Where is my mother?”
The question dropped into the room like a stone into still water. Larisa didn’t take off her coat, didn’t even pull the front door closed behind her. She stood on the threshold, and the cold air from the stairwell mingled with the stale warmth of the apartment. Her bag hung limply from her shoulder, and in her hand she was still clutching her phone, icy and hard.
Andrei didn’t turn around. He was sitting on the sofa in the middle of their small living room, his silhouette sharply outlined against the flickering TV screen. Some stupid quiz show was on, and the cheerful voice of the host filled the pause, unnaturally loud. Andrei lazily clicked the remote, turning the volume up even more. That was his answer.
“Andrei, I’m talking to you,” she repeated, stepping inside. The sound of her heels on the laminate was sharp and out of place. “Where is my mom? She’s not answering her phone.”
He pressed the remote again, and the quiz show cut off. Now she could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. He slowly, theatrically, turned his head. There was no guilt, no anger, no surprise on his face. Only boredom. Boredom and a slight, almost imperceptible irritation, as if she had interrupted something truly important.
“I sent her home,” he said in an even, indifferent voice. “She has no business being in our apartment when you’re not here.”
His calm was worse than any shouting. It was sticky, suffocating, like cobweb. Larisa still heard her mother’s voice in her ears — thin, strangled, as if she were speaking through shattered glass. A voice telling how she, an elderly woman, had been thrown out the door, and how her old travel bag had flown off the balcony after her. How she, under the sideways glances of neighbors coming out of the building, crawled around the lawn picking up scattered pills, a handkerchief, and a framed photo of little Larisa.
“You threw her out.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, spoken with icy hatred. “You threw my mother out of the house.”
“I asked her to leave,” he corrected, turning back toward the dark screen. He studied his reflection in the black glass. “She didn’t get it. I had to explain in a way she’d understand.”
He spoke of it as if it were about taking out the trash or chasing off a stray dog from the yard. In his world, in his logic, this was an absolutely normal thing to do. She had invaded his territory. He removed her. Simple and effective.
Larisa slowly pulled the bag off her shoulder and dropped it on the floor. The dull thud made him flinch slightly.
“Her bag… You threw her things off the balcony?”
Now he looked at her again. And in his gaze something new flashed — a cold, measuring curiosity. He seemed to be studying her reaction, gauging how far she was prepared to go.
“It was the fastest way to get it through her head that she wasn’t welcome here,” he said, the corners of his lips twitching in a barely visible smirk. “She’s always taking three hours to get ready. I didn’t have time for a long farewell.”
“How could you throw my mother out of my apartment while I was at work?! You can go find yourself a new place to live now!”
He said nothing. He simply turned back to the TV and, very pointedly, pressed the power button. The cheerful music of the quiz show burst into the room again, brazen and out of place. For him, the incident was over. Conversation finished. He hid behind that stupid TV show, behind the sofa, behind his impenetrable, calculated calm.
Larisa stared at the back of his head. She watched the light from the screen playing on his hair. And all her rage, all her horror from that call with her mother, squeezed into one tight, incandescent ball somewhere in her chest.
“In my apartment,” she hissed so quietly her words almost drowned in the host’s voice. “You threw my mother out. From the apartment my parents paid for. Do you understand that?”
Larisa’s last words hung in the air, and the cheerful music of the quiz show, which until then had just been background noise, suddenly became unbearably false and insulting. Andrei slammed his thumb onto the remote. The screen went black. The silence that followed was louder and more aggressive than any sound. He rose from the sofa. Not with a jerk, but slowly, straightening stiff shoulders, like a man warming up before a fight. He no longer looked bored. Now he resembled a predator disturbed on its own territory.
“Your parents?” he repeated, and there was steel in his voice. He stepped toward her, shortening the distance. “Did I miss something? Do they live here too? Maybe they pay for the food I eat? Or for the gas in the car I drive to work in order, among other things, to support you?”
He stopped a couple of meters away, feet set slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. It was the posture of an owner, of power.
“This apartment is ours. Mine and yours. And as long as I live here, I won’t allow some outsider, even if she’s your mother, to rummage through my things, rearrange my cups in the kitchen, and comment on how much sugar I put in my coffee!”
His voice grew stronger, filling all the space. He began pacing the room — from wall to window and back — as if patrolling his domain. Each heavy step seemed to stamp his “rightness” into the laminate.
“She drove me crazy! Do you get that or not? A whole week! ‘Andryusha, why are you dressed so sloppily?’, ‘Andryusha, are you sure you’ve eaten?’, ‘Andryusha, don’t you think you drink too much beer in the evenings?’. Am I at home or in a daycare center under a teacher’s supervision?! I’m a man, Larisa, not some punching bag kid!”
Larisa stood still. She watched him fling his rage around the room, and her own anger turned cold and sharp, like a shard of ice.
“A man? A man who goes to war with a sixty-year-old woman by throwing her bag out onto the lawn? That’s your idea of manly valor? She came to help me because I asked her to! Because I knew I couldn’t count on any help from you!”
“Help?!” He stopped abruptly and wheeled around toward her. His face was red and contorted. “She wasn’t helping, she was imposing her own rules! You dragged her here to spy on me! So she could give you reports on how I live here without you!”
“I live here!” Her voice broke into a scream, piercing through the armor of his smugness. “This is my apartment! Mine! And if it weren’t for my parents, you’d still be living with yours, in that Khrushchyovka on the edge of town, bragging about your manly valor to your mommy in the kitchen!”
It was a punch to the gut. The most painful, most forbidden move in their family fights. Andrei froze. For a second, he couldn’t breathe. He stared at her, and in his eyes everything went out but pure, animal hatred.
Larisa realized she’d gone too far, but it was too late to back down. She turned sharply, meaning to go to the bedroom, just to break eye contact, to get out of the line of fire. She managed to take only one step.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he growled behind her.
He didn’t grab her. He just stepped forward and shoved. Not with his palm, but with his whole body, pouring all his wounded rage into that movement. His hand, as hard as a board, slammed into her shoulder. The force of the push was enough to throw her two steps to the side. She lost her balance and crashed backwards into the wall next to the door frame with her full weight. There was a dull, sickening thud. Pain shot through her shoulder blade and the back of her head, which struck the solid plaster. For a moment, everything went dark.
He remained standing in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. His fists were clenched. He looked at her — slumped against the wall, clutching her bruised shoulder. There was no remorse in his eyes. Only vicious, heavy triumph. He had crossed the line. And they both knew it.
The pain was sharp but brief. Like a stab. It pierced her shoulder blade and echoed dully in the back of her head. But that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing wasn’t what Larisa felt in her back, but what she saw when she lifted her eyes. She saw his face. There was neither regret nor fright at what he’d done. Only a heavy, malicious satisfaction. He was looking at her, sliding down the wall, like at a defeated enemy, and in that gaze something undeniable read: “That’s your place.”
In that moment, something inside her died. Not love — that had died long ago, quietly and unnoticed, suffocated by daily routine and mutual reproaches. What died was the last thread that bound them together into any semblance of a family. All her rage, all the scream straining to burst out, suddenly curled in on itself, compressed, and turned into a cold, heavy lump in her solar plexus. She no longer felt pain or hurt. Only absolute, crystal-clear clarity.
Slowly, bracing her hand against the wall, she got up. Her movements were precise, almost calm. She didn’t straighten her hair, didn’t brush off her clothes. She simply stood and looked at him. And he, having expected tears, reproaches or a hysterical outburst in response, felt a vague alarm at her calm. It was far more frightening than any scream.
“Get out,” she said.
Her voice was quiet, without any inflection. Just two words, delivered like an order that was not up for discussion.
Andrei frowned, and then a crooked, smug smirk appeared on his face. He misread her calm, taking it for shock and weakness. He again felt like the one in control.
“Not a chance. You forget who you’re talking to? This is my home too. If you want to leave — go. The door’s open.”
He demonstratively crossed his arms over his chest, striking a victor’s pose. He expected her to break down now, to start crying, begging for forgiveness. But she didn’t. She just looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. As if studying an unfamiliar, deeply unpleasant object.
Then, without another word, she stepped aside, walking around him in a wide arc, the way one steps around something filthy on the sidewalk. She went to the spot by the doorway where she had dropped her bag and bent down. Her hand found the cold plastic of her phone. Andrei watched her with contemptuous curiosity. Going to call mommy? Complain to her girlfriends?
Larisa straightened up, the phone in her hand. Her fingers didn’t shake. With one precise movement of her thumb she unlocked the screen, scrolled through her contacts and found the right number. “Viktor Semyonovich.” Before hitting call, she tapped the little speaker icon. Speakerphone.
Andrei stared at her, confused. What kind of game was this now? The dialing tone rang out. Loud and shrill, it sliced through the sticky silence of the room. Once. Twice. On the third ring there was a click in the speaker, and a hoarse, authoritative male voice answered:
“Yes.”
“Good afternoon, Viktor Semyonovich. This is Larisa,” she said in an even, almost businesslike tone. Her voice, amplified by the speaker, sounded unnaturally clear in the room.
Andrei jerked. The mask of self-confidence on his face cracked. He stared at her with wide eyes, in which disbelief was rapidly turning into panic. He understood.
“Your son has just hit me,” Larisa continued in the same cold, procedural voice. “Before that, he threw my mother out of the house and tossed her things off the balcony. Would you please come and take him away. I don’t want him staying in this apartment a minute longer.”
She fell silent. Heavy silence hung in the line, then there was a constrained male sigh. But Larisa was no longer looking at the phone. She was looking at her husband. The blood had drained from his face, wiping away the usual self-satisfied flush and leaving a deathly gray pallor. His lips moved soundlessly. He stared at the phone in her hand as if it were a loaded gun pressed to his temple. Humiliation. Public. In front of the only person in the world whose opinion truly mattered to him. This was worse than any blow.
There was a short, harsh exhale from the phone, followed by a flat, emotionless: “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Larisa disconnected. The screen went dark, and she set the phone down on the little hall table as if it were burning her hand. Everything was done. The mechanism was in motion.
Andrei looked at her, his face a canvas where horror battled with rage. The gray pallor gave way to blotches of crimson. He lunged toward her, but not to hit her — it was a pathetic, panicked movement.
“You… what have you done?” he croaked, stopping a step away. He didn’t dare touch her. “Do you even understand what you’ve just done? You dragged my father into this!”
She said nothing. She simply looked at him, and in her gaze there was nothing but the cold detachment of a pathologist examining a corpse. He had ceased to be a person to her, a husband. He had become a problem she had just handed over for disposal to more competent hands.
“Call him back! Phone him, tell him that we… that you overreacted!” He began darting about the small hallway, his movements jerky and frantic. “We can sort it out ourselves! Larisa, say something!”
He grabbed his head, then let his hands drop. His eyes fell on his jacket hanging on the rack. On the car keys. He could simply leave. Run off before his father arrived, salvaging the last scraps of his dignity. But he didn’t move. He was paralyzed by the terror of his father’s anger, more terrifying to him than any row with his wife.
Exactly twelve minutes later the doorbell rang. A short, authoritative chime that left no doubt about who stood outside. Andrei flinched as if struck. Keeping the same expression on her face, Larisa walked over and turned the key in the lock.
On the threshold stood Viktor Semyonovich. Tall, lean, in a perfectly cut dark overcoat. The gray at his temples was neatly trimmed, and the gaze of his heavy gray eyes was like an X-ray beam. He didn’t say hello. He just stepped inside, bringing with him the smell of expensive cologne and the icy chill of power. His gaze slid over Larisa — impassive, as if assessing the damage — then drilled into his son.
Andrei shrank under that look. All his faux masculine swagger, all his aggression, vanished without a trace. He stood before his father like a naughty teenager caught red-handed.
“Dad, I…” he began to babble. “She’s got it all wrong. Her mother provoked me, she…”
“Get your things,” his father’s voice was flat and hard as a sheet of steel. He didn’t even glance at Larisa. All his anger, all his contempt were aimed at one person.
“But I’m not going anywhere! This is my home too!” There was a last, desperate note of rebellion in Andrei’s voice. He tried to cling to his role as master of the house, but it was slipping through his fingers. “She can’t just throw me out like that!”
It was at that moment that Larisa stepped forward. She stood beside Viktor Semyonovich, and the two of them, so different, looked at Andrei together.
“Earn your own place to live if you want a home of your own. You’re never going to live here again.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was a verdict. Final and not subject to appeal. Viktor Semyonovich exhaled slowly. His face hardened into a stone mask. He didn’t say another word. He simply stepped up to his son, grabbed him by the elbow in an iron grip and jerked him toward the door. Andrei tried to dig his heels in, to say something, but his father yanked him so hard he nearly lost his balance.
“His jacket,” Viktor Semyonovich threw over his shoulder. Not to his son. To Larisa. She silently took Andrei’s jacket off the hook and handed it to her father-in-law. He shoved it into his son’s hands. “Move,” he hissed so that only the three of them could hear.
Andrei, humiliated and crushed, stumbling, stepped out onto the landing. His father followed. Before closing the door, Viktor Semyonovich glanced back at Larisa for a second. There was no sympathy or apology in his eyes. Only the cold, businesslike acknowledgment of a resolved incident.
The door shut. The dry click of the lock was the last sound in this story. Larisa was left standing alone in the middle of the room. She didn’t move. The silence that followed was absolute, like a vacuum. She looked around the apartment: the sofa with a dent where he’d been sitting, the TV remote lying on the floor, his house slippers by the armchair. Everything was in its place. But there was no air in the apartment anymore. Victory had not brought relief. It had brought only emptiness and the ringing awareness that in the spot where a weed had been torn out by the roots, there was now nothing but bare, scorched earth…