Either you go and clean my mother's apartment right now, my husband said, or tomorrow I file for divorce — six months out of work, living on my salary, saying it with a beer in his hand. I didn't argue. I took the keys and walked out. What was behind his mother's door turned that threat around on him inside forty minutes.

Then he pressed his mother's door keys into my palm and closed my fingers around them with his own.

And he said, to twenty people:

"Take them. Either you go and clean my mother's place right now, or tomorrow I file for divorce. Say yes, in front of everyone."

The room went silent.

Ilma was in the good chair and did not turn her head.

Twenty people. His cousin with a platter in his hands. My own neighbour from across the hall, who I had invited because I was embarrassed not to.

Nobody said one word.

I looked at him for about four seconds.

Then I smiled and said, "Yes. All right."

And Wade Ostrom smiled back with enormous satisfaction and said, "There we go. About time."

I got my coat and my bag and I left.

He thought he had finally broken me. That is what he told his cousin afterward, and his cousin told me, in the January, when it no longer cost him anything to tell me.