Dessa travels alone to Greece and Sicily

Dessa travels alone to Greece and Sicily after Dominick refuses to take the trip with her in the wake of their daughter Angela’s death. Planned as a way to face Angela’s first birthday, the journey becomes a point of separation between the spouses: Dessa leaves to meet the grief she can anticipate, while Dominick hides from both that grief and his fear of fatherhood’s return. Her departure is followed by his secret vasectomy; her return, in turn, opens a tentative path back to intimacy.

The Trip and Angela’s First Birthday

Dessa recognizes in advance how difficult Angela’s first birthday will be and plans accordingly. She has already turned her leave from the day care center into a resignation when she contacts her parents’ travel agent and arranges to travel by herself to Greece and Sicily. The trip had first been imagined as something she and Dominick would do together, using the life-insurance money they received after Angela’s birth.

Dessa asks Dominick to go with her, but he refuses because he does not want to leave before the school year ends. When she presses him to reconsider for her sake, he loses his temper and condemns the idea of traveling on money connected to their daughter’s death. That objection conceals a more personal fear: aboard a ship, he could not simply take the car keys and drive away, and he is afraid that being confined with Dessa might lead to another pregnancy.

Dominick’s Secret Response

The trip coincides with Dominick’s decision to make fatherhood impossible. He arranges a vasectomy without telling Dessa, presenting himself to the urologist as a single man who has made a considered decision. He does not disclose the operation to her during her calls from the Mediterranean, or to his friends. His private response turns the trip’s unspoken conflict into a lasting change in their marriage: while Dessa travels without him, Dominick secretly removes the possibility of having another child together.

His refusal is therefore more than a disagreement over travel or timing. He voices disgust at using death money for a holiday, but the fear he cannot tell Dessa is that he might become a father again. The concealed vasectomy gives that fear a concrete consequence, one he keeps from the person whose life it most directly affects.

Return and Renewed Intimacy

Dessa returns looking tan and rested. On her second night home, she and Dominick sit in the kitchen, share a bottle of wine, and look at her photographs. As she tells him about a passport mix-up, he interrupts by taking her hand, interlacing their fingers, and kissing her. He pushes her bangs from her forehead and holds her for the first time in a long while.

They go upstairs, both somewhat drunk and anxious. Dessa pauses outside Angela’s room and directs him inside; they lie down there. The scene does not erase the refusal or the undisclosed vasectomy, but it marks a change from the distance that preceded the journey: after returning alone, Dessa and Dominick approach each other again in the room associated with their loss.