“I’m not going to your parents. They’re not worth the honor,” my husband snapped. I smiled — and went to them alone, for a long time.
For three weeks, I stayed quiet and looked at my life as if from the outside. All that time, Igor was convinced I was simply angry and would soon come back and everything would return to normal. He had no idea what I had decided until he received the letter.
Igor said it in the doorway, already dressed for work.
“I’m not going to your parents. They’re not worth the honor.”
I stood in the middle of the hallway with my phone in my hand. Five minutes earlier, my mother had called: my father had suffered a stroke, and the ambulance had already taken him to the hospital. Mom’s voice was trembling so badly that I didn’t understand her words right away.
“Igor, it’s only for one day. Just to be there with me.”
“Your relatives haven’t lifted a finger for us in twenty-three years.” He adjusted his tie in front of the mirror. “And now I’m supposed to abandon my work?”
“I’m not asking you to abandon your work. I’m asking for support.”
“Call my mother. She’ll tell you what to do in situations like this.” He took his briefcase from the shelf. “But I’m not going.”
My mother-in-law, Valentina Nikolaevna, confirmed his position an hour later when I finally decided to call her as well. Her voice was calm, as though we were discussing a leaking faucet rather than my father.
“Marina, why drag Igor over there? He has three important meetings this week. Your parents will manage. They’ve always managed on their own.”
I listened while staring out the window at the neighboring courtyard, where someone was beating dust out of a rug on a balcony.
Twenty-three years of marriage suddenly condensed into one phrase from my husband.
They’re not worth the honor.
I smiled.
Not because anything about the situation was easy.
I smiled because suddenly I understood something I had refused to notice for twenty-three years.
“All right,” I said. “Then I’ll go alone.”
Igor shrugged and left without waiting for any further response. The door clicked shut behind him, just as it always did.
I packed a bag in fifteen minutes. I took a warm sweater, my phone charger, and my father’s documents, which I found in the top drawer of the dresser.
Then I went to the train station without leaving Igor a note.
Mom met me alone on the platform. She had never learned to drive, so we took a taxi straight to the hospital.
My father was lying in a four-bed ward, hooked up to an IV. His speech was slurred, but he recognized me and tried to smile with one side of his face.
“You came,” he said.
Only two words, but they were clear.
“Of course I came, Dad.”
For the next several days, I lived in my mother’s old apartment, slept in the bed I had used as a schoolgirl, went to the hospital with Mom every morning by ten, and stayed until evening.
I fed my father with a spoon, spoke with doctors, and wrote down every instruction and prescription in a notebook.
Igor called every other day.
The conversations were short.
“How’s your father doing?” he would ask in the same tone someone might use to ask about the weather in another city.
“Slowly improving. His speech is coming back.”
“That’s good. So when are you coming home?”
I never answered directly.
He never pressed me for an answer.
On the eighth day, Dad was allowed to sit upright.
The three of us had lunch together in his hospital room. Mom had brought broth in a thermos and poured it into cups.
Dad slowly lifted a spoon to his mouth by himself, without anyone’s help.
Mom suddenly laughed softly, the way she used to when she was young — simply because she was happy that he could do it on his own again.
I looked at the two of them and thought about something.
In twenty-three years, Igor had never looked at me the way they looked at each other — for no particular reason, simply because the other person was there.
It was a short thought.
And not even a new one.
I had simply never allowed myself enough time to finish it before.
On the twelfth day, Igor called in the evening.
His voice was different this time — irritated but somehow guilty at the same time, the way it always sounded when he wanted me to feel guilty.
“Marina, you’ve been there almost two weeks already. Mom says the neighbors are asking where you are.”
“The neighbors are asking?”
“Well, they’re curious. It looks strange.”
“What looks strange is that my father is in the hospital and my husband hasn’t visited him once.”
“I already explained. I’m in the middle of a reporting period at work.”
“Your reporting period has lasted three weeks?”
He fell silent for a couple of seconds.
“Are you deliberately staying there to punish me?”
I stood in my mother’s kitchen, holding the phone to my ear and looking out at the courtyard.
I wanted to tell him everything at once.
How I felt.
What his words had done to me.
That I was tired of proving things.
That I had no intention of doing it anymore.
But I stayed quiet.
“I’m here because my father is sick,” I said instead. “We’ll talk when I come home.”
After that call, Valentina Nikolaevna phoned me.
She told me I had “abandoned my family at a difficult moment” and that “respectable wives don’t behave this way.”
I listened to her for about three minutes without interrupting.
Then I said I had to go see my father and ended the call.
That night I couldn’t sleep.
I lay in the darkness thinking that maybe I really was behaving badly.
Maybe I should have insisted harder instead of simply leaving.
The thought circled through my mind until it turned into something else.
For twenty-three years, I had always been the one who had to insist harder.
And every time, the answer had somehow been the same.
They’re not worth the honor.
The next morning, I called an old university classmate who worked as a family lawyer.
I told her not only about Igor refusing to come with me, but also about everything that had accumulated over twenty-three years — everything I had never had the courage to look at directly.
“If you want a divorce, we’ll get you divorced. The apartment is jointly owned, so in a property division it’s usually split equally unless there are special circumstances,” she said. “Do you have anything unusual?”
“No,” I said. “An ordinary apartment. An ordinary marriage. It’s just over.”
“Then we’ll use the standard procedure. We’ll collect the documents and file for divorce and division of property at the same time. Do you want to start now, while you’re still away from home?”
I stayed silent for a long time.
Then I said:
“Yes. I do.”
Dad was discharged after three weeks.
His speech had almost completely recovered, and he had a rehabilitation plan for the next month.
I spent another two days with the lawyer, gathering copies of documents, signing a power of attorney, and preparing the claim.
When I finally returned home, Igor greeted me almost warmly.
He brought me tea from the kitchen and asked about the trip and about my father.
He was convinced everything had returned to its usual place.
His wife was home.
Therefore, the storm had passed.
I did nothing to convince him otherwise.
I cooked dinner.
I went to work.
I talked about ordinary household matters.
Inside, I knew the documents had already been filed, the claim had been registered, and within a few days he would receive an official notification.
Igor suspected nothing.
“You’ve become different somehow,” he said one evening during dinner, studying me the way someone studies an object that has suddenly stopped being familiar.
“I’m just tired,” I replied.
That was only partly true.
The notification arrived on the eighth day after my return.
Igor collected the mail himself — a habit he had kept for twenty years.
I heard the front door slam harder than usual.
“What is this?”
He was holding an envelope stamped by the court. He had ripped it open in a hurry, tearing the edge of the paper.
“Property division? Divorce? You filed for divorce?!”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“While I was staying with Mom.”
He sat down on the chair near the entrance without even taking off his jacket.
“You decided this while I thought you were just in a bad mood because of your father?”
“I decided it the moment you said they weren’t worth the honor.”
“That was just a phrase, Marina. I didn’t think you would—”
“You said what you really believe. For twenty-three years, you’ve treated my family as though they mattered less than yours.”
He unfolded the claim, scanned the lines quickly, and stopped at the section about the property.
“It’s all according to the standard procedure,” I said. “The apartment is divided fifty-fifty.”
Igor stared at the paper for a long time.
Then he looked at me.
“You could have just told me.”
“I did. Many times. You always treated it as though it wasn’t worth your attention.”
He had no answer.
For the first time in twenty-three years, I saw him without a ready argument.
“So what happens now?” he asked more quietly.
“Now it’s only a matter of time until the court finalizes everything. And I’m already looking for an apartment for myself. Small, but mine.”
He stayed sitting by the entrance, holding the printed claim in his hands.
I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.
Alone.
I did it with the same familiar movements I had used for the past twenty-three years.
Only this time, I wasn’t waiting for someone to come in and sit beside me.
A month later, I signed the contract for a one-bedroom apartment not far from my parents.
By then, Dad was speaking freely again.
He joked that he now had two reasons to be proud of his daughter:
She had learned to walk on her own once as a child…
and had finally remembered that she still knew how to do it.