Valentina Petrovna was folding the last blouse into her suitcase when the phone rang. Her sister’s voice sounded both excited and breathless.
“Valya, can you imagine—Oleg and Katya are coming! For a whole week! We’ve planned so much—plays, restaurants, museums. They really want to spoil me…”
Valentina Petrovna smiled, picturing her sister flushing with maternal pride. The kids really had grown into thoughtful adults—unlike certain people’s own children who assume their mother will manage perfectly well on her own.
“Of course, Lidochka. I won’t be getting in the way of your family time, will I?”
“Heavens, no! It’s just… well, you know, they come so rarely, and they don’t have much time…”
Valentina Petrovna understood. Translated from the language of delicacy, it meant: “Dear sister, I’m sending you home earlier than we agreed; we’ve got family things to do.” She wasn’t offended—at her age, taking offense at such trifles was a luxury a solitary woman couldn’t afford.
The apartment seemed to empty the moment the door closed behind her. Valentina Petrovna stood on the landing, listening to the quiet behind the wall. Pavlik, her son, had moved in with his fiancée Marina six months earlier. “Temporarily,” he said. “Until we get married and find a place of our own.” But Valentina suspected that “temporarily” could stretch into years—especially given Marina’s apartment was twice the size and her parents lived abroad.
On the train to the regional capital where her sister lived, Valentina Petrovna read a mystery novel and thought about how her life had changed over the last two years. First her husband had died—suddenly, of a heart attack; they hadn’t even managed to call an ambulance. Then Pavlik “temporarily” moved out. And now here she was, traveling to a sister who, truth be told, wasn’t exactly eager for her visit.
“You’re getting old, Valya,” she told herself, looking out the window at the flashing fields. But she felt no bitterness. Age brought not only loneliness, but a remarkable clarity of thought. She’d become better at seeing through people, understanding their motives and hidden desires.
Lida met her at the station with a guilty smile. The niece and nephew truly were wonderful—tall, handsome, successful. On the very first evening they whisked their mother off to an expensive restaurant, bought her gifts, and drew up a cultural program for the whole week.
Sitting at the restaurant table, Valentina Petrovna felt superfluous. Not because the kids were rude—on the contrary, they made an effort to include her. But their attention was entirely focused on their mother, and that was natural and right. They’d come to see her, not an aunt they hadn’t laid eyes on in five years.
On the third day, when the family headed to the philharmonic, Valentina Petrovna stayed home, pleading a headache. She sat in the kitchen, drank tea, and realized: this wasn’t her place. Not because she wasn’t loved or welcome—simply because they had their own family story, their own traditions, their own rhythm of life.
“What am I doing, really?” she asked herself. “Getting in the way of people enjoying a rare visit?”
The next morning she announced she was leaving.
“Valya, but why?” Lida was upset. “We agreed on a month!”
“Things at home,” Valentina lied. “My neighbor asked me to look after her cat, and it got sick.”
The kids expressed polite regret, but she caught the relief in their eyes. The young wanted time alone with their mother—to share news and plans and whisper secrets. Which was perfectly normal.
The train home took five hours. Drowsing to the rhythm of the wheels, Valentina Petrovna thought about returning to an empty apartment. Pavlik promised to stop by, but he came less and less often. He had a new life now—work, a fiancée, plans for the future. And she… she was just a mother who had fulfilled her function and was now supposed to quietly live out her days somewhere in the background.
“Nonsense,” she scolded herself. After all, she was only fifty-seven. Hardly the age for such thoughts.
Climbing to the fifth floor was harder than usual—the strain of the past days was catching up. She set her suitcase by the door and dug in her purse for the keys. The lights were on—she’d noticed from the courtyard, but assumed she might have left the hall lamp on.
The key turned easily. She pushed the door open and immediately heard voices—one male, one female. Unfamiliar.
“…and tomorrow we’ll go to that museum you wanted…”
“Yes, and then the café on Pushkinskaya—Lenka said they…”
Valentina Petrovna froze. There were strangers’ shoes in her entryway. Strangers’ jackets hung on the rack. And from the kitchen came the sounds of tea being poured.
She coughed. The conversation in the kitchen broke off at once.
Footsteps sounded, and into the hallway came a young man of about thirty, followed by a woman roughly the same age. Both stared at her in shock and barely concealed alarm.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”—the woman had found strangers in her home, but they didn’t want to let her into her own apartment.
Or rather, the young man didn’t. He recovered first and planted himself defensively.
“We should be asking you that! How did you get in? Do you have keys to someone else’s apartment?!”
“Someone else’s?” Valentina Petrovna was taken aback. “This is my apartment!”
“Yours?!” The woman grabbed her phone. “Then we’re calling the police! We’ve been scammed!”
“Wait, wait,” Valentina Petrovna raised a hand. “Let’s sort this out calmly. I really am the owner of this apartment. Here’s my passport with the registration.”
The young man took the document skeptically and compared the photo to her face.
“Then why did some guy rent this place to us? Pavel… what was it… Somov?”
Valentina Petrovna’s heart plunged. Pavlik. Of course.
“May I see the contract?”
The woman brought a sheet of paper from the room. Valentina recognized her son’s handwriting—broad, hurried. The lease was for a month, for a tidy sum. And the signature—that familiar scrawl she’d seen on Pavlik’s documents since childhood.
“That Pavel Somov is my son,” she said quietly.
The young couple exchanged glances.
“What do you mean?” the woman faltered. “He rented it out without your knowledge…?”
“Apparently, yes.”
Valentina Petrovna sat down on a hall chair. Her mind felt blank—not from anger, but from a kind of numbness. Pavlik had rented out her apartment. While she was visiting her sister, he’d decided to make money off his mother’s living space.
“Listen,” the young man looked embarrassed. “We do understand… But we paid. We came here on vacation from another city. We looked for a place through listings, and your son seemed like a decent guy…”
“And we have a lease,” the woman added, but less combatively now.
“I understand,” said Valentina Petrovna. “It isn’t your fault. Just give me time to think what to do.”
She called Pavlik from the hallway. He didn’t answer right away.
“Mom? How… aren’t you supposed to be at Aunt Lida’s?”
“Pavlik,” she said evenly. “There are strangers living in my apartment.”
A long pause.
“Mom, I can explain…”
“Explain.”
“You see, Marina and I had no money at all. Her parents stopped sending transfers, my salary is peanuts, and then there’s the car loan… And I thought—the apartment’s sitting empty, you went away for a month…”
“You thought.”
“Well, yeah! What’s so terrible about that? You weren’t living there anyway, temporarily!”
“Temporarily,” echoed in her head. There was so much “temporary” in her life now.
“And if I hadn’t come back early?”
“Well… we would’ve had time to clean up, put everything in order. You wouldn’t even have known.”
“I see.”
She hung up without listening to more excuses.
The young couple—Denis and Katya, as it turned out—stood nearby and had clearly heard the whole conversation.
“This is horribly awkward,” Katya said. “Maybe we should look for another place?”
Valentina looked at them more closely. Ordinary kids—not rich, but decent. Both were looking at her with genuine sympathy.
“You know what,” she said, surprising even herself. “Why don’t you stay for now. I need to go take care of something anyway.”
Valentina took her suitcase and an hour later was standing outside the building where Pavlik and Marina lived. The house was new, with a concierge and an intercom. She went up to the seventh floor and rang the bell.
Pavlik opened. He looked guilty, but clearly hoped he could still smooth things over.
“Mom, come in, Marina and I were just talking about—”
“I’m moving in with you,” said Valentina, carrying her suitcase into the hall.
“What?” Pavlik’s voice cracked with surprise.
“Since my apartment is rented out, and since, as you say, I ‘don’t live there at the moment,’ I’ll live here. Also temporarily.”
Marina peeked out of the room—a slim blonde with a perpetually displeased expression.
“Valentina Petrovna, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that your fiancé rented out my apartment without my knowledge. So now I’m your roommate.”
Marina turned pale.
“But we… we only have two rooms, and one is my home office…”
“That’s fine, I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m not picky.”
Valentina walked into the living room and looked around. The apartment really was twice the size of her own. Expensive furniture, a huge TV, an Italian kitchen. And a mess—the typical young-people kind, when there’s no one to tidy up and they can’t be bothered.
“Mom, we can work this out,” Pavlik started quickly. “I’ll give the kids their money back, they’ll move out…”
“What money? You don’t have any—you said so yourself. The car loan.”
Marina and Pavlik exchanged glances.
“We’ll come up with something,” the fiancée muttered.
“Do that. In the meantime, I’ll stay here. By the way, what’s for dinner? I’m hungry from the trip.”
By evening, the atmosphere had grown very tense. Marina paced the rooms nervously, whispering to Pavlik. He tried to find the right moment for a “serious talk” with his mother, but she was unflappable—calmly washed the dishes, watched TV, and laid out linens on the couch.
“Mom,” Pavlik finally ventured when they were alone in the kitchen, “are you really going to live here?”
“Why not? Don’t I have the right to visit my son?”
“You do, but—”
“Then what’s the problem? I’m not in the way. Marina said she has an important video conference with overseas partners tomorrow. I’ll sit quietly in the kitchen—maybe I’ll make some borscht. By the way, when was the last time you ate a home-cooked meal?”
Pavlik said nothing. They really didn’t know how to cook and survived on delivery and ready-mades.
“And besides,” Valentina went on, “I like it here. It’s spacious and bright. And most importantly—I’m not alone.”
She said those last words with such guileless joy that something tugged in Pavlik’s chest.
The next day things reached a breaking point. Marina did have an important video conference, but at seven in the morning Valentina started making breakfast. She bustled in the kitchen, turned on the radio, clattered the dishes. Marina burst out in a robe, hair disheveled.
“Valentina Petrovna, I have a work call in half an hour!”
“Oh, sorry, dear. I thought you were still asleep. How about some eggs? You’re skin and bones.”
“I don’t need eggs! I need silence!”
“Of course, of course. I’ll be ever so quiet.”
But “quiet” wasn’t in Valentina’s repertoire. She fried cutlets (very loudly), vacuumed the hallway (even louder), and sang songs (loudest of all). By noon Marina was on the verge of a breakdown.
“Pavlik,” she hissed, dragging her fiancé into the bedroom, “I can’t do this! She’s doing it on purpose!”
“No, she can’t be—”
“She can! She’s punishing us for the apartment!”
Meanwhile Valentina washed all their laundry and hung it across the bathroom.
“Oh, you two,” she said when they came into the kitchen, “your detergent doesn’t work very well. And you really should use fabric softener—everything’s so stiff…”
By evening the young couple realized things couldn’t go on.
“Mom,” Pavlik said, sitting down beside her on the couch, “Marina and I decided to pay the kids back and free up your apartment.”
“Why?” Valentina asked, genuinely surprised. “Let them stay. They’re good kids, tidy.”
“But you want to go home, don’t you?”
“And what makes you think I want to go home? I’m comfortable here. Marina is such a caring future daughter-in-law, you’re such an attentive son…”
Pavlik felt his eye begin to twitch.
“Fine, how much do you want?” Marina asked bluntly. “To move out?”
Valentina looked at her carefully.
“Money? What would I need money for? I didn’t come for money. I came out of love. I missed family life.”
She smiled so warmly and sincerely that Marina was struck speechless.
On the fourth day, Pavlik couldn’t stand it.
“Mom, enough!” he exploded. “You know perfectly well we get it. You’re punishing us!”
“Whatever for?” Valentina calmly stirred the soup.
“For renting the apartment! I didn’t mean any harm! I needed the money!”
“Pavlik,” she turned to him, “I’m fifty-seven. I’m not young, but I’m not old either. I have my own apartment, a small pension, some savings. I could spend the rest of my life quietly and unobtrusively, not bothering anyone with my existence.”
“Mom…”
“Don’t interrupt. I thought my son would sometimes come to visit, maybe bring the grandchildren someday. I thought I had a home I could always return to. It turns out my home is simply a source of income for my adult son.”
Pavlik was silent.
“Do you know what upset me most? Not that you rented out the apartment. That you didn’t even think to ask my permission. I’ve become so insignificant to you that my opinion doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not true!”
“Pavlik, if you’d come to me and said, ‘Mom, we really need the money, can I rent your apartment for a month?’ I would have agreed. I’d have given you the money outright, no lease needed.”
Pavlik lowered his head.
“But you decided it would be easier without me. That I wouldn’t find out, and if I did—I’d put up with it. Because where would an old mother go?”
“Mom, I’m sorry…”
That evening, Pavlik and Marina went to see the students.
Two hours later Pavlik returned alone, his face drawn.
“Mom, it’s all settled. We returned their money, found them another place, compensated them for the trouble. The apartment’s free.”
Valentina nodded.
“And where did you get the money?”
“Marina borrowed from a friend.”
“I see.”
She stood up and began to pack her things into the suitcase.
“Mom, where are you going?”
“Home. If the apartment’s free, there’s no need for me to stay here.”
Pavlik watched as she neatly folded her few belongings.
“Mom, I understand now. Honestly, I do. I’ll never make decisions for you again.”
“All right.”
“And I’ll come by more often. I promise.”
“Promises are easy, Pavlik. Keeping them…”
“I will keep them!”
She zipped the suitcase and looked at her son.
“You know what I realized these past few days? Old age isn’t when people don’t notice you. Old age is when they take you for granted—when they assume you won’t go anywhere, that you’ll put up with anything and agree to any terms. Because where would you go?”
Pavlik said nothing.
“If my own son thinks of me as a piece of furniture, I’ll remind him that furniture can be very uncomfortable.”
At home she brewed strong tea and sat by the window. The apartment welcomed her with silence and familiar smells. Denis and Katya had cleaned thoroughly—even watered the flowers.
On the table lay a note: “Valentina Petrovna! Thank you for understanding. We’re very sorry it turned out this way. We left a cake for you in the fridge—Katya baked it. Our apologies again! Denis and Katya.”
Valentina Petrovna smiled. Good kids. Pity they weren’t hers.
The phone rang. It was her sister.
“Valya, how are you? We all miss you, the kids left, the house is empty. Maybe you’ll come?”
“Thanks, Lidochka, but I’m home. And you know… I feel good here.”
After the call she sat by the window for a long time. Her soul felt calm.
In the end, life at fifty-seven is only just beginning—especially when you finally stop being convenient.