The phone rang at half past seven just as Ira was carrying two bags back from the store, one of which already had a suspiciously cracking handle. The number was unfamiliar, and she wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear because both hands were full of discounted potatoes and milk.
«Ira? It’s Kira. I’m sure you know who I am.»
The voice was upbeat and businesslike, like the clinic administrators who call to remind you about an appointment. Ira stopped by the entrance, shifted the heavy bag to her left hand, and didn’t say a word.
«I want to ask you for a favor,» Kira continued, not waiting for a reply. «You and Volya have been strangers for a while, everyone can see it. Let’s not drag out the divorce and keep hurting each other. You do realize you’re keeping us from moving on, right?»
Ira had known the name since summer. In her husband’s phone, Kira was saved as ‘Kirill Supplies,’ and for three months in a row, Volya came home late because of these supply issues, sometimes at ten, sometimes eleven, and once he came back on a Saturday in a dress shirt that Ira definitely hadn’t ironed.
«I’m in the way?» Ira repeated. «I’m the one bothering you? How long have you two been seeing each other?»
There was a pause on the line. Someone near Kira burst out laughing, and a car door slammed.
«Almost eight months,» Kira replied, softer now. «And I’m not going to make excuses, because we love each other.»
Just then, the handle finally gave way, and potatoes tumbled across the asphalt under the bench. Ira burst out laughing—a loud, unflattering laugh that made a neighbor with a dog turn to look at her from across the courtyard.
«Eight months!» she exclaimed into the phone. «But tell me, dear, did you know that your beloved has spent all eight of those months living in my apartment, eating my cutlets, and sleeping on my pillow?»
«He just doesn’t want drama before the final split,» Kira replied irritably. «He feels sorry for you, if you want to know.»
«He feels sorry… Well, let him call me himself, then. I’m not going to file for divorce at the request of a woman my husband’s been hiding from me for eight months under the name Kirill!»
Kira hung up without saying another word. Ira squatted down to gather the potatoes into the surviving bag, wiping each one off on her jacket, while the neighbor with the dog politely turned away toward the garages. The last potato rolled into a puddle by the curb, and Ira left it there—it would have been just too humiliating to go after it right now.
Volya came home around ten, and Ira heard him fiddling with the lock for a while before he walked straight to the kitchen without stopping by her room. When she finally came out, there was already a printout from some legal consulting website on the table, and his phone was lying on top of it, screen down.
«We need to file the application,» Volya said as he took off his jacket. «Preferably this week. The apartment’s yours, I’m taking the car, and we each pay our own debts. Sounds fair to me.»
He spoke in that same even tone he used back when he announced they were getting the more expensive fridge, because he’d already checked out the cheap one and it just wasn’t good enough. Ira walked over to the table and pulled the papers closer.
«Did Kira call you?» he asked, without looking at her.
«Yes, she called me. So you already know she did. Was this your idea together, or did she decide to put pressure on me all by herself?»
«She’s just worried,» Volya mumbled. «Don’t start.»
The printout talked about splitting assets, the court process, and that the mortgage counted as a shared obligation. Volya had circled one paragraph with a pen, as if that explained everything.
«Why does it have to be everyone for themselves?» Ira asked. «We took out the mortgage together. We paid for the renovations together. And when you were laid off and spent six months on the couch ‘finding yourself,’ was that just on your own too?»
«Because I don’t want to live with you anymore!» Volya slapped his palm on the table so hard the phone bounced. «Are you planning to hold onto me with money? Tie me to you with these loans?»
«I want to see the full list,» Ira said. «All the cards, all the loans, everything you ever mentioned in passing. Then we’ll talk about what’s fair.»
Volya swept the papers off the table, crumpled the top sheet, and threw it into the sink where a skillet was soaking.
«You’ve turned our divorce into accounting! Seventeen years together, and now you’re talking about credit cards!»
«Seventeen years,» Ira echoed, fishing the soggy wad out of the water. «And you’re talking to me about Kirill from procurement. Send all the documents before we discuss splitting things, otherwise there’ll be no application at all.»
He stormed out, slamming the kitchen door, and a minute later the television blared from the other room. Ira smoothed out the soaking wet sheet on the table and read the circled paragraph, even though the letters were already smudged.
In the morning, she called the bank from the staff locker room to request information about her obligations. That evening, she pulled down the blue folder with the elastic band from the closet, where she and Volya had been keeping their contracts all these years, and spread the papers over the carpet — the table wasn’t big enough. For about three hours she checked dates and amounts until she noticed two loans she only remembered from their conversations.
Volya once explained the first loan as ‘just clearing up loose ends,’ and for the second he said he’d lent money to a friend, Sergei, for a business that would pay back in six months. Ira had never met Sergei, there was no contract with him in the folder, and those six months had run out last spring.
When Volya came in, she didn’t even let him take off his shoes.
«Come here,» she called from the room. «Look what I found.»
He stood over the spread-out statements in his jacket, keys clenched in his fist.
«What is this, a search?»
«Where did seven hundred thousand go, Volya?»
«I don’t remember exactly. Are you trying to paint me as a scammer before the divorce? Real nice. Did your girlfriends suggest this?»
«I’m not asking you to account for every coffee!» Ira stood up from the floor, her knees cracking. «I just want to know why we buy nothing, why I’ve been wearing the same coat for three years, and the debts keep growing! Where is Sergei? Give me his number, I’ll call him myself!»
Volya fiddled with his keys, looking at the TV. Then he sat on the armrest and said, sure, Sergei exists, but no one ever gave him money. Part of it went for an apartment he rented by the day to meet with Kira, part for a trip to Kaliningrad last autumn, and the rest he used paying off old debts since his salary hadn’t been enough for a long time.
“To Kaliningrad…” Ira repeated. “You told me you were going on a business trip. I even packed sandwiches for you for that trip!”
“What else was I supposed to do?” he suddenly yelled. “Stay here with you and count how much we saved on buckwheat?”
Ira grabbed the calculator she’d been using to tally up percentages all evening and hurled it at the wall above the sofa. The calculator cracked against the wallpaper, the battery cover flew off and landed on Volya’s lap, and he ducked, even though she hadn’t aimed at him.
“Lunatic,” he said quietly.
“I’ve been saving for a year and a half for the bathroom renovation!” Ira shouted. “I didn’t buy myself a winter coat, because I was going to get it later! And you took her to the sea on my ‘later’!”
She gathered up the statements into a folder, yanking the sheets right from under his boots, and snapped the rubber band so sharply that it whipped her fingers.
On Saturday shortly before ten, the doorbell rang. Ira answered in her robe, hair wrapped in a towel, and found a tall young woman standing on the landing, in a light-colored coat, a cardboard folder tucked under her arm. She recognized the voice the moment she heard the first word.
“Good morning. I’m Kira. Volya asked me to pick up copies of some papers—he’s got urgent work.”
“On a Saturday,” Ira replied. “Urgent work on a Saturday, and for the papers he sends you to his wife. He sure has it figured out.”
Kira started to step toward the door, but Ira stepped out onto the landing herself and pulled the door shut behind her. The guest looked visibly unsettled—clearly, she’d braced herself for something else, maybe shouting, maybe tears, maybe even having her hair pulled.
“I don’t understand why you all have to make things so complicated,” Kira said, clutching her folder tighter. “Volya told me you agreed a long time ago to separate, and now you’re making up some debts just to keep him here.”
“Making it up, am I,” Ira nodded. “And you think you know a lot about his finances?”
“He earns a decent living,” Kira shrugged. “It’s just a rough patch right now with the rented apartment and divorce. He’ll sell his car, take care of the most important things, and then we’ll find a place and start over.”
Upstairs, a door clanged open—the neighbor from the fifth floor came out with her trash bin and slowed down on the landing, giving the light coat a thorough look. Ira waited until the bin clattered down the stairs, then went inside the apartment, grabbed a blue folder, and brought out a single sheet with the payment schedule, covering the account number with her hand.
“This is every month, and that’s for just one loan. The mortgage is separate, plus two other loans he just told me about last week.”
Kira’s eyes darted down the page and her eyebrows shot up.
“He told me a completely different number. Like, three times less.”
“He probably figured he’d finish things with me first, then explain the rest to you,” Ira said. “Don’t worry, he did the same with me.”
“You’re lying!” Kira snapped her head up. “You printed that out just to…”
Her voice broke off in mid-sentence. She pushed the paper back into Ira’s hands, turned quickly, and walked away down the stairs, leaving her cardboard folder on the railing. Ira opened it once she was back inside: inside were just empty sleeves and a note in Volya’s handwriting, listing which documents to collect from his wife.
That evening, Volya stormed into the apartment without even taking off his shoes, heading straight for the room where Ira was ironing laundry.
«What did you say to her?» he yelled from the doorway. «She cried on the phone with me for an hour! You could’ve just signed the papers and let me move on with my life! Did you really need to make me look like a loser to her?»
«You already look the way you do, I didn’t add anything,» Ira replied, not letting go of the iron.
Volya paced between the room and the kitchen. He yanked a sports bag down from the closet, started stuffing shirts in straight out of the pile of unironed laundry, then changed his mind and dumped everything back out onto the couch.
«I got the money for your down payment! Me! If it weren’t for me, you’d still be living in your mom’s tiny apartment!»
«And who picked up extra shifts?» Ira set the iron on its stand. «Who hasn’t taken a vacation for three years? Who paid the utility bills with their own salary while you were ‘finding yourself’? Do you even remember how much our utilities cost?»
Volya didn’t remember how much the utilities cost, and it showed by how quickly he changed the subject. He grabbed a Gzhel-style plate that his aunt had given them as a wedding present from the china cabinet and smashed it on the floor, scattering blue shards under the ironing board.
«Choke on your utility bills!» he shouted.
Ira unplugged the iron, walked silently to the hallway, snatched his jacket from the hook, flung the front door open, and threw his jacket out onto the stairwell. His shoes followed, and one of them banged against the banister, clattering down the steps.
«Go!» she yelled. «Go to her right now, if you’re in such a hurry! What are you waiting for, a stamp? Go like this!»
Volya darted after her, picked up his jacket, went down for his shoe, and sat on the stairs, the shoe in his hand.
«Where am I supposed to go?» he suddenly said, but his voice was completely different now. «Ira, I have nowhere. My daily rental is up. If Kira changes her mind, I literally have nowhere to live.»
He said it while staring at his shoe, not seeming to realize what he was admitting. The neighbor’s door across the hall cracked open on the chain, then swiftly closed again.
Ira stood in the doorway, holding it with her shoulder. Then she said he could stay the night, but there would be no more agreements printed off the internet, and absolutely no Kiras at her door. From now on, all talk about the apartment, loans, and debts would happen only with a lawyer present, who would check every document and explain exactly what she was signing.
«With a lawyer,» Volya echoed and laughed bitterly. «Seventeen years, and we need a lawyer.»
«You started keeping count,» Ira said. «Bring your shoes in, the neighbors are watching.»
She went back to the room, grabbed a broom and started sweeping the blue shards from under the ironing board, while Volya could still be heard for a long time in the hallway, struggling to untie the knot in his shoelace that had tightened as the shoe flew down the stairs.
Two days later, Kira called again during Ira’s lunch break, while she was waiting in line for the microwave with a container of buckwheat. Kira’s voice was completely different now, without any of that Saturday cheerfulness, and she started by apologizing for the stairwell incident, though her apology came out quick and offhand.
«I honestly don’t know who else to call,» she said. «Voya found an apartment on Sadovaya—a two-bedroom, already renovated, but more expensive than the ones we looked at. And now he’s asking me to take out a loan for the furniture, because money’s tight for him… well, you know how it is.»
Ira stepped out of the line and went over to the window, covering her other ear with her hand because two people from accounting behind her were loudly arguing about vacation pay.
«A loan in your name? So what exactly is he bringing into your new life together, besides himself?»
«I love him,» Kira shot back defiantly. «And I don’t want to turn everything into calculations, like…»
«Like I do,» Ira finished for her. «Go on, say it, might as well.»
The microwave beeped behind her, someone shouted «Whose buckwheat is this?» across the cafeteria, and Ira just waved her hand without turning around.
«Then tell me, Kira, are you ready to take on his debts and loans along with him?» she asked. «Are you prepared to pay for his choices if your combined money isn’t enough for Sadovaya, for his loans, and for ordinary life—tights, medicine, groceries?»
There was a long silence on the other end, and Ira could hear the noise of the street and honking cars through the phone.
«You just want to humiliate me,» Kira finally said. «That makes you happy, doesn’t it? You’re just sitting there gloating!»
«The only thing I’m happy about right now is that I didn’t drag you by your hair on Saturday,» Ira snapped. «I don’t care to manage your money and I’m not asking you to pay for him. But you’re about to move in with a guy who lied to you by a factor of three, so at least know who you’re moving in with.»
«Voya says you’re hiding some of the details on purpose, just so he’ll stay with you.»
Ira laughed so loudly the cashier actually turned to look at her.
«Stay with me! Girl, I sent him out the door with his boots on Wednesday.»
She pulled out a sheet of paper, folded in quarters, where she had written down the numbers from the folder the day before, and only mentioned what could be backed up by statements: the monthly loan payment, the outstanding renovation balance, two other loans and their amounts. She added that how it would all be divided would be decided by contracts, a lawyer, and maybe even a court, and that neither herself nor Kira should take anyone’s verbal promises at face value.
«Send me photos of the documents,» Kira asked. «I want to see for myself.»
«I’m not sending you someone else’s bank papers. Ask him for the contracts and statements. If he’s got nothing to hide, he’ll give them to you in five minutes.»
Kira was quiet for a moment and then said she’d figure it out, and this time she didn’t mention divorce at all. Ira went back to the microwave, where her container was still sitting on the edge of the table, already cold, and she ate her buckwheat straight from the plastic lid, standing by the window.
The next day, Voya came back at six, earlier than usual, and didn’t even take off his coat. Ira was sitting on the floor in the living room, packing his winter sweaters into banana boxes she’d gotten from the movers at the store that morning.
«What did you tell her?» he asked from the doorway. «Exactly what did you say to her?»
«The numbers,» Ira replied, taping up the box. «Your numbers. I didn’t tell her anything about mine.»
«Now she thinks I plan to live off her!» Volya shouted. «Do you realize that we might break up because of you? Because of your talk!»
«Because of my talk,» Ira nodded. «Did I ask her for a couch loan or something?»
Volya kicked the nearest box, knocking it over, and his gray reindeer sweater that Ira once knitted for New Year’s slid onto the floor. He looked at the sweater, then sat down on the edge of the couch and finally took off his jacket, tossing it beside him.
«She demanded to see every contract,» he said more quietly. «Every single document. She asked why I promised her we’d move in by the first of the month if I don’t have money for the first rent payment. I told her I’d sell my car and pay it off, and she said, ‘Show me the calculation.’ You get it? ‘Show me the calculation,’ like I’m at an accountant’s office.»
«I understand,» Ira replied. «I asked for a calculation too.»
«She said she doesn’t intend to become my creditor.» Volya spoke with such hurt, as if Kira had broken some ancient and well-known agreement. «And she also asked why I still haven’t sorted out the apartment situation.»
Ira picked up the reindeer sweater, shook it off, and put it back in the box. She didn’t bother to count how many times she herself had silently agreed to another payment, because they were family and things would get easier later, though she could have recalled every instance, down to the date.
Volya sat for a moment, rubbed his knees with his palms, and suddenly slid off the couch onto the floor, sitting across from her right between the boxes.
«Ira, help me, please,» he asked. «Until the divorce. Let’s at least close out the credit card, there isn’t much left, and you’ve always been great at figuring this stuff out. I’ll pay you back, I swear.»
«Later,» Ira repeated. «I’ve been sorting out ‘later’ for seventeen years.»
«I’m asking you, as a person!»
«And I’m answering you, as a person. We’ll look at the documents with the lawyer, in front of the lawyer, with all the papers. I’m not going to keep patching your holes just because I’m afraid you’ll leave me—I won’t do that anymore. You’re leaving already.»
«You’re just getting revenge!» Volya jumped up and hit his shoulder on the door frame. «You like watching me struggle!»
Ira handed him a roll of tape.
«Tape up the second box, now that you’re standing. My hands are tired.»
He stood there with the roll in hand, then threw it onto the couch and went into the kitchen. A minute later, there was a loud racket as he rummaged through a drawer, looking for his phone charger and cursing at the whole building.
They went to see the lawyer on Thursday in his car, to an office above the pharmacy on the second floor. The lawyer, Gavrilova—a large woman of about sixty with glasses on a chain—spoke slowly, started every sentence with «so,» and immediately asked them to put all the contracts on the table, no stories needed.
For an hour and a half, she sorted through the papers and figured out which loans were in Volya’s name, which were for the family, what was going on with the mortgage, and which bank would even allow any transfer of obligations. She explained that if a loan was taken in one spouse’s name, it doesn’t decide anything during a divorce. They’d have to prove how the money was spent, and no debt would be removed automatically from either of them.
«Let Ira take the apartment,» Volya said, tapping his pen against his knee. «She can have the mortgage too, if she likes crunching the numbers so much. I’ll pay off my own share myself.»
«Alright,» Gavrilova said. «Will your income be enough for your own monthly payments and rent? Please, work out the numbers for me here and now.»
She pushed a big-buttoned desk calculator toward him. Volya started to add up the figures confidently, reading them out loud, but then lost his place, started over, hit reset, and began again. Ira looked out the window at the pharmacy sign, waiting as he recalculated for the third time.
«Well… the numbers don’t quite add up,» he finally said. «If I give up the car, it almost works out.»
«The car is collateral for the loan,» Gavrilova reminded him, still not looking up from the contract.
Ira pulled a sheet of her own calculations from her bag and placed it on top of the folder.
«I suggest we consider selling the apartment,» she said. «First we get it appraised, then see what’s left after the mortgage is paid off. If it turns out to be the fairest way for both of us, we’ll sell.»
It scared her even to say it, because she’d already dreamed of the renovated bathroom, with that tile she spent six months choosing from a catalog. But on one salary, she couldn’t cover both the mortgage and utilities and still have enough left for food and a winter coat.
«Sell it?» Volya threw his pen onto the table, and it rolled under the lawyer’s chair. «Are you out of your mind? That’ll take at least six months! Kira won’t wait that long, do you get that or not?»
«Alright,» Gavrilova said calmly, leaning down to pick up the pen. «Your desire to start a new life quickly, young man, doesn’t erase your obligations to the bank. The bank doesn’t care who’s waiting for you.»
Volya was the first to leave the office, not saying goodbye, and Ira found him downstairs by the car, standing with the keys in hand but not opening the door. People came out of the pharmacy carrying bags, someone bumped his elbow, but he didn’t even turn around.
«Why didn’t you ever tell me you were this tired?» he asked, staring at the roof of the car. «Tired of all this. Of the money.»
«I did tell you,» Ira answered. «Every month, I told you. And every month you’d tell me the next one would get easier. I even remember the way your voice sounded.»
He opened the car, got behind the wheel, but didn’t start the engine for a long time. She walked around and got into the back seat, even though she’d always ridden up front, and spent the whole drive home looking at her phone, where she had a website listing apartments for sale in their building open.
Early the next week, Volya came home around nine at night, quiet, carrying a bag from the hardware store with a rolled-up furniture catalog inside. Ira was at the stove, and he sat down on the stool by the fridge, placing the catalog on his knees.
«Kira came to see me at work today,» he said. «Right up to the gate. She wants to meet tonight, just us, no talk about the divorce.»
Ira turned off the burner and faced him.
«I showed her everything you told me to,» he continued, flipping through and then closing the catalog again. «The contracts, the statements. She sat there in the cafe flipping through it all, and then she asked why I never told her about the loans if I planned on living seriously with her. And why did I ask her to take out a loan for the furniture when I was already up to my neck in debt?»
«And what did you say?»
«I told her I was afraid of losing her. She always talks about independence, says she’d never get involved with a guy in debt, her friend got into trouble like that.» Volya gave a wry smile. «And she told me she never expected money from me, just that she hoped I wouldn’t lie. Especially not about money.»
He rolled the catalog even tighter, causing the glossy cover to crack, then got up and stuffed it into the trash bin under the sink, pressing it down with his palm.
«She said she wasn’t going to pay for things she didn’t know about and never agreed to,» Volya repeated, staring into the bin. «First sort out your own issues, then ask me to move in. She refused to sign the lease on Sadovaya, wouldn’t take out the loan either. I called the landlady myself and told her we were backing out.»
«Did she break up with you?»
«No,» he answered too quickly. «We didn’t break up. She said we’ll see.»
He washed his hands at the sink, wiped them on his pants, then sat back down on the stool, as if he didn’t know where else to put himself in this kitchen. Ira waited a little, then asked if he was ready now to calmly take care of his documents and stop demanding that she make decisions that really mattered to someone else.
«I’m ready,» Volya said. «What choice do I have now?»
Ira placed a plate of pasta in front of him—the one she’d cooked just for herself—and went to her room, leaving him to eat in the kitchen with only the small lamp above the stove for light, not turning on the ceiling light.
The divorce was finalized at the end of January, and the apartment situation dragged on until March. After appraisals and endless calculations at Gavrilova’s, they agreed that Ira would keep the apartment and take on the mortgage herself, while Volya took the car along with its loan, both other debts, and his own credit card. Ira had to get a side job on Saturdays and gave up on the tiles from the catalog, while Volya rented a room from an elderly landlady near the metro and sold his winter tires that he’d been saving for three seasons.
Kira called him sometimes; Ira could hear snatches of their conversations when he came to collect his things. They met up on weekends, but neither of them ever moved to Sadovaya, and one day Volya told Ira on his own, without being asked, that from now on Kira always pays for herself—even for coffee.
He collected the last of his things on a Saturday morning, mid-March. The banana boxes had been stacked in the hallway since autumn, and one of them, the one with rods and reels, kept falling apart because the tape was coming off. Volya carried three boxes out to the car, came back for the last one—the one with reindeer printed on top—and paused in the doorway.
«Tell me,» he said, adjusting the box on his hip, «did those seventeen years mean anything to you at all? Or was I just another line in your files?»
«They meant something,» Ira replied. «That’s exactly why I don’t want these last six months to be about who owes whom and who gets to make decisions for the other. I’ve already fought for these months.»
«Fought for them,» he repeated. «Yeah, I guess you have.»
Volya adjusted the box for a better grip, stepped into the hallway, and started heading down without looking back or asking if she might change her mind. Ira locked the door with both locks and went back to the kitchen, where her work calendar lay open on the table. Monday had a note: appraiser, bank, 2:30 PM.
Her phone beeped just as she was putting the kettle on. Kira had messaged, saying she hadn’t understood what Ira was trying to tell her back then, but now she realized why that question was asked. Ira read the message once, placed the phone in the desk drawer on top of a blue folder, and pushed the drawer closed until it clicked.
Then she took a screwdriver from under the sink and went into the hallway. The hook from which she had pulled Volya’s jacket in the fall was held up by two screws and always hung a bit crooked, since he also hung his backpack there. Ira unscrewed both screws, slipped the hook into her robe pocket, and hung up her own coat—old, but it was the only one she had—on the now empty neighboring hook.
