The door opened before I could make it to the hallway. On the threshold stood Tamara Pavlovna, my mother-in-law.
And behind her, like a shadow, hid a slender girl with the frightened eyes of a fawn.
“We’re here to see Dima,” my mother-in-law announced without a greeting as she walked into the apartment. She smelled of expensive perfume and the chill of a January morning.
The girl followed, shifting nervously from foot to foot in her simple boots.
“Dima isn’t home yet, he’s at work,” I answered, instinctively pulling my robe tighter.
“That’s fine, we’ll wait. We’re not going to stand out in the street.”
Tamara Pavlovna went straight into the living room, making a proprietorial gesture for her companion to sit on the couch.
She herself sat in the armchair opposite, folding her hands over her handbag. Her gaze was appraising, cold. It was as if she were taking inventory of my home. Of my life.
“Lena, meet Anya. She’s the daughter of an old friend of mine from the Oryol region.”
I nodded, still not understanding. A guest? Some distant relative?
“Anya will be living with us now. I’ve decided.”
The air in the room turned dense, viscous. I looked at my mother-in-law, then at this Anya, who seemed to want to evaporate right off our couch.
“In what sense—with us?”
“In the literal sense,” my mother-in-law leaned forward slightly. “Dima needs a proper wife. A homemaker. The mother of his future children. Not a part-time businesswoman.”
She said it as casually as if she were discussing buying new furniture. As if I, Dima’s actual wife, weren’t there at all.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” my voice sounded foreign, hoarse.
“What’s not to understand? Look at yourself. Your head is all career, meetings, projects. And at home? A void.
“My son comes home from work to an unwelcoming house that smells of paperwork, not dinner. He needs care. Anechka will take care of him. She’s a lovely girl, modest, well-bred. She cooks so well you’ll lick your fingers.”
The girl on the couch hunched her head into her shoulders; a deep blush flooded her cheeks. She was a tool in someone else’s hands and seemed terrified of her role.
“You can’t just bring another woman into our home… This is… this is madness.”
“I’m his mother; I know better what he needs!” snapped Tamara Pavlovna. “I gave him life, and I won’t let you ruin it. And you… you’re just a temporary misunderstanding. A mistake I’ll help him correct.”
She looked at me with such icy superiority that my knees went weak.
I had always tried to please her, to find common ground, to smooth over sharp corners. And this is where it led. They had come to evict me from my own life, like a servant who hadn’t lived up to expectations.
At that moment a key turned in the lock. Dima walked in.
He froze in the entryway, seeing the unexpected guests. His gaze slid over his mother, lingered on the frightened Anya, and then found me.
Everything must have been in my eyes—the absurdity, the pain, the humiliation of the last ten minutes.
Dima silently took off his jacket and hung it on the rack. He didn’t ask a single question. He understood without words.
Then he came into the room. He walked past the armchair where his mother sat. Past the couch where the girl had curled up.
He came up to me, stopped right in front of me, and, looking me in the eyes, wrapped his arms firmly and confidently around my shoulders.
“Dima, what does this mean?” My mother-in-law’s voice cut through the tense silence. There was no question in it—only an order to obey at once.
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t let go of me.
“It means, Mom, that you’ve come into my home. And this is my wife, Lena.”
His voice was calm, but there was steel in it. Tamara Pavlovna rose slowly from the armchair, and I realized the battle was only beginning.
“I can see she’s your wife! That’s exactly why I’m here! I came to save you! This woman is dragging you down! And Anechka—” she waved a hand at the couch, “Anechka is a wonderful, modest girl. She’ll be a real support to you!”
“Mom, I don’t need saving. And I don’t need a new wife either,” Dima finally stepped back, but immediately took my hand, weaving our fingers together. “I’m asking you to take Anya and leave.”
“Leave?” Tamara Pavlovna let out a short, angry laugh. “You don’t understand anything. I’ve already arranged it with her parents!
“They’re a respectable family, they trust me! The girl has nowhere to go; they’re sure you’ll take care of her! Do you want to disgrace me? Disgrace this meek girl?”
Anya lifted tearful eyes to Dima.
She whispered something, but the words were indistinct. The manipulation was crude, but it hit the mark.
My mother-in-law was casting Dima as a monster who would toss an innocent creature out onto the street.
“We can call her a taxi. Send her to a hotel. I’ll pay,” I tried to interject, but my voice betrayed me and shook.
“You be quiet!” my mother-in-law barked at me. “You don’t exist here anymore! No one cares about your opinion! This is a conversation between mother and son!”
Dima squeezed my hand harder.
“Don’t you dare speak to my wife like that.”
“Ah, your wife!” she drawled. “For how long, I wonder? I’ll get my way anyway. You’ll come to your senses, but it will be too late.”
She sank back into the armchair, demonstratively showing she wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m staying here. And Anechka is staying. You need time to think, son. Morning is wiser than evening. We’ll spend the night in the guest room.”
It was a tactical move. She was locking us into this unbearable situation, turning our home into a battlefield.
Call the police? Make a scandal for the entire building? That was exactly what she wanted, so she could later tell everyone what a hysterical viper her son had warmed at his breast.
Dima looked at me. There was such weariness in his eyes, as if he were carrying the whole world on his shoulders. He was trapped, and I with him.
“All right,” he said quietly, and my insides dropped. “Stay. But only for one night.”
A barely perceptible victorious smile touched Tamara Pavlovna’s lips.
I realized this wasn’t a compromise. It was a declaration of war. And that night our home was going to become hell.
The night was long. We locked ourselves in the bedroom. Dima sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
“Why did you agree?” I whispered.
“Because I know her,” he answered dully, without lifting his head. “If I threw her out now, she’d put on such a show the neighbors would call not the police but the orderlies. She’d lie down by the door. She’d call the entire family and tell them we threw her and the ‘poor orphan’ out into the cold. That would be her victory. This way… this way I have until morning.”
He raised his eyes to me.
“Len, I don’t know what she’s told this girl and her parents. But I can’t just toss her into the street at eleven at night.
“I’ll resolve it in the morning. Civilly. And as for my mother… I’ll talk to her later.”
He was saying all the right things, but I could see how hard it was for him. He had spent his whole life trying to be a good son, and today that burden had become unbearable.
In the morning I went to the kitchen for some water. And froze.
Tamara Pavlovna was already running the place. She had taken our wedding china—the set we saved for special occasions—out of the cupboard and was setting it on the table. Anya was bustling beside her, slicing bread.
“Good morning, Lenochka,” my mother-in-law smiled at me so sweetly it made my teeth ache. “We’re making breakfast. Anechka is such a clever girl; she can do everything. Not like some people.”
She said it looking me straight in the eye. It wasn’t a hint anymore; it was a direct insult.
But that was only the beginning.
When I returned to the living room, I saw the final act of the play.
On the coffee table where our wedding photo had always stood, there was now some cheap little vase. And our photo… Our photo was in Tamara Pavlovna’s hands.
“Here, Anechka, we’ll take this away,” she said to the girl, handing her our frame. “Put it on the floor by the wall for now. We’ll throw it out later. Why rake up the past? We need to build a new future.”
Anya, pale as a sheet, took the photo with trembling hands. She didn’t want to do it—it was clear from her frightened eyes—but she was afraid to contradict her future mother-in-law.
And at that moment Dima walked into the room.
He was already dressed for work. He saw everything: his mother with a triumphant expression, the terrified Anya holding his wedding in her hands, and me, frozen in the doorway.
Something changed in Dima’s face. The calm fell away from him like a mask. Weariness was replaced by a cold, measured fury.
He didn’t raise his voice. He walked over to Anya slowly, almost unnaturally calmly.
“Put it down,” he said so quietly that the girl flinched.
She hurriedly set the photo on the floor.
Then Dima turned to his mother. He looked at her for a long time, studying her. As if seeing her for the first time.
“Mom.”
“What is it, son?” she was still smiling, sure of her power. “Have you finally realized I’m right?”
He came over to me, took my hand again, and led me to stand before his mother. We stood together, the two of us.
“Mom, your whole life you taught me to be a man. To stand by my word, to protect my family.”
He paused, and his voice turned as hard as granite.
“So know this. I might divorce Lena. I might even fall in love with someone else.
“But I will never—do you hear me? never—be with the one you bring into my home. Because my choice is mine.
“And your son died the day you decided you could live his life for him.”
He pronounced it clearly, distinctly. Every word was a slap across Tamara Pavlovna’s face.
Her smile slid off, replaced by bewilderment and then by horror. She stared at her son, total incomprehension in her eyes. She had lost. Not to me. To her son.
Her face turned ashen. She looked at Dima as if he were speaking some unfamiliar, barbaric language.
All her commanding posture deflated, her shoulders slumped. Suddenly she was just an elderly, defeated woman.
“How… how can you?” she whispered. It was no longer an order or a manipulation. Just a bewildered murmur. “I only wanted what was best…”
“Your ‘best’ is destroying my life,” Dima replied calmly. He walked to the door and flung it wide open. “Please leave.”
Anya was the first to recover. She shot off the couch, grabbed her little purse, and without looking at anyone mumbled:
“I’m sorry… I didn’t want this… Tamara Pavlovna said you were divorced… that you were waiting for me… I’m sorry…”
She almost ran out the door, and all I felt for her was pity. A pawn in someone else’s game, just swept from the board.
Tamara Pavlovna was left alone. She rose slowly, bracing herself on the arm of the chair. Her movements were stiff, elderly.
She walked up to her son and stopped in the doorway.
“You’ll regret this,” she said hoarsely, but there was no threat in her voice, only bitterness. “You’ll crawl back to me yet.”
Dima didn’t answer. He just looked at her, and that calm, adult gaze was more frightening than any quarrel.
And then she couldn’t hold it in. Her face twisted, and big, angry tears rolled down her cheeks. She turned away to hide them and hurried—almost ran—down the hall toward the elevator.
Dima closed the door. The lock clicked.
He turned to me, came over, picked our photo up off the floor, carefully brushed away imaginary dust, and set it back in its place.
Then he hugged me. Not like yesterday—protecting me. Differently. Firmly, reliably, the way an equal embraces an equal.
“Forgive me,” he said into my hair. “I’m sorry this happened at all. I should have stopped her much earlier. Years ago.”
Silently, I pressed myself to him. I didn’t need an apology. At that moment I realized that my main problem hadn’t been my mother-in-law. The problem was the obedient boy who lived inside my husband.
And today that boy died. In his place was born a man who chooses his own life. And his own woman.
We didn’t say anything more. Words weren’t needed. We just stood in the middle of our living room, in our home, which had become ours again. And it wasn’t just the end of a war. It was the beginning of a real peace.
Two months passed. Two months of deafening, unfamiliar freedom. The phone no longer rang off the hook with calls from Tamara Pavlovna. No one showed up unannounced to inspect our refrigerator.
Dima and I had changed. He became calmer, more confident. As if he had shrugged off an invisible but heavy burden he’d carried all his life.
As for me, I stopped tiptoeing around my own home, afraid of doing something “wrong.” We got to know each other again, talked for hours, like at the very beginning of our relationship.
One evening Dima came home from work and handed me two tickets.
“Remember how you wanted to go to Italy? To that little town on the coast?”
I looked at the tickets, and tears welled up. We had dreamed about it for so long, but there had always been reasons to postpone: his mother needed help at the dacha, it was her jubilee, or simply “not the right time.”
“And… your mother?” slipped out. An old habit.
Dima smiled.
“My mother is an adult. She’ll manage. And our family is you and me. And our family needs a vacation.”
He said it so simply, but to me it sounded like the most important declaration of independence.
The day before we left, the phone rang. An unknown number. I picked up.
“Lenochka? It’s Aunt Galya,” came the insinuating, sympathetic voice of Tamara Pavlovna’s cousin. “It’s about Tamara… She’s doing very poorly. Her heart… she’s bedridden, keeps calling for Dima… Maybe you could visit? Before your trip…”
A cold, sticky web of guilt crept down my back. An old trick. A classic. Before, I would’ve been dashing around the apartment, begging Dima to drop everything and go to his mother.
I silently handed the phone to Dima. He listened, and his face didn’t change.
“Hello, Aunt Galya. Tell Mom I wish her a speedy recovery.
“And also tell her she has two paths: either she accepts my choice and my wife, and then she’ll have a son. Or she keeps playing her games, and then she’ll be alone.
“There’s no third option.”
He hung up.
A pause followed. I looked at him, my heart brimming with tenderness and pride.
“You were… cruel,” I said softly.
“No,” he shook his head and hugged me. “I was honest. With her. And with myself. Enough of half-measures.”
The next day we flew out. We wandered through narrow streets, ate pasta by the sea, and laughed a lot.