I made myself a coffee, deliberately added the cream slowly, and leaned against the kitchen counter. My husband Kostya, who possessed the rare gift of blending into the furniture whenever my relatives came over, silently scrolled through the news on his tablet. Our spacious, bright kitchen suddenly felt cramped with other people’s ambitions.
“One and a half million, Ira. That’s pocket change at your level,” said Lyudmila Petrovna, my mother and, incidentally, the accountant for the local homeowners’ association, as she carefully set her cup onto its saucer. She said it in the same tone one might use to ask someone to pass the salt.
“I just want it to be beautiful!” chimed in Alina immediately, my twenty-six-year-old sister and bride-to-be. “An outdoor ceremony in a pine grove, an arch of live orchids, a host from TNT… Family is supposed to help each other.”
Alina’s fiancé, Slava, an auto mechanic, perched on the edge of a stool, hunched over as if he were expecting a blow to the back of the head.
“I’m perfectly fine with a simple wedding,” he muttered under his breath. “Sign the papers, grill some шашлык, and that’s it…”
But under Alina’s heavy, cast-iron-iron glare, Slava instantly faded into the wallpaper.
Then Aunt Tamara stepped into the arena at once, a cultural center methodologist and the chief ideologue of our clan. Beside her sat her husband, Uncle Albert. He, in particular, was our family council’s supreme moral authority—the kind of man for whom tickets should have been sold.
“Family is an unbreakable monolith!” Albert declared solemnly, adjusting the utterly inappropriate burgundy neck scarf around his neck. “In Ancient Rome, elder siblings bore financial responsibility for the younger ones. We must share resources like communicating vessels, Irina!”
I took a sip of coffee, looking straight into his inspired eyes.
“Communicating vessels only work, Albert Eduardovich, when both of them actually contain liquid. When one of them is a bottomless bucket with a hole in it, physics turns into ordinary sewage.”
Albert threw up his hands indignantly, clipped the sugar bowl with his elbow, and sent it crashing over, spilling white sugar all over his corduroy trousers. He froze with one index finger raised, like a broken Lenin monument at a sugar refinery.
“You’ve become so cruel, Ira,” my mother sighed, ignoring her relative’s embarrassment. “You’re the head of sales at the factory! You get bonuses, performance pay. What would it cost you to give your sister a nice celebration?”
“Yes, Ira!” Aunt Tamara picked up, switching to her favorite tactic—public shaming. “You hoard everything for yourself. You could at least learn selflessness from Grandma! Look at Zoya Pavlovna—she gave Lyudochka her funeral savings for a new kitchen and didn’t say a word. That’s what I call soul!”
In the corner of the kitchen, on the most uncomfortable chair, sat Grandma Zoya Pavlovna. At the sound of her name, she flinched. Her old, knotted fingers nervously worried the edge of a faded handkerchief.
“I… I didn’t give it to her, Lyudochka,” Grandma suddenly said in a quiet, cracked voice. In the silence of the kitchen, her words sounded deafening. “You told me inflation would eat it all away, and you promised to put it in a deposit account. Then the kitchen set arrived… I only wanted a granite headstone with a little birch tree on it. So I wouldn’t be a burden to anyone when I die…”
She lowered her head, and a tear slowly rolled down her wrinkled cheek. My mother flushed deep red and looked away. Aunt Tamara suddenly became very interested in the pattern on the tablecloth.
At that moment, something inside me—something used to cold calculation—shifted. I looked at the hunched figure of a woman who had worked forty years as a cashier, only to be robbed by her own daughter for the sake of plastic cabinets. I slowly set my mug on the table.
“All right then,” I said evenly, though Kostya prudently moved the butter knife farther away from me. “Mom. By tomorrow before noon, you open a deposit account in Grandma’s name and put all her money back into it. Every last ruble. Including the interest at the Central Bank’s key rate for the past year. If by evening I don’t see a photo of the contract, there will be no wedding at all.”
Grandma looked up at me, her eyes full of disbelief and timid hope. From that moment on, no one in the room dared interrupt Zoya Pavlovna again.
“But Ira!” Alina protested. “What about my orchids?”
“Wait, Alina,” I said, raising a hand. “I’m not finished. I’ll pay for your wedding. One and a half million. I agree.”
A collective sigh of relief swept through the kitchen. Alina squealed happily, and Uncle Albert puffed out his chest proudly, as though his speech had done the trick.
“But on one condition,” I added gently.
Everyone froze.
“You see, my dears,” I said, leaning on the countertop, “giving away sums like that informally is legally illiterate. Under Article 574 of the Civil Code, a promise of a future gift has to be made in writing if the amount exceeds three thousand rubles. Besides, if I simply transfer the money straight to the restaurant, Alina will be receiving an economic benefit. And the tax authorities would be perfectly within their rights to demand she pay thirteen percent personal income tax on that one and a half million. That’s nearly two hundred thousand rubles. You don’t want trouble with the law, do you?”
My mother, being an accountant, swallowed nervously.
“And what do you suggest?” she asked warily.
“I suggest a deal. My friend Oksana works as a television producer. They’re launching a new reality show right now under the working title Parasites on Trust. They need a pilot episode.”
I let the pause hang theatrically, enjoying the way their faces lengthened.
“I will sponsor the wedding from start to finish. But! Cameras will be present at the celebration, the dress fittings, and even the bachelor party. Journalists will interview each of you in detail about how to properly pressure a successful relative into paying for your whims. Alina, you’ll explain to the entire country why a beauty salon administrator can’t save up for orchids. Mom, you’ll share your life hacks for investing Grandma’s funeral money into a kitchen set. And Slava… Slava will give a man’s interview about what it’s like to be a groom who has no say in his own wedding.”
Suddenly Slava straightened up sharply.
“No!” he barked so loudly that even Kostya flinched. “The guys at the garage will see it—they’ll laugh me out of the place! I’m not taking part in this circus. We’re going to the registry office, and then to a khinkali restaurant. That’s it!”
“Ira, this is disgraceful!” my mother shrieked, clutching her chest. “Airing dirty laundry in public! How can you?”
Uncle Albert puffed himself up and opened his mouth.
“Intellectual terror! This violates every convention of humanity!”
“The conventions of humanity end where a consumer attitude toward someone else’s wallet begins, Albert,” I shot back. “By the way, Oksana said you’d all get paid for filming. Enough to cover dry-cleaning for your corduroy.”
Albert tried to rise with dignity, but got his foot tangled in the strap of his wife’s handbag, wobbled, and collapsed back into the chair, breathing heavily like a beached walrus trying to imitate the grace of a doe.
“The choice is yours,” I said with a sweet smile. “Either you sign a filming consent form and I transfer the money, or you go earn your orchid money yourselves. Oh, and Grandma’s deposit is a non-negotiable condition. By tomorrow.”
Five minutes later, my apartment was empty. For a long time, the hallway still echoed with Aunt Tamara’s angry snorting and Alina’s timid attempts to persuade Slava to at least agree to a mid-range restaurant. Grandma was the last to leave. She paused in the doorway, looked at me with her pale, faded eyes, and, for the first time in years, smiled with the dignity of someone who knew she had a protector.
“Thank you, Ira,” she whispered.
I closed the door, turned to my husband, and winked.
“Kostya, call Oksana. Tell her false alarm. Her talk show won’t need background extras today. They picked the khinkali place.”
