Dessa

Dessa is Dominick Birdsey’s former wife, a mother whose daughter’s early death became a lasting grief, and a continuing presence in the lives of both Dominick and his twin brother, Thomas Birdsey. Their sixteen-year relationship includes shared hopes for a child, bereavement, and a separation Dominick eventually recognizes he helped bring about. Even after the marriage ends, Dessa’s gestures of affection and her friendship with Thomas resist the idea that their history can be reduced to its painful conclusion.

Identity and Life

Dessa and Dominick were together for sixteen years. At the time Dominick describes himself as unhappily divorced and less than a year out of the marriage, he still reaches for her in the night and wakes to the empty side of the bed. Their life together had been long enough to establish habits of intimacy that persist after separation, while the abruptness of the loss still catches him off guard.

Dessa works in child care. Later, she lives with a boyfriend who is a potter; the van she drives bears the words GOOD EARTH POTTERS. When Dominick sees it parked nearby, he notices the ordinary signs of her life: women’s sunglasses, an Indigo Girls cassette, a coffee mug decorated with the Three Stooges, and her black Lab, Sadie, asleep in the passenger seat. The scene makes her new household concrete to him, including the fact that the van may belong to her boyfriend rather than to her.

Dessa had also appeared in Ms. magazine with her friend Jocelyn. The brief reference places her in a life beyond her marriage to Dominick, though the account supplies no further details about the magazine feature.

Marriage, Parenthood, and Loss

As newlyweds, Dessa and Dominick spent time with their friends Leo and Angie: the couples went to the beach, visited each other’s apartments, and played cards. Their friendship carried an unspoken competition. If Dessa put baskets on the kitchen wall, Angie wanted baskets too; a sleep-sofa in one home prompted a need for one in the other. The narrator recalls that others expected Dessa and Dominick to last, and that the two of them expected it as well.

They tried for years to have a child and consulted two fertility specialists, enduring repeated humiliations in the process. They did have a daughter, Angela, but she died in May 1983, three weeks and three days after her birth. Dominick found her. He later recalls that he had stayed up correcting his students’ papers, overslept after turning off his alarm, and then decided to go back inside and kiss the baby before leaving. He is grateful that Dessa was spared the discovery, but that gratitude does not lessen the loss.

Dessa and Dominick grieved together. After Angela’s death, Dessa had to call her mother and ask her to come over; Gene Constantine came too. He and Dominick sat together, waiting for time to pass and for Dessa to stop crying. Dominick understood that she needed reassurance that the baby’s death was not her fault, while acknowledging that he had struggled with the same question himself. The shared vigil links Dessa’s grief to the family around her, without making the loss something they could explain away.

Thomas never got to meet Angela. Dominick had gone to tell him that he was an uncle and remembered Thomas smiling, but the planned visit did not happen before the baby died. That missed introduction adds another absence to the family’s account of Angela: Thomas knew of his niece, but never saw her.

Separation and Dominick’s Recognition

Dessa’s father, Gene, told her she would be better off without Dominick when she announced that she intended to divorce him. Dominick and Gene had generally respected one another, and their shared time after Angela’s death had given them a bond formed in grief. Still, Gene’s judgment makes explicit the blame Dominick had long understood Ray to place on him: that the divorce was his failure.

Dessa had gone to Greece to decide whether she wanted to try again for a child. She returned knowing that she did. Dominick later confronts the part he played in the marriage’s end: though Dessa packed her bags because she felt unable to breathe, he sees that he had done more to end the relationship than she had. In his own reckoning, he had suffocated the possibility and hope of a future together. The recognition is not simply that she left; it is that his conduct helped close off what she had hoped might still be possible.

After the separation, Dominick repeatedly drove past the farmhouse where Dessa and her boyfriend lived, holding on to fantasies of reconciliation. He recognizes this habit as an attachment to the life they had lost, rather than a way of moving forward. He had even gone there on the night he later totaled his truck. His memory of the marriage thus returns through both longing and self-reproach: he continues to love Dessa, but increasingly understands that loving her does not entitle him to reclaim their past.

Continuing Bonds with Dominick and Thomas

When Dessa and Dominick meet again in a parking lot, she parks three spaces away. She takes his hands, squeezes them, and hugs him. He places a hand at the small of her back, tentative despite their sixteen years together. The familiarity of the gesture and his awkwardness coexist: intimacy remains legible, but its old ease is gone. Dessa tells him she had wanted to come and that she loves Thomas. Before driving away, she gives Dominick a thumbs-up. He watches her leave and acknowledges that he cannot stop loving her and expects to love her for the rest of his life.

Dessa’s bond with Thomas is not merely an extension of her former marriage. Thomas had called her his very best friend, and Dominick remembers this when Dessa does not appear at Thomas’s funeral. He keeps imagining her arriving and making room beside him, perhaps holding her hand. Her absence hurts, although he also knows that his history with her includes more than the marriage’s collapse. The remembered closeness between Dessa and Thomas helps explain why Dominick hopes she will be there to mourn him with the family.

Her care continues in practical ways. When Dominick needs books, Dessa obtains them through interlibrary loan after the Three Rivers Public Library cannot supply them. At another point, he tries calling her but does not get the machine he hoped to reach. These small, incomplete contacts show a relationship that has not returned to marriage but has not disappeared into estrangement either. Dominick also wonders whether Dessa planted tulips, an inference rather than a confirmed fact, as he notices them and imagines her quiet presence in the aftermath of loss.

Grief, Contact, and the Limits of Reconciliation

Dessa later arrives carrying a pie. She looks upset and puts an arm around Dominick; he closes his eyes and hugs her back, and she is the first to pull away. The brief exchange offers comfort without clarifying what either expects from the other. Their physical closeness remains possible, but the encounter does not erase the separation or establish that they have resumed their marriage.

Dessa also speaks to Dominick about the emotional labor he has spent on Thomas. She recognizes that the brothers’ relationship was complex and that Thomas had occupied a great deal of Dominick’s life; after Thomas’s death, she suggests, Dominick will have to invest that energy elsewhere, a process likely to be complicated. In a separate reflection, she proposes that Thomas may simply have been ready to stop fighting. Her words offer neither a simple explanation nor a cure for grief. They acknowledge the strain of Thomas’s life and the difficult work left to his surviving brother.

Near the end, Dominick wonders whether Dessa wants to go upstairs and say hello to Ray. The question leaves their next step open. Across the novel, Dessa’s significance lies partly in that unresolved space: she is no longer Dominick’s wife, but remains bound to him by shared parenthood, a life together, and grief; she is also a beloved friend of Thomas, whose loss continues to bring her back into Dominick’s thoughts and life.