“Lyuda, here’s the thing… Mom’s jubilee is in two months. Sixty.”
Vitaly’s voice sounded behind her—loud, deliberately cheerful, brimming with the self-satisfaction of a man about to bestow happiness on someone. Lyudmila didn’t turn around. She sat at her desk in the living room, which looked more like mission control. A big monitor glowed with an Excel table listing dozens of line items: “tent rental,” “catering, option 3,” “florals, peonies,” “emcee, fee.” On the corkboard beside it were pinned business cards from photographers, DJs, and drivers. The air smelled of cooling coffee and, faintly, ozone from the equipment. She was entering the cost of sound equipment rental for a major corporation, her fingers flying over the keyboard with practiced speed.
“You need to organize everything. You know—like you do. Top-of-the-line,” he pronounced the last word in syllables, as if savoring it, and laid a patronizing hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be your present to Mom—she’ll be over the moon. This isn’t up for discussion; you’re a professional.”
His hand on her shoulder felt heavy and alien. Lyudmila finished typing the figure, hit Enter, and only then slowly lifted her head. The gaze that had spent the day picking out details and discrepancies in budgets now focused just as dispassionately on her husband’s face—on his pleased, slack features, on a smile that allowed not the slightest shadow of doubt about her thrilled consent.
“Hold it. I don’t get it. Why exactly am I supposed to organize your mother’s jubilee—and for free, at that?”
His wife was beside herself with indignation when he delivered this “cheerful” news and said it wasn’t up for debate.
Her question came out perfectly even, without a questioning intonation. It was a statement, a finding of fact. Vitaly’s smile didn’t slide off his face, but it froze there, turning into a grimace. He removed his hand from her shoulder.
“What’s with you, Lyuda? What do you mean ‘for free’? It’s a gift! It’s Mom! My mother! How can you even say that? We’re family!”
He started pacing the room, from the desk to the sofa and back, his steps heavy, pressing into the carpet. He clearly hadn’t expected this turn and was improvising on the fly, trying to find the right note of outrage.
“For strangers you’ve got the job, the estimates, the contracts. But this is for those closest to you! It should come from the heart, from the soul! You want to take money from your own mother-in-law for helping her arrange a party?”
Lyudmila watched his flailing in silence. Then she pushed the keyboard away, took a clean A4 sheet from the stack and her favorite pen—heavy, metal-bodied, the one she used to sign contracts. The click of the extending refill sounded deafeningly loud in the sudden quiet.
“Very simple,” she replied in the same tone. “My time, my knowledge, my contacts I’ve spent years building, the sleepless nights before events, and my nerves—those all cost money. For everyone.”
Her pen slid over the paper. Quickly, without a blot, she wrote line after line in her neat, slightly angular hand. Vitaly stopped and stared in puzzlement as she wrote.
“Here,” she finished, handing him the sheet. “You can look it over. A preliminary estimate for my services. Concept development. Selection and booking of the venue. Negotiations and contracts with vendors: emcee, photo, video, décor. Day-of coordination for the jubilee, based on an eight-hour workday. Fifty percent deposit. Let your mother take a look. If she’s fine with it, she signs my standard contract, and I can start tomorrow.”
Vitaly took the paper skeptically. He stared at the even lines, the numbers with multiple zeros at the end. His gaze flicked from the sheet to her unreadable face and back. He had expected anything—an argument, pleas, maybe even a tantrum. He was not prepared for a business proposal. He looked at her—at his wife—and saw a stranger: an efficient, cool manager who had just billed his mother. Vitaly’s face slowly began to fill with blood, shifting from its normal color to dark red, almost purple.
That purple shade deepened, the color of an overripe plum. He crushed the sheet in his fist. The thin office paper crackled in protest but didn’t tear—his fist was more for show than truly strong. He tossed the crumpled ball onto the desk, aiming for the keyboard, but missed. The paper bounced off a stack of documents and fell noiselessly onto the carpet, white and out of place against the dark pile.
“Are you out of your mind, Lyuda? Have you completely gone off the rails with your projects?” he hissed in a sibilant, strangled whisper far nastier than a shout. “What kind of stunt is this? This is how you show respect for my mother? You hand her a bill like she’s some fly-by-night company?”
He braced his hands on her desk, looming over her. He smelled of office lunch and a faint irritation he’d clearly brought home from work and now found a lightning rod for.
“She’s Mom! She took you into the family when you were on your own. She brings you her pies on Sundays because she knows you don’t like to cook! She brought you seedlings for your balcony in the spring! Does that not count? Or should we have made a price list for that, too? ‘Pie—five hundred rubles, tomato plant—one hundred’? Is that it?”
Lyudmila didn’t recoil. She met his gaze calmly, looking up at his anger-contorted face. She slowly rolled her chair back half a meter, re-establishing distance.
“Pies are her hobby, Vitaly. She likes messing with dough. Seedlings are her pastime. She enjoys it. And I always thank her. But this”—she gestured to her work area: the monitor, the printer, the stacks of fabric and cardstock samples—“this is not a hobby. This is my job. The very job that paid for our vacation to Italy last month. The same job that covered half the payment on your car. It isn’t entertainment. It’s one hundred percent focus, sleepless nights, missed deadlines from suppliers, and dealing with unreasonable clients. It’s an asset I’m not going to hand out for free just because it’s convenient for someone to call it my ‘wifely duty’—putting on parties.”
Her words were precise, measured blows. She didn’t raise her voice, but each one landed squarely. She saw the vein twitch at his temple. He couldn’t find anything to counter her logic, and that enraged him even more. When arguments run out, the insults begin.
“So that’s what you’re really like,” he straightened, folding his arms. “Cold, calculating wheeler-dealer. I thought I married a woman, turns out I married a calculator. Everything’s numbers with you, everything’s a budget. You’ve got no soul, Lyuda. Not a drop.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and ostentatiously started scrolling through contacts, never taking his scornful eyes off her.
“Fine. You want to play business? We’ll play business. Only the client has the right to hear all the terms directly from the contractor, don’t they?”
He brought the phone to his ear. Lyudmila understood what he was doing. He wasn’t just calling for backup; he was bringing the queen onto the board—the name you don’t utter in such arguments.
“Hi, Mom. Yeah, everything’s fine… almost,” his voice changed instantly, acquiring the plaintive, filial notes of a wounded son. “I’m talking to Lyuda about your jubilee. Yes, of course she’ll help, Mom, how could she not… She’s the professional. She even… prepared a commercial offer. To keep it all official.” He paused, letting the phrase sink in for the listener on the other end. He looked straight at Lyuda, savoring the effect. “No, Mom, you misunderstood. It’s not a bill from the restaurant. From her. She’s billed… you… for her services as organizer.”
He listened for a few seconds, nodding, his face arranged in sympathy and sorrow.
“I know, Mom. Yeah. I’m shocked too. Don’t worry about it. Can you come over? Yes, now. She’s here. You can discuss the details… of her business project. Okay, we’ll be waiting.”
He hung up and set the phone on the desk.
“Mom’s coming over. She wants to look her manager in the eye and go over the contract terms. Get ready for negotiations.”
Vitaly didn’t sit. He stayed standing in the middle of the living room, positioned somewhere between the sofa and his wife’s desk like a referee in a ring he himself had arranged. He was sure of his rightness, of his strength, bolstered by the imminent arrival of maternal support. In that pause—filled with the computer’s hum and the ticking wall clock—he reveled in his role: a son defending his mother’s honor and a husband putting his uppity wife in her place.
Lyudmila, by contrast, showed not a trace of anxiety. She didn’t leap up and dash around the apartment, preparing a defense. Instead, she calmly bent down, picked up the crumpled sheet from the carpet, and carefully, nail by nail, smoothed it on the tabletop. She pressed out every crease, every fold, until the sheet was almost flat again. Then she placed it in a prominent spot beside the monitor and took the mouse back in hand, returning to her spreadsheet. This was not an escape from reality. It was a quiet, firm statement: your theater is your theater; I have work to do.
No more than fifteen minutes passed before the sharp, imperious doorbell sliced through the tense air. It sounded less like a guest’s chime than a summons. Vitaly started and went to open it, anticipation and righteous fury written on his face.
On the threshold stood Klavdia Petrovna. She didn’t look like a raging fury. On the contrary, she looked the picture of offended virtue. Perfectly set hair, a strict but expensive coat, and in her hands—not a string bag but a large plastic container that smelled faintly of baked goods. She entered without taking off her shoes, walked straight into the living room, and addressed her son first, deliberately ignoring the daughter-in-law at the desk.
“Vitalichka, I rushed right over, I was so worried. What’s going on here? What happened?” Her voice was full of tragedy and maternal concern, aimed at one listener but delivered for two.
Vitaly immediately picked up the cue.
“Look, Mom. Lyudmila’s a business lady now. For her, family is just another project.”
Only then did Klavdia Petrovna deign to look at her daughter-in-law. She walked slowly to the desk and set her container down directly on a stack of cardstock samples.
“Hello, Lyudochka. Vitaly tells me you’ve been very busy lately. That you have no time at all for us—for family.”
“Hello, Klavdia Petrovna,” Lyudmila turned her chair to face her mother-in-law. Her tone was impeccably polite, like at a meeting with an important client. “Come in, have a seat. Vitaly’s exaggerating. There’s time; it’s only a matter of how we choose to use it.”
“I see,” Klavdia Petrovna drawled, studying her. “We thought sixty years is a big celebration. That you, as family, would help, advise, be happy for me. And it turns out… it turns out that’s now called ‘using time.’”
Her gaze fell on the smoothed sheet on the desk. She picked it up between two fingers, with a touch of distaste, as if it were something dirty.
“So that’s what this is… ‘Preliminary estimate.’ What fancy words we use now…” She read aloud, metal ringing in her voice. “‘Concept development… vendor selection… coordination…’ Good Lord, Lyuda, this is your husband’s mother’s jubilee, not a rocket launch!”
“This is my work, Klavdia Petrovna,” Lyudmila replied evenly. “I take it seriously, whether it’s a two-hundred-guest wedding or a thirty-person jubilee. A clinic doctor doesn’t operate on relatives for free just because they’re relatives. He does his job. So do I.”
“Don’t compare God’s gift to scrambled eggs!” Vitaly snapped, unable to stand her calm. “A doctor saves lives, and you… you just pick menus and balloons!”
“Exactly!” Klavdia chimed in, tossing the sheet onto the desk. “We asked you humanly—to help, like a daughter! And what did you give us? A contract? A bill? You want me, a pensioner, to pay you for calling a restaurant you yourself recommended? Is that what gratitude looks like now for everything we’ve done for you and Vitalik?”
She stepped closer, and her face, previously mournful and offended, turned hard and mean. The mask dropped.
“I thought my son had a wife. A family. Turns out he has a business partner who lives in the same apartment. You turn everything into a transaction. Everything in your life has a price. Tell me, Lyuda, does love, care, respect for elders have a price in your rate card too? Or is that the ‘free add-on’ to the contract?”
“A price? You want to talk about price, Klavdia Petrovna?” There was neither hurt nor anger in Lyudmila’s voice—only a cool, almost academic interest, the tone she used when a client challenged obvious expense items. She rose slowly, and that simple movement made Vitaly and his mother involuntarily step back half a pace. “Fine. Let’s talk about price. Only not the price of my services—the price of your ‘love and care.’”
She braced her fingertips on the desktop. Her gaze slid from mother-in-law to husband and back.
“When your nephew needed emergency help with his wedding two years ago because his fiancée botched everything, who sat up four nights calling my vendors and begging them to help out? Who found him an emcee, a photographer, and a venue a week before the date? Was that ‘love’? Or was that free use of my professional resources?”
Vitaly opened his mouth to speak, but Lyuda stopped him with a look.
“When you started the cottage renovation and couldn’t decide on the veranda design, who spent two weeks drawing sketches, choosing materials, and composing a work plan so your builders wouldn’t ruin it? Was that ‘care’? Or was that a free interior design consult that other people pay good money for? When your car was in the shop for a month, who drove across town every day after work to take you shopping, then waited an hour in the parking lot? Was that ‘respect for elders’? Or a free taxi and personal driver service?”
She spoke steadily, each word enunciated. This wasn’t a scandal; it was the reading of a bill. One that had been accruing for years, one she had never planned to present. But they had asked for it.
“All your so-called care, Klavdia Petrovna, has always had a second bottom. Your pies”—she nodded at the container on her paperwork—“are a perfect pretext to show up uninvited and check up on us. Your advice is a way to control our lives. Your ‘help’ is an investment for which you always expect dividends—in the form of my time, my energy, my nerves. You’re used to me being a convenient, multifunctional, and above all free add-on to your life. And to your son’s life.”
Klavdia Petrovna looked at her, and her face showed not wounded dignity anymore but naked, undisguised hatred. She saw her manipulations no longer worked. The girl—the daughter-in-law she had considered obedient and manageable—had suddenly shown a spine of steel.
“You…” she hissed, the word dripping poison. “You’re just ungrateful…”
“Mom, let’s go,” Vitaly finally found the nerve to intervene. He stepped to his mother and took her by the arm, thereby definitively choosing his side. He did not defend his wife. He didn’t try to understand her. He simply decided to evacuate his mother from a lost battlefield. “There’s nothing more to discuss here.”
They moved toward the exit. Standing in the hallway, Klavdia Petrovna turned and hurled the cruellest line she could muster.
“Barren fig tree,” she said quietly but distinctly. “No children, no soul. Just numbers in your head.”
Lyudmila said nothing. She watched her husband open the door for his mother. He didn’t look at his wife; his eyes were on the floor. At that moment, Lyudmila went to her desk, took the plastic container of pies still sitting on her papers, and silently followed them. She stepped into the open doorway, onto the landing, and gently—without knocking or a sound—set the container on the doormat outside her door. Then she returned to the apartment and looked straight at her husband, who still held the door handle.
“My jubilee gift to your mother,” she said in an icy, utterly calm voice. “Free of charge. A farewell.”
Only then did she close the door on him. No slam. Just the soft click of the lock.