Mom, please—just for an hour,” Andrey said for the third time, and with each repetition his voice grew thinner and more pleading. He stood in the middle of their small living room, feeling like a clumsy teenager caught off guard.
Galina Borisovna didn’t even turn her head. She sat in the only armchair Oksana loved, straight as a rod, and looked with contempt at the children’s drawings taped to the refrigerator door. Her silence was louder than any scolding. She had arrived forty minutes earlier without calling—simply materialized on the doorstep with a suitcase and the expression of someone the whole world owed. And now, with her regal presence, she had turned their cozy family apartment into a branch of a VIP waiting room.
“Mom, the train arrives in an hour and a half. I need to get to the station, meet Oksana… You know how it is—she’ll be tired after the trip, with bags.”
He swept the room with a helpless glance. Five-year-old Misha was intently building a lopsided tower out of blocks, and three-year-old Katya was trying to feed a plush rabbit a plastic carrot. Ordinary, peaceful bustle—an hour ago it had felt normal to him, but now it looked like outrageous chaos, something that compromised him in his mother’s eyes.
At last, Galina Borisovna deigned to react. Slowly, with a squeamish grimace, she shifted her gaze from the refrigerator to her grandchildren, as if appraising shoddy merchandise.
“Andrey,” she pronounced his name as though rinsing her mouth with something unpleasant. “I’m going to tell you something now, and you try to understand it the first time.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t need your kids even as a gift, son! I came here to rest, not to watch your litter! So I’m not staying in the same room with them!”
She didn’t raise her voice. Her words dropped into the room like heavy, cold stones, forcing all the air out. Andrey felt blood rush to his face. It wasn’t just a refusal—it was a public annulment of his children, his family, his life.
“But it’s only an hour…” he stammered, already realizing how pointless it was.
“I don’t care,” she cut him off and, rising gracefully from the chair, headed not for the exit but deeper into the apartment. Her gait was that of an owner inspecting her property. She walked straight into his and Oksana’s bedroom.
Andrey, as if on autopilot, went after her. He couldn’t even formulate what he wanted to say or do, but the very fact that she moved toward their private space filled him with a dull panic.
Galina Borisovna entered the bedroom and, without slowing, went to the large sliding wardrobe. With a light creak she pushed the mirrored door aside. Her gaze, methodical and indifferent, slid over his shirts and suits and stopped on Oksana’s half.
“Let’s see what your little fashionista has for tonight,” she said more to herself than to him. Her hand—adorned with a massive gold ring—plunged into a row of neatly hung dresses. She shoved hangers aside with the casual insolence of someone pawing through rags at a thrift shop. “What’s this sack? Lord, what a color… And this must be her ‘going-out’ one?”
She spoke calmly, with a faint note of investigative curiosity, and that was more frightening than open aggression. Andrey stood frozen in the doorway. He watched чужие, властные hands rummage through his wife’s things, touch her underwear, judge her dresses—and he couldn’t force out a single word. He should have stopped her. He should have said, “Mom, stop. Those are Oksana’s things.” But his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. This wasn’t just a woman—this was his mother, a force of nature he’d obeyed since childhood. Any protest felt unthinkable, like trying to stop an avalanche with bare hands.
His silence in the doorway meant nothing to her. Galina Borisovna acted with the methodical certainty and entitlement granted by her long, unquestioned status as “mother.” She wasn’t just rummaging through her daughter-in-law’s wardrobe—she was auditing someone else’s life and delivering a mute but perfectly clear verdict. She pulled out a silk slip dress, held it between two fingers as if it were something indecent, and with a slight contemptuous snort tossed it onto the bed. The dress landed on Oksana’s pillow and crumpled like a discarded napkin.
Andrey swallowed. A burning shame rose from somewhere in his stomach, scorching his throat. He didn’t feel like just a bad husband—he felt like an accomplice. Every gesture, every assessing glance—everything happened with his silent consent. The children in the next room went quiet, and in the sudden stillness the scrape of hangers along the metal rod sounded deafening.
“Mom… please don’t,” he finally forced out. His voice was weak, unconvincing. “Oksana will be upset. Those are her things.”
Without turning, Galina Borisovna answered, continuing to sift through the outfits:
“And what if they’re hers? It’s not a stranger taking them. Or does your wife already consider me a stranger? I knew it—she’s turning you against me. She’s bought rags worth three salaries, but when her mother-in-law comes once a year—suddenly it’s too much.”
She turned a shoulder toward him, her face perfectly calm, even righteous. In her world everything was logical. She was the mother. She had the right. And any attempt to challenge that right was a rebellion to be crushed at the start. Andrey opened his mouth to object—to say Oksana wasn’t being stingy, that it wasn’t about that—but the words jammed somewhere in his chest. What could he say? That she was breaking every imaginable boundary? To her, those boundaries didn’t exist.
Her choice fell on a dark-blue velvet dress—new, with a faint cardboard tag at the collar. Oksana had bought it for their anniversary and had never worn it, saving it for a special occasion. Galina Borisovna removed it from the hanger and held it against herself, looking at her reflection in the mirrored door.
“Well, at least something decent,” she nodded approvingly. “Otherwise she’s always in her pants like a little boy.”
With that she began unbuttoning her travel cardigan right there in the middle of the bedroom. Andrey wanted to turn away, leave, vanish into the floor. But he stood there, chained to the spot, watching the desecration of their most intimate space. He saw her take off her clothes and put on his wife’s dress. The velvet clung to her heavy figure in a way it never could on Oksana’s slim frame, but Galina Borisovna didn’t seem bothered. She went to the vanity, pushed aside Oksana’s perfume bottle, leaned toward the mirror, and started fixing her hair.
“There. Much better,” she said, admiring herself. “And tell me—where was she planning to wear this? To the store for bread? Just throwing money away.”
She turned toward him, expecting approval—and at that very moment the pocket of his jeans vibrated briefly. Andrey pulled out his phone. A message from Oksana glowed on the screen. Two words that made everything inside him go cold: “We’re pulling up. Come out.”
The lock clicked with a dry, final sound that to Andrey rang like a starter pistol for a race he’d already lost. He froze, unable even to turn around. A moment later Oksana appeared in the hallway doorway—tired from the trip, a travel bag on her shoulder and a light jacket draped over her arm. She stopped, her gaze first sliding over the hushed children, then moving to her husband, and finally into the bedroom, where his mother stood like a monument to someone else’s audacity.
Oksana didn’t say a word. No startled gasp, no angry shout. The fatigue on her face vanished for an instant, and her expression became completely unreadable—like a mask. She looked at Galina Borisovna wearing her new velvet dress, and there was no question in her eyes. Only a fact—dry, indisputable, like a medical report. She saw everything: the dress stretched over чужое body, the crumpled things thrown on her pillow, and her husband’s pathetic, guilty posture, frozen between them.
For a second Galina Borisovna faltered, then immediately regained control. She tried to play the gracious hostess greeting a long-awaited guest in the guest’s own home.
“Oksanochka, you’re here! And we’re just… I decided to help you tidy up a bit, tried something on too. I thought maybe we’d sit this evening, celebrate my arrival.”
Her voice was brightly false, but that falseness shattered against the wall of Oksana’s silence. Oksana slowly lowered her bag and jacket to the floor. She stepped forward, going around her husband as if he weren’t there. Andrey felt not just unnecessary—he felt invisible, a piece of furniture unworthy of even a fleeting glance.
She entered the bedroom. Her movements were measured, almost somnambulistic. She didn’t look at her mother-in-law or at the mess. She went to the same wardrobe Galina Borisovna had just inspected and slid the mirrored door aside. Her hand reached deep inside, past the fancy hangers, and pulled out an old terry-cloth robe—washed out, faded in spots, with loops stretched on the sleeves. The very robe she wore to drink coffee in the mornings and sometimes to step out on the balcony. Something purely домашнее—intimate, not meant for anyone else’s eyes.
Oksana turned. She held the robe out in front of her with both hands, as if it were a flag of surrender she was offering the enemy. She took a few steps toward her mother-in-law and stopped. The silence in the room became so thick it felt touchable. Even the children stopped moving, sensing the air change.
“Change,” Oksana said. Her voice was terrifyingly calm—quiet, even, without the slightest tremor. It wasn’t an order or a request. It was a statement of inevitability.
Galina Borisovna went rigid; her face slowly flooded with a dark red. She stared from the humiliating robe in her daughter-in-law’s hands to Oksana’s cold, indifferent face. Only then did the full scale of the insult land. She hadn’t simply been caught—she had been publicly, wordlessly reduced to the level of a servant being thrown work clothes.
“You… what?!” she exhaled, and her usual commanding tone cracked into a shrill screech. “How dare you tell me what to do! What is this?!”
Oksana didn’t answer. She just stood there, holding the robe. Her calm was an absolute weapon. It devalued Galina Borisovna’s shouting, turning righteous anger into a pitiful, powerless tantrum. Andrey tried to step in, to say something—but he met his wife’s gaze. There was nothing in it but cold steel. And he understood: if he uttered even a single word in defense of his mother, he would cease to exist for Oksana forever.
“I’m talking to you! Are you deaf?!” Galina Borisovna stepped forward, her face twisted with rage. She had expected anything—tears, yelling, accusations, a scandal in which she would, as always, come out the winner by crushing everyone with her authority. But she had hit something new and incomprehensible: an icy wall of total indifference.
Oksana didn’t dignify her with a reply. She simply tossed the old robe onto the bed beside the crumpled silk slip. Then, just as calmly and methodically, she approached Galina Borisovna. There was no aggression in the movement—only businesslike efficiency, like a nurse performing an unpleasant but necessary procedure. She took her mother-in-law by the elbow. The grip wasn’t painful, but it was unyielding—touch that left no choices.
Galina Borisovna tried to jerk away, her body tensing.
“Hands off! What do you think you’re doing, you brat?! Andrey, tell her! Tell your wife she’s not allowed to touch me!”
She appealed to her son, but her cry hung in the air. Andrey stood rooted to the spot, watching as if it were a silent film. He was no longer a participant—he was a spectator. A spectator to the execution of the bond between mother and son, which his wife was carrying out coldly, right in front of him.
Oksana, ignoring the screaming and resistance, led her mother-in-law out of the bedroom. She moved with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what she was doing and would finish what she’d started. Galina Borisovna dug in her heels, tried to yank her arm free, but Oksana’s hold was iron. They passed through the living room, past the children frozen in astonishment, staring at the strange procession with wide-open eyes. They didn’t understand the words, but they felt their mother’s cold resolve.
In the hallway, Oksana—without releasing her mother-in-law’s elbow—picked up the suitcase and travel bag from the floor with her other hand. Then she calmly opened the front door. The stairwell, with its dim lightbulb and scuffed walls, greeted them with institutional cold. Oksana guided Galina Borisovna out onto the landing, set her belongings beside her. All of it—silent.
Only when she was on the landing did Galina Borisovna seem to fully grasp what was happening. Her face shifted from red to ash gray. She stared at Oksana, at the door to her son’s home, and her rage turned into stunned disbelief.
“You… You’re throwing me out? From my son’s house?!”
Oksana stopped in the doorway, her hand on the doorknob. She looked not at her mother-in-law, but at her husband, who had silently followed them the whole time.
“Your rest is over, Galina Borisovna,” she said in the same flat, colorless voice. Then her gaze locked onto Andrey. “Andrey, call your mother a taxi.”
It wasn’t a request. It was an instruction—final and absolute. She left him no room for maneuver, no compromise, no pathetic attempts to keep the peace. She stated the reality.
And then she began to close the door—slowly, inexorably, cutting the stairwell off from the apartment. Andrey watched the narrowing gap, the disappearing face of his wife, and in the last second saw her eyes—empty, cold, чужие. The door slammed. The lock clicked, turning twice.
He was left on the landing. On one side—a locked door to his home, his family. On the other—his mother, now looking at him with a hurricane of rage, humiliation, and contempt in her eyes. He was no longer between two fires.
He was alone…