“Well, hello, Victoria,” her voice was all ice-cold politeness. “I want you to know this. You turned my son against his family. He used to be a normal man. Now he’s a doormat.”
“Are you calling just to insult me?” Victoria opened the fridge and took out some kefir. She no longer had the strength to be angry—only a sticky, weary indifference.
“I’m calling to tell you I see right through you. Everything about you is clear. You think that because the car is yours, the power is yours too? You’re just petty and mean. You’re a snake, Victoria. Cold-blooded.”
“Thanks for the diagnosis. You can get back to your TV shows now. I think your favorite is on—the one about the poor widow’s suffering.”
“Dmitry is suffering!” shouted Raisa Gennadyevna. “He told me himself: ‘Mom, I’m tired of her coldness.’ Tired, do you understand?!”
“Let him move out,” Victoria shut the fridge softly. “Pavel has a spare room. Or he can go to you. I’m tired of everyone trying to live off my things, my time, my nerves.”
“So that’s how you talk,” drawled Raisa Gennadyevna. “So the apartment’s yours, everything’s yours. And my boy is nobody?”
“No, Raisa Gennadyevna. He is somebody. But he’s a grown man. And if he can’t say ‘no’ to a brother who uses him, then he’s not my husband. He’s a doormat. And I’m not married to doormats.”
That evening Dmitry came home late. The entryway smelled of stale alcohol.
“Where were you?” Victoria asked without getting up from the couch.
“With Pavel. We were drinking. He’s a decent person. Understanding. Unlike some people.”
She stood up without a word, walked to the kitchen, and sat down without turning on the light.
“I don’t understand, Vika…” he followed her, leaning on the doorjamb. “What happened to you? You used to be… more affectionate. Softer. And now you split everything up: your car, your money, your apartment.”
“Because I’m tired. Because I don’t want to play the nice aunt anymore—the one you can take everything from and never give anything back. Because it disgusts me when a husband drinks with his brother and at the same time discusses what a bitch his wife is.”
“You… don’t you see yourself?” he suddenly raised his voice. “You’re taking my family away from me! I don’t have anyone but you and them!”
“Think about why you don’t have anyone else. Maybe because everyone you defend uses you? And I’m the only one who ever told you the truth?”
They didn’t speak until morning. He slept in the kitchen. She—in the bedroom. In the morning, he left for work in silence. Without a goodbye.
Victoria gathered her documents into a folder, took out the paperwork for the car, and finally put on her coat. She left a note on the table:
“I’m not your mother. I’m not Pavel. And I’m not ‘always convenient.’ I’m a person who’s tired of being a thing. Until evening. If there’s no conversation—there will be a divorce.”
She didn’t know whether she’d come back that evening. But she knew for sure: there was no way back.
The day turned out unusually gray. A fine, nasty drizzle was falling—the kind that makes an umbrella only get in the way. Victoria sat in the car across from Dmitry’s workplace. The wipers squeaked like old bones. In the glove compartment lay a printed divorce petition form. No hysterics, no “it’s all your fault”—just the form.
She hadn’t come to make a scene. She’d come to look him in the eye once more and understand whether there was anything alive there—or only habit.
“Are you serious?” Dmitry stood in the parking lot in his work vest, a bag from Pyaterochka in his hand. He looked tired, dimmed, almost defeated. “Do you really want to just take everything and throw it away like this?”
“And didn’t you throw it away?” Victoria looked at him the way you look at a stranger. “When you told Pavel I was a bitch. When you let your mother dump mud on me. When you drank last night and didn’t come to the bedroom.”
He lowered his eyes, stammered, searched for words. But the words were like change in a pocket with a hole—rustling somewhere inside, impossible to catch.
“I just… didn’t know what to do,” he exhaled at last. “Pavel is always in debt, Mom’s yelling, you’re angry. I’m torn apart. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“By not hurting anyone, you hurt me. Constantly. Systematically. For years, Dim. You don’t even understand that this isn’t about the car. It’s about the fact that you always choose them. And I’m always at the bottom of the list.”
“Vika, you knew who you were marrying…”
“I knew. And I hoped you’d grow up.”
She took the petition from her bag and handed it to him.
“Sign it. If you really don’t want to fight—let me go.”
He took the paper and looked at it. His hands were trembling. Then, for some reason, he glanced around—as if hoping someone would tell him what to do. But there was only the wet parking lot and passersby with plastic bags.
“So that’s it? Just like that?”
“No, not ‘that’s it.’ ‘At last.’ This isn’t a divorce, Dim. It’s a release.”
That evening Raisa Gennadyevna came to her. She stood in the doorway in shoes on bare feet, a thin jacket on, her expression like a prosecutor pronouncing a death sentence.
“Are you happy now?” she spat out viciously, not crossing the threshold. “You got what you wanted. Broke up a family. Saved your precious car. Congratulations.”
“Yes,” Victoria replied calmly. “I’m happy.”
“You think he’ll come crawling back to you on his knees?”
“No. I think I’ll finally have peace and quiet. And no one will ask to rent my life anymore.”
Raisa flinched. Victoria had never raised her voice at her. Had never gotten personal. Had always been “proper.” But not now. Now she was simply herself.
“Don’t forget,” hissed Raisa, “he’ll still be my son.”
“You’d do better to forget that he was my husband.”
And she closed the door.
A month passed.
Victoria didn’t cry. She didn’t remember how they’d met, didn’t look at old photos. Life seemed to have washed off its scale. There was emptiness, but it was the right kind of emptiness—the kind from which something new begins. Without fear. Without other people’s voices in her head.
She enrolled in a driving school—for extreme-condition driving courses. The psychologist said it was symbolic: she wants to take full control into her own hands. And he was right.
Her car now sat in an underground garage with an alarm system. But it wasn’t about the car. It was about the fact that now she had her own road.
And she would drive it—without passengers who don’t pay the fare.
The end.