“Now that you have a two-room apartment, you’re obligated to take Nadya in,” my mother ordered me.
Later, Galya would remember that morning for a long time — how she stood by the window with a cup of tea gone cold in her hands, looking out into the yard where the janitor was slowly raking last year’s leaves into piles. There was something soothing in that monotonous movement. The apartment still seemed to remember the footsteps of Sergey’s grandmother, who had lived there almost her entire life. Her cacti were still sitting on the windowsill — small, prickly, stubborn. Galya had not thrown them away.
That was when the phone rang.
She knew — for some reason, even before she saw the name on the screen — that this call would change something important. Her mother never called without a reason. Her mother only called when she needed something.
“Galochka,” her mother said in a voice that already carried the unmistakable sound of a rehearsed speech from the very first word. “Have you heard about Nadya?”
Nadya was the younger one. That explained a lot, although Galya had long forbidden herself from thinking that way — it was too convenient an excuse, too simple. But the fact remained: Nadya was loved differently. Not more — no, her mother always denied that — but differently. With that special, anxious tenderness people reserve for something fragile, afraid they might drop it.
Galya would remember that morning for a long time afterward—how she stood by the window with a cup of tea gone cold in her hands, looking out into the courtyard where the janitor was leisurely raking last year’s leaves into piles. There was something soothing in that monotonous motion. This apartment still remembered the footsteps of Sergey’s grandmother, who had lived here for almost her entire life. Her cacti still stood on the windowsill—small, prickly, stubborn. Galya had not thrown them away.
That was exactly when the phone rang.
She knew—somehow she knew even before she saw the name on the screen—that this call would change something important. Her mother never called for no reason. Her mother only called when she wanted something.
“Galochka,” her mother said in a voice that already carried a prepared speech from the very first word. “Have you heard about Nadya?”
Nadya had been the younger one. That explained a lot, though Galya had long forbidden herself to think that way—it was too convenient an excuse, too simple. But the fact remained: Nadya had been loved differently. Not more—no, her mother always denied that—but differently. With that special anxious tenderness people use when holding something fragile, afraid they might drop it.
As a child, Nadya cried louder. In adult life too.
Galya had married Sergey quietly, almost without a wedding—they signed the papers, sat in a café with only their closest people, and that was it. Her mother had disapproved: how could it be, with no veil, no toastmaster, no crowd of relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Nadya had shown up at that modest gathering with yet another fiancé, loud and cheerful, drawing half the attention to herself, and Galya had not been offended. She had long since gotten used to not being offended by her sister.
She and Sergey rented a one-room apartment on the edge of the city. Small, with low ceilings and windows facing a courtyard where cats yowled at night. Galya hung yellow curtains in the kitchen, put her favorite books on a shelf, and it became almost good. Almost—because there was always just a little too little money, because the neighbors upstairs stomped around like elephants, because the commute to work was long. But they were together, and that outweighed everything else.
Meanwhile, Nadya lived the only way she knew how—lightly and recklessly. One fiancé replaced another with enviable regularity. Every time it was a great love; every time it ended in a tragedy of universal proportions. Galya listened on the phone to the details of each new breakup, said the right words, hung up, and returned to her calm, quiet life.
Then Sergey’s grandmother died.
He found out late in the evening, when they were already getting ready for bed. Sergey sat on the bed with the phone in his hand, and Galya saw something change in him—not grief, no, they had not been close to his grandmother, they rarely saw her—but something else. Thoughtfulness. A quiet shock at the fact that people leave and behind them they leave not only memories.
His grandmother had left him the apartment.
A two-room apartment, in a good neighborhood, in a building with high ceilings and broad windowsills. When they entered it for the first time—Sergey with the keys in his hand, Galya with her heart standing still—she immediately felt that here one could breathe. Truly, with a full chest. The rooms were small, but there were two of them. It seemed like almost unbelievable wealth.
“This will be the study,” Sergey said, standing in the smaller room. “Or a workshop. Or just a room where you can be alone.”
Galya nodded. She imagined putting an armchair here by the window, reading in the evenings while Sergey watched his movies in the larger room. Little dreams, funny, domestic ones—but it turned out that those were exactly what happiness was made of. They moved in a month later. Her mother helped—came over, pushed furniture around, gave advice no one had asked for. She walked through the rooms, looked into the kitchen, stood by the window.
“It’s nice here,” she said in a tone Galya knew far too well. A tone that meant the conversation was not over.
Nadya moved back in with their mother at the end of autumn. Galya learned about it from a short message: “Dima and I broke up. I’m home.” Dima was, apparently, already the third or fourth one lately—Galya honestly tried to remember the names, but they blurred together. She replied with something sympathetic and decided that this time there would be no long phone calls. She had enough of her own things to deal with: they still had not unpacked all the boxes, the plumbing in the bathroom had to be replaced, and Galya had finally enrolled in the courses she had dreamed about for a long time.
But then her mother called again.
“Galochka,” she said in that same prepared voice. “Have you heard about Nadya?”
“I have. She’s with you. How is she?”
A pause. Her mother knew how to hold a pause—that was her weapon, her way of making the other person feel anxiety.
“She’s pregnant,” her mother finally said.
Galya set her cup on the windowsill. The cacti looked at her indifferently.
“By whom?”
Another pause.
“She… isn’t entirely sure.”
Galya closed her eyes. Outside the window the janitor kept raking the leaves. The world had not changed by even a fraction—only something inside had shifted, some heavy premonition.
“Mom, so what now?”
“Now that you have a two-room apartment, you are obliged to take Nadya in,” her mother ordered in a voice used for reading out a sentence. “She is in a delicate condition. She needs proper conditions.”
Galya said no evenly and calmly. Then she said it again—less evenly. Then she listened for twenty minutes to how heartless she was, how Nadya was her sister, how family was the most important thing, how only relatives helped in difficult times, how one day she herself would ask for help and remember this conversation.
She did not give in. She hung up. Her hands were trembling slightly.
Sergey came home from work and found her in the kitchen.
“What happened?”
Galya told him. He listened in silence, only his brows drawing together slightly.
“You did the right thing by refusing,” he said at last.
“She won’t back off.”
“I know.”
They both knew. Galya’s mother was one of those people whom the word no did not stop, but merely made them look for a way around.
A way around appeared two weeks later.
On Saturday morning the doorbell rang. Galya opened the door—and found her mother, Nadya, and two large suitcases on the threshold.
“We’re only here for a little while,” her mother said, already stepping into the entryway. “Until Nadya gets settled.”
Nadya stood a little behind her—in an oversized sweater, with the look of someone who felt awkward, but not awkward enough to turn around and leave. She had lost weight. Or maybe not—she just looked different somehow, crumpled.
“Mom,” Galya said. “We already discussed this.”
“I didn’t,” her mother replied, and dragged one of the suitcases into the corridor.
Sergey came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked at the suitcases. He looked at Galya. Galya was staring at the wall.
“Hi, Nadya,” he said evenly.
“Hi, Seryozha,” she replied. There was something pleading in her voice.
Her mother stayed another hour—drank tea, said the apartment was nice, that Sergey’s grandmother had been a smart woman, that the second room was standing empty, that pregnant women needed peace. Then she left, leaving behind Nadya, the suitcases, and a suffocating silence.
The first few days were almost bearable. Nadya occupied the second room, got up late, almost never came into the kitchen when Sergey was there. Galya caught herself walking quietly around her own apartment, as if apologizing for her own existence. It was a familiar feeling—from childhood, from that time when Nadya cried and Galya tried not to get in the way. Then Nadya settled in.
She began leaving dirty dishes behind her. Not deliberately—she simply did not notice them. She monopolized the bathroom for incomprehensibly long stretches of time. She talked on the phone loudly, laughed loudly, cried loudly too. Once, at three in the morning, Galya woke up to the sounds of some TV series—it was behind a closed door, but still audible.
Sergey kept silent. Galya appreciated that and feared it at the same time. She was afraid that one day his patience would run out.
“How are you?” he sometimes asked in the evenings.
“I’m fine.”
“Galya.”
“I’m managing.”
He would look at her, and she would avert her eyes.
Meanwhile, Nadya told stories about the pregnancy with a strange inconsistency. Sometimes she said she had definitely decided to keep the baby. Sometimes that she was still thinking. At times she would suddenly say the doctor had said one thing, and then it would turn out to be something completely different. The dates did not add up. The details kept changing. Galya noticed it, stored it away in her mind, and said nothing.
One day she asked carefully, in passing, while they were washing dishes together:
“Nadya, did you go to the doctor?”
“Well, yes.”
“And what did they say?”
“That everything is fine,” her sister answered, reaching for a towel.
“And how far along are you?”
A pause. A short one, but Galya felt it.
“They haven’t determined it very precisely yet,” Nadya said. “There are different ways of counting.”
The ending came unexpectedly—as it always does. Galya came home earlier than usual. In the hallway she bumped into Nadya’s bag, from which some things had spilled out. She bent down to pick them up—and saw, among the makeup, keys, and crumpled receipts, a small cardboard box. A pregnancy test. Unused.
Galya stood for a long time with that box in her hand. Then she put it back into the bag, went into the kitchen, and put the kettle on.
Nadya came out half an hour later—fresh, with wet hair, in a good mood.
“Oh, you’re already home? Early today.”
“Nadya,” Galya said. “We need to talk.”
Something in her voice made her sister stop.
“Are you pregnant?”
“Galya, what kind of question is that…”
“Just answer.”
Nadya looked at her for a few seconds. Then she lowered her eyes.
“I’m not quite sure yet.”
“You bought a test. You still haven’t used it.”
“I…”
“Nadya.”
The silence stretched out, became dense, almost tangible.
“Well…” Nadya began, and suddenly burst into tears. Fast, skillfully, the way only those who have done it many times can. “You don’t understand how bad things were for me. Mom was always helping you, you got Seryozha, you got…” She waved her hand toward the walls, the ceiling, the window. “Everything. And I have nothing. Dima left, and I’m all alone. I just wanted someone to feel sorry for me a little.”
“You’re not pregnant,” Galya said firmly.
Nadya wiped her tears away with her palm.
“Probably not. Almost certainly not.”
Galya stood up and poured herself some tea, though she did not want any tea at all. She just needed somewhere to put her hands.
“You moved in with us, dragged in suitcases, took over the room, lived here…” She did not say for how long. “And all this time you knew there was no pregnancy?”
“At first I thought maybe there was. I really wasn’t sure. Then it just… well, it turned out that way.”
“It just turned out that way,” Galya repeated quietly.
Sergey came home when Nadya had already shut herself back in her room. Galya was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea gone cold—just as in the morning, only her mood was completely different. She told him everything. He listened without interrupting.
Then he stood up and went to the window. He stood there for a long time.
“Galya,” he said at last. “She is going back to your mother’s.”
“Seryozha…”
“No, listen.” He turned around, and there was something in his voice—not anger, not irritation, but something firmer, calmer. “I understand she’s your sister. I understand that this is awkward for you. But look at yourself. You walk around your own apartment like a guest. You can’t sleep properly. This is your home, Galya. Our home. And I don’t want this circus in it.”
“Mom will say we abandoned her.”
“Your mother brought her here against our will. Without warning. She confronted us with a fait accompli.” He shook his head. “And that was after you had already told her no.”
“But Nadya is still alone…”
“Galya.” He came over, sat down beside her, and took her hand. “She is not pregnant. She is healthy. She has a mother who has an apartment. That’s where she was living, that’s where she belongs right now—not here. I’m not saying this out of cruelty. I’m saying it because I can see how much you’re suffering, and you don’t want to admit it to yourself because she’s your sister.”
Galya looked at their clasped hands.
“You’re the owner of the apartment,” she said at last, quietly, as if testing the word. “We both live here. But if that makes it easier for you—yes, legally it’s my apartment. And I do not want a person living in it who lied to us from the very first day.”
The conversation was hard. Nadya took it with a kind of false resentment, theatrical and prepared, like an actress who had known this scene would come sooner or later. She cried, said nobody loved her, that she was always in everyone’s way, that she had known it all along. Galya listened and felt—for the first time in many years—not guilt, but weariness. Pure, honest weariness from this endless performance.
“Nadya,” she said at one point. “Stop.”
Nadya stopped—surprised, as if she had not expected it.
“I love you. You’re my sister, and I love you. But what you did was unfair. To us, and to yourself. You’re an adult. You can’t create an emergency every time you feel bad so that everyone around you will come rushing to help.”
“Easy for you to say when you have everything.”
“I have what I built myself. Slowly and without drama. That’s different.”
Nadya said nothing.
“You need to go back to Mom’s,” Galya said. “That’s where things will be best for you. Mom loves you, there is room there, and you can calmly figure yourself out. But not here. Here it won’t work.”
Her mother called several more times afterward. She kept saying the same things—about heartlessness, about family, about how Galya would regret this yet. Galya listened, answered briefly, did not argue. At some point she realized it no longer touched her—just words, just noise.
Nadya stayed with them another three days—until she packed her suitcases. As she was leaving, she hugged Galya awkwardly, sideways, the way people hug when they have not quite made peace but do not want to part in a total quarrel either.
“You’re right,” she said in the hallway, without looking at her. “Probably.”
“Go to the doctor again,” Galya replied. “Just so you know everything is all right.”
Nadya nodded and left.
That same evening Galya sat in the armchair by the window in the small room. They had finally bought the chair—recently, an inexpensive one, but comfortable. She was reading a book, and behind the wall the television was playing quietly—Sergey was watching one of his movies. The cacti on the windowsill stood there as if nothing had happened.
Galya put the book aside and simply sat for a while—in the silence, in her room, in her home. Outside, someone was walking down the street, a streetlamp was shining, far away a car horn sounded. Everything was ordinary and good.
