“Andreï, again?” Marina tossed the phone onto the couch. “Every single weekend, the same thing.”
“There’s no extra space for you in our apartment,” the daughter-in-law told her mother-in-law.
“What happened?”
“Your mom called. Asked if we’re coming on Sunday. Like clockwork—Tuesday, five p.m., a call from the mother-in-law.”
“So what? We haven’t been for two weeks.”
“We went three weekends in a row before that!” Marina flopped onto the couch. “Why can’t we just rest at home? I’m on my feet six days a week in that damn store. All I want on Sunday is to be a seal on the couch, laze around and watch shows.”
“Let’s at least stop by for an hour.”
“Exactly—‘at least.’ Like you’re bringing her a handout. ‘Oh, my little son has come!’” she mimicked his mother. “And then it starts: ‘Stay for lunch,’ ‘I made dumplings,’ ‘How’s work?’”
“Marina, it’s normal to ask how things are, you know.”
“Yeah, especially when it’s the same questions every time. Listen, why don’t you go by yourself? I’ve suddenly got a headache.”
Andrei sighed. These sudden headaches came suspiciously regularly—right before visits to his mom.
“I’ll at least let her know, then.”
“And don’t you start with that reproachful tone!” Marina flared up. “What, are we dedicating every weekend to your mother now? Don’t we have our own life?”
“We do. And right now you’re spending it on a fight instead of dropping in on an elderly person for an hour.”
“Elderly?” Marina snorted. “She’s sixty-nine! She’ll outlive both of us. And anyway, I was going to the store.”
“For the what, third time this week?”
“I have the right! It’s my weekend and my life.”
The next day, while Andrei was at work, his mother’s neighbor called:
“Andryusha! I called an ambulance for Vera. She came over to borrow some salt, white as a sheet. Holding her stomach, barely speaking.”
“What’s wrong with her? Which hospital did they take her to?”
“City Hospital No. 1. I told the medics you would come.”
The ER smelled of bleach, nerves, and Corvalol. Marina ostentatiously scrolled through her feed while her husband ran between reception and the doctor’s office.
“Maybe you should go home?” Andrei couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ll stay here.”
“Finally, a sensible idea,” she stood up. “I’ve been sitting here for two hours for nothing. Call when there’s any news.”
When Marina left, a doctor came out of the office:
“Any relatives of Nikolaeva?”
“Yes, I’m her son.”
“She needs emergency surgery. Peritonitis. Another couple of hours and… well…”
The next three weeks went by in a fog.
Andrei went to the hospital every day, taking time off from work. Marina stopped by a couple of times—brought a clean nightgown and a container of food she wasn’t allowed to eat.
“Why are you hanging around there all day?” she asked her husband. “There are nurses and doctors for that.”
When they moved Vera Nikolaevna from ICU to a regular ward and removed all the drains and stitches, the question of discharge arose.
“Mom will stay with us until she gets stronger,” Andrei told his wife. “She can’t be alone. She can hardly walk—the operation was complicated, a full laparotomy.”
Marina froze with her coffee cup in hand.
“Excuse me, what?!”
“She needs care. We’ll have to take her in for dressings, and she can’t really take care of herself yet…”
“Even though we’ve got a two-room place, it’s tiny! Where are you planning to shove her?”
“Temporarily, until she’s back on her feet.”
“And you don’t need to ask my opinion? This is my home too!”
“Marina, don’t be childish. She genuinely needs help.”
“Exactly—help! Not to live with us. We can bring groceries, come clean.”
“She needs constant care.”
“Great! Then you take care of her. Just know—you’ll be sleeping in the kitchen.”
The next day Andrei brought his mother. Vera Nikolaevna, sharply thinner and drawn after the hospital, sat gingerly on the edge of the couch.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be long. Just until I regain my strength.”
Marina slammed the bedroom door.
The first day passed relatively quietly—Marina ostentatiously ignored her mother-in-law, holed up in the room. On the second day the provocations began.
“Marina, would you like some tea?” Vera Nikolaevna asked timidly in the morning.
“I’ll manage,” the daughter-in-law snapped, clattering cups. “I’m at home, not a guest. For now.”
In the evening she turned the music up full blast—supposedly cleaning. Vera Nikolaevna sat in the corner of the couch, trying to take up as little space as possible.
“Marin, have a heart,” Andrei asked. “She needs peace and quiet after surgery.”
“And I need personal space!” she shouted. “Where am I supposed to get it? In the bathroom? On the balcony?”
She deliberately slammed doors in the mornings. Talked loudly on the phone in the kitchen, telling her friends how “some mothers-in-law don’t know their place at all.” Ostentatiously left her dishes unwashed—”I’m at home; I’ll do what I want.”
Vera Nikolaevna tried not to leave the room unless necessary. She understood—her daughter-in-law was provoking a fight on purpose.
After a week of this, she called her son:
“Andryusha, take me home. I’m better now.”
“Home? You still can’t be alone!”
“I can, I can. I’ll manage.”
She didn’t tell her son she’d overheard the late-night conversation.
How Marina hissed: “I’m tired of living in a train station! This is my apartment! I have a right to personal space!”
On the day of her departure, Vera Nikolaevna slowly packed her things. Every movement cost her—her scars still pulled and hurt. Andrei went down to warm up the car.
Marina stood in the doorway, watching her pack.
“At last,” she muttered through her teeth. “You’ve turned this place into a hotel. Think that if you’re sick, you can just waltz into someone else’s home?”
Vera Nikolaevna silently folded clothes into her bag.
“And it’s all rather odd. We haven’t lived together for five years, and suddenly you just had to come. Andrei and I have our own life, you know.”
Vera Nikolaevna looked up.
“I never planned to stay. You can see for yourself—I’m leaving.”
“Really? To me it looks like you staged this whole illness. Right on cue—your son decides to buy an apartment, and suddenly you fall ill.”
“As if anyone chooses the time to get sick. And about the apartment—we weren’t talking about that with Andrei,” the mother-in-law said quietly.
“Oh, please! I bet you’ve been buzzing in his ear about how lonely and miserable you are.”
“Marina, for five years…”
“Exactly! For five years you pretended to be the perfect mother-in-law. And as soon as things got tough—you ran to us. You know what? There’s no room for you in our apartment. Not now, not ever.”
“Good thing you finally said it out loud,” came Andrei’s voice.
He was standing in the doorway. His face made it clear he’d heard the whole conversation.
“What did I say that’s so terrible?” Marina folded her arms. “The truth! I have a right to live in my own apartment without strangers!”
“Strangers?” Andrei walked slowly into the room. “Are you talking about my mother?”
“I don’t care if it’s the Pope! This is our home, and I don’t have to—”
“You know what?” Andrei cut her off. “In five years I have never—do you hear me, never—said anything bad about your parents. Even though there was plenty I could have said.”
“Oh really! At least my parents don’t live with us for weeks!”
“True. They just come on weekends and stay till midnight, and your father smokes in the bathroom even though he knows about my asthma. And I keep quiet. But you can’t put up with my mother, who actually needs help?”
“Don’t act like a saint! I’m sick of your righteousness! If you’re such a golden son—go live with your mommy!”
“You know… I think I will.”
“Andryusha, don’t!” Vera Nikolaevna was frightened. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“It’s not foolishness, Mom. I’ve finally realized who I’m living with. Someone who can’t muster basic compassion.”
“Oh, here we go,” Marina rolled her eyes. “Now you’ll act all noble.”
“No, Marina. I’m just leaving. Leaving the person who can talk like that to a sick woman. Who throws tantrums over two weeks of inconvenience. Who…”
“Then get lost!” Marina screamed. “Found yourself a reason! Think I can’t live without you?”
She stormed out, slamming the door so hard the chandelier rattled.
“Son, don’t do this,” Vera Nikolaevna took Andrei’s hand. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have agreed to move in with you.”
“Mom, stop,” he hugged her. “None of this is your fault. Sometimes people just need time to show their true face. For Marina, two weeks was enough.”
Three days later Andrei took his things. Marina didn’t come out of the bedroom while he packed.
At the door he said:
“I’ll file for divorce on Monday. I assume you won’t object.”
For the first week Marina pretended nothing had happened. She told friends how happy she was to have “gotten rid of a mama’s boy.” She posted photos from cafés and clubs.
Then she started calling mutual acquaintances:
“Can you imagine, that old witch planned everything! Pretended to be sick just to break us up! And Andryusha fell for it.”
A month later she tried to reconcile. She messaged Andrei on social media, called his work:
“Come on, I lost my temper. My nerves just snapped. So much work, all the fatigue…”
Andrei stayed silent.
“Let’s start over?” she suggested. “I’m even willing to make peace with your mother.”
“Marina,” he finally replied. “It’s not about Mom. It’s that I saw the real you. And no apology can fix that.”
“You’re ruining your whole life because of your mother!” she started winding herself up again.
“No. I’m saving my life from a person who doesn’t know how to love.”
The divorce went quickly. Marina didn’t show up at the hearing, sending her consent through a representative.
Mutual friends split into two camps. Some reproached Andrei:
“You wrecked a family over some domestic spat!”
“Did you really divorce over your mother?” his childhood friend Vitalik asked. “Marina told me your mom staged the whole thing.”
“How do you stage peritonitis?” Andrei answered wearily.
Others supported him:
“I always knew she was an egoist,” said his colleague Natasha. “Remember when your father passed away? She didn’t even go to the funeral—she had a corporate party, ‘you see.’”
Marina actively played the victim:
“He traded me for his mommy! Can you believe it? We lived fine for five years, and then the mother-in-law decided to move in for her old age.”
“Move in?!” a mutual friend Sveta couldn’t stand it. “She lived with you for two weeks after hospital!”
“Yeah, right! That was just a pretext. She wouldn’t have moved out after, I’m telling you.”
Vera Nikolaevna worried:
“Andryusha, maybe make up? I can see—you miss her.”
“You know, Mom,” her son said, sorting her pills into a weekly case, “I miss the person I invented. The real Marina… I couldn’t live with her.”
Six months passed. Marina started a new relationship, ostentatiously posting photos with her new beau. She wrote posts about “real men who don’t run to their mommy.” But sometimes, late at night, after another glass, she wrote messages to Andrei:
“You’ll come back to me anyway. When your mother finally stops manipulating you.”
Andrei silently deleted the messages. Then he just blocked her.
Once they ran into each other at a mall. Marina was with some man.
“Oh, the ex!” she said loudly, hanging on her companion’s arm. “Meet the ultimate mama’s boy.”
Andrei gave a curt nod and walked on.
“Screw you, got it?” she yelled after him. “I don’t even know how I could ever live with you!”
Her new companion looked away, embarrassed.
That evening Marina wrote to Sveta:
“Hey, I saw Andryukha today.”
“So what now?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I saw him. And I realized—he’ll never forgive me. And me… I didn’t really love him, did I. I was just used to him being there, used to everything going my way.”
Meanwhile, Vera Nikolaevna slowly recovered. She went back to tending her balcony garden. Andrei came by often—not on a schedule anymore, just because.
“You know, Mom,” he said once. “I’m grateful to you.”
“For what?”
“For never trying to meddle in my life. For not telling me how to live. Just loving and supporting me.”
“That’s normal, son. That’s what love is—when you don’t try to remake a person to suit yourself.”
Marina never understood that it wasn’t about the mother-in-law. It was about herself—about her inability to see another’s pain, her need to control everything, her lack of basic empathy.
They say trouble shows a person’s true face. Two weeks of living together after his mother’s illness showed the real Marina. And that face was far too unbecoming to be forgotten.