“What is this? I’m asking you, who gave permission?” Marina stepped into the apartment and froze in shock.
Alexey and Marina had divorced six months earlier. The divorce had not been easy. The former spouses had argued constantly and fought over property. Alexey did not want to give his wife and daughter two apartments, deciding that one larger place should be enough for them, even though he owned plenty of real estate. Eventually, they somehow agreed that one of the apartments would be rented out for a while and later transferred to Alisa, their daughter. They signed an agreement and decided that the rent money would be saved in Alisa’s account. Alisa, of course, knew nothing about this. She was already a difficult, headstrong teenager, and her parents’ divorce had shaken her already unstable emotional state.
Alexey took advantage of the fact that his daughter was desperate to express herself. He tried to win her over in every possible way, indulging her childish whims. Want to cut your hair like a boy? Go ahead. Want a nose piercing? Why not? Every time Alisa came back from visiting her father, Marina felt as if her heart would give out.
When her daughter came home with a skull tattoo on her wrist, Marina finally snapped.
“Do you even understand what you’re doing?”
“Mom, I’m sixteen. I can do whatever I want! I could even go have fun with Pasha tomorrow and come home pregnant.”
“Oh, really? Then go ahead! Just don’t bring the baby to me — bring it to Pasha’s parents! I’m done taking responsibility!” Marina shouted, trying to shake some sense into Alisa. Her daughter was becoming more and more like Alexey, and Marina was horrified by the fact that her own child was beginning to repel her.
She decided to see a psychologist before she did something she would regret.
“This is normal. You need to let go of the situation,” the woman in glasses advised her.
“But what if she really does get pregnant? What am I supposed to do with grandchildren now?” Marina burst into tears.
“Don’t worry. Alisa is your daughter too, which means she has at least a bit of common sense in her. At moments like this, children manipulate and threaten. But usually, they don’t actually act on their threats. Most of it stays at the level of words.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it. You’re still lucky she isn’t saying she’ll jump out the window.”
Marina turned pale. She suddenly felt sick, and the session had to be stopped. She was prescribed anxiety medication and advised to bring her daughter to therapy as well. Alisa responded to that suggestion by sending her mother somewhere very far away in language that left no room for discussion.
Still, the medication had an effect. Marina no longer cried or became hysterical after Alisa’s visits to her father. Alisa, it seemed, calmed down when she realized her provocations no longer worked. Even so, arguments still broke out in the family from time to time.
“You need to occupy yourself with something,” the psychologist said during another session. “I can see progress, but to make it stable, you need to shift your attention away from your daughter completely and focus on something constructive.”
“I don’t know what,” Marina shrugged.
“You mentioned that it hurts you to be in the bedroom where you and your husband lived together for almost twenty years. You said the walls feel like they’re closing in on you.”
“Yes. I still sleep in the living room. I can’t be in that room.”
“Start a renovation.”
Marina thought about it. Why not?
“The kitchen needs updating. I hate the bedroom with all my heart. And the child’s room stopped being a little girl’s room long ago. It’s time to give it a modern teenage style,” Marina thought as she walked into a design studio.
The idea of renovating inspired her.
“We’ll do everything beautifully,” the designer promised. “Tomorrow I’ll send workers to your place to take measurements, and in a couple of weeks the design project will be ready.”
“Wonderful,” Marina smiled, already anticipating the changes. She had already visited home improvement stores and looked through interior references online. She wanted to turn the bedroom into a room for rest and meditation. In the living room, she planned to place the vintage sofa she had always dreamed of — the same sofa that had once become a point of conflict with Alexey. Her ex-husband had loved lying around on a huge, ugly, completely graceless couch that Marina had never liked.
“Mom! I’m not letting those men into my room!” Alisa protested when the workers arrived to take measurements.
“This is my apartment. You only live here,” Marina cut her off. “If you don’t like it, go live with Pasha.”
Alisa glared at her mother, put on her headphones, grabbed her backpack, and left in an unknown direction. On any other day, Marina would have panicked. But not this time. She was busy with the renovation and felt certain her daughter would come back. And that was exactly what happened. At three in the morning, the front door slammed, and Alisa went to bed.
“The psychologist really was right. Children only threaten. She won’t go anywhere,” Marina noted, finally allowing herself to sleep.
“I’m going on a business trip for a week. You’ll stay with your father,” Marina told her daughter one morning. The bedroom renovation was already in full swing, and the kitchen was supposed to be delivered just in time for her return.
Alisa looked at her mother strangely, but Marina did not catch the meaning of that look.
She was sure everything would go perfectly. The workers were doing their job quickly and smoothly.
Marina left for her business trip in a good mood, not suspecting that, due to circumstances, she would return home not after one week, but after two — and that what awaited her at home would be nothing like what she had imagined.
The moment Marina opened the door, she sensed something was wrong.
There was unfamiliar furniture in the hallway. When she entered the bedroom, she froze. The renovation had not moved forward at all. But in Alisa’s room, a new door had been installed — a black metal one that looked like the door to a safe.
“Oh my God…” Marina turned the handle and entered the “child’s room.”
What she saw looked like pure madness. Alisa’s once soft pink girl’s room had turned into a branch of hell, the kind of place where even Mephistopheles would be afraid to live. The walls were black, covered with blood-red streaks. The bed looked as if it had come straight out of a horror movie. There was a rusty tabletop scratched with runes, and as the final touch, a cage with a black raven inside.
“Alisa! What is this? I’m asking you, who gave permission?” Marina roared, instantly forgetting every piece of advice her psychologist had ever given her as she ran out of the room.
Her daughter was in the kitchen.
“I’m asking you, who allowed you to do this?”
“To do what?” Alisa asked as if nothing had happened.
“I don’t even have words. This is unacceptable! Not in my apartment!”
“You can move out. Dad likes it.”
The arrogant expression on Alisa’s face finally pushed Marina over the edge.
“So he sponsored this corruption of your personality?”
“He just helped me express myself through interior design.”
“Oh, really? Excellent,” Marina said coldly, then went straight to her lawyer.
A few days later, Alexey was called in for a conversation.
“Your wife claims that you have created an unhealthy environment in an apartment that does not belong to you,” the lawyer said.
“I simply listened to my daughter’s opinion. She asked me for advice.”
“And you like the result?”
“Yes. It’s very modern and authentic.”
“In that case, your former wife is forced to hand over the responsibility of raising the child to you. She has decided to exchange apartments with you. The apartment where you feel more comfortable will become yours — together with the teenager, of course. You and your daughter seem to get along much better. Marina Nikolaevna is undergoing therapy, and she has a psychiatrist’s certificate stating that she needs to live alone for a while.”
Alexey’s face changed. He had already promised his new girlfriend that they would live together in his two-room apartment. The renovation there was ordinary, but at least there were no ravens in cages. Besides, Alisa existed in his life mostly as a way to assert himself against his ex-wife.
“I don’t agree.”
“You’re contradicting yourself.”
“Perhaps I made a mistake. You see, Alisa is taking the divorce very hard. She needs support.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to support her. My client and I will petition the court so that the daughter temporarily lives with you. And believe me, with your statements and actions, you have every advantage to become even closer to Alisa — for at least a year.”
Alexey left the lawyer’s office looking utterly defeated. Marina refused to speak with him privately. Moreover, when she told her daughter that she was moving out and that Alisa would be living with her father, the girl took the news enthusiastically.
Under pressure from the circumstances, Alexey had to move into the apartment with his daughter. But living there was unbearable for him. Very quickly, he became the “bad” father who forbade Alisa everything. He also had to break up with his young girlfriend, who was not ready to share living space with Alexey’s daughter.
Marina, meanwhile, went to a sanatorium and turned off her phone. Her medical certificates allowed it.
When Marina returned, her daughter called her.
“Mom, I don’t want to live with Dad.”
“And I don’t want to live in a branch of hell. I haven’t sinned that much in my life.”
“We redid the renovation. Dad removed all the furniture and contacted your design studio — the one that made the original project.”
“And?” Marina froze.
“The builders are coming tomorrow. They’ll redo everything.”
“We’ll talk when the renovation is finished.”
“Mom!”
“I have a flight. I’m going to Lake Baikal to discover inner peace.”
“Mom…”
“There won’t be any signal there, sweetheart. If anything comes up, ask your father.”
Marina was pleased with herself. She had outplayed those who had tried to throw her off balance. The rest had done her good. She returned home calm as a boa constrictor, looking younger and fresher. Most importantly, the renovation at home was complete — exactly the one she had wanted.
Alexey no longer indulged Alisa, and Alisa herself realized that living in a branch of hell was not much fun, especially when that hell existed not only in the interior, but also in the soul.
Over time, the relationship between mother and daughter improved. Maybe Alisa grew up, or maybe she simply understood that self-expression did not have to mean mocking her mother. There were other, more peaceful ways — creativity, for example. The girl joined a theater group with her friends. There, she played all kinds of roles: angels, demons, and ordinary people. And the more she acted, the more clearly she understood that she needed to be herself.
Because all the other roles… yes, exactly.
All the other roles were already taken.