“Move it, feed my relatives,” my fiance said in my own apartment. An hour later, he was out of there without a bride and without keys.
“Olya, why are you standing there like you’re not family? Move it, come on, take care of the guests.”
I was holding a tray with hot food — chicken drumsticks from the oven, with potatoes, meant for two people, by the way, because Stas and I had agreed to have dinner together and discuss the wedding. Calmly. The menu, the guests, the budget — everything adults are supposed to discuss.
But four people showed up. Without calling. Without asking, “May we?” At exactly six o’clock on Saturday evening, the doorbell rang, and there stood Stas with his mother, Tamara Anatolyevna, his father, Viktor Sergeyevich, and his older sister Alla with her husband Dima.
“Surprise!” Stas said, kissing me on the cheek. “Family council!”
Back then, I still kept quiet. I smiled. I let them in. I thought, all right, unexpected, but I’ll put something together. There was sausage in the fridge, I had salted some herring that morning for dinner, and the chicken was already in the oven. I opened a bottle of Khortytsya that my neighbor, Uncle Vitya, had given me the previous week after I fixed his kettle through the wall.
They sat there for an hour. Tamara Anatolyevna inspected the apartment and pursed her lips. Viktor Sergeyevich settled into my armchair by the window — the only one with a blanket on it because the upholstery was worn — and began flipping through my book lying nearby. Alla and Dima made themselves comfortable on the sofa, and Alla immediately asked:
“Is that wallpaper or some kind of tile?” she said, pointing at the kitchen backsplash.
“Tile.”
“Strange. We had something like that glued up back in 2010.”
I kept quiet again. Even though I had laid that tile myself last year. With a level. And it was perfectly normal tile — white subway tile, not “strange.”
But when Stas said, “Move it, take care of the guests,” something inside me clicked. Quietly. Like a switch.
I put the tray down on the table.
“Stas. Can I speak to you in the hallway for a minute?”
“Olya, later, we’re already discussing everything…”
“For a minute.”
He rolled his eyes — demonstratively, for his parents, as if to say, see how capricious she is — but he got up. We went out into the hallway.
“Stas. Are you at home?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Whose apartment is this?”
“Yours, well. So what?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure we both remembered.”
He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“Olya, why are you getting nervous? My mom and dad came over, Alla and Dimka too. They’re family! The wedding is in a month. We need to get to know each other better.”
“Stas. Getting to know each other is when people warn you in advance. And when they bring a cake. Not when six people show up without calling.”
“Four.”
“What?”
“There are four of them, and two of us. Six altogether.”
I looked at him. Seriously. He was correcting my arithmetic. In complete seriousness.
“Stas. Go back to your people. I’ll be there in a moment.”
I went into the kitchen — not to them, but into the kitchen. I closed the door. Took out my phone. Opened my notes.
And I did what I should have done a month earlier, when Tamara Anatolyevna first told me on the phone, “Olechka, the main thing is, don’t even think about having children right away — let Stasik get on his feet first, he has a mortgage on his car, after all.” A mortgage on a car. On a Lada Granta. I had kept quiet then too.
So, in my notes, I opened a list. I had been keeping it for the past two months. Not for a scandal — for myself. To understand what I was getting into.
The list looked like this:
Stas has been living with me since October. He no longer pays rent — he moved out of his place. He doesn’t pay a single ruble toward my utilities.
I buy the groceries. Once, he bought beer and chips and said, “My treat.”
His car is on credit. He has been paying for three years, with two more left.
The ring he gave me was silver. I kept quiet. Silver is silver.
We are planning the wedding — at whose expense? “We’ll split it fifty-fifty.” The dress, the restaurant, the host — fifty-fifty. The wedding car will be my Hyundai Solaris because his Granta is “not formal enough.”
The apartment is mine. I bought it myself, paid the mortgage for eight years, and closed it two years ago.
I looked at that list and thought, Olya, you fool. You’re not a little girl. You’re thirty-five. You lived alone for eight years after your first divorce — and you lived just fine. And now this swept over you.
From the room came Tamara Anatolyevna’s voice:
“Stasik, where is your girl? The chicken is getting cold.”
“Stasik.” Right.
I opened the kitchen door and walked into the room. Calmly. Without the tray.
“Dear guests. I am now going to ask you to get dressed and go home.”
Silence. Only Viktor Sergeyevich turned a page in my book automatically.
“What?” Tamara Anatolyevna asked again.
“Dinner is over. Please get dressed. Is your car downstairs? You’ll get home just fine.”
Alla half rose from the sofa.
“Olya, are you out of your mind?”
“Absolutely. For the first time in six months.”
Stas flew out of the hallway.
“Olya, what are you doing?!”
“Stas. You too. Get dressed.”
“I live here!”
“You live here by my invitation. I am withdrawing the invitation. I’ll bring out your things now.”
And I went into the bedroom. Opened the wardrobe. Pulled out his sports bag — the big blue one he had arrived with in October. I threw everything that belonged to him inside: three shirts, jeans, socks, his razor, some book of his about “successful success,” his phone charger. Silently. Quickly. It took me about five minutes.
I carried the bag into the hallway and placed it by the door.
The guests were standing there in their coats. Tamara Anatolyevna was red as a tomato, Viktor Sergeyevich was calm, as if none of it concerned him at all. Alla stood with her mouth open. Dima was the only one who, I think, was actually glad. I nodded to him silently, and he silently nodded back. A good man. Unlucky with his wife.
Stas stood in the middle of the hallway, blinking.
“Olya. Olya, you’ll regret this. Are you serious? Over what? Because I asked you to take care of the guests?”
“Stas. Not because of that. Because of everything.”
“Because of what ‘everything’?!”
“Stas. You’ve been living with me for six months. You haven’t put a penny into this apartment. I pay the utilities, I buy the groceries, I cook, I do the laundry. We’re splitting the wedding fifty-fifty, but you invited forty people, while I invited twelve. Your mother chose the restaurant, in a district I’ve never even been to. You criticized my dress and said it was ‘too simple.’ You gave me a silver ring. You’re planning to use my car for the wedding. And today your parents showed up at my home without calling, and in my own apartment you ordered me to ‘move it.’”
I took a breath.
“Stas, I didn’t stop loving you. I stopped respecting you. And that, you know, is worse.”
Tamara Anatolyevna opened her mouth.
“Why, you! Any woman would be lucky to have Stasik—”
“Tamara Anatolyevna. Any woman is welcome to him. Stasik is at your disposal. Take him back home. And help him pay off the Granta — you have a house in the Moscow region, sell the dacha or something.”
Viktor Sergeyevich snorted. I looked at him — and it turned out he was smiling. Quietly. To himself.
“Let’s go, Toma,” he said. “The girl is making sense.”
“Vitya!”
“I said, let’s go.”
And they left. Alla followed them. Dima lingered in the doorway and quietly said to me:
“I’m sorry for all of this.”
“Thank you for not taking part in it.”
He nodded and left.
Stas stayed behind. With the bag at his feet.
“Olya. Wait. Let’s talk. I got carried away, I didn’t think, I…”
“Stas. The keys.”
“What?”
“The keys to my apartment. Give them back.”
“Olya…”
“The keys.”
He slowly pulled the keyring out of his pocket. Removed my two keys — one for the upper lock and one for the lower lock. Placed them on the small cabinet.
“Olya. I love you.”
“Stas. I believe you. It’s just not the kind of love I need. Goodbye.”
He left. I closed the door. Locked both locks. Put the chain on — for the first time in six months. I stood in the hallway for about five minutes, leaning against the door. I didn’t cry. I just stood there.
Then I went to the kitchen. The chicken in the oven had gone cold, but that was fine — it could be reheated. The potatoes too. The herring stood untouched — apparently none of them liked it. Thank God. They wouldn’t get any.
I poured myself a shot of Khortytsya. Clinked glasses with myself — against the corner of the table. Drank it. Ate a piece of herring.
I turned on the television. Some series was playing — I wasn’t paying attention. I just wanted some sound. So it wouldn’t be too quiet.
And you know what I thought?
I thought, it’s good he said “move it” today. Not in a month, after the registry office. Because after the registry office, maybe I would have moved. Out of habit. Out of inertia. But today — today I am not yet a wife. Today I am still the mistress of my own home. Of my own life. Of my own chicken in the oven.
And you know what? The chicken turned out finger-licking good.
It was a pity, of course, that I ate it alone. But I put the rest in the fridge. It’ll be enough for tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And maybe tomorrow I’ll invite Uncle Vitya — he’s a lonely man, and he did fix my kettle, after all. Why not?
As for the wedding — we’ll cancel it. I won’t even call Stas. He’ll figure it out himself. He has such a smart mother — Tamara Anatolyevna. She’ll explain it to him.
I poured a second shot. This time, I didn’t clink glasses with anyone.
I simply drank it.
To freedom.
