“I’ll be living with my son from now on. You can settle on the sofa in the kitchen, Tatyana, and I’ll sleep in the bedroom. The mattress there is orthopedic,” the mother-in-law said with a smile.
Any copying, voice-over, or publication of the channel’s materials without the author’s consent is prohibited. © Mil Rey
“I’ll take your shampoo. It’s good. Probably terribly expensive!” the mother-in-law said without asking, taking the pretty bottle from the shelf.
“Take it,” Tanya muttered. “You use my things secretly anyway.”
Lyudmila Vasilyevna turned around and looked at Tatyana with her signature stare.
“Secretly?! Well, would you look at that, she’s criticizing me now?! You use my water, my electricity, and you begrudge me a drop of some shampoo?! Get out of the bathroom. You’ve been sitting here for an hour again! I need to get ready!”
She tugged her dawdling daughter-in-law by the sleeve of her robe.
Lyudmila Vasilyevna nearly tore the bathroom door off its hinges, she was in such a hurry to kick Tanya out.
“I’m so sick of all this,” the young woman breathed helplessly and went to the bedroom.
Tatyana had been in such a rush that she barely understood whether she had actually showered or not.
Once again, the girl thought about how fed up she was with washing in a hurry, saving water, electricity, gas, and even oxygen. Meanwhile, her mother-in-law only noticed her expenses and flaws more and more often. It had reached the point where Lyudmila started checking the receipts Tanya brought home from the supermarket. She would recalculate everything, not trusting her daughter-in-law.
Tanya’s patience was not unlimited. She was not going to live like this anymore…
Tanya and her husband Kostya had met exactly a year earlier at a mutual friend’s birthday party. At first, the girl did not pay any attention to Kostya, but he became seriously interested in the beautiful, attractive blonde with big blue eyes.
Their romance was dizzying. Kostya won Tanya’s heart. A month into their relationship, Kostya proposed to her. Tatyana agreed, but the young couple had nowhere to live.
The groom’s parents came to their rescue…
Kostya’s father, Viktor, was a wonderful man, but he was rarely home because he worked in the north. Her husband’s mother, Lyudmila Vasilyevna, did not make a bad impression on Tanya. On the contrary, the woman seemed very domestic and capable.
Lyudmila cooked deliciously, forbade her son from eating in cafés, and ran the household very practically. After their first meeting, Lyudmila Vasilyevna herself suggested that her son and his girlfriend move into her apartment.
“Why not? I live alone. It’s so empty here when Vitya leaves, I could howl like a wolf. You’re young, you’ll work, and I’ll take care of the household for you. Like a personal housekeeper,” Lyudmila Vasilyevna said cheerfully.
Tanya shrugged.
“It feels awkward somehow.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t interfere in your life,” Lyudmila Vasilyevna assured her firmly.
Tanya was getting ready for work and even smirked as she remembered that conversation from a year ago.
Her mother-in-law had been the first to break the agreement and began actively participating in the lives of her son and daughter-in-law.
Reproaches aimed at her daughter-in-law became a daily ritual for the domineering woman. Lyudmila considered it her duty to buzz in Tanya’s ear like a mosquito as soon as Tanya came into her field of vision.
Tanya got ready for work, wrote her husband a message saying that a surprise was waiting for him that evening, and left the room.
In the hallway, she ran into Lyudmila Vasilyevna. She was walking like a queen, with a towel on her head wrapped like a turban. The empty bottle of Tanya’s shampoo flew into the trash bin.
“Where are you all dolled up to go? You eat from my fridge and spend my pension on your beauty routine! How does my son put up with this?!” Lyudmila Vasilyevna rasped, measuring Tanya with a cold look.
“Aren’t you ashamed? I work, and Kostya works too. And we have our own shelf in the refrigerator.”
“But the refrigerator is mine, and there is definitely nothing of yours here! That ‘shelf’ only appeared a month ago, and you’ve been living here for a year! I don’t begrudge my son anything, but you’re a spendthrift and a wastrel! How did I not see through you right away…”
Her mother-in-law’s words hurt Tatyana deeply. © Mil Rey She worked, supported herself, and did not depend on her husband. In general, everything was good between her and Kostya, if not for the housing issue…
“You shouldn’t have invited us to live with you if you’re so quarrelsome! Maybe that’s why your husband ran away from you to the edge of the world!”
“What?! How dare you talk back to me?! I’ll tell my son everything!” Lyudmila roared.
“Go ahead. And buy me a new shampoo. It is expensive, you understood correctly. From today on, I don’t allow you to use my things!” Tanya declared and left, proudly clicking her heels.
That evening, the young couple returned later than usual because Tanya had persuaded her husband to celebrate their anniversary at a restaurant.
“Tanyusha, there’s plenty of food at home.”
“I don’t want your mother sitting there like an owl and watching whether I’m chewing her pasta correctly!” Tanya blurted out in response.
“You’re exaggerating,” Kostya shook his head. “She called today and told me how you yelled at her. Tanya, can’t you two live peacefully?”
Tanya told him her version. Her husband asked her to make peace with his mother.
“Tanya, we are living in her apartment, after all. Otherwise, we would be renting a one-room place somewhere on the outskirts, spending hours getting to work and sitting in traffic jams. Besides, Mom helps us save money. We already have enough for half of the down payment.”
Her husband’s words sounded encouraging. But Tanya did not want to live for another year or more under Lyudmila Vasilyevna’s iron heel.
“Kostya, we do have some money, as you said. Let’s take out a mortgage right now. Why wait another year?” his wife said.
“Tanyusha, what are you talking about? Tomorrow you’ll say that your biological clock is ticking. And, in general, it is—we need to think about children,” her husband scratched the back of his head. “Tanya, let’s not rush. We live at Mom’s, with everything provided.”
“We pay the utilities and buy food.”
“Still, Mom knows how to run a household,” her husband remarked. “Tanyusha, let’s be patient a little longer. Otherwise, we’ll buy a place now, and then what? Later you’ll go on maternity leave, and I’ll be killing myself at work alone? No, let’s do everything gradually.”
“I can ask my parents,” Tanya said.
“I don’t want to be indebted to them!” her husband snapped.
Kostya asked Tanya not to quarrel on their special day.
Lyudmila treated her son well, doting on him, while Tanya endured it all for her husband and their future apartment…
After the shampoo incident, Lyudmila seemed to quiet down, but a week later, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law clashed again in a grand scandal. It all happened because Kostya became ill, and his vigilant mother immediately understood who was to blame.
Kostya was taken to the hospital with an attack, and the women argued even at the door of his hospital room…
“You feed him nothing but processed food! Not only do you not cook, hiding behind your job, but you also don’t let him eat my food! Well, admire the result of your love! In one year you’ve ruined my son, and what will happen next?!” Lyudmila shouted shamelessly.
“He was at a corporate party yesterday and ate something at the restaurant with his colleagues. Several guys from his work wrote in the chat that they felt sick too. What does my cooking have to do with it?!” Tanya tried to justify herself.
“I don’t want to hear anything! You’re not a wife, you’re an enemy! I hope my son realizes who he married and leaves you!” Lyudmila said in anger.
Kostya was discharged. Nothing serious had happened to him, and the cause of the poisoning turned out to be the restaurant food at the corporate party, just as Tanya had said.
But nothing could soften her mother-in-law. Lyudmila Vasilyevna did not even apologize to her daughter-in-law, continuing as usual to blame Tanya for everything.
Tatyana went to visit her mother and once again complained in conversation about her husband’s mother’s nitpicking.
“When Viktor comes home, she becomes normal. She forgets about me. But when he isn’t there, that’s it—you might as well move out! I’m her lightning rod, apparently. Lyudmila fights with me so she won’t take it out on her husband and Kostya,” the young woman told her mother.
“Maybe things are bad between her and her husband?” her mother asked.
Tanya replied that she did not know. She did not have that kind of trusting relationship with her mother-in-law, and besides, what did her in-laws’ personal problems change?
“I can’t live like this, Mom. She provokes me because I tell her the truth. She constantly reproaches me and lectures me,” Tanya said aloud again.
“I hear this every time you come to visit us, daughter. Take out a mortgage. You’ll work and pay for your own home. And no one will come there to lecture you. Not even me,” Tanya’s mother smiled.
Tanya said her husband did not want to. Kostya was unsure about his job or simply did not want to strain himself, but the fact remained. And Natalya Ivanovna said that she and Tanya’s father would help their daughter with the purchase.
Tanya delighted her husband with the news that they would live separately. Kostya himself was tired of his mother’s moralizing and agreed to move.
Lyudmila Vasilyevna took the departure of her beloved son to a separate apartment very hard.
“That Tanya of yours will ruin you, son! You’ll come running back to your mother in six months. You won’t last any longer with a wife like that!”
“Mom, why are you saying that? You could at least be happy for me,” Kostya tried to soften her.
“There is nothing to be happy about. A mother’s heart senses trouble. I thought Tanya was decent and would take good care of you. But she said such things to me that I’m still in shock. She’s too sly, too cunning, like a fox.”
“Mom, we’ll figure it out ourselves,” Konstantin answered firmly.
“Fine, I’ll go to Dad, stay there for a while, and then to Sveta’s. I’ll help her. And then I’ll come to you too, for an inspection. I’ll see how your little wife manages the household and takes care of you.”
In any case, Tatyana’s mother-in-law had things to do. Her older daughter had recently given birth to a long-awaited grandson, and she also needed Lyudmila Vasilyevna’s care.
Kostya and Tanya moved out of the mother-in-law’s apartment and began living separately. For two whole months, Tanya forgot what nitpicking and constant quarrels with Lyudmila Vasilyevna felt like.
One evening, Tanya was waiting for her husband for dinner. Kostya came home in a depressed mood and sat down at the table without even taking off his outerwear.
“Did something happen? Have you been drinking?” Tanya asked, catching an unpleasant smell from her husband.
“My parents are getting divorced. Mom is at my sister’s now, but there’s barely enough space there as it is. I blame myself for the fact that she rushed over there and found everything out,” Kostya said, twisting the tablespoon his wife had placed on the table in his hand.
Disaster had struck his mother-in-law’s family. Viktor had been unfaithful to his wife. After Tanya and Kostya moved out of the apartment, Lyudmila went north and discovered that her husband had been living with two families for several years and had no intention of leaving Lyudmila…
“What are you saying, Kostya? He was deceiving her, and the deception would have come out sooner or later. But it has nothing to do with you. You’re not to blame!” Tanya shook her head.
“You’re right. It’s your fault, Tanya. You never loved my mother. You always lived with her like a cat and dog. Because of you, she went to my father and found everything out,” her husband said.
Tanya was stunned that her husband had made her the scapegoat out of nowhere and had so shamelessly blamed her for the scandals Lyudmila herself had started.
“Oh, Kostya! You’re sleeping on the sofa in the kitchen tonight! And without an apology, I won’t even speak to you,” Tanya blurted out.
“Why are you acting like I’m some freeloader here? This is my apartment too! See, now you and I are already living like cats and dogs. Mother was right!” her husband shouted.
Tanya threw the ladle onto the table, went to the bedroom, and brought her husband his pillow. Kostya packed up and left the house.
In the morning, Tanya found him at the district police station, where patrol officers had taken Kostya during the night.
Her husband apologized to his wife, begged forgiveness, and stood on his knees. Kostya had forgotten what he had said and did not remember at all how he had ended up at the station.
A week later, Tanya returned from work and smelled the familiar scent of chicken broth when she opened the door to her apartment.
She rushed into the kitchen and saw Lyudmila Vasilyevna acting like the mistress of the place. The woman had taken all the frozen vegetables out of the freezer and thrown them into the trash. For some reason, Lyudmila had started rewashing clean dishes, then left them unfinished and began cooking broth.
Tanya’s kitchen looked like the kitchen of some cafeteria where several people had been working at once, it was so cluttered.
“Take off your shoes, Your Highness! You’re not in a mansion to walk around the apartment with your shoes on!” her mother-in-law shouted at her.
“What are you doing here?” Tanya asked one word at a time, choking with anger.
“I’m cooking dinner for my son. Or did you want him, with his gastritis, to choke down your canned meatballs and instant mashed potatoes?” the mother-in-law raised her eyebrows sternly.
“Where did you get the keys, I’m asking? I did not allow you to show up here without an invitation!”
Tanya shouted so loudly that probably every neighbor in the five-story building heard their scandal.
“Shut up, you little flirt. This is my son’s apartment! Kostya personally gave me the keys! And I didn’t come here for no reason. I got a call that day when you threw him out, and patrol officers picked up my Kostenka like a homeless man. How dare you oppress my son?” Lyudmila Vasilyevna pressed on, crossing her arms.
Tanya had no intention of explaining why her husband had left home that night. She did not want to speak civilly with Lyudmila at all.
“I came to explain to you that you are a bad wife for Kostya,” Lyudmila explained businesslike, pacing around the kitchen.
Tanya remembered how she had lived in her mother-in-law’s apartment. Every hurtful word surfaced in her memory, every undeserved reproach.
But Tanya had endured it because she thought her husband loved her and that everything was good between her and Kostya. But it turned out that her husband had given his mother the keys behind her back, knowing how badly Tanya got along with his mother. © Mil Rey
“You are the one who will have to get out of here,” Tanya hissed, forcing herself not to lunge at Lyudmila.
“Oh, really?” Kostya’s mother spread into a malicious smile. “I’ll be living with my son from now on. Here, a wonderful sofa. Though I think this is your place, Tatyana, and I’ll sleep in the bedroom. The mattress there is orthopedic!”
“Get out of my apartment,” the daughter-in-law pointed at the door.
Lyudmila hesitated, taking off her apron and turning down the heat on the stove. Tanya quickly went to the bedroom and swept her mother-in-law’s travel bag off the bed and onto the floor.
“What are you doing?!” Lyudmila Vasilyevna screamed.
Any copying, voice-over, or publication of the channel’s materials without the author’s consent is prohibited. © Mil Rey
A key turned in the door. Kostya had come home from work and walked into yet another scandal.
“Get out. You don’t belong here. You didn’t let me live in peace in your apartment, and now you’ve come to mine?!”
“You’re lying!” Lyudmila twisted with rage.
“What is going on here?! Mom! Tanya!” shouted Kostya, because of whom this whole story had begun. © Mil Rey
The women began shouting accusations over each other.
“Stop it. Tanya, Mom is going to live here,” her husband declared.
“Divorce her, Kostya! She has appropriated your property!”
“Kostya, does your mother not know whose apartment this is?” Tatyana asked her husband, tilting her head to the side.
Konstantin picked up the bag from the floor and told his mother that his wife was right.
“You bought the apartment during marriage, demand your half!” the mother-in-law shrieked, but her daughter-in-law answered her.
“The apartment was bought with my money! My parents gave part of it, and my mother took out a loan for the rest. You and Kostya have no rights to it.”
A silent pause hung in the air. Lyudmila Vasilyevna was breathing like a steam locomotive, while Kostya simply remained silent.
“You’re wrong. I have rights to the apartment too. I supported you all this time,” her husband said directly.
“Both of you, pack your things. Otherwise, I’ll call the appropriate place, and you’ll be sent back to where you’re registered,” Tanya answered, unable to hold back.
It hurt her terribly that her Kostya had turned out to be an ordinary mama’s boy. Only the heel he was under belonged to Mama Lyuda.
Kostya moved out of the apartment in a fit of emotion, took his mother, and drove back to his parents’ home.
Of course, his mother made sure that Kostya did not return to his wife or apologize for giving her the keys.
After a week of silence, Kostya received a letter saying that his wife had filed for divorce. The notification and a copy of the claim were handed to the son by his loving mother…
“I was right! I saw it coming! Tanya was saving up for an apartment while eating and dressing at your expense! And you didn’t even tell me she had fooled you and taken you out of your home!” the mother-in-law kept saying.
“Mom, we’re a family. No one wins from divorce. The car will have to be divided too,” the man lamented.
“You want to go back to her?” his mother asked, placing her hands on her hips.
“Tanya probably won’t forgive me now,” Konstantin said, hanging his head.
Kostya tried to repair his relationship with his wife, not wanting to lose his family. Tanya set one condition: his mother stays away from them, or better yet, Kostya completely stops communicating with her. © Mil Rey
“Otherwise, she’ll sit on our heads again,” his wife said over the phone.
“Tanya, you’re wrong. You really are kind of cold-hearted. Is the apartment more important to you than a living, lonely person?!” Kostya objected.
“No, what matters more to me is living peacefully and without raids from toxic people, Kostya. We really don’t understand each other after all. Your mother still managed to reshape the man I fell in love with,” Tanya exhaled into the phone.
The divorce went through.
The car was divided between the spouses according to the law. But the apartment went to Tatyana—or rather, it had belonged to her mother all along. Tanya recovered slowly, threw herself into work, and for the time being did not think about starting a new romance with anyone, so deeply had the story with her mother-in-law shaken her.
“Everything has its time,” Tatyana kept telling herself.
Kostya stayed living with his mother, but even he did not last long.
I’ll add a few words in the comments. Thank you for subscribing to the channel and for your comments; they inspire the author.
