“You do absolutely nothing for our family. You’re constantly running off to your mother, and now you’re planning to transfer your entire salary to her too? Why don’t you just move in with her for good?”

As she spoke, he frowned and puffed out his lips like an offended child whose favorite toy was being taken away.
His face took on the expression she hated more than anything in the world—a mixture of stubbornness and a complete inability to understand what she was accusing him of.
“Oh, don’t start, all right? You’re always unhappy about something. I’m taking care of my mother. What’s wrong with that? It’s my duty.”
“Then perhaps you should perform that duty at its primary location,” Veronika said, stepping toward him.
Her eyes, usually warm and brown, now resembled two dark shards of glass.
“Perhaps you should simply move in with her. Take your belongings and stay there forever.”
Stas snorted and turned his attention back to his phone, making it clear that the conversation was over.
It was his favorite method of dealing with problems—escaping from them by hiding behind a glowing screen.
“I’m not moving anywhere. Stop creating all this drama.”
Veronika gave a bitter laugh. Her smile was crooked and unattractive.
She no longer felt anger or resentment. There was only a cold, ringing emptiness and a sudden, crystal-clear understanding of what she had to do.
“No one is asking you. I’m not offering you a choice. I’m informing you of a decision that has already been made. You’re moving out. Today. Go back under your mother’s skirt. She needs you more, after all. You and your salary. The door is over there. You can start packing.”
Stas slowly lowered his phone onto the table as though it had suddenly become too heavy.
His face took on an expression of puzzled superiority, the kind worn by someone listening to the ravings of a madman while deciding whether they were even worth responding to.
He looked at Veronika—at her straight back and her tightly clasped hands—and gave her a crooked smile.
“Are you serious? Nika, stop putting on a show. Is this PMS or something? I said I’m going to help my mother. My mother. The only person who is truly family to me, the woman who devoted her entire life to me. And you’re standing here making a scene.”
He rose, intending to walk past her into the other room, demonstrating how little her words meant to him.
But she did not move.
She stood in the narrow passage between the table and the refrigerator like a rock, like an immovable border marker separating his past from his future.
“The only person who is family to you?” she repeated, without a trace of warmth in her voice. “Then who am I? Your servant? An incubator who gave birth to your son? A convenient addition to your life that you can ignore as long as it continues functioning properly? Have you ever asked what I need? What your child needs? Have you spent a single weekend with us over the past year instead of going to her country house to hold up her rotten fence?”
The accusations fell upon him like dry, prickly seeds.
He stepped back instinctively, as though defending himself.
He was not accustomed to this. Usually Veronika complained, sulked, and then eventually gave in.
But now a completely unfamiliar woman stood before him, her eyes cold and determined.
“What are you talking about? That’s not true! I work. I bring money into this house. You don’t lack anything!”
“Money?” She let out a short, dry laugh. “You think your entire purpose in this family is simply to bring home a salary? And now you’re not even going to do that. Do you know the difference between us, Stas? I build this home every day. I cook, clean, do the laundry, help our son with his homework, think about what we’re going to eat tomorrow and what he will wear to school the day after that. You only sleep here. You’re a guest. A consumer. And now the consumer has decided that he no longer intends to pay for the services. So the services are ending. Pack your things.”
His face turned crimson.
Accusations of inadequacy struck his most sensitive spot, and she had hit it directly.
He pulled his phone from his pocket like a knight drawing a sword. It was his main weapon, his connection to the command center.
“Oh, really? Fine. I’m calling Mom right now. Let’s see what she has to say about the way you treat her son. Let’s see how much you appreciate the care I show her.”
Veronika silently stepped aside, clearing the way for him.
She leaned against the kitchen cabinets, folded her arms across her chest, and simply watched.
There was contempt in her gaze, along with a tired disgust, as though she were looking at something both inevitable and repulsive, like a cockroach crawling across a clean floor.
Stas dialed the number and pressed the phone to his ear.
His posture immediately changed. He hunched slightly, and his voice became plaintive, almost childish.
“Mom? Hi. Yes… No, everything isn’t all right. It’s Veronika… Yes, again. Can you imagine? I told her I was going to help you and send you money… And what do you think she did? She’s throwing me out of the house! She says I should move in with you! Yes, just like that! She said it directly! She says I do nothing for this family… Mom, that isn’t true, is it?”
He listened to the voice on the other end, and his entire figure gradually began to transform.
His shoulders straightened. His chin lifted. The whining notes in his voice were replaced by a firm confidence that did not belong to him.
He nodded and agreed, absorbing his mother’s instructions and righteous anger.
“Yes, Mom… I understand… You’re right… Of course you’re right… That’s exactly what I’ll do… I’ll put her in her place. All right. Love you.”
He ended the call and looked triumphantly at his wife.
He was no longer the mumbling little boy who had called his mother five minutes earlier.
Now a self-satisfied mannequin stood before her, stuffed with someone else’s will.
“Well, I spoke to Mom. She said I’m absolutely right and that I have to stand my ground. So listen carefully. I am not leaving this home. This apartment belongs to me just as much as it belongs to you. I will help my mother as much as I consider necessary. And if you don’t like it, you can learn to accept it. Because that is what I have decided. I am the man of this house, and things will be done the way I say.”
Veronika did not answer.
She merely looked at him the way an entomologist looks at an insect pinned to a corkboard.
There was as much truth in his declaration that he was “the man of the house” as there was strength in the cardboard sword of a child.
He was not the man of the house. He was a loudspeaker broadcasting someone else’s will.
Her silence, filled with icy contempt, angered him much more than shouting would have.
He stood there for a few more moments, waiting for a reaction, an argument, anything that might confirm his imaginary authority.
When none came, he marched demonstratively into the living room and turned the television up to full volume.
The next several hours passed in a state of thick, suffocating silence.
Veronika methodically finished cleaning the kitchen. Her movements were precise and mechanical.
She did not bang the dishes or slam the cabinet doors. She moved almost soundlessly, and that silence was deafening.
Their son was staying with her parents, and she was grateful to fate for that small miracle.
He did not need to witness this theater of absurdity.
When the doorbell rang, she did not even flinch.
She knew who it was.
The ring was brief, commanding, and impatient. It was not the ring of a guest but the signal that an inspection was about to begin.
Delighted that reinforcements had arrived, Stas rushed to open the door.
Irina Konstantinovna stood on the threshold.
She was not a stooped pensioner in desperate need of assistance, but a solid monument in a high-quality wool coat, with perfectly styled hair and the face of a Roman senator.
She entered the apartment, barely acknowledging her son with a nod, and marched directly into the living room like a general arriving at the front line.
Her gaze swept across the room, evaluating and passing judgment on everything it touched: the sofa cushions, the framed photographs, the cleanliness of the floor.
“Well, son, did you explain to this woman where her place is?” she began, deliberately refusing to address Veronika, as though she were an inanimate object.
Veronika came out of the kitchen and stopped in the doorway.
She leaned against the frame and folded her arms across her chest.
“Good evening, Irina Konstantinovna. You are in my home. Before explaining my place to me, take off your coat and remove your shoes.”
Irina Konstantinovna slowly turned her head.
Her face showed neither surprise nor anger, only cold, arrogant curiosity.
“I did not come here as a guest, dear girl. I came to save my son’s family from your selfishness. Stasik told me everything. How dare you throw him out of his own home simply because he decided to help his sick mother?”
“First of all, I am not your ‘dear girl.’ Second, your ‘illness’ does not appear to prevent you from looking perfectly healthy or traveling across the city to conduct inspections. And third, he did not decide to help you. He decided to completely abandon his financial responsibility toward his own family—toward me and your grandson. Can’t you see the difference?”
Stas, standing behind his mother, immediately interrupted like a faithful squire.
“Nika, stop it! Mom is right! You simply don’t want me to help her! You’ve never liked her!”
Irina Konstantinovna smiled victoriously.
She slowly walked around the room, running one gloved finger across the surface of the bookshelf.
She did not examine the finger afterward, but the gesture spoke more clearly than words ever could.
“I have always told my boy that a wife must be a source of support and stability. She must understand that a mother is sacred. But you… You think only about yourself. Your own comfort. Money. A real woman creates a warm home. She does not count every coin her husband wants to give to the woman who gave him life.”
“A warm home?” Veronika looked around her immaculately clean apartment. “A warm home is where your husband comes back because he wants to be with you, not because he needs somewhere to sit before running back to his mother. A warm home is where you plan the future together, not where he suddenly informs you that your future no longer exists in his plans. You came here to support him? Wonderful. Support him. But you’ll be doing it at a different address.”
She straightened and pushed herself away from the doorframe.
There was no longer a trace of doubt in her eyes.
She was not looking at two separate people. She was looking at a single two-headed organism, connected by an umbilical cord that had never been cut at birth.
Arguing with that organism was as pointless as trying to persuade a wall to move.
They both stared at her—the mother with an expression of righteous fury and the son wearing a reflection of his mother’s superiority.
They were confident they had won.
They believed they had backed her into a corner.
And at that exact moment, Veronika realized there were no words left to say.
The time for talking was over.
“Well? Do you understand now?” Irina Konstantinovna’s voice dripped with triumph.
Although she was shorter than Veronika, she looked at her as though from above.

“My son is a man, and he will take care of his mother. You must accept that. You should be grateful to have such a caring husband.”
Stas, standing beside her, nodded and squared his shoulders.
His mother’s approval affected him like a powerful drug.
“You heard her. Mom would never give me bad advice. So let’s end this performance. I’m hungry. Make dinner.”
Veronika looked first at one of them and then at the other.
She studied their smug, confident faces.
They were one united whole, an indestructible monument to maternal love and filial devotion.
And at that moment, she felt neither anger nor despair, but complete, crystalline calm.
It was the calm of a surgeon delivering a final diagnosis: the tumor was inoperable. Amputation was required.
Without saying a word, she turned around and walked into the bedroom.
“That’s right,” Irina Konstantinovna called after her. “Go and cool down. It was time you understood who is in charge of this home.”
Stas gave a self-satisfied snort and returned to the television, ready to sink once again into its comforting glow.
He had won.
He had defended his rights and his position as a man.
Now she would cry into her pillow, then return to the kitchen, obedient and resigned.
That was how it had always happened before.
But she did not return.
Instead, the sound of the overhead storage compartment being opened came from the bedroom.
A minute later, Veronika appeared in the living-room doorway.
She was holding a large, dusty sports bag.
It was the same bag Stas had brought when he first moved in with her, naively believing that he was beginning a new, adult life.
Irina Konstantinovna and Stas stared at her in confusion.
“Are you going somewhere?” Stas asked with a hint of superiority in his voice.
Veronika did not answer.
She walked past them into the hallway, dropped the bag on the floor, and yanked open the sliding wardrobe door.
Her movements were sharp, stripped of all softness.
They were the movements of someone pulling a weed out by its roots.
She grabbed his winter jacket, which hung in the most prominent spot, and threw it forcefully into the open mouth of the bag.
Then came his autumn coat. His scarf. His hat.
“What are you doing?” Stas finally exclaimed.
His face lengthened, and his self-satisfied smile slid away like a cheap mask.
“Have you lost your mind? Put those back!”
“Stop this hysterical behavior immediately!” Irina Konstantinovna shrieked, her senatorial composure finally cracking. “Veronika, I am ordering you!”
But Veronika did not hear them.
She was deaf to their voices.
She returned to the bedroom.
They followed behind her like two stone statues, neither daring to touch her.
The loud scrape of a dresser drawer being pulled open made them flinch.
She began scooping out his T-shirts, sweaters, socks, and crumpled underwear.
Everything flew into the bag, which now stood in the middle of the room.
She did not fold his clothes.
She annihilated them.
She was cleaning his smell, his presence, and his years of parasitic existence out of her space.
“Nika! Stop! Those are my things!” Stas shouted, attempting to grab her arm.
She dodged him, and his hand closed helplessly around empty air.
She worked silently and methodically, with frightening determination.
Her face was an impenetrable mask.
She emptied his shelves, leaving behind a ringing emptiness.
When the final pair of socks landed inside the bag, she forced the zipper shut.
The sound of the slider scraping across the metal teeth rang through the silence like a gunshot.
She grabbed the heavy, bulging bag and dragged it toward the entrance.
Stas and Irina Konstantinovna moved aside as though making way for a battering ram.
Veronika pulled the front door open and shoved the bag onto the landing.
It struck the tiled floor with a dull thud.
Only then did she turn around.
She swept both of them with a long, cold look that contained nothing but the acknowledgment of an established fact.
Finally, she spoke.
Her voice was steady, without the slightest tremor.
“That’s it! You can both get out and never come back! Over there, your salaries and pensions can become one shared budget! That’s all!”
She looked directly at Stas, but her words were meant for both of them.
In the silence that followed, the hum of the kitchen refrigerator could be clearly heard.
Irina Konstantinovna’s face twisted with rage.
She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came.
Stas stood pale and lost, with the confused expression of a child, completely unable to understand how his triumph had transformed so quickly into total and unconditional exile.
Veronika stepped backward into the apartment and reached for the door handle.
“The door is right there. Take your property and leave. Both of you.”

“You do absolutely nothing for our family. You’re constantly running off to your mother, and now you’re planning to transfer your entire salary to her too? Maybe you should just move in with her for good?”
“Starting next month, my entire salary will go to Mom. She needs it more.”
The words dropped into the silence of the kitchen as casually as crumbs falling from the table. Stas did not even consider it necessary to look up from his phone, whose screen cast a cold bluish glow across his serene face. He simply stated it as a fact, as though he were announcing the weather forecast or a rise in the price of buckwheat.
He sat sprawled in a chair in the middle of the small kitchen that Veronika kept polished to perfection, looking completely alien in that space. He was a visitor from another world—a world where only he and his mother existed, while everything else was merely a blurred background.
Veronika froze halfway through a movement. Her hand, gripping a damp cloth, stopped just before reaching the sticky ring left by her husband’s cup. She felt the warmth slowly draining from her fingers and the muscles in her back turning rigid.
With almost mechanical precision, she slowly straightened. She placed the cloth on the edge of the sink. Her movements were controlled and completely devoid of haste, and there was something frightening about that calmness.
She stared at the back of her husband’s head and watched his thumb lazily slide across the glass screen of his smartphone.
“What did you say? Repeat it.”
Her voice was flat and hollow, without the slightest trace of outrage. That dead calm was far more terrifying than an approaching storm.
Stas finally looked away from his phone. He blinked irritably as his eyes adjusted to the kitchen light, then looked at her. His expression showed mild annoyance at being interrupted from something important.
“I said I’m going to send money to Mom. My whole salary. You know what her pension is like. She can barely make ends meet. And we already have everything we need.”
He said it in the tone of a man performing a noble deed, expecting, if not praise, then at least silent approval.
He truly did not understand. He saw nothing unusual about his decision. To him, it was as natural as breathing.
His world revolved around a single axis, and the name of that axis was Irina Konstantinovna. Everything else—his job, his wife, their life together—was merely a collection of secondary satellites orbiting around it.
At that moment, something inside Veronika snapped.
Not her nerves. It was more like the final thin thread holding together her patience, her hope, and her foolish desire to believe that one day he would finally grow up.
All the years when he had rushed to his mother at the first hint of a problem. The countless weekends spent fixing her leaking tap or digging up her garden plot. The thousands of phone calls during which he reported every detail of his life to her.
It all merged into one enormous, ugly lump that rose in Veronika’s throat.
“She needs it more?” she repeated just as quietly. “She needs it more. So we don’t need anything, is that it? We don’t need money to prepare our child for school? We don’t need to buy you winter boots because yours are falling apart? You already don’t lift a finger for this family. You exist here like a piece of furniture that occasionally gets taken outside to be aired at your mother’s house. And now you’ve decided that your money isn’t needed here either?”
“Yes! That’s what I decided, because I’m the head of this family! And that’s enough—”
“You do absolutely nothing for our family. You’re constantly running off to your mother, and now you’re planning to transfer your entire salary to her too? Maybe you should just move in with her for good?”
As she spoke, he frowned and puffed out his lips like an offended child whose favorite toy was being taken away.
His face took on the expression she hated more than anything in the world—a mixture of stubbornness and a complete inability to understand what she was accusing him of.
“Oh, don’t start, all right? You’re always unhappy about something. I’m taking care of my mother. What’s wrong with that? It’s my duty.”
“Then perhaps you should perform that duty at its primary location,” Veronika said, stepping toward him.
Her eyes, usually warm and brown, now resembled two dark shards of glass.
“Perhaps you should simply move in with her. Take your belongings and stay there forever.”
Stas snorted and turned his attention back to his phone, making it clear that the conversation was over.
It was his favorite method of dealing with problems—escaping from them by hiding behind a glowing screen.
“I’m not moving anywhere. Stop creating all this drama.”
Veronika gave a bitter laugh. Her smile was crooked and unattractive.
She no longer felt anger or resentment. There was only a cold, ringing emptiness and a sudden, crystal-clear understanding of what she had to do.
“No one is asking you. I’m not offering you a choice. I’m informing you of a decision that has already been made. You’re moving out. Today. Go back under your mother’s skirt. She needs you more, after all. You and your salary. The door is over there. You can start packing.”
Stas slowly lowered his phone onto the table as though it had suddenly become too heavy.
His face took on an expression of puzzled superiority, the kind worn by someone listening to the ravings of a madman while deciding whether they were even worth responding to.
He looked at Veronika—at her straight back and her tightly clasped hands—and gave her a crooked smile.
“Are you serious? Nika, stop putting on a show. Is this PMS or something? I said I’m going to help my mother. My mother. The only person who is truly family to me, the woman who devoted her entire life to me. And you’re standing here making a scene.”
He rose, intending to walk past her into the other room, demonstrating how little her words meant to him.
But she did not move.
She stood in the narrow passage between the table and the refrigerator like a rock, like an immovable border marker separating his past from his future.
“The only person who is family to you?” she repeated, without a trace of warmth in her voice. “Then who am I? Your servant? An incubator who gave birth to your son? A convenient addition to your life that you can ignore as long as it continues functioning properly? Have you ever asked what I need? What your child needs? Have you spent a single weekend with us over the past year instead of going to her country house to hold up her rotten fence?”
The accusations fell upon him like dry, prickly seeds.
He stepped back instinctively, as though defending himself.
He was not accustomed to this. Usually Veronika complained, sulked, and then eventually gave in.
But now a completely unfamiliar woman stood before him, her eyes cold and determined.
“What are you talking about? That’s not true! I work. I bring money into this house. You don’t lack anything!”
“Money?” She let out a short, dry laugh. “You think your entire purpose in this family is simply to bring home a salary? And now you’re not even going to do that. Do you know the difference between us, Stas? I build this home every day. I cook, clean, do the laundry, help our son with his homework, think about what we’re going to eat tomorrow and what he will wear to school the day after that. You only sleep here. You’re a guest. A consumer. And now the consumer has decided that he no longer intends to pay for the services. So the services are ending. Pack your things.”
His face turned crimson.
Accusations of inadequacy struck his most sensitive spot, and she had hit it directly.
He pulled his phone from his pocket like a knight drawing a sword. It was his main weapon, his connection to the command center.
“Oh, really? Fine. I’m calling Mom right now. Let’s see what she has to say about the way you treat her son. Let’s see how much you appreciate the care I show her.”
Veronika silently stepped aside, clearing the way for him.
She leaned against the kitchen cabinets, folded her arms across her chest, and simply watched.
There was contempt in her gaze, along with a tired disgust, as though she were looking at something both inevitable and repulsive, like a cockroach crawling across a clean floor.
Stas dialed the number and pressed the phone to his ear.
His posture immediately changed. He hunched slightly, and his voice became plaintive, almost childish.
“Mom? Hi. Yes… No, everything isn’t all right. It’s Veronika… Yes, again. Can you imagine? I told her I was going to help you and send you money… And what do you think she did? She’s throwing me out of the house! She says I should move in with you! Yes, just like that! She said it directly! She says I do nothing for this family… Mom, that isn’t true, is it?”
He listened to the voice on the other end, and his entire figure gradually began to transform.
His shoulders straightened. His chin lifted. The whining notes in his voice were replaced by a firm confidence that did not belong to him.
He nodded and agreed, absorbing his mother’s instructions and righteous anger.
“Yes, Mom… I understand… You’re right… Of course you’re right… That’s exactly what I’ll do… I’ll put her in her place. All right. Love you.”
He ended the call and looked triumphantly at his wife.
He was no longer the mumbling little boy who had called his mother five minutes earlier.
Now a self-satisfied mannequin stood before her, stuffed with someone else’s will.
“Well, I spoke to Mom. She said I’m absolutely right and that I have to stand my ground. So listen carefully. I am not leaving this home. This apartment belongs to me just as much as it belongs to you. I will help my mother as much as I consider necessary. And if you don’t like it, you can learn to accept it. Because that is what I have decided. I am the man of this house, and things will be done the way I say.”
Veronika did not answer.
She merely looked at him the way an entomologist looks at an insect pinned to a corkboard.
There was as much truth in his declaration that he was “the man of the house” as there was strength in the cardboard sword of a child.
He was not the man of the house. He was a loudspeaker broadcasting someone else’s will.
Her silence, filled with icy contempt, angered him much more than shouting would have.
He stood there for a few more moments, waiting for a reaction, an argument, anything that might confirm his imaginary authority.
When none came, he marched demonstratively into the living room and turned the television up to full volume.
The next several hours passed in a state of thick, suffocating silence.
Veronika methodically finished cleaning the kitchen. Her movements were precise and mechanical.
She did not bang the dishes or slam the cabinet doors. She moved almost soundlessly, and that silence was deafening.
Their son was staying with her parents, and she was grateful to fate for that small miracle.
He did not need to witness this theater of absurdity.
When the doorbell rang, she did not even flinch.
She knew who it was.
The ring was brief, commanding, and impatient. It was not the ring of a guest but the signal that an inspection was about to begin.
Delighted that reinforcements had arrived, Stas rushed to open the door.
Irina Konstantinovna stood on the threshold.
She was not a stooped pensioner in desperate need of assistance, but a solid monument in a high-quality wool coat, with perfectly styled hair and the face of a Roman senator.
She entered the apartment, barely acknowledging her son with a nod, and marched directly into the living room like a general arriving at the front line.
Her gaze swept across the room, evaluating and passing judgment on everything it touched: the sofa cushions, the framed photographs, the cleanliness of the floor.
“Well, son, did you explain to this woman where her place is?” she began, deliberately refusing to address Veronika, as though she were an inanimate object.
Veronika came out of the kitchen and stopped in the doorway.
She leaned against the frame and folded her arms across her chest.
“Good evening, Irina Konstantinovna. You are in my home. Before explaining my place to me, take off your coat and remove your shoes.”
Irina Konstantinovna slowly turned her head.
Her face showed neither surprise nor anger, only cold, arrogant curiosity.
“I did not come here as a guest, dear girl. I came to save my son’s family from your selfishness. Stasik told me everything. How dare you throw him out of his own home simply because he decided to help his sick mother?”
“First of all, I am not your ‘dear girl.’ Second, your ‘illness’ does not appear to prevent you from looking perfectly healthy or traveling across the city to conduct inspections. And third, he did not decide to help you. He decided to completely abandon his financial responsibility toward his own family—toward me and your grandson. Can’t you see the difference?”
Stas, standing behind his mother, immediately interrupted like a faithful squire.
“Nika, stop it! Mom is right! You simply don’t want me to help her! You’ve never liked her!”
Irina Konstantinovna smiled victoriously.
She slowly walked around the room, running one gloved finger across the surface of the bookshelf.
She did not examine the finger afterward, but the gesture spoke more clearly than words ever could.
“I have always told my boy that a wife must be a source of support and stability. She must understand that a mother is sacred. But you… You think only about yourself. Your own comfort. Money. A real woman creates a warm home. She does not count every coin her husband wants to give to the woman who gave him life.”
“A warm home?” Veronika looked around her immaculately clean apartment. “A warm home is where your husband comes back because he wants to be with you, not because he needs somewhere to sit before running back to his mother. A warm home is where you plan the future together, not where he suddenly informs you that your future no longer exists in his plans. You came here to support him? Wonderful. Support him. But you’ll be doing it at a different address.”
She straightened and pushed herself away from the doorframe.
There was no longer a trace of doubt in her eyes.
She was not looking at two separate people. She was looking at a single two-headed organism, connected by an umbilical cord that had never been cut at birth.
Arguing with that organism was as pointless as trying to persuade a wall to move.
They both stared at her—the mother with an expression of righteous fury and the son wearing a reflection of his mother’s superiority.
They were confident they had won.
They believed they had backed her into a corner.
And at that exact moment, Veronika realized there were no words left to say.
The time for talking was over.
“Well? Do you understand now?” Irina Konstantinovna’s voice dripped with triumph.
Although she was shorter than Veronika, she looked at her as though from above.
“My son is a man, and he will take care of his mother. You must accept that. You should be grateful to have such a caring husband.”
Stas, standing beside her, nodded and squared his shoulders.
His mother’s approval affected him like a powerful drug.
“You heard her. Mom would never give me bad advice. So let’s end this performance. I’m hungry. Make dinner.”
Veronika looked first at one of them and then at the other.
She studied their smug, confident faces.
They were one united whole, an indestructible monument to maternal love and filial devotion.
And at that moment, she felt neither anger nor despair, but complete, crystalline calm.
It was the calm of a surgeon delivering a final diagnosis: the tumor was inoperable. Amputation was required.
Without saying a word, she turned around and walked into the bedroom.
“That’s right,” Irina Konstantinovna called after her. “Go and cool down. It was time you understood who is in charge of this home.”
Stas gave a self-satisfied snort and returned to the television, ready to sink once again into its comforting glow.
He had won.
He had defended his rights and his position as a man.
Now she would cry into her pillow, then return to the kitchen, obedient and resigned.
That was how it had always happened before.
But she did not return.
Instead, the sound of the overhead storage compartment being opened came from the bedroom.
A minute later, Veronika appeared in the living-room doorway.
She was holding a large, dusty sports bag.
It was the same bag Stas had brought when he first moved in with her, naively believing that he was beginning a new, adult life.
Irina Konstantinovna and Stas stared at her in confusion.
“Are you going somewhere?” Stas asked with a hint of superiority in his voice.
Veronika did not answer.
She walked past them into the hallway, dropped the bag on the floor, and yanked open the sliding wardrobe door.
Her movements were sharp, stripped of all softness.
They were the movements of someone pulling a weed out by its roots.
She grabbed his winter jacket, which hung in the most prominent spot, and threw it forcefully into the open mouth of the bag.
Then came his autumn coat. His scarf. His hat.
“What are you doing?” Stas finally exclaimed.
His face lengthened, and his self-satisfied smile slid away like a cheap mask.
“Have you lost your mind? Put those back!”
“Stop this hysterical behavior immediately!” Irina Konstantinovna shrieked, her senatorial composure finally cracking. “Veronika, I am ordering you!”
But Veronika did not hear them.
She was deaf to their voices.
She returned to the bedroom.
They followed behind her like two stone statues, neither daring to touch her.
The loud scrape of a dresser drawer being pulled open made them flinch.
She began scooping out his T-shirts, sweaters, socks, and crumpled underwear.
Everything flew into the bag, which now stood in the middle of the room.
She did not fold his clothes.
She annihilated them.
She was cleaning his smell, his presence, and his years of parasitic existence out of her space.
“Nika! Stop! Those are my things!” Stas shouted, attempting to grab her arm.
She dodged him, and his hand closed helplessly around empty air.
She worked silently and methodically, with frightening determination.
Her face was an impenetrable mask.

She emptied his shelves, leaving behind a ringing emptiness.
When the final pair of socks landed inside the bag, she forced the zipper shut.
The sound of the slider scraping across the metal teeth rang through the silence like a gunshot.
She grabbed the heavy, bulging bag and dragged it toward the entrance.
Stas and Irina Konstantinovna moved aside as though making way for a battering ram.
Veronika pulled the front door open and shoved the bag onto the landing.
It struck the tiled floor with a dull thud.
Only then did she turn around.
She swept both of them with a long, cold look that contained nothing but the acknowledgment of an established fact.
Finally, she spoke.
Her voice was steady, without the slightest tremor.
“That’s it! You can both get out and never come back! Over there, your salaries and pensions can become one shared budget! That’s all!”
She looked directly at Stas, but her words were meant for both of them.
In the silence that followed, the hum of the kitchen refrigerator could be clearly heard.
Irina Konstantinovna’s face twisted with rage.
She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came.
Stas stood pale and lost, with the confused expression of a child, completely unable to understand how his triumph had transformed so quickly into total and unconditional exile.
Veronika stepped backward into the apartment and reached for the door handle.
“The door is right there. Take your property and leave. Both of you.”

Leave a Comment Cancel reply