“You’re on maternity leave, so that means free.”
We live in my apartment. That is an important detail my husband’s family tactfully forgets, as if it were a minor flaw in their perfect picture of the world. Sergey, my husband, a man with Napoleon’s ambitions and a librarian’s salary, believed that his very presence in my life was already a gift from heaven. He loved lecturing about “traditional values” while lying on the couch that, incidentally, had been bought with my maternity money.
“Kristinochka,” he began one evening, puffed up with self-importance, “Mom called. Aunt Valya is having renovations done, and she needs somewhere to crash for a couple of weeks. I told her we have plenty of space. You’re home anyway, so you can look after her and feed her. She needs Diet Table No. 5.”
I looked up from my laptop — freelancing had not been canceled, even if our six-month-old son was snoring softly in his cradle — and studied my husband with the interest of an entomologist.
“Sergey,” I said gently, “did you happen to ask your mother whether she’s confusing our three-room apartment with the Mineralnye Vody health resort?”
Sergey rolled his eyes as if I had served him spoiled wine.
“There you go again. It’s family! You sit at home all day — is it really that hard to pour a bowl of soup? A woman should be the keeper of the hearth, not a calculator.”
“The keeper of the hearth, my dear, protects it from drafts and unnecessary people. What you are proposing is called domestic staff.”
“You’re becoming cold-hearted!” he blurted, waving his hand. “Mom says maternity leave corrupts women. You’re losing touch with reality!”
“Touch with reality, Sergey, is understanding that the food in the refrigerator does not reproduce by budding.”
My husband snorted, unable to come up with an answer, and proudly retreated to the bathroom — the only place in the house where his authority was unquestioned.
The next day Lidiya Semyonovna arrived. She brought a bag of cheap gingerbread and a list of tasks.
“Kristina,” she began, without even taking off her shoes, “Svetlanka’s school performance is coming up. We need a squirrel costume sewn. Here’s the fabric. You’re home anyway, and the sewing machine is just sitting there. And I bought some curtains too — they need hemming. Five windows. You can finish by tomorrow, right?”
She spoke like a general issuing orders to raw recruits. In her world, I was a free add-on to her son, something halfway between a multicooker and a sewing machine with voice control.
“Lidiya Semyonovna,” I said, carefully pushing aside the bag of mothball-smelling fabric, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to. I have the baby’s massage, a walk, and work scheduled.”
My mother-in-law froze. Her eyebrows climbed upward, trying to merge with her hairline.
“Work? You’re on maternity leave! Your job is diapers and borscht!” she threw up her hands. “Young people these days! We washed clothes in ice holes and gave birth in the fields, and nothing happened! And you have automatic washing machines and you’re still tired! It’s laziness, Kristina, plain mother-laziness!”
“In an ice hole, you say?” I blinked innocently. “Well, that’s wonderful!”
“You insolent girl!” she gasped.
Then she stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door as if stamping a final verdict on the whole affair. I only shrugged. The show was just beginning.
That evening we had a “family council.” Sergey, after receiving a healthy dose of maternal poison over the phone, came home determined.
“You offended my mother!” he declared the moment he crossed the threshold. “She asked for help! You are obligated to apologize and sew that damn squirrel costume!”
“Sergey,” I said, pulling a printed A4 sheet from a folder, “I thought about what you said about family and contributing to the common good. You are absolutely right.”
My husband looked surprised. He had expected a scandal, tears, anything but agreement.
“Well… there you see. I knew you were a smart woman,” he said with a satisfied smile, already savoring his triumph.
“That is why I drew up a business plan,” I continued, handing him the paper. “Take a look.”
It was titled: “Price List for the Services of LLC ‘Wife on Maternity Leave.’”
Squirrel costume sewing (rush fee + emotional damages) — 5,000 rubles
Curtain hemming (per running meter) — 400 rubles
Cooking fish cutlets from customer’s fish (including scale-cleaning all over the kitchen) — 2,000 rubles
Accommodation for Aunt Valya (bed space + three meals a day, ‘Diet Table No. 5’) — 3,500 rubles per day
Listening to advice on “how to live properly” — 1,500 rubles per hour
As Sergey read, his eyes grew wider and wider.
“You… have you lost your mind?” he whispered. “That’s my mother! That’s Aunt Valya! You’re going to charge family money?”
“No, of course not,” I reassured him. “You will pay. You are the head of the family, the client ordering the services. And I am the provider. Market economy, darling. You said it yourself: time is money. My time is worth something too.”
“That’s greed!” he shrieked in falsetto. “You should do this out of love!”
“Out of love I sleep with you and give birth to your children,” I snapped, no longer smiling. “Cleaning three kilos of carp for your mother is catering. Payment on delivery, or 100% in advance.”
Sergey snatched the paper, crumpled it, and threw it on the floor.
“I’m not taking part in this! Tomorrow Mom is bringing fish, and you will fry it! Otherwise—”
“Otherwise what?” I stepped right up to him. “You’ll go live with your mother? Let me remind you, the apartment is mine. And I can change the lock faster than you can say ‘cutlet.’”
My husband froze. He suddenly realized that the ground beneath his feet — which he had taken for solid granite — was actually quicksand.
The climax came a week later. It was Lidiya Semyonovna’s sixtieth birthday. At first they had planned a restaurant, but then my mother-in-law decided to save money — at my expense, naturally — and announced:
“We’ll gather at Kristinochka’s! Her living room is big. Kristina will set the table, she’s home anyway. About twenty people, just family.”
Sergey relayed this to me in a tone that allowed no objections, though he kept glancing nervously at my “Price List,” which I had attached to the refrigerator with a magnet.
“All right,” I said. “There will be a table.”
Sergey exhaled in relief. He decided I had surrendered, that the “female rebellion” had been crushed. All week he strutted around like a peacock, humming to himself. My mother-in-law called and dictated the menu: aspic, pork ribs stewed with vegetables, three kinds of salad, homemade cake. I wrote it all down very diligently.
On day X, the guests began arriving at five in the afternoon. My sister-in-law came with her children and husband, Aunt Valya arrived, and some second cousins I barely knew. Lidiya Semyonovna, draped in brocade and gold, floated into the apartment expecting to see a lavish spread.
They walked into the living room.
In the middle of the room stood a large table.
Covered with a beautiful tablecloth.
Absolutely empty.
On the snow-white cloth there was only a vase with a single rose and a stack of laminated menus from the nearest pizzeria.
“Kristina…” my mother-in-law’s voice trembled and cracked. “Where is… the food?”
