— And this beet of yours, Veronichka, is… from a supermarket or something? No flavor of its own. Bland, — Tamara Pavlovna’s voice, thick and syrupy like cooled kissel, filled the small kitchen. She held a spoonful of borscht aloft like an expert taster delivering a verdict to the accused.
Veronika felt her fingers ball into a fist under the table, nails biting into her palm until white crescents appeared. She didn’t lift her eyes from her plate. The tip of her knife scraped unpleasantly against the faience as she cut another piece of meat that no longer wanted to go down. It was Sunday. A day that, by all accounts, should have been a day of rest had turned into a weekly Golgotha for her.
— It’s ordinary beetroot, Tamara Pavlovna. From our market, — she answered evenly, putting not a drop of emotion into her voice. Emotion was fuel for this fire, and she had long since learned to keep her reserves under lock and key.
Igor, her husband and the only son of Tamara Pavlovna, seemed to exist in a separate reality, protected by an invisible, soundproof dome. He was intent on erecting a complicated construction in his bowl out of meat, potatoes, and thick sour cream, carefully ignoring the rising tension. He was here at the table, and yet he wasn’t. Each time his mother and wife shared the same space, he turned into a function, a body consuming food.
— Well, I don’t know, I don’t know… — the mother-in-law drawled, finally sending the spoon into her mouth. She chewed slowly, with the air of a martyr. — In my borscht I always add a pinch of sugar, for color and taste. And I sauté on lard, not on that odorless oil of yours. Borscht should smell like home, but yours is… somehow sterile. Like a cafeteria. Don’t take offense, girl, I mean well — I want to teach you.
Veronika drew a deep, nearly invisible breath. Teach. In the three years she and Igor had been together, Tamara Pavlovna had tried to “teach” her everything: how to wash floors properly (only by hand; mops are for the lazy), how to iron men’s shirts (collar first, then the cuffs), how to pickle cucumbers, and even how to breathe correctly so that “female energy doesn’t stagnate.” Every word of hers, wrapped in a sticky coating of care, was a small poisoned sting.
Putting her spoon down with a deliberately light tap, the mother-in-law shifted her appraising gaze from the plate to Veronika herself. Her eyes, small and sharp like a bird’s, skimmed the daughter-in-law’s face and stopped at her hair.
— And what’s this new fashion? Got a haircut? — there was no question in her tone, only the statement of a depressing fact. — So short… You used to have such braids, Igor loved them so much. And now… you look like a boy. Well, it’s your business, of course. If your husband likes it, fine. Right, Igoryosha? You like it, don’t you?
Igor, rudely yanked out of his gastronomic shelter, jerked and raised his eyes. He looked at his wife, then at his mother, and his face showed a sincere desire to sink through the floor.
— It’s fine, — he muttered and buried himself back in his bowl, signaling that the limit of his participation in the conversation had been reached.
— “It’s fine,” — Tamara Pavlovna mimicked with a bitter smirk. — That’s your whole young generation. Whether freedom or no freedom — everything is “fine.” And then you wonder why men start looking to the side. A man needs a woman beside him, not a comrade from work. You already sit all day at that… computer of yours, ruining your eyes. At least the looks should be feminine. You’ve let the family go to seed, Veronika. This house doesn’t rest on you; it’s only standing because Igor is carrying it on his shoulders.
The accusation that she had let the family go to seed hung over the table, dense and poisonous like mercury fumes. Veronika felt something inside her chest tighten into a small icy stone. She held a knife in her hand, and for a moment it stopped being a piece of flatware and turned into a small, cold weapon. She pictured plunging it into the snow-white tablecloth — just to rupture the suffocating, viscous correctness of the Sunday dinner.
Igor continued his silent feast. He didn’t stand up for her. He didn’t even clear his throat. He simply pretended that his mother’s words were background noise, like an engine idling outside or kids shouting on the playground. And that silence hurt more than any reproach from his mother. It was a betrayal being committed in real time, right before her eyes.
Seeing that her attack had hit home and still met no resistance, Tamara Pavlovna decided to deliver the decisive blow. She set her plate aside, folded her arms across her chest, and assumed the pose of a judge about to announce a verdict.
— Here’s what I’m thinking, Igoryosha, — she began, addressing her son but not taking her eyes off Veronika. — Time is passing. You’re thirty-two already. It’s time for me to look after grandchildren, and you two — silence. All my friends are out walking with strollers, and me? I sit home alone like a cuckoo. This won’t do. A family is about continuation — children. Without children it’s not a family, it’s cohabitation.
She paused, letting her words soak into the air and corrode it to the ground.
— Maybe you should get checked, Veronichka? — her voice suddenly turned insinuating, cloyingly caring — worse than any scream. — Medicine’s good these days; they treat everything. The little clock is ticking, you know. My Igoryosha is a healthy man; he needs an heir. And if the wife can’t, then… — she didn’t finish, but pursed her lips meaningfully, and that unspoken “then” was scarier than any direct threat.
This was it. Bottom. The point beyond which patience turns to dust. Veronika slowly, with absolute, almost inhuman calm, set her knife and fork on the plate. She didn’t drop them — she placed them, crosswise. The sound of metal on faience was quiet, but in the deafening silence, broken only by Igor’s smacking, it rang out like a gunshot. She lifted her head and, for the first time during the entire meal, looked her mother-in-law straight in the eye.
— Tamara Pavlovna, — her voice was even and cold as steel. There was no hurt, no anger — only an absolute, measured statement of fact. — How we live and when we have children is for us to decide. Without your advice.
For a second, Tamara Pavlovna froze; her brain apparently refused to process what it had heard. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again like a fish thrown onto the shore. Obedience, silent agreement, even tears — she was ready for anything but this. Not for a calm, icy rebuff. Her face, pale and pinched until that moment, began to flood swiftly with a purplish red. Blood rushed to her cheeks, to her temples, making the fine lines by her eyes tremble.
— Whaaat? — she hissed, the sound like fabric tearing. She shot up from her chair, knocking over her glass of compote. The dark-red liquid spread across the white tablecloth in an ugly blood-colored stain.
Her chest heaved with rage at the unheard-of, unthinkable insolence. This girl, this freeloader in her son’s apartment, had dared to give her orders.
— Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, you snot-nosed brat! I’ll give you such a lesson your own mother won’t recognize you!
The threat that tore from her thin lips, twisted with malice, wasn’t just words. It was the sound of a dam breaking. All the bile that for years had masqueraded as “homespun wisdom” and “motherly care” burst out in a filthy, uncontrollable torrent. Her face became a crimson mask with two prickly eyes staring out of it, full of pure, unclouded fury.
She didn’t wait for an answer. Words were exhausted. Her right hand — dry and studded with gold rings that now looked like brass knuckles — swept up through the air. The movement was sharp, practiced, like that of a person who has no doubt about her right to use violence. She was aiming for Veronika’s cheek — that smooth skin, that calm jawline, that silent defiance. She wanted to leave her mark there, a red badge of her power.
Veronika didn’t flinch. She saw the hand flying at her as if in slow motion. She saw the glint of light on the stone in the ring, the taut tendons across the back of the hand. Her body coiled instinctively, ready to take the blow, but her eyes stayed open, locked on her mother-in-law’s face. She would not let her see fear.
But the blow never landed.
Another hand — broad, male, painfully familiar and at the same time utterly alien — caught her wrist in midair. Igor. He was no longer poking around in his bowl. He was no longer an amorphous spectator. He moved with such lightning speed it seemed he had simply materialized between the two women. His fingers closed around the thin bones of his mother’s wrist with a force that held neither filial deference nor doubt.
Time in the kitchen stopped. Tamara Pavlovna froze with her arm raised and caught; her face showed absolute, cosmic bewilderment. She stared at her son as if seeing him for the first time. This wasn’t her little Igoryosha, the soft, compliant boy who always lowered his eyes and agreed. Before her sat a man. A stranger — hard, with eyes cold as steel. A look she had never seen and now feared more than anything in the world.
He looked straight at her, and there was nothing in his gaze but ice and contempt. He did not see a mother, he saw a maddened, out-of-control woman who had tried to strike his wife. His wife. In his house.
— Mama, — he did not shout. He hissed those four letters, and in that whisper there was more menace than in any howl. He spoke the word not as an address but as a sentence. — Get. Out. Of. My. House.
He hammered out each word, driving it like a nail into the ringing silence. Tamara Pavlovna twitched as if struck. Her mind refused to accept reality. Her son. Her son. Choosing this… over her. She tried to pull her hand free, but Igor’s grip was iron.
— Igoryusha… — she stammered, stunned, instinctively using the childish name, trying to yank him back into the reality where she was in charge, where her word was law. — What are you…?
— I said — out! — his voice cracked, splintered by the monstrous inner pressure bursting out for the first time in thirty-two years. He sprang to his feet, dragging her up, forcing her to back away from the table. His face was inches from hers. — And I don’t want to see you here again until you learn to respect my wife.
The last words, flung with force and disgust, destroyed the remnants of the world in which Tamara Pavlovna had been the center of the universe. Slowly — almost implausibly slowly — she lowered her hand. Igor unclenched his fingers. There was no physical contact between them anymore, only a scorched field on which the ruins of their blood tie were still smoking.
The shock on her face gave way to something else. Something cold, crystal clear, and infinitely evil. She was no longer the victim, and he was no longer her little Igor. She looked at him the way one looks at a traitor, a turncoat, a monster one has mistakenly raised.
— Respect? — she repeated. Her voice had changed too. The screech was gone, the hysteria gone. It had become low and hollow, ringing with metal. — Respect this emptiness? The one who wormed her way into my home, into my family, and sucked everything out of you? Look at yourself — what you’ve become. A shadow. Her puppet on a string.
She spoke looking only at Igor, completely ignoring Veronika as if she were a piece of furniture — an inanimate cause of all misfortunes.
— She feeds you swill and you eat it and smile. She put you in that ridiculous shirt and you wear it. She cut off her hair and you say “it’s fine.” You don’t have your own opinion anymore, Igor. She has burned everything manly out of you — everything of mine. You’re just her attachment now, her thing. And you want me to respect this? To bow to her for turning my son into a spineless creature?
She wasn’t asking for an answer. She was delivering a sentence. Each word was a carefully chosen stone she hurled at the fragile construction of his new life. She aimed not at him but at the joint between him and Veronika, trying to split their union with one last desperate effort.
Igor listened in silence. He didn’t interrupt. He let her speak, to spill every last drop of poison. When she fell silent, breathing hard, he took a step back to the table and leaned on it with both hands. He looked at the bowl of cooled borscht, at the blood-colored compote stain on the tablecloth, at his wife sitting with a straight back, staring at a fixed point in front of her.
— Are you finished? — he asked quietly.
Tamara Pavlovna snorted contemptuously.
— My turn, — he continued in the same even, lifeless tone. — You’ve spent my whole life teaching me something. How to hold a spoon. How to tie my laces. How to choose friends. How to talk to girls. How to cook your borscht. There was only ever one right opinion — yours. Any desire of mine, any thought of mine was wrong, immature, stupid. I wasn’t supposed to become myself — I was supposed to become your continuation. Convenient, obedient, proper.
He raised his eyes to her, and there was no anger and no hurt in them. Only emptiness. A desert burned to ash.
— And then Veronika appeared. And she never told me how to live. She just lived beside me. And for the first time in thirty years I understood that you can breathe without asking permission. That you can love borscht that doesn’t taste like yours. That you can wear a shirt that I like. That you can be happy simply because you’re happy — not because you’ve fulfilled someone’s order.
He straightened. His voice found hardness.
— You didn’t take care of me. You owned me. And you hate her not because she’s bad, but because she took me away from you. Because she made me free. So. This is my house. This is my wife. This is my family. And you… you’re no longer part of it. Leave.
Tamara Pavlovna understood. This was the end. Final and irrevocable. Not a single muscle twitched on her face. She measured them both with a long, heavy look in which there was nothing but cold hatred. Then slowly, with queenly dignity, she turned, took her handbag from the sideboard, and walked toward the exit. Without looking back. The front door closed behind her with a soft, neat click.
A dead silence settled over the kitchen. Igor sank heavily into his chair. He stared at his hands on the table as if he didn’t recognize them. Veronika was silent. Then she stood, took her mother-in-law’s plate with the untouched, cooled borscht, walked to the trash bin, opened it, and dumped the entire contents in with a sharp thud. The red slurry slid down the sides of the bag, leaving only greasy streaks on the plate. It was the end of Sunday dinner…