I deserved a break!”

And there it was, the argument at the very center of everything, the belief that had allowed him to walk out the door: that his work counted, and mine did not.

That because he earned a paycheck, his labor was real, valued, deserving of rest and reward, while my labor, the round-the-clock work of keeping two infants alive, was somehow not work at all, but merely something that happened, a natural function of my being their mother, requiring no rest, earning no break, deserving no compensation.

“And I,” I said, and I let my voice rise just enough to cut cleanly through his, “work twenty-four hours a day.