“Yes, I own my own home. Yes, I earned it myself. No, I am not required to sell it in order to meet your ‘standards’!”
“What next? Are you going to give her peacock feathers? Or a life-sized golden statue?” Katya looked up from her tablet and stared at Ulyana as though she had suggested turning their souvenir shop into an underground brothel.
“Oh, stop it,” Ulyana sighed, leaning back in her chair. “It’s only a pendant. An antique one. With garnets. It’s very stylish, even for your ironic soul.”
“For my soul, perhaps. But to Galina Pavlovna, it’ll be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. She already sees you as some kind of marketing glitch, and now you’re giving her a pendant. It’ll look as though you’re trying to buy her approval.”
“That is exactly what I’m trying to do,” Ulyana admitted with a bitter smile, reaching for her phone. “I want to buy it because I can’t get it any other way.”
Katya’s expression softened slightly. They had this conversation every three months—after every visit to her husband’s “family,” as Ulyana called that circle of people, unwilling to risk using the word “relatives.”
“Listen, maybe you should forget about them. Seriously. You don’t owe them anything. You’re forty-one, you have your own company and a chain of stores, you’ve signed a contract with Siberia Souvenir, and your designer packaging is so original that even the Chinese haven’t thought of anything like it…”
“I have Denis,” Ulyana interrupted quietly. “And I want him to… at least not feel as though he’s being torn between me and his mother.”
“Is he really being torn apart? Or is he simply pretending that the situation is difficult for him?”
There was no answer to that question. Like a needle, it struck the sorest spot every time.
The call came that evening. The kind that always began with a polite, “Are you busy?” and ended with a proposal that would determine the next cycle of self-destruction.
“Hi, Ulyana. Listen, Mom’s celebrating her anniversary on Saturday. She’s turning seventy-five. I was thinking… maybe you could come with us?”
“How will she react to that?” Ulyana’s voice sounded calmer than she felt.
“She’ll accept you. I promise. Everything has changed. I spoke to her. She understands that she was too harsh.” Denis’s voice was as soft as a sweater fresh from the dry cleaner, but the familiar attempt to pressure her was already present beneath the softness.
“Is this the same mother who called me ‘a souvenir salesgirl without a degree’ at our last dinner?”
“Well…” Denis breathed heavily into the phone. “She worries. She comes from a different era. Things were different then. Higher education, academic departments, professional ethics…”
“Right. A hierarchy based on academic degrees and contempt for people who have achieved something without a framed certificate. I understand perfectly.”
“But will you come?”
Ulyana thought for a moment. Then she looked at the box containing the pendant, carefully lined with velvet, and nodded even though he could not see her.
“I’ll come. But only for you.”
“Thank you. You won’t regret it.”
Oh, Denis. You seriously overestimate my capacity for regret when everything has already become perfectly clear.
The anniversary celebration was held in a typical apartment belonging to members of the Soviet-trained academic intelligentsia. Tea-rose-colored curtains, books arranged in two rows on the shelves, porcelain figurines on the sideboard, and the smell of something resembling marinated fish that had clearly seen better days.
“And here comes our business star!” Galina Pavlovna practically pronounced the words as an accusation when Ulyana entered.
“Good evening.” Ulyana smiled. “Happy birthday.” She held out the box containing the pendant.
“Thank you, dear.” Her mother-in-law took the box, glanced briefly inside, and placed it on the windowsill. “Denis, help me bring in the salad. Apparently, some people consider cooking beneath them.”
Ulyana sat on the very edge of the sofa, feeling as though layer after layer was being scraped away from her: her patience, her self-respect, her composure.
“So, Ulyana, tell us, what are you selling these days?” one of the numerous relatives asked cheerfully from the table.
“We’re currently producing a collection of souvenirs for the championship. It’s a new line made from environmentally friendly materials. Everything complies with national standards. We’ve even received interest from Finland.”
“Eco-souvenirs?” Galina Pavlovna almost sang the words. “What an extraordinary new field of science.”
“Business, Galina Pavlovna,” Ulyana replied with a smile. “Science is your specialty.”
“Indeed. Although nobody needs science anymore. The important thing now is to sell absolutely anything, as long as it comes in a pretty box.”
“You don’t like packaging?” Ulyana asked with a faint smirk. “And yet the pendant you didn’t even bother to examine came in precisely such a pretty box.”
The word “tension” was far too mild to describe the silence that followed. Denis entered carrying the salad and stopped dead, sensing the cold front in the room.
“What kind of tone is that?” he said quietly as he sat beside her. “Ulyana, please don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything. I’m continuing to be accommodating.”
“You’re behaving provocatively. This isn’t a corporate event. This is family.”
“This is not my family. And apparently, it never will be.”
“Maybe you simply want their acceptance too badly,” Denis said, and there was pity in his voice—pity for himself.
“Or perhaps you want me too badly to fit into the picture your mother has been painting since the nineties.”
He did not answer. He merely looked away as though trying to examine a stain on the wallpaper.
When everyone had left, Ulyana stepped onto the balcony. The evening air was cool, carrying the smell of city dust and dinners drifting from open windows. In her hand was a glass of white wine, slightly warm, much like the evening’s atmosphere.
The balcony door creaked, and Denis appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry. She’s simply… the way she is.”
“And what about me? What am I like?”
He remained silent. That silence told her more than any words could have.
“I don’t want to keep trying.” She stared into the distance, toward the windows of neighboring buildings where the lights of other people’s lives flickered. “I didn’t build my life so that I could spend it constantly being asked to become someone else.”
Denis did not respond. He quietly closed the door and returned to the kitchen, where his cozy, boiled, intellectual little world was beginning to grow cold.
“Do you honestly think I did it deliberately?” Ulyana stood in front of the mirror, slowly removing her earrings. “That I wanted to ruin your mother’s evening?”
“I think you could have restrained yourself.” Denis’s voice was muffled and almost weary. “It could have been a normal evening. Without a scene.”
“It wasn’t a scene. It was a response. A response to years of contempt.”
“Or maybe you simply don’t like it when someone refuses to applaud you?” He sat on the edge of the bed with his head lowered. “Is everyone except you allowed to have an opinion?”
“Of course they are. But not in the form of, ‘You are unworthy of my son because you don’t have a degree from Moscow State University.’” She spoke quietly, but her voice rang like frozen steel. “We have lived together for seven years, Denis. Seven years. And in all that time, she has never once thanked me—not even for the damned cabbage rolls I brought her during the winter when she was ill. All she talked about was ‘poison’ and ‘modern fake food.’”
“She simply doesn’t know how to behave differently. That’s how she was raised. You’re an intelligent woman. You should understand that.”
“And what about you? Were you raised properly? Do you know how to defend your wife? Or do you agree with your mother that I’m ‘from a different social circle’ and should consider myself lucky that you noticed me at all?”
The words cut deeply. He raised his head.
“Don’t go too far. I love you.”
“Really? At what precise moment in this love did you decide that I should abandon everything so that I wouldn’t ‘upset your mother’?”
“That isn’t what I said!” He jumped to his feet. “I said that perhaps you could do something calmer, something more academic…”
“More academic? What should I do—write a research paper about the effect of souvenir products on the climate?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“How else am I supposed to react when you seriously suggested that I sell my business and buy a country house near your parents so that we could ‘spend more time together’? Do you even hear yourself?”
He turned away and said nothing, as though an argument might be hiding somewhere in the dust beside the baseboard.
The following morning, she arrived at work before everyone else. She opened her laptop, closed it again, and stared through the window. Outside was the usual commotion: cars, a street cleaner, a courier carrying coffee in a bag. Inside her was an emptiness as smooth and solid as asphalt after heavy rain.
Katya came in, nodded, and set down a cup.
“So, yesterday I visited my aunt Zina. She started up again: ‘In your day, we embroidered and gave birth instead of doing all this nonsense.’ I said, ‘Aunt Zina, you’ve been retired for twenty years, while I’m paying a mortgage, coordinating designers, and searching for logistics providers. When exactly am I supposed to embroider?’”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘You should have done your embroidery before you turned thirty.’” Katya sat down and took out her tablet. “How did your evening go?”
“Mine is simple.” Ulyana looked at her nails—the flawless manicure she had rushed to get the previous day before the anniversary. “They love me as long as I’m convenient. As long as I smile, buy presents, and remain silent in response.”
“A classic.” Katya nodded. “So what are you going to do?”
“Me? For now, I’m thinking about how to leave properly. Without falling apart along the way.”
“Leaving isn’t about doing it gracefully. It’s about surviving.” Katya stood and walked over to her. “You’re strong. Just remember that this isn’t the first time you’ve chosen yourself. And it certainly won’t be the last.”
That evening, Denis came home with wine and fresh éclairs. Apparently, he believed enough sugar could repair the cracks.
“I spoke to Mom,” he said as soon as he entered. “She’s upset. She said she may have gone a little too far.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told her that you’re sensitive. That you want her to like you but express your affection in your own way. That you…”
“You called me sensitive?” She moved slowly toward him. “Do you understand how that sounds when I have endured humiliation for seven years and still kept visiting her, smiling, and bringing presents?”
“Well, I was trying to smooth things over…”
“Next time you want to smooth something over, cut out your tongue.” Ulyana picked up the remote and switched off the television that Denis had turned on automatically. “Listen to me carefully. You aren’t an idiot. And you certainly aren’t blind. That means you are making a choice. You are consciously choosing whose side to take. And you have chosen. Or rather, you have never made a choice at all because you have always tried to please both sides.”
“I simply don’t want a scandal,” he said dully.
“And I don’t want to be part of the scenery in your peaceful life.” She walked into the kitchen and turned on the water, then spun around sharply. “And yes, about what you said yesterday… Do you genuinely want me to sell my business?”
“I said that in the heat of the moment. It’s just… I feel that we’re drifting apart. That you’re living more and more in your own world.”
“A world where people don’t measure my worth by the number of dissertations in my family? You know, at least I like myself in my world. In yours, I’m always some kind of ‘almost normal’ woman. And you’re fine with that.”
He approached and tried to take her hand.
“Don’t leave now. Please.”
She pulled her hand away, but not sharply. She did it like a person who was no longer afraid of being misunderstood.
“I haven’t left yet. But I’m already no longer with you.”
He stood frozen to the spot. He was not accustomed to her coldness ending the conversation rather than simply adding drama to it.
Ulyana did not sleep that night. For the first time in a long while, her mind contained no plans, figures, or deliveries. There were only words. His words. His mother’s words. Her own words. Old, dusty memories: how he had first suggested that they live together, how he had assured her that he did not care about his family’s opinion, how he had kissed her forehead and said, “You are the most genuine thing in my life.”
How little genuine feeling there had ultimately been in those words.
Just before dawn, without changing her clothes, she picked up a bag, packed her laptop, passport, and charger, and left the apartment. She did not slam the door. She did not leave a note.
As she walked through the city that morning, she did not feel free. Not yet. But she felt emptiness—an emptiness into which, sooner or later, something new would come.
Something that belonged to her.
One morning at five, Ulyana woke to the sound of her own voice. She had been screaming in her sleep. Not because of a nightmare. The internal conversation had simply become too loud and lasted too long, and now it was tearing its way outward—into speech, into a scream, into the air.
She sat up on the sofa in the rented apartment overlooking a construction site, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and looked toward the window. Dawn was already breaking. The city continued living despite her personal catastrophe.
She had been living there for a month. The temporary two-room apartment, with its uneven walls and shabby kitchen, no longer felt like exile. It felt like shelter. Everything that had once anchored her—the old family apartment with its parquet flooring and the silent reproach in her husband’s eyes—now irritated her whenever she remembered it.
Her phone remained silent. Denis had not called for a week. Their last conversation had ended with him saying:
“If you left because you expected me to beg you to return, it isn’t going to happen.”
“I never asked you to,” she had answered calmly. “I simply decided to stop burning myself alive for the sake of your comfortable little hell.”
After that, he disappeared. Smoothly. Almost elegantly. The way people disappear when they have spent their whole lives avoiding real decisions.
Ulyana sat in a café, absently stirring a cappuccino that had long since gone cold. The coffee shop was noisy and crowded. Someone laughed loudly; someone else argued with the barista. Ulyana heard none of it. She simply stared at her laptop screen.
There, in black and white, was a congratulatory message from the regional trade department.
Her first export contract.
Germany.
Souvenirs inspired by ancient Slavic ornaments.
“What did I tell you?” Katya dropped into the chair opposite her, glowing with excitement. “You’ll be singing the European anthem every day now.”
“I can’t believe this is happening. It all feels so… unreal.”
“That’s because you’re accustomed to living inside somebody else’s system of coordinates. A system in which you’re ‘the scientist’s wife,’ ‘a businesswoman without a degree,’ and someone who ‘tries but never does things properly.’ Now you’re simply yourself.”
Ulyana smiled. It was a faint smile, but an honest one.
“You know,” she added quietly, “I still want to call him. I want to tell him that it worked. That I didn’t break. And most importantly, that I don’t regret anything.”
“Don’t do it, Ulya. You’ll turn yourself from a woman with a successful business back into a little girl clutching an impressive piece of evidence in her hand. You outgrew that role a long time ago.”
“What if I don’t want to prove anything?” Ulyana placed her palms on the table. “What if I simply want to hear that he is… at least a little proud of me?”
Katya looked at her for a long time.
“He had his chance. More than one. He didn’t choose you. He chose… peace. The familiar picture of the world. And you didn’t fit into it.”
“I know.” Ulyana nodded. “It still hurts, even when everything is finally right.”
The court hearing took place two days later. The divorce was finalized quickly. There were no disputes, no division of property, not even a need for them to appear in person. Their lawyers handled everything.
Denis did not write a single word. No letter, no message. Silence was his final argument.
She never discovered what he had felt upon learning that she was truly gone. That she was no longer beside him, no longer trapped inside his outdated system of beliefs, no longer beside his mother, who still believed that a woman without a degree in philology should at least know how to embroider.
He disappeared like a ghost she had lived with for far too long, mistaking its presence for love.
Six months passed.
The office in its new location was spacious, with tall windows. The team had grown. Katya was now the creative director. They had hired a logistics manager, and Ulyana met the partners from Hamburg in person for the first time in September.
They gave her a leather document folder and expressed genuine admiration for the collection based on Slavic symbolism. Ulyana even laughed as she told them that people had once called it “all that nonsense” to her face, while the same nonsense was now being exported.
One evening, shortly before eight, she remained alone in the office. It was quiet. Only the occasional car passed outside, accompanied by the hum of the air conditioner. She took out a thermos of tea and sat beside the window.
There were hundreds of messages on her phone, both professional and personal: congratulations, requests, and proposals.
Among them was one new message.
There was no name attached, only a number.
“You’ve become more beautiful. Stronger. I think about you often. Forgive me for not choosing you. You were right.”
Her heart trembled.
Not with joy.
Not with hope.
With a strange, deep, almost maternal pity.
For him.
For the woman she had once been.
She did not reply.
She deleted the message.
That night, she had a strange dream. She was running barefoot through a forest, wearing a white shirt and carrying a suitcase. The suitcase was light, almost weightless, like air.
When she reached the edge of a clearing, she saw a city ahead of her.
Lights.
Sound.
Life.
She smiled and continued walking.
Epilogue
Sometimes Ulyana remembers.
She remembers how they sat in the car and argued about how much she “owed” for the apartment. How they argued about why she needed a presentation in English when “no normal person exports souvenirs.” How Galina Pavlovna adjusted her blouse and whispered, “A woman should be more modest.”
Now Ulyana knows that a woman owes nothing to anyone.
She sits beside the window with a glass of white wine. Her new partner is an Italian named Marco. He laughs often and adores everything she does.
But this is not about him.
It is about her.
Because for the first time in her life, Ulyana chose herself.
And she stayed.
And she will never again explain why.
