A screwdriver was lying on the couch, right on top of a winter sweater.
The screwdriver was lying on the couch, on top of a winter sweater. Blue, with a chipped handle—the same one Vadym used last spring to tighten the hinges on the kitchen cabinet. Larysa stood in the doorway, still in her coat, bag on her shoulder and a sack of her mom’s pickled cabbage in her hand, unable to make sense of what she was seeing.
An open suitcase. Beside it, two shoes—one black, one brown. A hairdryer. A jar of instant coffee. And the screwdriver, placed neatly on top, as if it had been left there for some important purpose.
“Vadym?” she called out gently. “Have we started doing renovations?”
A man stepped out of the room. He was clutching a huge pile of clothes: shirts, t-shirts, jeans, and the sleeve of his pajamas dangled at the side. He looked at his wife the way someone who’s been struggling upstream for hours suddenly glimpses the shore.
“You’re early,” he said. “I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow.”
“Mom kicked me out. She said you’ve probably turned to moss here without me.”
* * *
A week ago, everything was calm at the start.
Mom, Raisa Fedorivna, called on Sunday evening and circled around the conversation for a while. She talked about the neighbor’s goat, the prices at the district market, how they were saying November would come early this year. Then, as if in passing, she added:
“We need to sour the cabbage, and the harvest this year is so big that I won’t be able to manage alone. The windows aren’t sealed for winter yet. And the cellar… you can barely get near it.”
Larysa understood everything from the very first sentence. Her mother is seventy-six, lives alone in a village forty kilometers away, and doesn’t know how to ask for help. She only knows how to do it like this—hinting, circling, so her daughter will volunteer.
“I’ll come, Mom. I’ll stay for a week.”
When she hung up, Vadym was already standing at the kitchen door. He had heard everything.
“Go, of course,” he said. “It will be a break for you.”
“A break? From cabbage?”
“From me,” he laughed. “Larysa, I’ve been managing shifts at the factory for fifteen years. I have forty people under me. Surely I can handle a washing machine?”
Even so, she sat down to make a list. On the back of a gas bill, because there was nothing else nearby: what’s in the freezer, when to water the ficus, how to turn on the boiler if it starts blinking again. Vadym waited until she wrote the third item, gently took the pen from her, kissed her on the top of her head, then folded the bill in half and returned it to the drawer.
“Please. I’m a grown man.”
She let go. Twenty years together—surely it’s okay to trust him just this once.
* * *
The first photo came on Monday at seven in the evening. Scrambled eggs with sausage, made from four eggs and arranged on the plate with what looked like real culinary inspiration. Message: “Like in a restaurant.”
On Tuesday—store-bought dumplings, topped with sour cream. “With potatoes. Just like your mom’s, only worse. Don’t show her.”
Of course, Larysa showed her. Raisa Fedorivna put on her glasses, looked long and hard at the screen, then gave a satisfied little hum:
“Worse. Because the dough is store-bought. He should know that.”
On Wednesday, there was no photo. Larysa checked her phone twice while she and her mom chopped cabbage on the old wooden board her grandfather had once carved.
“He’s quiet?” her mom asked without looking up.
“Quiet.”
“Means he’s out of bread and too lazy to go to the store. He’s making sandwiches with whatever he can find.”
She really called it! Late at night, a short message came: “Everything’s fine. There’s still cheese.”
* * *
On Thursday, he called on his own. Larisa was standing on a ladder, pasting strips of paper with flour glue onto her mom’s old wooden window frames—just like they always did, since her mom had been refusing new windows for ten years.
“Larisa, listen, I’ve got a question. Just a technical one.”
“Go on.”
“Can you wash jeans together with towels?”
She froze for a moment with the brush in her hand.
“Which towels?”
“You know, the white ones. From the bathroom.”
“Vadym. Did you already do the laundry?”
There was a pause on the other end. So long and meaningful, Larisa could picture everything even without a photo.
“Now they’re kind of… heavenly,” he finally said. “A soft blue. I actually kind of like it.”
Larisa climbed off the ladder, sat down on the bench by the window, and laughed so hard her mom came out of the house to see what had happened.
* * *
On Friday, Vadym called again, this time sounding much less cheerful.
“Just don’t laugh. Where do we keep the spare bedding?”
“In the sofa. In the living room, under the winter blanket. Why?”
“In the sofa,” he repeated. He was quiet for a bit longer. “I sit on it every evening. Watch the news. Larisa, I’ve been looking for three days. I turned the whole closet upside down. I even checked the top shelves. Searched the toolbox drawer.”
“So, what did you sleep on?”
“On the mattress. With a throw. Totally fine, like camping.”
That evening, she and her mom sat in the kitchen. Under the table were three big jars of cabbage covered with cheesecloth, and the house smelled of dill and carrots. Her mom was quiet for a long time, rolling her tea cup in her hands, and then she finally said:
“Don’t make fun of him, dear.”
“I’m not laughing at him. Just surprised, that’s all.”
“He’s not dumb or lazy. He’s just never seen how these things get done. You do everything so quietly. He comes in—it’s warm, it’s clean, there’s food. So he thinks that’s just how the apartment works, like the heating in winter.”
Larisa didn’t answer. Then her mom, after a pause, added quietly:
“And I’m the same way. When you visit, everything is done in a week. And I can’t figure out how it’s possible. Honestly, I could chop the cabbage myself, bit by bit. That’s not why I wanted you here. I just missed you.”
* * *
And then on Saturday morning came some unexpected news.
“I’ve been sent on a work trip,” Vadym said on the phone, sounding like he’d just heard about a natural disaster. “For two days, to the neighboring region. Training on new equipment. Departure is at 7 a.m. on Monday from the main gate.”
“Are you going to pack your things yourself?”
“Larisa,” he said, wounded, “What’s there to pack? Just a bag?”
Raisa Fedorivna, who heard every word, was already taking her daughter’s jacket off the hook.
“Go today. Take the last bus. The cabbage will ferment without you, but he won’t.”
* * *
And now Larisa was standing in the middle of the living room while her husband, holding an armful of shirts, waited for what would happen next.
“Where are you off to, traveler?” she asked, taking off her coat.
“Told you, just for two days. Training.”
“Two days. And what’s with the hair dryer?”
Vadym reflexively ran his hand over his short haircut, which had seen better days.
“You always take a hair dryer.”
“I take it. Because I have hair. What about the coffee?”
“Hotels have instant coffee. I know, I’ve traveled before.”
“Winter sweater?”
“They said it might get cold.”
«Up to twelve degrees, Vadym.»
He shrugged. Larysa pointed at the shoes.
«And these?»
«I haven’t decided yet,» he replied. «I was going to check on the spot and see what matches best.»
Then she nodded toward the sofa:
«And the screwdriver?»
Vadym looked at the screwdriver as if seeing it for the first time, then at his wife, and back at the screwdriver again.
«I have no idea,» he admitted honestly. «It was in the closet next to the suitcase. I thought if it’s there, you must always put it in. So, I figured I should take it too.»
At first, Larysa kept her composure. But then she remembered—last year, she used that very screwdriver to tighten a wheel on the suitcase and just forgot to put it back. Suddenly, she pictured Vadym standing in front of the open closet, serious and focused, trying to figure out why his wife packs a screwdriver for a business trip.
She laughed until she sank onto the armrest of the couch. Laughed until she had tears in her eyes. Vadym stood over her with his shirts, and started to smile as well—careful at first, and then with a wide grin.
* * *
She packed the suitcase in forty minutes.
She rolled up the shirts to keep them from wrinkling. Tucked socks into the shoes—one black pair, for the dark suit. Toothbrush and toothpaste went into a separate pouch, the phone charger in a side pocket for easy access. In the inner pocket, as always, she slipped a tiny kit: two threaded needles, one black and one white, plus a few spare buttons.
Vadym sat on a stool by the door, watching silently. No jokes, none of his usual «I’ll do it myself.» He looked like he was in a lecture, afraid to miss something important.
«You’re so quick,» he finally said.
«I’ve been doing it this way for twenty years.»
«Twenty years,» he repeated. He didn’t say anything else.
* * *
On Monday, at half past six, he stood in the hallway in his jacket, suitcase at his feet. Larysa handed him a bag with sandwiches wrapped in foil and a thermos of tea.
He took the bag and set it on the floor. Then he hugged her—tight, long, a hug he hadn’t given her, maybe, since their daughter’s graduation.
«Do you know what I realized this week?»
«What?»
«Nothing in this house happens by itself. The bed doesn’t make itself, the towels don’t stay white on their own, and the cabbage doesn’t ferment itself. I used to think that’s just how it worked. That everything just… happened. But it’s just you. It’s always been you.»
Larysa wanted to reply with something light and joking, like she always did. But her throat felt tight, and all she could do was fix his collar.
«Go on now. You’ll be late.»
* * *
On the evening of the second day, he called from the hotel.
«My button popped off my shirt. Right in the middle of class—can you believe it? But I found a needle and black thread in my suitcase pocket. Did you know this would happen?»
«No, I didn’t. I just always pack it.»
«I sewed it back,» Vadym said proudly. «It’s crooked, but it holds.»
Then, on Saturday, already back home, he didn’t go to the TV after breakfast. Instead, he took out that same gas bill from the drawer, flipped it over and said:
«Show me. Show me where everything is, how everything works, what can’t be washed together. Show me everything.»
They wandered around the apartment until lunchtime. He took notes in his tiny engineer’s handwriting, kept double-checking everything, and more than once argued, insisting, “But that doesn’t make sense.” He opened drawers he’d never known about. He discovered the boiler has an eco mode, and the washing machine has a special program just for delicates.
Now, that sheet of paper hangs on the fridge, held up by a little seahorse magnet they once brought back from vacation. The very last line on it is circled twice:
“Jeans — SEPARATE!!!”
Larisa never takes it down. Sometimes on Sunday mornings, she walks into the kitchen and the smell of fried onions is already in the air, and Vadym, not turning from the stove, says:
— Sit down. Today, I’ll handle it.
And she sits down.
