“Have you completely lost your mind? What is this exhibition you’ve got here for strangers to see?!”
Oksana froze in the hallway, not even having time to take off her boots. Her mother-in-law’s voice rang out from the bedroom so loudly, as if she hadn’t been rummaging through someone else’s wardrobe but conducting an inspection at a vegetable warehouse. A heavy laptop bag was still hanging over Oksana’s shoulder, her temples were pounding after the meeting, the minibus had crawled along the evening avenue at the speed of a wounded snail, and just before she left, her boss had added, “Oksana, the presentation is rough. Redo it by morning.”
Redo it. By morning. Of course. Why not? Sleep was optional. And apparently, coming home to a circus was part of the evening program too.
She slowly closed the door, clicked the lock, and walked into the bedroom.
There, beside the open wardrobe, stood Zinaida Pavlovna — wearing a glittery lurex sweater and an expression as though she had personally saved the morality of the entire district. In her hands dangled Oksana’s new lingerie set, bought a week earlier on sale. The discount had been so good that it had to be taken silently and quickly before anyone changed their mind.
“I’m asking you, what is this supposed to be?” her mother-in-law shook the lace in front of her. “Do you live at home or work on a runway?”
“And why, excuse me, are you digging through my things?” Oksana asked very quietly, and that was more dangerous than any scream.
“Not your things. Family things. My son lives here, by the way. I have the right to see what condition the home is in and what kind of atmosphere you have here.”
“What kind of atmosphere? Nerves, Zinaida Pavlovna. Mine. You air them out wonderfully.”
“Don’t be rude to your elders. I came to help, by the way. There’s dust in the apartment, an unwashed mug in the kitchen, towels thrown around in the bathroom. And all of this…” She lifted the lingerie again with two fingers, as if it were evidence in a criminal case. “Who are you dressing up for? For Seryozha? Or do they give bonuses for cleavage at your office?”
Oksana snatched the set out of her hands.
“For myself. Have you heard that phrase? For myself. And once again: what are you doing in our bedroom?”
“Our bedroom?” the mother-in-law smirked. “You’re funny. While you’re at work day and night, someone has to take care of the home. My son is hungry, his shirts are wrinkled, there’s no soup, no proper food, and his wife comes home in the evening with a face that says, ‘I hate everyone.’ Of course I came.”
“Seryozha is hungry?” Oksana gave a dry laugh. “Then who empties the fridge at night so completely that even the yogurt looks at me sadly in the morning? A house spirit?”
“A woman is obligated to feed her husband.”
“And a husband is obligated to occasionally lift his backside off the sofa.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my son that way!”
“Then don’t you dare rummage through my underwear! Agreed?”
Seryozha appeared in the doorway. He was wearing sweatpants with stretched-out knees, a T-shirt that should have long ago been moved to the “for the dacha” category, holding a mug of tea, with the face of a man who deeply wished he had been born into a family where everyone stayed silent.
“What’s going on again?” he muttered. “I just started a video.”
Oksana turned to him.
“Seriously? That’s your first sentence? Not ‘Mom, leave the room,’ not ‘Oksana, I’m sorry,’ but ‘what’s going on again’?”
Seryozha sighed as if he had been forced to unload freight cars.
“Oksan, don’t get worked up. Mom is just worried.”
“About what? The condition of my wardrobe?”
“About the family!” Zinaida Pavlovna cut in sharply. “About the fact that my son’s wife is always running around somewhere, while there’s no order at home! I would have kept quiet if you behaved like a proper homemaker. But you behave like a tenant who dropped in just to spend the night.”
“And you behave like the local morality inspector,” Oksana snapped. “Who invited you here?”
“Seryozha had a spare key. He gave it to me.”
Oksana slowly shifted her gaze to her husband.
“You gave your mother the key to my apartment?”
“Oh, listen, don’t start just because of a key. What’s the big deal? She’s not a stranger.”
“But apparently I am. Since there’s an unpaid guided tour going through my bedroom.”
Seryozha set his mug on the dresser.
“You’re dramatizing everything. Mom came over, cleaned up, fried some cutlets.”
“Right, and while she was at it, she arranged a customs inspection of the bottom drawer. Very useful service.”
“Because I care!” the mother-in-law flared up. “I see how my son is fading away next to you.”
“Oh, really. He’s fading away? From what? The internet? Computer games? From the fact that I pay for the apartment, groceries, phone bills, and half of his little wishes?”
“He’s going through a difficult period right now.”
“That difficult period has lasted three years.”
Seryozha frowned.
“That’s enough. I’m trying to find myself.”
Oksana stared at him.
“You’ve been searching for yourself so hard that soon we’ll have to put up posters around the neighborhood: ‘Missing adult man, last seen on the sofa with a game controller.’”
“Very funny.”
“I’m having a wonderful evening in general. Especially after walking into my home and seeing your mother in our wardrobe like an archaeologist at an excavation site.”
Zinaida Pavlovna pressed her lips together.
“This is exactly why I was against your wedding. You’re sharp-tongued, prickly, stubborn. My Seryozha needed a calm girl. A domestic one. Lena from the next building, for example — pure gold, not a girl. She cooks, irons, and never raises her voice.”
“Then go get Lena before someone else takes her,” Oksana said coldly. “And leave me alone.”
“Don’t talk to your husband’s mother like that!”
“And stop acting as if I’m temporary here and you’re the director of this circus.”
“Oksana,” Seryozha drawled tiredly, “why are you getting so worked up? Mom came in, looked at some things. What now, should we make a tragedy out of it?”
Oksana didn’t answer right away. She looked at him as if, in a few seconds, she was reviewing their entire marriage — from their first date with cheap latte at the mall to this magnificent moment: her husband with a mug, her mother-in-law with her lingerie, and herself, like an idiot who had played the patient wife for far too long.
“Do you really not understand what’s wrong here?” she asked almost in a whisper.
“I understand. But can we do it without hysterics?”
“So your mother digging through my things isn’t hysteria. But me being outraged is.”
“You’re twisting everything.”
“No, Seryozha. You and your mother have a duet going on here: one intrudes, the other pretends that’s normal.”
Zinaida Pavlovna raised her chin.
“I would never advise my son badly. And instead of thanking me, you bare your teeth. You come home angry, don’t want to cook, haven’t given birth to children, don’t support your husband. What are you even in this family for?”
“I’ll write you a list right now,” Oksana smirked. “Point by point. First: I pay the mortgage. Second: I buy the food. Third: I pay for electricity, water, and the internet your son consumes like a factory. Fourth: I work so much that my eye twitches on a schedule now. And after all that, I’m supposed to give a standing ovation because I’m being humiliated in my own home?”
“The mortgage?” her mother-in-law snorted. “How much could you have done without your husband?”
“Shall we check?” Oksana sharply opened the bedside table, took out a folder with documents, and slapped it onto the bed. “Let’s check.”
Seryozha winced.
“Here we go.”
“No, darling, it didn’t start now. Now it has simply reached you. Here is the contract. Here is the registry extract. Here are the payment receipts. The apartment is registered in my name. The payments come from my card. The appliances were bought with my money. Even this dresser you’re standing next to with the expression ‘why is everyone bothering me?’ — I bought it. Question: why on earth does your mother have keys and the authority to give orders?”
The mother-in-law turned pale, but quickly pulled herself together.
“Because you are my son’s wife.”
“That is not a pass into someone else’s wardrobe.”
“But it does come with duties.”
“Does he have duties?”
“Men have a different psyche! You can’t pressure them!”
Oksana laughed shortly.
“Of course. Men have delicate emotional structures. Especially when they’re thirty-two and still consult their mother about whether they’re allowed to buy new headphones.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Seryozha muttered. “You’re humiliating me on purpose now.”
“No. I’m stating facts.”
“Oksan, what do you want?” He spread his hands. “Do you want me to tell Mom not to come anymore? Fine, she won’t come.”
“Too late. I want both of you to leave my bedroom right now and never come in here without permission again.”
“Are you kicking me out?” Zinaida Pavlovna said slowly.
“For now, I’m asking nicely.”
“Seryozha, do you hear this? Your wife is throwing me out of the house.”
“This is not your house,” Oksana cut her off.
“Oksan, don’t be so harsh,” Seryozha grimaced.
“How should I do it? With flowers? With an orchestra? Should I write a note too: ‘Dear Zinaida Pavlovna, please don’t paw through my lingerie, it makes me uncomfortable’?”
“You have no filter on that tongue of yours,” the mother-in-law hissed.
“But I do have a spine. And I’m not obligated to carry all of you on it.”
Silence hung in the room. Thick, sticky silence. Even the fridge in the kitchen stopped humming, as if it too had decided not to get involved.
Then Seryozha coughed and said:
“Fine. Mom, let’s go to the kitchen.”
“No,” Oksana answered sharply. “Going to the kitchen means the banquet continues. And I’m full. Up to my throat. Zinaida Pavlovna, take your bag, leave the key on the bedside table, and go home. Seryozha, we’ll talk later.”
“You’re going to order me around now?” the mother-in-law flared up. “Who do you think you are?”
“A tired woman having a very bad evening. Don’t test fate.”
“I’m not leaving my son here with you in this state!”
“What state? He’s alive, intact, and he has tea. He’ll survive.”
“Oksana!” Seryozha barked. “Enough!”
She turned sharply toward him.
“No, you enough. Enough sitting between two chairs and pretending you’re helpless. It’s convenient for you, isn’t it? Mom cooks, I pay, you exist. Great system. Almost a business model.”
“I didn’t ask you to talk to me like that.”
“And I didn’t ask for my apartment to be turned into a public courtyard!”
Zinaida Pavlovna grabbed her bag, yanked her raincoat from the hanger, and threw over her shoulder as she left:
“You’ll regret this. With a character like that, you’ll end up alone.”
“As long as there are no Thursday underwear inspections, that’s already an improvement,” Oksana nodded.
When the door slammed behind her mother-in-law, Seryozha exhaled sharply.
“Do you even understand what you’ve done?”
“Yes. Finally.”
“She is my mother.”
“And I am your wife. At least, theoretically, I was.”
“What do you mean, was?”
Oksana pulled the hair tie from her hair, tossed it on the dresser, and sat tiredly on the edge of the bed.
“It means I can’t live in this madhouse anymore. I’m tired of feeling guilty every time because I work. Tired of listening to you whine that you’re exhausted, even though your maximum workload is carrying a mug to the sink and missing. Tired of your mother talking to me like I’m a servant. And most of all, I’m tired of you choosing convenience every single time.”
“I’m not choosing anyone.”
“Exactly. That’s the problem. A man who chooses no one eventually just drifts with the current. And the women around him row, fight, and drown.”
Seryozha sat across from her.
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Tonight you sleep in the living room. Tomorrow we calmly discuss how to go on.”
“So you’re sending me to the sofa because of Mom?”
“No. Because of you.”
“You’re going too far.”
“And you never go far enough. Constantly.”
He snorted.
“Everything is a joke to you, huh?”
“This isn’t a joke, Seryozha. This is the last stop.”
The night was awful. Oksana barely slept. First she listened to the sofa creaking in the living room as Seryozha demonstratively tossed and turned. Then her mother-in-law’s phrases circled through her head again and again. Then her inner voice switched on, that nasty one that always appears at three in the morning and says, “What if you really were too harsh? What if you should have been softer?” But by six in the morning, that voice shut up, because Oksana remembered the lingerie in someone else’s hands — and everything fell into place.
She went into the kitchen, poured herself coffee, and saw that Zinaida Pavlovna was already there. Sitting at the table like a deputy receiving citizens. In front of her were containers of food, a thermos, and a bag with some kind of rags.
Oksana closed her eyes.
“Bravo. So yesterday wasn’t enough.”
Her mother-in-law pressed her lips together.
“I didn’t come to see you. I came to see my son.”
“At seven in the morning? With pots? Very delicate.”
Seryozha peeked out from the living room. Disheveled, displeased, but not displeased enough to send his mother back home.
“Why are you yelling right away?” he said. “Mom brought food.”
“Of course. The son is under siege. He’s been lying on the sofa for two days; he needs strength.”
“Here we go,” he muttered.
“No, darling. Now it ends.”
Oksana placed her cup on the table.
“Listen carefully, both of you. I am no longer interested in participating in this performance. Zinaida Pavlovna, you are now taking your food, your opinions, and your visits with you. Seryozha, today you start looking for somewhere else to live.”
“Somewhere else to live?” he repeated so sincerely, as if she had suggested he fly to Mars without a suitcase.
“With your feet, Seryozha. A very common method of transportation. Either to your mother’s, to friends, or to a rental place. Adults usually have options.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Finally, yes.”
Zinaida Pavlovna threw up her hands.
“Look at her! Throwing her husband out! A normal wife doesn’t behave like that!”
“A normal mother-in-law also doesn’t come early in the morning to starve an apartment into submission.”
“Seryozha has the right to live here!”
“Until the divorce, formally, yes. But comfort is over. The attraction is closed.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said stubbornly. “We’re a family. People fight and then make up.”
Oksana tilted her head to the side.
“Did you come here to make up? Really? Strange tactic. So far I only see reinforcements in the form of Mom and a thermos full of pasta.”
“Just don’t destroy everything over nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” Oksana even smiled in disbelief. “Do you know what nonsense is? When you buy the wrong bread. But when your mother walks around my apartment like inherited property, and you stand there mumbling — that’s not nonsense. That’s a diagnosis of your relationship.”
“There you go again with your clever words.”
“Of course. Someone here has to speak in full sentences, not interjections.”
“Oksana!” the mother-in-law shrieked. “You’ve completely lost your conscience!”
“No. I’ve lost my patience. My conscience held on for quite a long time.”
Seryozha sat down at the table and rubbed his face with his hands.
“So that’s it? Just like that?”
“No, not just like that. It’s very difficult, actually. For two years I pretended everything could be fixed. That you’d find a job. That you and your mother would stop living with an umbilical cord stretched across the city. That I’d just endure a little longer and things would get easier. They didn’t. They got worse. And do you know what hurts the most? I can’t even say I was betrayed in some grand, beautiful way. No passions, no adventures. I was simply, quietly, domestically, pushed to the edge of my own life every day.”
He was silent.
She continued, quieter now:
“I come home from work and don’t feel like I’m home. I feel like I’m in a place where I have to report: why I’m late, why I didn’t cook, why I’m tired, why I’m unhappy. And you sit there looking at me as if I’m an inconvenient function that can be updated.”
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” Seryozha said dully.
“But it suited you.”
Zinaida Pavlovna stood up.
“That’s enough. I understand. You’ve decided to make my son guilty. Very convenient. You chose a career, you don’t take care of family life, and somehow he’s the one to blame.”
Oksana turned to her.
“A career? Is that what you call it? I didn’t choose a career. I chose to pay for reality. Because, for some reason, bills don’t accept motherly care as payment.”
“I would never allow anyone to speak to a mother like that!”
“And I would never allow a husband’s mother to command my home. See? Everyone has their own fantasies.”
Suddenly Seryozha stood up sharply.
“Fine. Okay. I’ll leave.”
Zinaida Pavlovna gasped.
“Seryozha!”
“Yes, Mom. I’ll leave. Because otherwise this will never end.”
Oksana looked at him carefully. For one second she even wanted to believe that now he would say something adult. Something real. But he only added:
“But it’s temporary. Until you calm down.”
And that was when something inside her finally clicked.
“No, Seryozha. It’s not temporary. It’s forever.”
He blinked.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I’m filing for divorce.”
The mother-in-law sat back down so abruptly that the spoon in the glass clinked.
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“Possibly. But it’s the only kind of madness that can save me right now.”
“Oksan, don’t use that word right away,” Seryozha winced. “People divorce over something serious.”
“And this, in your opinion, isn’t serious? Fine, let’s go down the list. Husband doesn’t work steadily. Doesn’t help at home. Husband’s mother walks in here as if it’s her place. You never take my side. My things are touched. Decisions are discussed for me. Who am I in this family — a person or service staff with a payment function?”
“You’re making us sound like monsters.”
“No. That’s the horror of it. You’re not monsters. You’re ordinary people with a very convenient habit of living off someone else’s resources. That makes it even more disgusting.”
Packing took two hours. Zinaida Pavlovna whined, Seryozha walked around the apartment with the face of a martyr and packed his things as if he were being forcibly evicted from an ancestral estate. Oksana stood by the window, drank cold coffee, and thought only one thing: just don’t break before it’s over.
“This blender is mine,” Seryozha suddenly said, holding the box.
“No,” Oksana replied. “That blender is mine. You were even afraid to turn it on.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be petty?”
“Exactly. Let’s not. Leave it.”
A minute later:
“Can I take the blanket?”
“Not the gray one. Take the checkered one. It’s prickly anyway, like your version of the truth.”
Zinaida Pavlovna couldn’t take it anymore.
“You are behaving so cheaply. It’s shameful to watch.”
Oksana turned around.
“I’ve been ashamed for the last two years too. And somehow I survived.”
When the door finally closed behind them, the apartment became so quiet that Oksana didn’t believe it at first. There was no strange voice, no slipper-shuffling, no eternal “what do we have to eat,” no heavy sigh of a person to whom life somehow owed everything. Only the kettle clicked in the kitchen, and somewhere outside the window someone was arguing over parking.
She walked slowly through the apartment, as if checking whether it was really true. In the kitchen — a clean table. In the hallway — an empty coat rack. In the bedroom — a closed wardrobe, and inside it, finally, only her things, without an inspection committee. Oksana sat directly on the floor in the middle of the room and suddenly laughed. Not even from happiness. From some absurdity. Imagine reaching thirty only to understand such a simple thing: sometimes the main romantic gesture is when people finally leave you alone.
For two days, Seryozha didn’t write. On the third, he sent a message: “Have you cooled off?” She didn’t answer. On the fourth, his aunt called and, in the cautious tone of a person who really enjoys other people’s drama, said, “Maybe don’t cut from the shoulder? He’s not a bad man.” Oksana politely replied, “Not bad is not a profession, nor is it a quality of a marriage.” The aunt was offended.
On Friday evening, the doorbell rang. Oksana looked through the peephole and snorted. Seryozha. With a supermarket bag and a bouquet of tulips that already looked as if they themselves doubted the success of the operation.
She opened the door.
“You have five minutes,” she said.
“Thank you,” he answered quickly and stepped into the hallway. “No scandal.”
“That’s progress already. Usually the only time you were without scandal was when you were sitting at the computer.”
He pretended not to hear.
“I rented a room. On Station Street. I’m working. As a courier for now, but every day. And… I understood everything.”
“All men say that with the same face. Do they train you somewhere?”
“Oksan, really. I realized I was living wrong. That Mom interfered too much. That I allowed it. That it was hard for you.”
“Was? How sweet. As if I’ve already survived it and received a certificate somewhere.”
He placed the bag on the table.
“I bought you coffee. The kind you like. And cheese. And that… mango yogurt.”
Oksana looked into the bag and gave a short laugh.
“And why sanitary pads?”
Seryozha became embarrassed.
“Well, I don’t know… I took them just in case. To show I’m attentive.”
“Listen, that’s not attention anymore. That’s panic in the household chemicals aisle.”
He gave a crooked smile too, then became serious.
“I miss you. Really. Without you everything feels kind of… empty. Mom is furious, of course, says you turned me against the family. But I suddenly realized I didn’t actually have a family. There was Mom and there was you. And I was between you like jelly.”
“Very accurate comparison,” Oksana nodded. “It’s almost insulting that it’s so good.”
“I want to fix everything.”
“And I don’t want to climb back into it.”
“Give me a chance.”
“Seryozha, chances are given to people who have behaved like partners at least once. You behaved like a tenant with a parent committee included.”
“I’m changing.”
“Congratulations. Honestly. Really. But your changes are no longer about us. They’re about you. And that’s good. But it’s too late.”
He was silent for a long time, then asked:
“You’re leaving no options at all?”
Oksana leaned against the doorframe.
“I’ll tell you one unpleasant thing. Sometimes love doesn’t end after one great betrayal, but after a thousand tiny ones. After the moments when you weren’t heard, weren’t defended, weren’t chosen. And then a person comes with supermarket tulips, but inside, everything is already empty. Not because he’s bad. But because the train has left, and he’s still tying his shoelaces.”
Seryozha lowered his eyes.
“Harsh.”
“But honest.”
“So what now?”
“Now you live your life. I live mine. Without mutual performances.”
“You’re strong.”
“No. I’m just very tired of being convenient.”
He nodded, stood there for another second, and said quietly:
“Fine. Then I’ll sign everything without scandals.”
“That, by the way, is the first thing you’ve said that sounds adult.”
At the door, he turned around.
“Can I give you some advice?”
“Try. Maybe you’ll surprise me.”
“Don’t close yourself off completely. You’re not made of iron.”
Oksana smirked.
“Don’t worry. The iron ones are usually the people sitting on someone else’s neck without blushing. I’m just made of flesh and sarcasm.”
When he left, she took the bouquet, looked at it, at the drooping petals, then carried it out to the stairwell and left it on the windowsill. Let someone take it. Maybe those flowers would be luckier than the man who gave them.
Then she returned to the kitchen, opened the window, inhaled the cold evening air, sat at the table, and wrote one sentence in the notes app on her phone:
“Love is not when someone tolerates you. It is when they don’t try to push you out of your own life.”
And for the first time in a long while, she didn’t want to justify herself, explain herself, or save someone from the consequences of his weakness. She wanted only silence, decent coffee, and to wake up tomorrow without the feeling that someone at home would once again put her on trial over an unwashed mug, a late arrival, or lipstick that was too bright.
And that, no matter how you looked at it, was almost a luxury.
The end.