On Friday evening, Alena was ironing five shirts for Vitya, one for each workday of the week. In the past few months, he’d been coming home late all the time, always talking about urgent deadlines, a new department dumped on him, meetings going until nine, and she had stopped asking when to expect him. The blue shirt was already draped over the chair, the white one lay on the ironing board, when her phone rang.
«Al, are you alone?» Lena asked, skipping any kind of greeting.
«Yeah, I’m alone. Vitya’s at work, they’re swamped with their quarterly report. What’s going on?»
Lena was quiet for so long that Alena managed to flip the shirt over to iron the other sleeve. In the background, she could hear dishes clinking and music playing on her friend’s end.
«Hey, are you absolutely sure he’s at work tonight?»
«What do you mean sure? He told me this morning he’ll be there till late. Lena, what’s up with you?»
«So, I stopped for dinner with Ira from work at this little Georgian place on Sadovaya. And I saw your Vitya at the entrance. He wasn’t alone.»
Alena let out a short, awkward laugh and immediately realized how silly it sounded. She started running through possibilities out loud: maybe it was someone from his department—there are lots of young women there—maybe a client, or maybe it was Sveta from accounting, whose husband left her and Vitya just felt sorry for her. He was always so compassionate. Lena just listened quietly, then softly said, like you do with someone who’s hurting:
«Alen, he was holding her. That’s not how you hug clients; I’m not blind. I’ll send you a photo right now—just promise me you won’t get mad at me later.»
A minute later, Alena’s phone chimed before she could even set it down on the ironing board. The picture was a little dark and the sign above the restaurant door was blurry, but Alena instantly recognized the jacket—a dark blue one with an orange lining she’d picked out for him at last year’s November sale. She saw the watch with the leather strap—a gift for his fortieth. Behind them, by the sidewalk, stood a gray car with a scratch on the bumper. The woman wore a light coat, her hair down, and Vitya’s hand rested on her waist so confidently, it looked like it belonged there.
Alena zoomed in and out on the photo, over and over. Then she noticed a burnt smell coming from the ironing board and saw a yellow coin-sized stain appear on the collar of the white shirt. She yanked the iron out of the socket, sat down on the edge of the couch, and messaged Lena just one word: “Thanks.” Then she thought a moment and added: “Don’t call him, please?”
***
Vitya came home almost at eleven at night. Alena was sitting in the living room with the TV off, and he didn’t even notice her at first. Calmly, he hung his jacket on a hook, tossed his keys onto the side table, kicked off his shoes by stepping on the heels, and called out toward the kitchen:
«Alenka, is there anything to eat? They kept us until closing tonight—Gusev totally lost it with this tender.»
«I’m here,» she said.
He jumped, peeked into the room, and smiled.
«Why are you sitting in the dark? You scared me.»
«Where were you after work?»
«I told you, at work. Then I grabbed a bite with the guys, and after that the boss called and chewed me out for half an hour. I sat in the car taking the call.»
He spoke evenly, smoothly, unbuttoning his cuffs, and Alena noted how easily he lied, as if just telling her the weather report.
«Which guys?»
«With my guys, with Seryoga and Pashka. You don’t know them. Why are you interrogating me?»
«Then explain why in Lena’s photo you’re standing outside a restaurant on Sadovaya with a woman, holding her like this?» Alena turned the screen toward him. «Is her name Pashka too?»
Vitya fell silent for a moment, the corner of his mouth twitching. Then he waved his hand dismissively and didn’t even reach for the phone.
«Your Lena is always making things up. She’s a colleague, it was her birthday, the whole group dropped by, she had a bit too much, and I saw her to a taxi. Lena misunderstood everything!»
«Give me your phone.»
«Why?»
«Give it to me, right now!»
He smirked, shook his head like he was dealing with a spoiled child, pulled the smartphone from his pocket and placed it on the coffee table.
«Here, look, since you have nothing better to do. There’s no password on it, by the way, just so you know.»
He walked off to the kitchen, whistling to himself. Alena could hear him opening the fridge, the frying pan rattling, the sound of the lighter at the stove. He was heating up yesterday’s cutlets while she picked up his phone.
She found the chat right away, right at the top. The contact was simply saved as «Karina.» Vitya hadn’t deleted or renamed anything. There were photos: of her, of him, of them together in some cafe. His hand rested on her knee. There were messages about a hotel room over the weekend, when he’d supposedly visited his mother to fix a fence. Alena scrolled up, and the chats just kept going, stretching back into June, May, even April.
«I’m downstairs, come out.» «Can’t tonight, need to be home or there’ll be questions.» «You promised the evening would be ours.» «Baby, don’t be upset, tomorrow for sure.» He messaged this woman about where he was, when he’d be free, and why he needed to go home again that night. Coming home seemed like a second job to him, just making an appearance and getting some sleep.
Alena put her own phone next to his and started snapping photos of the screen, page by page, methodically, like snapping tax receipts. On the stove, the cutlets sizzled and popped in the oil. When she finished, there were forty-two shots in her gallery.
Vitya returned to the room with his plate, chewing as he walked. Silently, Alena placed his phone at the edge of the table, screen up to the open chat. He glanced at the phone, then at her, set the plate down on the armrest of the chair, and for a few seconds, said nothing at all. He was still holding his fork.
«How long?» Alena asked.
«Al, can we not do this right now?»
«How long, I’m asking you?!»
«Not long. Just recently. It’s nothing.»
«Vitya, there are messages from April!»
He winced, like she’d caught him being late, and put the fork down on the plate.
«Since spring. Since April, I guess. I didn’t keep track.»
«So why did you keep coming home every night?» Her voice was getting higher, and she couldn’t help it. «If you’ve got Karina there, if you’ve got your ‘baby’ there, why did you keep coming here? To eat my cutlets?»
«Where else would I go?» Vitya shrugged. «I wasn’t planning to leave my family. I don’t even know what’s going on, if it’s serious or just a fling. Why are you yelling right away?»
«I’m not yelling! I’m asking!» She stood up and the coffee table wobbled. «There’s nothing left for you to understand, Vitya. I’ve read it all myself, every single message from the very first to the last. It’s all clear—you don’t even try to hide it! And you don’t even have a password on your phone!»
He reached for his plate, but changed his mind. Alena stood over him, feeling the urge to swipe those cutlets right onto the carpet—the very carpet they picked out together three years ago. She clasped her hands behind her back and spoke slowly, determined not to let her voice crack:
«I’m giving you one week. In seven days, you figure out what you’re taking, where you’re going, and how we’re handling the divorce paperwork. After a week, I’ll be the one filing.»
Vitya looked at her with total calm. Suddenly, he let out a smirk, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his legs like he was a guest in his own home.
«Get divorced if you want,» he said. «I’m staying here.»
Alena asked again, honestly thinking she must have misheard. Maybe he was just exhausted or making one of his usually awkward, poorly timed jokes.
«What did you say just now?!»
«You heard me,» Vitya finally picked up his plate and cut a piece of cutlet with his fork. «I’m not moving out to rent some place for thirty thousand just because you feel like it. We’ve got a three-room apartment, Al. The small room’s empty, there’s a decent sofa in there—I’ll move in and that’s that.»
«Where will you move? To the small room? Do you even hear yourself right now??»
«So what? The apartment belongs to both of us, I’m registered here, I own half. Divorce me all you want, I won’t stand in your way. But you’re not kicking me out—that’s something you should know right now.»
Alena felt like laughing, just as she would with Lena on the phone, but she held it back. She walked to the window, turned around, then went back to the table, as if the room had suddenly become too small.
«Vitya, the down payment came from selling my own apartment. Grandma’s little one-bedroom on Zavodskaya—remember? I sold it and put the money here. Then you switched jobs three times, and for two years I paid the mortgage. By myself. You told me then that you were ashamed.»
«You’ll have to prove it,» he answered calmly, finishing his cutlet. «Money earned in a marriage is joint property, you know. If you want, let the court sort it out. Until then, I’m not going anywhere.»
He got up, brought his plate to the kitchen, turned on the water but didn’t wash it—just rinsed it. Then he went to the bedroom, and Alena heard him pulling out a drawer in the dresser. When he came out, he had his orthopedic pillow under his arm—the one he’d paid six thousand for—and carried his phone charger and laptop in his hand.
«You don’t have to make dinner for me, I won’t ask,» he said from the doorway of the small room. «I won’t be around much in the evenings anyway. Just don’t use the washing machine all weekend, alright? We only have one.»
He closed the door gently. Alena stood in the middle of the hallway, then went to the living room, grabbed his blue shirt off the chair, a white one with a yellow stain on the collar from the ironing board, and three more unironed shirts out of the basket. She carried the whole pile to his door and dumped it on the floor in a heap, sleeves trailing down.
***
Three days later, everything happened just the way Vitya said it would. He woke up at seven, made himself eggs in her frying pan, and ate standing by the window, holding his fork in one hand and typing messages with the other. Sometimes he’d smile at his phone right in front of her, and Alyona would turn away toward the sink. After breakfast, he’d head out, not coming back until eleven, sometimes twelve, once even half past one. When he did return, he locked the door quietly and confidently, as if she was the guest in his place.
He still didn’t bother to hide his phone from anyone. On Tuesday, he left it on the kitchen table when he went to shower. The screen lit up with a new message, and Alyona read it without touching the phone:
«Vit, I’m tired of waiting. When are you going to move your stuff? A month ago, you told me it was all settled.»
Vitya came out of the bathroom with a towel on his shoulders, read the message, gave a little snort, and started typing his reply right there in the kitchen, his back to her. Alyona could see the screen over his shoulder and didn’t even pretend not to look.
«Babe, it’s complicated, the apartment’s joint, we have a mortgage. She won’t play nice, keeps digging in her heels. Just wait a little longer.»
He left out the part where it was his own choice not to move out. That evening, while he was gone, Alyona found this Karina’s social media page—it took her two minutes using a photo—then typed a message: “He’s lying to you, he’s not planning to move out.” She held her finger over the send button for a long time. Then deleted every word, closed the page, and went to take out the trash.
***
At home, she stopped doing all the things she’d done for him over the years—and she did it silently, without fanfare. She started cooking just enough buckwheat with mushrooms for herself, enough for a single bowl, and ate it in front of the TV, watching her show. His socks and shirts piled up in the laundry basket until it wouldn’t close anymore, so Alyona just put the basket in the corner of the small room. The electric bill, which she used to stick on the fridge with a magnet so he would pay his half, she paid herself and threw away.
Vitya didn’t seem to notice anything until Thursday. That day, just before eleven, he knocked on her bedroom door, opened it without waiting for an answer, and stood in the doorway holding a white shirt—the one with the stain on the collar.
«Al, why don’t I have a single clean shirt? I’ve got a meeting with a client at ten tomorrow.»
Alyona was sitting on the bed with her laptop. She didn’t look up at him right away, finishing her paragraph first.
«Ask Karina,» she said. «You did all this for her, right? Let her do your laundry—and your ironing too.»
«Are you serious right now?» Vitya snapped the shirt. «Is it so hard to just toss it in the machine? You wash your stuff anyway.»
«I wash my things, not yours,» Alyona agreed, her eyes going back to the screen. «Close the door, there’s a draft.»
He stood there another moment, crumpling the shirt in his fist, and then left. A minute later, Alyona heard the washing machine rumble in the bathroom and Vitya muttering under his breath, cursing her because he had no idea which button to press.
***
On Friday, Alena took two hours off work and went to the lawyer Lena had recommended. Tamara Sergeyevna was sitting in a cramped little office above a pharmacy, wearing a worn-out sweater with pills on the elbows, listening without looking up from her notepad. When Alena got to the part about the tiny room and the pillow, the lawyer gave a wry chuckle and put down her pen.
«This is classic,» she said. «They all seem to think that if they just sit on the couch, the apartment will split itself in half. Do you have your documents?»
Alena did have the documents, and she’d spent the past week gathering them in the evenings while Vitya was at Karina’s. She pulled down a shoebox from the closet, where she kept the sales contract for her grandmother’s old one-bedroom on Zavodskaya. She found a statement in her app showing how, three days after the sale, the money went to pay for their new three-room place. The mortgage payments for those two years when Vitya was ‘finding himself’ had all come from her card, month after month, and the printout was nearly as thick as her finger.
Tamara Sergeyevna flipped through the papers, holding some up to the lamp for a closer look.
«The down payment was almost all yours, your personal pre-marriage money—it’s clear. The payment history is clear too. But don’t count on anything verbal, no ‘kitchen table deals.’ We’ll file for divorce and asset division in court, and separately decide who lives where while the case is ongoing. Be prepared—this won’t be over in a month.»
«I’m ready,» Alena replied, surprised at how easy it was to say.
That evening, she set the plastic folder on the kitchen table and left it there. Vitya came home just before midnight, opened the fridge and closed it again, then spotted the folder. He flipped through it standing up, still wearing his coat, and Alena watched his smile fade as he read. He stopped at the statement about the Zavodskaya apartment sale and stared at it for a long time.
«Are you actually planning to go to court?» he asked.
«I gave you a week. The week ended Wednesday.»
«Al, come on, you’re not like this,» Vitya said, closing the folder and pressing his palm on top of it. «Why lawyers and courts? That’s a lot of money. We can work it out like normal people.»
«The ‘normal people’ conversation happened on Friday—you said everything then,» Alena replied. «I did just what I said I would. Don’t touch the folder—they’re just copies, but still, don’t touch, got it?!»
He jerked his hand back as if the folder had burned him, then went into the small room. Through the wall, she could hear him talking on the phone, louder than usual, his voice tight with hurt—and just from that, she knew exactly who he was calling.
Vitya’s mother, Svetlana Petrovna, showed up the next day around lunchtime, unannounced as always. She always did this—arriving with a bag from Pyaterochka and a jar of homemade lecho wrapped in newspaper, heading to the kitchen without fully taking off her boots, balancing on one while she set the jar down. This time she took both boots off at the door, set her bag down, and called out from the hallway:
«Alena, I don’t understand what kind of circus you have going on here. Vitya calls me, says you’re throwing him out on the street, hiring lawyers and all that. What’s this about? So you had a fight—who doesn’t? Kola and I argued for thirty years and nobody ever kicked anyone out of the house.»
Alena didn’t bother to explain anything right there. She took out her phone, opened the gallery with those forty-two photos, and placed it on the table in front of her mother-in-law. Vitya stood in the kitchen doorway, wearing house pants, staring off to the side.
Svetlana Petrovna put on the glasses that hung from a cord around her neck and started flipping through the photos. At first, she swiped quickly, looking annoyed, as if forced to read someone else’s receipts. Then she slowed down. When she got to the photo where Vitya’s hand rested on Karina’s knee, she paused, zoomed in with two fingers—just like Alena had done that Friday—and held it like that until the screen went dark.
“Vitya,” she said without turning around. “How long has this been going on?”
“Mom, since the spring. Does it really matter?”
“So you’ve been seeing her since spring?”
“Yeah, I have.” Vitya shifted from foot to foot. “Mom, that doesn’t mean I have to end up homeless. I paid here too, you know!”
Without a word, Alena pushed a blue folder toward her mother-in-law and opened it to the bank statement from Zavodskaya. She pointed at the amount and the date, then turned a few pages to show the mortgage payments, line by line, with her last name next to them.
“It’s my grandmother’s apartment, Svetlana Petrovna, remember? You were there at the housewarming. I sold it before the wedding and almost all the money went toward the down payment. These here—these are two years when Vitya kept switching jobs. You even told me back then how proud you were that I was managing on my own.”
Svetlana Petrovna took off her glasses and set them on top of the folder. She looked at her son the same way you’d look at someone who spilled wine on a tablecloth at a party and is pretending nothing happened.
“So after the divorce, you think you’re going to keep living here?” she asked. “In that room? And keep going over to see her?”
“Why not?” Vitya shrugged. “Half the apartment is mine. Where else am I supposed to go, squeeze into your one-bedroom on a pull-out couch?”
Svetlana Petrovna turned her glasses over in her hands, folded the arms, and didn’t say anything more to her son. She sat for another minute, then stood up, pulled a jar of lecho out of her bag, and set it right in front of Alena, even though she usually left it by the stove. Then she went to put on her shoes. Vitya went to see her off, and Alena could hear him mumbling something quickly in the hallway, but his mother just answered over and over: “Leave me alone, Vitya, leave me alone.”
***
A week later, Alena filed a claim in court. Tamara Sergeevna put it together over two evenings, including divorce, how the apartment would be divided, and a specific request about who can use the place until the court decided. Alena delivered the papers herself, waited her turn at the office, got the stamp, and took a photo of it—just like she’d photographed text messages, for her own records.
That evening, Vitya came home early, just before eight, and Alena could tell by the way he tossed his keys that he’d already gotten a call or a message. The keys slid off the table and dropped to the floor, but he didn’t bother to pick them up.
“Why are you making this so difficult?” he started right from the doorway. “We could have worked this out like adults! Sat down and talked it through. But you just want to get back at me, that’s all. You’re punishing me because of Karina.”
Alena was at the stove, stirring her buckwheat, and didn’t turn around.
«Vitya, you told me yourself: divorce if you want to. So I wanted to. Why are you yelling now?»
«That’s not what I meant!»
«Then what did you mean?»
He fell silent and started unzipping his jacket, but the zipper got stuck halfway. He tugged at it until the slider broke off. He ended up taking the jacket off over his head, like a sweater.
«I have a right to live here,» he said, catching his breath. «This is my apartment too.»
«The court will decide what rights you have.» Alena turned off the stove. «Don’t talk to me about this in my kitchen anymore—I’m not the one making these decisions.»
He went to his room, and that evening not a sound came from the small bedroom. In the morning, as Alena was leaving for work, the door was open a crack. Vitya was sitting on the couch in just his socks, scrolling through rental listings on his phone. The screen faced the door, so Alena saw an ad for a studio in Kuzminki for twenty-six thousand, with a close-up photo of the toilet.
Two weeks later, on a Saturday, Vitya came back from Karina’s not in the middle of the night, but at six in the evening. Alena was mopping the hallway and didn’t even have time to move the bucket before he walked right across the wet floor, boots and all, straight into the small bedroom. His phone rang immediately—he answered on speaker, probably a habit from driving, and forgot to close the door.
«Karina, I’ve explained this to you—the court, the mortgage, it’s not something that can be sorted out in a day!» he said loudly, almost shouting.
«Vitya, I get the thing about the mortgage,» responded a woman’s voice, tired and very young. «What I don’t get is why you leave me to go sleep at her place. You eat what she cooks, you wash your shirts in her washing machine, and then you tell me about the new life we’ll have together. I don’t want this. I’ve told you from the start.»
«She doesn’t cook anything for me!»
«It’s all the same, Vitya. Honestly, it doesn’t matter anymore.»
Alena wrung out the rag, grabbed the bucket, and went to the bathroom. When she came back, the small bedroom’s door was shut, and a line of his footprints cut across her freshly mopped hallway.
***
Ten days later, he rented that exact studio in Kuzminki. He packed his things over two evenings, putting them into Lenta grocery bags and boxes from work labeled ‘A4 paper’. He took his orthopedic pillow first. Alena neither helped nor interfered—she only brought him his forgotten razor from the bedroom once and placed it on top of a box.
«I’ll come back for my winter stuff,» he said at the door, holding shopping bags in each hand. «And for the drill.»
«Come by, just text me in advance.»
He came by two weeks later, on a Thursday, without texting first. He stood in the hallway, keeping his shoes on, eyes wandering slowly around the place.
«Where are my winter boots?» he finally asked.
«In the storage area, in a box.»
Vitya fetched a stool, climbed up to the storage, and from up there—a bit absent-mindedly—said to her back, «By the way, it’s over with Karina. Feel free to celebrate.»
Alena turned to him, but he was already coming down, box in hands, not looking at her.
«The drill’s in the closet,» she said. «Put the stool back where it belongs. And I’m changing the locks tomorrow.»
When he left, the apartment was finally as quiet as it used to be at her grandmother’s place on Zavodskaya, back when she lived alone. Alena walked around the small room, opened the window, pulled his sheet off the sofa, and loaded it into the washing machine with her own laundry. Then she took it back out and put it in a separate bag.
A week later, on Wednesday, just before nine in the evening, Svetlana Petrovna called. Alena saw her name on the screen but hesitated to answer; the phone rang about six times. She was bracing herself for another, “Have pity on him, he’ll be lost without you,” and already rehearsing what she’d say in response.
«Alena, it’s me,» her mother-in-law said, her voice hoarse like she’d had a cold. «Please don’t hang up, okay? I want to ask you for something I never would’ve asked a month ago.»
«What’s happened, Svetlana Petrovna?»
“Vitya is living all alone in that cramped place of his. Things are over with that girl, you probably know that. He comes to my place every evening, sits in the kitchen until late, and keeps saying the same thing—he wants to come home. That he made a mistake. That you’d forgive him if I asked you.”
Alena stayed silent, scraping a dried speck of paint off the windowsill with her fingernail, left over from the renovation.
“Why should I take him back, Svetlana Petrovna?” she finally asked. “After all of this, after his betrayal?”
«I know you shouldn’t,» her mother-in-law said quickly. «When I first came over, I thought you were just being emotional. So he cheated, he was a fool, who hasn’t done something stupid? Men are all like that, it passes. Then I sat at your table and watched him in those pants of his saying that nothing was impossible. He wanted everything, Alena. That girl, you, the apartment, your ironing his shirts and you always being around. I’ve known him for forty-three years and still… I never knew…»
She paused, and Alena could hear the TV murmuring in the background of her tiny apartment.
«If you still can,» Svetlana Petrovna said even more quietly, «please take him back. I won’t ask you for anything else.»
Alena stepped away from the window, sat on the stool Vitya never put back in its place, and stared at her slippers for a while.
“He made his own choices, Svetlana Petrovna,” she said. “That night, when he sat in my armchair eating cutlets and said, ‘Divorce me if you want, I’m staying here.’ He wasn’t joking. Well, I’ve made my choice too. I’ll see the divorce through, and let the court split the apartment. I won’t take him back. He just stayed here until she made up her mind, but no one will ever do that again.”
There was silence on the other end of the line for so long that Alena checked her screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
«I understand,» her mother-in-law finally said. «I really do. Just tell me one thing—can I still come over for tea sometimes? Without him. I’ll bring you some lecho, you like it.»
Alena laughed unexpectedly, short and a little nasal.
“Of course, Svetlana Petrovna. Just call ahead, I work until seven now.”
Four days later, on Sunday morning, Vitya messaged her a long note starting with, “Al, I’ve been thinking a lot” and ending by asking if they could meet at a café and have a calm conversation, just the two of them—no mom, no lawyers. In the middle, he talked about how the studio apartment still feels damp, the neighbors upstairs stomp around, and there isn’t a decent store in Kuzminki.
Alyona read his message while standing in the small room, hovering over the last box with his things. Inside were old sneakers, a charger for something unidentifiable, a rolled-up sheet in a bag, and that same white shirt with the yellow stain on the collar that he still hadn’t picked up.
«I’ll only meet you at the lawyer’s, about the divorce and the apartment,» she replied. «Tuesday, 3:00 PM—Tamara Sergeyevna will send you the address. You can pick up your box of things at the same time, it’s with the neighbor. I’ve changed the locks.»
She hit send, taped up the box with big crisscrossed strips of packing tape, and wrote in large letters with a marker on top so it could be seen from the doorway: «Vitya. Pick up by the 15th.» Then she brought it out to the hallway and rang the neighbor’s bell.
