“YOU WON’T LET my mother in? She’s already sitting in the car!” Artyom stared at his wife in disbelief.
The front door slammed so hard that the coat rack in the hallway shook. Raisa Petrovna strode into the apartment with the confidence of someone entering property she had long considered her own. She carried a bag filled with something soft, and her face bore the stern expression of an inspector arriving for an unannounced examination.
“It’s unbearably stuffy in here. The baby could suffocate,” she declared instead of saying hello.
“Good afternoon, Raisa Petrovna. I may be trying to conserve oxygen, but I haven’t taken it quite that far,” Veronika replied, supporting her daughter against her shoulder.
“Don’t get smart with me. Give Mila here. Look at the way you’re holding her! Her head is wobbling!”
 
“She has been holding her head up since she was two months old. Usually, the only things wobbling around here belong to people who enter without knocking.”
Before Mila was born, the two women had spoken differently. Raisa Petrovna used to ask questions, seek Veronika’s opinion, and call ahead to say, “If it’s convenient for you.” After the birth, the word “convenient” disappeared from her vocabulary, along with every trace of a questioning tone.
“Take off that bonnet. The fabric is scratchy,” Raisa Petrovna said, already unpacking her bag. “I brought proper ones. And some decent undershirts too. Those things you bought aren’t clothes—they’re rags.”
“Those ‘rags’ passed a selection process stricter than an audition for the conservatory,” Veronika replied. “I washed them three times and ironed every one.”
“You ironed them—how impressive. And how are you feeding the baby? On a schedule or whenever you happen to remember?”
“I feed her when she’s hungry. Mila hasn’t started wearing a wristwatch yet.”
“There!” Raisa Petrovna raised one finger triumphantly. “That is precisely the problem. There’s no routine whatsoever! She’ll grow up nervous, sickly, and developmentally delayed!”
“You can see the future now? Wonderful. Could you tell me what the exchange rate will be next week? That information might actually be useful.”
At first, Veronika tried to tolerate it. She told herself that Raisa Petrovna was getting older, missed having a baby around, and would eventually calm down.
She did not calm down. She became worse.
Every visit turned into an endless inventory of Veronika’s supposed failures. She swaddled Mila incorrectly, rocked her the wrong way, aired the apartment too little, bought the wrong products, used the wrong soap, and put everything in the wrong place. The list of accusations grew faster than Mila herself.
“You carry her around far too much,” Raisa Petrovna announced during another visit. “She’ll get used to it, and then you’ll never be able to put her down. Let her scream. It develops the lungs.”
“She gets plenty of exercise for her lungs whenever you arrive. It’s excellent training, so thank you.”
“Are you being insolent with me? You need someone to teach you, yet all you do is talk back! You’re completely incompetent. Everything you touch turns out wrong!”
 
“There’s a simple rule about teaching people,” Veronika said. “You teach those who have asked for help. I didn’t ask. I didn’t even submit an application.”
“Artyom!” Raisa Petrovna shouted toward the living room. “Can you hear the way your wife is speaking to me?”
Artyom emerged, rubbing the back of his neck. At first, he had tried to stand between them like a reluctant referee.
“Mom, that’s enough.”
“Mom, she knows what she’s doing.”
But his objections became quieter with every passing week.
“Mom, please don’t,” he said this time. “Nika is trying her best.”
“Trying!” Raisa Petrovna threw up her hands. “My son is living with a hopeless woman! That child will grow up sick and delayed, and it will be her fault. Then you’ll spend the rest of your life taking the girl from one doctor to another!”
“Raisa Petrovna, perhaps you should make an appointment for yourself,” Veronika suggested. “You have a remarkable talent for predictions. It would be a shame to waste it.”
Veronika felt that something had changed the following Thursday.
Artyom came home, removed his jacket, and walked into the room without greeting her.
“You didn’t open the window again,” he said. “There’s no air in here.”
 
“I did open it. An hour ago.”
“That isn’t enough. You need to do it more often.” He picked up one of Mila’s undershirts from the drying rack. “And this hasn’t been washed properly. Mom says you’re supposed to boil them.”
“Artyom.” Veronika turned toward him slowly. “Are you speaking in your own voice, or have you tuned in to someone else’s broadcast?”
“Don’t start. I can see for myself that you’re doing things wrong.”
“Really? A month ago, you could see that I hadn’t slept properly for four nights. Has your eyesight deteriorated since then?”
“Nika, my mother wouldn’t give us bad advice.”
“Your mother gives the advice, and then you repeat it to me like a loudspeaker mounted on a utility pole. Do I need to remind you which one of us feeds Mila at three in the morning?”
“You’re exaggerating. You always make everything too dramatic.”
“I’m not exaggerating. I’m counting. Your mother made twelve critical remarks yesterday. I wrote them down because I’m tired and my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
Veronika sat on the edge of the sofa. There were no tears in her eyes, and her voice remained calm, but something in her expression made Artyom look away.
“Artyom, I’m asking you one last time. Talk to your mother. Tell her to control what she says. Mila is too young to understand her now, so at the moment it is only noise. In two years, our daughter will understand every word. She’ll grow up believing that her mother is incompetent and personally responsible for everything wrong in the world.”
“You want me to say that to Mom?” Artyom gave a dismissive laugh. “She’s right about at least half of it.”
“Which half exactly—the upper half or the lower one?”
“Nika, stop acting like a clown.”
“All right.” Veronika rose to her feet. “I’ll stop. From now on, I’ll handle this differently.”
 
Beginning on Monday, the apartment acquired a completely new atmosphere.
“What kind of shopping cart did you choose at the supermarket?” Veronika asked when Artyom returned with groceries. “One of its wheels is crooked. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to select a proper cart?”
“What are you talking about?”
“And you bought the wrong groceries. The cottage cheese is sour, the bread is from yesterday, and the apples are shriveled. Is choosing decent food really so difficult? Someone clearly needs to teach you.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“I’m showing concern. That’s how concern is expressed in your family.” She took the grocery bag from him. “And your salary is rather disappointing too. You’re a man. Surely you could earn more.”
“Do you even understand what you’re saying?”
 
“I’m repeating everything word for word. I merely changed the person receiving the advice. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel so pleasant, does it?”
Artyom became furious. He paced around the room, jerked his shoulders, and snapped at her. Veronika continued in the same composed voice, wearing a polite smile as if she were reading the weather forecast.
Raisa Petrovna arrived on Saturday. As usual, she had not called beforehand.
“Oh,” Veronika said as soon as she opened the door. “That is certainly a courageous blouse. Very few women would risk wearing such a color—especially with that hairstyle.”
Raisa Petrovna froze.
“What did you say?”
“Your hairstyle,” Veronika continued. “Did you do it yourself? You really don’t know how? It isn’t difficult. You need someone to teach you, so I’ll show you.”
“How dare you speak to me like that?”
“And your fingernails!” Veronika shook her head sympathetically. “Raisa Petrovna, you reach toward a baby with those nails? How dreadful. You’re also holding Mila incorrectly—her head is wobbling. And you don’t know how to dress her. Who puts woolen socks on a baby in April?”
“Artyom!” Raisa Petrovna’s voice soared toward the ceiling. “Can you hear this? She is insulting me!”
 
“I’m not insulting you,” Veronika replied. “I’m teaching you. You always say that teaching someone is an expression of concern. Or does concern work in only one direction, like a subway turnstile?”
“How dare you! I… You…” Raisa Petrovna snatched up her handbag. “I will never set foot in this house again!”
“I remember where the door is. Allow me to show you out.”
The door slammed behind her. Artyom stood in the middle of the hallway, his face drained of color.
“Do you understand what you’ve just done?”
“Perfectly. I held up a mirror. Mirrors can be unpleasant, but at least they’re honest. They don’t cost much either, despite containing more truth than all your family advice combined.”
Veronika believed the lesson had finally been learned, so she stopped criticizing him.
For two weeks, the apartment remained peaceful. Mila slept, Artyom kept quiet, and even his silence felt almost comforting.
Then Raisa Petrovna returned. She resumed her criticism at the exact point where she had previously stopped.
“That bonnet again! And you’re still feeding her whenever you please! Look how thin the poor child is. You’re practically starving her!”
Veronika approached, calmly lifted Mila from her grandmother’s arms, and said, “Raisa Petrovna, it’s time for you to go home.”
“What?”
“Home. That’s the place where, I hope, nobody lectures you about the correct way to hold a spoon.”
That evening, Veronika met Artyom in the hallway.
“I asked you to speak to your mother. You didn’t. I will not allow her into this apartment again.”
 
“You don’t have the right…” He stopped himself. “She is my mother.”
“The mother is yours. The apartment is mine. My parents left it to me, and the ownership papers are in my desk drawer. The geography of this situation is quite simple.”
He did not answer.
On Friday evening, while staring at his phone, he casually announced, “Mom is coming over this weekend. I told her she could.”
“You told her she could. I’m telling you she will not get past the doorstep.”
“YOU WON’T LET my mother in? She’s already sitting in the car!” Artyom stared at his wife in disbelief.
“Then she can sit there for a while and drive home. I’ve heard that cars were invented for precisely that purpose.”
“Nika, are you serious?”
“Completely. Now listen to the second point because it’s short. If you tell me one more time that I’m doing something incorrectly, I won’t let you in either. You can go live with the woman who does everything properly. She’s waiting for you, probably with a brass band.”
“You would throw me out of my own home because of my mother?”
“Not because of your mother. Because you chose to become her loudspeaker instead of being a father to your child. Do you understand the difference? Let me help you: a father protects his family; a loudspeaker merely repeats whatever it is told.”
The doorbell rang at exactly eleven o’clock.
Veronika did not move. She remained seated in the armchair, feeding Mila and looking calmly at her husband.
“Go and deal with it,” she said, nodding toward the door. “And remember: what you do next will determine whether I need to take your suitcase down from the top shelf.”
“Nika, don’t take this too far.”
“I’m not taking anything too far. I’m weighing my options. Go.”
The doorbell rang again—long, demanding, and insistent.
Artyom stood motionless for a moment. Then he walked out abruptly and closed the apartment door behind him.
Voices echoed from the stairwell, first one and then another. Veronika could not make out the words. She gently stroked her daughter’s back and spoke softly to her.
 
“It’s all right, Mila. You and I are doing everything correctly. Some people simply need a translator—from human language into human language.”
Artyom was gone for half an hour. The entrance door slammed twice. At one point, an engine roared to life somewhere below and then went silent. It started again a little later, and this time the sound gradually faded into the distance.
Artyom returned with a flushed face and damp hair at his temples. He stopped in the doorway, looked at his wife and daughter, and spoke in a hoarse voice.
“You are the most wonderful mother in the world.”
Veronika raised her eyes to him.
“Did you come up with that yourself, or did you read it in the elevator?”
“By myself.” He sat on the floor beside her chair and carefully touched Mila’s tiny heel with one finger. “I told Mom she could come here only when you invited her. I also said that if she ever called you incompetent again, I would personally walk her back to her car.”
“And what did she say?”
“She called me a henpecked husband. She said I had betrayed her and that she would never forget it. Then she claimed her heart was acting up. After that, she got into the car and drove away.”
“Her heart is remarkably strong,” Veronika observed. “I’ve noticed that it only starts hurting according to a strict timetable, like a commuter train.”
Artyom smiled briefly, then became serious.
“Nika, I finally heard myself from the outside. It happened when you criticized the shopping cart and my salary. Every word made me feel furious.”
“So the mirror worked. It comes with a lifetime guarantee.”
“I’m sorry.”
 
“I’ll accept your apology, but on one condition.” She adjusted Mila’s blanket. “No more comments about how I washed something incorrectly or failed to air the room properly. If you want to be involved, help with your hands instead of offering commentary. This country already has more than enough commentators. What we lack are people willing to get up with a baby during the night.”
“Agreed,” Artyom said. “Let me hold her.”
“Go ahead. Just remember to support her head.”
“I know.”
“There, you see?” For the first time in a month, Veronika smiled sincerely. “It turns out nobody needs to teach you. You already know what to do.”