Your tea, Svetočka, is still tasteless. Just like grass. And in those little teabags too—like in a factory cafeteria.”
Marina Vitalyevna said it in that special tone that both stated a fact and expressed the deepest sympathy for the wretchedness of someone else’s everyday life. She sat at Svetlana’s impeccably clean glass kitchen table and held an expensive porcelain cup with two fingers, pinky extended, as if she were doing both the cup and the hostess a great favor. A sunbeam, breaking through the flawlessly washed window, played over her carefully styled hair, dyed a shade called “eggplant.”
Svetlana silently poured herself filtered water. She knew the tea was only the beginning. It was preparatory fire before the main assault. Her mother-in-law never came just to “drop by.” Every visit was a mission, the aim of which was to extract some kind of benefit—moral, material, or, most often, both at once.
“Yes, compared to your samovar and loose-leaf blend, I can’t compete,” Svetlana replied evenly as she sat down opposite. She didn’t smile. She simply watched.
“Exactly,” Marina Vitalyevna nodded with satisfaction, taking another sip of the “grass.” “Traditions are dying out. No one appreciates the real thing anymore. And my Lyosha has completely gone off the rails. He used to eat his mother’s soup, borscht. And now what? They order pizza—and that’s dinner. He’ll ruin his stomach.”
She looked at Svetlana reproachfully, as if Svetlana personally sprinkled poison into every pizza box. Svetlana said nothing. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard accusations of culinary genocide against her own husband. It was the second part of the required program: complaints about how badly her son was living with this woman.
Marina Vitalyevna sighed heavily, set her cup down, and began examining her flawless manicure.
“It’s hard, Svetočka, living on one pension. I worked my whole life, hands to the bone, and what do I have in the end? Pennies. For medicine and utilities. And yet you still want to… live a little. Like a human being. See the world. My neighbor Lyudochka is going to Turkey for the third time already. And how am I worse?”
Svetlana felt the air in the kitchen begin to thicken. They were approaching the climax.
“Turkey is nice,” she remarked neutrally. “The climate is wonderful.”
“Wonderful!” her mother-in-law seized on it enthusiastically, leaning forward. Her eyes gleamed with a gambler’s spark. “And the hotel is шикарный—luxurious—everything included! And all my friends are going. We’ve practically packed our suitcases. There’s just one ‘but’…”
She paused dramatically.
“I’m short. Just a little. One hundred thousand. You’re a smart girl, Svetočka. You work well, my Lyosha isn’t starving either. You wouldn’t refuse a mother, would you? The mother of your husband. His own mother?”
She looked at Svetlana expectantly, with that very blend of fawning and demand that Svetlana hated so much. Her gaze said: Go on, say yes, and maybe I’ll leave you alone for a while.
Svetlana took a slow sip of water.
“Marina Vitalyevna, I understand you. But right now we can’t. We have a major purchase planned, and all free funds have already been allocated.”
Not a single muscle twitched on her mother-in-law’s face. She only leaned back slowly in her chair. All the elderly meekness, the rehearsed goodwill, vanished instantly. Something predatory and spiteful surfaced—something usually hidden behind sighs and complaints. Her eyes narrowed; the corners of her mouth slid downward.
“So that’s how it is,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I knew I wouldn’t get any help from you. Greedy. You’ve always been greedy. Do you think Lyosha won’t find out how you humiliated his mother? Refused over such a trifle. He won’t let anyone offend his mother. We’ll see how you sing when he has to make a choice.”
The threat hung in the kitchen air, dense and poisonous like mercury vapor. Svetlana expected it. She knew that behind the façade of weakness and pension complaints was this very mechanism—primitive, but honed over years: blackmail. Anyone else might have been frightened, might have started justifying themselves, bargaining. But Svetlana only smirked slightly, with the corners of her lips. It wasn’t a cheerful smile—it was cold, almost predatory, the smile of someone who sees a predictable trap and has no intention of stepping into it.
“A choice?” she repeated, and her voice was calm, even mildly curious. “Do you really think, Marina Vitalyevna, that in this situation it’s Alexey who will be choosing?”
Marina Vitalyevna frowned. She hadn’t expected that kind of pushback. She was used to her hints producing fear, fussing, a desire to make things right. But here there was icy calm and a counter-question that struck the weakest point in her whole construction.
“And who else?” she snapped defiantly. “He’s my son! He loves and respects me! And when I tell him what a heartless wife he has, ready to leave his own mother in poverty for the sake of some ‘major purchase,’ he’ll think about it. He’ll think hard. I’ll open his eyes to you, Svetočka. I’ll tell him how you don’t value him, how you don’t care about his family. How you only think about yourself. He won’t abandon his mother. He never has.”
She spoke with relish, savoring each word, painting in the air a picture of her daughter-in-law’s inevitable collapse. She saw herself as the victor—the wise mother saving her son from the clutches of a selfish woman.
Svetlana listened without interrupting. She let her finish, let her spill every drop of the prepared venom. When her mother-in-law ended and looked at her triumphantly, Svetlana slowly stood up from the table. Now she wasn’t sitting opposite her—she was standing over her. And that simple change of position completely shifted the balance of power.
Svetlana’s gaze contained no emotion. No anger. No hurt. No fear. Only cold, absolute clarity.
“If you need money so badly, Marina Vitalyevna, then go and earn it, instead of extorting it from me under the pretext that you’ll turn your son against me! And if he’s as suggestible as you claim, then I don’t need a husband like that at all!”
Each word was clipped and precise. This wasn’t a reply in an argument. It was a sentence. A sentence on her relationship with her, on her blackmail, and—perhaps—on her son.
Marina Vitalyevna froze; her face went long. She stared at her daughter-in-law, not believing her own ears. In her world, that scenario was impossible. People were supposed to argue with her, fight with her, fear her. And she had simply been… written off. Crossed out of the equation along with her all-powerful influence over her son.
Without waiting for an answer, Svetlana turned and walked into the entryway. She didn’t hurry. Her movements were confident and final. She grasped the handle of the front door and, with a soft click, unlocked it. Then she swung it open wide, creating a large, inviting opening to the exit.
“You can start right now,” she added, turning back toward her frozen mother-in-law in the kitchen. Her voice was just as flat and lifeless. “Call Alexey. Tell him. Let’s see who your son stays with when he learns about your methods. Goodbye.”
Marina Vitalyevna slowly got up. Her face shifted from stunned to crimson with fury. She walked past Svetlana without looking at her, feeling spat on and humiliated. Already on the landing, she turned back—her eyes flashing with lightning.
“You’ll regret this,” she hissed.
Svetlana looked at her in silence. Then, without saying another word, she closed the door.
Right in her face.
The door shut with a dry, indifferent click. To Marina Vitalyevna, the sound was louder than a gunshot. She remained on the landing, staring at the smooth, faceless surface that cut her off from the familiar world in which she was the center of her son’s universe. A cold, sharp rage stabbed through her. This wasn’t just an insult. It was sabotage—an undermining of foundations, an attempted coup on the scale of one single family. Her hands, gripping her handbag so tightly that her knuckles whitened, trembled slightly. But it wasn’t the tremor of weakness. It was the vibration of a string stretched to the limit, ready to snap and lash anything nearby.
She didn’t knock or shout. That would have been admitting defeat. Instead she slowly, barely breathing, took out her phone. Her fingers—usually so deft when laying out solitaire on her tablet—now moved with predatory precision. She found the cherished contact, “Lyoshenka,” and pressed call, already rehearsing the opening lines in her head. She didn’t go downstairs. No. She stayed right there on the landing so that her voice, if needed, would carry the chill and echo of an empty stairwell—scenery for her little performance.
Alexey was in a work meeting when his phone vibrated in the pocket of his suit jacket. “Mom.” He grimaced and declined the call. Ten seconds later it buzzed again. And again. He apologized, stepped into the hallway, and answered, bracing himself for yet another complaint about the pharmacy or the noisy neighbors.
“Yes, Mom, I’m in a meeting. Is something urgent?”
Instead of her usual brisk tone, he heard a quiet, stifled sob—a sound that had been his personal code red since childhood.
“Lyoshenka… son…”
“Mom, what happened? Where are you?” His voice changed instantly. All the business polish fell away, exposing the protector’s instinct.
“I… I was at your place…” Marina Vitalyevna’s voice shook and broke, as if she couldn’t get enough air. “I just stopped by… for some tea… to check on Svetočka…”
She paused, letting her son paint an idyllic picture in his mind.
“And?” “What happened? Is Sveta home?”
“She is…” Another sob, now more desperate. “Lyoshenka, I don’t know what I did to her… I only… only mentioned that my friends are going to Turkey… That I want so much, just once… in my old age… to have some joy… I didn’t ask for anything, son, you know me, I never…”
A masterful lie, perfected over years. Alexey tensed; his jaw tightened. He pictured his small, aging mother sharing a modest dream.
“And what did she say?” he ground out.
“She… she laughed in my face, Lyoshenka… Said if I need money, I should go work, not extort it… Said that…” Here Marina Vitalyevna made a brilliant move—her voice dropped to a tragic whisper—“that I’m nobody to her, and that if you’re so suggestible, then you’re not needed by her either… And then… then she just opened the door… and threw me out. Like a dog, Lyoshenka… I’m standing in the stairwell right now… alone…”
The picture she drew was monstrous. In Alexey’s mind, the puzzle snapped together instantly: his tired, unhappy mother, humiliated to the core—and his wife, a soulless, cruel monster. Any doubts that might have arisen were erased by his lifelong habit of believing every one of his mother’s words. His world was simple: Mom was sacred. And whoever offended the sacred was an enemy.
“Mom, calm down. Hear me? Go home right now. I’m coming,” he cut her off.
He ended the call without waiting for her reply. He returned to the meeting room, grabbed his laptop and car keys from the table. “Urgent family matter,” he threw at his boss and walked out without looking at anyone. One thought hammered in his head, red-hot: a blow to the temple. An insult. His mother. His mother had been thrown out. He drove without noticing traffic lights or other cars. Righteous anger filled him to the brim, leaving no room for questions or doubt. He wasn’t going to sort it out. He was going to deliver justice. And justice, as he understood it, had to happen immediately.
The apartment door didn’t open—it was ripped from the frame by the force of the key turning. Alexey burst into the entryway without even taking off his coat. His face was dark, nearly unrecognizable, twisted by a grimace of righteous fury. Svetlana was sitting in an armchair in the living room, a book on her lap—which she wasn’t, in fact, reading. She had been waiting. She looked up at him, and there was no fear in her eyes, no surprise—only a weary acknowledgement of the inevitable.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he started from the doorway, his voice low and tightly controlled, which made it even more threatening. He wasn’t shouting. He was accusing.
Svetlana said nothing, simply looking at him. She saw not her husband, but a soldier sent into battle. A чужой солдат—a stranger’s soldier.
“You threw my mother out? My mother! An elderly person! You kicked her out the door?!” He took a step into the room, his fists clenched. He breathed heavily, as if after a sprint. “She called me—she was in terrible shape! Because of you!”
He waited for an answer. Excuses, screaming, an argument—anything that confirmed there was a conflict in which he could be the judge. But Svetlana kept silent, and that silence drove him mad far more than any verbal fight could have.
“I’m waiting for an answer!” he barked, losing what remained of his self-control. “You will take your phone right now, call her, and apologize. Do you hear me? You will beg her for forgiveness!”
He spoke like to a subordinate who had messed up, like to a lesser creature that had dared to violate an immutable law. Svetlana slowly closed the book and set it down on the side table.
“You didn’t even ask what happened, Alexey,” she said quietly, but the quiet only gave her words more weight. In the room ringing with his anger, that soft voice landed like a bell strike.
“What is there to ask?!” he exploded. “Mom told me everything! How you mocked her, humiliated her! How you refused to help and threw her out! Or are you going to tell me she made it all up?!”
“No,” Svetlana replied calmly. “I’m not going to say that. I’m going to say that you came here already knowing the ‘truth.’ You don’t need my version. You don’t need dialogue. You need me to carry out your mother’s order.”
Alexey froze. She disarmed him again, but this time the blow didn’t land on his mother—it landed on him. She exposed his motives with a surgeon’s precision.
“You… you’re trying to turn everything upside down! Shift the blame!” he tried to regain the initiative, but his voice no longer sounded so sure.
“There’s no blame, Alexey. There’s only a choice. And you made it before you even crossed this threshold. You chose her. Her performance, her manipulation, her version of reality. That’s your right.” Svetlana rose from the chair. She was absolutely calm. Her face held nothing but a cold, final decision. “She demanded money, threatening to destroy our family. I told her that if you’re so suggestible that you’ll allow that, then I don’t need a husband like that. And I was right.”
She looked straight into his eyes, and in her gaze he saw neither love nor hatred. He saw emptiness. The place where he used to be had been burned to ash.
“So now,” she continued evenly, “you can turn around and go to your mother. Calm her down. Tell her she won. She got what she wanted. She got rid of me. And now you belong to her completely.”
He stood in the middle of the room, stunned. All his fury, all his righteous anger, crumbled to dust against that icy wall. He wanted to shout, argue, prove something, but the words stuck in his throat. He suddenly realized there was no one to argue with. A stranger stood in front of him—someone who had just delivered his final verdict.
Svetlana walked around him the way you walk around a piece of furniture, went into the bedroom, and returned with a small travel bag, which she had clearly packed in advance.
“I’ll leave the keys on the table. Goodbye, Alexey.”
She passed him into the entryway, put on her shoes, threw on her trench coat. He remained standing in the living room, unable to move, watching her. He heard the lock click.
The door closed.
This time forever.
Alexey was left alone in the silent apartment, filled with the scent of his wife’s perfume and the deafening echo of a life that had just collapsed. He had won the war for his mother’s honor. And in that victory, he lost everything