“Lilya, you don’t do anything anyway, you’re always at home with the baby,” her mother-in-law, Anna Leonidovna, kept repeating. “Is it really so hard for you, young and energetic as you are, to do the things I ask? I’m not asking too much of you. We’re one family now, and you, forgive me, behave like a stranger!”
“I’ve got more than enough of my own things to do! With a small child you don’t exactly sit still. And you know that perfectly well, but you still keep asking me for something,” the daughter-in-law answered boldly.
“Oh, stop it, that’s all just words. You’ll do it and you won’t drop dead,” the mother-in-law insisted.
“I don’t have time,” the daughter-in-law stood her ground.
“Buy me some groceries, I sent you the list by text,” she would call early in the morning, ignoring Lilya’s refusals.
“No, I’m about to take Nikita to the children’s clinic,” Lilya replied irritably.
“Well, there you go! On the way you can pop into the store. You’ll buy everything I need. And in the evening Slavik will bring it over. It’s all so simple, and you’re the one making it complicated again,” the mother-in-law argued. “With this cold of mine, I really can’t be running around the stores right now!”
“Nothing will happen to you, you’ll take a walk. Walking is even good for you. It’s really not convenient for me. And I’m not going to drag a small and not entirely healthy child around a supermarket.”
“Why are you making a problem out of this, Lilya? You’ll spend ten minutes on everything, no more,” the mother-in-law wouldn’t let up. “And still you make a scene.”
In the end, the daughter-in-law would still refuse, and Anna Leonidovna would get angry and complain to her son about his heartless wife.
“Lil, Mom asked you to come over today. She needs help—washing the windows before the holiday. Will you go? I’ll stay with Nikita,” one day Vyacheslav surprised his wife.
“Oh sure, and who’s going to wash ours? Your mother or Pushkin maybe? I haven’t even started cleaning our apartment yet—one thing after another keeps coming up. Don’t I have enough of my own worries? Why does your mother keep clinging to me? Let her call a cleaning service. Or wash them herself—she’s not some lady of the manor! And she’s not a hundred-year-old granny either.”
“Come on, Lil, go, I’m asking you! Otherwise she’ll nag me to death afterwards, buzzing and buzzing,” her husband tried to persuade her.
“No. I said I’m not going,” Lilya was unyielding.
Next time, her mother-in-law came up with a new job for her.
“Lilichka, I’ve got a lot of clothes in my wardrobe—you know, the built-in one, the huge one. And all of it, mind you, is expensive, branded stuff. In good condition and good quality. I don’t wear much of it anymore. Maybe you can come and help me sort it all out. And whatever you like, you can take for yourself, wear it,” Anna Leonidovna decided to lure her daughter-in-law in with a bit of cunning.
“Sure, right! I don’t wear other people’s clothes, especially old-lady stuff. I’ve got plenty of my own.”
“Who are you calling an old lady?” the mother-in-law immediately took offense. “I’ll have you know, I’m just a bit over fifty. And I still look very young. Absolutely everyone tells me so. And I feel like I’m thirty… five,” she added after a slight pause. “Well, forty at the most. And you behave disrespectfully toward me. I’ve told my son more than once about this…”
“Yeah, of course!” the daughter-in-law cut her off sharply. “Save your fairy tales! Why be shy, just tell the truth—you feel like you’re eighteen! If that were really the case, you wouldn’t be pestering me with your constant whining about help, justifying it by saying you feel unwell. I’m not coming over, dig through your rags yourself.”
“Liliya, you’re rude and tactless. What kind of upbringing did you have? No respect at all for the person who gave life to your beloved husband!”
“Why not? I do have respect, I’m just used to telling the truth to people’s faces.”
Any such quarrel would end with Anna Leonidovna calling her son and complaining at length about her lonely and oh-so-unhappy life.
Lilya’s mother-in-law really was alone. A few years earlier her husband had left her for a colleague. And contrary to the usual cliché, it was not for a young, bold blonde. The man preferred to his lawful wife of twenty years a woman slightly older than himself—quiet and cozy. And completely nondescript, in his ex-wife’s opinion.
At the time she just couldn’t wrap her head around what had happened to her husband. Anna Leonidovna even went to his office and met his new chosen one. She wanted to understand what was so extraordinary about a woman who was a few years older than both him and Anna herself.
But the rival was ordinary! A gray, inconspicuous mouse, who didn’t stand out from a faceless crowd in any way. Even her hands weren’t well-groomed. That colleague didn’t get herself a luxurious manicure that turned fingers into thin and graceful fairy-like hands. Bewildered and utterly crushed, Anna couldn’t make sense of it, comparing her own well-kept appearance and hands to what she saw in front of her. She couldn’t grasp why her rival didn’t care that her hands looked like a man’s. And her eyebrows were thick and uneven, and her hair, cut carelessly and poorly dyed, had long been in need of a visit to a beauty salon.
Anna, who had carefully watched over her appearance all her conscious life, was in obvious turmoil at that moment.
She left the office where her husband worked in a kind of daze. Something had broken in her head; her usual algorithm had fallen apart. The woman simply could not understand how it was possible that her husband had preferred THAT to her!
Three years after the husband left the family, their son decided to get married. Anna, still not fully recovered from the betrayal of the man closest to her, was not at all ready for complete loneliness. At first she even tried to dissuade her son from marrying.
“Mom, what are you talking about? The decision’s made, Liliya and I love each other. The wedding date is already set. How much longer are we supposed to put it off?”
“Well, maybe at least you could live with me?” she tried to persuade her son.
“Oh no. That’s unlikely. Liliya will be against it. She told me right away that we’d only live separately from our parents,” Slava replied.
And now, after the birth of her grandson, when her son had stopped paying his mother as much attention as before, she began to play on pity, constantly asking the young family for some sort of help.
And she also very much wanted, just like before, to feel herself at the center of attention, to be the one steering everything. Like in that former life, when both her husband and her son were nearby, fulfilling her every wish and whim.
“Slavik, call Lilya, I have an urgent matter for her,” his mother phoned, having decided this time to resort to a trick.
“I’m listening,” the daughter-in-law answered irritably; at that moment she was busy with her little son.
“Lilya, come to me today after Slava gets back from work,” she began quietly.
“What for?!” the daughter-in-law asked with annoyance.
“I’m sick. I feel really bad… My head’s spinning and my blood pressure is through the roof. And my heart is giving me trouble too, it hurts.”
“Call a doctor. What do I have to do with it?”
“I did call one. I did…” Anna Leonidovna went on, almost in tears. “She prescribed a whole bunch of medicine. It all needs to be bought and brought over.”
“Nowadays you can order medicine for home delivery. Use that service and you’ll be just fine.”
“Lilya, why are you so merciless! I’m asking you—come to me. I so need human warmth, some company. Stay with me five or ten minutes. I’ll feel better straight away. Well?”
“Let your son come,” Lilya held her ground.
“Slavik doesn’t know how to give injections. And I’ll need a shot. Come on, I’m waiting!”
The mother-in-law hung up, and Lilya unloaded on her husband everything she thought about his mother—without softening a thing.
But in the evening, when Vyacheslav came home from work, she still decided to walk over to her mother-in-law’s. The weather was wonderful, after all. And she wanted a little distraction from household chores and worries.
On the way she stopped at the pharmacy and bought everything her husband’s mother needed. As usual, the mother-in-law had sent the list to her phone.
But when Lilya entered the apartment, at first she wanted to protest loudly, to let her emotions fly. Then she changed her mind and decided to see how this would play out.
Her mother-in-law was sitting at the table in the living room, surrounded by two of her old friends, laughing loudly and discussing something with them.
“Oh, Lilichka is here. Good girl! What do you have in the bag? The medicine, did you buy everything on the list? Good, put it over there on the chest of drawers,” the “sick” mother-in-law said in a brisk voice.
“And I see you’re already feeling better? And no injection needed, by the look of it,” the daughter-in-law asked in surprise.
“Oh, what are you talking about? Of course not! What ‘better’—far from it! I just decided to sit a bit with my friends, who for once made it over to see me. And the illness, well, it’s not going anywhere. I can treat it tomorrow.”
“What a wonderful philosophy!” Lilya gave a nasty little smile. “I wish you a pleasant evening. I’m leaving.”
“Where?” the mother-in-law shouted. “Where do you think you’re going? And who’s going to set the table for us? Chop the salads, slice the cheese and sausage? Come on, go into the kitchen and get to work. Toast some bread for my favorite sandwiches. Wash and chop the greens. You can see I’ve got guests, I don’t have time myself, and I’m not feeling well either. Don’t just stand there like a post, move it,” she barked in a commanding tone.
“What!?” Lilya gasped with indignation. “Oh, no! That’s not what we agreed on! And you can keep your orders to yourself. They don’t work on me. I came here only because I believed you were ill. But I see you’re just fine, back in your usual role. So I’m leaving, you enjoy yourselves. Just don’t drink too much, or your blood pressure will shoot up again.”
Ignoring her mother-in-law’s outrage, Lilya left, slamming the door loudly.
“Well, Anya, looks like we’ll be setting the table and cooking ourselves, huh? Your daughter-in-law ditched you? You really are a storyteller! We actually believed you that she’d come running and start waiting on us like a little lapdog. She really put you in your place, that Lilichka. Serves you right—no need to show off, dear!”
“Once again she showed her true character,” Anna Leonidovna replied displeased. “She has such a difficult character, not an easy one at all. Well, I’ll talk to her later, teach her how she should respect her mother-in-law.”
“Come on, get up, enough pretending to be half-dead. We don’t need this performance. We’ll set the table ourselves. No sense wasting the evening after we went to all this trouble to get together, right?” her friends said cheerfully