Gena smiled the way only he could—broadly, with dimples and that peculiar glimmer in his eyes that Ida had once mistaken for tenderness.
Now she knew better.
It was anticipation.
He sat down across from her at the kitchen table, covered her hand with his, and began to speak in a calm, thoughtful tone, as though he were merely thinking aloud rather than carefully preparing the ground.
“Just think about it,” he said. “Why do we need that old apartment in that neighborhood? The building is pre-revolutionary, the plumbing and wiring are falling apart. We could sell it and buy a proper place in a new development—with underground parking, an elevator, everything. A place of our own. Ours, you understand?”
Ida looked at his hand resting on hers. His fingers were warm. His wedding ring caught the light from the kitchen lamp.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
Then she smiled back at him.
Gena had no idea that there was nothing left for her to think about.
Everything had changed a week earlier, on the night she had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water and stopped in the hallway after hearing his voice behind the half-closed door of his mother’s room.
Before that night, Ida had possessed a habit she privately considered a weakness: she knew how to be happy.
Not loudly. Not theatrically. Something inside her would simply grow warm, and she protected that warmth.
She found joy in the first days of spring, in a good cup of coffee, in managing to steal an hour to read a book.
Five years of marriage to Gena, five years of living under the same roof as his mother, Valentina Sergeyevna, had not completely destroyed that ability. It had only made it quieter.
When Ida’s mother called and told her that her great-aunt Zoya had died and left Ida her apartment—the one that smelled of old wood and valerian, with potted rubber plants and a chiming clock—Ida cried at first.
She had loved Aunt Zoya. She was the sort of person who never lectured others about how to live. She simply sat beside you and listened.
When Ida’s tears finally dried, another feeling came.
An apartment of her own.
For the first time in five years, something truly hers.
She had not realized how exhausted she was from living in someone else’s space.
From having to ask whether she could move a shelf.
From Valentina Sergeyevna entering the kitchen at the exact moment Ida began to feel like the woman of the house.
From her mother-in-law’s gaze—measuring, slightly narrowed, as though Ida were a problem that had been solved incorrectly.
Gena appeared delighted for her. He hugged her and said it was a stroke of luck, that their lives would finally change.
Ida believed him.
She had five years of experience believing Gena.
That night, she woke after midnight.
The apartment was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator somewhere in the kitchen. She got out of bed and went to get some water.
That was when she heard her mother-in-law’s voice—low, clear, carrying the kind of tone Valentina Sergeyevna never used with Ida: confidential, almost affectionate.
Ida stopped.
“You don’t understand,” her mother-in-law was saying. “That old apartment belongs to her. According to the will, according to the documents. If anything happens, you have no claim to it.”
“Mom, we’re married,” Gena replied.
“Married,” Valentina Sergeyevna repeated, managing to fit an entire argument into that single word. “Exactly. If you sell the old apartment and buy a new one, the new property will be considered marital property. Do you understand the difference?”
There was a pause.
Ida pressed her palm against the wall. The plaster felt cold.
“You mean…”
“I mean you’re a grown man and should start thinking about your future. Convince her to sell. Tell her a new building would be better. Tell her old properties are nothing but trouble. She trusts you.”
Another pause followed.
Gena said something too quietly for Ida to hear.
Then they both laughed.
She returned to the bedroom and lay down.
She stared at the ceiling and felt the warmth she had protected for so long slowly and methodically drain out of her, disappearing the way water vanishes into sand.
The next morning, she called her mother.
“Mom,” she said, “I want to transfer the apartment into your name.”
There was a long silence.
“Ida, has something happened?”
“Everything is fine,” Ida said. “It’s simply what I want.”
Her mother was not the kind of person who pressured others with questions. She knew how to hear what remained unspoken.
After another brief silence, she said, “All right. Come over, and we’ll talk.”
They met at a café near her mother’s home.
Ida told her everything calmly and without tears, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. Her mother listened, held her hand, and nodded from time to time.
When Ida finished, her mother said only one thing.
“I’m glad you heard them before you did anything.”
“So am I,” Ida replied.
They drank coffee and spoke about Aunt Zoya—about how quiet and independent she had been, how she had lived her entire life on her own terms.
Ida thought that perhaps Aunt Zoya had known exactly what she was doing when she decided who should inherit the apartment.
Afterward, they went to a notary.
For the next several days, Ida lived in a strange state of separation from herself.
On the outside, nothing changed.
She cooked dinner. She answered Valentina Sergeyevna’s questions about whether she had remembered to pay the internet bill. She watched television shows with Gena in the evenings.
Gena was attentive, even affectionate.
Now Ida knew how to read that affection. She understood what motivated it, and strangely, the knowledge no longer hurt.
It only left her feeling empty.
He approached the subject carefully, testing different angles.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about the apartment,” he said casually one day. “Maybe we should look at a few new developments. Just to get a sense of the market.”
“Mm-hmm,” Ida answered.
“There’s one residential complex that just opened. They say the layouts are excellent. Bright, spacious apartments.”
“Sounds interesting.”
He studied her almost the way his mother did.
Ida smiled.
Evenly. Calmly.
She had learned that smile from him.
During those days, Valentina Sergeyevna became inexplicably pleasant. She offered Ida her recipe for cabbage pie. She asked how Ida’s aunt was doing.
Ida answered politely, wearing the same composed smile.
She had no interest in playing games.
Still, she would finish this one if necessary.
Not because she wanted revenge, but because she did not want to rush. She needed those few days to be certain, to give herself enough time to make sure no doubts remained.
There were none.
The decisive conversation happened on Sunday.
Valentina Sergeyevna had gone to visit a friend, a rare stroke of luck since she had hardly left the apartment lately.
Gena set the table, opened a bottle of wine, and put on music.
He had arranged everything like a romantic evening, and Ida gave him credit for that.
He knew how to create an atmosphere.
They ate and drank a glass of wine each.
Gena began talking about the future—about how wonderful it would be to live alone together, without a third person constantly present.
Ida listened and wondered whether he truly believed what he was saying.
Perhaps he did.
Or perhaps he was simply very good at persuading himself.
“I’m ready,” he finally announced, using the firm tone of a businessman who had reached an important decision. “Let’s sell your aunt’s apartment. We’ll buy a good place in a new building and take out a reasonable mortgage. We’ll finally have a home of our own. Do you understand?”
Ida put down her glass.
“Gena.”
“What do you mean, ‘Gena’? I’m talking sense. You’ve complained yourself that you’re tired of living with my mother.”
“I have.”
“Exactly. And now we have an opportunity. It’s practically fallen into our hands.”
Ida looked at him.
He smiled back, the dimples still there and the familiar glimmer in his eyes.
“Genochka,” she said quietly, almost sympathetically, “the apartment is no longer mine.”
The silence stretched between them.
Gena blinked.
“What?”
“You weren’t expecting that, were you? I transferred it to my mother. Several days ago.”
He stared at her with the expression of someone who had just been addressed in a foreign language. He could hear the words, but their meaning refused to register.
“Wait. Why?”
“I feel safer that way,” Ida said.
“Safer.”
He repeated the word as though tasting an unfamiliar dish.
“Do you even understand what you’ve done? That apartment…”
“It was legal,” Ida supplied. “I have every right to manage my property as I see fit.”
“Ida.”
The warmth disappeared from his voice. Something harder replaced it.
“Do you understand what you’ve done? We could have…”
“I understand perfectly,” she said. “That is exactly why I did it.”
He stood up and paced across the kitchen.
Then he stopped by the window and looked outside.
The night was dark and wet, and streetlights shimmered in the puddles.
“Is this because of my mother? Did she say something to you?”
Ida did not answer.
She simply watched him, and there was no anger, accusation, or triumph in her gaze—nothing he could use against her.
“Ida. I asked you a question.”
“I heard you.”
He turned away from the window.
Something shifted in his expression. She could almost see the machinery working behind his eyes as he searched through possibilities and constructed explanations.
“Listen,” he said in a different voice, almost gentle again. “Can we talk about this normally? Something happened, you’re upset, I understand. But that’s no reason to do something foolish…”
“I’m filing for divorce,” Ida said.
This silence was different.
It was not surprised.
It was stunned.
“What?”
“A divorce, Gena. I’ve made my decision.”
He remained silent for a long time.
Then he sat back down, picked up his wineglass, and placed it on the table again without drinking.
“Because of the apartment,” he said at last.
It was not a question. It was a conclusion he had chosen because it suited him.
“No,” Ida replied. “Because of everything else.”
Valentina Sergeyevna returned home around ten.
Her son was sitting in his room with the door closed. Ida was reading in the bedroom.
Her mother-in-law entered the kitchen, clattered around with the kettle, and then went quiet. She must have sensed the peculiar silence that follows a conversation that has changed something forever.
She looked into the bedroom.
Ida raised her eyes from the book.
“Is everything all right?” Valentina Sergeyevna asked.
Her voice was neutral, but caution lived beneath it.
“Everything is fine,” Ida said. “Good night, Valentina Sergeyevna.”
The divorce took two months.
It was easier than Ida had expected. They had no children and no jointly owned property that required division.
Gena hired a lawyer.
After examining the documents, the lawyer informed him that the apartment transferred to his wife’s mother had no connection to marital property.
Ida learned this from her own lawyer and understood that it was proof she had heard everything correctly that night.
She had interpreted their plan exactly as they intended it.
She moved in with her mother.
She slept on the sofa in the living room, helped around the house, and took long walks.
At that time of year, the city looked exposed—without leaves or decoration, simply gray and alive, with wet pavement and the smell of the river.
Ida walked and thought about the fact that five years was a significant part of a life.
Those years had happened, and something in them had certainly been sincere.
There had simply been less sincerity than she once believed.
Her mother did not interrogate her.
She cooked meals, placed plates in front of Ida, and sometimes sat beside her in silence.
It was a rare ability, one Ida had appreciated all her life.
One evening, her mother said, “You know the apartment is yours. Whenever you want it.”
“I know,” Ida replied. “Thank you.”
“We can transfer it back as soon as you say the word.”
“Not yet.”
Her mother nodded.
They did not discuss it again.
A month passed, then another.
Ida returned to work after medical leave. Officially, the leave had been prescribed for nervous exhaustion. The doctor had looked at her with understanding and asked no unnecessary questions.
Work became the best thing in her life during those months.
It gave her structure. It demanded her attention. It left no room for endlessly replaying the same conversations.
Her colleagues knew she was getting divorced. They did not ask for details, and Ida was grateful for that.
Only Marina, with whom she sometimes drank coffee after meetings, said one day, “You did the right thing. Seriously.”
Ida was in no hurry to meet another man.
Not because she was afraid—or not only because of that.
Something inside her had changed during that night in the hallway outside her mother-in-law’s room.
She had become more attentive to what existed behind people’s words.
It was a useful skill, though she had paid dearly for it.
An acquaintance offered to introduce her to someone.
“Not yet,” Ida said.
“That’s probably wise,” the woman agreed, and did not press the matter.
Over time, Ida began to think about the apartment differently.
Not as something she had lost.
Not as a weapon.
Simply as a place that was waiting for her.
There had been large rubber plants in wooden tubs. She needed to find out whether they were still alive, and if they were not, she would buy new ones.
There was the chiming clock, which had probably stopped long ago.
There was the window where Aunt Zoya had loved to stand and watch the street, a window that caught a special kind of light in the morning.
Ida was not someone who knew how to hate for long.
Hatred required too much energy, and she needed her strength for other things.
One Saturday, she took the keys and went to the apartment.
Both rubber plants were dead.
The clock had stopped.
The rooms were cold and dusty, and the apartment smelled not only of old wood and valerian but also of abandonment—the peculiar emptiness that accumulates in a place after someone has gone.
Ida opened the window.
She stood there for a while, looking down at the street.
Then she took out her phone and called her mother.
“I’m at the apartment,” she said. “We need to buy new plants. And find someone who can repair the clock.”
Her mother paused for a second.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
Ida did not transfer the apartment back into her own name for a long time.
Not because she forgot or never found the time.
She simply realized one day that it did not matter.
What mattered was that she was there.
That the rooms smelled of old wood.
That a light St. Petersburg rain was falling outside the window.
That her mother would soon arrive with new plants, and together they would decide where to place them.
Ida arranged cups on the table and thought about how Aunt Zoya had lived in this apartment for many years—on her own terms, owing nothing to anyone, surrounded by plants, a chiming clock, and that special morning light.
It seemed to Ida like a very good example to follow.