“Zhenya, why are you sprawled out in front of the TV again? Don’t you have anything better to do? Look at him, lying there rubbing his belly, lazybones,” Margarita Lvovna said in her usual manner.
“What do you mean, lazybones? Have you forgotten that today is Sunday? Am I allowed to spend at least one legitimate day off lying peacefully without anyone bothering me?” Evgeny snapped irritably at his guest. “Or does the ‘boss’ still refuse to give me permission?”
“Zhenya, why are you getting angry? You need to take care of your nerves. Doctors say nerve cells don’t regenerate. Am I imagining things, or didn’t we agree yesterday that we’d go to the country house? Everything needs to be cleaned up there before winter, you know that,” his mother-in-law replied calmly. “I’m only worried about you. I’m trying to help. And you react to everything as if I’m attacking you.”
“Who exactly did you make that agreement with, Margarita Lvovna? This is the first I’ve heard about it!” the man said irritably. “Besides, it’s our country house, not yours, in case you’ve forgotten. We’ll clean it whenever we decide to!”
There hadn’t been any peace in his own apartment for a long time. Evgeny had even started flinching at the sound of his mother-in-law’s voice, and peace was something he could only dream about now.
The moment she had shown up at their place a month earlier without any warning, their peaceful life had come to an end. The owner of the apartment could no longer sit quietly in the evening after work with a can of beer and some dried fish, watch his favorite TV program, or sleep as long as he wanted.
Margarita Lvovna got up at five in the morning, turned energetic music on at full volume throughout the apartment, and did her exercise routine.
“For a healthy body and a vigorous spirit,” she proudly called it.
But exercising alone was boring for her, so she constantly searched for like-minded participants among the relatives living in the apartment.
“Rise and shine, young people!” she would say, entering the couple’s bedroom at the crack of dawn. “Time to get moving, time to wake yourselves up! Stop lying around. Look at the bellies you’ve grown! It’s embarrassing to look at you!”
The spouses reluctantly got out of bed because they knew Margarita Lvovna wouldn’t leave them alone. Yawning and barely able to open their eyes, they tried to imitate some kind of exercise movements.
Evgeny was furious.
His wife Katya tried to calm him down.
“Zhenya, just be patient. It’s temporary. Mom will leave soon. Let’s not upset her. And besides, however you look at it, she’s right. We’ve both put on quite a bit of weight lately. Beer, dried fish, pizza, chips, crackers… all of it has had an effect. Half my wardrobe is already bursting at the seams.”
“As if those ridiculous morning exercises are going to help you lose all those kilos,” her husband replied unhappily. “We’d be better off sleeping longer in the morning. That would be more useful.”
And today, on his perfectly legitimate day off, Evgeny was surprised to discover that he was apparently expected to travel forty kilometers to the country house and do some kind of work there.
“What country house, Margarita Lvovna? Have you even looked out the window? It’s raining, and it’s freezing outside,” Evgeny tried to protest.
“Oh, so what? The rain will stop soon. And I didn’t look out the window, I checked the forecast. As for the wind and the cold, that’s no problem. It’s autumn. We’ll dress warmer. This kind of weather is actually better for working. It wakes you up, you know.”
During the entire month that his wife’s mother had been staying with them, Evgeny had fulfilled practically every one of her wishes and whims. By now he was thoroughly tired of being so accommodating.
One day he had to drive her to the central market, where his mother-in-law searched for fresh veal and farm-made cottage cheese. Another day, the entire family suddenly had to travel across the city to a swimming pool or steam bath, where they spent half the day in the heat.
Katya’s mother had completely destroyed their usual routine and way of life.
But even that would have been only half the problem.
Especially since Evgeny had noticed with some satisfaction that he had actually lost five kilos. The morning exercises and swimming pool had done their job.
The worse problem was that his mother-in-law tried to humiliate him at every opportunity.
“You never listen to your mother, Katerina. You didn’t when you were young, and you don’t now. And admit it—you chose yourself a completely useless husband,” her mother would tell her in the kitchen in the evenings. “Look at my Anechka and her Mikhail. They live in a palace! And the cars they drive can’t even be compared to your Niva. And when they go on vacation, they don’t go to some country house like you do. They go to the Maldives. Or the Canary Islands.”
“Mom, please don’t start,” her daughter would reply gently, suppressing her irritation because she didn’t want to quarrel with her mother.
“If you’d listened to me, you’d be living like that now too,” Margarita Lvovna continued, believing that her son-in-law couldn’t hear her.
“Listen, dear mother-in-law, don’t you think it’s extremely rude to humiliate your son-in-law while living in his apartment? I can hear everything! I’m not deaf! Why don’t you go stay with your precious Anechka if everything is so wonderful at their place? Why did you come here to stay with us poor, pathetic people?” Evgeny finally exploded one day.
“There you go. Now he’s shouting at me too,” Margarita Lvovna stated calmly, pointing toward her son-in-law as though he were an inanimate object or some kind of statue. “And after that, you’re still going to claim I’m wrong. I would go to Anechka’s place, of course I would, especially since they invited me. But they aren’t home right now. They flew to the Dominican Republic for two weeks.”
“But you’ve already been living with us for a month! Your daughter and your beloved son-in-law have probably come back by now,” Evgeny persisted. “So go make them happy with your visit. We need a rest too. From you.”
“No, no, I haven’t planned on going to them yet. And I don’t want to go home either. Autumn always makes me so lonely. The loneliness becomes unbearable. If Leonid were still alive, I wouldn’t feel so miserable. So I’ll stay with you for a while longer, all right, Katyusha?”
At these words, the woman even managed to squeeze out a small tear.
“Of course, Mom. Stay as long as you want,” Katya replied, looking reproachfully at her husband. “You can help Dasha and Vitya with their homework while we’re at work.”
Unable to take any more, Evgeny slammed the door and left.
That evening, he told his wife everything he thought.
“How much longer is she going to get on my nerves? Don’t you think your mother is abusing our hospitality? She humiliates me without the slightest embarrassment. Do you think my patience is made of iron? I’m going to have to buy her a ticket myself and send your mother home!”
“Stop behaving like this. She’s my mother. She isn’t some stranger to me. She can stay as long as she needs,” his wife argued.
“Fine! Do whatever you want! Just leave me alone!” he shouted angrily.
The next day, Evgeny got drunk with a friend who, after his divorce, lived alone in an apartment one floor above them.
“Ah, Edik, you have no idea how much I envy you!” Evgeny repeated drunkenly for what must have been the tenth time. “No wife, no mother-in-law—complete freedom! You’re living a real life, unlike me. I feel like a prisoner in a maximum-security prison.”
“Just look at him! Now he’s coming home completely drunk too. No, Katya, you made a terrible mistake choosing this husband. A terrible mistake,” her mother kept nagging nearby while Katya helped her husband take off his clothes and get to bed.
The atmosphere became increasingly tense.
From that day forward, the son-in-law and mother-in-law stopped speaking to each other.
Evgeny tried not to notice her at all and ignored every comment and request she made.
Today, Margarita Lvovna had chosen their apartment itself as the object of her criticism.
“Katya, haven’t you ever thought about it yourself? The children are growing up. They need rooms of their own, and all you have is this miserable two-room apartment. Is that really normal? Take me, for example. I often come to visit and stay in one of the rooms. And all four of you have to squeeze into the other one. It’s terribly inconvenient!” her mother complained.
“Yes, you’re absolutely right. It is inconvenient. But what can we do?” her daughter replied sadly, hoping her mother might finally understand that her prolonged presence was exactly what made things so cramped.
“Exactly! You should have thought earlier about whom you were marrying. But now, what can you do? At least your Zhenya could find another job so you could buy a decent home. And if he can’t find a respectable job, then let him take out a loan,” her mother-in-law said angrily.
“Mom, you know perfectly well there’s no point. What loan? What other job? What are you talking about? And our apartment is perfectly fine. Why are you criticizing everything? I’m satisfied with it.”
Evgeny listened to these conversations with growing anger and understood that if his wife’s mother didn’t leave soon, he could no longer guarantee how he would react.
But before long, circumstances helped him solve the problem.
One day, Evgeny happened to overhear a very interesting telephone conversation involving his mother-in-law.
That day, he and his wife had decided to take the children for a walk in the park. The weather was pleasant despite the fact that it was autumn, and since it was a day off, why not spend some time outdoors with the children?
His mother-in-law complained of a headache and stayed at home.
But Evgeny had to return to the apartment because, in the rush of getting the children ready, he had forgotten his cellphone. He was expecting a call from a colleague.
When he entered the apartment, he heard Margarita Lvovna speaking very emotionally to someone on the phone.
“What? That’s terrible, Anechka! My God, that can’t be true! They took the house too? How could this happen? The business… what kind of business is it if they take away your house and cars? Tell me, how did Mikhail let this happen? How did he allow things to get this bad? Everything was going so well for you! Oh my goodness, what are we going to do? What’s going to happen now, Anya?”
His mother-in-law continued gasping and exclaiming in shock, while Evgeny, increasingly interested, decided to listen to the entire detective story.
“What do you mean, you still owe money? More? Even after they took everything from you? You’re serious? And what about Misha? Oh, I see… Well, I don’t know. I really don’t know. This is serious. I need to think about it. Of course you need help. Nobody’s arguing about that. But whether I can sell my apartment that quickly, I don’t know. And besides, where am I supposed to live afterward? From what I understand, there’s nowhere for me to stay with you now. You’ve lost your home yourselves. At Katerina’s place, you say? Well… yes, I suppose that’s how it’ll have to be. There’s nowhere else. Don’t be upset, sweetheart. We’ll think of something. Hang in there.”
Margarita Lvovna ended the call, and Evgeny almost lost his breath from what he had just heard.
What unbelievable audacity!
What treachery!
They had already decided everything behind his and Katya’s backs.
“Well, this is very interesting, don’t you think, Margarita Lvovna?” Evgeny said confidently as he stepped into the room. “You’re planning to sell your apartment without telling my wife, give all the money from the sale to Anechka because she has serious financial problems, and then you’re planning to live with us—your poor and pathetic relatives. Is that right? Did I misunderstand anything? Have I described the plan correctly?”
The woman flinched and turned pale when she saw her son-in-law.
Not only was her plan collapsing, but Katya’s husband had heard everything.
Of course, it was unfair to her older daughter.
But what else was she supposed to do?
Anya urgently needed help. She and her husband had to be rescued from their debts.
“Zhenya… Evgeny, you understand that I have no other choice. Later, once everything settles down for them, Anna will give Katerina part of the money from my apartment. But for now, this is the only way. And yes, I’ll have to live with you,” she said in a quiet, helpless voice, hoping to make her son-in-law feel sorry for her.
“You say you have no choice? No. There is always a choice. And I’m going to tell my wife about your scheme right now. And you will not be living with us! I’m telling you that with complete certainty. Stop taking advantage of Katerina’s kindness and inability to say no! You’ve lived at our expense long enough. Enough!”
“Evgeny, how can you say that? She’s my own daughter. She’s obligated to help me when I’m going through difficult times.”
“And is she also obligated to tolerate the way you treat her? You and your younger daughter were simply planning to deceive her. You wanted to sell your apartment, give all the money to your younger daughter, and then move in with the older one.”
Their conversation must have gone on longer than either of them realized, because Katya and the children, who had been waiting for Evgeny near the entrance to the building, had already returned home.
“We were freezing standing out there. Why didn’t you come back?” she asked in surprise when she saw how agitated and upset both her mother and her husband looked.
“Oh, your mother and I got talking,” Evgeny replied. “We had such an interesting and meaningful conversation! You wouldn’t believe it. And we decided that she’s already overstayed her welcome here and is going home. Right, Margarita Lvovna? That’s exactly what you were just telling me, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, yes! That’s right, Katya. I really need to leave now. I’ll pack my things and head to the railway station. Will you help me, Evgeny?”
“With enormous pleasure! Why wouldn’t I help someone close to the family?” the son-in-law replied cheerfully. “I’ll even buy you the ticket myself. The best seat in the carriage.”
Before long, Katya and Evgeny learned that Margarita Lvovna had sold her apartment and moved in with Anna and her husband, who were now renting a small apartment.
They had been forced to forget about their luxurious house.
Margarita Lvovna never gave her older daughter any of the money from the apartment sale.
She simply didn’t consider it necessary.
And besides, by then she no longer had any money left to give.
As for Evgeny, he received a promotion at work, and just a year later, he and his wife bought a larger apartment.
Margarita Lvovna never comes to visit them anymore.
She communicates with her daughter only by telephone.
Apparently, Evgeny must have said something to her that day at the railway station while seeing her off.
Something very, very convincing—and extremely easy to understand.
