“So, you’re not going to give me the card, then?” Maxim asked with icy calm.
Vera froze in the middle of the kitchen, a bag of groceries in her hands. She had just come home from work after standing in line at the store. Her wallet lay on the table, while across from it sat her husband in lounge shorts, scrolling through listings for camping tents.
“I don’t understand…” she said slowly.
“I already explained it to you. Since you’re the one earning money now, it makes sense for me to manage it.”
Vera looked at her husband, who had been unemployed for almost a year, and felt a wave of indignation beginning to rise inside her. She placed the grocery bag on the table beside her wallet—carefully, deliberately slowly. Simply so she wouldn’t say anything she might regret right then.
They had met during their third year at university, at a boring economics lecture. Maxim had slipped her a funny note with a caricature of the professor, and she had barely managed to suppress her laughter. Then came coffee after classes, long conversations until midnight, and a wedding two years after graduation.
The first few years went well. Maxim quickly rose to become a department head at a large insurance company and became the family’s primary breadwinner. Vera looked after their daughter, Polina, and took freelance jobs designing online stores, working remotely between feedings, walks, and childhood illnesses.
“You’re a real many-armed goddess,” Maxim would laugh whenever he found his wife simultaneously working on her laptop with a phone pressed to her shoulder while soup bubbled on the stove.
“I just know how to set priorities,” she would reply.
Their family roles had fallen into place naturally: he earned the money, and she managed the home. They discussed major decisions together—that was how things had been from the very beginning.
When Polina started first grade, Vera was offered a position as head of the design department at a local advertising company. The job required her to work from the office, but it opened up entirely new prospects.
“Take it,” Maxim said without hesitation. “You’ve been working toward this for a long time.”
For the first few months, everything truly went well. But gradually, something began to change in Maxim himself. He started coming home with a vacant expression, complaining about pointless meetings, a boss who never listened to people, and chronic exhaustion.
“I’m just burned out,” he said one evening, sitting down on a kitchen chair earlier than usual. “I handed in my resignation today.”
Vera was taken aback, but said nothing. After so many years, a person had the right to take a break—that was what she thought at the time.
At first, Maxim genuinely tried. He picked Polina up from school, went out to buy bread and milk, and cooked macaroni and cheese on Fridays—the only dish he could make without complaints. Vera felt something close to relief: finally, there was another adult in the house who was simply there.
But gradually, the situation began to change.
In the mornings, Maxim stayed in bed longer and longer. First until nine, then until eleven. In the evenings, the television screen glowed in the living room—sometimes a TV series, sometimes football, sometimes an endless stream of short videos on his phone. His gaming sessions stretched past midnight.
“Has Polina eaten?” Vera would ask when she came home from work.
“She heated something up herself,” Maxim would reply without looking away from the screen.
The household chores quietly returned to Vera. She cooked dinner, sorted the laundry, checked her daughter’s schoolwork, scheduled dental appointments, and bought notebooks and paints. Maxim still called himself a homemaker, but in reality, he only did what he was directly asked to do.
One evening before the school’s autumn festival remained especially vivid in Vera’s memory. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by cardboard, wire, and yellow fabric, making a tree costume for Polina.
“You should make the branches thicker,” came Maxim’s voice from the sofa.
“Then help me,” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Maxim replied and turned up the volume.
That night, as she sewed on the final leaf, Vera clearly thought for the first time: this was no longer a break.
On Saturday morning, Maxim asked her to sit down and talk. He looked unusually serious, even slightly embarrassed. Vera immediately perked up inside: he had decided to go back to work. She was already mentally choosing words of encouragement.
“I’ve wanted to tell you this for a while,” he began, staring at the table. “I don’t feel comfortable not having money of my own.”
“Finally,” Vera said with relief. “So where are you looking? Insurance again, or something different?”
Maxim looked up at her in surprise.
“Wait. I’m not looking for a job yet. I still need more time.”
“How much?” she asked cautiously.
He shrugged and said calmly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world:
“Just give me your salary card.”
Vera thought she had misheard him. But Maxim continued in an even, almost businesslike tone. He explained that a man should always control the family budget. His wife only needed enough money for groceries, utility bills, and minor household expenses. He would manage the rest himself.
For clarity, he even listed the things he planned to buy: a new smartphone, an expensive bicycle, fishing equipment, and tickets to a singer-songwriter festival.
Vera listened in disbelief. Sitting in front of her was a man who had not contributed a single ruble to the household in almost a year, and he was completely sincere as he explained to her how she should manage her own money.
The next day, during her lunch break, Vera’s phone vibrated on her desk. It was Polina.
“Mom, I forgot my gym clothes. We have PE sixth period,” her daughter said, sounding guiltily embarrassed.
“All right. I’ll bring them.”
Vera informed her coworkers and drove home. She unlocked the door with her own key, stepped into the hallway—and stopped.
The blue bag containing Polina’s gym clothes stood right by the door, as though waiting for someone. Maxim’s phone lay on the cabinet beside it, quietly playing something rhythmic through its speaker. The stale smell of fried eggs drifted from the kitchen. Plates were piled on the table—breakfast dishes, still unwashed.
Maxim was asleep on the sofa, his head tilted back and his mouth slightly open.
Vera picked up the bag, stood silently for a second, and slowly looked around. The kitchen, the sofa, her sleeping husband, the abandoned dishes. And there she was in the middle of it all—with the bag in her hands, wearing her work clothes, in the middle of her working day.
She worked. She paid for the apartment, the groceries, and Polina’s extracurricular activities. She remembered the gym clothes, the doctor’s appointments, and the notebooks. She carried all of it in her head every minute of every day—and yet the previous day, her husband had seriously explained to her that her salary should be placed under his control.
That evening, Vera waited until Polina was asleep, sat down across from Maxim, and folded her hands on the table.
“Listen carefully. Either you start working within a week, or we begin filing for divorce. And until you find a job, all the household chores will be divided strictly fifty-fifty. According to a list.”
Maxim smirked.
“Are you serious?”
She didn’t answer. She simply looked steadily at him without looking away.
The smirk vanished from his face.
The next morning, a sheet of paper appeared on the refrigerator, divided into two handwritten columns: “Vera” and “Maxim.” Under each name was a specific list of responsibilities for the week.
“What’s this?” Maxim asked, studying the list with a mug of coffee in his hand.
“Your half of the household chores,” Vera replied calmly as she packed Polina’s schoolbag. “It’s your turn to cook dinner today. And don’t forget—you have to pick her up from English class at four.”
For the first two days, Maxim carried out his duties with undisguised irritation. The pasta stuck together, the apartment smelled strongly of cleaning chemicals after he finished cleaning, and he even managed to arrive ten minutes late when picking Polina up.
“Dad, did you forget about me or something?” his daughter said resentfully outside the classroom.
“I didn’t forget. I just… got delayed.”
By the end of the week, something in him began to change. He realized that making dinner wasn’t simply a matter of putting something on the stove. You had to think about what to buy, get to the store, start cooking on time, and remember that Polina didn’t eat onions.
On the fifth day, he silently sat down at his laptop and opened a job-search website. Vera noticed but said nothing.
Three days later, he was invited to an interview. Another week passed, and he called her from the street, something unusually lively in his voice.
“They hired me. Five days on, two days off. The salary is a little lower than before, but it’s fine.”
“Good,” Vera said. “Congratulations.”
She ended the call and, for the first time in a long while, felt as though the weight on her shoulders had become a little lighter.
A year passed.
Maxim was working at a small consulting firm, without the old pressure and without his former ambitions. He came home at seven, sometimes earlier. On Wednesdays, he picked Polina up from dance class, and on Sundays, he made breakfast for the entire family.
They managed their budget through a banking app. Both of them could see all income and expenses, they saved for vacations together, and they discussed major purchases in advance.
One evening, while Maxim was clearing the table after dinner, Vera looked at him with a smile and said:
“Listen, maybe I should give you my salary card after all?”
Maxim grimaced as though he had bitten into a lemon.
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious. You’re the man, the head of the family.”
“Vera,” he said, turning around. “Stop it.”
She laughed. So did he—a little sheepishly, but sincerely.
Polina looked up from her textbook.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” they said simultaneously.
Maxim remembered perfectly well that day when he had been asleep on the sofa while his daughter waited at school for her gym clothes. He remembered his wife’s expression when she looked at him without anger—simply calm and exhausted.
That was enough for him never again to confuse someone else’s money with his own dignity.
