Everything started with the cup. Or rather, with the sticky brown ring it left on the white engineered-stone countertop. I wiped it off for the third time that morning, and it showed up again, like a stubborn birthmark. Lyosha’s brand. A stamp of his presence in my perfect, ruler-straight world.
“Lyosh!”—my voice, just as I intended, sounded not irritated but tiredly caring. It was my signature tone, honed by years of motherhood. The tone of a righteous martyr. “You put your cup down without a coaster again! I’ve asked you a thousand times!”
From his room—which I called “the den”—came a vague rumble. Either explosions from a computer game or just the noise leaking from his eternal headphones. He didn’t hear me. Or pretended not to. That was his main trick—deafness.
I took a deep breath, gathering the world’s sorrow into it, and went in. As always. The bed looked like two wild beasts had fought on it. Clothes on the floor—not dirty, no, just tossed. Yesterday’s. The laptop was open; the room smelled of dust and teenage laziness.
“Lyosha, I’m talking to you.” I went over and touched his shoulder.
He jerked, yanking off his huge Cheburashka-sized headphones.
“What?” There wasn’t a trace of respect in his voice. Only a dull annoyance, as if I’d pulled him away from saving humanity.
“I said, clear your cup. And make your bed. It’s eleven already, Alexei. You got up three hours ago.”
“In a sec,” he tossed back without even looking at me. His eyes were glued to the monitor.
“Not ‘in a sec’—now. Immediately. And take out the trash, the bag is already full. And—”
He spun around in his chair so sharply I recoiled.
“Listen, can you just leave? You’re in my way. I’m playing. And stop whining first thing in the morning. Cup, bed, trash… You’re like a scratched record.”
I froze. Not at the rudeness—I was almost used to that—but at the word “whining.” It punched me in the gut.
“I am not whining, Alexei! I’m trying to keep order in this home! In the home where you live!”
“Sure you are,” he smirked. “You’re not keeping order. You’re just looking for an excuse to pick at me. You’re bored, so you trail after me. Get yourself a hobby.”
“Get yourself a hobby.” He, the snot-nosed kid I bore in pain, advising me to get a hobby. The familiar, tightly coiled spring of resentment clenched in my chest.
“My hobby is you!” I shouted. “Your life, your future! And you don’t value it! Just like your father!”
There it was. I hadn’t meant to, but it slipped out. The comparison to his father. My main weapon and my main wound.
Lyosh suddenly took an interest. He pulled off his headphones.
“What about my father?”
“What about him!” I sat on the edge of his unmade bed, feeling myself sink into the usual sweet swamp of self-pity. “He thinks that if he transfers money to the card, he’s fulfilled his paternal duty. But that his son’s going through adolescence, that someone needs to talk to him, that he needs a male example… He doesn’t care. His deals matter more. He’s been living in his own world for a long time now. And we’re just an annoying hindrance that sometimes calls and asks for something. He didn’t even ask how you’re doing in math. He takes no part at all…”
I talked and talked. About his coldness, his detachment. I poured my loneliness and my grievance against my husband onto my son. Lyosh listened in silence, and it seemed to me I could see sympathy in his eyes. It seemed to me he was my ally now. That we were on one team against an indifferent world. How blind I was.
That evening there was a parent-teacher meeting. I was going as if to a battlefield. I was ready. I knew I’d hear about slipping grades and scattered attention. But today I wasn’t going to listen. I was going to speak. To accuse. To find allies.
Maria Semyonovna, the homeroom teacher, a woman with intelligent, tired eyes, droned through the overall successes and problems of 9 “B.” I waited patiently for my moment. And when she said, “Now, does anyone have any private questions?” I raised my hand like the best student.
“Yes, Irina Petrovna, I’m listening.”
I stood up. So everyone would see me. So everyone would hear my pain.
“Maria Semyonovna, dear parents! I want to speak not about the private, but about the general. About what worries, I’m sure, every mother here!” I swept my gaze around the room. A few women nodded sympathetically. “I’m talking about our children’s total indifference! About their black ingratitude! I, for example, have devoted my whole life to my son Alexei. I gave up my career so he could have the very best. I oversee his homework, hire the best tutors, make sure he’s well fed and well dressed! And in return—what? Rudeness, laziness, and a complete lack of motivation! I’m beating my head against a wall! We practically have no father; he’s completely immersed in business; all the weight of upbringing lies on me! And I ask you, what else am I supposed to do? What other sacrifices must I make for my son finally to get his act together?!”
I sat down, pleased with myself. That was powerful. I’d outlined the problem, showcased my self-sacrifice, and even elegantly shifted part of the blame onto my husband. Perfect. Now the floor was Maria Semyonovna’s. I expected her to say something like: “Yes, Irina Petrovna, we understand, it’s very hard for you, we’ll do our best on our side…”
But she was silent. For a long time. The pause was becoming improper. Tense quiet fell over the classroom.
“Thank you, Irina Petrovna, for your candor,” she finally said. Her voice was even, without a shred of sympathy. “But I would like to ask you a counter-question. You’ve just listed everything you do for your son. Have you tried not doing something?”
I didn’t understand.
“In what sense?”
“Literally. Have you tried to stop monitoring his homework? To stop reminding him about lunch? To stop being a 24/7 service center for him?”
“But… then he’ll nosedive! He’ll be buried in filth and get nothing but F’s!” I protested.
“Possibly,” Maria Semyonovna replied calmly. “Or possibly, after getting a couple of F’s and walking around in a wrinkled T-shirt, he’ll understand that actions have consequences. That the person responsible for his life isn’t you, but himself.” She paused again—deadly. “I spoke with the school psychologist about Alexei. He has no issues with intelligence. But he has the classic symptoms of a teenager suffocating from hyper-parenting.”
“What?!” I leapt up. “My care is ‘suffocation’?!”
“Care, Irina Petrovna, is when you hand a child a fishing rod. You’re not just giving him fish—you clean it, fry it, cut it up, and feed him with a spoon. At fifteen.” Her gaze hardened. “Alexei is rude to you not because he’s bad. He’s rude because it’s the only available way for him to defend his boundaries. To tell you: ‘Mom, step back, let me breathe!’ It’s a cry for help. And the louder you shout about your self-sacrifice, the louder and rougher he’ll shout back. So, returning to your question, ‘what else should you do?’ The answer is: nothing. Start doing something for yourself. And maybe then your son will see next to him not support staff, but an interesting person he can respect.”
It was a knockout. Public. Several moms who had just been nodding sympathetically now looked openly curious—as at a talk-show guest just exposed. The teacher, my potential ally, had just called me the cause of all the problems. Me. The victim.
I said nothing. I had no words. I grabbed my purse and left the classroom amid a murmur of whispers. My cheeks burned. My ears pounded. All the way home I replayed not devastating comebacks, but her words: “Let me breathe”… “Support staff”… “An interesting person one can respect.”
I burst into the apartment.
“Alexei! Come here!”
He sauntered out of his room, stretching lazily.
“Why are you yelling?”
“I was at the parent meeting!” I blurted. “I was ashamed! Ashamed, you hear?! The teachers complain! Your school psychologist says you’re uncontrollable! That you have no motivation! It’s all your computer games! And your rudeness!”
I expected him to be scared. To deflate. But he looked at me with lazy contempt.
“What did you expect? That they’d pat you on the head and give you a ‘Mother-Heroine’ medal? You were angling for this.”
“What?! Angling for what?!”
“For everyone around to know how miserable you are. How hard it is for you with your flunking son. That’s your favorite song. You sing it at home and at school. Well, take it.”
I raised my hand to slap him, but it froze in the air. At that moment the phone rang. Sergei. I hit speaker. Let him hear. Let him take part.
“Yes!”
“Ira, why are you shouting? What happened now?”
“Your son!” I gasped with rage. “He’s rude to me! He doesn’t give me the time of day! After the parent meeting!”
“Lyokha”—Sergei’s voice went steely—“give me the phone.”
Grudgingly, Lyosh took the phone from me.
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Who do you think you are? Why is your mother hysterical again? When will you start behaving like a normal person instead of a punk?”
And then Lyosh landed the blow. A blow I had prepared for him myself.
“When will you start behaving like a normal father?” he replied—calmly, almost lazily. “Why do you only care that Mom’s hysterical and not how I’m doing? Have you ever called just to ask how I am? Without her complaints? She, by the way, says herself you don’t give a damn about me. That you buy us off with money and don’t take part in raising me at all. So what do you want from me now?”
Dead silence on the line. I watched the knuckles on Lyosh’s hand gripping the phone turn white. And I… I stared at him. And with horror realized that the monster who had just so coolly used my own words against his father—I had created it. With my own hands. With my complaints. With my hypocrisy.
“We’ll talk when I get there,” Sergei said in an icy tone and hung up.
Lyosh tossed the phone on the table and looked at me. There was no triumph in his eyes. Only emptiness.
“Happy now?” he asked, and went back to his room.
I was left alone in the middle of the kitchen. Humiliated at school. Humiliated by my own son. And, worst of all—exposed. Exposed to my husband, to my son, and, it seemed for the first time in my life, to myself.
“What if… what if they’re all right?”
The night was sticky and airless. I didn’t sleep. I lay staring at the ceiling, car lights flickering across it, and replayed the day. Every word. Every smirk. My son’s contemptuous look. My husband’s icy tone. And, above all, the teacher’s calm, lethal verdict. “Support staff.” “Suffocating atmosphere.”
By morning I’d reached the only possible conclusion. It was a conspiracy. They’d all conspired. My husband, always annoyed by my calls. My son, who wanted unlimited freedom. And that teacher, an unfit hen who’d decided to find a scapegoat to cover her own incompetence. Yes. Exactly. I felt better. It wasn’t my fault. I was a victim of circumstance.
I needed to cement the thought, get confirmation. I needed my only true ally. Sveta. My college friend, Lyosha’s godmother, the one person who had always been on my side.
I dialed her number, ready for a long, sympathetic conversation. I needed to pour it all out. To recount every detail with the right intonations so she would feel the depth of my humiliation.
“Hey, Sveta! Do you have half an hour? You won’t believe what happened yesterday—you’ll drop dead.”
“Hi, Irish.” Sveta’s voice was tired. She had her own hell—an elderly mother after a stroke. But my hell was worse, more unfair. “Honestly, not really. Mom’s worse again. What’s up? Lyosha?”
“Him! Who else! And not just him! Imagine, yesterday I was at the parent meeting…” And I began. I talked for fifteen minutes without stopping. I vividly described my speech, the sympathetic looks, and then the homeroom teacher’s treacherous attack. “…and she told me, in front of everyone—can you imagine?—that I supposedly ‘suffocate’ my child! That my care is ‘control’! And Lyosha’s rudeness is a ‘cry for help’! Can you imagine the nerve?! Instead of supporting me, helping me find a way to rein in that slacker, she blamed me!”
I paused, waiting for a flood of righteous anger at the overreaching teacher. But Sveta was silent.
“Sveta? You there?”
“I’m here, Ir, here.” She sighed. Heavily, as if she carried not only her sick mother but all my problems too. “Ir, didn’t it occur to you that in her words… maybe there’s a grain of truth?”
I was stunned. A stab in the back. From where I least expected it.
“What? What truth?! The truth is that I work myself into the ground for him and get not a drop of gratitude in return!”
“Ira, we’ve been friends thirty years. And for the last ten I’ve been hearing the same thing. The same monologue. ‘Lyosha is wrong, my husband is wrong.’ It’s like you’re stuck in one day that repeats over and over. You recite your grievances, I sympathize, and nothing changes. You don’t even notice how you’ve turned into a walking complaint.”
“What?!” I choked with indignation. “A complaint?! I’m just sharing! You’re my best friend! Who else am I supposed to talk to?!”
“Ira, sharing is one thing. Dumping tons of negativity on me without wanting to change anything is another. I’ve told you a hundred times: do something for yourself! Remember how you used to draw! Take a class, find a part-time job! But you don’t want to. You like being the center of your own tragedy. You like that role.”
“You… you’re talking like that… teacher! Are you in cahoots with her too?”
“My God, Ira, what cahoots? I’m just exhausted. Tired of being the shoulder you cry on while changing nothing. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it anymore.” Her voice hardened. “You don’t need me. You need a professional. Someone who’ll listen to you for money and ask the right questions. I have a contact. A psychotherapist. Very good. Call her. Or don’t. But please, not with me. I have plenty of my own problems. Sorry.”
She hung up.
I sat with the phone in my hand, stunned. Betrayal. Total. The last bastion had fallen. Everyone had abandoned me. Alone. I was left completely alone in my righteous struggle. A psychotherapist… She thinks I’m crazy! She thinks I’m the one who’s sick, not them!
I threw the phone onto the couch. A number. She sent a number by text. Anna Viktorovna. I stared at the name, and two feelings wrestled inside me: humiliation and… curiosity. A sharp, spiteful curiosity. What if I went? Went and told this Anna Viktorovna everything? Told it so she’d understand what a victim I really am. So she’d give me a professional verdict. A certificate. Stating I’m right. And I’d take that certificate and shove it under the noses of Sveta, and Maria Semyonovna, and Lyosha. Yes! That’s what I’d do! I’d prove to them all they were wrong!
My fingers dialed the number on their own. I was going to war, not for help.
The therapist’s office was nothing like I expected. No couch, no mysterious dimness. A bright room, two comfortable armchairs, a bookcase, and a table with two glasses of water. Sterile. Uncozy.
Anna Viktorovna wasn’t what I expected either. Not a sympathetic auntie and not a distant professor. A woman about my age, with short hair and very calm, attentive eyes. She looked in a way that seemed not to see me but an X-ray of my soul.
“Hello, Irina. Have a seat. We have fifty minutes. I’m listening.”
Her calmness was infuriating. I launched into my rehearsed speech. I talked about my late, hard-won motherhood. About a husband who ran away into work. About a son who didn’t appreciate anything. About a school that didn’t help. I dumped all my pain and righteousness onto her. I expected to see sympathy in her eyes, to hear words of support.
She listened silently, nodding from time to time. Didn’t interrupt. When I finally ran out of steam, she looked at me and asked her first question.
“Irina, I heard a lot about what your son, your husband, the teachers do or don’t do for you. What do you want?”
The question was so simple it caught me off guard.
“What do you mean? I want my son to get his act together! For my husband to be more involved in his life! For everything to be… normal!”
“‘Normal’ meaning what, exactly?”
“Well… that he does his homework without reminders. That he cleans up after himself. That he doesn’t talk back. That my husband… calls not only to ask how Lyosha is.”
“Good. That’s what you want from them. I asked what you want. For yourself. Personally you, Irina. Not as a mother. Not as a wife. As… Irina.”
I fell silent. What a stupid question. What did I have to do with anything? My whole life was subordinated to them. My wants were their wants.
“I… I don’t understand the question.”
“You do. You just don’t have an answer.” she said gently, which only made it worse. “You said you were forced to leave your job. Who forced you?”
“Well… circumstances. Lyosha was often sick as a child, someone had to pick him up from kindergarten… My husband said I could stop working, he’d provide everything.”
“Did he say ‘you can stop working,’ or did he say ‘I forbid you to work’?”
“Well… ‘you can.’ But that implied…”
“It implied nothing, Irina. That was your choice. Right? You chose in favor of the family. It was your decision.”
She wasn’t arguing. She was just stating facts. But those facts tore down my victim image. I wasn’t “forced.” I “chose.”
“Let’s imagine for a second,” she went on, her voice softer still, “that tomorrow morning you wake up and a miracle has happened. Your son is the perfect child. He does his homework, keeps his room clean, says ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Your husband calls three times a day to ask how you are and brings you flowers every night. No more problems. All your complaints are gone. What will you do from nine to six? Your entire day. What will you do, Irina?”
I stared at her and said nothing. The silence in the office grew deafening. I could hear the blood pounding in my temples. What would I do? All day? Without his problems, his homework, without complaints, without the sense of grievance that filled every hour?
A void.
For the first time in my life I looked inside and saw not a loving, self-sacrificing mother. I saw a gaping, black, endless hole. And it was terrifying. Truly terrifying.
“I… I don’t know,” I whispered.
“That’s the question we’ll start with,” said Anna Viktorovna. “Your homework for the week. Don’t change anything. Just observe. And write things down. But not your feelings. Only bare facts. ‘At 10:05 I reminded my son for the fifth time to make his bed. He didn’t respond.’ ‘At 15:30 I called my husband. The call lasted three minutes. For two minutes and forty seconds we talked about our son.’ Just facts. We’ll meet the same time next Thursday.”
I left her office like a beaten dog. I’d come for confirmation of my righteousness and left with a diagnosis. And it had been given not to my son, not to my husband. To me.
“A facts diary.” What nonsense. I rode home in a taxi, clutching my purse and fuming. At that Anna Viktorovna. At Sveta for giving me her number. At the world. I’d paid five thousand rubles to be humiliated, to have my choice called “my choice,” and to be made to feel empty. And now I had to play her stupid games? Write “protocols”? Fine! I’d write them! I’d collect such compromising material on both of them—on Lyosh and Sergei—that she’d be horrified! She’d understand the hell I lived in and take her words back!
That evening, when Lyosh locked himself in his room and the emptiness in the apartment became almost tangible, I sat at the table with a pretty notebook Sergei had once brought from Italy. I’d saved it for recipes and never wrote a thing. Well, now it would have a different, more important purpose.
In neat handwriting I wrote at the top: “Observation Diary. Day One.” And prepared to document the evidence of my martyr’s life.
“Friday.”
08:15. I made breakfast. An omelet with cheese and tomatoes, toast, freshly squeezed orange juice.
08:30. Called Alexei to breakfast. No response.
08:40. Called Alexei to breakfast. Said everything would get cold.
08:50. Alexei came out of his room. Poured himself cereal with milk. Ate standing, looking at his phone. Didn’t glance at my omelet. To my question, “Why won’t you eat real food?” answered, “Don’t want to.” Left the bowl on the table with milk in it.
12:20. Called Sergei. Asked how he was. Call lasted 4 minutes. For 3 minutes 50 seconds we discussed yesterday’s blow-up, the parent meeting, and Alexei’s behavior. Ten seconds he asked what I’d make for dinner.
15:40. Alexei came back from school. Threw his jacket on the chair in the hall. I asked him to hang it in the closet. He said, “In a sec.” Jacket remained on the chair. (Notation at 20:00. Jacket still there.)
19:00. Made lasagna for dinner—his favorite.
19:30. Called him to dinner.
20:00. Called him to dinner.
20:30. Alexei came to the kitchen. Took three pieces of lasagna, put them on a plate, and carried it to his room. To my remark that we eat at the table as a family, he said, “Where’s the family? I only see you.”
22:15. I picked up the dirty plate from outside his door.
I reread what I’d written. There! There’s the record! Cold, indisputable evidence. Breakfast ignored, request ignored, family dinner ignored. And a husband interested only in the topic of problems with our son. I felt righteous satisfaction. I’d collect enough facts to fill a book. Let her read it.
“Saturday.”
In the morning Sergei called.
“Hey. Listen, I can’t stop by today as promised. Partners called an urgent meeting. Tell Lyosh. And—” he hesitated, “I was thinking after yesterday. Maybe I really don’t talk to him enough. Buy him a new iPhone, the latest model. From me. So he knows his dad is thinking of him. I transferred the money.”
Again. Buying absolution. He cancels a visit to his son and compensates with the latest phone. And I get to live with it. I get to explain to Lyosh the difference between “thinking” and “buying.”
10:10. Called Sergei. Call lasted 7 minutes. All 7 minutes I tried to explain that Lyosh needs a father, not an iPhone. He said I was dramatizing and “making an elephant out of a fly.” Said he had no time for “these teenage snot-and-tears.”
I wrote that fact in the diary, underlining the word “snot” twice.
When I told Lyosh about the iPhone, he didn’t get excited. He smirked.
“Yeah. Of course. Easier to buy an iPhone than haul his ass over here. Classic.”
There was so much bitter contempt in his words that I felt uneasy. Then he looked at me and added:
“And what about you—happy? Got your bonus?”
“What bonus?” I didn’t get it.
“For ratting me out to him yesterday. He never calls or gives gifts just because. Only after you give him a phone meltdown.”
I stared at him, speechless. In his cynical adolescent logic, everything fit neatly. I complain—his father pays off. A scheme honed over years. And in it, I’m not the victim. I’m the go-between. The instigator.
All day I mechanically documented facts. Dirty socks under the bed. Toothpaste cap left off. The computer humming till three a.m. Each entry was supposed to prove I was right, but rereading them, I felt growing anxiety. I wasn’t describing his sins. I was describing my life. A life filled to the brim with his dirty socks and uncapped tubes.
“Tuesday.”
Something awful happened.
In the morning I discovered I was out of my favorite coffee. And I can’t wake up without it—my blood pressure drops. I peeked into Lyosh’s room. He was still asleep. I usually don’t wake him; I let the “baby” sleep in.
“Lyosh,” I shook his shoulder. “Lyoshenka, wake up, honey.”
He grunted something.
“Sweetie, I’m out of coffee. Please run to the store. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“Mmm… okay…” he mumbled, pulling the blanket over his head.
“Lyosh, please. I feel really bad.”
“Fine, I’m going,” came the irritated muffled reply. “Just get off my back.”
I waited ten minutes. Twenty. Half an hour. He didn’t get up. I went in again. He was sleeping soundly.
And then something detonated inside me. Not anger. A cold, calculated fury.
I got dressed. Took my bag. And left. Not to the store. I just went for a walk. I left my phone at home. On the kitchen table, next to his dirty cup.
I wandered through the park. Sat on a bench. Watched moms with strollers, old men playing chess. For the first time in fifteen years, I was… nowhere. I had no goal. I didn’t need to run, cook, check, clean. I just was.
I came home around three in the afternoon. My heart pounded. What would I find? A flood? A fire?
The apartment was quiet. His jacket still lay on the hall chair.
I went to the kitchen. On the table stood a bag. Inside—a pack of my coffee and two croissants. Next to it—a note. On a torn notebook sheet, in his messy hand: “Where are you? I called, you didn’t answer. Bought coffee. Took money from the change jar. I’m at school.”
I sat down and stared at the note. He’d gotten up. Gotten dressed. Gone to the store. Bought coffee. Called me. And gone to school. Without reminders. Without yelling. Without my martyr’s sighs.
I opened my diary.
“Tuesday.”
09:00. Asked Alexei to go to the store for coffee.
09:30. Alexei didn’t get up.
10:00. I left home, leaving my phone behind.
15:00. I returned. Coffee had been bought.
A fact. Just a fact. Bare and lethal. When I didn’t control—result achieved. When I suffered and demanded—I got “get off my back.”
I canceled all my actions, all my “care,” all my “necessity.” And the system didn’t collapse. It simply… worked. On its own. Without me.
And then I understood what the psychologist meant by the emptiness. If he doesn’t need me as the perpetual engine and controller… then who am I? What is my function in this house?
I looked at my perfect, freshly polished kitchen table. A pack of coffee stood on it, which he had bought himself. And for the first time I felt not grievance or anger. I felt fear. A panicky, icy fear of my own uselessness.
I went to the second session with Anna Viktorovna feeling a righteous triumph. My Italian notebook, filled with tiny script, felt weighty like a criminal case file. I’d gathered them. The exhibits. Undeniable, documented facts of rudeness, laziness, and indifference. Today this cold psychologist would understand whom she was dealing with. She’d see my case was special, clinical, and all her silly theories didn’t apply.
“Hello, Irina. Come in,” Anna Viktorovna motioned to the chair with the same serene politeness as last time. It was infuriating.
“Hello,” I sat, laying the notebook on my knees like a shield. “I did your assignment. I kept a diary.”
“Excellent. What did it show you?” she asked as if the result were obvious.
“It showed I was absolutely right,” I declared, opening to the first page. “My life is a round-the-clock battle with windmills. Friday, for example. I made him the perfect breakfast. Cheese omelet, fresh-squeezed juice. What did he do? Poured himself cereal. Ignored it. Showed complete disrespect for my work!”
“I see the fact: ‘Alexei ate cereal,’” said Anna Viktorovna, glancing at my notes. “The facts ‘ignored’ and ‘showed disrespect’—those are your interpretations. Correct?”
I faltered.
“Well… yes. But it’s obvious!”
“Not obvious. Maybe he just doesn’t like omelets in the morning. Did you ask him?”
“Why ask? I’m his mother; I know better what’s good for him!”
“There’s the first entry for the new diary: ‘I believe I know better what my 15-year-old son needs than he does.’” She said it without sarcasm, simply as a fact. “All right, next. ‘Called Alexei to breakfast three times.’ Why?”
“What do you mean, why? So he’d come!”
“But he didn’t come after the first time. Or the second. What result did you expect from the third?”
“I… hoped he’d come to his senses!”
“Hope is a feeling. In fact, you performed the same action three times with no result. What does that tell you about your strategy?”
I kept silent, feeling my confidence begin to crack. This wasn’t a conversation. It was a cross-examination.
“Let’s continue,” her voice remained even. “Call with your husband. Four minutes. 3:50 about your son, ten seconds about dinner. Where are you in that conversation, Irina?”
“What do you mean where? I’m the one who talked!”
“You talked about your son. You acted as an informant on your son’s problems. Where is Irina? What was happening with her? What did she feel that day, besides resentment at Alexei? Was any of that in the conversation?”
“Well… no. Sergei doesn’t care.”
“Did you try to tell him? Or did you decide ahead of time he wouldn’t be interested and immediately moved to the familiar topic where you’re guaranteed a reaction?”
I fell silent again. A direct hit. Of course I hadn’t tried. Talking about Lyosh was easier. It was the only point of contact my husband and I had left.
Page by page, she methodically dissected my diary. Every “fact” she turned to show me its other, ugly side. My control over the jacket. My three dinner summonses. My suffering over the plate by the door. These weren’t his offenses. These were my repetitive, ineffective actions. My hamster wheel I’d built for myself.
Then we came to Tuesday. The coffee story.
“What happened here?” she asked, pointing to the short entry.
Stammering, I told her the whole story. How I left, how I returned, how I found the bag and the note.
“So,” she concluded when I finished. “Let’s record the facts. When you controlled, demanded, and reminded—you got zero results and rudeness. When you removed yourself from the situation, stopped controlling it—the task was completed. Your son showed independence and responsibility. What conclusion did you draw?”
I sat staring at my beautiful Italian notebook. My weapon of accusation. My dossier. And I saw this was not a dossier on them. It was a dossier on me. On my life. The life of a controller, an overseer, a perpetual engine spinning in neutral, generating only noise and grievances. And when that engine stopped, the system didn’t collapse. It started to run.
“I… I felt afraid,” I admitted honestly. “Afraid that I’m not needed.”
For the first time all session, Anna Viktorovna smiled—barely.
“Congratulations, Irina. That’s our first real conversation. The fear of not being needed—that’s what we’ll work with. Hyper-parenting is just a symptom, a way to drown out that fear. You’re afraid that if you stop being ‘the mother-function,’ there’ll be nothing left of you.”
She was right. It was so frightening and so precise I wanted to cry.
“What should I do?” I whispered.
“Now for your homework,” her voice turned businesslike again. “More difficult this time. I want you to run an experiment this week. Radical. Starting today until next Thursday, you completely remove yourself from responsibility for your son’s personal space and food.”
“What do you mean?!” I was horrified.
“It means: you don’t enter his room. At all. You don’t clean there, don’t pick up dirty dishes, don’t collect socks. It’s his territory. You cook food. For the family. Put it in the fridge. And once, in the evening, you say, ‘Lyosha, dinner is in the fridge.’ That’s all. You don’t call him to eat. Don’t ask if he ate. Don’t reheat for him. Don’t cook separately what he likes. He’s a grown guy. If he wants to eat, he’ll find a way.”
“But he’ll starve! He’ll drown in filth up to his ears!”
“That’s his choice and his responsibility. And his consequences. Your task is to observe. Not him. Yourself. What will you feel when you desperately want to go into his room and clean? What will you do with the anxiety when he skips dinner? This experiment isn’t about him, Irina. It’s about you. About your ability to tolerate your own anxiety and let go of control. Can you do that?”
I looked at her. It was madness. It was cruel. It was… impossible. It meant destroying the entire order of my life. It meant declaring war. But something inside me, a small, frightened voice, whispered that if I didn’t do it, I’d stay in this Groundhog Day forever—with that sticky tea ring on the table.
“I… I’ll try,” I managed.
I walked home feeling like a traitor on a mission of sabotage in my own house. The plan was monstrous. My sweet Lyoshenka, my boy—he wasn’t ready for life! He would starve to death next to a full fridge!
I came into the apartment. Quiet. The usual sounds of gunfire drifted from the “den.” I peeked into the kitchen. A plate from sandwiches and an empty cup stood on the table. A perfect pretext for a scene. A perfect pretext to do it all the old way.
“Not him. Yourself.”
I clenched my fists. I walked past the table. I didn’t clear the plate. I went to my room and closed the door.
I sat on the bed, shaking. The experiment had begun. I felt like a sapper who’d just cut the wrong wire and now my whole life was going to either explode or… what?
I didn’t know. And that was the scariest part.
I lived through the first day of my “experiment” on adrenaline. It was almost fun. I felt like a spy in my own home. Here I walk past Lyosh’s room and don’t look in, though instinct screams: “Check! What if he’s smoking? What if the window’s open and he’ll get a draft?” Here I see his dirty dishes on the kitchen table and… walk past. It was a sharp, almost painful pleasure—not to do. Not to react. Not to be.
At first, Lyosh didn’t get it.
“Ma, did you take the trash out?” he yelled from his den in the evening.
“No,” I answered calmly, without looking up from the book I was trying to read.
Pause.
“Why not? The bag’s full.”
“Then someone who lives in this house will take it out soon,” I said to the air.
Half an hour later I heard him, cursing, clattering the bag by the front door. A small victory. I even made a diary entry: “20:15. Trash taken out without my involvement.” I felt like a brilliant strategist.
Naive fool. I thought this would be a chess game. I forgot my opponent didn’t know the rules. He just flips the board.
By the evening of day two, the atmosphere in the house began to change. It thickened, turned viscous and hostile. The territory of his room became a focus of bacteriological warfare. A sour smell wafted out—old food, dirty clothes, and adolescent rebellion. I held on. I pinched my nose, walked past, repeating the mantra: “Not my territory. His responsibility.”
I didn’t sleep that night. I lay imagining mountains of dirty dishes, mold, microbes. I dreamed I opened his door and a garbage avalanche crashed down on me. I woke in a cold sweat. My anxiety was almost physical. It lived in my solar plexus, squeezing my insides with icy fingers.
“Ira, you sound like an addict in withdrawal,” Sveta told me on the phone. I couldn’t hold out.
“I am an addict, Sveta! My drug is control! I’ll die if I don’t go wash that damned pizza plate that’s been on his table for two days!”
“Hold on,” my friend said firmly. “You knew there’d be withdrawal. Get through it. You’re not fighting for the plate. You’re fighting for yourself.”
By the third day, Lyosh moved from bewilderment to open aggression. He understood. He understood it was a system. Not just my “forgetfulness.”
He came into the kitchen in the morning. I sat drinking coffee, looking out the window. A mountain of dishes loomed in the sink. Yesterday’s. His.
“Are you sick or something?” he asked, surveying the kitchen with disgust.
“No, I’m perfectly healthy,” I replied without turning.
“Then why the mess? You’re ‘Miss Clean,’ remember.”
“My dishes are washed.”
He stood there, silent for a bit. Then he opened the fridge. Yesterday I’d cooked chicken. And, as ordered by Anna Viktorovna, I’d told him in the evening, “Dinner’s in the fridge.” Naturally, he didn’t come. He’d sat at the computer all night.
“So no one’s going to heat it up for me?” he asked, provocative.
“We have a microwave.”
“Great. I’m supposed to do it myself?”
Here it was. The moment of truth. I turned slowly.
“Lyosha, you’re fifteen. You can heat up your own food. And wash your own plate.”
“Then what are you even here for?” he blurted.
The words slapped me. Painful. Humiliating. But through the pain, I suddenly heard not rudeness but fear. He was scared. His world, where Mom-Function was always on standby, was crumbling. He didn’t know what to do. And he defended himself the only way he knew—by attacking.
The old me would have burst into tears. Thrown a fit. Screamed that I’d sacrificed my life for him. The new me—frightened, trembling, but stubborn—said:
“I’m here to be your mother. Not your maid.”
And I turned back to the window, showing the conversation was over.
Detonation came two hours later. He was supposed to go to a classmate’s birthday. Suddenly I heard a racket from his room. Closet doors slamming, something falling. Then he shot out, red and disheveled.
“Where’s my blue shirt?!” he yelled. “The one with the white collar!”
“I don’t know,” I answered calmly.
“What do you mean you don’t know?! You always washed and ironed it!”
“I haven’t seen it this week. It’s probably somewhere in your room.”
“In my room?! It’s a wreck in there!” He stopped, eyes burning with hatred. “So that’s it. You did this on purpose. You knew I had a birthday today. You decided to get back at me!”
“I didn’t decide anything, Lyosha. Your clothes are your responsibility.”
“Oh, my responsibility? Fine—here’s yours!”
He pulled his phone from his pocket. I saw him pick “Father” in his contacts. My heart skipped a beat. Nuclear option. He was going to use the nuclear option.
“Dad! Hey!” he shouted into the phone. “Dad, can you come now? Right now! Mom… she’s lost it!”
He listened, and his face twisted into a gloating grin. He looked straight at me.
“She’s not cleaning! Not cooking! The place is a dump! She says it’s some experiment from a psychologist! That I’m responsible for everything now! Dad, she’s really not right! She’s driving me crazy! Yeah! I’ll wait!”
He tossed the phone on the table.
“Well, psychologist?” he hissed, glaring at me. “Dad’s coming. Your experiment is over. Very fast. And very badly. For you.”
He spun and stormed off to his room, slamming the door so hard plaster dust fell from the wall.
I stood in the kitchen. Alone. Listening to the merciless ticking of the clock marking the minutes till my husband’s arrival. My judge. And my executioner.
The next forty minutes passed in a fog. I paced the kitchen, hands going from cold to clammy. The wall clock ticked with a funereal slowness. Each click of the second hand brought the catastrophe closer. I ran through the upcoming conversation in my head. I had to be strong. I had to use the words Anna Viktorovna had taught me: “boundaries,” “responsibility,” “my choice.” But the thought of Sergei made all my drilled courage evaporate, leaving only a sticky, primal fear. Fear of his anger. Of his ability to turn you into a nothing with a single cold word.
The doorbell cracked like a gunshot.
I went to open it, knees buckling. Sergei stood there. In an expensive cashmere coat, clean-shaven, smelling of success and cold. He didn’t say hello. He simply walked in, and the temperature in the hall seemed to drop a few degrees.
His contemptuous gaze swept the hall. It lingered one extra second on the chair where Lyosha’s jacket had lain for five days.
“Where is he?” my husband asked, not looking at me.
“In his room,” I whispered.
“Lyosha! Come here!” Sergei barked, and the glassware in the cabinet rang with his commanding voice.
Lyosh came out. He wasn’t the triumphant victor from half an hour ago anymore. Seeing his father, he shrank, his neck pulling into his shoulders. He had called up a storm and was now afraid of the consequences.
“What’s going on here?” Sergei spoke quietly, but the quiet carried threat. He looked at his son.
“Dad, I… I told you. She…”
“Shut up,” Sergei cut him off. And turned to me. “I’m waiting for an explanation. What circus did you stage? What psychologists? What experiments?”
I breathed deeply. This was my moment. Either I’d break and become the old Ira—crying and complaining—or…
“This isn’t a circus, Sergei. It’s my attempt to change a situation that has become unbearable.”
“Change?” He smirked. “By turning the house into a pigsty and driving your own son to a nervous breakdown? Original method. Which quack taught you that?”
“Her name is Anna Viktorovna, and she’s not a quack,” I tried to keep my voice steady. “She’s helping me understand why our son stopped respecting me. And why our home turned into a battlefield.”
“I can tell you without any psychologist why!” He stepped closer. “Because you spoiled him with your stupid over-care! And now, instead of pulling yourself together, you’ve gone to the other extreme! What kind of upbringing is this—starving the kid and not washing his clothes?! Are you in your right mind?!”
“I’m not starving him, there’s food in the fridge!” I almost snapped. “And I’m not his laundress! I’m his mother! I’m trying to teach him responsibility!”
“Responsibility?!” He laughed. Cold, mean. “What responsibility at fifteen, for God’s sake?! His responsibility is to study well! And your responsibility is to provide everything for that! Comfort! Clean clothes, hot dinners, and calm nerves! You get more than enough money for it! Or is it not enough? Should I increase your allowance so you stop this nonsense and start doing your actual duties?!”
Money. There it was. His main argument. His scalpel with which he always cut open any rebellion of mine.
Lyosh stood aside, watching our back-and-forth with fearful curiosity. He was waiting to see how this terrible court—of his own making—would end.
And then I understood what was really happening. This wasn’t even about Lyosh. It was about me and Sergei. Lyosha was only a pretext, a detonator. The core conflict was between us. Between his world, where everything is bought, and mine, where I was trying to grope for something money can’t measure. Respect. Worth. Myself.
The old me would already be crying and apologizing. The old me would have surrendered under the onslaught of money and power. But something had changed. This week of withdrawal, that fear of being unneeded—I’d cracked.
I looked at Sergei. Straight. Calm. And said what I’d never dared say in my life.
“Your money has nothing to do with this, Sergei.”
He was taken aback.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you can’t solve this with money. You can’t buy me a good mood. You can’t buy Lyosha’s respect for me. And you can’t buy yourself the right not to participate in our life, showing up once a month as a grim judge. This problem is ours. And either we solve it together, like adults, or…”
“Or what?” A dangerous glint appeared in his eyes. He wasn’t used to being contradicted.
“Or nothing. But we’re not going back to the old way. I will no longer be your emotional container for guilt you dump as money. And I will not be Lyosha’s maid he can humiliate with impunity.”
As I said it, I couldn’t believe my own ears. Where were the words coming from? From some depth I hadn’t known I had.
Sergei was silent. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. Not little hysterical Ira, not the eternally dissatisfied wife. But… another person.
He turned to Lyosha.
“Back to your room. Now.”
Lyosh, not daring to disobey, darted into his den. We were left alone.
Sergei took off his coat. Tossed it on that same chair, on top of Lyosha’s jacket. And went to the kitchen.
“So, no more ‘as before,’” he said, more a statement than a question. He filled a glass with tap water. “And how will it be now—have you decided?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “But I know where we need to start.”
“With what?”
“With admitting that we should stop pretending everything’s fine. That we’re a family. That you have a wife and Lyosha has a father. We’re three strangers living under one roof on one person’s money. Let’s at least admit that. That’ll be step one.”
He was silent for a long time, staring out the window. In the reflection, I saw his tense, unfamiliar face. He was thinking. Really thinking. Not about deals and partners. About us.
“All right,” he said finally, not turning. “Step one. Suppose. And step two?”
I didn’t know what step two would be. I only knew one thing. I had just taken mine. The scariest, most important one of my life. I hadn’t won. Or lost. I had simply stayed on my feet. And that was more than I’d thought possible.
When the door closed behind Sergei, I felt neither relief nor triumph. Only a hollow, ringing emptiness, like the air after a very loud noise. I slowly sank into a chair in the kitchen. I was shaking. Not from fear, but from the tension spent. The adrenaline ebbed, leaving weakness and a strange sense of unreality. Was that really me? Was that really me saying those words to my all-powerful, frightening husband?
“We won’t go back to the old way.”
The phrase hung in the air like smoke after a shot. I still didn’t fully understand what it meant. I only knew there was no way back. I’d burned bridges. Not just with him. With the Irina I’d been all my adult life.
I must have sat there half an hour. The apartment was dead quiet. Lyosh didn’t come out of his room. I didn’t even hear the usual game sounds. He, too, had gone silent. Was processing.
What was he thinking? Happy his mother finally stood up to someone? Or afraid he’d broken the fragile world where, despite all the fights, things were full and safe?
I had to do something. Just stand up and move, so I wouldn’t freeze forever in this emptiness. I got up. My eyes fell on the chair in the hall. His coat lay on it. And under it—Lyosha’s jacket. Two symbols of male presence in this home. Two challenges.
The old me would have immediately hung my husband’s coat on a velvet hanger and flung my son’s jacket into his room with a shout. The new me… what does the new me do?
I didn’t know.
So I simply took them and hung both in the closet. On ordinary hangers. Quietly. Without drama. Not because I’m the help. Because a home should have order. This act wasn’t for them. It was for me. A small, tiny step toward restoring my own world.
I went back to the kitchen. The mountain of dirty dishes in the sink no longer felt like a personal insult. They were just dirty plates. I calmly, methodically washed them. My cup. His plate. The frying pan. I scrubbed off the burnt cheese; the simple physical effort calmed me.
That evening I didn’t cook anything elaborate. I boiled pelmeni. Store-bought. Earlier I would have considered that sacrilege, an admission of maternal failure. Today I didn’t care.
I set the table. For two.
Then I walked to the door of his “den.” It was closed. I didn’t shout, “Lyosha, dinner!” I just knocked. Two quiet, hesitant taps.
“Lyosh, I boiled pelmeni. If you’re hungry, come,” I said to the closed door and went back to the kitchen.
I didn’t expect him to come. I sat down and started eating. Alone. In silence. And it was strange. Not lonely. Just… quiet.
His door creaked. I didn’t turn. I heard his steps. He came into the kitchen, silently took a plate, helped himself to pelmeni. And sat. Not opposite me, but at an angle. So our eyes wouldn’t meet.
We ate in complete silence. No usual background—no TV, no endless questions he never answered. Just the clink of forks against plates.
This silence was different. Not hostile. Awkward. Cautious. As if two strangers had ended up at the same table by chance.
“Thanks,” he said when he finished. Quietly. Barely audible.
And he put his plate in the sink. He didn’t wash it. But he didn’t leave it on the table either. It was a tiny, almost invisible shift. A compromise.
“You’re welcome,” I answered just as quietly.
He went back to his room.
That night, for the first time in many days, I fell asleep almost at once. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. Whether Sergei would come. Call. Whether Lyosha would start being rude again. But tonight, on this particular evening, there was no war in my house. There was simply a truce. Fragile, uncertain, but real.
In the morning I woke to the smell of coffee. Real coffee, brewing. I went into the kitchen. Lyosh stood at the stove, clumsily working a cezve. On the table, next to my cup, lay a croissant from the bakery downstairs.
He saw me and got flustered.
“I… I forgot to say yesterday,” he mumbled, looking off to the side. “Happy birthday.”
I froze. Today was October twenty-second. My birthday. And I had forgotten. For the first time in forty-six years I had absolutely, totally forgotten my own birthday.
And he—remembered.
He poured coffee into my cup. His hands trembled a little.
“It’s… not great. I think it boiled over,” he nodded at the stove.
I sat down. Took the cup. The coffee was bitter and sludgy. The most disgusting and the most delicious coffee of my life. I looked at my son. My prickly, rude, unbearable—and so grown-up—son.
“Thank you,” I said. And tears ran down my cheeks.
For the first time in many years they weren’t tears of resentment or self-pity. They were something else. Something new and not yet clear.
He got scared.
“What’s wrong? Too bitter?”
“No,” I smiled through tears. “It’s just right.”
He stood there awkwardly a moment, and, not knowing what else to do, went back to his room.
I sat at the table. Alone. With a cup of terrible coffee and a croissant. In the quiet. And suddenly I understood what my second step would be. And the third. And all the others. They would be like this. Small. Hesitant. But—mine.
I knocked on his door. He sat at the computer.
“Lyosh, can I have a minute?” I sat on the edge of his—to my surprise—made bed. He tensed, expecting another “talk.” “I’m not here to scold. I… wanted to apologize.”
He looked up at me in surprise.
“For what?”
“For everything.” I took a deep breath, gathering my strength. “Forgive me. Not for caring. For how I did it. I thought love meant controlling everything, knowing better than everyone, living someone else’s life. I wanted so desperately to be needed that… I smothered you. Really it was my fear. The fear that if I stopped being ‘Lyosha’s mom,’ nothing would be left of me at all. I was wrong. And I’m very sorry.”
He was quiet a long time, staring at the floor. Then he raised his eyes; there was no familiar sneer in them.
“You just… drove me nuts,” he said. Not meanly—stating a fact. “Really.”
“I know,” I nodded, accepting the bitter truth. “I won’t anymore.”
It was the most honest conversation of our lives. Awkward, short, but real.
Later the phone rang. “Sergei” flashed on the screen.
I looked at the name. Before, I’d have grabbed the call, hoping to hear apologies or congratulations. Now I just looked. My entire life, my entire marriage had been spent waiting for his calls, his approval, his money. Waiting for someone else to make me happy.
And in that moment I grasped a simple, frightening thing. The moral of my story. No one is coming to save you. Not your husband, not your child, not your friend. The only person who can pull you out of the swamp you yourself created is you. Love that doesn’t start with love and respect for yourself isn’t love at all—it’s poison. Control masquerading as care.
I declined the call.
And I sent a text. “I’ll call you back later. Right now I’m drinking coffee my son made me for my birthday.”