When Artyom checked for the third time that evening whether the cutlery was arranged perfectly, my inner patience reached its very last limit. Not his patience, which seemed limitless when it came to my supposed mistakes, but mine. He froze over the festive table like an experienced commander studying a flawless battle plan, and a slight crease of displeasure appeared on his forehead.
“Sofia, darling, look at these glasses. They’re not in one line. Do you really not see this obvious misalignment?”
I shifted my gaze to the crystal glasses. They stood in impeccable geometric order; I had checked their position with a spirit level. But I didn’t say a word. I just silently took two glasses and moved them exactly one centimeter to the left. Artyom nodded approvingly, and a look of deep satisfaction at the corrected mistake appeared on his face.
“That’s much better. Listen, are you sure the Olivier salad is made exactly according to my dear mother’s recipe? The guys are used to a certain, familiar taste, you do understand what I mean, don’t you?”
A certain taste.
I had been preparing this endless festive dinner for three long days. For three days I had carefully chosen the best products at the market, marinated the meat according to a special recipe, made countless preparations, baked a complicated pie with several fillings. My back ached from standing at the stove without a break, and my fingers, despite all my efforts, still kept the faint smell of onions.
“Exactly according to it,” I replied in an absolutely even, calm voice, without a single tremor.
“Excellent.” Artyom cast a quick, businesslike look at his watch. “The guests will be here in exactly thirty minutes. Be so kind as to change into something more festive, will you? Not these usual home clothes.”
“Home clothes” meant my most comfortable, soft jeans and my favorite oversized sweater. Perfectly normal, reasonable clothes for a quiet evening at home. But again, I chose not to say anything and silently walked to our spacious bedroom. I picked a strict black dress—the very one that Artyom once, a long time ago, had called incredibly elegant and attractive. It was almost five years ago, at the very dawn of our marriage, when he still looked at me with genuine interest and warmth, not like at a mute piece of home décor.
I stopped in front of the large carved-framed mirror and looked closely at my reflection. I was only thirty-three, but my face bore the never-ending mark of fatigue more fitting for someone well over forty. When had that happened? At what moment did I turn from Sofia, a promising designer who attended international exhibitions and worked on exciting projects, into just Sofia, the wife of a successful and ambitious financier?
It all started six years ago, when Artyom got his first significant promotion. His salary almost doubled, and together we decided that I could afford to temporarily leave my professional activity. “Just for a little while,” he said, hugging me. “Until we properly settle into our new home, until you take a little break from all that hustle.” I had been “resting” for six years. Resting so intensely that there wasn’t a single free minute in all twenty-four hours that actually belonged to me.
At first everything really was wonderful. We moved into a new spacious apartment in a prestigious district, and I enthusiastically threw myself into the renovation, spent days choosing furniture, lovingly and carefully making our nest cozy. Artyom would come home from work incredibly tired, and I always met him with a hot dinner, a light relaxing massage, my care and attention. He was sincerely grateful, he called me his personal guardian angel and best friend.
Then came another promotion. And another. His income grew at incredible speed—just like his personal ambitions. He worked twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day, came home long after midnight and gave me detailed accounts of his projects, of his colleagues, who were “not particularly bright” in his opinion, and of unfair, incompetent management. I always listened attentively, nodded, reheated his dinner in the microwave. And then, completely unnoticed by either of us, he began to present me with his first complaints.
At first they were minor, almost insignificant remarks. The soup was a tiny bit oversalted. A shirt wasn’t ironed with quite enough care. There was a slight “creative disorder” in the fridge. I tried my very best to improve, to do everything even better, even more perfectly, but the flow of remarks did not diminish. On the contrary, there were more and more of them every day, and the wording became harsher and more cutting.
And then his “jokes” entered our life.
“My Sofia,” Artyom would say to his mother during an evening phone call, “is a completely creative person, not of this world at all. Yesterday she tried to hang a new painting in the living room. Spent two hours fussing with the drill, made so many holes in the wall that it now looks like Swiss cheese, and in the end the masterpiece still hangs noticeably crooked. I had to redo everything myself. What can you do, hands like hooks—not everyone can be a handyman.”
Or another situation:
“You should’ve seen my darling trying to park the car! Yesterday she spent almost forty minutes trying to squeeze in between two modest hatchbacks. I was about to get out and offer my help, honestly. A woman behind the wheel is a special kind of art—sometimes tragicomic.”
Or this one:
“Sofia fell for the supermarket marketers again. Brought home twelve packs of spaghetti because they were ‘on an unbelievably good sale.’ And it was such a bargain because the expiry date is in three days! Expired goods! How can someone be that naïve?”
Every time he laughed loudly and contagiously. Lightly, carelessly. As if it truly was funny—this idea that his own wife was a bit silly and extremely clumsy. And I would stand nearby and try to force a faint smile, because “it’s just a joke, Sofia, you can’t be so sensitive.”
But the hardest evenings were those when Artyom came home especially exhausted and on edge. He would sit at the table, and his long monologue would begin. About how his immediate boss, Dmitry Vasilievich, was a complete ignoramus. About how his colleague Anna had spent an entire week preparing an important presentation and still managed to do everything crookedly and badly. About how Stas from the adjacent department was a very limited person, but for some reason earned more than him. About how the general director, Orlov, was a total random figure in the company, who had gotten his position only thanks to connections, and had zero real knowledge or experience.
I listened and kept silent. Because that was my direct duty—to listen. To cook food, keep the house in order, and listen. That was the entire simple list of functions of the wife of a successful and promising man.
And then the project code-named “Phoenix” appeared in his life.
Artyom worked on it for almost five months. It was a very large and important contract: amounts with six zeros, influential foreign clients. He came home far past midnight, woke up at five in the morning, lived in a state of permanent stress, fueled by strong coffee and frayed nerves. And then, just four days ago, the project was successfully closed. Brilliantly, with a significant over-fulfillment of the plan and solid bonuses for all the key team members.
“Sofia,” Artyom said, glowing like a thousand suns, “we did it! The general director himself praised us personally! Listen, let’s throw a proper big celebration? Invite all the key guys from the project, celebrate the way it should be. You don’t mind, do you?”
Of course I did mind. Because “celebration” in his language meant that for the next three days I would do nothing but cook, clean, and set the table. That I would have to smile at people I barely knew and serve them snacks and drinks. That I would be playing the role of a professional waitress and maid in my own home.
But I quietly said:
“Of course, dear. Approximately how many people are you expecting?”
“About nine to eleven. The closest ones from the project. You understand perfectly how important this is for my future career growth, don’t you?”
I understood. I always understood everything.
And so here I was, standing in front of the mirror in my black dress, putting lipstick on my lips and thinking about how terribly, to the very depth of my soul, I was tired of understanding everything and keeping quiet.
The first guests started arriving exactly at eight in the evening. The first to come was Stas—the very one whom Artyom in private conversations described as a limited person. It turned out he was a cheerful man of about thirty-five, with a huge bouquet of flowers for me and a bottle of elite aged whiskey for the host.
“Sofia, thank you so much for your hospitality and for agreeing to host our noisy company!” He shook my hand with such sincere warmth that I even felt a little awkward. “Artyom talks about you so often and with such warmth.”
I wondered what exactly he told him, but my face showed only a light, polite smile.
“Please come in, make yourself at home.”
After Stas, the other guests began to arrive. Anna—the one who had spent a week preparing the allegedly “crooked” presentation—turned out to be a pretty young woman with incredibly intelligent, lively eyes. Kirill, Denis, Oleg—all of them were extremely polite, all thanked me for the invitation to our home. And finally, there was the arrival of Dmitry Vasilievich himself, the department head whom Artyom so loved to criticize over our family dinners.
“Artyom Viktorovich!” Dmitry Vasilievich firmly shook my husband’s hand. “Excellent work was done. I’m very glad you decided to organize this informal meeting.”
Artyom shone with happiness and pride. He adored being praised, being admired. All his childhood and youth he had been a gray, completely unremarkable average student, and now he was making up for the lack of attention and recognition with interest.
I carried around various appetizers, poured drinks into glasses, constantly smiling. The classic, familiar role of the gracious hostess. All the guests were exceptionally polite, thanked me for each new dish, generously praised the salads and snacks. Artyom accepted all these compliments as if it were he who had spent three days glued to the stove.
“Yes, Sofia and I tried our best,” he said proudly, while I silently put another hot dish on the table.
When everyone finally sat down at the festive table and started eating, the conversation smoothly drifted toward work topics, the recently completed project, and the company’s future plans. I sat at the far end of the long table and tried not to interfere in the conversation, not to get in the way. Artyom was in his element—he told amusing stories from office life, joked wittily, and with dignity accepted numerous congratulations. Then he smoothly moved on to his signature “stories from life.”
“You know, friends, this is already our second celebration this week!” He gave me a meaningful look with that well-known condescending smile. “Sofia here performed her own little heroic feat a few days ago.”
All those present turned their heads toward me almost in unison. I tensed up inside, feeling the danger approaching.
“She somehow managed to spend almost an entire hour looking for a parking spot and actually parking at the mall. An hour, Stas! I was seriously considering calling a tow truck to gently place the car where it belonged.”
There was a restrained, polite chuckle. Not very loud—more of a protocol reaction. I involuntarily tightened my grip on my fork.
“Artyom, come on, that’s enough,” I quietly tried to stop him.
“Oh, come on, it’s so funny!” He was fully immersed in his role as entertainer now. “And do you remember that story with the painting? Guys, you should’ve seen it! She spent almost an hour and a half with a screwdriver in her hands, drilled so many holes in the wall that it looked like a sieve, and the painting still ended up hanging at a noticeable tilt. I had to redo the entire structure myself. Golden hands, really!”
Stas laughed a bit louder than the others. Anna exchanged glances with Oleg but chose to remain silent. Dmitry Vasilievich pretended to be entirely occupied with tasting the salad.
“And I still can’t figure out,” Artyom continued, gaining momentum, “how you can mess up a simple store promotion. Everything is written there in big, clear letters! But no, Sofia somehow managed to buy twelve packs of pasta right before the expiry date. I tell her: ‘Sofia, always look at the production date!’ And she says: ‘But they were such a bargain!’ Our own little financial genius.”
This time the laughter around the table was louder. Especially from Stas—apparently he decided that this was the proper way to behave in such a situation. Artyom was clearly pleased with the effect he was producing. He told story after story, and with each new “joke” I felt a thick, dark wave of long-accumulated resentment and hurt rising inside me.
He told them how I once mixed up salt and sugar while baking his favorite pie. How I couldn’t figure out the settings of the new dishwasher and called a repairman, even though “you just needed to read the manual carefully.” How I bought him a shirt in the wrong size, even though “I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m a fifty-second size!”
“But I love my wife just the way she is,” he magnanimously concluded his speech. “Even if she is a bit scatterbrained and impractical.”
And he patted me on the shoulder. On the shoulder, like you would a loyal but not very clever dog.
I looked closely at Artyom. At his self-satisfied, glowing face, at his pleased smile. At how he relished the applause for the results of my three exhausting days in the kitchen. At how he laughed at my “failures,” which, if we’re being objective, either never happened at all or were deliberately exaggerated tenfold. The parking had taken me just seven minutes, not an hour. The painting in the living room was hanging perfectly straight; I had checked. I had never bought any pasta at all—he was the one who brought them home and forgot about them.
But he needed bright, memorable stories for the audience. He needed this role: the successful, patient husband and his sweet but utterly helpless wife. It worked for his image, it made him the center of attention. And whether I felt humiliated and insulted in the process did not matter at all—that was a trivial detail.
“You know,” I said suddenly, even for myself, and my voice sounded surprisingly even and calm, “Artyom really does have an outstanding talent as a storyteller. Especially when it comes to work matters and his colleagues.”
Artyom turned to me, his face still shining with smugness.
“Oh, come on, Sofia, what talent do I have…”
“No, no, I’m absolutely serious,” I went on, my face still wearing the same polite, social smile. “Take, for instance, the stories about you, Dmitry Vasilievich. Artyom often tells me how you fall asleep during meetings and briefings. And how you forgot the name of a project three times in a row while it was being discussed. And that your higher education supposedly wasn’t obtained entirely honestly, and that you got your position exclusively thanks to family connections.”
Total, deafening silence fell in the living room. Heavy, suffocating, like a slab of lead. Dmitry Vasilievich stopped chewing. Artyom turned as white as a sheet.
“Sofia, what are you talking about…”
“And about Stas, Artyom often says that his intellectual abilities leave much to be desired,” I calmly turned to Stas, who was staring at me with eyes wide in shock. “And that he earns significantly more than he deserves, without bringing the company any real benefit. Pure coincidence of circumstances, he says.”
“Sofia, stop talking this second!” Artyom jumped up from the table, fury twisting his face.
“And Anna,” I shifted my gaze to her, “Anna spent a week preparing that supposedly ‘crooked’ presentation, right? Artyom would tell me every evening with great enthusiasm how incompetent you are at your job. And that they keep you in the department only because of your pleasant appearance and easygoing character.”
Anna blushed crimson. Oleg silently pushed his dessert plate away.
“There are also some very entertaining stories about the general director, Orlov. According to Artyom, he’s a complete ignoramus in his field, randomly ended up in the director’s chair, has zero brainpower, just the right connections at the top. Artyom was even planning to initiate a collective letter demanding his resignation.”
“Enough!” Artyom grabbed my wrist so tightly that it took my breath away. “Do you even realize what you’re saying? Are you out of your mind?”
I pulled my hand free and slowly rose from my chair. All the guests were looking at me as if I had suddenly gone insane. Perhaps, in that moment, I was insane. Driven insane by six long years of constant humiliation and biting mockery, by the realization that I had been systematically turned into unpaid help and a convenient laughingstock.
“I’m just entertaining our dear guests with funny stories,” I said in a completely even, calm tone. “Isn’t that how we always entertain guests in this house? We tell amusing little episodes from the lives of our loved ones and acquaintances, don’t we?”
“Sofia,” Dmitry Vasilievich got up slowly and with dignity, “I think it really is time for us to leave. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Dmitry Vasilievich, I can explain everything,” Artyom rushed between his boss and me, his voice trembling with panic. “She’s just joking, it’s all complete nonsense, I never said anything like that, she made it all up…”
“This is a joke?” Anna also rose from her seat, her voice cold and sharp as a knife. “So you never said that I’m only kept in the department because of my looks?”
“Anna, come on, I would never…”
“A person of limited intellectual ability,” Stas repeated slowly, by syllables, and there was no trace of his former merriment in his voice. “Very interesting. And I honestly thought we were, if not friends, then at least good colleagues.”
The guests began to hurry. Artyom tried to stop them, to explain something, to prove that this was all a huge misunderstanding, that his wife was acting strangely, that he never uttered such words, that it was all her sick imagination. But no one was listening to him anymore. The guests silently, avoiding his eyes, gathered their things, said cold, dry goodbyes, and walked out the door.
Dmitry Vasilievich was the last to leave. On the threshold he paused for a moment and turned to Artyom:
“On Monday, at exactly ten in the morning, be in my office. We need to discuss in detail your future in this company.”
The door closed with a soft but final click. We were left alone in the large living room.
Artyom stood in the middle of the room, his face white as chalk, his hands visibly shaking. Then he slowly turned toward me.
“Do you… Do you even realize what you’ve just done?”
“Quite.”
“You’ve just destroyed my entire career! I’m going to be fired! And all because of your stupid, pointless revenge!”
“This isn’t revenge,” I began calmly gathering empty dishes from the table, trying not to look at him. “These are just your own words and thoughts spoken out loud. For years you sat at this table and mocked your colleagues, laughed at them. I just delivered that information to its rightful recipients.”
“But those were private conversations! Within the walls of our home! I was just venting, releasing stress, you’re supposed to understand that! I had every right to!”
“And I didn’t?” I turned to him sharply, and for the first time the long-suppressed pain and anger broke through in my voice. “Did I not have the right to tell you that it hurt me? That it’s painful to hear such things? That I don’t want to be a constant target for jokes at your corporate parties?”
“I was just joking, Sofia! They were harmless jokes!”
“No.” I shook my head, and that gesture held all my accumulated exhaustion. “They weren’t jokes. It was systematic, deliberate degradation of my dignity. You turned me first into service staff, and then into your personal punching bag. And tonight you decided to publicly showcase your success.”
“I had a very important, landmark evening! I needed to…”
“You needed to boost your ego at my expense,” I finished for him. “To show everyone what a wonderful and patient husband you are, next to your silly, incompetent wife. Well, I only helped you. I showed everyone what a truly ‘wonderful’ colleague and subordinate you are next to your ‘stupid’ coworkers and ‘incompetent’ management.”
Artyom collapsed heavily onto the sofa and grabbed his head in his hands.
“What am I supposed to do now? They’re going to fire me, Sofia. We’ll be left without any means to live.”
“I’ll find a job,” I said, surprisingly calmly. “I haven’t worked for six years, but I’m a good, in-demand designer. I’ll definitely find a suitable position.”
“You?” He tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled, hysterical sound. “You, who can’t even hang a picture straight? Who gets confused by simple price tags in the supermarket?”
“Me, who for six years has been running your entire household,” I replied firmly. “I planned the family budget, did the shopping, organized and supervised repairs, solved all everyday problems and issues. While you came home and complained about your hard life. I’ll manage.”
He stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. And I’m also filing for an official divorce.”
A long, tense silence hung in the room. Artyom sat motionless, like a stone statue. Then, very quietly, almost in a whisper, he asked:
“Why? For what?”
I looked at him carefully. At this man I had lived with for eight years under the same roof. Who had once been my great love, my solid support, my bright future. Who had gradually, completely unnoticed by himself, turned into a domestic tyrant.
“Because in all these six years, not once have you said a simple human ‘thank you’ to me,” I answered quietly but very clearly. “Not once did you thank me for a tasty dinner, for the clean, tidy house, for the ironed shirts. But you found hundreds of reasons to nitpick. You humiliated me thousands of times. And today, after I spent three exhausting days making sure your celebration turned out perfect, you didn’t even think to say a simple ‘thank you’ to me. You only thought about how to tell your guests the funniest stories about what a klutz and loser I am.”
“Sofia…”
“I’m unbelievably tired, Artyom. I’m tired of being your unpaid maid and court jester. I want to be just a person again. An individual. A wife who is respected and appreciated, not tolerated out of habit.”
“But I do respect you.”
“No. You only respect your career. Your projects. Your ambitions. And you treat me as a convenient element of the interior. Familiar, comfortable, but not worthy of special attention or respect.”
Artyom said nothing. What could he say? It was all the plain truth, and he knew it perfectly well. Perhaps in that very moment, for the first time in many years, he realized it fully.
I turned and walked out of the living room, closing the bedroom door behind me. I sat down on the edge of the bed and began to cry softly. But these were not tears of self-pity or anger. They were tears of long-awaited relief. Because I had finally said out loud everything that had been building up inside me for years in silence. Because I had finally done the thing I had been afraid to do all that time.
On the other side of the door, it was completely quiet. Artyom was probably still sitting in the living room amid the pile of dirty dishes and the ruins of his collapsed celebration, which was supposed to be his crowning moment but became the hour of his total downfall.
On Monday he really was fired. Dmitry Vasilievich said that a toxic atmosphere and the undermining of corporate spirit were absolutely unacceptable and that the company did not need employees who systematically violated ethics and subordination. Artyom tried to justify himself, talked about a huge misunderstanding and an unfortunate coincidence, but the time had been irrevocably lost. It was too late.
I found a new job three weeks later. It was a small but promising design studio, a young and friendly team, with still modest pay. But I felt alive again. I became Sofia again, not just “Artyom’s wife.” I regained my own value—not as service staff, but as a competent and talented professional.
We finalized the divorce relatively calmly, without noisy scandals or mutual insults. In the end, Artyom also found a new job, though with a lower salary, and that circumstance, I hope, taught him to appreciate what he has instead of constantly chasing illusory ideals. Or at least I very much want to believe that.
Sometimes, in the quiet of the evening, I remember that ill-fated night. How I “joked” in such a way that my husband lost his prestigious job. Some of our mutual acquaintances still condemn my action, say I behaved meanly and cruelly, that you mustn’t take revenge on a person so harshly. Others, on the contrary, understand and support me, insisting that he himself was to blame for what happened.
And I believe that the guilt lay with both of us. He—because he forgot a simple truth: I am a living person, with my own feelings and dignity, not a soulless function. And I—because I kept silent and endured for far too long, afraid to shatter our fragile well-being. I should have started speaking much earlier—more gently, more calmly, but firmly.
But unfortunately, sometimes people don’t hear even the most reasonable and calm words. They only begin to listen and understand when they are faced with the consequences of their own actions. And what I did that evening was a desperate, final cry of a soul that had been silent and suffering for far too long.
And I don’t regret anything. Because after that evening I got my life back. I got myself back. And that turned out to be more valuable than any career, any social status, any outwardly prosperous but long-dead and hollow marriage.
For years my husband allowed himself to mock me in front of friends and colleagues, and in the end I “joked” back in such a way that he lost his job. But I gained something far more important—I found myself. And for me, that was the only possible and fair price for my newfound freedom and self-respect.
And now, when I look at my reflection in the window of a flower shop, I no longer see the tired eyes of a successful financier’s wife, but the bright, living gaze of a person learning anew to see the colors of the world. I buy myself flowers—for no reason at all, just because. And in their fragrance, in the fragility of their petals, I sense something very important, something that had been unavailable to me for many years: a light, like a breath of wind, feeling of my own dignity which, like a blossomed bud, can no longer be hidden from the world