“We talked it over with little Zoya and decided that you’ll be paying the installments for your own gift yourself,” my mother-in-law announced solemnly, sliding a large glossy box and a bank contract toward me.
“After all, the thing is shared now. It will be standing in your home, so the payment is a family debt too.”
Nina Timofeyevna cast a victorious glance around the guests gathered at the table for my thirty-fifth birthday. She smiled sweetly, absolutely certain of her own infallibility and her right to manage my money.
My mother-in-law had failed to consider only one thing: from beneath the paper clip on the contract, a sales receipt was treacherously sticking out, with some very interesting terms.
I pulled the transparent folder with the papers toward me. A spring celebration, neatly dressed relatives politely passing salad bowls to one another, and right there at the festive dinner I was being presented with a premium smart coffee machine, the latest model.
On credit.
My powers of observation had always worked several times faster than my emotions. I did not start getting indignant, crying, or justifying myself in front of the guests. I simply shifted my gaze from the colorful cardboard of the box to my mother-in-law’s face.
“Allow me to clarify, Nina Timofeyevna,” I said evenly, without the slightest note of irritation.
“The gift is being presented to me, the credit agreement is in your name, but I am supposed to make the monthly payments to the bank?”
“Well, look at you, acting like some fine lady!” my mother-in-law immediately threw up her hands, raising her voice to attract even more attention from everyone present.
“I, for your information, gave my personal passport information to complete strangers! I waited for approval, wasted my nerves!”
“You can just transfer twelve thousand to my card every month for a year, and that will be the end of it. But just think what kind of coffee you’ll be drinking in the mornings!”
I slowly took the papers out of the file and ran my eyes over the lines of the bank printout.
“Very interesting arithmetic. The official payment schedule states, in black and white, that the monthly installment is eight and a half thousand rubles. Where did the twelve-thousand figure come from? Did you decide to charge me a service fee?”
My sister-in-law Zoya, who until that moment had been enthusiastically chewing a sandwich with red caviar, hurried to help her mother.
“Lyuda, come on, Mom spent her personal time. She walked around the shopping center, talked to consultants. There should be some compensation for her efforts. We’re family, after all. We should solve everything like family, without all these dry accounting calculations of yours.”
I looked at Zoya. A girl who still sincerely believed that the entire world existed solely to serve her comfort.
“Solving things like family means adding your own personal interest on top of outrageous bank terms and dumping it on your daughter-in-law?” I carefully folded the contract back.
“An old story, but hard to believe. Your entrepreneurial spirit, madam, deserves thunderous applause.”
My mother-in-law blinked nervously, realizing that the beautiful public presentation of her generosity was not going according to plan at all. She decided to turn on pressure through status and authority in front of witnesses.
“Don’t disgrace us in front of people!” she hissed, leaning aggressively toward me across the table.
“We brought an elite item into your home, for your own good! A woman should be the keeper of the hearth. She should know how to be grateful instead of shaking coins out of her husband’s own mother. You should be happy we even cared about you at all!”
“Otherwise you live like you’re stuck in the last century.”
At that point, my husband predictably spoke up. Ilya always preferred the position of an ostrich on a concrete floor — hiding his head in the sand at the first sign of any discomfort, even when there was no sand anywhere.
“Lyuda, seriously, stop it. Mom tried. She picked out a surprise. We’re family, our budget is shared. We’ll pay it, we won’t go broke. Let’s not have scandals on a day like this.”
I turned an icy gaze on Ilya.
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Well, we… you and me. We’ll transfer money to Mom’s card from our shared funds.”
“On what grounds?” I crossed my arms.
“On the grounds that we’re family! And the thing will be standing in our kitchen!” my husband chopped the air with his hand, clearly feeling the powerful support of the maternal faction behind him.
Nina Timofeyevna straightened triumphantly in her chair.
“Exactly! Since the machine is in your home, that means you should give me keys to the apartment too, Ilyusha. I have every right to come in whenever I want and check how the appliance is working, since I personally vouched for it before the bank. Make a duplicate tomorrow.”
Ilya nodded obediently. I calmly took my keychain out of my purse and dropped it with a metallic clatter straight onto the credit agreement.
“If even one unaccounted-for duplicate appears in my home, there will be a new lock on the door the very next day. And I will send you the bill for its installation, Ilya. Now, let us bring this inventory of the gift to its logical conclusion.”
I pulled the long sales receipt out from under the paper clip and placed it in the very center of the tablecloth.
“Nina Timofeyevna, what is this loyalty bonus card number at the very bottom of the receipt? Unless my eyesight is failing me, the last four digits exactly match our Zoya’s mobile phone number.”
“So, let’s summarize the situation: an elite coffee machine is bought on consumer credit, which you brazenly try to hang on me with your personal markup. And the generous store cashback — judging by the purchase amount, about fifteen thousand bonus points — safely lands in Zoya’s account.”
“Did I get anything wrong? An outstanding business scheme. Chichikovs in skirts, truly. Are you waiting for me to come bowing to you in gratitude too?”
Zoya choked on her mineral water. Ilya stared at the receipt in confusion, blinking so often it looked as if dust had gotten into his eyes. The relatives at the table all lowered their gazes to their plates in perfect synchronization, carefully pretending they were not there at all.
My mother-in-law tried to wriggle out of it, her voice trembling.
“That… that is for future purchases! For the home! For frying pans, towels, things for you!”
“For whose home exactly?” I said coldly, knowing perfectly well that Zoya had long been saving up for a new smartphone.
“Madam, your commercial streak deserves to be included in economics textbooks, but I do not intend to sponsor this vanity fair.”
I got up from the table, picked up the unbearably heavy box along with the folder, and carried them to the cabinet in the hallway.
“The gift is not accepted. Take it back.”
“How dare you!” Nina Timofeyevna shrieked, losing the last remnants of her social polish.
“I already paid the first installment from my own savings!”
“Your investments are your personal risks,” I said, returning to my seat and calmly picking up my fork.
“Now let’s continue dinner. Ilya, please pass me the salad.”
The rest of the evening passed in an exceptionally strained atmosphere. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law demonstratively began getting ready to leave early, “forgetting” the box in the corridor.
“She’ll drag it over herself. She has nowhere to go,” Nina Timofeyevna whispered loudly to her daughter on the landing, confident that she was right.
The next day, at exactly ten in the morning, I was standing on the threshold of my mother-in-law’s apartment. Ilya had been trying to talk me out of it since the night before. He muttered the standard memorized phrases: “you’re destroying the family,” “you should have just kept quiet for the sake of peace.”
A sleepy Zoya opened the door. Nina Timofeyevna peered warily out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.
Without a word, I set the heavy coffee machine box directly onto the doormat. The folder with the credit agreement went on top.
“Here is your item.”
“My holidays take place without loans in my name. Good luck returning it to the store. According to the receipt, you have fourteen days.”
“You… you can’t do this to me!” my mother-in-law began to boil over, realizing the scale of the approaching catastrophe.
“How am I supposed to drag this monstrosity back?! I have a bad back!”
“Carry it back the same way you bought it. You and little Zoya talked it over yesterday, so she can help. Loyalty bonuses need to be worked off somehow through physical labor.”
“As the classic wrote: we consider everyone zeros, and ourselves the only ones, right? But in my mathematics, your account has been finally reduced to zero.”
I turned around and walked down the stairs, each step precise and firm. I did not listen to the shouts behind my back or the loud accusations of black ingratitude. The matter was closed.
That evening, Ilya came home from work quiet and unusually compliant. He had been forced to take half a day off at his own expense to drive his mother and the box to the shopping center, arrange the return, and write the humiliating application to cancel the loan.
Zoya, of course, suddenly claimed she was extremely busy at work and simply disappeared from the radar. In addition, it turned out at the store that when the item was returned, all the accumulated bonus points were automatically canceled.
My husband sat down to dinner, lazily picking at his plate with his fork.
“Mom is upset. Her blood pressure went up,” he squeezed out, looking at me from under his brows.
“My sincere sympathies. Medicine is expensive these days,” I calmly poured myself some hot tea. “But now you pay for everything from your own personal funds, so I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“You’re too harsh, Lyuda. You can’t treat family like that.”
“I am fair, Ilya. And remember this firmly for the future: when you publicly say ‘we decided,’ make sure that I am included in that ‘we.’”