Boxes stood in towers in the hallway, labeled in marker: “fragile,” “very fragile,” and “seriously, don’t touch.” Alisa squeezed between them with a string of lights clenched between her teeth and flicked the switch. The little bulbs glowed warmly, and the bare apartment suddenly began to look like a home.
“Ilya! Come look! I made us a starry sky out of three hundred rubles’ worth of wire!” she called.
“Coming, coming,” he answered from the room. “Hey, is our sofa even assembled?”
“It is. By me, actually. Your screwdriver was lying nearby, providing moral support.”
They laughed like schoolchildren. Three months since the wedding, their first apartment of their own, ten square meters of unobstructed floor space, and the feeling that an entire life lay ahead of them without a single rough note.
“Alisa, this shelf is crooked,” Ilya said, pointing at it. “See? It’s lower on the left.”
“I see. It’s a design feature. It’s called ‘the house is breathing.’”
“Right. The house is breathing and the jars are sliding away.”
“Then the jars are breathing too. We’re a very lively family.”
He pulled her toward him and quickly kissed her temple between two stacks of boxes. She shoved a roll of tape into his hands and ordered him to seal the empty boxes so they wouldn’t get in the way.
“I have to get up at four tomorrow,” Ilya said. “The forecast says there’ll be no wind. We’ll get up above the field—it’ll be beautiful.”
“And I’m up at six,” Alisa nodded. “My four won’t understand if I’m late. Their schedule is stricter than a train station’s.”
“Your four love you more than I do.”
“My four are more honest than you. At least they don’t promise to take out the trash.”
They spread the mattress directly on the floor because the bed was still on its way and the sofa still hadn’t been assembled. They laughed, argued over who would get the left side, and finally agreed that the left side belonged to both of them—and so did the right.
Their first evening in the new home was perfect, and that was exactly how Alisa remembered it.
Right up until the following Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Alisa came home late, her sleeves wet and her cheeks red from the wind. In the hallway stood Ilya’s shoes and a bag tossed carelessly nearby. The television muttered from the living room.
“Hi,” she said, pulling off her jacket. “I’m dying. Let’s order something and eat with our hands like ancient people.”
“I already ate,” Ilya replied without turning around.
“Good for you. I suppose I’ll eat later, like an aristocrat.”
“You could cook something, actually. Something proper, not all this food out of boxes.”
Alisa froze in the doorway. For a moment she thought she had misheard him and asked again evenly, without any edge in her voice.
“Who could cook?”
“You’re a wife now, aren’t you? A wife has responsibilities. Start fulfilling them,” her husband declared, picking up the television remote.
He said it casually, as though he were reading a sign. Then he turned up the volume, leaned back against the cushion, and stretched out his legs.
That was it. Question settled. Subject closed.
Alisa slowly sat down on the arm of the sofa. She brushed a strand of hair from her face and spoke calmly, almost affectionately.
“Ilyusha, can I ask you one question? Purely out of curiosity.”
“Go ahead.”
“Where did you get this list of responsibilities? Did it come with the remote? Instructions, warranty card, and ‘Duties of a Wife’?”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m actually finishing,” she said, taking the remote from his hand and muting the television. “We got married three months ago. In all that time, I never once heard the word ‘duties.’ I heard ‘let’s,’ ‘together,’ and ‘remember when?’ And now it turns out we’ve got serfdom with fairy lights.”
“Alisa, everybody lives like this!” He jerked upright. “The wife takes care of the home, the husband brings in the money. That’s normal!”
“Excellent. Then starting tomorrow, I won’t bring a single ruble into this household. You support us. Alone. Completely. Agreed?”
He stopped short. He opened his hand as though he wanted to display something self-evident, except the self-evident thing stubbornly refused to appear.
“Why do you have to take it that far right away?”
“Not right away. Exactly as quickly as you handed me an employment contract with no signature and no salary.”
“I’m tired! I get up at four in the morning!”
“I get up at six. And you know, not one of my four has ever said, ‘Alisa, you’re a woman, so deal with my dirty bowl.’ They just wag their tails. So far, you’re losing to them in basic manners.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“I’m explaining. Gently, because we only recently hung those fairy lights and I’d hate to ruin the mood.”
Ilya reached for the remote. Alisa moved her hand behind her back.
“Give me the remote.”
“I will. After we divide things up. We take a piece of paper, make two columns, and split everything fairly. Who can do what, who’s home when. I’ll even give you first pick, like in neighborhood football.”
“I’m not writing anything!”
“Then I’ll write it myself. And I’ll start with: ‘Trash—Ilya.’ It’s been standing in the hallway since Sunday. It practically has residency there by now.”
He jumped to his feet, went out to the balcony, came back with the garbage bag, and slammed the hallway door behind him.
Alisa turned the television back on, found a documentary about penguins, and folded her hands contentedly in her lap.
Eight minutes later, he returned and silently picked up a cleaning cloth.
On Saturday, they had guests.
Timur arrived carrying a watermelon—in April, from God only knew where—and Gleb, Ilya’s younger brother, showed up with a bottle of lemonade and the expression of a man who expected life to cause him trouble at any moment.
“Alisa, you’re a magician,” Timur said, looking around the apartment. “Renovations, everything neat and tidy, everything shining. Ilyukha, you got lucky. I need a woman like that—she dusts everything while you lie around.”
“That’s how we live,” Ilya nodded proudly. “She does everything herself. I don’t even interfere.”
Alisa set down the tray and slowly turned toward her husband with sudden interest.
“I’m sorry. You don’t interfere with what?”
“You know. The housework.”
“Ilya, you have a callus on your palm from a putty knife. You spent a week plastering the hallway and shouting that the manufacturers of the compound had personally betrayed you. Are you seriously going to announce, in front of witnesses, that none of that happened?”
Timur snorted. Ilya’s face darkened.
“I helped.”
“You did the work. The difference isn’t in how much you did—it’s in how you describe it. ‘Helping’ means the house belongs to me and you’re a guest who happened to show up with a putty knife. But I’m not the maid on this property. I’m a co-owner. With everything that entails, including taking out the trash on Thursdays.”
“Okay, fine,” Gleb cut in. “What does the trash have to do with anything? Alisa, you’re lucky, actually. Ilyukha doesn’t drink, doesn’t run around with other women. My first wife drained me dry. Now I’m paying her and living out of one bag.”
“Gleb, has it ever occurred to you that ‘he doesn’t drink and doesn’t cheat’ isn’t an achievement? It’s the bare minimum. Like ‘he doesn’t set the house on fire.’ We don’t praise people for not setting the house on fire.”
“There she goes being clever again,” Ilya muttered through clenched teeth.
“I’m not being clever. I’m translating from the language of ‘this is convenient for me’ into the language of ‘this is what’s actually happening.’”
Timur cut himself a slice of watermelon and asked through a mouthful:
“So, Ilyukha, do you two really have a chore schedule?”
“We do,” Alisa nodded cheerfully. “It’s hanging on the door. Ilya is responsible for the floors, windows, and taking out the trash. I handle cooking and laundry. The bathroom alternates—odd and even days. Nothing more complicated than multiplication.”
“And you agreed to that?” Gleb looked at his brother in disbelief.
“He didn’t agree,” Alisa said. “On the first evening, he simply lay down on the sofa and informed me that wives have responsibilities. So that same evening, I informed him that I have a personality. And guess which argument turned out to carry more weight? That’s right—the one with the callus.”
Ilya abruptly stood up.
The glass on the table wobbled, but nobody broke or smashed anything. The room simply went quiet.
“You’re humiliating me in front of my friends!”
“No, darling. You humiliated yourself exactly two minutes ago when you said, ‘She does everything herself.’ I simply refused to play along. I’m a terrible actress anyway. They even took the role of a snowflake away from me at school.”
Timur was the first to laugh. He clapped Ilya on the shoulder.
“She’s got a point, brother. All my life, people told me I needed to find a woman who would put up with everything. So she puts up with everything—and ten years later you’re living with someone who quietly hates you and serves you soup without saying a word.”
“Thank you, Timur,” Alisa nodded. “Here’s a wise thought to take home with you: patience isn’t love. It’s an explosion postponed until later. I prefer talking immediately, while it’s still cheaper.”
The guests left, and that evening Vera, Ilya’s mother, came over carrying a bag with bunches of herbs sticking out of it and some heavy package at the bottom.
She took off her shoes, looked around, and immediately reached toward the windowsill, where jars full of nails were standing.
“You sit down, I’ll tidy this up quickly,” she fussed. “And I’ll mop the floors too. I can see that…”
“Vera, stop,” Alisa said, gently catching her hand. “You don’t need to. Sit down.”
“It’s no trouble for me…”
“But it is for me. It’s hard for me to watch a grown woman come to visit and immediately grab a cleaning cloth because she feels as if she won’t be accepted otherwise. Ilya will mop the floors. He knows how. He’s almost good at it.”
Ilya flushed.
“Stop embarrassing me! She’s my mo—she came to help!”
“She came to visit. Help is when someone asks for it. Everything else is called ‘the habit of carrying everyone else on your back,’ and in this house, we’re going to politely execute that habit,” Alisa said, smiling at her mother-in-law. “No offense.”
Vera sat down.
Her fingers still searched for something to do, nervously picking at the edge of a napkin.
“For thirty years,” she said quietly, “I washed clothes, scrubbed floors, carried things, got up before everyone else, and went to bed after everyone else. Their father used to say, ‘You’re a woman. That’s what you’re supposed to do.’ And I thought I’d just endure it, as long as the household stayed together. But the household was standing on top of me, and I was lying crushed underneath it.”
“There,” Alisa said, sitting beside her. “There, Ilya. Listen. This system of yours isn’t even yours. You just picked it up like someone else’s scarf and decided it suited you.”
“So what, I’m a bad person now?”
“You’re untrained so far,” Alisa said. “That can be fixed. The second issue is harder to cure.”
She took out her phone and placed it in front of him.
The screen displayed a list of bank transfers.
“Eighty-four thousand. On the thirty-first. From our savings. The money we were putting aside for the spring competition—equipment, the vet, entry fees. Where did it go?”
Ilya reached for the phone.
Alisa covered it with her hand.
“Don’t grab it. I asked you a question.”
“Gleb,” he breathed. “He had to make a payment. He was completely… He’s my brother! I couldn’t refuse him!”
“You could have told me. One sentence: ‘Alisa, my brother’s in trouble. Let’s help him.’ And between you and me, I would have helped. I’m not made of stone, and I don’t hate Gleb. But you decided to take money from our joint savings without saying anything. And then for three weeks you looked me in the eye and kept quiet.”
“You wouldn’t have agreed!”
“Ah. There it is.” Alisa nodded. “You weren’t helping your brother. You were going around your wife. Those are two different things, and the second one has a short, unpleasant name. 😐”
“Don’t you dare!”
“I do dare. First you handed me a list of household duties. Then you announced to your friends that I do everything myself. Then you took money out of my spring plans and called it a family obligation. Ilya, you’ve built yourself a very convenient arrangement where you have all the rights and I have all the functions.”
His mother covered her face with her hands.
“Ilyusha, tell me that isn’t true…”
“Mom, stay out of it!”
“Don’t you dare speak to her like that,” Alisa said, standing up. “She isn’t furniture. I’m not furniture either. In fact, the only piece of furniture in this house is the sofa, and between you and me, it behaves more decently than you do.”
He paced around the room, raising his voice until it almost broke into something childish.
“I tried! I work my ass off! I get up at four in the morning! And you come at me with schedules and cleaning cloths and reports! I’m not your employee!”
“Correct. You’re not my employee. And I’m not yours. The problem is that you wanted to appoint someone to that position.”
“All normal women keep their mouths shut!”
“Then I’m not normal. I’m the talking version. And I talk immediately, not twenty years later like your mother. Be grateful you got the model with audio included. 🙂”
“Where are you going to go? Your whole life is here!”
“And that’s where you’re more wrong than you’ve been about anything else tonight.”
Alisa picked up a bag from the floor and placed it on the mattress.
“My life isn’t inside these walls. My life is outside the city, at the kennel, where four wagging tails are waiting for me and we have a competition in twenty days. I have somewhere to go. And Ilya, that is the only reason I’m still speaking to you politely.”
He went pale and began talking faster.
“You want to leave? Because of dishes? Because of that transfer? Do you realize I’ll end up like Gleb?! He lives out of a bag now! He has nothing!”
“Ah. And there’s the real motive. Not ‘I love you,’ but ‘I’m afraid of ending up like my brother.’ Thank you for being honest. For the first time tonight.”
“Alisa, I’ll fix everything! I’ll pay the money back, I’ll…”
“You’ll return the money—that goes without saying. Respect doesn’t come back that way. You have to grow it again, slowly, like a temperamental plant. I’m leaving for ten days. I’m going back to my place, to my own crowd, to the little trailer with the stove.”
“And me?”
“You stay here with the apartment, the schedule on the door, and your list of chores. Floors, windows, laundry, trash on Thursdays. Someone has to take responsibility for these duties, right? You were the one who said they existed. Turns out they simply don’t come with a woman’s name attached.”
His mother quietly grabbed Alisa’s hand.
“Alisa, don’t go. Don’t tear everything apart… I’m begging you. I’ve already seen this happen once.”
“Vera, I’m not tearing anything apart. I’m taking him off my shoulders and putting him on his own two feet. If he stays standing, we’ll have a family. If he climbs back onto my shoulders, then all we ever had was an apartment with fairy lights.”
Alisa put on her jacket.
Ilya stood in the doorway, crushing that same cleaning cloth in his fist. His voice cracked until it was almost a squeak.
“You said ten days. Exactly ten? Not longer?”
“Exactly ten,” she said, zipping up her jacket. “And Ilya, one small piece of advice before I go: you’d better put the remote back on the shelf. It isn’t a scepter. It’s just a piece of plastic with buttons.”
The door closed softly.
For the first day, he wandered around the apartment touching things as though they had somehow changed.
On the second day, he scrubbed the plaster residue out of the hallway, got into a fight with the floor mop, and won.
On the third, he called Gleb and asked him to return at least part of the money. He heard, “Where am I supposed to get it from?” and sat silently for a long time afterward.
On the fifth day, he sent her a message:
“The shelf is level now. I fixed it.”
Alisa read it, looked at the four wet noses nudging insistently into her palms, and replied with a single word:
“Beginning.”
Neither of them knew what would happen on the eleventh day.
