I Came to the Hospital With Gifts and Overheard My Husband Tell My Sister, “Your Son Will Have My Name, and Your Sister Will Pay for Everything”

I was the responsible one.

That was my name, really, more than Valerie — the responsible one, the capable one, the one who had her act together.

Rebecca was the other kind, the spoiled favorite of our parents, Arthur and Beatrice, the sensitive one, the one who needed things, the one whose feelings set the weather in every room she entered.

And the arrangement between us, the deep unspoken arrangement that had run our family since we were girls, was simple and total: my job was to provide, and hers was to receive, and no one, least of all me, was ever to mention that this was the arrangement, because mentioning it would have been selfish, and being selfish was the one thing the responsible one was never allowed to be.

So when I earned more, I paid more, and this was called fairness.

When Rebecca wanted something, I yielded, and this was called being the bigger person.