“Just don’t touch anything,” Viktor said as we walked into the dishware store. “You still have paint under your nails.”
I quickly stuffed my hands into the pockets of my coat.
He was right—the paint was still there. A thin blue stripe by my thumb that I hadn’t noticed in the morning. The night before, I’d been up until two, working on an old chair: stripping off the varnish, sanding the backrest, picking just the right shade.
That chair had been in our kitchen for about fifteen years. Viktor was always threatening to throw it out, but I loved how perfectly the rounded backrest fit my hand.
“I’ll wash it off,” I said quietly.
“You should find a normal hobby,” he said. “You’re a grown woman, and you’re still playing with scraps of wood.”
The saleswoman near the display case pretended she hadn’t heard a thing.
I turned away and looked at the plates.
That day, I turned forty-two. We were picking out a birthday present for me.
Now I realize, it wasn’t about the chair—or even the paint.
Viktor had been embarrassed by me for a long time.
I was a bookkeeper at a small clinic, wore comfortable shoes, and couldn’t hold conversations about fancy restaurants. If anyone complimented our kitchen table, I’d go on excitedly explaining how I’d stripped off its old polish.
During those moments, Viktor would interrupt:
“Lena’s our self-taught restorer. Let her loose and she’ll bring home the whole junkyard.”
Everyone would laugh. I’d smile too, though after nights like that, I wouldn’t touch my tools for weeks.
Later, he started going out to these business dinners. Bought himself a few new shirts. Asked me not to call after seven: “Meetings run late, it’s awkward.”
One day, I was about to do laundry, checked the pockets of his pants, and pulled out a folded note.
A shopping list.
Avocado, shrimp, blue cheese, white wine.
At the bottom, written in neat, round handwriting, it said: “And my favorite pears. Don’t forget, please.”
I sat with that note on the edge of the bathtub, waiting until Viktor came home.
He glanced at me, then at the slip of paper, and sighed tiredly.
He didn’t even look scared.
“We should have talked long ago.”
The conversation lasted about twenty minutes.
Her name was Marina. They’d met six months ago. With her, everything felt easy for him. She understands what he wants out of life. Turns out he and I had been strangers for a while.
“You just never noticed,” he said.
For some reason, I asked:
“What kind of pears?”
“What?”
“Which ones does she like?”
He frowned.
“Lena, don’t start.”
I didn’t ask anything else after that.
Our son was studying in another city at the time. When he heard about the divorce, he wanted to come back, but I wouldn’t allow it.
“It’s exam time, Pasha. I’ll be fine.”
The way I “handled” things was odd.
I could go through a whole day at work, buy bread, pay the bills. And then, in the evening, find his old scarf in the closet and just sit down on the hallway floor.
I felt embarrassed that it hurt so much.
Especially after Viktor came to pick up the rest of his things and remarked:
“Don’t turn the apartment into a total mess. Who’s going to want to visit you here?”
I stood by the door, hugging the box with his documents to my stomach.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You’re not planning to stay alone, are you? Though, honestly…” He looked me up and down. “With your personality, it won’t be easy.”
He took the box and added:
“You’ll regret this one day. But I won’t come back a second time.”
I closed the door and, for the first time since all this started, didn’t cry.
The hallway still smelled of his cologne. A wet footprint remained on the floor by the coat rack.
I grabbed a rag and spent a long time scrubbing it away.
My very first job came from my neighbor on the fifth floor.
“Lena, you fix furniture, right? My mother’s dresser is falling apart. She won’t let me throw it away, just cries about it. Can you take a look?”
Right away, I started explaining that I wasn’t a professional, that I only did this for myself, and that I might actually make it worse.
“It’s already ruined,” the neighbor reasoned. “How much worse could it get?”
The dresser was heavy, crooked, with three mismatched handles. In one drawer, an old button was stuck; in another, there was a yellowed photo of a little girl in a school dress.
I worked on it for almost a month.
Every evening, I’d roll out a tarp in the kitchen, turn on my desk lamp and carefully pull out the dried-up runners. I had to redo the top twice.
When we brought the dresser back to her, she ran her hand over the wood and said,
“Now it’s ours again.”
Not “like new.” She called it “ours.”
My neighbor handed me an envelope.
“It’s not much. Please don’t be offended.”
Inside were eight thousand rubles.
I counted the money three times.
Then I bought myself some good clamps. And a pastry.
I ate the pastry standing by the kitchen window. The sweet cream stuck to my lips, and for some reason, I started laughing.
No, things didn’t just magically start working out after that.
On my second job, I picked the wrong finish and ruined a tabletop. I had to refund the payment and buy new materials out of my own pocket.
The third time, the client picked up the repaired chairs and then spent two months promising to send the rest of the payment.
I called him from the clinic bathroom, so that my coworkers wouldn’t hear how much my voice was shaking.
My mom kept saying:
“Maybe it’s time to stop? You have a good job. The salary is small, but at least it’s stable.”
Honestly, I was thinking the same thing.
Especially on those nights when my fingers ached, and in the morning, I had to do all the paperwork.
But little by little, I started collecting photos of my projects. And then—people started coming, referred by others.
One day, the manager of a small café asked me to restore twelve chairs.
Twelve.
I agreed, hung up, and immediately regretted it.
So I called Pasha.
“Mom, what are you afraid of?”
“That I won’t manage.”
“Can you handle one at a time?”
“One, yes.”
“See? Do one. Then do the next.”
He was serious, no smile—just like when I’d explain to him back in first grade that you didn’t need to solve the entire page of math problems all at once.
For these chairs, I rented a space for the first time—a former storage room at an auto repair shop.
It was cold there, smelled like rubber, and the window wouldn’t shut.
But in the evenings, I could leave a disassembled armchair out on the workbench, and find it in exactly the same place the next morning. I didn’t have to clear away my tools before every dinner.
The owner of the auto shop, gray-haired and quiet Nikolai, once peeked in and watched me for a minute as I tried to hold up a heavy tabletop.
“You’re going to drop it.”
“I won’t drop it.”
He came over and grabbed the other end.
“Stubborn.”
“A little bit, yeah.”
The next day, there were two sturdy sawhorses waiting for me by my door.
There was a note left on them: “At least these don’t argue.”
Viktor would call every once in a while.
The first year, he asked if I still had his winter boots.
The second year, he wanted to know if he could pick up his drill.
“It’s mine,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I bought it. Even before the divorce.”
“Do you even need it…”
“I do.”
After that, we didn’t speak for almost three years.
Friends brought me news, even though I never asked.
It turned out Viktor and Marina had moved. Then they got a dog. Then they sold the car. Then someone spotted him without Marina.
I felt neither happiness nor empathy. All of this was happening somewhere far from my life, where a client still couldn’t decide what kind of legs she wanted for her dining table.
By then, I had already left the clinic.
Before signing my resignation, I sat in the hallway for about forty minutes. There was a calculator in my bag. I kept taking it out, going over my expenses, then putting it away again.
For another six months, there was a piece of paper on my fridge with the minimum sum I couldn’t go below.
Nikolay helped me find a brighter workshop.
Pasha made a page with photos of my work.
And I learned to say to clients:
“No, I won’t be able to finish by Friday.”
“No, I won’t buy materials without a deposit.”
“No, it’s not ‘just a simple fix.’ Here you need to take the whole assembly apart.”
At first, after each such conversation, I felt rude.
But eventually, I got used to it.
I ran into Viktor at the hardware store.
I was walking out with a box of fittings and stopped near my car, searching for my keys. I was wearing an old jacket, and, as I realized later, a white streak of filler marked my cheek.
“Lena?”
I turned around.
He was standing two steps away, holding a bag from the pharmacy.
He looked older. Then again, so did I. But for some reason, seeing him made me remember not the day of our divorce, but that kitchen store and my hands shoved in my coat pockets.
“Hi, Vitia.”
He glanced at my box.
“Renovations?”
“Work.”
“Still working with your wood stuff?”
“I am.”
He nodded like I’d just confirmed something he’d always known.
We talked about Pasha. About the weather. He told me he now lives in another neighborhood.
I was waiting for a polite moment to say goodbye. There was a tabletop drying in the workshop, and in an hour someone was supposed to deliver a chair.
But Viktor didn’t leave.
“So, how are you alone?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Oh come on. You don’t have to pretend with me.”
I looked at him.
He smiled with that familiar smile—slightly condescending, like we both knew the truth and I was just being stubborn.
“So, do you regret it?”
Shopping carts rattled in the parking lot. Nearby, a man was trying to talk a child out of jumping into a puddle.
I set my box on the hood.
“Regret? I’ll show you.”
I unbuttoned my cuff and rolled up my sleeve.
There was a jagged pale scar running along my forearm.
Viktor stopped smiling.
“What’s that?”
“Glass. The old cabinet glass cracked when I was removing the door. Had to get five stitches.”
He frowned.
“See? I always told you, you shouldn’t…”
“Wait.”
I turned my arm. By my wrist there was a small round mark.
“And this is from the soldering iron. Was fixing a lamp for my work desk. See these fingers? They still won’t fully bend in the morning if I’ve done a lot of sanding the night before.”
He looked completely lost.
He probably thought I was about to start complaining.
I pulled down my sleeve.
“This is what my hands look like now. I spend a fortune on hand cream. At least my elbows are still fine.”
“Lena, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you’re getting at.”
He glanced away, looking toward my car.
“I was just asking. You used to love me.”
“I did.”
That word came easily, without shame or any need to downplay it.
“See?”
“And?”
Viktor opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything.
I picked up the box from the hood of the car.
“When you left, I was really miserable. I’m not going to claim I was waiting for it to happen. I spent half a year falling asleep to the TV because I couldn’t get used to the silence. But then I started to get used to it.”
He stayed silent.
“You know what I noticed one day? I left an unfinished chair in the kitchen. I woke up the next morning, saw it—and wasn’t scared that you’d start yelling at me. I made some coffee, sat down next to it, and thought about how to better attach the backrest.”
A car drove by as we stood there. Viktor stepped aside, even though it was pretty far away.
“So all this is about some chairs…”
“No, Vitya. It’s not about the chairs.”
I pressed the button on my key fob and opened the trunk.
He didn’t offer any more words or help—just stood there as I packed the box between the blanket and my toolbox.
Then, finally, he asked:
“So you live alone now?”
I shut the trunk.
“I’m doing fine, don’t worry about me.”
Back in the workshop, Nikolai was sitting on a stool by the door, eating an apple.
“Where’d you disappear to? The chair’s arrived.”
“Ran into my ex.”
He stopped chewing.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. We just chatted a bit.”
Nikolai nodded and stood up.
“I brought you some soup. It’s in a thermos. Otherwise you’ll just survive on coffee all day again.”
We didn’t live together. He’d asked me twice, and both times I’d asked him not to change anything for now.
He wasn’t upset.
I had a key to his apartment and he had one to my workshop. On Sundays we’d go out of town, sometimes arguing about which music to play in the car. He liked old songs, and I just wanted half an hour without anyone singing.
“What’s that on your cheek?” he asked.
I rubbed my face with my hand.
“Did you get it off?”
“Just made it worse. Hold on.”
He dampened the edge of a clean rag and carefully wiped away the putty.
Then we ate soup at the small table by the window. Nikolai told a story about a client who spent half an hour looking for a car problem, when really the tank was just empty.
I laughed, crumbs fell onto my lap, and suddenly I remembered Viktor.
Not his question. Not the look on his face.
I remembered never finding out which kind of pears Marina liked.
I used to think that was really important.
“What are you thinking about?” Nikolai asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
I brushed the crumbs into my hand and got up.
“Let’s go check out the chair. Can you help me flip it over?”
“Of course. Just button up your cuff or you’ll snag it.”
I buttoned my cuff and followed him into the workshop.