“What kind of filthy hillbillies dragged themselves in here?” Valentina Sergeyevna looked my parents up and down as if she had found roaches in her oyster dish. “Security! Throw these… people out of the room at once. Guests like this do not belong at my birthday dinner in the Metropol!”
My mother went white and grabbed my father’s hand. My father said nothing, but I saw his jaw harden. I knew that look. It was the same one he had when I was little and our drunken neighbor Vitka tried to snatch my bicycle away from me.
“Valentina Sergeyevna, those are my parents,” I said, getting up from the table, my knees shaking. “I invited them.”
“Then send them right back to their… what is that place called again? Kozlovka? Some backwater hole?” my mother-in-law said with a disgusted grimace. “Just look at them. Your father in that secondhand jacket, and your mother… good Lord, is that dress from some cheap market stall?”
Fifteen years earlier, I had come to Moscow from a small town with one suitcase and enormous dreams. My parents sold our cow, Zorka — the one thing that kept us afloat — just to pay for my first year in the dormitory. My mother cried as she saw me off at the station, slipping the last five hundred rubles into my pocket “just in case.” My father stayed quiet, hugged me tightly, and whispered, “Study hard, sweetheart. We believe in you.”
I studied like my life depended on it. University during the day, odd jobs at night. Waitressing, handing out flyers, delivering parcels — anything, as long as I did not have to ask my parents for money. I knew that back home every ruble mattered. My mother worked as a hospital aide for a tiny salary, and my father was a mechanic at a factory that was constantly shutting down and reopening.
Then Igor appeared. Handsome, confident, from a well-off family. I fell for him like an idiot at first sight. He courted me beautifully: restaurants, flowers, gifts. When he proposed, I thought I was the happiest woman in the world.
“Let’s just skip the whole rustic wedding thing,” he had said back then. “My mother will arrange everything properly. As for your parents… well, we’ll meet them some other time.”
That “some other time” turned into three years.
Valentina Sergeyevna threw a lavish celebration for her sixtieth birthday. Two hundred guests, a Michelin-starred restaurant, live music. I begged Igor to let me invite my parents.
“Please, just this once,” I pleaded. “They want so badly to be part of a family celebration. Mom already bought a dress…”
“Fine,” my husband agreed reluctantly. “But warn them — no provincial behavior. They are to sit quietly and not embarrass us.”
My parents came by bus — fourteen hours on the road. I wanted to meet them at the station, but Valentina Sergeyevna threw a fit. “What do you mean, leave the preparations for my birthday dinner because of some guests?”
My mother put on her best dress — blue, with a lace collar. She had bought it especially for the occasion and saved for half a year to afford it. My father took out his only good suit, the same one he had worn when they got married thirty years earlier.
They stepped into the hall timidly, looking around. I rushed toward them, but Valentina Sergeyevna blocked my way.
“Is security asleep?” my mother-in-law snapped, clicking her fingers. “Didn’t I make myself clear? Get these beggars out of here!”
“We are not beggars,” my father said, stepping forward. “We are Katya’s parents. We came to congratulate you on your birthday.”
“Her parents?” Valentina Sergeyevna burst out laughing. “Igor, do you see this circus? Your wife dragged a pair of farm yokels in here! Everyone, take a good look — this is the stock my son plans to have children with! This village breed!”
The whole room fell silent. Two hundred pairs of eyes turned toward my parents. My mother started crying, clutching her handbag to her chest. Inside was her gift — a tablecloth she had embroidered by hand over three months.
“Come on, Masha,” my father said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “This is no place for us.”
“Wait!” I cried, shaking myself out of the shock. “Mom, Dad, don’t go!”
“Katya, choose,” Igor said coldly. “Either these… relatives of yours leave right now, or you go with them. Forever.”
I looked at my husband. Then at my mother-in-law, grinning like a hyena. Then at the guests, greedily drinking in every word. And finally at my parents. My mother was trying to wipe away her tears without anyone noticing. My father stood straight, but I could see his hands trembling. And in that instant, everything became painfully clear.
“You know what, Valentina Sergeyevna?” I said, stepping to my parents’ side and taking them by the arms. “Take your elite restaurant and shove it where you usually speak from. My parents raised me to be an honest person. They sold the last thing they had so I could get an education. And what have you ever done besides marrying a rich fool?”
“How dare you!” my mother-in-law shrieked.
“Oh, I dare,” I shot back. I slipped off my wedding ring and threw it onto the table in front of a stunned Igor. “For three years I put up with your insults. I was ashamed of my own parents. I lied to them, told them everything was fine, told them you would eventually accept us. But you know what? My mother is worth ten of you. She worked herself to the bone to feed her family, while all you know how to do is waste your husband’s money on Botox and designer clothes!”
“Katerina, stop this hysterical scene!” Igor barked. “You are going to regret it!”
“The only thing I regret is wasting three years of my life on you and your precious mommy, you spineless mama’s boy!” I turned toward the room. “And the rest of you are no better — sitting here stuffing yourselves with caviar and laughing at decent people. Shame on all of you!”
The three of us walked out together. My mother was still sobbing. My father was silent. At the entrance, I turned back. The room was frozen in dead silence. Valentina Sergeyevna’s face had turned the color of a beet. Igor sat there with his mouth hanging open.
“My girl, what have you done?” my mother said, grabbing my hand. “Go back and apologize. Where will you live now?”
“With you,” I said, holding both of them tightly. “I’m coming home. Back to our Kozlovka. Forgive me. Forgive me for being ashamed of you. Forgive me for not defending you right away.”
“You silly girl,” my father said, smiling for the first time that evening. “There is nothing to forgive. We always knew you would find your way back.”
We got into my father’s old Zhiguli — it turned out they had driven it there to surprise me. My mother pulled a thermos of tea and sandwiches with homemade sausage out of her bag.
“I had a feeling they wouldn’t feed you properly in that fancy restaurant,” she said, handing me a sandwich. “Eat, sweetheart. It’s a long way home.”
I took a bite, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Nothing in the world had ever tasted better than that simple sandwich.
A month later, Igor came to Kozlovka. He stood by the gate, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. My mother wanted to call me outside, but my father stopped her.
“Let him get lost,” he said. “We do not need some city peacock around here.”
Igor left with nothing.
Six months later, I found out that Valentina Sergeyevna had landed in the hospital with a heart attack after her husband filed for divorce — he had found himself a young secretary. Igor lost access to his father’s money and ended up working as a manager at a car dealership.
And me?
I opened a small bakery in Kozlovka. My mother helps with the baking, and my father did the repairs himself. On weekends, half the town comes to us for tea and pies. And you know what? I have never been happier.
Yesterday my mother said to me, “Maybe it’s for the best that everything happened the way it did, sweetheart. I looked at you back then in that restaurant and thought, she is not ours anymore. But now — now you are our Katya again.”
And I held her close, breathing in the smell of fresh bread and childhood. Real life, it turned out, was never in elite restaurants. It was here — where people love you not for your status, but simply because you are you.