— Mom, what’s wrong?
Nikita walked into the kitchen, drawn by a sharp, medicinal smell that overpowered even the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Marina Gennadyevna sat at the table, deliberately slowly dripping a dark liquid from a bottle into a faceted glass. Corvalol. Her battle standard, her shield, her weapon. She didn’t look at her son, but everything about her—from her mournfully pursed lips to her tense shoulders—screamed of universal suffering.
“I didn’t sleep all night,” she complained at last, lifting her eyes to him. Her gaze, usually keen and piercing, was now veiled with the misty film of martyrdom. She took a small sip and winced as if she were swallowing poison.
“Why?”
“Son, make your wife moan less at night! I didn’t move in with you to listen to such indecency! My heart is weak—I need peace!”
Nikita froze halfway to the coffeepot. Blood rushed hot and thick to his face, scorching his ears and neck. He felt naked, caught off guard. His mother’s words, spoken in an ostentatiously quiet, suffering tone, struck like a sniper’s bullet. They were meant not to provoke anger but shame—sticky, paralyzing shame about what was most personal, most intimate in his life and was now being publicly discussed at the breakfast table. He wanted to say something, to object, but his mouth went dry.
At that very moment Alla entered the kitchen as if woven from the morning light. She wore a light silk robe, her hair carelessly gathered at the back of her head, and a shadow of a content, relaxed smile played on her lips. She looked as if she had just woken up in paradise, and that look was the fiercest dissonance with the mourning atmosphere his mother had so diligently created.
Seeing her, Marina Gennadyevna straightened, her lips tightening into a thin, spiteful line.
“Good morning, Alya. Slept well, I suppose?” The venom in her voice seemed concentrated enough to burn through the tabletop.
Alla paused for a moment; her gaze slid over the Corvalol bottle, over her mother-in-law’s suffering face, over her husband, red as a boiled crawfish. She assessed the disposition of forces in a split second. No embarrassment or anger crossed her face. Instead, her smile only widened, turning from relaxed into dazzling and defiant.
“A most excellent morning to you, Marina Gennadyevna!” she sang. “And the same to you.”
She went up to Nikita, ran her hand over his tense back, and kissed him lightly on the temple. Then she turned to her mother-in-law, looking her straight in the eye.
“Nikit, darling, you didn’t forget we’re going today to pick out new lace lingerie for me, did you? I saw a stunning set yesterday. I think we’ll get something red. To make the nights even brighter.”
She playfully winked at her petrified husband, mischief sparkling in her eyes. It was a return shot—precise and merciless. She didn’t justify herself. She didn’t defend herself. She accepted the challenge thrown at her and raised the stakes to the heavens, turning the accusation of “indecency” into the announcement of even more unabashed pleasure to come. She left Nikita in complete stupefaction, mouth open and heart pounding, and left his mother, flushed with impotent rage, alone with her useless Corvalol and the utter failure of her morning assault.
The frontal attack with Corvalol had failed, but Marina Gennadyevna wasn’t one to retreat. She was a strategist, and the battlefield—her son’s apartment—offered endless tactical possibilities. She changed tactics from a cavalry charge to a measured guerrilla war. The pretext was “helping around the house.” Like a caring shadow, she slipped through the rooms while the young couple were at work, dusting where there was no dust and rearranging perfectly placed vases. Her target was the bedroom. The holy of holies, the enemy’s citadel.
And she waited for her moment. One day, coming back from the store, Alla carelessly left a branded paper bag with the logo of an expensive lingerie boutique on the dresser. From the hallway, Marina spotted it, and her heart beat with a predatory, triumphant rhythm. Waiting until Alla went to shower, she slipped into the room. Her fingers, accustomed to wool socks and laundry soap, unfolded the crinkling wrapping paper with disgusted curiosity. Out came that very red set. Bright scarlet, almost screaming silk; the finest black lace—it wasn’t just lingerie. It was a manifesto, a challenge, the very weapon her daughter-in-law had so brazenly struck her with days earlier. Marina didn’t look at it as an article of clothing but as the face of an enemy. And she struck.
That evening, when Nikita and Alla came home, they were met by the biting smell of bleach and demonstrative cleanliness. In the center of the kitchen, hanging over a chair like the flag of a conquered state, was… something. A gray-brown rag marred by ugly streaks, in which the outline of that scarlet set could barely be discerned. The lace had shriveled and yellowed; the silk had faded and looked stiff. Next to it, for contrast, hung an old checkered dishcloth. The tableau spoke louder than any words.
“Mom, what’s this?” Nikita asked, the first to break the silence. There was no anger in his voice, only bewildered confusion.
“Oh, Nikitushka, I was tidying up, decided to wash everything,” fussed Marina Gennadyevna, wiping perfectly dry hands on her apron. Her face portrayed pure innocence. “Found it in the laundry basket, so I tossed it in with the towels. Must’ve bled a lot. Chinese, I suppose—the quality these days is no good.”
Nikita looked at Alla. He expected her to explode, to start yelling, and that he’d have to, as always, dash between two fires, trying to calm everyone down. But Alla was silent. She wasn’t looking at the ruined item—she was looking straight at her mother-in-law. Her gaze was calm, cold, and so piercing that Marina involuntarily shivered.
“Mom, come on…” Nikita began conciliatorily. “That’s silk, an expensive thing. You have to wash it separately, by hand…”
Without a word, Alla slowly walked up to the chair. She didn’t examine the pitiful remains of her purchase. She picked up the ruined set with two fingers, as if touching something vile, walked past her stunned husband and mother-in-law to the trash bin, opened the lid, and, without looking, dropped the rag inside. The metal lid slammed shut with a dull, final sound.
She turned. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile on her lips.
“It’s all right, Nikita. We’ll buy a new one. An even better one. Apparently, some people take huge pleasure not in wearing beautiful things but in touching other people’s underwear—even if that means rummaging in a dirty laundry basket.”
The mask of the innocent busybody fell from Marina’s face in an instant. Her eyes on Alla were full of pure, undiluted hatred. She had lost this round, too. And she understood that this war would be waged to total annihilation.
The lost battle with the ruined lingerie didn’t break Marina; it only convinced her that all means were fair in this war. Alla was not just a daughter-in-law—she was an enemy who didn’t follow rules, didn’t feel shame, and wasn’t afraid of open confrontation. Fighting such an opponent alone was pointless. Marina realized she needed heavy artillery. And she summoned it.
The heavy artillery was her husband, Gennady Arkadyevich, Nikita’s father. A solid, heavyset man with a face fixed in an expression of perpetual rightness. He rarely interfered in family matters, preferring the role of a silent patriarch whose opinion was law by default. He arrived on Sunday, and a “family dinner” was arranged. This was not an invitation; it was a summons to a tribunal. The special-occasion china was set out, and in the center stood Marina’s signature dish—duck baked with apples. The aroma of celebration mixed with the oppressive sense of a trap.
Nikita sat between his father and mother, his head drawn into his shoulders. With unnatural diligence he cut his portion of duck into microscopic pieces, as if his life depended on it. He didn’t look up, feeling like the accused even though no charges had yet been voiced. Alla sat opposite, straight-backed and calm. She ate slowly, with regal dignity, as if she were not at a trial but at a reception at an embassy.
“Nice evening,” rumbled Gennady Arkadyevich after dabbing his lips with a napkin. His low, booming voice filled the kitchen, making the air vibrate. “The family gathered—that’s what matters. A family’s strength, Alla, rests on respect. Respect for elders, respect for tradition. And on feminine modesty.”
He paused, letting the words sink in. Marina nodded approvingly, looking at her daughter-in-law with triumph. This was it. You can’t argue with fatherly authority.
“A woman is the keeper of the hearth,” Gennady went on, staring somewhere above Alla’s head. “Her behavior, her manners—they’re the family’s face. And when there is no quiet and decorum in the home, when nights turn into… ahem… a circus, that means the hearth has cracked. That must not be allowed. A man needs peace to work, to be the head. Not all this…” He waved his heavy hand vaguely.
Nikita shrank even more, wishing he could sink through the floor. He braced for an explosion, for a cutting retort from Alla. But she finished chewing a piece of apple, carefully set down her fork and knife, lifted her clear, limpid eyes to her father-in-law, and smiled slightly.
“You are absolutely right, Gennady Arkadyevich. Family is sacred. And I’m very glad you brought up such an important topic.”
Marina and her husband exchanged glances. They hadn’t expected such compliance. It seemed the plan was working.
“You speak of passion, of nights,” Alla continued in a soft, insinuating voice with not a hint of sarcasm. “That’s precisely the spark that keeps a family alive, rather than just a union of two people under one roof. I’ve always wondered how people of your generation—after so many years together—manage to keep that passion. You must know some secret for carrying that fire through the decades, so it doesn’t go out—so the nights stay bright and the feelings sharp. That’s true respect for each other, isn’t it?”
Silence fell over the kitchen. But it wasn’t the oppressive silence Nikita’s parents had been aiming for. It was a deafening, paralyzing awkwardness. Alla hadn’t argued. She hadn’t been rude. She took their hypocritical moral lecture and, with an innocent air, turned it back on them, asking a direct, devastatingly personal question about their own intimate life. Five minutes earlier, Gennady had been a fearsome judge; now he sat, face dark red and mouth open, not knowing what to say. Marina looked at her daughter-in-law as if she had turned into a snake before her eyes. They’d wanted to stage a public flogging; instead, they themselves were stripped naked in the middle of their own kitchen. The only sound was the gentle clink of Alla’s fork on porcelain as she resumed her meal.
Dinner didn’t end in scandal. It ended in emptiness. Gennady, whose patriarchal grandeur had been punctured and deflated by one innocent question, retreated to the living room and the television, taking the last shreds of his dignity with him. Three people remained in the kitchen. Dirty dishes, cooling duck, and tension as thick as grease. The masks were off. Theatrical Corvalol scenes, helpful laundry, edifying speeches—none of it had been more than a prelude. Now the real game was beginning—without rules and without anesthesia.
Marina silently gathered the plates. Her movements were sharp and precise. She didn’t look at her son, but every fiber of her being was directed at him. Nikita sat staring at his half-eaten duck, feeling as if the air around him had thickened into concrete, making it impossible to breathe. He waited.
“Well then, son,” she said at last. Her voice was even, without a drop of suffering—cold as steel. She set the stack of plates in the sink and turned, leaning on the counter. “I think it’s time you decided. This house will have either order—or her.”
It wasn’t an ultimatum. It was a verdict. She didn’t shout, didn’t reproach. She merely stated a fact, like a doctor announcing injuries incompatible with life. She placed him before a choice that wasn’t really a choice but an act of capitulation. Either he accepted her rules, her world order with her at the center of the universe and everyone else revolving on a prescribed orbit, or he chose chaos, shame, and debauchery—embodied by his wife.
Nikita lifted his eyes to her. There was pleading in them. He wanted her to stop, wanted everything to return to a time when he could simply live without choosing every second between his mother and his wife. But in her gaze he saw only a firm, unbending will. She would not back down.
And he did what all weak people do. He chose the path of least resistance. He got up and went not to his mother to put her in her place, but to Alla, who stood by the hallway window, looking at the city’s night lights. He approached her from behind, pathetic in his attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.
“Alla, listen…” he began in a wheedling, quiet voice. “Mom… she’s an elderly person. She got carried away. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that to Dad? Maybe you could just… apologize? You know, for appearances. Just so there’s peace at home. Mom’s living with us now, and she really doesn’t need to hear… what we do in the bedroom…”
Alla turned slowly at that moment. She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Not with anger, not with hurt—with the cold, dissecting curiosity of a researcher studying a strange, incomprehensible specimen. She looked at his darting eyes, his weak, pleading smile, and understanding dawned—final and complete. She hadn’t been fighting his mother. She’d been fighting for him. And she had just realized there was nothing to fight for. Before her stood not an ally, not a husband, not a protector. Before her stood a trophy begging her to surrender voluntarily to the enemy to spare him the inconvenience of battle.
She said nothing. Not a single word. Her silence was more frightening than any scream. She walked around him the way one walks around an obstacle on the road. She passed by Marina, frozen in the kitchen doorway in a victor’s pose, and went into their bedroom. Nikita hopefully thought she’d gone to cool off, that things would settle down.
But a minute later she emerged. In her hands she carried his pillow and a neatly folded blanket. She walked through the living room where her mother-in-law sat on the couch. A predatory, triumphant smile slowly blossomed on Marina’s face. Alla came up to the couch and, without looking at either her husband or his mother, simply dropped the bedding onto the leather upholstery. The dull thump of the blanket hitting the couch sounded in the apartment’s silence like a gunshot.
“Now you can sleep here. Or go make your bed next to your mommy, if her peace matters more to you than our family and our life. From the start I was against her moving in because I knew she meant to drive a wedge between us. And she succeeded. Congratulations, Marina Gennadyevna. When you go back home, you can take with you this spineless creature I used to call my husband.”
Then she turned and walked back. Nikita stood in the middle of the room, paralyzed, shifting his gaze from the couch—now his new bed—to his mother, and then to his wife’s retreating back. He watched her reach the bedroom door, grasp the handle, and close it. The soft click of the lock was the last sound he heard. He remained standing in the scorched desert of his living room, between his victorious mother and the door behind which his family life had ended…