“Why Can’t I Get In?” — My Former Mother-in-Law Pounded on My Door in Despair, Demanding an Explanation
“Nadya, what happened? I can’t get into your apartment!” her former mother-in-law, Lyudmila Georgievna, shouted.
Nadya stood behind the door and listened.
Lyudmila Georgievna’s face was completely red. Whether from anger or from climbing to the fifth floor was hard to tell. Maybe both.
Nadya remained silent.
“Nadya! I know you’re home! Your car is parked outside!”
Yes, the car was outside. A blue Honda that she and Sergey had bought three years ago. On credit. Nadya was now paying off the loan alone. Sergey had gone to stay with his mother. With this very same Lyudmila Georgievna, who was now shaking the door handle.
“Open the door right now! I have keys! But they don’t work…”
Exactly. She had keys. Just not the right ones anymore.
Nadya had changed the locks a week earlier. Quietly, without making a fuss.
Uncle Kolya, a locksmith from the building management company, had come and installed new locks. Good German ones.
“How much?” Nadya had asked.
“Five thousand for the work. The locks are extra.”
“That’s expensive…”
“Well, they’re German. Reliable. You won’t open these with just any key. Only the original ones…”
Uncle Kolya knew nothing about the… former mother-in-law. But he had hit the nail on the head.
Lyudmila Georgievna had already been pounding on the door for ten minutes. The neighbors were beginning to peek out. Aunt Galya stuck her head into the hallway.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Lyudmila Georgievna snapped. “Nadya! I’m talking to you!”
Nadya stepped closer to the door. She almost rested her forehead against the cold metal.
“Lyudmila Georgievna, go home.”
“Aha! So you can talk after all! Now open the door! I need to pick up Seryozha’s things!”
Seryozha’s things.
Nadya glanced around the apartment. Everything had been cleaned up. His belongings were neatly packed into boxes by the door. Jeans, T-shirts, sneakers. An electric razor. A phone charger. Game discs. Three years of living together fit into four boxes.
Nadya opened the door with the security chain still fastened. Lyudmila Georgievna immediately tried to stick her hand through the gap.
“Step back, please.”
“Nadya, have you completely lost your mind? Seryozha said you two had just had an argument!”
An argument.
What a convenient word.
Nadya shut the door. She dragged the first box toward the entrance. Damn, it was heavy. Sergey had always been a big man, and his belongings matched him.
She opened the door again and placed the box in the hallway.
“Here are his things.”
“I’m coming inside! I’m going to check everything!”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am! I have the legal right! Seryozha is registered here!”
“He isn’t anymore. He already deregistered.”
That was a lie.
Sergey hadn’t deregistered. But Lyudmila Georgievna didn’t know that.
Nadya had only recently learned how to lie.
After finding out about Katya from the accounting department.
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not. Here’s the certificate.”
Nadya pushed some paper through the gap in the door. Lyudmila Georgievna grabbed it and began examining it.
It was actually an Internet bill, but without her glasses the mother-in-law couldn’t see well enough to make out the details.
Nadya quickly put the remaining boxes outside while Lyudmila Georgievna carefully studied the “certificate.”
“So… what is this?”
“Proof of deregistration.”
“It says Rostelecom!”
“That’s the stamp.”
Lyudmila Georgievna crumpled the paper and threw it onto the floor. “Do you think I’m stupid?!”
Nadya said nothing.
She did.
“Seryozha is going to come back! He said he needs time to think!”
“Let him think.”
“And you don’t miss him?”
A strange question.
Did Nadya miss him?
She woke up in the morning—no one beside her.
She made coffee—for one.
She turned on the television—no one changed the channel. Peace.
No.
She didn’t miss him.
“Lyudmila Georgievna, take the boxes.”
“They’re heavy! How am I supposed to carry them?”
“Call Seryozha. Let him help.”
“He’s working!”
“On Saturday?”
A pause.
Lyudmila Georgievna realized she had given herself away.
Sergey never worked Saturdays.
Never.
Saturdays had been their “family days.” They would lie on the sofa, watch movies, and order pizza.
Now Sergey spent Saturdays with Katya from accounting.
And Nadya…
Nadya read books.
Cleaned.
Cooked something complicated and delicious.
Just for herself.
“Nadya…” Lyudmila Georgievna’s voice softened. “Maybe you shouldn’t do this? Seryozha is a good man…”
Good.
Thirty-two years old.
A man who had been seeing another woman for six months.
Who lied about “having to stay late at work.”
Who came home and kissed Nadya on the cheek while smelling of another woman’s perfume.
“Lyudmila Georgievna, the boxes are staying here until tonight. After that, I’m throwing them away.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I would.”
Nadya closed the door.
She sat down on the sofa. Only Lyudmila Georgievna could still be heard muttering outside the door. Then came the sound of boxes being dragged away.
Nadya switched on the kettle.
She took a beautiful cup from the cupboard.
She brewed good tea.
Expensive tea.
The kind Sergey used to call “women’s fancy tea.”
She sat by the window.
It was raining outside. A fine autumn drizzle.
Down in the courtyard, Lyudmila Georgievna was trying to shove the boxes into a Gazelle van. One box fell. She waved her arms and argued with the driver.
Nadya took a sip of tea.
Delicious.
Her phone rang.
“Seryozha” appeared on the screen.
Nadya looked at the phone.
Then at the rain outside.
At the empty apartment.
At the new locks.
She rejected the call.
A minute later, he called again.
She rejected it again.
Downstairs, Lyudmila Georgievna was still battling with the boxes.
Finally, she got them loaded.
The Gazelle drove away. Nadya finished her tea.
She went to the kitchen, washed the cup, dried it carefully, and put it back in the cupboard.
There was plenty of time…
She could read.
Or take a bath.
A long, hot bath with bubbles and candles.
The kind she had never had time for before.
Or she could simply sit in silence.
The phone rang again.
Nadya switched off the sound.
Outside, the rain grew heavier…
One Week Later
Lyudmila Georgievna appeared again.
This time, Sergey was with her.
Nadya heard his familiar voice while they were still on the stairs.
“Mom, maybe we shouldn’t? She’ll open the door herself…”
“Oh, she’ll open it. But will she talk to us?”
Nadya froze beside the door.
Seven days of silence.
Seven days without calls, without explanations or arguments.
She had already started getting used to it.
“Nadya?” Sergey knocked gently. “Nadya, it’s me.”
As though she wouldn’t recognize him.
Three years together—and she supposedly wouldn’t recognize his voice?
“Nadya, let’s talk. Let’s talk normally.”
Normally.
What exactly had been normal?
Was it normal that he had lied to her for six months?
“I know you’re angry…”
Angry?
Nadya thought about it.
No.
She wasn’t angry anymore.
The anger had disappeared that evening when she had accidentally found a café receipt in his pocket.
For two people.
From the day he had supposedly been “working late.”
“Open the door. It’s uncomfortable talking through it.”
Uncomfortable for him.
Nadya almost laughed.
Had it been comfortable for her to live with a stranger for six months?
“Seryozha, break down the door!” Lyudmila Georgievna hissed. “You have the legal right!”
“Mom, keep your voice down…”
“Why should I?! She threw you out of your own home!”
His own home.
A two-room Khrushchev-era apartment…
Nadya sat down on the sofa.
She picked up her book.
Opened it at the bookmark.
“Nadya, I understand you’re hurt. But we’re adults…”
Adults.
Which one of them exactly?
The one who had lied for six months?
The knocking grew louder.
“Nadya!” Lyudmila Georgievna was shouting now. “Stop acting ridiculous! We know you’re home!”
Of course they knew.
Her car was outside.
Or maybe they could see the lights through the windows.
“We’re not leaving!” her mother-in-law continued. “We’ll stand here until you open the door!”
They wouldn’t leave.
Nadya knew that.
Lyudmila Georgievna was a persistent woman.
Stubborn, Sergey used to say.
“Don’t pay attention to her. That’s just her personality.”
Her personality.
Nadya read her book.
Page after page.
The words blurred together, but she continued reading.
Mechanically.
So she wouldn’t hear the voices outside the door.
An hour later, they left.
They promised to return.
That evening, Sergey called.
Nadya didn’t answer.
Then text messages arrived.
“Nadya, why are you acting like a child?”
“We can work this out like normal people.”
“I’m ready to explain everything.”
Explain.
What?
That Katya was younger?
More fun?
That with Katya he didn’t have to think about loans and leaking faucets?
Nadya deleted the messages.
All of them.
They came every day.
Sometimes together, sometimes Lyudmila Georgievna alone.
They knocked, called out to her, threatened her.
The neighbors began complaining to the building management company.
“Sweetheart,” Aunt Galya said, “maybe you should just talk to them? They’ve already driven everyone crazy…”
Talk.
Everyone wanted her to talk.
But who was going to listen?
At work, her colleagues shook their heads.
“Nadya, maybe he really will change?”
“All men are like that. He’ll have his fun and come back.”
“What does it cost you to forgive him? He didn’t kill anyone…”
He didn’t kill anyone.
He merely deceived her for six months.
Merely kissed another woman.
Merely made plans for the future—but not with her.
So she was supposed to forgive him?
Nadya stayed silent.
At work.
At home.
And in the store, when she ran into Katya from accounting.
“Nadya!”
Katya turned red and tried to head in the opposite direction.
But Nadya caught up with her.
Silently.
She simply walked beside her through the store.
Katya became nervous and started grabbing random things from the shelves.
Bread.
Milk.
Laundry detergent.
“Nadya, I… well… we didn’t mean for it to happen…”
They didn’t mean for it to happen.
Six months of seeing each other accidentally.
Nadya looked at her.
Katya really was younger.
And prettier.
Probably more fun too.
Men liked women like that.
Easygoing.
“Take him,” Nadya said quietly.
“What?”
“Take him. He’s yours now.”
Katya exhaled with relief.
“Thank you… I mean, I’m sorry… I didn’t want…”
“Take the whole package. His mommy too. His habit of leaving his things everywhere. His snoring at night.”
Katya nodded repeatedly, like a bobblehead doll.
“And his debts,” Nadya added. “The refrigerator loan is in his name. And… and last year’s vacation too.”
Katya’s expression changed.
“What debts?”
“His debts.”
That part was true.
Loans, borrowed money, debts to friends.
Sergey liked living well.
He just wasn’t very good at working.
Katya turned pale.
“He never told me…”
“There are lots of things he doesn’t like talking about. You’ll see.”
Nadya turned around and headed toward the checkout.
Katya remained standing in the middle of the dairy aisle, holding her basket and looking confused.
Sergey stopped coming after a month.
Lyudmila Georgievna stopped after two.
The last time she came, she stood outside the door crying.
“Nadenka, at least say something… Seryozha has completely lost his way… With that… what’s her name… Katya… Please, forgive the fool…”
Nadya sat beside the door and listened.
Lyudmila Georgievna told her how Seryozha had moved out of her apartment.
How he kept demanding money to pay his debts.
How Katya had found out about his loans and caused a huge scandal.
“Nadenka… maybe you could forgive him? He understands his mistake now…”
He understood.
When the creditors started calling.
When Katya moved out.
When he realized his mother wasn’t going to support him.
“He’s changed, Nadenka…”
Changed.
He had become even more miserable and demanding.
Lyudmila Georgievna left.
She never came back.
Nadya sat in her quiet apartment.
She read books.
She brewed expensive, fragrant coffee in a Turkish coffee pot.
She listened to the rain outside.
The new locks gleamed on the door.
Reliable.
German. And no one ever asked her for the keys again.