“Sveta dear, I’ve been thinking: if we throw your exercise bike out onto the balcony, my sewing machine will fit perfectly right here by the window,” my mother-in-law’s patronizing voice rang out from my own kitchen.
I froze in the hallway, still with my right shoe on. In three years of marriage, I had gotten used to many things, but the prospect of discovering a branch of a sewing factory in my three-room apartment was news to me.
In the kitchen, comfortably settled at the oak table I had bought with my last quarterly bonus, sat two people. Margarita Andreyevna, a sixty-five-year-old woman with a monumental hairstyle, was methodically destroying sandwiches made with my favorite lightly salted trout. Across from her sat Vasily — my lawful husband.
Vasya was a man of delicate spiritual organization. More precisely, he had dreamed of fame all his life, and fate had finally smiled on him: my husband had begun being regularly invited as an extra on talk shows. Yesterday, for example, he had spent three hours enthusiastically portraying an outraged neighbor on a program about secret DNA tests, for which he received eight hundred rubles and an unshakable sense of his own uniqueness.
“Mom, that’s genius!” Vasily chimed in, without looking up from his smartphone. “Svetik disappears at her clinic for days anyway. Why does she need an exercise bike? And it’ll be brighter for you to sew by the window.”
I took off my second shoe, carefully placed both on the shelf, and walked into the kitchen.
“Good evening,” I said, leaning against the doorframe with my arms crossed over my chest. “Margarita Andreyevna, why do you need a sewing machine by my window? You only come to visit us on weekends. And only because, and I quote, ‘your blood pressure jumps from oppressive loneliness.’”
My mother-in-law dabbed her lips with a paper napkin with such dignity that it looked as though she were attending a reception with the British ambassador.
“Well, Svetochka, I’ve decided to meet you halfway. After all, I am a teacher with a capital T. I worked as a nanny in a kindergarten for thirty years. I can see right through you — without a strong woman’s hand, you’re going wild here. I’ll move in with you permanently. We’ll rent out my one-room apartment and put the money toward Vasya’s television career. He needs a PR manager! And you and your husband will support me. According to the law of conscience!”
I looked at my husband. Vasily was diligently pretending to be incredibly absorbed in studying the ingredients on a jar of olives. Defending me was clearly not part of his plans: living at someone else’s expense had long ago become his basic need.
“Speaking of conscience and support,” my mother-in-law said, proudly straightening her back and adjusting her lace collar. “Svetochka, transfer me twenty thousand tomorrow for those Japanese capsules, The Emperor’s Longevity. My blood vessels are like rusty pipes. I urgently need nano-cellular renewal! It’s a secret development by Tibetan monks!”
I sighed quietly, walked over to the kettle, and pressed the button. Working as a senior nurse in an expensive private clinic had taught me phenomenal self-control.
“Margarita Andreyevna,” I began calmly, taking my cup from the shelf. “Those ‘imperial’ capsules contain ordinary diosmin flavonoid and dried garlic extract. As a medical worker, I’ll reveal a terrible secret to you: drugs with unproven effectiveness, beautifully labeled as dietary supplements, are sold for insane amounts of money only because of packaging with gold hieroglyphs. Diosmin really does improve venous tone, but the exact same medication, made domestically, costs exactly two hundred and forty rubles at the pharmacy around the corner. The only difference is that ours has undergone real clinical trials, while your ‘Emperor’ is simply a very expensive way to make your urine slightly vitamin-enriched.”
Margarita Andreyevna choked indignantly on air. A piece of expensive trout treacherously slid off her sandwich straight onto her lace blouse, leaving a greasy stain.
“Vasya!” she shrieked, theatrically clutching her heart, which anatomically was located on the completely opposite side. “Your wife is mocking an honored educator! She wants me to treat myself with cheap chemical poison!”
She flared her nostrils and shook her chin like an offended turkey that had suddenly been offered Kant to read instead of selected grain.
Vasily rolled his eyes, his entire appearance demonstrating the exhaustion of a genius burdened by everyday fuss.
“Sveta, why are you starting again? Mom has an incredibly delicate soul. You could have given her the money. You’re raking in millions at your elite clinic anyway. We’re family. We’re obligated to help each other!”
I said nothing. Arguing with them was about as productive as giving artificial respiration to a mannequin. They had long ago turned into a well-coordinated mechanism for pumping comfort and resources out of me. I silently took my tea and went to the bedroom.
The turning point came on Thursday. I had forgotten important certificates at home for the clinic’s upcoming accreditation and returned from work in the middle of the day. As I opened the door with my key, I heard the cheerful, incredibly energetic voice of my “seriously ill” mother-in-law coming from the living room.
“Yes, Lyubasha! Of course we’ll rent it out!” Margarita Andreyevna was declaring over the phone, sipping tea. “I’ve been putting my pension into a deposit account for the second year now, at a good interest rate. Why should I spend my own money? Our Svetochka is a workhorse. Her salary is more than most men could dream of. She pays the utilities, buys delicacies. I told them I was sick through and through — so now she carries bags of medicine for me. By November, I’ll move in with them permanently. I’ll rent out my little apartment. And Sveta can sleep on the sofa in the living room. She has to get up for work at six in the morning anyway, so she won’t wake me and Vasya. He’s a star, after all. He needs his sleep, he has to preserve his face!”
I quietly closed the front door behind me. Inside, there were no tears, no hurt rising in my throat. Only cold, absolutely crystal-clear understanding: they were not simply using me shamelessly. They were systematically pushing me out of my own home. As an experienced operating-room nurse, I knew the main rule of surgery: if gangrene has begun, there is no point smearing the affected area with antiseptic. You have to cut the damn thing off.
That evening, when Vasily returned from another taping of the talk show DNA Scandals, I was sitting on the sofa in complete darkness.
“Svetik, why are you saving electricity?” my husband asked cheerfully, throwing his jacket past the coat rack. “Today I sat in the front row. The camera caught me in close-up three times! The episode airs tomorrow. Tell your girls at work to watch!”
I slowly raised my eyes to him. My face was pale and twisted with horror — years of observing difficult patients had taught me perfect control over facial expressions.
“Vasya… catastrophe,” I whispered in a trembling, breaking voice. “I was fired for cause.”
Vasily froze mid-sentence, still not having taken off his left boot.
“What do you mean, fired? What are we going to live on? My fees are still on the way!”
“That’s not the worst part,” I said, covering my face with my hands and portraying the highest degree of despair. “I accidentally damaged the cooling circuit on the new MRI machine. There was a leak of liquid helium, and the superconducting magnet failed. The clinic filed a recourse claim against me for compensation. Six million rubles. The court placed a lien on my apartment today. Tomorrow morning the bailiffs will seal it. We have to move out. Immediately. Otherwise the police will come.”
A tangible silence hung in the hallway, so deep that the monotonous hum of the refrigerator could be heard from the kitchen. In one second, Vasily’s face lost all of its television gloss.
“Move out? Where?” he squeaked thinly, stepping back toward the door.
“Where do you think? To your mother’s, of course!” I jumped up and nervously grabbed his hands. “Call Margarita Andreyevna! Tell her we’re packing our suitcases right now and going to her place. She has a spacious one-room apartment. We’ll fit perfectly! She herself said we’re family, that we must help each other according to the law of conscience! Call her immediately. Put it on speaker!”
With trembling hands, fumbling through the icons on the screen, Vasily t
ook out his smartphone and dialed his mother’s number.
“Hello, Mommy?” my husband’s voice shook. “Mom, something happened… Sveta lost her job. She owes millions. Her apartment is being taken away for debts tomorrow. We’ll be out on the street. We’re going to throw our things into bags and come to you now. We’ll stay with you for a while.”
A strange gurgling sound came from the other end of the line.
“Vasenka…” Margarita Andreyevna’s voice suddenly became weak, cracked, dying. “Oh, something stabbed me under my left shoulder blade… My son, how can you come to me? My one-room apartment is tiny. I have seedlings on all the windowsills, and my joints ache so badly I cry. I’m a teacher, I need absolute peace, or I’ll have a stroke!”
“Mom, what are we supposed to do, sleep on a park bench?!” Vasily wailed, finally losing face completely.
“Why on a bench? You’re grown adults!” my mother-in-law snapped irritably and surprisingly energetically, instantly healed from the threat of a stroke. “Let Svetochka get herself placed in some hospital dormitory. They always give nurses a bed. Or let her go to her friends; she helped them, didn’t she? And you… well, Vasenka, rent yourself a room in a communal apartment somewhere on the outskirts. I simply cannot let you stay with me. You snore loudly at night, and it ruins the aura in my apartment. My chakras close. That’s it, son. Don’t worry your old sick mother. I still have to measure my blood pressure and drink Corvalol!”
Short, merciless beeps sounded.
Vasily remained standing in the hallway with the dead phone in his hand, blinking in confusion.
I slowly straightened my back. The expression of panic vanished from my face all at once. I took two steps, flipped the light switch, flooding the hallway with bright light, and looked my husband straight in the eyes.
“What about the sewing machine by my window?” I asked in an icy tone.
“Sveta… Mom just got confused. She was frightened by the surprise,” Vasily began babbling pitifully, instinctively pressing his back against the front door.
“I did not lose my job, Vasily. There was no broken MRI machine and no six-million-ruble lawsuit. The apartment is mine, and no one will ever take it from me,” I said evenly and clearly, physically enjoying every word I pronounced. “I simply wanted to conduct a small clinical test on your famous family conscience. And both of you — you and your dear mother — failed it with a spectacular crash.”
“Svetik, so you were just joking? God, thank goodness!” Vasily tried to squeeze out a relieved smile and reached toward me. “I was really scared! I thought that was it, the end of my career!”
I recoiled from his hand in disgust.
“I was not joking. I was making the final diagnosis,” I said, confidently pointing to the door. “Now listen to me carefully, extra-star. Go to the bedroom. In the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, I have thoughtfully prepared excellent black garbage bags for you. One hundred and twenty liters, extra strong, with drawstrings. Specifically so your immense television aura can fit inside them completely. I’m giving you exactly forty minutes. And within an hour, I don’t want even your spirit left in my apartment. I’ll file for divorce tomorrow morning through the government services portal.”
Justice arrived quietly, without Italian passions, scandals, or the smashing of my favorite dishes. Vasya, muttering something about female treachery, shamefully retreated into the night with two bulging bags.
I locked the door behind him with two turns of the key, poured myself a glass of good dry wine, and went to the living-room window. There, exactly where my mother-in-law had so dreamed of placing her sewing machine, stood my beloved exercise bike — proud and unshakable.
And I had absolutely no intention of moving it from there.