Denys unlocked the door with his own key and immediately took a deep breath in through his nose. He’d been doing this for thirty years, ever since high school: walk into his mom’s apartment on a Sunday and know instantly what was for lunch, just from the smell. Usually it was beef roasted with garlic and prunes. His mom would put it in the oven at ten, and by two, the meat would fall off the bone with just a touch of a fork.
But this Sunday, all he could smell in the hallway was laundry detergent.
“Mom, are you home?”
“In the kitchen,” Lyudmyla Hryhorivna called back.
She was sitting at the table, wearing an old, faded flannel robe, eating buckwheat. Just plain buckwheat, no sauce, from an old plate. Next to her sat a three-liter jar of homemade sauerkraut.
“Uh… lunch?” Denys glanced at the dark oven window.
“This is lunch. Help yourself, there’s more in the pot.”
He sat down across from her, not even taking off his jacket. The kitchen was cold. The radiator under the window was barely warm, even though it was the third straight day of cold October rain and everyone in the city was walking around with umbrellas.
“Did you turn down the heat?”
“I did,” his mom replied calmly. “Why heat up the air? I’m in my robe, I’m fine.”
Denys watched as she carefully picked a black grain out of her buckwheat, and he realized: he’d started all of this himself. Exactly one week ago.
* * *
It all began with the dress.
That Sunday, as usual, he brought an empty plastic container to take home the leftover beef. On the closet door in the hallway, there was a new dress—a dark blue one with tiny white polka dots, still with the tag dangling from the sleeve. Denys absentmindedly flipped the tag over and let out a low whistle.
“Mom, isn’t that a bit much for a piece of cloth?”
“It’s not just a piece of cloth,” Lyudmyla Hryhorivna smiled, wiping her hands on a towel. “Look how it fits! On Thursday we’re going to a new cafe with the girls. Nelya says they have eclairs so good you’ll swallow your tongue.”
The “girls” were all over sixty. Aunt Nelya from the third floor and Valentyna Ivanivna, who had worked with his mom in the factory accounting office for twenty years. Every Thursday, they went “out and about”: coffee, pastries, two hours chatting about grandkids, prices, and TV shows.
Denys started running the numbers in his head. The dress. Weekly coffee shop visits. Manicures at the salon near the market. A pool membership. And just a month ago, a new washing machine, since—according to his mom—the old one had “started rampaging around the bathroom like it lost its mind.”
“Mom, come on,” he said, dropping onto the stool. “Do you even keep track of how much you’re spending on these eclairs?”
“What’s there to keep track of?”
“What do you mean? You’re sixty-three. Pensions aren’t magic money. At your age you should be planning ahead, putting something away. Saving for the future, you know? But you—dresses, coffee shops. It’s all money wasted. On silly things.”
He didn’t say it to be mean. Or at least, that’s what he thought at the time. In fact, he felt a bit proud of himself: here he was, a grown-up son, caring about his mother’s future instead of just coming over for the beef.
Lyudmyla Hryhorivna was quiet for a moment. Then she neatly folded the towel into quarters and hung it on the oven handle.
“You’re right, son,” she said. “It’s time to start saving.”
And she never brought up the conversation again. She packed him a container full of meat—like always, way more than he could eat in two days—and walked him to the door. Denys left for the bus stop feeling pleased. He even thought his mom had taken everything surprisingly calmly. She didn’t get offended. She didn’t start reminding him how she’d raised him.
Back then, Denys had no idea that his mom was just getting started.
* * *
The first sign came on Wednesday.
Two years ago, Denys bought a one-bedroom apartment in a new building. The renovations dragged on—sometimes there wasn’t money for tiles, sometimes no time. When his mom saw the first utility bill, she just waved it off: “I’ll pay for now, you finish your kitchen.” From then on, utilities were paid from her card every month by the tenth. Denys had even stopped thinking about it altogether.
On Wednesday evening, the head of the homeowners’ association posted a list of debtors in the building’s group chat. Third down was: “Apt. 47—October overdue payment.” Denys called his mom.
“Mom, did you forget to pay the utility bills? They posted my name in the group chat for the whole building…”
“I didn’t forget,” she said evenly. “I’m just saving now. You said yourself: at my age, I need to think things through. So I did.”
“Mom, that’s not what I meant!”
“What did you mean, then?” her voice sounded genuinely surprised through the phone. “You counted my money. I just counted to the end. Your apartment — your bills, son. You’re an adult now.”
He paid that same night. The total, with heating included, made him reread the number in the app twice. Turns out, every month his mom had quietly covered his radiator bills with more money than he spent on groceries in a week.
* * *
On Thursday, Denys was leaving work, crossing the square, and automatically slowed down in front of a new coffee shop. At a table by the window sat Aunt Nelia and Valentyna Ivanivna. There were two cups before them and a plate of eclairs. The third chair was empty. Aunt Nelia’s purse rested on it.
Nelia saw him through the glass and waved. It wasn’t a cheerful wave—more like she wanted to say something but changed her mind.
Denys nodded and kept walking. For a while, he convinced himself it wasn’t a big deal. So his mom skipped coffee once. No biggie. Still, all evening that empty chair with someone else’s purse on it stuck in his mind.
* * *
Friday was supposed to be a good day. His friends had invited him for the weekend: barbecue, sauna, two days offline. His mom’s Skoda usually sat by the building for weeks, since Liudmyla Hryhorivna only drove in the summer to get to the dacha. So Denys had kept the spare keys for a while and took the car when he needed it, without even asking. That’s just how it was.
He stopped by his mom’s on the way home from work to pump up the tires. Liudmyla Hryhorivna stood in the doorway, holding out her open palm.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“The keys, son. The spare ones.”
“Mom, I’m just taking it for the weekend…”
“Gas is expensive these days,” she said, as if reading from a manual. “Take the bus. There’s one leaving the station every hour—checked it myself.”
He wanted to laugh it off, but when he saw her face, he put the keys in her palm. The keychain with the wooden stork he once brought her from the Carpathians jingled softly against her wedding ring.
Denys traveled standing up all the way to the village. The bus was packed, so for an hour and a half he clung to a handrail between a sack of potatoes and a woman holding a woven basket with a kitten meowing angrily inside. Rain streamed down the windows. Someone behind him talked loudly on the phone the whole ride about fertilizer prices. Denys stared at his wet sneakers and thought about how his mom hadn’t said a single harsh word to him all week. She’d done exactly what he’d advised her to do.
And that was the worst part.
* * *
Now he was sitting on his mom’s cold kitchen, still in his jacket, staring at a bowl of buckwheat.
“Mom,” he finally said. “That’s enough. I get it.”
“What do you get?” Lyudmyla Hryhorivna put her spoon aside.
“That I said a bunch of nonsense.”
She looked at him for a long time. Not angrily, but the way she used to when he’d bring his school diary home and couldn’t decide which page to start from.
“Denys, I worked for thirty-eight years. And I’m still managing the accounts for our building association, you know that. I earned this money myself. The dress, the eclairs, even your utility bills—they all come from the same wallet. I just liked deciding for myself where to spend it. And when you said I was wasting money on silly things, I sat down and thought: what’s silly for me? Coffee with Nelya, who’s been my friend for forty years? Or your radiators?”
Denys stayed silent.
“And you know what’s the funniest thing?” his mom smiled for the first time that day. “I never thought of your utility bills as silly. I actually enjoyed paying them. Just like I enjoyed cooking beef for you. But by your logic, spending money on myself was pointless. Spending on you? That was normal, that was how it should be.”
“Mom…” he rubbed his face with his hands, “just live the way you used to. Please. Buy those dresses. Go places with Aunt Nelya, wherever you want. Go to Truskavets, go to the spa, even to the seaside. Just don’t sit here in the cold with buckwheat. I can’t even eat a bite when it’s like this.”
“And the utility bills?”
“I’ll take care of the utilities myself. Really, I will. I’m thirty-eight, Mom. It’s kind of embarrassing, you know.”
Lyudmyla Hryhorivna was quiet for a bit longer, then got up, turned the radiator all the way up, and opened the fridge. On the bottom shelf sat an enameled pot covered with a plate. Beneath the plate, in a marinade of garlic, mustard, and prunes, lay a good chunk of beef.
“It’s been marinating since Friday,” she said, not turning around. “I knew you’d come to your senses by Sunday.”
Denys laughed for the first time in a week. He laughed long and hard, until tears came, while his mom turned on the oven, pulled out a baking tray, and spread out the foil. There were still three hours until lunch, and they drank tea with raspberry jam, while the kitchen slowly filled with warmth and the same smell that began every one of his Sundays.
* * *
That next Thursday, Denys purposely walked across the square after work.
Three women sat by the window table. Aunt Nelya was gesturing with her eclair as she told a story, Valentyna Ivanivna laughed, covering her mouth with a napkin. And his mom, in a navy-blue dress with white polka dots, spotted him through the glass and waved. This time with real joy.
He waved back and walked on. He’d already paid the utility bills for November back on Monday, by himself—no reminders in the family chat needed.
On his way home, Denis thought about how easy it is to judge how other people spend their money. It always seems like they’re wasting it on the wrong things. But as soon as saving money knocks on your own door, you instantly realize just how much warmth was hidden in what you once considered your mom’s ‘nonsense’ purchases.
