“Your mother called my boss and demanded that my working hours be cut because, as she put it, I ‘don’t take proper care of my husband’! Do you even understand that she humiliated me and almost cost me my career?! Did you give her my director’s number?! Do you want me sitting at home cooking borscht for you the way she wants?!” his wife screamed, returning from the office in tears. But they were not tears of self-pity — they were drops of pure, distilled rage.
Ekaterina hurled her leather bag onto the floor with all her strength. The heavy briefcase, stuffed with documents and a laptop, landed on the parquet with a dull thud, nearly hitting Alexey’s feet. He was sitting on the sofa in stretched-out sweatpants, lazily flipping through TV channels, and when he saw the furious woman burst in, he merely grimaced, as if bothered by an annoying fly. The apartment smelled of stagnant laziness and a microwaved ready-made meal.
“Katya, why are you yelling the second you walk in? My head hurts,” he drawled, not taking his eyes off the screen, where scenes from some action movie flashed by. “Mom just called to ask why you’re always staying late. She’s worried about our home life. By the way, there’s nothing in the fridge. I’ve been eating dumplings for three days. I already have heartburn.”
Ekaterina froze while unbuttoning her coat. Her fingers were trembling, the buttons wouldn’t cooperate, and she yanked the fabric so hard she nearly tore them off. She looked at her husband and saw before her not the partner she had lived with for five years, but some alien, amorphous body completely devoid of empathy.
“You have heartburn?” she repeated in a frighteningly quiet voice, stepping into the room without taking off her outdoor shoes, leaving dirty marks on the light carpet. “And I, Lyosha, had a board meeting today. We were approving next year’s budget. Investors were there, the CEO was there, department heads were there. Twelve people. And do you know what happened in the middle of my presentation?”
Alexey finally deigned to turn his head. His face showed bored irritation.
“What happened? Mom called. So what? She’s an old-school woman, direct. But she stands up for family.”
“She called Petrov, Lyosha!” Ekaterina’s voice broke into a shriek, but she immediately pulled herself together, clenching her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. “My CEO. And because he was waiting for an important call from the ministry, he answered on speakerphone. In front of the entire conference room. Can you imagine that scene? I’m standing at the board with charts, and your mother’s voice starts blaring from the speaker on the table.”
Ekaterina walked over to the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and turned off the television. Alexey clicked his tongue in annoyance but said nothing.
“She was shouting, Lyosha. Shouting so loudly the microphone was feeding back. ‘Have you people completely worked the poor girl to death? Her man is at home unfed, suffering with his stomach, and you’re keeping her in the office until night! What kind of job is this where a woman doesn’t even have time to make cutlets? Let her go immediately, my Lyoshenka’s gastritis has flared up!’” Ekaterina mimicked her mother-in-law’s intonation with terrifying accuracy, which made it even more disgusting. “The whole room was collapsing with laughter, Lyosha. The investors were choking. Petrov, that old cynic, deliberately didn’t hang up for a full minute. He let her talk. Then he asked, ‘Should we approve the weekly menu too, Zinaida Viktorovna?’”
Alexey snorted. The corner of his mouth twitched into a half-smile.
“Well, your Petrov has a sense of humor, then. And Mom is right. You really do live at work, Katya. I got married so there would be comfort at home, not so I could sleep with a business plan. Mother is right — you’ve completely forgotten your womanly duties.”
Ekaterina felt the ground slip from under her feet. Not from weakness, but from a monstrous realization: he did not simply fail to grasp the scale of the catastrophe — he agreed with this circus.
“I earn three times more than you, Alexey,” she said, striking out every word. “I pay the mortgage on this apartment where you lie on the sofa. I pay for your insurance, your car loans, your gas. And you dare talk to me about ‘womanly duties’? You gave her my boss’s number. You knowingly set me up. Why? To humiliate me? To get me fired so I’d sit on your neck — the one you barely have?”
“So you’d remember that you’re married!” Alexey suddenly roared, jumping up from the sofa. Red patches spread across his face. “Yes, I gave her the number! Because I’m sick of eating sandwiches! Mother came over, looked at this pigsty, opened the empty fridge, and said, ‘I’ll deal with it.’ And she did! Good for her! Instead of yelling at me, you should be ashamed of yourself. There’s a man in the house going hungry, and she’s waving her career around!”
“Ashamed?” Ekaterina gave a bitter laugh, throwing her coat straight onto an armchair. “I was ashamed at the office, when Petrov asked whether I needed a break to breastfeed my husband. But I’m not ashamed now. Now I’m disgusted.”
She walked into the kitchen, unbuttoning her blouse as she went because it was choking her like a noose. Alexey shuffled after her, sensing that he had gone too far, yet, as always, remaining certain he was right.
“Oh, come on, stop being so dramatic,” he muttered at her back. “They laughed and forgot. At least now they’ll let you leave earlier. They’ll be afraid to mess with you. Mom is like that — a tank. Persistent. You could learn from her how to stand up for your interests instead of bowing down to management.”
Ekaterina poured herself water from the carafe. The glass clinked against her teeth. She drank greedily, in large gulps, trying to wash away the bitterness of betrayal.
“You don’t understand,” she said, placing the glass on the table with such force it seemed the glass might crack. “This isn’t care, Lyosha. This is sabotage. She turned me into a laughingstock. A professional with ten years of experience was turned into a stupid hen who needs supervision from her mother-in-law. And you, my husband, the person closest to me, handed her the ammunition.”
“I just wanted homemade food!” Alexey squealed, childish, spoiled notes cutting through his voice. “What’s criminal about that?”
At that moment, a key scraped in the front door lock. Ekaterina froze. She had only one set of keys. The second set belonged to her husband.
“You gave her keys?” she asked in a whisper, but in the silence of the kitchen it sounded like a verdict.
“Well, yes,” Alexey shrugged, looking away. “She came with groceries. It’s heavy to carry everything.”
The door swung open, and Zinaida Viktorovna sailed into the hallway like an icebreaker. She was loaded down with bags and pots as if she had come to feed a company of soldiers before an offensive.
“Lyoshenka, son, take these quickly, my arms are falling off!” Zinaida Viktorovna thundered, dropping an enormous checkered bag onto the floor with a crash — the kind shuttle traders used to storm the Polish borders with in the nineties. “I brought you first course, second course, and compote in a jar. You’ve lost so much weight, it hurts to look at you. Nothing but cheekbones left.”
She did not even take off her shoes. In her worn autumn boots, leaving dirty wet streaks across the light laminate floor, the mother-in-law moved deeper into the apartment. Such a powerful wave of confidence in her own righteousness radiated from her that Ekaterina involuntarily stepped back toward the wall, letting this tank in a skirt pass. The air in the entryway instantly thickened: the smell of fried onions, old rancid oil, and cheap “Red Moscow” perfume clogged the lungs, pushing out the familiar scent of air conditioner and expensive fragrance.
Alexey, forgetting about his “sick stomach,” jumped toward his mother with the eagerness of a hungry puppy. He grabbed the bag, peeked inside, and blissfully inhaled.
“Mom, are those belyashi?” he asked, and his voice carried such genuine happiness that Ekaterina had not heard anything like it in two years. “With meat?”
“With meat, Lyoshenka, with meat. Not with the grass she feeds you here,” Zinaida Viktorovna threw her daughter-in-law a quick, prickly glance full of undisguised triumph. “Well, why are you standing there? March to the kitchen. We’ll restore the breadwinner’s strength. And you, Katerina, take off your coat. Or are you going to stand there like a monument to your own bad housekeeping?”
Ekaterina exhaled slowly, trying to calm the trembling in her hands. She wanted to grab that bag and throw it out the window along with the belyashi, but she understood: any emotional outburst now would be perceived as the hysteria of a weak woman. Silently, she hung up her coat and went into the kitchen, which until that moment had been her personal, sterile space.
Her mother-in-law was already taking over. She unceremoniously shoved Ekaterina’s laptop — which she sometimes used in the mornings — to the edge of the table and began unloading her treasures. Plastic containers, cloudy jars of pickles, a grilled chicken wrapped in greasy paper. Grease stains had already begun spreading across the snow-white tablecloth Katya had brought back from a business trip to Provence.
“Zinaida Viktorovna,” Ekaterina began, trying to speak firmly, though her voice had treacherously dropped. “I want to return to the subject of your call. Do you understand that you violated professional boundaries? You called the CEO of a major holding company. You made me, a leading specialist, look like an incapable idiot who needs supervision.”
Her mother-in-law did not even turn around. She was busily untying a plastic bag of sauerkraut, the brine dripping directly onto the table.
“I made you look like a woman whose husband is hungry,” she snapped, licking her finger. “And rightly so. That Petrov of yours is an understanding man. We had a heartfelt talk while you were rustling your little papers. He agreed, by the way. He said, ‘Zinaida Viktorovna, we’ll eliminate excesses on the ground.’ So say thank you that I did your job for you. Now you’ll come home at six like all normal people and stand at the stove.”
Alexey was already sitting at the table, stuffing a huge, grease-shining belyash into his mouth. Juice ran down his chin, but he didn’t notice. He ate so greedily as though he had just returned from a famine zone, not lived in an apartment where the refrigerator was packed with marbled beef steaks and fresh vegetables.
“Lyosha, do you hear what she’s saying?” Ekaterina turned to her husband. “She discussed my schedule with my boss. Without me. And you’re just sitting there chewing?”
“Mmm, delicious,” Alexey mumbled with his mouth full, ignoring the point. “Katya, seriously, try one. Mom made the dough herself. Not like your delivery sushi.”
“Exactly!” Zinaida picked up, banging a pot of soup onto the table. “Sushi, rolls, pizza… Pah! Poison! I looked in your fridge while Lyosha opened the door. Shameful! Fat-free yogurts, some wilted arugula, plant-based milk. You feed a man plant milk? What are you trying to turn him into? A grazing goat?”
She yanked open the refrigerator door as if conducting a search.
“What is this?” She pulled out a package of expensive French cheese. “Mold! People pay money for mold! Throw it out immediately before you poison yourselves!”
The mother-in-law demonstratively threw the cheese into the trash can under the sink. Ekaterina twitched to stop her, but ran into Alexey’s heavy, leaden stare.
“Don’t interfere, Katya,” he muttered, wiping his hands on his pants. “Mom is right. I can’t stand that cheese. It smells like socks. I’ve wanted to say it for ages, but you’re always: ‘delicacy, delicacy.’ I want potatoes. Fried. With onions.”
“There! Do you hear?” Zinaida exclaimed triumphantly. “Truth speaks through the mouth of a babe. You, Katerina, got carried away playing businesswoman. You forgot your main purpose. But never mind, I’ll be coming here often now. I’ll establish control. Lyoshenka didn’t give me the keys for nothing. We agreed on this a week ago.”
Ekaterina felt the floor vanish beneath her feet. Her mother-in-law’s words struck harder than a slap.
“A week ago?” she repeated, looking at her husband. “So you planned this? While I was closing the quarterly report, while I sat up nights over presentations so we could afford a vacation in the Maldives, you were discussing a plan behind my back to seize my kitchen?”
“Not seize — rescue!” Zinaida corrected, pulling an enormous jar of mayonnaise from the bag. “Lyosha called me, nearly crying. He said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to go home. It’s cold there, Katya’s hugging her phone again, babbling about her indexes. And I want warmth.’ So I came. To give warmth.”
Alexey lowered his eyes to his plate but did not stop chewing. He looked like a schoolboy caught misbehaving, hiding behind his mother’s broad skirt and now feeling completely untouchable.
“So, warmth…” Ekaterina said slowly. “And the fact that I work twelve hours a day to provide us with this standard of living — that isn’t warmth? That’s a whim, according to you? Lyosha, you were the one who asked for the new car. You were the one who wanted that expensive fitness club. Where do you think the money for all of that comes from? Thin air?”
“A man should earn the money!” Zinaida snapped, starting to cut bread into thick, crooked slices directly on the tablecloth without looking for a cutting board. Crumbs scattered onto the floor, onto clothes, onto the table. “And if a woman earns more, that means she suppresses the man. Humiliates his masculine dignity. That’s why Lyoshenka suffers. His soul hurts, and you give him money.”
“His soul doesn’t hurt — he’s been eaten alive by laziness!” Ekaterina couldn’t hold back. “He has spent half a year in a middle-management position and doesn’t even try to grow, because it suits him! It suits him that I solve all the problems!”
“Don’t you dare raise your voice at my son in front of his mother!” Zinaida roared, slamming the knife on the table. The blade clanged against the porcelain sugar bowl. “Look at you, getting carried away! Boss lady! You can command people in your office, but this is the kitchen. A woman’s place. This requires humility, not arrogance. Sit down and eat before it gets cold. I made rassolnik with kidneys. Thick enough for a spoon to stand in it. You’re all skin and bones, disgusting to look at. Both of you.”
She plopped a plate of grayish slop in front of Ekaterina, with pieces of pickled cucumber and huge circles of fat floating in it. The smell of boiled kidneys hit her nose, triggering a gag reflex.
“Eat,” her mother-in-law ordered. “Or I’ll call Petrov and tell him you don’t respect your mother-in-law either. He’s a strict man. He’ll set your head straight quickly.”
Alexey giggled. A nasty, petty giggle, staring at his pale wife.
“Come on, Katya, eat. It’s really good. Mom worked hard.”
At that moment, Ekaterina understood: they would not stop. This was not just a courtesy visit. It was an occupation. And her husband was not a hostage — he was a collaborator who had gladly surrendered the fortress to the enemy for a pot of rassolnik.
“Eat, I said!” Zinaida Viktorovna shoved the plate of rassolnik so sharply that the thick slop splashed over the edge, leaving an ugly yellow-gray stain on the snow-white tablecloth. “Kidneys are first-rate. Good for women’s health. You sit there pale as a fainting moth. A man needs a healthy woman, rosy and strong, not some office-dried fish.”
Ekaterina stared into the plate, feeling nausea rise in her throat. The smell of boiled offal mixed with cheap mayonnaise and her mother-in-law’s stuffy perfume, creating an unbearable cacophony that made her head spin. But worse than the smell was the sound. The smacking. Alexey — her Lyosha, who only yesterday had known how to use a knife and fork — was now slurping soup, bent low over his plate, making sounds worthy of a pigsty.
“I will not eat this,” she said quietly but firmly, pushing the plate away with the tip of her finger as if it were a dead rat. “And I’m waiting for an explanation. What exactly did you tell Petrov? You mentioned ‘women’s duties,’ but I saw his face on the video call. He looked at me not just with mockery, but with pity. What did you spin for him?”
Zinaida Viktorovna lowered the ladle back into the pot, straightened up, and wiped her hands on the enormous apron she had brought with her. A pleased, sly smile spread across her face — the smile of a person who had pulled off a successful deal at the market.
“I told him what needed to be said,” she declared, planting her hands on her hips. “I said my daughter-in-law has women’s problems. That the doctors told her not to overwork, not to get nervous, and not to sit late at work. That we’re planning an heir, and you, silly fool, are ruining everything with your workaholism. I asked him to transfer you to lighter duties. To the archive or some paper-shuffling job with less responsibility.”
A silence did not fall over the kitchen — a vacuum did. It was as if all the air had been sucked out. Ekaterina felt the blood drain from her face. Light duties. Pregnancy. Women’s problems. In the world of big business, where she had clawed out her reputation as an “iron lady” with her teeth, this was not just humiliation. It was professional euthanasia.
“You… you told him I was ill? That I was planning maternity leave?” Ekaterina’s voice trembled, but not from tears — from the monstrous realization of the scale of the catastrophe. “Do you even understand that they were counting on me to lead the new branch? And now? Who will appoint a woman to a top position when, according to her relatives, she has ‘problems with her head and her health’? You destroyed my reputation with one phone call.”
“And thank God!” Zinaida barked, not the least bit embarrassed. “A woman manager is grief in the family. Look at Lyosha! With you he’s like a page beside a queen! Pah! A man must feel he’s the head, that everything depends on him. And you crushed him with your money and meetings. Now you’ll sit on a smaller salary, lose some of that arrogance, and start respecting your husband. And then, maybe, you’ll finally give birth. The clock is ticking, Katya. Thirty years old and not a baby in your hem.”
Ekaterina shifted her gaze to her husband. Alexey had stopped chewing. He sat there, wiping his greasy lips with a piece of bread, not looking at his wife. He was looking at his mother with adoration and some puppy-like devotion.
“Lyosha, did you know?” Ekaterina asked in an icy tone. “Did you know she would talk about pregnancy and light duties?”
Alexey finally raised his eyes. There was no remorse in them. There was only full, stupid satisfaction.
“Well, Mom and I discussed it,” he drawled, leaning back comfortably in his chair. “Katya, seriously, you can’t earn all the money in the world. And it’s embarrassing for me in front of the guys. Everyone else has wives like wives — they sit at home, make the place cozy, take care of kids. And I say, ‘Mine is at a meeting.’ They laugh, you know. Mom was right: you need to slow down. Petrov is a normal guy, he understood. He said health is more important. So you should say thank you.”
“Thank you?” Ekaterina slowly rose from the table. She was shaking with fury, but her mind was cold and clear as never before. “You want me to say thank you for deciding behind my back to turn me into an incubator and a cook? You, who live in an apartment bought with my bonuses? You, who drive a car whose loan I paid off? You want a ‘traditional family’? Can you handle one, Lyosha? Your salary is enough only to pay utilities and buy those kidneys.”
“Don’t you dare reproach my son over a piece of bread!” Zinaida shrieked, shielding Alexey with herself as if she were covering an embrasure. “Money can be earned! But he is a man! And you… you’re just a wallet with ambitions! Look at you clucking! Sit down and eat while it’s hot. I fried cutlets too — nice fatty pork ones, with garlic. Eat now and you’ll become kinder. Your stomach is empty, that’s why you’re angry.”
She grabbed a second plate and slapped two enormous grease-dripping cutlets onto it, garnishing them with a mountain of fried potatoes.
“Eat!” she ordered, setting the plate in front of Ekaterina so hard that grease splashed onto the sleeve of her silk blouse. “And I don’t want to hear another word about work. Tomorrow you’ll go and write a transfer request. A mother won’t give bad advice.”
Alexey reached for a cutlet with his bare hand, broke off a piece, and sent it into his mouth, rolling his eyes with pleasure.
“Mmm, so good, Mom. Katya, seriously, try it. You won’t find this in your restaurants. This is made with soul.”
Ekaterina looked at them — at her chewing husband with grease running down his chin, and at her triumphant mother-in-law already piling on seconds. She understood that what stood before her was not family. It was a parasite and its host, a symbiosis in which there was no room for a third. They had not merely humiliated her. They had tried to digest her, grind her down, and mold her anew in their own pathetic image.
“So, made with soul?” she repeated, watching Alexey reach for the bread. “And tomorrow I’m supposed to write a transfer request?”
“You will, you will,” Zinaida nodded with her mouth full. “And you’ll say thank you.”
“All right,” said Ekaterina. “Since you’ve decided everything, then so be it.”
She went to the sink, picked up the heavy cast-iron frying pan on which the remains of the “soulful” cutlets were sizzling, and slowly turned toward the table. There was no fear in her eyes, no doubt. Only cold calculation and the understanding that negotiations were over. The time for diplomacy had passed. The time for action had come.
“Now watch carefully,” Ekaterina said in an icy tone. “I’m giving a master class in housekeeping.”
She took two steps toward the trash can, pressed the pedal with her foot, and the lid flipped open with a soft clap. The frying pan in her hand tilted. Two heavy cutlets, shining with grease and lovingly molded by Zinaida Viktorovna’s hands, slid off the cast iron and fell with a wet slap into the depths of the trash bag, directly on top of vegetable peels and coffee grounds.
“What are you doing, you idiot?!” the mother-in-law screeched, springing up from her chair as if a spring had gone off beneath her. “That’s wasting food! That’s a sin! Fresh pork — I picked it myself at the market!”
Ekaterina did not answer. She silently returned to the table while her relatives sat open-mouthed, unable to believe their eyes. With one sharp movement, she snatched the plate from under Alexey’s nose. He did not even have time to react, frozen with a piece of bread in his hand, gravy dripping from it.
“Hey, Katya, what are you doing? I wasn’t finished!” he squeaked, but fear was already cutting through his voice. He saw her eyes — absolutely empty, merciless eyes, the eyes of a surgeon amputating a gangrenous limb.
“You’ve eaten enough, Lyosha. The banquet is over,” she snapped.
The contents of his plate — half-eaten rassolnik with floating chunks of gray kidney — flew into the trash can after the cutlets. The sound of the slop pouring out was disgustingly wet. Ekaterina threw the dirty plate into the sink with such a ringing crash it seemed the faience would split, but it held.
“You’re possessed!” Zinaida Viktorovna shouted, turning crimson. She jumped up, trying to shield the pot of soup on the stove with her body. “Lyosha, hold her! She’ll throw everything away now! This is a mother’s labor! I stood at the stove until my legs ached, and she… You belong in a madhouse, that’s where! Petrov was right — you’re sick in the head!”
Alexey finally came to his senses and leapt up, trying to intercept his wife’s hand as she reached for the three-liter jar of compote.
“Katya, stop this hysteria!” he barked, trying to reclaim the role of head of the household. “Sit down and calm down! Mom worked hard, she cooked, and you’re acting like an ungrateful pig! We’re taking care of you, you fool!”
Ekaterina spun around sharply. The heavy jar was in her hand. Alexey recoiled, afraid she would hit him, but she only slammed the bottom of the jar against the countertop. The glass rang pitifully but held.
“Taking care of me?” she asked quietly, and that quietness chilled Alexey from the inside. “You turned my life into hell in one evening. You destroyed my career by presenting me as mentally unfit for work. You came into my home, soiled my table, insulted me, and now you call it care?”
She grabbed the pot of rassolnik, shoving Zinaida aside with her hip so forcefully that the bulky woman staggered and crashed into the refrigerator.
“Get out of my way,” Ekaterina hissed.
She went to the sink, turned on the garbage disposal, and slowly, methodically began pouring the contents of the pot down the drain. The machine roared, grinding pickles and offal. Zinaida Viktorovna wailed aloud, clutching at her heart as though it was not soup being ground up, but her own insides.
“Monsters! People are starving in Africa!” she howled, theatrically rolling her eyes. “Lyosha, do something! Your wife has lost her mind!”
Alexey stood there, blinking in confusion. His entire world, built on his mother’s pies and his wife’s salary, was collapsing before his eyes.
“Katya, why so harsh?” he whined. “We got heated, it happens. Tomorrow you’ll call Petrov and say it was a mistake. Why destroy the food?”
Ekaterina shook out the last drops of greasy broth, threw the empty pot onto the floor — it rolled across the tile with a crash, hitting the chair legs — and turned off the water.
“Now listen to me carefully,” she said, wiping her hands on a paper towel, crumpling it, and tossing it at her husband’s face. The paper ball bounced off his chest and fell to the floor. “You wanted domestic comfort, Lyosha? You wanted borscht, cutlets, and a caring woman who doesn’t work but sits at home waiting for you with a ladle? Congratulations. Your dream has come true.”
She went into the hallway, stepping over her mother-in-law’s scattered things. Alexey and Zinaida, sensing something was wrong, shuffled after her.
“What do you mean, it came true?” Alexey asked warily.
Ekaterina flung the front door wide open. A draft from the stairwell rushed into the apartment, diluting the stale smell of fried onions and sweat.
“I mean exactly that. You are packing your things right now and going to your mother’s. There, borscht, cutlets, belyashi, and complete freedom from my ambitions and my money are waiting for you. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Mommy’s care? Then receive it in full. Twenty-four hours a day.”
“You’re throwing me out?” Alexey gaped. “From my own home?”
“From my home,” Ekaterina corrected harshly. “The mortgage is in my name. The documents are in my name. You’re registered here, but you will not live here anymore. I’m changing the locks in an hour. Keys on the side table. Both sets.”
“How dare you?!” Zinaida shrieked, trying to block her son with her body. “This is tyranny! We’ll find justice against you! A wife is obligated—”
“A wife owes nothing to outsiders who betrayed her,” Ekaterina interrupted. “Take your pots, your bags, and your precious little sonny-boy, and get out of here before I truly start behaving inappropriately.”
She grabbed Alexey’s jacket from the hanger and threw it into the stairwell. It landed on the dirty concrete floor of the landing. His boots flew after it. One hit the railing, the other rolled down the stairs.
“You’re insane!” Alexey shouted, red with humiliation. “I’m not going anywhere!”
Ekaterina stepped right up to him. There was so much cold determination in her gaze that he instinctively backed away.
“You are going, Lyosha. Because I won’t give you another kopeck. I’m canceling your supplementary card right now. I’ll stop paying for your gas. You won’t even get to work tomorrow. You wanted patriarchy? Support yourself. And until you learn how, sit on your mother’s neck and eat kidneys.”
Alexey froze. The threat of financial collapse affected him far more than any shouting. He realized she was not joking. He looked at his mother, then at his wife, then at his boots in the stairwell.
“Come on, son,” Zinaida Viktorovna suddenly hissed viciously, grabbing her checkered bag. “There’s nothing to do here. A hunchback can only be fixed by the grave. Let her sit alone with her money, dry as a stockfish. We’ll find you a normal one. Domestic. Obedient.”
She grabbed Alexey by the hand and pulled him toward the exit like a little boy. Alexey resisted, his face twisted with resentment and anger, but he obeyed. His mother’s hand was more familiar and reliable.
“You’ll regret this, Katka!” he shouted from the stairs, pulling on his jacket. “You’ll come crawling back when you realize a woman can’t be alone!”
“Keys!” Ekaterina barked, ignoring his threats.
Alexey pulled the key ring from his pocket with hatred and threw it onto the hallway floor. Zinaida Viktorovna spat on the doormat by the door — loudly, with feeling — and proudly lifted her chin.
“Pah on you! Live however you want now!” she threw at her.
Ekaterina slammed the door shut in their faces with all her strength. The crash of metal against metal echoed through the stairwell, putting a heavy full stop at the end of their relationship. The lock clicked. Then the second. Then the night latch.
She was left alone in an apartment filled with the heavy, suffocating smell of someone else’s food and someone else’s malice. Only the humming of the refrigerator broke the silence. Ekaterina slowly slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. But she did not cry. She felt a strange, ringing lightness, as if a sack of cement had just been lifted from her shoulders.
She got up, went to the kitchen, and threw the window wide open. The cold autumn wind burst into the room, blowing out the smell of fried onions and cheap perfume. She inhaled deeply, feeling the frosty air burn her lungs, cleansing them of all the filth of that evening.
Down in the courtyard, a taxi door slammed. She knew they had left. Gone back to their world of cheap manipulation, greasy food, and endless grievances. And she remained in hers. For the first time in many years, that world belonged only to her.
Ekaterina picked up her phone, opened her banking app, and blocked her husband’s card. Then she dialed a cleaning service.
“Hello, I need a deep cleaning. Urgently. Yes, right now. Everything needs to be washed. Especially the kitchen. I don’t want a trace of that smell left.”
She pressed “end call” and looked at the empty table. Tomorrow would be a new day. A difficult one, scandalous, possibly with dismissal. But it would be her day. And her life. Without kidneys, without a mother-in-law, and without dead weight on the sofa…
