The heavy, cloying smell of her perfume hit me the moment the elevator doors opened. Alevtina Borisovna.
She stepped into our tiny hallway, and the apartment instantly seemed to shrink, filled with that scent of expensive, suffocating powder. It was her smell. The smell of power.
“Got yourself draped in rags again, Katerina?”
Her gaze dug into the new curtains in the kitchen. The ones I’d sewn myself for three nights in a row, saving on everything just to buy that linen.
“It’s linen, Alevtina Borisovna. It’s trendy now…”
“Trendy,” she twisted her lips, running a gloved finger along the mirror frame. She always wore gloves, even in summer. As if she were afraid of getting dirty on our world.
“Trendy is when you have money. This is poverty covered with a napkin.”
Andrey, my husband, came out of the room. He always appeared at her voice, like a well-trained dog. Forcing a smile.
“Hi, Mom. Katya worked hard, she’s making it cozy.”
“Cozy,” she snorted. “Cozy is marble floors and a housekeeper. Not these geranium pots of yours.”
Twenty years. For twenty years I’ve been cooking her broths when she “got sick” after fights with Andrey’s brothers and listening to how I have no taste, no breeding, nothing at all.
I stayed silent. I learned to stay silent, because I’d seen what happened when I tried to speak. Andrey would go pale, rush between us, and inevitably choose her. And I didn’t want to lose him.
She sat down on the couch we had barely finished paying off and adjusted her skirt with distaste.
“Well, what do you say, Andrey? Yegor has finished his house. Two stories. And you’re still in this hole.”
“We’re saving, Mom. We like our neighborhood.”
“Saving. Sure. Your wife is ‘saving’.”
Her gaze dropped to my neck. To the thin chain with a small silver locket. My only treasure. From my mother.
“Still wearing that piece of tin, Katerina? You should be ashamed.”
I instinctively covered it with my hand.
“It’s a keepsake.”
“A keepsake should be in diamonds. Or at least in good gold. And this… a cat tag.”
She didn’t finish, but her look said everything.
Andrey frowned but kept quiet. He was tired too.
Alevtina Borisovna slowly got up. Her tall, bony figure loomed over me.
“Is it expensive?” she hissed so only I could hear. Andrey was already turned away, reaching for her coat.
“She’s not worth anything to you, son.”
She turned back to me, and her eyes flashed.
“For twenty years you’ve been pretending to be a little sheep. But I see you. I see the snake warmed at my breast. Quiet, but poisonous.”
I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. Stay quiet, Katya. For Andrey’s sake. For peace. “Peacemaker” — that was my role. My prison.
She left.
But the smell of her perfume stayed. It soaked into the curtains, into the upholstery of the couch, into my skin.
I went to the window and flung it wide open, letting in the icy air.
Andrey hugged me from behind.
“Katya, don’t take it to heart. You know her. She doesn’t mean it, she’s just… like that.”
I nodded. I knew.
I am a snake. I am poor. I am a rag.
For twenty years I’ve been buying our fragile family peace at the price of my own dignity.
And I was ready to keep paying that price. I didn’t know that the real bill would be presented to me very soon.
The phone rang a week later. At two in the morning.
I jolted awake, my heart pounding somewhere in my throat. Andrey mumbled sleepily:
“Who the hell is that…”
I picked up. It was Alevtina Borisovna.
Her voice was weak and cracked.
“I’m dying, Katerina. Come.”
Andrey shot up at once, pulling on his jeans.
“What? Mom? What’s wrong with her?”
“She says she’s dying,” I was already dressed. My hands were trembling.
We raced across half the city to her place.
Her apartment met us with silence and that same suffocating powdery smell, only now mixed with the sharp, sour scent of valerian.
Alevtina Borisovna was lying on a huge bed with a carved headboard. Pale, but her eyes were alive. And very angry.
“Finally,” she croaked. “I thought you’d only show up when they read the will.”
“Mom, what happened?” Andrey rushed to her. “Did you call an ambulance?”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” she cut him off. “I need care. Human care.”
She looked at me. Straight into my eyes.
“Yegor bought his Sveta a car. For taking care of him. And Veronika, Oleg’s wife, gave him three kids. And you, Katerina?”
I was silent. What was I supposed to say? That we could barely pay the mortgage on our “hole”? That I couldn’t get pregnant because after every one of her visits I was treating my nerves?
“All you can do is bring your chicken broth. Useless.”
“Mom, Katya…”
“Be quiet, Andrey!” she snapped, and there wasn’t a trace of weakness in her voice. “I’m thinking of you! A wife like that is good for nothing. She just drags you into poverty.”
She pushed herself up on her elbow.
“I’ve decided. I’m moving in with you.”
My vision went dark. Into our “hole.” With her smell. With her orders.
“No,” Andrey said. “Mom, we don’t have the space. We’ll come to you. Katya will.”
“She?” Alevtina Borisovna laughed. A dry, nasty laugh. “She will? Katerina, come here.”
I walked over. The “peacemaker” in me was shaking, but still going forward.
She grabbed my hand. Her fingers were cold and strong.
“You’re our little ‘God’s dandelion’. You put up with everything.”
Her gaze dropped to my locket again.
“Take that junk off!” she suddenly screeched. “It hurts my eyes!”
She yanked the chain.
The thin silver didn’t hold. The locket fell into my lap.
I froze.
It wasn’t just a locket. It was my mother. It was the only thing that still tied me to my past, to the love I’d known before this constant fear.
“Mom, what are you doing?!” Andrey shouted.
“What?” Alevtina Borisovna stared straight at me. “I’ll buy her a proper one. A gold one. So people won’t laugh. She walks around like…”
I didn’t cry. I just stared at the broken chain in my palm.
For twenty years I’d been a “sheep.” For twenty years I’d been a “rag.”
In that moment I understood what she had just done. She hadn’t just broken a chain.
She had cut the leash she herself had been holding me on.
But she didn’t realize it yet.
I slowly stood up.
“We’re leaving, Andrey.”
“What?” He looked at me, then at his mother. “Katya, but…”
“We’re leaving.”
I turned and walked to the door. I didn’t hear what he shouted after me. I didn’t hear how the “dying” Alevtina Borisovna shrieked at him.
I walked out of the apartment and, for the first time in twenty years, took a full breath.
And never mind that it was the stale air of the staircase. It smelled like freedom.
Andrey caught up with me at the car. His face was purple with anger.
“What was that, Katya? What are you doing?!”
I silently got into the car. He sat down too, but didn’t start the engine.
“Katya! She had an attack! She’s dying! And you because of… because of that trinket…”
I turned to him. My eyes were very calm. The former “peacemaker” in me had died five minutes ago in that stuffy room.
“First of all, she’s not dying,” I said evenly. “She’s putting on a show. Like always. And second, Andrey, that’s not a ‘trinket’.”
“What difference does it make? She’s my mother!”
“And that is my mother. Whom she just…”
I didn’t finish. I just looked at him.
“If you go back to her now,” I said quietly, “I’ll leave. Not to my mom. I’ll leave you. For good.”
He stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.
For twenty years I had been a shadow. Convenient, silent, forgiving everything.
“You can’t,” he whispered. “You…”
“I can.”
He slammed his fist against the steering wheel.
“What’s gotten into you?!”
“Self-respect, Andrey. Apparently I still have some.”
We drove home in deafening silence. Andrey’s phone kept ringing off the hook. It was his brothers. Yegor and Oleg.
Andrey didn’t pick up.
For three days we lived as if in a fog. I slept on the couch in the kitchen. I fixed the chain. The locket was back on my neck.
Andrey walked around like a ghost. He slept in the bedroom. He didn’t know how to talk to me. He was afraid of his mother’s anger, but now he seemed to fear my leaving too.
He tried.
“Katya, please forgive her. She’s old. She didn’t mean it…”
“She meant every word, Andrey,” I answered without looking at him, washing the dishes. “Always.”
“But you can’t treat her like that! She’s a mother!”
“She’s your mother. And she made her choice. And I made mine.”
On the fourth day Yegor called. Andrey picked up. I could hear his brother yelling through the receiver.
“…you killed Mom! She’s in the hospital! A real stroke, you hear me?! If she dies, it’ll be on your conscience! And on the conscience of your snake!”
Andrey sank onto a chair. He was as white as the wall.
“Katya… Mom’s in intensive care.”
We went to the hospital.
The hallway didn’t smell of perfume. It smelled of bleach and fear.
Yegor and Oleg were there. Their wives, Sveta and Veronika, were drilling holes in me with their eyes.
“Here she comes,” Sveta hissed, tugging Andrey aside. “Happy now? You finished her off!”
“She finished herself off!” Andrey suddenly said. Loudly.
Everyone fell silent.
Yegor moved toward him.
“What are you talking about? Mom, because of your…”
“Because of what?” Andrey looked him straight in the eye. “Because Mom spent twenty years tormenting Katya? And we all kept quiet?”
A doctor came out.
“Alevtina Borisovna has regained consciousness. But… her condition is serious. She wants to see you.”
We all went in together.
She lay there, wrapped in tubes. Small, frightening, without her usual “armor” of makeup.
Her eyes found me in the crowd.
Her lips barely moved.
“I hate you…” she croaked, looking only at me.
Her gaze was full of venom.
“I hate you, snake!”
Those were her last words.
An hour later she was gone.
The funeral was hard. Yegor and Oleg didn’t speak to me. Andrey stayed close, gripping my hand tightly.
On the ninth day we gathered in her apartment. That same powdery smell, only now mixed with mothballs and dust.
A wilted-looking notary (a family acquaintance Yegor had called) sat in her armchair. He was there only for form’s sake. Everyone “knew” how Alevtina Borisovna must have divided her property.
Sveta and Veronika were already dividing the china sets in their heads.
The notary cleared his throat and opened the folder.
“So, the will of Alevtina Borisovna Koltsova.”
Yegor nodded. Oleg adjusted his glasses.
“I should mention right away,” the notary said, looking up. “This is a new will. Drawn up…” he checked the date, “…just a few days ago. Last week.”
Yegor, Oleg and their wives exchanged glances. Worry flashed across their faces.
“‘All my movable and immovable property, including the apartment at the address…, the country house in… and all funds in all bank accounts…’”
The notary paused. Sveta leaned forward.
“‘…I, being of sound mind and clear memory, bequeath to Katerina Dmitrievna Soboleva.’”
Silence didn’t exactly fall. It’s just that all sounds were suddenly turned off.
I thought I’d misheard.
Sveta made some strange, gurgling noise.
“What?”
“W-what was the surname?” Oleg stammered.
“Soboleva. Katerina Dmitrievna.” The notary looked at me over his glasses. “That is you, as I understand.”
“Me?!” I jumped up. “No! That’s a mistake! That can’t be right!”
Yegor snatched the sheet from the notary’s hands.
His face, pale after the funeral, turned scarlet.
“You!” He jabbed a finger at me. “You bewitched her! You con artist!”
“It’s a forgery!” Veronika squealed. “She couldn’t! She hated you! She said…”
“There’s… there’s more!” Oleg interrupted her. “Read it!”
The notary sighed and turned the page.
“There is a handwritten note here. Personally from Alevtina Borisovna. Certified.”
He cleared his throat again and read, struggling with her tiny handwriting:
“‘…I have already given my sons enough for them to become men, but they did not manage it. I leave everything to Katya. Because this snake was the only one who looked me in the eye. The only one who put up with me not for money, but out of her stupid kindness. And when she stopped putting up with me, she was the only one who had the strength to leave. She is tougher than all of you, sucklings. She’ll know what to do.’”
Everyone fell. Not literally. But I saw their worlds collapse.
Yegor slumped onto a chair. Sveta sobbed loudly, smearing her mascara.
“For what?! I washed her car! I…”
“And I gave her three grandkids!” Veronika chimed in. “And her! A barren weed!”
Oleg just stared at the wall.
And Andrey…
Andrey slowly turned to me.
I was ready for anything. Reproach. Confusion.
He walked over and took my hand.
And for the first time in twenty years I saw in his eyes not the son of Alevtina Borisovna, but my husband.
“She saw you, Katya,” he whispered. “At last.”
“I… I don’t know what to do,” I whispered back.
“We’ll sue!” Yegor shouted. “You won’t get anything!”
Andrey stepped between us.
“Leave.”
“What?!” the brothers yelled together.
“Leave her apartment. That is…” he looked at me and smiled, “…my wife’s apartment.”
The scandal was ugly. They yelled about the police, about how I was a “snake” and a “freeloader.”
I stood there and kept silent.
When the door finally slammed behind them, I went to the window.
The apartment was mine. And this smell… it was mine too now.
“I’ll sell it,” I said quietly.
Andrey hugged me.
“I know.”
“And I’ll sell the house too.”
“All right.”
I turned to him.
“I don’t want that life, Andrey. I want ours.”
I pulled my old silver locket with the repaired chain from my pocket. It was still with me.
“We’ll just go back home. To our ‘hole.’”
“To ours,” he nodded. “But first…”
He went to the drinks cabinet, took the most expensive bottle of cognac (the one Alevtina Borisovna kept for “special guests”) and two shot glasses.
“I think,” he said, handing me a glass, “she won’t mind if we see her off. Properly.”
Epilogue
Six months passed.
I did exactly what I’d said. The apartment with the smell of powder and mothballs was sold. The house too. The money sat in the account. Silent, heavy.
The brothers came running.
It happened a month after the sale. Yegor and Oleg. Without their wives. Crumpled, angry, but with notes of desperation.
They didn’t threaten to sue. The lawyer they’d gone to had apparently explained that a will drawn up properly and with such an “addendum” was impossible to contest.
They came to ask.
“Katya, you’re… you’re kind,” started Yegor, the same one who’d called me a snake. “We’re family.”
“Mom… she wasn’t herself,” Oleg chimed in. “You have to understand. We have loans. Kids.”
They were sitting in our kitchen. In our “hole.” And I looked at them, and I felt no anger, no pity.
Only tiredness. And peace.
“Andrey,” I said to my husband, who was standing behind me, “please bring the envelopes.”
Andrey quietly put two white envelopes on the table.
“What’s this?” Yegor asked warily.
“Your share,” I said evenly. “Not by law. By mine.”
They grabbed them. I saw their fingers tremble as they peeked inside. It was enough to pay off their mortgages. And that was all.
“That’s it?!” Yegor flared up. “Just that much?!”
“It’s enough,” I said.
I was no longer a “peacemaker.” I was no longer a “sheep.”
“Alevtina Borisovna wrote that she gave you enough to become men. Looks like she was wrong. This is just so you leave us alone. Take it. And don’t come back. Ever.”
Andrey quietly opened the door for them.
They left.
We didn’t buy a mansion. We didn’t go on a round-the-world trip.
We bought the neighboring one-room apartment on our floor. Another “hole,” just like ours.
Andrey himself broke through the opening in the wall.
Now we sit in the kitchen. It’s twice as big now. Part of it is still bare concrete and plaster, smelling of dust and paint.
Andrey is drinking strong tea from a big mug I gave him.
He looks at me.
“Are you sure, Katya? That you didn’t want… I don’t know. A house by the sea.”
I smile and touch the silver locket on my neck with my fingers. It’s in its place.
“Andrey, what for? So I can listen all over again to how I have no taste?” I laugh.
It was the first joke on that subject in twenty years.
Andrey smiled too.
“She was… a strange woman.”
“She was unhappy,” I said, looking out the window.
Outside, just ordinary snow was falling.
I didn’t become rich. I simply… became.
She called me a snake.
Maybe she was right. A snake doesn’t tolerate being stepped on. It sheds its old skin.
Without realizing it, Alevtina Borisovna just gave me the means to do it.
“I love you, Katya,” Andrey said. Simply, without drama.
“I know,” I answered. “Go finish that wall. And I’ll make us dinner.”
And for the first time in our entire life together, it wasn’t broth for someone else, but simple fried potatoes. For us.