“Son, I moved in with you to rest, not to listen to your wife moaning at night! Have some pity on my heart!”
“Mom, what’s gotten into you?”
Nikita entered the kitchen, drawn by a sharp medicinal smell that overpowered even the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Marina Gennadyevna was sitting at the table, deliberately and exaggeratedly slowly dripping a dark liquid from a bottle into a faceted glass. Corvalol. Her battle standard, her shield, and her weapon. She did not look at her son, but her entire being—from her sorrowfully pursed lips to her tense shoulders—cried out about unbearable suffering.
“I didn’t sleep all night,” she complained, finally raising her eyes to him. Her gaze, usually sharp and observant, was now clouded with the hazy veil of martyrdom. She took a small sip and grimaced as though she were swallowing poison.
“Why?”
“Son, tell your wife to moan a little less at night! I didn’t move in with you so I could listen to that disgrace! I have a bad heart. I need peace and quiet!”
Nikita froze halfway to the coffee pot. A thick wave of heat rushed into his face, burning his ears and neck. He felt naked, caught completely off guard. His mother’s words, spoken in a deliberately quiet, suffering voice, struck with the precision of a sniper’s bullet. They were designed not to make him angry, but to make him ashamed.
A sticky, paralyzing shame over something that had been the most private and intimate part of his life—something that had now become a subject of public discussion at the breakfast table.
He wanted to say something, to object, but his mouth had gone dry.
At that very moment, Alla entered the kitchen as though she had materialized out of the morning sunlight. She wore a light silk robe, her hair carelessly pinned at the back of her head, and a faint, satisfied, relaxed smile played on her lips. She looked as if she had just awakened in paradise, and her appearance created the most outrageous contrast with the funeral-like atmosphere her mother-in-law had worked so hard to create.
When Marina Gennadyevna saw her, she tried to sit up straighter, and her lips tightened into a thin, malicious line.
“Good morning, Alya. Slept well, I suppose?” The venom in her voice was so concentrated it seemed capable of burning through the tabletop.
Alla stopped for a fraction of a second. Her gaze moved from the bottle of Corvalol to her mother-in-law’s suffering face and then to her husband, who was red as a lobster. She assessed the balance of power instantly.
Not a trace of embarrassment or anger appeared on her face.
Instead, her smile widened, transforming from relaxed into dazzling and provocative.
“A very good morning to you too, Marina Gennadyevna!” she sang. “And I wish you the same.”
She walked over to Nikita, ran a hand across his tense back, and lightly kissed his temple. Then she turned toward her mother-in-law and looked her directly in the eyes.
“Nikita, darling, you haven’t forgotten that we’re going shopping for some new lace lingerie for me today, have you? I saw an incredible set yesterday. I think we should get something red. So our nights can be even more exciting.”
She playfully winked at her petrified husband, mischievous sparks flashing in her eyes.
It was return fire.
Precise and merciless.
She did not make excuses. She did not defend herself. She accepted the challenge that had been thrown at her and raised the stakes to the heavens, turning the accusation of “disgrace” into an announcement of even more shameless pleasure to come.
She left Nikita completely stunned, his mouth hanging open and his heart pounding, while his mother, purple with helpless rage, sat alone with her useless Corvalol and the complete failure of her morning attack.
The direct assault involving Corvalol had failed, but Marina Gennadyevna was not the kind of person who retreated.
She was a strategist, and the battlefield—her son’s apartment—offered unlimited tactical possibilities.
She changed her strategy from a cavalry charge to systematic guerrilla warfare.
Her excuse was “helping around the house.”
Like a caring shadow, she moved silently through the rooms while the young couple was at work, wiping dust from places where there was none and rearranging vases that had already been standing perfectly.
Her true target was the bedroom.
The holy of holies.
The enemy fortress.
And eventually, her opportunity came.
One day, after returning from the store, Alla carelessly left a branded paper bag from an expensive lingerie boutique on the dresser.
Marina Gennadyevna spotted it from the hallway, and her heart began beating with predatory triumph.
She waited until Alla went to take a shower and slipped into the bedroom.
Her fingers, accustomed to woolen socks and bars of household soap, unfolded the rustling tissue paper with a mixture of disgust and curiosity.
Inside was that very red set.
Bright scarlet, almost screaming silk, decorated with the finest black lace.
It was not simply lingerie.
It was a manifesto.
A challenge.
A weapon with which her daughter-in-law had so brazenly struck her several days earlier.
Marina Gennadyevna stared at it not as an article of clothing but as the face of her enemy.
And then she struck back.
That evening, when Nikita and Alla returned home, they were greeted by the biting smell of bleach and an almost theatrical level of cleanliness.
In the middle of the kitchen, draped over the back of a chair like the flag of a defeated nation, hung something unrecognizable.
A grayish-brown rag covered in ugly stains, barely retaining the shape of the once-scarlet lingerie.
The lace had shriveled and yellowed. The silk had faded and appeared stiff.
Beside it, for contrast, hung an old checkered kitchen cloth.
The scene spoke more clearly than words ever could.
“Mom, what’s that?” Nikita asked, becoming the first to break the silence.
There was no anger in his voice, only bewildered confusion.
“Oh, Nikitushka, I was cleaning up and decided to wash everything,” Marina Gennadyevna fussed, wiping her perfectly dry hands on her apron. Her face portrayed complete innocence. “I found it in the laundry basket, so I tossed it into the machine with the towels. Apparently, the color ran terribly. Probably Chinese. The quality of things these days is dreadful.”
Nikita looked at Alla.
He expected her to explode, to start shouting, forcing him, as usual, to run helplessly between two fires while trying to calm everyone down.
But Alla remained silent.
She was not looking at the ruined garment.
She was looking directly at her mother-in-law.
Her gaze was calm, cold, and so piercing that Marina Gennadyevna involuntarily shuddered.
“Mom, come on…” Nikita began in a conciliatory tone. “It was silk. It was expensive. You’re supposed to wash something like that separately, by hand…”
Without saying a word, Alla slowly walked over to the chair.
She did not bother examining the pathetic remains of her purchase.
She picked up the ruined lingerie with two fingers, as if touching something disgusting, walked past her stunned husband and mother-in-law, and approached the trash can.
She opened the lid and, without looking, dropped the rag inside.
The metal lid slammed shut with a dull, final sound.
She turned around.
There was not even the faintest trace of a smile on her lips.
“It’s all right, Nikita. We’ll buy another one. An even better one. Apparently, some people get enormous pleasure not from wearing beautiful things, but simply from touching other people’s underwear. Even if they have to dig through a basket of dirty laundry to do it.”
The mask of innocent helpfulness vanished from Marina Gennadyevna’s face instantly.
She stared at Alla with eyes filled with pure, undiluted hatred.
She had lost this round too.
And now she understood that this war would continue until one of them was completely destroyed.
Losing the battle over the ruined lingerie did not break Marina Gennadyevna. It merely convinced her that, in this war, anything was permissible.
Alla was no longer simply her daughter-in-law.
She was an enemy who refused to obey the rules, felt no shame, and did not fear open confrontation.
Fighting such an opponent alone was pointless.
Marina Gennadyevna realized she needed heavy artillery.
And she summoned it.
The heavy artillery was her husband, Gennady Arkadyevich, Nikita’s father.
He was a solid, heavyset man whose face seemed permanently frozen in an expression of unquestionable righteousness.
He rarely interfered in family matters, preferring the role of a silent patriarch whose opinion was automatically treated as law.
He arrived on Sunday, and a “family dinner” was arranged.
This was not an invitation.
It was a summons before a tribunal.
The ceremonial dinnerware, normally used only on major holidays, was brought out, while Marina Gennadyevna’s signature dish—a duck roasted with apples—occupied the center of the table.
The festive aroma mixed with the oppressive feeling of a trap.
Nikita sat between his father and mother, his head drawn down into his shoulders.
With unnatural concentration, he cut his portion of duck into microscopic pieces, as though his survival depended on it.
He refused to raise his eyes, already feeling like a defendant even though no formal charges had yet been announced.
Alla sat opposite them, straight-backed and calm.
She ate slowly, with regal dignity, as though she were attending a reception at an embassy rather than sitting through a family trial.
“Well, this is nice,” Gennady Arkadyevich began, dabbing his lips with a napkin.
His deep, rumbling voice filled the kitchen and seemed to make the air vibrate.
“The whole family together—that’s what matters. A strong family, Alla, is built on respect. Respect for your elders, respect for traditions. And on feminine modesty.”
He paused, allowing his words to sink in.
Marina Gennadyevna nodded approvingly, looking triumphantly at her daughter-in-law.
There it was.
Surely Alla would not dare challenge a father’s authority.
“A woman is the guardian of the family hearth,” Gennady Arkadyevich continued, staring somewhere above Alla’s head. “Her behavior, her manners—they represent the entire family. And when there is no peace or decency in the house, when the nights turn into… ahem… into some kind of circus, it means there is a crack in that hearth. That cannot be allowed. A man needs peace so he can work, so he can be the head of the household. Not all this…”
He waved one heavy hand vaguely.
Nikita shrank even further into himself, wishing the floor would swallow him.
He waited for an explosion, for some cutting remark from Alla.
But after finishing a piece of apple, she carefully placed her knife and fork on her plate.
She raised her clear, calm eyes toward her father-in-law and smiled slightly.
“You’re absolutely right, Gennady Arkadyevich. Family is sacred. And I’m very glad you brought up such an important subject.”
Marina Gennadyevna and her husband exchanged glances.
They had not expected her to be so agreeable.
Apparently, the plan was working.
“You mentioned passion and what happens at night,” Alla continued in a soft, insinuating voice that contained not the slightest hint of sarcasm. “That’s the spark that keeps a family alive, isn’t it? Otherwise, marriage becomes nothing more than two people living under the same roof. I’ve always wondered how people of your generation, who have lived together for so many years, manage to preserve that passion. You must know some secret for carrying that flame through the decades without letting it go out, so that the nights remain exciting and the feelings remain intense. That’s what real respect for one another is, isn’t it?”
Silence descended over the kitchen.
But it was not the oppressive silence Nikita’s parents had intended to create.
It was a deafening, paralyzing awkwardness.
Alla had not argued.
She had not been rude.
She had simply taken their hypocritical lecture about morality and, with an innocent expression, turned it against them by asking a direct, devastatingly personal question about their own intimate life.
Gennady Arkadyevich, who only five minutes earlier had been a formidable judge, now sat with a crimson face and his mouth hanging open, completely unable to answer.
Marina Gennadyevna stared at her daughter-in-law as though she had just watched her transform into a snake.
They had wanted to publicly humiliate Alla.
Instead, Alla had metaphorically stripped them naked in the middle of their own kitchen.
The only sound was the quiet clink of Alla’s fork against the porcelain plate as she calmly returned to her dinner.
The dinner did not end with a scandal.
It ended in devastation.
Gennady Arkadyevich, whose patriarchal grandeur had been punctured and deflated by a single innocent question, retreated into the living room to watch television, carrying the remnants of his dignity with him.
Only three people remained in the kitchen.
Dirty dishes.
Cooling duck.
And tension as thick as grease.
The masks had fallen.
The theatrical performance with the Corvalol, the helpful laundry, the moral lectures—all of it had merely been a prelude.
Now the real game was beginning.
No rules.
No anesthesia.
Marina Gennadyevna silently collected the plates.
Her movements were sharp and precise.
She did not look at her son, yet her entire presence was directed toward him.
Nikita sat staring at the unfinished duck on his plate, feeling as if the air around him had hardened into concrete, making it impossible to breathe.
He waited.
“Well, son,” she finally said.
Her voice was even, completely devoid of suffering, cold as steel.
She placed the stack of plates in the sink and turned around, leaning against the countertop.
“I think it’s time for you to decide. There will either be order in this house—or there will be her.”
It was not an ultimatum.
It was a sentence.
She did not shout.
She did not reproach him.
She simply stated it as a fact, like a doctor informing someone of injuries incompatible with life.
She was forcing him into a choice that was not really a choice at all, but an act of surrender.
Either he accepted her rules and her worldview, in which she was the center of the universe and everyone else revolved around her on prescribed orbits, or he chose chaos, shame, and depravity—everything his wife supposedly represented.
Nikita raised his eyes toward her.
There was pleading in them.
He wanted her to stop.
He wanted everything to return to the way it had once been, when he could simply live without being forced every second to choose between his mother and his wife.
But in her eyes he saw only firm, unbending determination.
She would not retreat.
And he did what all weak people do.
He chose the path of least resistance.
He stood up and walked not toward his mother to put her in her place, but toward Alla, who was standing by the hallway window, looking out at the lights of the nighttime city.
He approached her from behind, pathetic in his attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.
“Alla, listen…” he began in a quiet, ingratiating voice. “Mom… she’s an older woman. She got carried away. Maybe you shouldn’t have spoken to Dad like that? Maybe you could just… apologize? Just for appearances. So there can be peace in the house. Mom is living with us now, after all, and she really doesn’t need to hear everything we’re doing in the bedroom…”
At that moment, Alla slowly turned around.
She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time.
Not with anger.
Not with hurt.
But with the cold, dissecting curiosity of a researcher examining some strange creature she could not understand.
She studied his shifting eyes and his weak, pleading smile, and final realization appeared in her gaze.
She had not been fighting against his mother.
She had been fighting for him.
And she had only just realized that there was nothing worth fighting for.
The man standing before her was not an ally.
Not a husband.
Not a protector.
He was a trophy begging her to surrender voluntarily to the enemy so that he would no longer have to endure the inconvenience of the battle.
Alla said nothing.
Not a single word.
Her silence was more terrifying than any scream.
She walked around him as one might walk around an obstacle in the road.
She passed Marina Gennadyevna, who stood frozen in the kitchen doorway in the pose of a victorious conqueror.
Then she entered their bedroom.
Nikita hopefully assumed she had gone there to cool down, that everything would settle soon.
But a minute later, she came back out.
She was carrying his pillow and a neatly folded blanket.
She walked through the living room, where her mother-in-law now sat on the sofa.
A predatory, triumphant smile slowly blossomed across Marina Gennadyevna’s face.
Alla approached the sofa and, without looking at either her husband or his mother, simply tossed the bedding onto the leather upholstery.
The dull thump of the blanket hitting the sofa sounded like a gunshot in the silence of the apartment.
“Now you can sleep here, or you can go make yourself a bed next to your mommy, since her comfort means more to you than our family and our life together. I was against her moving in with us from the very beginning because I knew she intended to drive a wedge between us. And she succeeded. Congratulations, Marina Gennadyevna. When you go back home, you can take this spineless creature I used to call my husband with you.”
Then she turned and walked away.
Nikita stood paralyzed in the middle of the room, shifting his gaze from the sofa that had become his new bed, to his mother, and finally to the back of his departing wife.
He watched as Alla reached the bedroom door, placed her hand on the handle, and closed it behind her.
The quiet click of the lock was the last sound he heard.
He remained standing in the scorched wasteland of his living room, trapped between his victorious mother and the door behind which his family life had just come to an end…