“Do you even hear yourself?” Oleg snapped, as if someone had pinched him. “What do you mean, ‘without me’? Are you my wife or what? What kind of performance is this? You just pack up and leave, while I’m supposed to sit here like some useless object left on a shelf?”
“Objects, darling, at least don’t ask for a new bedside cabinet every month,” Nadya replied calmly as she carefully folded a light summer dress into her suitcase. “But you do. Well, not exactly you. Your entire cheerful battalion does.”
“Don’t you dare talk about them like that!” His voice shot upward, almost reaching the pitch where shouting turns into squealing. “They’re my family! My own people! You’re just greedy, that’s what you are! You saved enough for your tickets and now you think you’re better than everyone!”
“Greedy,” Nadya repeated thoughtfully, as if testing the word. “Interesting. I would have thought greedy was someone who saved for a vacation and then ‘accidentally’ handed every last coin to someone else. And afterward stares at somebody else’s suitcase as though he’s just been robbed in broad daylight.”
“I was helping people!” Oleg began pacing around the room in large, agitated strides. “Grandpa needed a greenhouse! There were dentures to pay for! My sister has a child! And you? Have you ever given any of them so much as a ruble? No! All you care about is spending money on yourself!”
“On myself,” she agreed without sounding offended in the slightest. “Imagine that. I actually spend my own money on myself. Shocking, I know. The neighbors are probably whispering about it already. And you’re free to spend your money on anyone you want. That’s what we agreed, remember? ‘Everyone saves for themselves.’ Your idea, by the way, sweetheart.”
“I didn’t think you’d take it literally!” He threw his hands in the air. “I only said it to keep things organized!”
“Oh, to keep things organized,” Nadya nodded. “And silly me, I took it seriously. Just like when you said, ‘I’ve got everything under control.’ You held onto that control for a while, and then somehow dropped it. Straight into Grandpa’s greenhouse.”
The door opened without a knock.
Galina had her own key, and it had never occurred to her that she might not be welcome to use it whenever she pleased.
She walked in wearing a cheerful smile, noticed the open suitcase, and immediately raised her hands in delight in almost exactly the same way her son had done a minute earlier.
“Nadenka, sweetheart, you’re packing!” she sang. “Good for you! You absolutely should get some rest. So, where are you two flying?”
“I’m flying,” Nadya corrected gently without looking up from her clothes. “Singular. The sea, sunshine, and absolutely no extra baggage in the form of complaints.”
Galina’s smile froze as if someone had unplugged it.
“What do you mean, alone?” she asked, looking from her daughter-in-law to her son and back again. “Olezhek, what is she talking about? Why alone?”
“Because she despises all of us!” Oleg immediately jumped in. “Me, you, our whole family! She doesn’t care about any of us!”
“Galina, it’s much simpler than he makes it sound,” Nadya said, finally straightening up. Her tone was calm, almost as if she were giving directions to a lost stranger. “We agreed that each of us would save for the vacation separately. I saved. I denied myself things. I counted every expense. And I reached my goal. Your son, meanwhile, gave his money away. I won’t bother saying to whom or for what, because you already know. And I’m not canceling my holiday simply because somebody doesn’t know how to add two and two.”
“How shameless!” Galina pressed a hand dramatically to her chest. “Did you hear that, son? She’s humiliating you in front of your own mother! ‘Gave it away,’ she says! He was helping his family!”
“Exactly!” Oleg suddenly narrowed his eyes. A sticky, unpleasant suspicion appeared in them. “Now I get it! You don’t want me to come because you’re not going alone! There’s someone waiting for you there! A lover, right? Admit it!”
“Well, finally,” Nadya said with a smirk as she zipped the suitcase shut. “You spent half a year throwing money around, and your imagination only started working today. Of course I have a lover. Tall, rich, and most importantly, he knows how to save money.”
“Did you hear that?!” Galina gasped, turning toward her son as if seeking support. “She’s saying it openly! Mocking her own husband right in front of his living mother and bragging about another man! She has no shame!”
“Galina, don’t worry,” Nadya said, spreading her hands with an almost good-natured smile. “Your son has a vacation coming too. He has the dacha, six hundred square meters of land, fresh air. He shouldn’t waste the opportunity either. He can find himself someone in the holiday village and have as much fun as he wants. Then I’ll come back, and we’ll all be one big happy family again. Fair and modern.”
Galina opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out.
She stared at her daughter-in-law as if the woman had suddenly begun speaking an unknown language. She genuinely could not tell whether Nadya was joking or completely serious.
“I don’t know what kind of values people have these days,” she finally managed, pursing her lips. “Nothing like this happened in our time. You two can sort out for yourselves who is sleeping with whom and where. I’m not getting involved in this circus.”
She spun around in offended dignity and left, slamming the door behind her and leaving a cloud of outraged silence in her wake.
Oleg stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed.
He remained convinced that his wife was simply being dramatic.
The thought that she might actually take the suitcase and leave had not even entered his mind.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said to her back when she picked up the luggage. “This is all for show. You’ll calm down and change your mind.”
“Darling,” Nadya said, turning around from the doorway, “I’m not a balloon that needs to cool down. Have a nice vacation. And don’t forget about the holiday village. I wasn’t joking.”
The next two weeks passed easily and brightly.
To keep herself entertained, Nadya went on excursions almost every day. She visited temples, wandered through gardens, and admired sunlit bays.
An older gentleman even tried seriously to court her. He brought flowers, showered her with compliments, and offered to show her around the city.
Nadya politely but firmly made it clear that she was not interested.
The man accepted the rejection with dignity and backed off.
When she returned home, she was tanned, lighter somehow, and almost fully rested from everyone else’s demands.
She opened her wardrobe and immediately noticed something unfamiliar among her clothes.
A soft peach-colored women’s robe hung there.
Next to it was an unopened package of underwear that was very obviously not her size.
“And what exactly have we found here?” she said aloud, examining the items as though they belonged in a museum display.
“Oh, you found them already.”
Oleg appeared in the doorway looking strangely relaxed, almost lazy.
“Well, you told me yourself. Remember? ‘Have some fun while I’m gone.’ So I did. The dacha wasn’t very comfortable. Mom was there, plus mosquitoes and flies. Home was much nicer.”
Nadya slowly placed the robe back on the shelf and looked at her husband as if she had just discovered that her wardrobe could speak.
“So you decided I actually meant that?” she asked.
“Why not?” He shrugged with astonishing arrogance. “You had your fun there, I had mine here. Now we’re even. It’s over. We forget about it and go back to being a happy family. Fair is fair. It was your suggestion.”
“You know,” Nadya said, the corners of her lips lifting slightly, “I expected many things from you. But I never imagined that, out of everything I’ve said over the past six months, this would be the one sentence you chose to take literally. Not ‘let’s act like adults.’ Not ‘let’s save together.’ Not ‘let’s take care of each other.’ No. Somehow you remembered exactly one thing—the joke about cheating.”
“What’s the big deal?!” He immediately began heating up again. “You gave me permission! You started it!”
“Yes,” Nadya nodded. “I gave you permission. And now I’m giving you permission to do something else.”
She opened the wardrobe wider, pulled several of his shirts out together with the hangers, and carried them toward the front door.
“What are you doing?!” Oleg rushed after her. “Stop! Those are my clothes!”
“Exactly,” she agreed, opening the apartment door. “They’re yours. So they’re going with you.”
Shirts, sweaters, jeans—one after another, with no bags and no ceremony—landed on the stairwell.
Oleg ran back and forth trying to gather everything from the floor, his voice climbing into high, wounded notes.
“Have you lost your mind?! You told me to have fun! I believed you! Why are you doing this now?”
“For being so trusting,” Nadya replied, carrying out another armful. “For six months you didn’t believe me when I talked to you about money. But this time you believed me immediately. That must hurt.”
He reached for her arm, trying to stop her.
A sharp slap cracked across the hallway.
It was not even delivered in anger.
It felt more like a full stop at the end of a very long sentence.
“Don’t put your hands on me,” she said quietly and clearly. “That is the one thing I am asking you seriously.”
At that exact moment, the elevator chimed softly and its doors slid open.
The owner of the peach-colored robe stepped out.
Kristina froze when she saw Oleg’s clothes scattered across the landing and Oleg himself crouching among them, disheveled and desperately collecting his belongings.
“Oh,” was all she managed to say.
“Kristina, wait! It’s not what you think!” Oleg jumped toward her.
“No,” she replied, carefully taking a step backward into the elevator. “I think I understand it perfectly. These adventures are too expensive for me. We had some fun. That’s enough. Goodbye.”
The elevator doors closed, carrying her downward toward a quieter life free from somebody else’s domestic disaster.
Oleg remained standing between the pile of his belongings and the firmly closed door of what, until very recently, he had considered his own home.
Only a couple of hours earlier, everything had seemed perfectly normal from his point of view.
He had been waiting for evening, imagining how he would greet his returning wife. They would sit down, talk, perhaps argue a little, and then make peace.
Now he stood on the landing, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, almost afraid to knock.
He had the distinct feeling that the door would open only long enough to slam shut even harder.
His phone gave a short notification sound.
‘
A message from his mother appeared on the screen, ordinary and simple:
“Son, send me five thousand. Urgent.”
Oleg slowly lowered himself onto the top step.
He stared at the message for a long time.
Then, for the first time, he said aloud to no one in particular:
“So this is what destroyed everything. Another five thousand.”
Behind the closed door, Nadya was neither crying nor shouting.
She put her suitcase in the corner, returned to the wardrobe, picked up the unfamiliar robe with two fingers, and carried it outside.
She carefully placed it directly into the stunned Oleg’s hands.
“Take it,” she said through the narrow opening of the door. “It might come in useful. And send the money to your mother anyway. You’re the generous one in the family, after all. Only from now on, you’ll be generous from somebody else’s sofa.”
“Nadya, please, let’s talk…” he began miserably.
“We already did,” she replied softly. “For six whole months. You were just too busy giving everything away. And you never learned how to listen.”
Then the door closed.
Quietly.
Without anger.
Without a slam.
This time, for good.