“Galya, you’re rich now!” her cousin’s aunt shouted into the phone. “Aunt Raya left you her three-room apartment in the city center!”
Galya lowered the phone, stunned.
An apartment.
Her own apartment.
A three-room apartment.
She looked at her husband. Zhenya, who until that moment had been lazily picking his teeth, suddenly straightened up. His eyes lit up with such an unhealthy, greasy gleam that Galya felt uneasy.
She understood that gleam that very evening.
They had barely sat down to dinner when Zhenya’s phone rang. His mother, Yulia Semyonovna, was on speakerphone.
“Zhenechka, my son! Congratulate Galochka! Oh, well done, she really grabbed a prize! Well then, Vera, Tolya, and I are coming to you! Tomorrow!”
Galya choked.
“Coming where?”
“What do you mean, where? To your three-room apartment!” her mother-in-law boomed cheerfully through the phone. “Why should it stand empty? We’re all crammed into our two-room place. Tolya has to travel to the center for his studies, Vera has to get to work. And you and Zhenechka can take the small room. What, are you going to be greedy? We’re family!”
Zhenya nodded like a bobblehead and smiled happily.
“Mom, of course! We’re all for it! Galka, what’s wrong with you? Mom wouldn’t suggest anything bad!”
Galya didn’t even have time to get a word in before the “dear relatives” showed up on Saturday.
Without their things.
“Just to inspect.”
Yulia Semyonovna immediately pulled a tape measure from her bag and began measuring the living room walls.
“Right. We’ll knock down this wall. Tolya’s room will be here. He’s our future programmer, he needs space.”
Vera, pouting capriciously, was already standing by the bedroom window.
“I’ll take this one. The view is nice here. Galya, take down these stupid curtains. I’ll hang mine — beige ones.”
Galya stared at this circus with her mouth open.
They were dividing up her apartment.
The apartment that still smelled of Aunt Raya’s medicine.
Zhenya stood beside his mother, respectfully holding the other end of the tape measure.
“Zhenya!” Galya grabbed his elbow. “Are you out of your mind? This is my apartment! My inheritance!”
Zhenya waved her off in irritation.
“Galya, don’t start. Fine, it’s yours, but are we strangers or something? Mom is right, we need to handle this wisely. Why should we keep squeezing ourselves into that rented dump when we have… when you have… such a living space?”
That evening, Galya heard him bragging to a friend on the phone.
“Yeah, a three-room place! In the center! I’m the head of a big clan now. I’ll move Mom in, Vera, Tolya. We’ll live well! Galka? What about Galka? She’ll grumble and calm down. Where is she going to go?”
Where is she going to go?
That phrase was the last straw.
Galya suddenly realized that to them, she was not a person.
She was a function.
A free add-on to square meters.
The “move” was scheduled for the following weekend.
Galya stayed silent all week. She went to work, nodded when Zhenya excitedly told her how they would buy a big sofa for the living room and how Tolya had already picked out a gaming desk for himself.
Zhenya and his mother decided she had “deflated” and “accepted” their will.
On Saturday, at exactly ten in the morning, a small moving truck pulled into the courtyard of their rented one-room apartment building. Yulia Semyonovna proudly climbed out of it, followed by Vera with a suitcase and Tolya with his computer.
“Well, Galochka, welcome us! Let’s go!” her mother-in-law commanded loudly.
Zhenya, shining like a polished samovar, carried two bags out of the entrance.
“Galya, why are you just standing there? Take the things! Help!”
Galya slowly walked up to him.
She was surprisingly calm.
“Zhenya. Who are you?”
Her husband was taken aback.
“What’s wrong with you, Galya? Have you lost your mind? I’m your husband!”
“And whose apartment is it?” she asked just as quietly.
“Well, yours…” he began uncertainly.
“COMMON PROPERTY!” Yulia Semyonovna shrieked. “Acquired during marriage!”
“An inheritance, Yulia Semyonovna, is not acquired marital property. It is not divided.” Galya gave the coldest smile she was capable of. “And now, Zhenya, listen carefully. Here are the keys to this rented apartment.”
She pulled a keyring from her pocket.
Zhenya stared at her, not understanding.
“I just called the landlord. Ivan Petrovich,” Galya said loudly and clearly, so everyone in the courtyard could hear. “I told him we’re moving out. Right now. That we no longer live here.”
Zhenya’s face began to change slowly. His radiant smile slid off like cheap lipstick.
“What… what are you talking about?”
“I’m telling the truth, Zhenya. Your mother is a genius. She has just evicted you not only from my future three-room apartment, but also from our current one-room rental.”
Galya threw the keys to the rented apartment at his feet, straight into the dust.
“Your things are in the truck? Excellent. You wanted to live together, didn’t you? Crowded but happy? Go ahead. Tolya has his computer, Vera has her suitcase, and your mother has her tape measure. You can measure the truck. I’m sure it’ll be cozy for you.”
“Galya!” Zhenya howled, finally grasping the scale of the disaster. “What are you doing?! Where will you go?!”
“Me? I’m going to have coffee.”
Galya snapped her fingers, and a bright yellow taxi rolled up beside her — the one she had called five minutes earlier.
“And then I’m going to my apartment. To file for divorce. And change the locks.”
“You… you…” Yulia Semyonovna choked with rage, her face turning crimson. “You’re destroying the family!”
“You destroyed the family, Yulia Semyonovna. With your tape measure.”
Galya got into the car.
The last thing she saw was a bewildered Zhenya standing between his furious mother, his crying sister, and the gloomy movers whom nobody had paid.
The divorce was quick.
Zhenya’s friends later rubbed salt into his wounds for a long time:
“So, head of the clan? How’s life in your mother’s apartment? Did all five of you fit?”
Galya renovated the three-room apartment beautifully.
A year later, an imposing man arrived at her housewarming party in a black Mercedes.
When a friend asked, “But what about Zhenya?” Galya adjusted her hair and smiled sarcastically.
“He’s probably happy. After all, he listened to his mother. And Mommy never gives bad advice.”
Because, as Confucius said: greed breeds poverty.
In Zhenya’s case, it also bred a lifelong cot in his mother’s hallway.