Two months ago, Artyom got down on one knee in the middle of the courtyard, gravel crunching beneath his feet, and Vika said “yes” before he had even finished the sentence. A week later, he arrived with a suitcase, set it down in the hallway, and looked around the two-room apartment as though he had […]
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“What if one day I just pack my things and disappear?” Andrei’s voice was calm, almost indifferent. Victoria looked up from her salad and frowned. “You’re starting this again?” she hissed through clenched teeth. “You’ve got a shift tomorrow, or is this another evening performance for an audience?” Andrei did not hurry to answer. He […]
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Tatiana graduated from medical academy with honors, but she never ended up putting on a white coat. During her final year, she worked part-time as a caregiver for an elderly woman, and the woman paid her so well that her classmates, who had already found jobs at clinics, were green with envy. Then there were […]
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Ksenia sat on the arm of the chair, turning a gold-embossed invitation over in her hands. “Valentina Arkadyevna’s Anniversary. Family Evening. Dress Code: Formal,” the inscription read in an ornate font. Tikhon paced around the room without looking at her, as though rehearsing the words he was about to say. “Ksen, we need to talk,” […]
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That evening, I was coming home especially exhausted. The Lily beauty salon had drained every last nerve: first there had been an inspection from the sanitation authorities, then two of the stylists had started arguing right in front of clients, and finally the supplier had mixed up the shades of hair dye. I dreamed of […]
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Nina carried Dasha across the garden plot, her back aching so badly that she wanted to sit down right there on one of the beds. Her daughter had her arms wrapped around Nina’s neck, her legs dangling uselessly—the same legs that had refused to obey her for the past three months. After a severe illness […]
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Tamarka from the neighboring table gave a thumbs-up and silently mouthed, “How beautiful.” Natasha nodded, although she was no longer seeing any of that beauty. She was watching Viktor Stepanovich, who had walked up to the microphone with an envelope in his hands, and her palms suddenly became damp. Something was wrong. It was in […]
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Forty minutes. Lyudmila stood in the hallway of her own apartment and still couldn’t get into the bathroom. A man in blue briefs was splashing around in there—the husband of the sister of her husband’s brother’s wife, a man she had seen maybe four times in her entire life. “Gena, are you going to be […]
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Daria carefully shifted her weight onto her right leg so that the old stool beneath her would not creak. A thick layer of sticky kitchen dust had collected on the top shelf of the bulky Soviet-era cabinet. Daria was looking for her old medical records—Tamara, her mother, insisted they were somewhere behind the boxes of […]
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In every family, there is someone who keeps the holiday table going. In our family, that person was me. It had been that way since the first year after I got married. At first, I cooked because I wanted to make a good impression, to show that I was a capable daughter-in-law and prove that […]
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