Chapter 1: Birthdays Are for Children
For nine years, my husband treated my birthday like it was just another date on the calendar. Then his own birthday came around, and suddenly he expected breakfast, presents, dinner reservations, and an entire celebration planned around him. So that year, I decided to give him exactly what he had given me for nearly a decade. Nothing. When he finally demanded an explanation, I simply repeated the same words he had used on me year after year. “Birthdays are for children, remember?” He immediately accused me of being petty. Then he made an even bigger mistake. He claimed he had never actually forgotten my birthdays. That was when I walked into our bedroom, opened the bottom drawer of my dresser, and pulled out a black notebook. By the time I finished reading from it, the kitchen was completely silent. For most of our marriage, my birthday came and went without changing anything in our household. Desmond would wake up, shower, get dressed, and leave for work. At the end of the day, he would come home, toss his keys onto the table, and ask what we were having for dinner. If my birthday happened to fall on a weekend, he might spend most of the day golfing before coming home and watching television. Usually, sometime after dinner, I would finally ask him, “Do you know what today is?” He would stare at me blankly. And eventually, I would have to say it myself. “It’s my birthday.” Desmond always responded with some version of the same speech. “We’re adults. Why do people make such a big deal about birthdays?” According to him, birthday celebrations were childish. Adults had jobs. Bills. Mortgages. Responsibilities. Apparently that meant adults didn’t need cards, flowers, cakes, presents, or even a simple acknowledgment from their spouse. At least, that was the rule when the birthday belonged to me. When Desmond’s birthday came around, everything changed. He started talking about it weeks in advance. Sometimes nearly two months beforehand. He would send me links to things he wanted. Fishing equipment. Expensive tools. Leather jackets. One year, he sent me a link to a grill that cost nearly as much as our monthly mortgage payment. He even kept a birthday wish list on his phone. And he was strangely particular about gift wrapping. Cheap wrapping paper wasn’t good enough. Gift bags were “lazy.” Those little store-bought adhesive bows were apparently embarrassing. He preferred proper fabric ribbon. I learned that after wrapping one of his fishing reels with ordinary curling ribbon and sitting through a twenty-minute explanation about why presentation mattered. The irony seemed completely lost on him. For his thirty-ninth birthday, Desmond told me he wanted one thing more than anything else. A surprise party. Yes. He actually told me that he wanted to be surprised. And somehow, I still managed to make it happen. I rented a private room at his favorite brewery. I invited nearly sixty people. I arranged the food. I ordered a custom cake shaped like the fishing boat he had dreamed about owning for years. I even hired a photographer because Desmond once complained that nobody ever took enough candid pictures of him at parties. His best friend Curtis helped me get him to the brewery without revealing anything. When everyone jumped up and shouted, “Surprise!” Desmond actually looked emotional. Later that evening, he put his arm around me and proudly told several guests that I was the kind of wife every man wished he had. For weeks afterward, he talked about that party. He told friends and coworkers how perfect everything had been. He kept saying how fortunate he was to have a wife who knew how to make him feel special. Three weeks later, I turned thirty-seven. Desmond spent the entire day at a golf tournament. Several of the men golfing beside him had attended the elaborate birthday party I had spent months organizing. He left the house that morning without saying a word about my birthday. He finally returned around nine that night. He dropped his cap on the kitchen counter, looked around, and asked, “Why isn’t dinner ready?” I stared at him. “It’s my birthday.” He blinked. Then he said, “Well, you should’ve reminded me.” That was all I got. No apology. No embarrassment. No attempt to make it up to me. He opened a beer and turned on the television. That was birthday number eight. By then, I knew every excuse. I should have reminded him. I should have told him what I wanted. I expected too much. Adults didn’t need birthday celebrations. He was busy. He wasn’t good at remembering dates. Strangely enough, his mother never forgot his birthday. Lorna called him shortly after midnight every single year. She sang the entire birthday song into the
phone like she was performing in front of an audience. In nearly a decade of marriage, she had never once called me on my birthday. She had also told me several times that women who cared too much about birthdays were “needy.” Desmond’s sister Bridget seemed to share the same opinion. Every year, she posted an enormous tribute to Desmond online. Old childhood photos. Long emotional captions. Rows of heart emojis. Judging by her posts, civilization itself should have been grateful Desmond had been born. When my birthday came around, Bridget usually posted about exercise, recipes, candles, or whatever else happened to interest her that week. Still, I kept trying. Every year, I bought Desmond presents. I booked restaurants. I remembered his favorite cake. I contacted his friends. I coordinated plans with his mother, who always had endless suggestions despite doing almost none of the actual work. And I wrapped his gifts exactly the way he preferred because apparently receiving fishing equipment in a gift bag would have been unbearable. Once, mostly as a joke, I asked him, “So what are you getting me for my birthday?” Desmond looked straight at me. “You already have your present.” “What present?” “Being married to me.” I waited for him to laugh. He didn’t. By the ninth year, something inside me had finally run out. My birthday fell on a Thursday. That morning, I secretly took the day off work. Instead of sitting at home wondering whether Desmond might finally remember, I drove across town and spent the afternoon at a spa. I paid for it with money from a small private savings account. For almost a year, I had been putting away little amounts whenever I could. Twenty dollars. Thirty dollars. Nothing enormous. At that point, I wasn’t preparing to leave my marriage. I wasn’t planning some dramatic confrontation. I just wanted one thing in my life that belonged to me. Because most of my time, energy, and attention seemed to belong to everyone else. I got a massage. Sat in the steam room. Ate lunch by myself. Then I spent hours reading a novel in the softest robe I had ever worn. It was easily the best birthday I’d had in years. When I returned home, I was actually relaxed. Desmond looked at me for a moment. “Did you do something to your hair?” “No.” “Huh.” Then he asked what I was cooking for dinner. And yes. I still made dinner. But something inside me had changed. Until that day, I had treated every forgotten birthday as a separate disappointment. That year, I finally understood that it wasn’t a series of accidents. It was a pattern. Desmond wasn’t bad at birthdays. In fact, he was excellent at them. As long as the birthday was his. So I made a decision. I was finished doing all the emotional work for both of us. A few months later, Desmond’s birthday arrived. That morning, he stayed in bed longer than usual. Normally, I would have walked into the bedroom carrying coffee, eggs, toast, and a small present. Instead, I went downstairs and poured myself a bowl of cereal. Eventually, Desmond wandered into the kitchen wearing sweatpants. He looked at the table. Then the stove. Then me. “Where’s breakfast?” “There’s food in the refrigerator.” He frowned. “I mean my birthday breakfast.” I took another bite of cereal. “What about it?” He stared at me. “It’s my birthday.” I gave him the same puzzled expression he had given me countless times. “Oh.” Then I went back to drinking my coffee. He stood there waiting. Finally, I said, “I thought adults were too old to make a big deal out of birthdays. Aren’t birthdays for children?” His face slowly changed. “What?” “Those are your words.” “I know I said that, but—” “Then we agree.” “No, we definitely do not agree.” I picked up my purse. “Have a good Wednesday.” He followed me toward the front door. “You didn’t buy me anything?” I smiled. “Wouldn’t that be childish?” Then I left for work. opening confrontation did not feel dramatic while Elise lived inside it; it felt like another ordinary evening asking her to swallow one more ordinary insult. She noticed the shared calendar because small objects often became anchors when people tried to make the truth slippery. Desmond spoke in a restrained tone that asked everyone to treat his discomfort as the main emergency. Elise answered with the plainness she had practiced in the mirror, and the room had to hear her. The strange thing about being dismissed for years was how practical Elise had become about pain. She could name the date, the bill, the errand, the meal, the call from Lorna, and the exact sentence Desmond used when he wanted her hurt to sound
