This was how almost every other Sunday lunch at Galina Petrovna’s began—with that phrase from her husband, spoken quietly, almost as though he were apologizing for what was happening in the house. And the same thing had been happening for six years: Marina would sit down at the table, Galina Petrovna would pour the tea, and sooner or later the conversation would turn to work.
“Now Lyuba has a real business. Her own,” her mother-in-law would say, seemingly addressing everyone at once while looking directly at her daughter-in-law. “And you’re still sitting there in that accounting department of yours, slaving away for somebody else. Is that really a life for a young woman?”
Marina never argued. She had understood long ago that there was no point. Besides, she was perfectly satisfied with her job. The pay was steady, her bosses appreciated her, and pointless arguments at the dinner table only ruined her appetite. She headed the payroll department at a small construction company and had worked there for almost ten years. It was precisely that job that allowed her to save money regularly, without missing a month. The habit had become almost automatic: on the fifteenth of every month, as soon as she received her salary, Marina immediately transferred a set amount into a separate account and only then thought about everything else. She had been doing this ever since she decided that sooner or later, her mother would have an apartment of her own.
Tamara Ivanovna, Marina’s mother, had spent her entire life renting. First she had rented a room in a communal apartment on the outskirts of town, and later a one-room apartment from acquaintances at a reasonable price. Every time the owners decided to sell the property or raise the rent, she had to start searching all over again. Looking for a rental home at sixty was hardly pleasant, and Marina could see that with each passing year her mother was growing more exhausted by the uncertainty. That was what the savings were for. Quietly, without announcements, without grand declarations at the family table.
Roman knew what the money was intended for—Marina had told him during their first year of marriage—but he never asked for details and did not tell his mother. At home, after another lunch filled with jabs about working for someone else, he would always tell his wife the same thing:
“Just ignore her. She’s always like that with people who aren’t her type.”
Marina would nod, agree, and the conversation would end there. Long ago, she had stopped expecting anything more from her husband—not because she didn’t want more, but because every attempt to explain that his silence in front of his mother hurt just as much as his mother’s words always ended the same way. Roman would shrug and say that he couldn’t exactly start a fight with his own mother over such nonsense.
Marina and Roman had bought the apartment they lived in with a mortgage five years earlier—a modest two-bedroom place on the outskirts, inexpensive but their own. The monthly payment came from their joint account, but in reality Marina contributed most of the money. Her salary was higher and more stable than Roman’s. He worked as a logistics manager for a small transportation company, where his income fluctuated depending on the season and bonuses, and some months were especially lean.
Marina never reproached him for the difference in their earnings. Once a month, she would simply cover whatever shortfall there was with her own money and, as always, transfer whatever remained into the account she had created for her mother.
Lyubov, Roman’s sister, was four years younger than him and had always been lively, independent, and “a girl with character,” as Galina Petrovna liked to say. For several years, Lyuba bounced between different jobs—sometimes working as an administrator, sometimes in sales—until one day, after returning from a beauty-industry seminar, she announced that she had decided to open her own nail studio.
Roman’s family reacted almost as though it were a holiday. Galina Petrovna invited the relatives over for a special Sunday lunch to celebrate, and throughout the evening she beamed as if her daughter had already opened a nationwide chain of salons.
“Now that’s how it should be done,” she said, pouring champagne into the glasses. “Real people build something of their own instead of breaking their backs working for somebody else their whole lives. One day Lyuba will be supporting all of us—you remember my words.”
Marina kept quiet that time too, although her cheeks turned slightly pink—and not because of the champagne. Roman raised a toast to his sister and, for a moment, met his wife’s eyes as if he wanted to say something in her defense.
But he never did.
He simply clinked glasses and turned back toward his mother.
Lyuba opened her studio in a rented space on the ground floor of a nine-story apartment building, not far from a metro station but away from the main flow of pedestrians. She had saved money on rent, but customers quickly began complaining that the entrance was difficult to find.
She did not buy the cheapest equipment or supplies. She officially took out a bank loan in her own name to launch the business. There was nothing suspicious about it; everything was done openly. Lyuba even proudly showed the loan agreement to the family during dinner as though it were a diploma.
For the first six months, business went fairly well. Friends brought their friends, and women from the neighborhood came in out of curiosity. But during that time, two more similar salons opened nearby. One belonged to a chain and constantly offered promotions; the other was simpler but charged nearly half as much.
Lyuba had underestimated the competition. She barely invested in advertising, relying mostly on word of mouth, while the rent increased by several thousand every six months. By the end of the first year, appointments had noticeably declined, and by the middle of the second year, conversations about the studio during family lunches had taken on a completely different tone.
“Lyuba is completely exhausted,” Galina Petrovna would sigh, no longer sounding nearly as confident as before. “Everyone has fewer customers these days. There’s a crisis everywhere.”
Marina listened in silence, trying not to show that she had understood everything long ago simply from the pauses in their conversations and from the way Lyuba, during one of their lunches, spent several minutes studying her reflection in a teaspoon instead of joining the discussion.
Several months later, the studio closed for good.
Lyuba returned the premises to the landlord. She sold some of the equipment for next to nothing through online listings, while the rest was left gathering dust somewhere in her rented apartment.
The debts remained—to the bank, to a supplier of materials, and also a certain amount owed to another nail technician whom Lyuba had once hired to help her but had never fully paid.
It was after all this that the evening Marina would later remember down to the smallest details finally arrived—even the smell of onions frying in the pan and the sound of the doorbell ringing at exactly the wrong moment.
Marina was preparing dinner. It was an ordinary weekday Tuesday, and nothing seemed unusual, when the doorbell rang. A second later, before Marina had even had time to wipe her hands, Roman opened the door and let his mother and sister inside.
Galina Petrovna stood in the doorway wearing her coat and a determined expression, looking less like someone who had come to visit and more like someone arriving for an important negotiation.
“Come in,” Marina said uncertainly, switching off the burner.
Her mother-in-law, however, had not been waiting for permission. She walked straight into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and placed her handbag on the chair beside her.
Lyuba lingered in the hallway near the mirror.
Roman sat across from his mother, while Marina remained standing by the stove, drying her hands with a towel and feeling a knot tightening inside her as she sensed that an unpleasant conversation was coming.
“Marina, we need to have a serious talk,” Galina Petrovna began without any introduction. “Lyuba is on the brink. She closed the studio, she still has debts, and now there’s nowhere for her to work. Who needs a nail technician without a client base or a name? The family has to help.”
“Of course we have to help,” Roman immediately added, looking at his wife. “We’re family, after all.”
Marina folded the towel and finally sat down at the table across from them.
“And what exactly do you mean by ‘help’?” she asked evenly.
“You have savings,” Galina Petrovna said as casually as though she were asking Marina to lend a neighbor some salt. “Roman said you’ve accumulated quite a substantial amount over the years. Well, now it can finally be useful. Lyuba can use it for new equipment and to rent another place—something more respectable.”
Marina looked at her husband.
He lowered his eyes and began studying the pattern on the tablecloth.
“I wasn’t saving that money for no reason,” Marina said, trying to remain calm even though her fingers had curled into a fist beneath the table. “I’m saving it to buy my mother an apartment. She’s been renting for years, and it’s becoming harder and harder for her. I am not giving that money away for a business.”
For a moment, the kitchen fell silent.
Galina Petrovna frowned as though Marina had just said something absurd, something she could not possibly comprehend.
“Your mother?” she repeated in the tone people usually reserved for something unimportant. “Oh, she has plenty of life ahead of her. She can wait. Lyuba is in a critical situation right now. She needs the money immediately.”
“We were counting on you, and now you’re refusing to help?!” Galina Petrovna exclaimed indignantly when she heard Marina’s answer, her voice rising an entire octave, so sharply that even Roman flinched.
Marina felt the blood rush to her face—not from embarrassment, but because something inside her suddenly shifted, as though a switch that had kept her from speaking up for years had finally been flipped.
“So you were counting on me,” she repeated slowly, looking directly at her mother-in-law. “For six years, I’ve sat at this very table listening to you say that I’m nothing more than an employee, that real people start their own businesses while I’m just some gray little mouse living on a salary. And now the money I saved from that very salary—the same money you called pathetic when I once told you how much I’d managed to save—has suddenly become important to you.”
“Nobody ever said that,” Lyuba interrupted, even though nobody had invited her into the conversation. She had just entered the kitchen after hearing the raised voices.
“You did,” Marina said, turning toward her. “At Aunt Ira’s birthday. Word for word: ‘You call that money? It isn’t even enough for a decent car.’ Have you forgotten?”
Lyuba hesitated and cast a quick glance at her mother, but remained silent.
Apparently, she had nothing to say.
“So why does everyone suddenly need this ‘pathetic’ money so desperately?” Marina asked, and for the first time that evening, her voice sounded firm, without its usual readiness to compromise.
“You’re twisting everything around,” Galina Petrovna snapped. “This isn’t about who said what years ago. This is about your husband’s own sister being in trouble, while you, because of your greed, are willing to stand there and watch her drown.”
“You’re jealous. That’s what this is about,” Lyuba added, pursing her lips resentfully. “You’ve always been jealous. You just never showed it.”
Marina gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Jealous,” she repeated. “Interesting. What exactly am I supposed to be jealous of? A studio that closed after a year and a half? The bank debts?”
“That’s enough!” Roman slammed his palm against the table so hard that the cups rattled. “Marina, transfer the money. Today. Family is more important than your principles.”
Marina looked at her husband for a long moment, as though she were truly seeing him clearly for the first time in all the years they had been together.
“This family remembers I exist only when someone runs out of other people’s money,” she said quietly, but clearly enough that everyone at the table heard every word. “Until then, I was just the woman who sits around earning a salary and doesn’t understand how life works. And by the way,” she added, turning toward her sister-in-law, “if your business was so good, why couldn’t it survive without somebody else’s money?”
Lyuba flushed, and her lips began to tremble.
“You’re saying that on purpose to humiliate me!” she shouted.
“Your wife has no shame, Roma,” Galina Petrovna said, rising from her chair. “I could never live in a family like this.”
“And I’ll never set foot in this place again,” Lyuba added, grabbing both her mother’s handbag from the chair and her own jacket at once, as though she intended to leave forever that very second.
“Marina, choose,” Roman said, getting to his feet beside his mother. “Either you’re a proper wife who helps my family, or that money of yours means more to you than I do.”
Marina slowly stood as well, resting one hand on the edge of the table.
“I choose myself,” she said simply. “I’m not giving you the money—not now, not later. And you can live however you think is right. Just do it without my money.”
The kitchen became completely silent.
The only sound was the ticking of the clock above the stove and the muffled television playing somewhere behind the wall in the neighbors’ apartment.
Roman stared at his wife for several more seconds, as though waiting for her to change her mind, apologize, or begin explaining herself differently.
Marina said nothing.
Finally, he turned around and followed his mother and sister into the hallway. The front door slammed behind them—not particularly loudly, more wearily than angrily.
Marina remained standing alone in the middle of the kitchen.
The pan of half-cooked onions continued cooling on the stove. The air smelled of burnt oil, and for some reason, that was the smell she remembered most vividly from that entire evening.
Roman did not come home for the next several days. Apparently, he was staying with his mother.
He called once.
The conversation was brief. He asked whether she had come to her senses.
Marina said she had not.
And that was where the conversation ended.
There were no more calls—no apologies, no attempts to discuss what had happened in any other way.
Marina noticed this without much surprise. Apparently, money had been the only subject worth calling her about.
A month later, Marina filed for divorce.
There was no scandal and no unnecessary conversation. It was simply another item on the list of things that had to be taken care of.
They decided to sell the mortgaged apartment and split the proceeds equally through a lawyer, without mutual accusations. The numbers were not in dispute; everything had been transparent from the beginning.
Several weeks later, Marina and her mother went to look at a small one-bedroom apartment in an old but cozy building not far from Tamara’s workplace.
Tamara Ivanovna stood at the window for a long time, looking down at the courtyard and its children’s playground.
Then suddenly she said quietly, almost to herself:
“I never thought I’d live long enough to have walls of my own.”
Marina stood beside her without answering.
And for the first time in a long while, she did not feel the familiar heaviness in her chest.
Instead, she felt something resembling peace—steady and quiet, without anguish—as though she had finally finished a task she had carried out silently and stubbornly for all those years, without waiting for anyone’s approval.
