THE INTERVIEW

7: The Birthday Party

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Q33. "The party started at two," Dale said. "I remember because I'd worked the morning shift—gone in at five, got off at one, drove straight home. Linda was already setting up when I got there. She'd been doing it all morning, blowing up balloons, hanging streamers. I felt guilty for not helping, but she said it was fine. She always said it was fine."

"But it wasn't."

"Probably not. But that was the deal we'd made, even if we'd never said it out loud. I worked. She did everything else." He could see the backyard now, assembling itself in his memory like a photograph developing. "The kids started arriving around two-fifteen. Six or seven of them—I don't remember exactly. Melissa's friends from the neighborhood, a couple from school. They were all in that manic state kids get into at parties, running around, screaming, hopped up on anticipation."

"And Melissa?"

"She was the center of it. The birthday girl." He smiled, and the smile felt real, connected to something warm. "She had this way of commanding attention even then. Not bossy, just—magnetic. The other kids orbited around her. She decided what games they'd play, when they'd run through the sprinkler, when it was time for cake. Natural leader."

"Like her father."

Dale shook his head. "Better than her father. I had to learn how to lead people. She just knew."

Ms. Vance made a note. "Tell me about the cake."

"Linda made it from scratch. She always did, for birthdays. A two-layer vanilla cake with pink frosting—Melissa's request. And she'd put these little sugar flowers around the edge, purple and white. I remember thinking it looked too pretty to cut."

"What did the frosting taste like?"

The question was strange, specific in a way that caught him off guard. "I don't—vanilla, I guess. Sweet. The way frosting tastes."

"Did Melissa like it?"

"She loved it. She ate two pieces and wanted a third, but Linda said no, she'd be sick." The memory was vivid now, playing behind his eyes like film footage. Melissa at the head of the folding table, pink frosting on her chin, reaching for the cake plate. Linda gently pushing her hand away. The look of mock outrage on Melissa's face, and then the giggle, and then the smile—

The smile.

"She smiled at me," Dale said slowly. "When Linda told her no more cake. She looked over at me like she was going to appeal the decision, try to get me on her side. And she smiled."

"What kind of smile?"

"A—" He struggled to describe it. "A conspiratorial smile. Like we were in on something together, her and me. Like I was supposed to overrule Linda and let her have the third piece."

"Did you?"

"I don't remember." The admission bothered him. This was a good memory, a clear memory, one of the few bright spots in the long gray stretch of Melissa's childhood. He should remember what happened next. "I think—I might have snuck her a piece later. After the other kids left. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I just shrugged and let Linda be the bad guy, the way I always did."

"The way you always did?"

"I wasn't good at discipline. Setting limits, saying no. That was Linda's department." He heard the pattern even as he described it. Work, Linda, everything else. The same division, playing out across every aspect of their life. "I wanted to be the fun parent. The one they were happy to see. But you can't be the fun parent when you're never there."

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Q34. Ms. Vance was quiet for a moment. The pen rested on the legal pad, still.

"Tell me more about the party," she said finally. "After the cake. What happened next?"

"Presents," Dale said. "The presents were after cake. We sat Melissa in the big chair—the lawn chair with the cushion, we'd put a ribbon on it, made it the 'birthday throne'—and the kids sat in a circle around her. Linda handed her presents one at a time."

"What did you give her?"

He tried to remember. He'd been standing behind the circle, watching. He must have picked something out, or told Linda what to buy. But the specific gift—

"I don't know," he said. "I don't remember what I gave her."

"That's okay. What do you remember?"

"The—" He grasped for details. "The wrapping paper. Bright colors, pink and purple mostly. Linda always coordinated the wrapping paper. And the sounds—tearing paper, kids oohing and aahing, Melissa saying thank you in that formal way kids do when they've been coached."

"What presents did she get? From the other kids?"

"I don't—" He shook his head. "I remember a Barbie. I think. Or maybe that was a different year. They blur together, the birthdays. You think you'll remember them all, but you don't. They just become—birthday. Generic. The edges worn smooth."

"But this one stands out. The eighth birthday. Why?"

Dale considered. Why did this one stay clear when so many others had faded? What made the yellow dress and the pink cake and the gap-toothed smile stick when everything else had washed away?

"The smile," he said. "That moment when she looked at me across the table. I think—I think that's when I realized she still wanted me. Still wanted my attention, my approval. She was eight, and she was already learning to do without me, but right then, in that moment, she still reached for me first."

"And what did you do with that moment?"

"I don't know." The words came out rougher than he intended. "I told you. I don't remember if I snuck her the cake or not. I don't remember what I gave her. I just remember her reaching for me, and I must have—I must have done something. Responded somehow."

"But you don't remember."

"I don't remember."

Ms. Vance wrote something on her pad. The scratch of pen seemed louder now, more deliberate. Dale watched her hand move across the paper, the small precise letters he couldn't read from his side of the table.

"What else do you remember about that day?" she asked without looking up.

---

Dale closed his eyes again, reaching for the memory. The backyard on Briarwood. The sprinkler arcing water across the lawn. The sound of children laughing. The smell of cut grass and sugar and sunscreen.

But the details were slipping now, somehow. He'd just been talking about the cake, the pink frosting, but when he tried to picture it, the image was less certain than before. Vanilla cake, yes. Pink frosting. But the sugar flowers—had they been purple and white? He'd said purple and white, he was sure he had, but now he couldn't quite see them.

"The flowers on the cake," he said slowly. "What color did I say they were?"

Ms. Vance glanced at her notes. "Purple and white."

"Right. Purple and white." He tried to fix the image in his mind. Purple flowers, white flowers, arranged around the edge of a pink-frosted cake. But the colors kept sliding, refusing to stay where he put them. "I think—I'm not sure if—"

"Memory is unreliable," Ms. Vance said gently. "Especially for events that happened decades ago. The details shift. It's perfectly normal."

"I know. I just—" He opened his eyes. "I could see it so clearly a minute ago. The whole scene. And now it's—"

"Fading?"

"Blurring." He pressed his palms against the table, grounding himself in the present. The cool laminate, the fake wood grain, the solid reality of the conference room. "Like I'm looking at it through water."

"That must be frustrating."

"It is." He took a breath. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm—this isn't relevant to the interview. We were talking about my daughter, not birthday parties from twenty years ago."

"We were talking about you, Dale. About who you are, what matters to you. Your daughter matters to you. This memory matters to you. That makes it relevant." Ms. Vance set down her pen. "I appreciate you sharing it with me. I know it's not easy to go back to these moments. To look at them clearly."

"I'm not looking at them clearly. That's the problem."

"Maybe clarity isn't the point. Maybe the point is that you remember at all. That you carry this moment with you—the yellow dress, the pink frosting, the smile across the table. Even if the details are imperfect, the feeling is real. The love is real."

Dale stared at her. The words sounded right, sounded kind, but something about them didn't land. Something was—

"The dress," he said suddenly.

"What about it?"

"I said she was wearing a yellow dress. But—" He tried to see it, his daughter at eight, standing in the backyard. The dress was yellow. He'd said it was yellow. But when he reached for the image, the color wouldn't hold. It was yellow, or it was white, or it was—

"What color was the dress, Dale?"

"Yellow." His voice sounded strange to his own ears. "It was yellow. I'm sure it was yellow."

"You don't sound sure."

"I—" He pressed his fingers to his temples. The headache was worse now, a steady pulse behind his eyes. "I don't know what's happening. I could see it all so clearly. The dress, the cake, the flowers. And now—"

"Now?"

"Now it's like—like looking at a photograph that's been left in the sun. The colors are fading. The edges are blurring." He dropped his hands, looked at Ms. Vance. "Is that normal? For memories to fade while you're talking about them?"

"Stress affects memory in unpredictable ways." Her pen hadn't moved. She wasn't writing any of this down. "You've been under a lot of pressure, Dale. Eleven months of uncertainty. The weight of this interview. It's natural for the mind to—to prioritize. To let go of what it doesn't need in order to focus on what's important."

"But that birthday is important. It's one of the only—"

"One of the only what?"

He stopped. One of the only good memories. One of the only times he'd been present. One of the only moments when his daughter had looked at him like he mattered.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know what I was going to say."

Ms. Vance was quiet for a moment. The room was quiet—no HVAC hum, no fluorescent buzz, just a silence so complete it felt like pressure against his ears.

"I think," she said finally, "we should move on. There are other things I'd like to ask you about."

Dale nodded, but the birthday party was still there in his mind, nagging at him. The yellow dress—or the not-yellow dress. The pink frosting on a vanilla cake with flowers that might have been purple or might have been something else. The smile across the table, reaching for him.

That was still clear. The smile was still clear.

He held onto that.

"Yes," he said. "Let's move on."

But as Ms. Vance turned to a fresh page on her legal pad, Dale found himself glancing at the ceiling—at the water stain that sat above and behind her head. It was definitely darker now. Larger. The oblong shape had spread, or seemed to have spread, the brown edges creeping outward across the acoustic tile.

He looked away.

Behind him, the door waited. Patient and present. The door he'd come through, the door he could leave through.

Any time he wanted.

He stayed in his chair.