Dominick and Dessa’s separation is the consequence of grief made harder by silence: after their daughter Angela dies, Dominick secretly makes himself unable to father another child, while Dessa travels alone to decide whether she wants to try again. The operation becomes the immediate rupture, but the separation’s deeper cause is the anger and blame Dessa has experienced throughout their bereavement. Her departure leaves Dominick to confront how his attempt to control the future has helped destroy the marriage he wanted to keep.

Background and bereavement

Angela died in May 1983, three weeks and three days after her birth. Dominick found her after turning off his alarm in his sleep and oversleeping; although he had been correcting students’ papers late the night before, he had started to leave for work and then returned to kiss the baby. Dessa had been up with Angela during the night and was sleeping in. Dominick later said he was grateful to have found his daughter himself, because that spared Dessa this particular shock. He had imagined getting to know Angela properly after the school year ended, an intention made painfully tentative by the shortness of her life.

The loss also marked a future that the couple had expected to share. When Angela was born, Big Gene Constantine had taken out a life-insurance policy on her, as he had for the children of Angie and Leo. Dessa wanted to use the insurance money to travel with Dominick to Greece and Sicily. She had hoped the journey would be something they did together, but Dominick declined, telling himself that he could not leave before the school year ended. The refusal concealed a more personal fear: he dreaded being confined with Dessa on a ship and feared that the trip might lead them to conceive another child.

The trip and the concealed decision

Dessa anticipated that Angela’s first birthday would be especially painful. She had turned her leave from the day-care center into a resignation and arranged to travel alone. When she asked Dominick to go for her sake, he lost his temper and called a trip financed by the insurance money sick. His objection masked the fear he could not bring himself to explain. He encouraged her to go without him, and she did.

Dominick spent Angela’s first birthday getting a vasectomy. He chose a urologist from the phone book and presented himself as a single man who had made a conscientious decision because of overpopulation, saying there was no wife whose consent was needed. His account makes clear that he arranged the procedure without Dessa’s knowledge. The secrecy was not a misunderstanding about what she wanted: he had decided for himself that another pregnancy must be prevented, while she was away trying to understand what she wanted after their daughter’s death.

When Dessa returned, the couple’s intimacy faltered. Dominick thought she was afraid of becoming pregnant and chose that moment to tell her what he had done. She stopped crying, then reacted with a physical outburst. She told him that she wanted another child; the trip had helped her reach that decision. The news turned his unilateral precaution into a direct contradiction of the future she had come home ready to discuss.

The rupture and departure

For the next couple of weeks, conversation dwindled to single syllables. Dessa cleaned closets, cooked meals she did not eat, rented a carpet cleaner, and stripped wallpaper from Angela’s room. Calls passed between her, her sister, and Eileen, a friend from the SIDS group. These domestic acts and calls followed the disclosure, but they did not repair the silence between the couple. On a Saturday morning in July, Dessa told Dominick she was leaving.

Dominick responded by pointing out that vasectomies could sometimes be reversed. Dessa rejected that solution as inadequate: in her view, the operation was a symptom, while the problem was his anger and the blame she felt he had directed at her throughout their loss. She described their marriage as a game of One, Two, Three, Red Light: each small step she made toward recovery seemed to be undone by his anger. Away from him, she had felt stronger; after returning and seeing him, she felt she was back at the beginning. She said she needed to protect herself and be able to breathe.

Dominick promised he could do better and offered to return to the support group. He followed her down the stairs and out to the car, begging and making promises, but her luggage was already packed in the back seat and the open trunk of the Celica. She left with the dog. The departure made the separation concrete: Dominick could offer reversal of the procedure and promise a change in himself, but neither could undo the decision she had reached or restore trust in time.

Aftermath and continuing loss

Dominick spent the rest of that summer reading large books and avoiding looking up. His recollection of the separation is entwined with the grief that preceded it and the absences that followed. He had gone to tell Thomas that Angela was a girl, bringing him a cigar and making him an uncle; Thomas smiled, but never met his niece, because the planned visit did not happen before she died. Dominick later described Thomas’s illness as having accomplished what he himself had tried to do all his life: separate the twins. He could accept that separation at times, yet also remembered aching for Thomas and needing him.

The marriage’s ending likewise persists in Dominick’s inner life rather than closing neatly with Dessa’s departure. In a later dream, he imagines that she has not left him. That return of the lost marriage echoes his continuing effort to recover lives and futures that bereavement has taken away. The event’s significance lies in the contrast between Dessa’s journey toward a decision she hoped to share and Dominick’s secret attempt to make the decision for both of them. His concealment protects him temporarily from the possibility of another child, but its disclosure reveals that the marriage has already been made unbreathable for Dessa.