“Mom, Dad, Valera and Natasha are coming on Saturday. They’ll stay with us for a month.”
Kostya said it casually. He was standing by the refrigerator, drinking kefir straight from the carton and scrolling through his phone, as if he had just mentioned the weather forecast.
I was holding a plate. I placed it on the table. Very carefully.
“A month,” I repeated.
“Yeah. Dad has vacation time, Mom has wanted to come for ages. Valera will come too, with Natasha. We’ll all spend time together,” he said, smiling without looking up from the screen. “It’s fine, right?”
Fine.
We had been married for seven years. During those seven years, his relatives had stayed with us four times. Every time, for more than a week. Every time, without warning.
Well, almost without warning. Three days counts as warning, apparently.
I work remotely as an accountant. My office is an eight-square-meter room beside the bedroom. A desk, a computer, folders. Everything arranged down to the centimeter, because our apartment has only two rooms. It is not a mansion.
“Kostya,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “There are two of us. Two rooms. Where are we supposed to put four adults?”
At last, he looked up from his phone.
“Mom and Dad can sleep on the sofa in the living room. Valera and Natasha can stay in your office. We’ll buy an inflatable mattress.”
“And where will I work?”
“At the kitchen table,” he shrugged. “Or in the bedroom. You have a laptop.”
I stood there and stared at him.
He hadn’t even asked me.
Not “Is that all right?” Not “How do you feel about it?” He had simply informed me. As if it was his apartment, and I was just something that came with it.
“You could have at least discussed it with me,” I said.
“What is there to discuss? They’re my parents. They’re not strangers.”
Not strangers.
But not mine either.
I drew air into my lungs. Then slowly breathed it out.
“All right,” I said. “Then here’s my condition. You cook. You clean. They are your guests, so you take care of them.”
Kostya laughed, as if I had made a joke.
“Lena, come on. Mom will cook herself. She loves cooking.”
I said nothing.
For six months, I had been putting money aside. Every month, seven or eight thousand from freelance work I took on in addition to my main job. In the evenings. At night. I balanced other people’s accounts so I could save for a vacation. A real one. By the sea. In silence.
Forty-eight thousand rubles were sitting on a separate card.
My little escape.
Back then, I didn’t yet know how soon I would need it.
They arrived on Saturday.
All four of them.
With three suitcases, two bags, and grocery bags from Pyaterochka containing three jars of pickles and a pack of buckwheat. A gift, apparently.
Zinaida Pavlovna entered first. A large woman with rings on every finger and a voice that could make the neighbor’s cats flinch. She inspected the hallway as if she were accepting a finished renovation project.
“It’s cramped here,” she said instead of hello. “And these wallpapers again. How long are you going to keep them? I told you last time.”
“Hello,” I replied.
My father-in-law, Gennady Petrovich, was a quiet, barely noticeable man. He nodded to me and immediately went toward the television. Valera, Kostya’s older brother, squeezed through the doorway sideways. Behind him came Natasha, thin and silent, with eyes that always seemed fixed on the floor.
Kostya fussed around them. He carried suitcases, moved furniture in my office, and inflated the mattress.
The mattress took up half the room. My work desk was pushed against the wall so tightly that there was no longer space for the chair.
“I work here,” I said to Kostya in the kitchen.
“You’ll work at the kitchen table for now. It’s temporary. Just one month.”
Just one month.
Two hundred and forty working hours at the kitchen table, next to pots and my mother-in-law.
On the first day, I stood at the stove.
Zinaida Pavlovna did not cook. She supervised.
She sat on a stool, crossed her arms, and began.
“Cut the onion smaller. Big pieces of onion don’t belong in borscht. That’s not soup, that’s slop.”
“Grate the carrot, don’t cube it. Who does that?”
“That’s the wrong oil. You need unrefined oil. Kostya, write that down so your wife buys the right one.”
I stood at the stove for three hours. I roasted the beets in the oven, the way I always do, because it keeps the color bright.
My mother-in-law leaned over the pot, sniffed it, and wrinkled her nose.
“Borscht should be dark. This is pink water.”
I said nothing.
Kostya was in the living room with his father, watching football. The condition that he would cook had been forgotten exactly twelve hours later.
Valera ate enough for three people. One bowl of borscht, then another, and half a loaf of bread. Natasha picked at her food with a spoon. My mother-in-law ate while commenting on every bite.
“Too salty,” she said.
Gennady Petrovich silently took a second helping.
I decided to count that as a compliment.
By evening, I had washed dishes for six people.
Twenty-two items: plates, cups, pots, a frying pan.
Kostya was watching a TV series.
Valera was snoring in my workplace.
I sat down on the bed in the bedroom and opened my laptop. I had an urgent report due. The client was waiting for it by Monday.
The screen caught the glare from the lamp. The surface was too low, so I had to put a pillow under my elbows.
Through the wall, Zinaida Pavlovna was telling Kostya that “his wife could at least smile.”
I heard every word.
“She’s tired, Mom,” Kostya said.
“And I’m not tired? I spent ten hours on a train. Yet somehow I’m smiling.”
I closed the laptop.
My fingers ached from typing. My back throbbed.
There were still twenty-nine days left.
On the third day, Zinaida Pavlovna rearranged the living room furniture.
I came back from the store carrying four bags that had cost two thousand three hundred rubles, and I didn’t recognize the room.
The sofa was standing across the room. The television had been turned toward the window. My ficus, which I had been growing for three years, was on the floor in the hallway.
“This is better,” my mother-in-law announced. “Energy should flow freely through the room.”
“Zinaida Pavlovna,” I said, putting down the bags. “Kostya and I arranged the furniture this way for a reason. If the sofa stands there, it blocks the radiator. The room will get too hot.”
“Nonsense. You can open a window.”
I looked at Kostya.
He was rubbing the bridge of his nose. His eternal gesture when he did not want to get involved.
“Mom, maybe we should put it back,” he began.
“Kostya, I know better. I’ve lived forty years longer than she has.”
I picked up the ficus and put it back on the windowsill.
Then I walked over to the sofa and started moving it.
“What are you doing?” my mother-in-law said, rising from her seat.
“Putting it back,” I replied. “This is our apartment. The furniture stays the way we decided.”
Silence.
Zinaida Pavlovna looked at Kostya.
Kostya looked at the wall.
In the next room, Gennady Petrovich changed the channel.
“Well,” my mother-in-law said. “So that’s what she’s like, Kostya. Cold. I was only trying to help you.”
She went into the kitchen and began clattering dishes.
I moved the sofa alone. Kostya did not help. Pain shot between my shoulder blades.
That evening, Kostya came into the bedroom.
“Why did you have to do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“In front of Mom. She got upset.”
“She rearranged our furniture without asking.”
“She wanted to make things better.”
I didn’t answer. I lay down and turned away.
Behind the wall, my mother-in-law was on the phone with a friend. I heard the words “dry as a stick,” “my poor Kostya is suffering,” and “can’t even cook proper borscht.”
Seven years.
For seven years, I had heard the same thing in different versions.
And every time, Kostya rubbed the bridge of his nose and said nothing.
The next day, my mother-in-law behaved as if nothing had happened. She smiled, set the table using my plates, and told Valera how she had “organized everything” here.
I opened the refrigerator.
Empty.
Yesterday it had been full. I had bought groceries for two days. Six adults had eaten everything in twenty-four hours.
Two kilograms of chicken, a pack of butter, a loaf of bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, a carton of milk.
Two thousand three hundred rubles gone in one day.
I took out my phone. Opened my notes. And started calculating.
By the tenth day, I knew the numbers by heart.
Groceries: an average of two thousand two hundred rubles per day. In ten days, twenty-two thousand. By the end of the month, it would be over sixty thousand.
Electricity: the washing machine was running every day. Before, we used it twice a week. Four extra adults plus us meant six full loads instead of two.
Water: I checked the meter. In ten days, they had used as much as Kostya and I normally used in a month and a half.
And then there was my time.
Four hours a day at the stove.
Forty hours in ten days.
A full working week spent cooking.
Valera and Natasha had completely taken over my office. The inflatable mattress remained in the middle of the room. Natasha had hung clothes over my office chair. Valera brought in a speaker and played chanson.
I worked in the kitchen, with my laptop squeezed between a cutting board and a jar of pickles.
On Wednesday, a client called.
“Elena Sergeevna, when will you send the report? I’ve been waiting for three days.”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
I hung up.
At that exact moment, my mother-in-law entered the kitchen.
“Lenochka, make cutlets. Valera likes them with mashed potatoes.”
I looked at her. Then at my laptop. Then back at her.
“Zinaida Pavlovna, I’m working.”
“Oh, it won’t take long. There’s minced meat in the fridge.”
There was no minced meat in the fridge. I had checked that morning.
I had bought it yesterday. One and a half kilograms. Four hundred and eighty rubles. They had eaten all of it at dinner as meatballs.
“The minced meat is gone,” I said.
“Then go buy some! The store is right across the road.”
I closed my laptop.
I stood up.
My hands clenched into fists on their own, and I felt my nails dig into my palms.
That evening at dinner — yes, I had still made the cutlets after buying minced meat with my own money — Zinaida Pavlovna began a new conversation.
“Gena and I are saving up for renovations,” she said. “It’s hard on a pension. Kostya helps, of course. But not much.”
I raised my eyes.
“Not much?” I repeated.
Kostya sent his parents fifteen thousand rubles every month. From our shared budget. I knew the exact number because I handled the family accounts.
“Well, what is fifteen thousand?” my mother-in-law waved her hand. “That’s not even enough for a month of groceries.”
I put down my fork and looked at everyone.
Kostya was rubbing the bridge of his nose.
Valera was chewing.
Natasha stared at her plate.
Gennady Petrovich cleared his throat.
“Let’s calculate,” I said.
Everyone froze.
“You’ve been living with us for ten days. During that time, I have spent twenty-two thousand rubles on groceries. That is food only. Not water, not electricity, and not my working hours, which I spend cooking instead of taking paid orders. If things continue like this, by the end of the month it will be close to seventy thousand. Maybe we should share the expenses?”
The silence was so sharp that I could hear the tap dripping.
“What?” Zinaida Pavlovna turned crimson. “You’re asking relatives for money?”
“I’m suggesting we split the costs. Kostya and I don’t earn enough to feed six adults.”
“Kostya, do you hear this?” my mother-in-law turned to her son. “She’s shaking us down for money!”
Kostya raised one hand.
“Lena, why are you doing this? In front of everyone.”
“When else was I supposed to say it? In private, you don’t listen.”
Valera pushed his plate away.
“Wow, Lenka. We came as guests. Who charges guests?”
“Guests stay for three days,” I replied. “A month is not a visit. It’s living here.”
Natasha lifted her eyes and looked at me.
And in them, I saw something that looked almost like sympathy.
Dinner ended in silence.
I washed the dishes alone.
Thirty-four items. I counted.
No one offered to help.
No one contributed money.
That night, Kostya did not come to the bedroom. He slept in the car. I saw him from the window.
On the twelfth day, I woke up at six thirty to my mother-in-law’s voice.
“Lenochka! You need to start the borscht! I’m used to having lunch at noon!”
Six thirty in the morning.
Saturday.
My only day off, when I had no urgent reports.
I lay there staring at the ceiling.
Behind the wall, Valera coughed. Natasha rustled plastic bags. Gennady Petrovich turned the television on at full volume because he couldn’t hear well.
Kostya appeared in the doorway.
He smelled like the car, which meant he had slept there again.
“Lena, get up. Mom is waiting.”
I sat up in bed and looked at my husband.
At his broad shoulders, which immediately hunched when my mother-in-law’s voice sounded from the kitchen.
“Kostya,” I asked quietly, “did you ask me when you invited them?”
“Lena, not this again.”
“Yes, this again. You invited four people into our apartment for a month. Without warning me. Without asking me. You didn’t even wonder whether I had work, plans, or things to do. You just said, ‘They’re coming on Saturday.’ That was it.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
The familiar gesture.
Seven years of watching that gesture.
“They’re family, Lena. What was I supposed to do? Say no?”
“You didn’t say no to me either. You simply didn’t ask.”
“So what do you suggest? Throw them out?”
I didn’t answer.
I got up. Went to the kitchen. Started the borscht.
Four hours. Beets, cabbage, fried vegetables, broth.
My mother-in-law sat beside me on a stool and counted the spoonfuls of salt.
“You’re not adding enough. Borscht without salt isn’t borscht.”
I added another half-spoon.
“Still not enough.”
I added more.
“There. But you’ve done the beets wrong again.”
Twelve days.
Four hours of cooking each day.
Forty-eight hours.
A full working week and another day on top.
And there were still eighteen days ahead.
After lunch, Zinaida Pavlovna called Kostya out onto the balcony. I was washing dishes and heard them through the open window.
“She isn’t right for you, Kostya. She’s cold. Greedy. Counts every ruble when it comes to family. You deserve better.”
I turned off the water.
The plate in my hands became slippery with soap. I placed it in the drying rack. Very evenly. Very carefully.
Then I dried my hands with a towel, went into the bedroom, opened my laptop, and searched for last-minute vacation deals.
Turkey. Antalya. Flight the day after tomorrow.
Twenty-eight days. Three-star hotel. All-inclusive.
Forty-four thousand rubles.
There were forty-eight thousand on my card.
I clicked “book.”
My hands did not shake.
For the first time in twelve days.
On the morning of the fourteenth day, I got up before everyone else.
Five in the morning. Dark. Quiet.
I packed my suitcase.
Summer dresses, swimsuit, sandals, sunscreen, charger, passport.
The suitcase was small, carry-on size. I had bought it three years earlier specifically so I wouldn’t have to check luggage.
On the kitchen table, I left a note. I wrote it by hand, in large letters, so they would definitely read it.
“Welcome! Your hospitable hostess has gone on vacation. For a month. There is chicken and pelmeni in the freezer. Borscht takes four hours; Zinaida Pavlovna knows the recipe. Enjoy your stay!”
Beside it, I placed the spare keys.
Then I left.
The taxi was already waiting outside the building. The driver put my suitcase in the trunk.
“To Sheremetyevo?”
“To Sheremetyevo.”
I got into the back seat and fastened my seat belt.
I looked up at the windows of our apartment.
Dark.
Everyone was asleep.
The car started moving.
I leaned back and breathed out.
It felt as if my ribcage had finally opened. I hadn’t even realized I had been breathing half-breaths for twelve days.
My shoulders dropped.
My neck stopped aching.
My phone rang at 7:42.
I was already sitting at the gate.
Kostya.
I declined the call.
He called again.
I declined again.
A message arrived:
“Where are you?!”
I replied:
“At the airport. I’m flying away on vacation. For a month. Just like your relatives — without warning. Read the note.”
Twenty-three seconds of silence.
Then the messages came flooding in.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Mom is crying.”
“Who is going to cook?”
“Give the money back.”
“Lena, this isn’t funny.”
I read all of them.
Especially “Who is going to cook?”
For twelve days, I had cooked for six people.
Forty-eight hours.
Twenty-two thousand rubles from my own pocket.
And his first question was who would cook.
I turned off my phone and put it in my bag.
Boarding was announced.
On the plane, I took the window seat and fastened my seat belt.
The woman beside me, about fifty and already suntanned, smiled.
“Going on vacation?”
“Vacation,” I answered.
And I smiled so widely my cheekbones hurt.
I hadn’t smiled like that in a long time.
The plane accelerated, lifted off the ground, and Moscow dropped away below us — rooftops, roads, traffic jams.
Somewhere down there, in a two-room apartment, my mother-in-law was reading my note. Kostya was rubbing the bridge of his nose. Valera was asking where breakfast was.
And I was flying toward the sea.
For the first three days, I slept.
I simply slept for twelve hours at a time, because for the twelve days before that, I had been sleeping five.
The hotel was quiet. The room was small. The balcony overlooked the pool.
No one woke me up at six thirty.
No one demanded borscht.
No one commented on how I cut onions.
On the fourth day, I turned my phone on.
One hundred and fourteen messages.
Thirty-two missed calls.
Eighteen from Kostya.
Seven from Zinaida Pavlovna.
Three from Valera.
Four from my mother, whom my mother-in-law had called to complain.
I read Kostya’s messages in order.
Day one: anger.
“You’re a traitor.”
“How could you?”
“Mom is sobbing.”
Day two: bargaining.
“Fine, come back. I’ll talk to Mom.”
“Maybe that’s enough already.”
Day three: panic.
“Lena, I don’t know how to make borscht.”
“Mom is making me cook.”
“Valera said he’ll leave if there isn’t proper food.”
I read that last message twice.
Valera — the man who had not washed a single plate in twelve days — was threatening to leave if he was not fed properly.
Then I opened my mother-in-law’s messages.
The first one: “Snake!”
The second: “My poor Kostya!”
The third: “I’ll tell everyone what kind of woman you are!”
The fourth was a three-minute voice message.
I listened to thirty seconds.
That was enough.
I sent Kostya one message:
“I’m on vacation. I’ll be back in twenty-four days. The groceries are in the store across the road.”
Then I wrote to my mother:
“Mom, I’m fine. I’m resting. Don’t listen to my mother-in-law. She has her own version.”
I turned off the phone and went to the sea.
The water was warm and salty.
I floated on my back, looking up at the sky, and thought about the fact that I hadn’t swum in the sea for seven years.
All that time, money had gone to transfers to Kostya’s parents, repairs for their country house, holiday gifts for his relatives.
My vacation was postponed every year.
“Next year for sure, Lena.”
Next year had finally arrived.
Without Kostya.
Without my mother-in-law.
Without thirty-four plates after dinner.
I stayed in the water for two hours.
Then I got out, lay down on a sunbed, and ordered coffee.
The waiter brought it in a small cup, with a cookie on the side.
I was in no hurry.
There was no borscht to cook.
In the middle of the second week, a message came from Kostya.
Short.
“They left.”
I didn’t ask for details.
I didn’t ask when or why.
I just read it and put the phone away.
On the twentieth day, he wrote:
“We need to talk when you come back.”
No exclamation marks.
No accusations.
Just: “We need to talk.”
I replied:
“Yes, we do.”
A month passed.
I came back tanned, rested, with four thousand rubles left on my card.
Kostya met me at the airport.
He silently took my suitcase.
We didn’t speak in the car.
At home, everything was clean.
Suspiciously clean, as if he had made a special effort.
The furniture was back in place.
The ficus stood on the windowsill, alive and even watered.
The inflatable mattress had been removed from the office.
“When did they leave?” I asked.
“A week after you.”
A week.
They had lasted exactly one week without being served.
Without cooking, cleaning, shopping.
Seven days — and they packed their suitcases.
“Mom said she’ll never set foot here again,” Kostya added.
“I see.”
He sat down on the sofa. He started to rub the bridge of his nose, but quickly lowered his hand, as if he had caught himself doing it.
“You could have just told me,” he said.
“I did. For twelve days. You didn’t hear me.”
“But leaving like that was too much.”
“And inviting four people for a month without asking me was normal?”
He was silent.
We did not make up.
We did not hug.
We did not tell each other everything was fine.
Now Kostya sleeps in the living room.
We speak briefly, only about practical things: who is paying the electricity bill, who is buying milk.
My mother-in-law calls him every evening. I hear her through the wall, telling her friends that her daughter-in-law “abandoned her husband and ran off to a resort.”
In her version, there are no plates, no borscht, no forty-eight hours at the stove.
And I sleep alone in the bedroom.
In silence.
No one wakes me up at six thirty.
No one comments on the way I cut onions.
Tell me — did the heroine go too far by leaving?
Or if her husband didn’t ask her first, should he be the one to deal with the consequences?