Chapter 2 - The Birthday That Always Came Second
“Why is Vanessa crying?” I asked.
Mom exhaled sharply, like I was being difficult on purpose.
“Because she saw your post. Because she had no idea you were going to Tokyo. Because you embarrassed her.”
I actually looked around the terrace, as if I might find the missing part of the conversation floating over the infinity pool.
“How did I embarrass her?”
“You know how.”
“No, Mom. I don’t.”
In the background I heard my father say, “Give me the phone.”
Then Vanessa’s voice, louder and closer.
“She made it look like we abandoned her.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The family specialty.
Take something that happened to me, turn it into something I had done to them.
“I posted a skyline,” I said.
“You posted it today,” Vanessa snapped.
“It’s my birthday.”
Silence.
Not long.
Maybe one second.
But long enough.
Long enough for all three of them to remember that basic fact at the same time.
I smiled without humor.
“Exactly.”
Dad came onto the line.
“Emily, nobody forgot.”
“Then what did you get me?”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
I walked toward the table, put down my glass, and sat.
“Dad?”
“We were going to call.”
“When?”
“We’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
Mom answered from somewhere in the room.
“Christmas.”
I laughed.
I hated how quickly the sound escaped me.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was familiar.
December 23 had always been swallowed by December 25.
When I was eight, my birthday cake was a grocery-store sheet cake with a plastic Santa in one corner because Mom said the bakery was “too backed up to customize anything.”
When I was twelve, we skipped dinner because Dad had to pick up Vanessa’s Christmas recital costume.
At sixteen, I watched my sister leave for a winter dance while Dad handed me an iPhone box at the Christmas Eve table.
“Birthday and Christmas,” he’d said. “Two birds, one stone.”
Vanessa’s sixteenth birthday, six months later, took place on a yacht on Lake Michigan.
Eighty guests.
DJ.
Caterer.
Custom ice sculpture.
A dress Mom had flown to New York to buy with her.
I had spent years telling myself it was timing.
Bad luck.
December birthdays were hard.
Then Vanessa turned twenty-three.
My parents surprised her with a week in Cabo.
That was when I finally understood.
It wasn’t the calendar.
It was the ranking.
And I had always known mine.
Dad cleared his throat.
“Come home after your trip. We’ll do something.”
“No.”
The word came out calm.
That scared him more than if I had yelled.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I’m done accepting make-up birthdays.”
Vanessa scoffed.
“Oh my God. This is so dramatic.”
I stared at Tokyo Tower.
“No, Vanessa. Dramatic was your twenty-first birthday entrance on a white horse.”
She went quiet.
For exactly two seconds.
Then she said, “At least people wanted to celebrate me.”
I froze.
The city noise below suddenly felt very far away.
Mom gasped her name.
Dad said, “Vanessa, enough.”
May you like
But the sentence had already landed.
And for once, nobody could wrap it in Christmas paper and pretend it hadn’t.
