The vacuum cleaner had broken down back in October. It was an old corded model, the kind that had stopped making cleaning easy a long time ago, with a dust bag you had to shake out over the trash while choking on the cloud of dirt. One morning before work, Marina turned it on. It buzzed for about five minutes, then made a strange cracking sound and died. A burnt smell spread through the apartment. She yanked the plug from the socket, opened the balcony door to let the smell out, and set the vacuum in the corner of the hallway. It stayed there for the next three months.
Since then, she had been sweeping. First with an ordinary broom, then mopping the floors by hand. It felt like being back in childhood at her grandmother’s village house. Only this was no village cottage. It was a three-room apartment in a concrete block building, seventy-two square meters, with two rugs, linoleum in the kitchen and hallway, laminate in the bedrooms. A broom, of course, never did a perfect job, but what else could she do?
“Vitya, maybe we should finally buy a vacuum cleaner?” she asked one evening when her husband was sitting on the couch with his phone.
He did not even lift his eyes.
“Now’s not the time.”
“How is it not the time? I’ve been cleaning with a mop for two months already.”
“Marina, just hold on a little longer. Mom’s feeling bad again. The doctor prescribed new medicine, and it’s expensive. Then there’s massage, some procedures too. Right now she needs the money more.”
Marina wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and sat down on the edge of the couch.
“And how much longer am I supposed to wait?”
“I don’t know. Until things stabilize.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said carefully,
“Listen, what if I buy it myself? Out of my own salary. I’ll save up little by little each month.”
At last Viktor looked away from the screen and toward her.
“Do whatever you want with your money. I’m not against it.”
“Really?”
“I just said so.”
Marina nodded and went into the kitchen to make tea. Something tightened in her chest—maybe relief, maybe hurt. She could not even tell which. She began mentally figuring out how much she could set aside. A large part of her salary already went toward groceries, which she bought herself, plus her transit pass and small daily expenses. But if she was careful, she could save something. In six months she could afford a decent robot vacuum with a wet-cleaning feature. One with a self-emptying station, so it could dump the dust on its own and rinse the mop cloth. She had seen models like that online and read reviews at night while Viktor was already asleep and she lay awake with her phone in her hands.
The thought of that robot vacuum comforted her. It would move around the apartment while she was at work, and by the time she came home, everything would be clean. She would not have to waste her weekends on cleaning anymore. She could rest, read, or simply lie down and do nothing. When was the last time she had done that?
November turned out to be difficult. Her mother-in-law, Valentina Petrovna, really was feeling unwell. She called Viktor every evening, complaining about her heart, her blood pressure, her shortness of breath. He went to see her twice a week, bought medicine, drove her to doctors. Marina watched silently as their shared budget kept thinning out.
“We need another ten thousand,” he said one morning at breakfast. “For a cardiogram and an ultrasound. At the clinic the wait is a month, but at the private center they can see her right away.”
Marina nodded while spreading butter on bread.
“Take it from the card.”
“There’s barely anything left there.”
“How long until payday?”
“About a week and a half.”
She pulled her wallet from her bag and counted out five thousand-ruble notes.
“Here. We’ll manage the rest somehow.”
Viktor took the money and slipped it into his coat pocket.
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back.”
But he never did. Marina had not expected him to.
Then in December, something happened that she had not seen coming. At work they announced year-end bonuses. Marina worked as an economist at a small construction company, and bonuses there were never guaranteed. But this year the projects had gone well, and the director decided to reward the staff.
On Friday, December twenty-third, he called her into his office and handed her a white envelope.
“Happy New Year. This is for your good work.”
Marina walked out of his office clutching the envelope to her chest. In the restroom she locked herself in a stall, opened it with trembling hands, and counted the bills inside. Seventy thousand. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the cold wall.
Seventy thousand.
Enough for the exact vacuum cleaner she had chosen back in November. The one with the base station, the wet-cleaning function, the phone app. Forty-nine thousand nine hundred. And there would still be money left.
That whole evening she moved around like she was floating. She cleaned while humming, cooked dinner, smiled at Viktor while he talked about work. The envelope stayed hidden in her bag, in a zippered inner pocket.
“What’s with you?” he asked when they got into bed.
“I’m just in a good mood. New Year’s is coming.”
“Right.”
He turned onto his side and within a minute was already breathing heavily in his sleep. But Marina lay awake, staring into the dark, replaying tomorrow in her mind. Saturday. They usually slept until ten, had breakfast, and then she could go to the mall. There was a big electronics store there. She already knew which floor, which department, where her vacuum stood. If she placed the order before noon, they would deliver it the same day. By evening she would already be watching it work, seeing it move around the furniture, wipe the floors, and leave neat clean paths behind it.
In the morning she woke before Viktor. Quietly she got dressed, went into the kitchen, made coffee, sat at the table, took out her bag, and unzipped the hidden pocket.
The envelope was empty.
She shook it. Nothing. She searched every compartment, turned the lining inside out. Nothing. Her heart pounded so hard that a rushing sound filled her ears. She went back into the bedroom and switched on the light.
“Vitya. Vitya, wake up.”
He mumbled, covering his eyes with his hand.
“What?”
“The money. From my bag. Where is it?”
He was silent for a moment, then sat up in bed and rubbed his face.
“Oh. You mean the bonus?”
“Yes. Where is it?”
“I took it.”
Marina stood in the middle of the room holding the empty envelope.
“What do you mean, you took it?”
“Well, Mom needed it. She asked me to pay for a stay at a health resort. The doctor recommended it, said it would help. For her heart, for her nerves. I looked into some options and found a good place outside Moscow. Sixty thousand for twenty days. Your bonus covered it perfectly.”
Marina said nothing. She could not force out a word.
“I thought you wouldn’t mind,” Viktor went on, looking up at her from the bed. “You’re always saying we need to help our parents. And anyway, it’s not that much money. You’ll earn more.”
Her voice sounded strange to her, almost like it belonged to someone else.
“You took my money. Without asking me.”
“Well, sorry. I thought you’d understand. My mother is sick.”
“And you spent it on a resort trip.”
“Not on her directly. I paid for the package. She’s going in January.”
Marina turned and left the room. She pulled on her coat, slipped her feet into her boots.
“Where are you going?” Viktor shouted after her from the bedroom.
She did not answer. She left the apartment, took the elevator down, and stepped outside. It was a bright, freezing day, and the snow squeaked under her boots. She walked fast without really seeing where she was going until she reached a bus stop. She got into the first minibus that came and rode to the shopping center.
The electronics store was almost empty. It was Saturday, and many people were probably still asleep after their office New Year parties. Marina went straight to the vacuum cleaners, found the model she wanted, and called over a sales assistant.
“I want this one.”
“Excellent choice. Paying cash or by card?”
“On credit.”
“No problem. Do you have your passport?”
Half an hour later she left the store with the contract in her hand. The vacuum would be delivered by evening. A twelve-month loan, with a monthly payment of four and a half thousand. She could handle it. She would cut down on personal expenses and manage.
When she got home, Viktor was sitting in the kitchen with a dark expression on his face.
“Where were you?”
“At the store.”
“What for?”
“I bought a vacuum cleaner.”
He jerked upright.
“What? What vacuum cleaner? With what money?”
“On credit.”
“Are you insane?” Viktor stood up so abruptly the chair toppled over. “You took out a loan for a vacuum cleaner? Have you lost your mind?”
Marina calmly took off her coat and hung it on the rack.
“No.”
“How could you do that? I promised that money to my mother! Take everything back to the store!” her husband burst out, slamming his fist on the table.
She turned toward him. For the first time in many years, she looked at him long and carefully. She saw the red blotches creeping up his neck, the swollen vein in his forehead, the fists clenched at his sides. She saw a man to whom his mother’s comfort mattered more than the three months his wife had spent scrubbing floors with a mop. A man who thought it was normal to open her bag and take what she had earned.
“What money did you promise your mother exactly?” she asked quietly.
“I promised I would help her! Do you think one trip to a resort is going to make her healthy overnight?”
“My money. My bonus,” Marina repeated. “The money I earned. The money I got for my work. That’s what you promised your mother?”
“What difference does it make whose it was? We’re family. We share everything.”
“We share everything,” she repeated with a nod. “And when I needed a vacuum cleaner, you said, ‘Do whatever you want with your own money.’ Remember?”
Viktor blinked in confusion.
“That’s different.”
“Why is it different?”
“Because Mom is sick. She really needs treatment.”
“A resort is not treatment. It’s something a doctor recommends if you can afford it. Examinations and medicine, yes, those are necessary, and I never begrudged money for that. But your mother goes to spa resorts every year. Last year it was Kislovodsk, the year before that Zheleznovodsk. And every time it’s paid from our shared money. But my vacuum cleaner is considered a luxury, right?”
“Why are you so hung up on this vacuum cleaner?”
“I’m not hung up on it!” Marina raised her voice for the first time in the entire conversation. “I just want to be able to clean the apartment properly! I’m tired of this mop! I’m tired of coming home from work and spending three hours cleaning! This is basic household comfort!”
“You should have asked me first!”
“Asked you?” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “Did you ask me when you took the money out of my bag?”
Viktor opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
“I thought you’d understand.”
“No,” Marina said. “I won’t. And you know what? Let’s settle this right now. From now on, with my salary, just like you said, I will buy whatever I want. For myself. For the house, if I think it is necessary. And you support your mother out of your own salary. All her resort trips, procedures, massages—out of your pocket. Agreed?”
“That’s not fair! My salary is smaller!”
“But what does your mother care about that? She’s your mother, not mine.”
“She’s your mother-in-law!”
Marina slowly shook her head.
“No. She’s yours. I help her because it’s the decent thing to do. But I am not going to keep denying myself everything so she can enjoy spa resorts. Medicine, yes. Doctors, yes. But a resort is her personal indulgence. And yours. So either you pay for it with your own money, or you tell her no. But not at my expense anymore.”
They stood facing one another on opposite sides of the kitchen. The smell of cold coffee lingered in the air. Outside the window, children were laughing while building a snowman in the yard.
“That’s not how families work,” Viktor said at last. “We’re a family.”
“Exactly,” Marina replied. “A family. You and me. Your mother is extended family. I’m willing to help her, but within reason.”
Viktor brushed past her, grabbed his coat.
“I need to go out. I need to think.”
The door slammed behind him. Marina stayed alone. She sat down right there on the kitchen floor and leaned her back against the refrigerator. Her hands were shaking. She barely recognized herself. She had never spoken to him that sharply, that firmly before. She had always given in, agreed, nodded.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was right, and she was selfish.
No.
She ran her palm over the floor, over the linoleum she had scrubbed with a mop for the last three months. Over the floor that in a few hours her vacuum cleaner would be moving across. Hers. Paid for by her. Bought on credit that she alone would repay.
That evening, when the vacuum arrived and Marina was unpacking it, Viktor came back. Without a word, he went into the living room, lay down on the couch, and buried himself in his phone. She finished setting everything up, installed the app, and started the first cleaning cycle. The robot hummed busily and rolled off through the rooms, neatly steering around obstacles.
Marina stood in the middle of the living room and watched it work. Her heart felt heavy, but strangely calm at the same time.
The next day they did not speak. Viktor left in the morning to visit his mother and came back late that evening. Marina made dinner, he sat down, ate in silence, and went into the other room. The same thing went on for three days.
On the fourth day he said,
“We need to talk.”
They sat down at the kitchen table. Marina’s hands went cold.
“I’ve been thinking,” Viktor began, not looking at her. “Maybe you were right. About the money. Let’s really divide the expenses. I cover my part, you cover yours. Utilities fifty-fifty, groceries fifty-fifty. Everything else each of us decides for ourselves.”
Marina nodded.
“All right.”
“So we agree?”
“Yes.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“And now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “We’ll see.”
A month passed. They kept a spreadsheet of expenses, split the shared costs, and each spent their own money as they chose. Marina made the payments on the vacuum loan. The apartment became cleaner, because the robot vacuum worked every day; she had programmed it through the app to clean while she was at work. But their conversations grew thin. They discussed bills, purchases, daily chores, but nothing more. They no longer asked each other how the day had gone. They no longer made plans.
One evening Valentina Petrovna called and invited them to her birthday dinner. Marina said of course she would come. Viktor nodded too.
In the car they rode in silence. Marina looked out the window at the snowy streets and the yellow glow of the streetlamps. She thought that they had become like two neighbors sharing an apartment—polite, restrained, distant.
At her mother-in-law’s place it was warm and smelled of pies. Valentina Petrovna greeted them with a smile and kissed both of them on the cheek. Her sister and her husband were already at the table, along with a friend and a neighbor. Marina helped set everything out, cut salad, poured drinks into glasses.
“So, how are things with you two?” Valentina Petrovna asked when she and Marina were briefly alone in the kitchen.
“Fine,” Marina answered.
“Vitya’s been looking gloomy lately.”
“Probably work.”
Her mother-in-law gave her a long look.
“You two aren’t quarreling, are you?”
“No. Everything’s fine.”
But there was no point trying to fool an experienced woman. Valentina Petrovna sighed.
“I know he spends a lot on me. You two aren’t fighting because of that, are you?”
Marina froze with the knife poised over a carrot.
“We made an agreement. Now each of us handles our own money.”
“I see.” Her mother-in-law nodded. “Maybe that’s for the best. To be honest, I never even asked him to send me to a resort. He decided it on his own, said I absolutely had to go. I told him I could live without any spa trips, that my medicine was enough. But he insisted.”
Marina slowly set the knife down.
“You didn’t ask for it?”
“A resort? Why would I? I’d rather sit quietly at home. But my son is stubborn. Once he decides something is best, that’s it.”
That evening, as they drove home, Marina watched Viktor. He drove in silence, frowning, tired. And suddenly she felt sorry for him. For this stubborn man who kept deciding for everyone what they needed. For his mother. For his wife. Without asking, without discussing it, simply deciding and acting.
“Your mother said she never asked to go to a resort,” Marina said.
Viktor tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“So what? I still think it would be good for her.”
“Vitya,” she sighed. “Do you even understand that the problem was never really about the money?”
“Then what was it about?”
“It was about you making decisions for me. And for your mother. Taking my money without asking. Sending her somewhere without even checking whether she wanted it. You just do what you think is right, and that’s the end of it.”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he muttered,
“I just wanted to help.”
“I know. But you can’t do things like that.”
They got home and went up to their floor. In the apartment, the robot vacuum was standing peacefully on its base, charging. Marina turned on the kettle and took out two cups.
“Maybe we should start over?” she asked.
“How?”
“I don’t know. But we can’t go on like this. We’ve turned into strangers.”
Viktor sat down on a chair and rubbed his face with both hands.
“I’m sorry. For taking the money without asking.”
“You should be,” Marina said—then softened. “And I’m sorry too. For how harsh I was.”
They drank tea sitting across from one another. Still quiet, but not with that same coldness as before. Something had thawed, just a little.
“It is a useful thing, though,” Viktor said at last, nodding toward the vacuum.
Marina smiled.
“Yes. It is.”
What lay ahead was still unclear. Maybe they would learn how to talk differently, how to make decisions together, how to respect each other’s boundaries. Or maybe they would realize too much damage had already been done. But for now they were sitting together, drinking tea, and that in itself felt like the beginning of something.
What exactly that something would become—only time would tell.