When I heard Maxim say that my family heirloom should be sold to satisfy his mother’s whims, something inside me snapped. Five years of marriage, patience, and compromise turned to ashes within minutes. But let me start from the beginning.
It all began on that disastrous evening when we were getting ready to go to a restaurant. Maxim came home from work looking darker than a storm cloud.
“Valentina Petrovna had something to say about your outfit, Lada,” he announced without even greeting me. “She didn’t like it.”
“And why should her opinion matter to you?” I asked, unable to hide the challenge in my voice.
Maxim immediately began making excuses.
“I don’t understand women’s fashion. It looks fine to me.”
My relationship with my husband had always been inseparable from endless conflicts with his mother. Valentina Petrovna was the embodiment of arrogance, capriciousness, and control. In her eyes, I had never been worthy of her beloved, exceptional Maxim. I doubt any woman could have earned her approval, but since there was no other candidate to criticize, all her complaints were directed at me.
After the wedding, Maxim and I rented a separate apartment. When we first met, he was still living with his mother, but I firmly stated that sharing a home with her was out of the question. Eventually, he agreed that we should rent our own place.
My career as a sales manager was thriving. I had a steady stream of clients and earned a respectable income. Maxim, meanwhile, had chosen education as his profession. He taught karate to young children at a municipal sports center. The salary was modest, but he genuinely loved his work, and I never reproached him for the small amounts printed on his pay slips.
Incidentally, it was Valentina Petrovna who had helped her son get that job. She had worked as a teacher her entire life and took enormous pride in it. In her mind, she belonged to the cultural elite, almost to the upper class.
Both mother and son could recite passages from ancient Greek authors in classical translations, quote famous poets and novelists, and speak several foreign languages. They read constantly and handled their cutlery with the refined elegance of aristocrats.
I did not share their snobbery.
I had grown up in a remote settlement surrounded by taiga, yet I had managed to move to a large city, graduate from university with honors, and build a career that paid three times more than my husband’s job. I could not recite the classics from memory, and I had not mastered three foreign languages like Maxim and his mother, but did that really make me inferior?
I sincerely cared for my husband. I washed and repaired his sports uniforms, took care of his clothes, and cooked a wide variety of meals. Even my cooking, however, became another source of criticism from Valentina Petrovna.
“You understand absolutely nothing about healthy eating, Lada!” she once lectured me. “What are these rustic pies with herbs and eggs? And fried in vegetable oil, no less! Food should be fried only in butter, though baking would be even better. And of all people, you certainly shouldn’t be indulging in flour-based foods.”
The lecture came from a woman who weighed more than ninety kilograms, while I weighed sixty at a height of one hundred seventy centimeters.
Usually, I only smiled inwardly and kept silent. There was no point trying to change or educate an older person. She was who she was.
Fortunately, Valentina Petrovna did not visit us very often, but every appearance came with a compulsory lesson on housekeeping, appearance, or proper behavior.
“A woman must always remain a woman! Just look at how you’ve let yourself go!” she scolded me one day when I came out of the bedroom with tangled hair and a red nose.
I had been sick for four days and naturally looked terrible. Yet judging by Valentina Petrovna’s reaction, I should have welcomed her in an evening gown, with perfect hair, carrying bread and salt on an embroidered towel.
“What kind of petty middle-class habit is this—mending socks?” she complained another time. “You earn enough money to buy Maxim new ones.”
“He wears them out quickly, and I don’t see anything shameful about sewing up a small hole in the heel,” I replied.
“You may have changed where you live, but your village nature remains! Nobody has heard of the university you attended, nobody understands what kind of job you do, and in general…” She shook her head dramatically. “I have no idea what my son ever saw in you. Such a talented young man, a born mentor, with such an excellent education.”
I would take a deep breath and make no effort to convince her of the quality of my education, the importance of my profession, or my abilities as a homemaker.
My strategy of patience worked to some extent. Valentina Petrovna and I rarely had open arguments. However, that did not lessen the bitterness accumulating inside me. Besides, Maxim usually sided with his mother, and sometimes I felt that I would always remain a secondary figure in his life.
Maxim was Valentina Petrovna’s only child. His father had refused to marry her, which had been considered a disgrace at the time. Raising a child alone had been extremely difficult, especially because Maxim had been born with numerous health problems.
Valentina Petrovna had spent most of her youth in hospitals, sitting beside her son’s bed and going without sleep. As a result, the bond between them was extraordinarily strong. There was very little I could do to shift even part of my husband’s attention away from his mother.
Valentina Petrovna lived in a spacious house in a private residential district. Her father had once been a well-known scientist and had earned an impressive income even during the Soviet era.
After his death, and later the death of her mother, Valentina Petrovna inherited several apartments and two country houses. As the only heir, she sold everything and bought herself a magnificent mansion.
The problem was that she now lived on a teacher’s pension and the interest from several modest bank deposits. She could afford to live in the mansion, but she could not afford the extensive renovations she desperately wanted.
Still, she was determined to remodel it.
“We really should help Mother with the renovation,” Maxim said one day, carefully introducing the subject.
“Maxim, we’re planning to take out a mortgage and should already be thinking about children,” I replied. “If your mother can’t afford to maintain that mansion, she should move somewhere smaller. That would solve everything. She’s lonely in that enormous house, has nothing to do, and spends her time interfering in our lives.”
“Of course, that would be logical,” he admitted. “But she’s emotionally attached to the house. And you have that country property…”
“My country house was inherited from my grandfather. There is nothing to discuss,” I interrupted sharply.
I did indeed own a country house, although the building was quite old. It stood in a gardening cooperative and had belonged to my grandfather, who had moved there after my grandmother died.
When he was younger, my grandfather had been exceptionally skilled with his hands and had created beautiful wood carvings. Even after so many years, the spacious two-story house remained strong, and its carved decorations were still magnificent.
The fruit trees and berry bushes planted by my grandmother had long since grown wild. Even so, I was in no hurry to part with the property. Sometimes I rented the land to neighbors, who grew vegetables and whatever else they wanted. In return, they prevented the garden from becoming completely abandoned.
The fact that Maxim had suddenly remembered the property disturbed me deeply.
Did he seriously believe I would sell the place that held the memory of my grandfather?
I had spent nearly every childhood summer there, resting and helping my grandparents. It was a place of strength, happiness, and precious memories of relatives who were no longer alive.
“Are you suggesting that I sell it?” I asked Maxim over dinner.
Avoiding my eyes, he shrugged.
“Well, the money would probably cover the renovation of Mother’s hallway and bedroom. It wouldn’t be enough for much more, of course.”
“I’ll say it again. She should move into an apartment instead of standing at our door with her hand out.”
The subject appeared to be settled, and for a while Maxim did not mention it again.
At the same time, work became extremely demanding. I rushed from one task to another, buried under paperwork and endless calls from clients. Our company sold stationery supplies, and August was always chaotic because everyone was preparing for the new school year.
Clients sometimes called me late at night, which greatly irritated my husband.
“It’s already half past eleven!”
“Maxim, our head office is in Moscow. You know that,” I reminded him. “Don’t be angry. At least I’ll receive a good bonus in September for all this effort.”
He would grumble unhappily and go to bed.
I became so exhausted that I decided to take two weeks of unpaid leave in October. The year had been unusually stressful, and September promised to be almost as busy as August.
At the end of summer, Maxim and I planned to spend a weekend alone in the forest. Unfortunately, an unpleasant surprise awaited me.
On Friday evening, Valentina Petrovna arrived at our apartment and began exchanging meaningful glances with her son.
“Lada, Mother and I have decided that we’ll use the money from selling your property to renovate her house,” Maxim announced.
His mother looked at him with warm approval.
“I have already explained to my husband that I’m not selling anything,” I said.
“Oh, Lada, that old country house is just standing there unused,” Valentina Petrovna replied. “Why are you being so stubborn with all this sentimental nonsense about your grandfather? You have photographs of him. The property itself is nothing but dead weight. Selling it would be the most practical and profitable decision. My house has needed repairs for years.”
“The bedroom wallpaper needs replacing, and the entire kitchen must be redone,” Maxim added. “Your old property would cover exactly…”
“My property belongs only to me,” I interrupted. “I have no intention of selling it to satisfy your desire to decorate your palace, Valentina Petrovna. I already told your son, and now I’m telling you. Move somewhere where renovations don’t cost a fortune.”
“Maxim, are you hearing how this woman speaks to me?” my mother-in-law cried, planting her hands on her hips and glaring furiously. “She hasn’t even given you children, yet she already thinks she can establish her own rules! A wife must respect her husband, and she should respect his mother even more!”
“I deserve respect too,” I replied. “I am the one in charge of this apartment, and I pay the rent because your precious son earns considerably less than I do. Now the two of you are trying to take away the property I inherited. That is not going to happen.”
“Mother is absolutely right, Lada,” Maxim said. “Since you insist on being stubborn, make your choice right now. Either you sell that useless shack you haven’t needed for years, or I leave you.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
Had I really been married to this man for almost five years?
He was nothing but a spoiled mother’s boy.
How dare he demand that I sell my inheritance to finance renovations in his mother’s house? She had humiliated me from the very beginning of our marriage. I did not even want her in my home, yet now she had come to pressure me into selling my property, with Maxim standing firmly beside her.
I looked at my husband as though he were a complete stranger.
Have a child with him? Take out a mortgage together?
Thank goodness his mask had fallen before we moved our family to a much more complicated stage. With a baby or a joint loan, everything would have been far more difficult.
“Pack your things, darling. Take your mother and get out of here, both of you!” I exploded.
Maxim tried to calm me down, while his mother showered me with insults and abuse. I threatened to call the police, and my practically former relatives disappeared as though blown away by the wind.
I was left alone.
An hour later, Maxim sent me a message.
“When can I collect the rest of my things?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I replied.
I woke early the next day and went to the forest. After all, Maxim and I had planned to spend the weekend there together. An upcoming divorce was no reason to abandon my plans or deprive myself of small pleasures.
When I returned home, I could hardly believe my eyes.
First, it was obvious that Maxim had come with his mother. Valentina Petrovna had dropped a button that had come off a cardigan I had given her three years earlier.
They had taken everything.
Even the beautiful blue cups Valentina Petrovna had presented to me for my birthday during the first year of my marriage to Maxim were gone. They took the mended socks, my sewing box with threads and scissors, part of the dishes, and even the salt.
The last detail made me laugh.
I imagined my mother-in-law carefully pouring half a packet of cheap salt into a little bag and packing the “valuable treasure” with the rest of Maxim’s belongings.
Their pettiness disgusted me, of course. At the same time, I was grateful that my relationship with Maxim had ended exactly this way. Most importantly, I would never have to see his mother again.
When the hectic period at work finally ended, I took my planned two-week vacation in October and went to my grandfather’s country house.
The carved wooden building looked like something from a fairy tale. October was unexpectedly warm that year, and golden leaves covered the paths and trails.
I wandered through the forest and slept in my grandfather’s house, which still held countless memories. One afternoon, I visited Aunt Klava, an elderly neighbor who had once been close friends with my grandmother. We drank tea and talked from the heart until late in the evening.
Valentina Petrovna called me several times, but I never answered.
Maxim did not call even once.
I did not regret it.
Everything had ended exactly as it needed to end.
Had I not separated from Maxim then, I would never have met Igor.
The man who later became my husband turned out to be a wonderful person. I was fortunate with my new mother-in-law as well. She considered me a gift to her son rather than an unworthy intruder in his life.
Before long, Igor and I had a beautiful little boy named Semyon.
I forgot all about Maxim and Valentina Petrovna. I was happy with my new husband and adored our young son.
People are right when they say that sometimes misfortune is simply happiness arriving in disguise.