The Birthday: A short story

Her husband woke her and she instantly knew why. She had been having a dream and banging her fist on the bed. In the dream, she was hitting her brother. As is so often the case with these things, when morning came, she could not remember anything else about the dream. Just that she was angry with her brother—more like frustrated. So frustrated that all she could manage to do was punch him. Not surprising.

Michael was 46 and lived in Mexico. The night before, she had several email exchanges with him. The subject was the contested custody of his two children. He and his Mexican wife were getting a divorce—a nasty one. Michael had not matured into a competent adult. She suspected he had bipolar disorder or something else that made it impossible for him to maintain jobs and relationships. And yet, he had moved to Mexico, fallen in love, and married a pregnant woman about 15 years his junior. They subsequently had a child of their own. The two girls were less than 2 years apart in age. Now the marriage was in the toilet and they were fighting over the kids. Michael currently had no consistent means of support, so how he was living, she didn’t understand. He obviously had enough money to pay for a roof over his head, an occasional outing with the girls, and lawyer fees, although she suspected the latter was working under agreement to be paid later, or else their parents were helping him. That would not be unusual, although she never knew how much her parents helped him and her sister. Michael was always the whipping boy of the family and her mother was more inclined to help him than her father, but even her father was unlikely to stand by while one of his children were in such dire straights.

She had talked with her mother earlier that day and suspected that the dream was more a result of that conversation, which had more to do with her sister. (To be continued.)