“Your son chose a new life partner—young and slim, just like you wanted. So ask her for help!” Ira told her former mother-in-law.
Ira was soaking the greasy range-hood filter in a basin of baking soda and boiling water. The water had already turned gray-yellow, with oily flakes floating on the surface. She scrubbed the clogged mesh with an old toothbrush and thought how different life felt after divorce.
Before, she had never remembered things like filters, leaking toilet tanks, suitcase wheels, utility meters, or dead doorbell batteries. Now she remembered everything because there was no one else to do it.
The doorbell rang loudly.
Ira wiped her hands on her blue cherry-patterned apron and opened the door.
Tamara Ivanovna stood outside.
In the year and a half since Ira’s divorce from Oleg, she had seen her former mother-in-law only twice, both times from a distance. Now the seventy-three-year-old woman stood on her doorstep in a buttoned beige coat, clutching the same old handbag Ira remembered from twenty years ago.
She looked smaller somehow.
“Hello, Ira.”
“Hello.”
After an awkward silence, Tamara Ivanovna asked, “Am I interrupting?”
“I’m cleaning the hood filter.”
“You were always so tidy.”
Ira almost smiled. In twenty years, Tamara Ivanovna had never praised her housekeeping. She had been more likely to run a finger across the top of a cabinet and silently display the dust she found.
Still, Ira invited her inside.
Tamara Ivanovna removed her shoes neatly and sat on the edge of an armchair, handbag on her knees.
“It’s cozy here,” she said.
“It’s only a one-room apartment.”
“Still cozy. Oleg has a three-room place, but it feels empty.”
Ira understood the implication but ignored it.
She made tea.
While waiting, Tamara Ivanovna noticed photographs of Artyom, Ira and Oleg’s fourteen-year-old son.
“He’s so grown up.”
“He wears size forty-three shoes now.”
“My goodness. I’ve hardly seen him.”
“You haven’t,” Ira said evenly.
Tamara Ivanovna had not called Artyom on his birthday for two years.
Ira sat opposite her and waited. The woman had not come merely for tea.
Finally, Tamara Ivanovna said, “You understand apartments and documents. You work at Rosreestr.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why I came. They’re throwing me out of my apartment.”
Ira frowned.
“Your apartment on Khmelyova Street?”
“Yes. Except it isn’t mine anymore. I gave it to Oleg.”
Ira remembered perfectly.
Seven years earlier, Tamara Ivanovna had decided to transfer her two-room apartment to her only son. She said it would avoid inheritance paperwork later.
Ira had warned her.
“Maybe make a will instead,” she had suggested. “You can change a will. A gift is much harder to reverse.”
Tamara Ivanovna had been offended.
“Do you have your eye on my apartment? Oleg is my son. I trust him.”
Ira had even suggested an agreement that would guarantee Tamara Ivanovna the right to live there for life.
Her mother-in-law dismissed that too.
“I don’t need lawyers deciding what my own son owes me.”
Oleg had remained silent.
So Tamara Ivanovna signed the deed of gift.
Now Oleg was the legal owner.
“And what happened?” Ira asked.
“Oleg wants to sell the apartment,” Tamara Ivanovna said. “He and Kristina have a mortgage. He says I don’t need two rooms alone. They’ll buy me one room in a communal apartment and use the difference to pay their mortgage.”
Her voice broke.
“A room, Ira. Eighteen square meters. Shared bathroom. I lived in my apartment for forty years. I raised Oleg there. I buried my husband while living there. And now I’m supposed to leave.”
Ira remained silent.
Then came the real request.
“You work with registrations. Maybe you can cancel the gift somehow. Do something. As family.”
Ira almost laughed at those last words.
“As family.”
“Tamara Ivanovna, you can’t simply undo a deed of gift. Unless there are very serious legal circumstances. Did Oleg attack you? Threaten your life?”
“Of course not!”
“Then the apartment belongs to him. He can sell it, mortgage it, or give it away.”
“But I’m registered there!”
“Registration isn’t ownership. But it gives you a right to live there. He can’t simply throw you outside without going to court.”
Tamara Ivanovna leaned forward.
“What should I do?”
“Do not deregister voluntarily.”
“What?”
“Stay registered there. That is your strongest position. Selling an apartment with an elderly registered resident is difficult. Buyers don’t like such complications. Oleg will probably keep persuading you to leave voluntarily.”
“He already is. Kristina calls constantly. She says a smaller room would be easier for me to clean.”
Ira asked, “If they buy you a room, whose name will it be in?”
Tamara Ivanovna hesitated.
“He didn’t say.”
That worried Ira most.
“Listen carefully. If you ever agree, the new room must first be registered in your name. Not Oleg’s. Not Kristina’s. Yours. You should have proof of ownership before you leave your current apartment. Never agree to ‘we’ll arrange it later.’ Otherwise you could end up with nothing.”
Tamara Ivanovna nodded quickly.
“You’re right. You’ve always been clever. Come talk to Oleg with me. He listens to you. Explain that he can’t put his mother in a communal apartment. Tell Kristina—”
“No.”
Tamara Ivanovna froze.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going. Oleg and I divorced a year and a half ago. His family problems are no longer mine.”
“But this is my life!”
“It’s his apartment legally,” Ira replied. “You chose that.”
Tamara Ivanovna suddenly began crying.
“You’ve become cruel. You used to be softer.”
“I’m not cruel. I’m simply not your daughter-in-law anymore.”
“I came to you like family!”
Ira stared at her.
Then years of memories rose inside her.
“Like family? Do you remember telling Oleg for twenty years that I was fat?”
Tamara Ivanovna looked startled.
“At our wedding you called me big-boned. After I gave birth, you said I had let myself go and would lose my husband. At every holiday you told me to eat less. You constantly told Oleg he could find someone younger and slimmer.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Twenty years,” Ira continued calmly. “I remember.”
Her mother-in-law stared silently.
“Well, your son finally chose himself a new life partner. Young and slim, exactly as you wanted. So ask her for help.”
The room went quiet.
Tamara Ivanovna looked suddenly much older.
“I said those things out of love.”
“Of course.”
“So you kept all that resentment?”
“I didn’t collect resentment. I simply didn’t forget.”
Tamara Ivanovna stood slowly.
“So you won’t help me?”
“I already did. Don’t deregister. Speak to a housing lawyer. Protect yourself legally. But I will not go to Oleg and solve his problems for him.”
Before Tamara Ivanovna left, Ira wrote down the phone number of a good housing lawyer.
“His first consultation is free.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s more useful than me arguing with Oleg.”
At the door, Tamara Ivanovna whispered, “Tell Artyom hello.”
“You should call him yourself. You missed his birthday this year. And last year.”
Tamara Ivanovna lowered her eyes.
“I forgot many things.”
After she left, Ira returned to the kitchen and continued cleaning the filter.
Her phone chimed.
Oleg.
“Did Mom come to you?”
Then:
“She said you promised to help with the apartment. Is that true?”
Ira typed:
“She came. I promised nothing. I gave her a lawyer’s number. Deal with it yourselves.”
A moment later:
“Thanks.”
Then another message appeared.
“How are you, anyway?”
Ira stared at it.
She almost replied automatically.
“I’m fine. How are you?”
Then she erased the words.
Artyom came home from training, hungry and noisy.
“Mom! What’s for dinner?”
“Wash your hands.”
While Ira cooked, Artyom asked whether his grandmother had visited.
“She has a problem with her apartment,” Ira explained during dinner. “She once gave it to your father. Now she’s afraid she’ll lose her home.”
“And she wanted you to fix it?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Good,” Artyom said firmly. “They should deal with it themselves.”
Later, Ira finished cleaning the filter until every cell shone. She installed it and switched on the hood.
It ran smoothly and quietly.
Her life now consisted of small things like cleaned filters, fixed faucets, fresh batteries, and meals with her son.
And she liked this life far more than the old one.
She checked her phone again.
Three messages from Oleg waited.
“How are you?”
“Ira, don’t ignore me.”
“Thanks for not turning Mom away completely.”
She could answer warmly.
He was still Artyom’s father.
A small thread might form between them again.
Or she could leave things exactly as they were.
“Mom!” Artyom shouted from his room. “Can I borrow your charger?”
“Coming.”
Ira placed the phone back on the windowsill without replying and went to find the charger.
Oleg’s message remained glowing in the dark kitchen.
It could wait.
For the first time in a long time, Ira was in no hurry.