Years of Invisible Tears
Every single year, my birthday arrived the same way: quietly, invisibly, almost apologetically, as though the calendar itself knew better than to make a fuss in my house. Desmond would wake up, shower, go to work, come home, drop his keys into the ceramic bowl by the door, and ask what was for dinner. If my birthday happened to fall on a weekend, he might spend half the day golfing and the other half planted in front of the television, which apparently required the concentration of an air-traffic controller.
Eventually, usually sometime after dinner, I would remind him what day it was. He would wave one hand like I had announced National Stapler Appreciation Day and say, “We’re too old to make a fuss over birthdays.”
According to Desmond, birthdays were for children. Adults had mortgages, cholesterol, and television remotes they could never find. Grown people did not need cake, candles, presents, cards, flowers, or apparently any evidence that the person they married had noticed they were still alive.
His birthday, however, operated under a different branch of federal law.
Desmond started counting down roughly two months in advance. Links would begin appearing in my text messages for fishing equipment, leather jackets, expensive tools, and once a grill that cost more than our monthly mortgage payment. He maintained an actual list on his phone and updated it with the seriousness of a Pentagon procurement officer.
He also had opinions about wrapping paper.
Cheap paper was insulting. Gift bags suggested laziness. Bows were acceptable, but the little stick-on ones from the drugstore were apparently “tacky.” He preferred fabric ribbon, and I know this because I once made the mistake of wrapping a fishing reel in regular curling ribbon and spent twenty minutes hearing why presentation mattered.
For his thirty-ninth birthday, Desmond announced that what he really wanted was a surprise party.
Yes, he announced his desire for a surprise party.
I spent almost four months arranging it anyway.
I rented the back room at his favorite brewery, invited sixty people, coordinated food, ordered a custom cake shaped like the fishing boat he had talked about buying for years, and hired a photographer because Desmond had once complained that nobody captured enough candid pictures of him at events. I even convinced Curtis, his best friend since high school, to get him there under the pretense of watching a game.
When everyone yelled “Surprise!” Desmond actually got misty-eyed.
Later that night he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and told three different people that I was “the kind of wife every man dreams about.” For weeks afterward, he told coworkers and friends how incredible the party had been and how lucky he was to have a wife who knew how to make him feel like a king.
Three weeks later came my thirty-seventh birthday.
Desmond spent the entire day at a golf tournament with many of the same men who had eaten my carefully ordered appetizers and posed beside his fishing-boat cake.
He didn't say happy birthday before leaving.
He came home around nine that night, tossed his cap onto the counter, looked around the dark kitchen, and asked, “Why isn’t there anything for dinner?”
“It’s my birthday,” I said.
He stared at me for two seconds.
Then he said, “Well, you should’ve reminded me.”
After that, he opened a beer and turned on a rerun.
That was birthday number eight.
By then, I had heard every variation of the same excuse. I should have reminded him. I should have told him what I wanted. I was expecting too much. Adults didn’t need celebrations. He was busy. He wasn’t good with dates.
His mother, Lorna, somehow managed to remember his birthday at midnight every single year.
At twelve-oh-one, Desmond’s phone would ring and she would sing the entire birthday song, slowly, with the enthusiasm of someone performing at Carnegie Hall. She had never called me on my birthday, despite my having been married to her son for the better part of a decade.
Lorna had actually told me more than once that women who cared too much about birthdays were “needy.”
Desmond’s sister Bridget apparently agreed. Every year she posted a sprawling Facebook tribute to her brother about how blessed she was to have him, usually accompanied by childhood pictures and enough heart emojis to cause structural damage to the internet. On my birthday, Bridget generally posted about sourdough, exercise, or a new candle she liked.
For years, I kept trying anyway.
I bought the gifts. Made the reservations. Remembered his favorite cake. Texted his friends. Coordinated with his mother, who always had fourteen opinions about the menu and none about helping with it. I wrapped packages in the good paper because God forbid a forty-year-old man receive fishing gear in a gift bag like some kind of animal.
Once, half joking, I asked Desmond what he planned to get me for my birthday.
He looked directly at me and said, “Your gift is being married to a man like me.”
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The worst part was that he wasn't joking.
By year nine, something in me had worn smooth.
