“What is this? A souvenir from the Soviet past?” Valeria asked irritably as she stepped over the threshold after a hard day at work. “Where did you drag this from? A dumpster? I bet it’s already crawling with cockroaches,” she added, critically eyeing the old mattress in the hallway.
Sasha came out to meet her and blushed slightly — he immediately understood she meant the mattress.
“That’s mom’s. She bought a new one, so I brought this one,” the man tried to explain.
“And why do we need it? She bought a new one — throw the old one away!” Valeria waved her hand angrily. “It reeks like grandma’s closet! It’s all sagging! Did you even sleep on it?”
“Lera, wait…”
“Get rid of it immediately!” she threatened, hands on her hips. “Or I’ll throw it off the balcony myself! Don’t think I’m joking!”
Alexander silently shrugged.
“Where? To the balcony?”
“Absolutely not!” his wife snapped, carefully hanging up her jacket. “Take it wherever you want, but get it out of here!”
“I can keep it at the dacha for a few days,” he suggested.
“It can’t stay here for a minute longer!” Valeria declared firmly. “You hear me?”
Realizing the situation was serious, Alexander started getting dressed. He decided to temporarily move the mattress to the garage.
Valeria was fuming inside: “Does Sasha’s mom really think our apartment is a dump for useless junk?”
Her relationship with her mother-in-law was neutral: no hostility, no closeness. But Valeria had never before noticed Irina Ivanovna’s stinginess or desire to get rid of old things. So the mattress story caught her off guard.
Alexander struggled and resisted while maneuvering the bulky item until he finally dragged it to the landing. He decided to leave it there until the weekend.
But half an hour later, the doorbell rang. It was a neighbor, frowning unhappily.
“Is that your mattress on the stairs?” she began accusingly. “It’s shedding and smells so bad you can’t breathe. Remove it immediately!”
Valeria barely suppressed a laugh, looking at her disappointed husband’s face. He had to put on his jacket again and carry the mattress down five flights.
He returned home irritated and angry.
“Why do you always make me quarrel with her?” he grumbled, taking off his shoes. “The neighbor is psyching out for no reason.”
“There’s always a reason,” Valeria retorted. “I’m scared just by the fact your mother slept on that… rag. How can anyone keep something like that?”
Throughout their life together, Valeria had only been to her mother-in-law’s house a few times, and it was always clean and even smelled nice. The old mattress was a complete surprise to her.
Alexander just silently went to another room, ignoring her words.
By evening, the phone rang. It was the mother-in-law — she said she was passing by and decided to drop in for a cup of tea.
“Of course, come in,” Valeria replied, deciding to use the moment to bring up the mattress issue.
Half an hour later, Irina Ivanovna stood at the doorstep, beaming a friendly smile and holding a cake in a pretty box.
“Oh, there’s a strange smell here,” the woman grimaced as she started to take off her shoes.
“Don’t you recognize it?” Valeria smirked dryly. “Looks like it’s familiar to you.”
“No? Then what is that smell?” Irina Ivanovna raised her eyebrows in surprise and started sniffing her armpits. “Could it be perfume? Seems not too strong…”
“Not you,” Valeria smiled gently. “It’s just the smell of your mattress still lingering in the apartment.”
“My mattress?” the mother-in-law blinked in astonishment. “What nonsense? I didn’t give it to you!”
The woman spread her hands in confusion, and Valeria felt a moment of awkwardness — maybe she had mixed something up?
“I came home from work, and there’s an old mattress in the hallway. It smells so bad it tickles your nose. Sasha said it was yours,” the daughter-in-law explained.
“Mine? I threw my mattress out a month ago! I bought an orthopedic one and immediately took the old one to the container near the garage. So it couldn’t possibly be here!”
Valeria started to get nervous, sensing the situation was getting strange. She shouted firmly into the apartment:
“Sasha! Come here!”
A few seconds later, her husband appeared at the door. Seeing his mother, he visibly wilted.
“Why are you home?” he blurted out, almost scared.
“I came to visit you, but I just found out you brought my mattress here? What is this about?” Irina Ivanovna asked harshly, hands on her hips.
Sasha froze like a schoolboy caught in a misdeed. His eyes flicked from his mother to his wife, where blame was already forming.
“Mom, I just…” he started but didn’t finish.
“Sasha!” his mother interrupted, voice trembling with indignation. “Why are you slandering me? What do you mean ‘mom’s’ mattress? I personally took it out the day they delivered the new one and put it right into the trash container by the garage. So if you found it, it was only there!” Her voice rang like glass.
She sharply pointed toward the hallway as if the mattress were still there.
The apartment was enveloped in tense silence. Valeria slowly got up from the couch. Everything was falling into place: his strange behavior, stubbornness, anger at the neighbor… and most importantly — the lie.
“So, it’s not your mattress?” she asked, feeling irritation boiling inside.
“Of course not!” Irina Ivanovna snapped.
“Then explain to me, Sasha, why you lied that it was mom’s? And why did you want to keep it here at least for a couple of days?”
Alexander turned pale. He rubbed his chin and lowered his gaze.
“Okay… I just found it. Near the garage, in the container. I thought maybe it would be useful at the dacha. For guests or something. Saving money is important. You yourself said we were planning to buy a mattress soon…”
“You took a mattress from the dump?” Valeria let out a bitter laugh. “Seriously? And thought it was normal? That it smells good? That the smell would just go away?”
Her voice grew colder.
Irina Ivanovna shook her head, smirking ironically:
“Congratulations, son. Because of some rag, you lied to your wife, slandered your own mother, quarreled with a neighbor, and dragged that filth up and down the stairs.”
Sasha was silent. It was painful to look at him — he seemed small and pathetic.
Valeria took a deep breath. It seemed even the smell of the long-gone mattress still hung in the air.
“Listen, Sasha, do whatever you want,” she said quietly. “Just don’t let that mattress come to my dacha or my home again. Got it?”
She turned to her mother-in-law, her face brightening a little.
“Irina Ivanovna, let’s go to the kitchen. We have tea and cake. Let’s forget this nonsense.”
The elderly woman nodded contentedly and followed her daughter-in-law. Alexander, hanging his head, got dressed again and headed to the garage — to carry the mattress back where it should never have been taken from.