“Alina, do you even hear yourself? It’s a юбилей — Mom’s sixtieth! What do you mean, ‘we’ll just do something small’?” Vadim flung the kitchen towel onto the table and stared at me as if I had suggested dropping his beloved mother off at a nursing home. “At least a hundred people. Relatives from Saratov, Mom’s old coworkers from the trust, former neighbors. Everyone is expecting a real celebration!”
I kept slicing the salad with careful, mechanical precision, never lifting my eyes. Inside, everything was tightening into one hard knot.
“Vadim, a hundred guests costs as much as a small wedding. We have a mortgage, a loan on your car, and school expenses for our son starting first grade. Where exactly am I supposed to get that kind of money?”
“Oh, stop it,” he said, waving a dismissive hand, and that same whiny mama’s-boy tone slipped into his voice again — the one I had spent years trying not to notice. “You work at a bank! You’ve got money, bonuses, perks. Just arrange some kind of special loan for family. It’s not a big deal. You have to do this. Mom has always supported you… morally. It’s your duty as her daughter-in-law.”
I slowly set the knife down. My mother-in-law’s “moral support,” courtesy of Klavdia Petrovna, usually sounded like: “Oh, Alinochka, dust on the baseboards again? Back in my day, women somehow managed to work and still keep the house cozy.”
“So that’s it? ‘You have plenty of money,’ ‘you should,’ and ‘you’re obligated’?” I looked him straight in the eye. “Fine, Vadim. I’ll pay for the anniversary. Since you’re so determined to have scale and spectacle, I’ll organize everything myself. But one condition: you stay out of it. I choose the venue, the menu, and the logistics.”
“Now we’re talking!” Vadim lit up, instantly forgetting his outburst. “Mom will be thrilled. She’s already picked out a sequined dress. Remember this, Alina — family is what matters most.”
I gave him a crooked smile. In Vadim’s version of family, it was basically a bottomless ATM whose PIN he had forgotten — though he somehow never forgot whose name was on the account.
Working at a bank changes the way you think. You start seeing the world in debits and credits. You understand that every ruble spent on appearances is an hour of your life traded away for the privilege of looking successful in front of people who do not care about you at all.
Klavdia Petrovna called me every day.
“Alinochka, dear, I was just thinking — we absolutely need a host with an accordion. And the caviar must be real, not imitation. A hundred guests is about status! You understand that, don’t you?”
“I understand, Klavdia Petrovna,” I would reply, jotting notes into my notebook. “Status is extremely important. Don’t worry, I’ll find a place that perfectly reflects the idea of historical continuity.”
And I did.
Cafeteria No. 4 at the Progress Machine-Building Plant.
Time had frozen there. The place smelled of bleach, overboiled cabbage, and stern Soviet nostalgia. High ceilings, walls painted a hideous blue, and aluminum spoons that looked ready to bend from a disapproving glance. Best of all, the rental cost next to nothing, and the cook, Aunt Lyuba, was fully prepared to throw together a “banquet” using a 1985 price list.
Vadim was too busy talking menu fantasies with his friends — he had promised them “premium liquor and mountains of meat” — to bother checking where I was actually taking a hundred guests. I simply texted everyone the address and the time.
Saturday. 4:00 p.m.
Guests started gathering outside the cafeteria.
Klavdia Petrovna arrived in the very sequined dress she had mentioned, and against the peeling sign that read Cafeteria, she looked like a disco ball that had somehow rolled into a coal mine.
“Alina…” she stammered, staring at the cracked asphalt and heavy metal door. “What is this? The back entrance to the restaurant?”
“No, Klavdia Petrovna, this is the main entrance to the temple of frugality. Please, come in, dear guests.” I smiled brightly and pulled the door open.
Vadim came in behind her, his face already turning a shade of red disturbingly similar to beet salad.
“Alina, are you serious? Is this some kind of joke? Where is Golden Pheasant?”
“Vadim, Golden Pheasant failed my credit policy review,” I whispered in his ear. “You wanted a hundred guests? Here they are. The economy must be economical, right? Didn’t the classics teach us that?”
Inside, the guests were met with a truly unforgettable scene: long tables covered in oilcloth printed with tiny flowers. In the center of each table stood proud glass pitchers of dried-fruit compote, murky enough to resemble the water used to rinse paintbrushes.
Then the appetizers came out.
“Herring under a fur coat,” though with more onion than fish. A beet vinaigrette called Winter Dream. And the star of the evening — fried pollock in batter.
Aunt Lyuba marched into the hall in a spotless white cap and shouted in a booming voice:
“Dear citizens and invited guests! Hot food is out! Fresh mashed potatoes, no lumps, and pollock — pure protein! Anybody who doesn’t finish doesn’t get seconds!”
A silence fell over the room so sharp it could have been sliced. One hundred guests — from relatives in stiffly starched shirts to former colleagues glittering in diamonds — stared at the grayish fish and pale yellow mashed potatoes carefully spread in perfect circles on their plates.
“Alina…” Vadim lunged toward me, his voice shaking with rage. “You humiliated me! You humiliated all of us! Pollock? At a sixtieth anniversary banquet? Where are the steaks? Where is the aged cognac?”
“The cognac is in the bank, Vadim. The very bank where I work. But since we apparently have ‘plenty of money,’ I decided it would be smarter to put it toward paying off the mortgage early than financing your need to pretend to be something you’re not. And pollock is very healthy. A nice dietary fish. Good for Klavdia Petrovna’s blood vessels.”
Klavdia Petrovna sat at the head of the table, her sequins flickering sadly under the weak fluorescent lights. The relatives from Saratov, practical people used to harsher realities, were the first to reach for the fish.
“Well,” Uncle Kolya grunted, “fish is fish. Tastes like childhood. Alinka, good for you — didn’t let us get spoiled!”
I stood up, lifting a faceted glass of compote.
“Dear guests! Today we are celebrating more than a birthday. We are celebrating the triumph of reality over illusion. Vadim said I work at a bank and have plenty of money. That part is true. But money likes to be counted. So today I’d like to raise this glass to living within our means. Klavdia Petrovna, you always said I was hopeless in the household. Well, I’ve learned something: feeding a hundred people on five thousand rubles — now that is a skill.”
My mother-in-law looked as though someone had stuffed an entire lemon into her mouth. Without sugar.
“I… I will never forget this, Alina,” she forced out.
“Of course you won’t! A celebration like this only happens once in a lifetime. Aunt Lyuba, bring out the school-style cutlets! More bread than meat, just the way we like them!”
By the middle of the banquet, Vadim snapped. He jumped to his feet and shouted,
“That’s it! Enough! This is mockery! I’m ordering pizza for everyone right now!”
“Go ahead, darling,” I said calmly, taking another sip of compote. “But remember, your credit card was canceled yesterday at my request as the primary account holder. Exceeded the trust limit, you see. And as we both know, the cash in your pocket barely covers a bus ride.”
Vadim froze, phone still in his hand.
The guests began whispering. Some were laughing, some were scandalized, but most of them… kept eating. Somehow mashed potatoes and pollock have a way of making people honest. Without the performance, without the expensive alcohol and fake grandeur, they simply started talking to one another. It turned out the relatives from Saratov did not care one bit about caviar — they had just wanted to see Klavdia.
But for Vadim and his mother, the evening was the total collapse of their social “brand.”
The party ended early. At nine o’clock Aunt Lyuba switched off the lights at one end of the hall and started mopping the floor.
“All right, citizens, let’s wrap it up. I still have to hand over the shift.”
The guests left quickly, some tucking leftover pollock into paper napkins to take home. Vadim escorted his mother outside, holding her elbow as if she had just undergone major surgery.
At home, the real explosion began.
“You ruined my life!” Vadim screamed, flinging his keys onto the floor. “You made me look like a pauper! Mom is crying, she’s practically having a heart attack! Do you even understand what you’ve done? This is what your greed has brought us to!”
“No, Vadim,” I said evenly, removing my earrings in front of the mirror. “I wasn’t being greedy. I was holding up a mirror. You wanted a banquet on my dime? You got one. You wanted a hundred people? Done. But you forgot one detail: I am not your sponsor. I am your partner. And when a partnership turns into exploitation, the bank closes the credit line.”
“I’m filing for divorce tomorrow!” he shouted.
“Excellent idea. Then we can also discuss how to split the debt on your car. Do you know how much pollock I could buy with the amount I pay toward it every month? An entire ocean.”
He never filed.
As it turned out, living in an apartment paid for by a “greedy wife” and driving a car she insured was far more comfortable than storming off into the sunset broke and self-righteous.
Klavdia Petrovna has not spoken to me in six months.
Honestly, that may be the best birthday gift I have ever received for myself. Silence on the other end of the phone is a priceless asset.
The funniest part is that the relatives from Saratov still talk about that anniversary as “the warmest, most heartfelt celebration.”
“Oh, Alinka, what a gathering that was! No fancy foie gras, just simple and real!” Uncle Kolya tells me on the phone. “And that pollock — what pollock! Took me right back to my youth!”
I smile every time.
My bank is still open for business. But now it runs under new security policies: no non-repayable loans to relatives driven by vanity. Only verified assets. Only genuine emotions.
And for our wedding anniversary, I think I’ll give Vadim a frying pan.
And a bag of frozen pollock.
It’s time he learned that economics is not just numbers on a spreadsheet. It is also knowing how to value the person who earns those numbers in the first place.