“Let that frumpy hen wash my socks!” Viktor laughed, pulling the young salesgirl close.
“Wait, she really doesn’t suspect anything?” Alyona giggled, fixing her lipstick.
“As if she could! She thinks I’m staying late at meetings.”
“Oh, look, someone’s coming…”
Marina recoiled from the jewelry store window. Her legs nearly gave way, but she forced herself to keep walking. Her husband’s laughter rang in her ears — the same laughter she hadn’t heard at home in three years.
Twenty years ago, they had met at the factory. Marina was a process engineer, Viktor was a shift supervisor. She remembered his shy courtship, little bouquets of wild daisies, stolen kisses in the storage room.
“Marinka, marry me!” he had proposed back then, right in the middle of the workshop.
“You fool, people are watching!”
“Let them watch! I love you!”
Then Nastya was born. Then Seryozhka. A mortgage on an apartment, a dacha from their parents, Sunday dumplings. The ordinary life of an ordinary family. Marina worked, cooked, did the laundry. Viktor brought home his salary, fixed the faucet, drove them to the dacha.
When had everything changed? Probably when the factory closed. Viktor got a job as a manager at a shopping center. New suits, cologne, late nights.
“Meetings,” he would mutter curtly, dropping onto the sofa.
“At least eat something…”
“I don’t want to. I’m tired.”
Marina blamed it all on a midlife crisis. Forty-five was a difficult age for a man. She endured his irritation, stayed silent through his rudeness. “It will pass,” she told herself.
That day, Marina went to the shopping center to buy a gift for her daughter. Nastya was graduating from university, and Marina wanted to make her happy. As she passed the jewelry store, she saw them. Viktor was hugging a girl of about twenty-five. Laughing. Kissing her neck.
“Let that frumpy hen wash my socks!” came his voice through the glass.
Marina stood there as if struck by lightning. The salesgirl inside was chirping about something, Viktor nodded and took out his wallet. He bought her a bracelet. An expensive one, with stones.
“The last time he gave me flowers was on Women’s Day,” the thought flashed through her mind.
At home, Marina cooked dinner mechanically. Her hands trembled, the milk spilled, the potatoes burned. One question kept spinning in her head: “What now?”
“Nothing to eat again?” Viktor entered the kitchen, grimacing at the smell. “You’ve really let yourself go!”
“Where were you?”
“At work. The meeting ran late.”
“Was the meeting in a jewelry store?”
Viktor turned pale, but quickly pulled himself together.
“Are you following me? Have you completely lost your mind?”
“I saw you by accident. You and that salesgirl…”
“So what? Yes, I’m seeing Alyona! She’s young, beautiful, fun! And look at yourself — you’ve gotten fat, you’re always in a robe, and you smell like borscht!”
Marina silently stood up and walked over to the stove. She picked up the pot of borscht.
“What are you doing?” Viktor stepped back.
“You say I smell like borscht?”
She swung her arms and threw the contents straight into his face. Hot borscht ran down his new suit, cabbage hanging from his tie.
“Have you completely lost it?!”
“This is only the beginning. Pack your things and get out. Go to your Alyonka!”
“This is my home! I pay the mortgage!”
“You pay half. And the apartment is registered to both of us. Forgot?”
Viktor wiped his face with a kitchen towel, smearing beetroot across his cheeks.
“You’ll die without me! Who needs you, you old bag?”
“We’ll see about that.”
Marina took out her phone and dialed a number.
“Nastya? Come home. Yes, urgently. And bring Seryozhka with you.”
The children arrived an hour later. Viktor was sitting in the living room, changed into clean clothes, but with red blotches still on his face.
“Mom, what happened?” Nastya looked anxiously around the kitchen.
“Dad, why do you look like that?” Seryozhka stared at his father.
Marina calmly told them everything. About the store, about Alyona, about the “frumpy hen.” Nastya turned pale. Seryozhka clenched his fists.
“Dad, is it true?” his daughter asked quietly.
“So what? I have a right to a personal life!”
“And Mom didn’t have that right for twenty years?” Seryozhka exploded. “She worked two jobs while you were ‘building your career’!”
“None of your business!”
“It is my business! She’s my mother!”
Seryozhka stood up and walked right up to his father.
“Pack your things and leave. Today.”
“You don’t give me orders, pup!”
“Dad,” Nastya stood beside her brother. “Leave peacefully. We’re not keeping you here.”
Viktor looked at his children, then at his wife. There was determination in all three pairs of eyes.
“You’ll regret this! You’ll crawl back to me on your knees!”
He left, slamming the door. Marina sat down on the sofa and covered her face with her hands.
“Mom, don’t cry,” Nastya hugged her.
“I’m not crying. I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“About how I’m going to work tomorrow. I won’t be able to hide how pleased I look.”
Three months passed. Marina lost ten kilograms — stress and the gym did their work. She enrolled in makeup courses at Nastya’s insistence. Got a haircut, updated her wardrobe.
“Marina Petrovna, you look wonderful!” her new boss showered her with compliments.
“Thank you, Igor Lvovich.”
“Perhaps we could have dinner tonight? Discuss the new project.”
“Only the project?” she smiled.
“Well… not only,” the man said, embarrassed.
Viktor was living with Alyona in a rented one-room apartment. The romance ended after a week.
“Vitya, we need to buy groceries!”
“I don’t have money. I paid alimony.”
“But you have money for beer?”
“That’s sacred!”
Alyona worked until eight, then demanded attention. She didn’t know how to cook and didn’t want to do laundry.
“I’m not a maid! Your ex looked after you — that’s why you lived with her!”
“You said you loved me!”
“Loving someone and washing their socks are two different things!”
Marina was walking through the shopping center with Igor. She had shopping bags in her hands and a smile on her face. Near that same jewelry store, she ran into Viktor. He was standing alone, rumpled, wearing an old jacket.
“Marina…” he said, bewildered.
“Hello, Viktor.”
“You’ve… changed.”
“Yes, I have. Igor, meet my ex-husband.”
“Pleasure,” Igor nodded coldly.
Viktor looked at them, at the radiant Marina, at the respectable man beside her.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“About what? About what a frumpy hen I am?”
“Marina, I was wrong…”
“You were. But thank you.”
“For what?”
“For showing me the truth. I really had turned into a frumpy hen. I forgot about myself and lived only for my family. And it turned out — for nothing.”
Alyona came out of the store with another man. Seeing Viktor, she deliberately kissed her companion.
“Let’s go, darling,” she said, pulling her escort away.
Viktor stood there as if he had been struck. Marina shook her head.
“You know, Vitya, she was right about one thing. Washing someone else’s socks is a thankless job. Neither she nor I will be doing it anymore. Bye!”
She took Igor by the arm and walked toward the exit. Viktor watched them go, realizing he had lost everything. His home, his family, his mistress. He was left alone with his dirty socks.
And that evening, for the first time in many years, Marina felt happy. Not perfectly happy — the scars remained. But alive. Real. A woman who would never again allow anyone to call her a frumpy hen.
