“So your sister isn’t allowed to lift anything heavy, but I am? Even though I’m pregnant? Are you serious?”
“Masha, Lena’s having her bachelorette party on Saturday. We’ll need to help her out a little.”
Kirill burst into the room like a small but extremely energetic hurricane, full of family plans and good intentions. He was glowing. It was that particular expression Masha privately called “the organizer puppy’s excitement.” It appeared whenever one of his numerous relatives planned yet another large-scale event that required fussing around, running errands, and free labor from anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.
Masha turned her head slowly. Very slowly. Every movement was difficult, as though her body were filled not with blood and flesh but with heavy, sticky lead.
The sixth month of pregnancy had turned out to be nothing like the glossy magazines described it. There was no magical glow, no sudden surge of energy. There was only a dull, aching nail driven into her lower back, occasional nausea, and the constant feeling that she had turned into a clumsy airship barely capable of maneuvering even on her own sofa.
She was lying down, trying to find a position in which she could forget about her own body for at least a couple of minutes.
Kirill, completely oblivious to her condition, continued enthusiastically spilling out ideas.
“We need to buy the food, bring everything over, set the tables… She can’t manage it alone, you know that. She isn’t supposed to overexert herself. It’s such an important day, with all the nerves and wedding preparations.”
The words “isn’t supposed to overexert herself” broke through the haze of Masha’s physical discomfort and reached her consciousness.
They hit her like an electric shock.
She felt hot, prickling rage beginning to spread through her veins instead of blood.
With effort, she propped herself up on one elbow, sat down, and then struggled to her feet. The room swayed, but she fixed her eyes on her husband’s radiant face to keep her balance.
“So your sister isn’t allowed to lift anything heavy, but I am? Even though I’m pregnant? Are you serious?”
The glow vanished from Kirill’s face so quickly it was as though someone had wiped it away with a dirty cloth.
His excitement was replaced by stunned, almost offended bewilderment.
He stared at her as though she had suddenly begun speaking a language he did not understand.
“Masha, why are you reacting like this? I’m not asking you to carry sacks of cement. I’m just asking you to help. What’s the big deal?”
His calm, placating tone infuriated her even more.
This was not simply misunderstanding.
It was the complete, absolute dismissal of her condition, her feelings, and of her as a person.
He did not see her.
He saw only an annoying obstacle standing in the way of his noble mission to save his sister’s bachelorette party.
“Just help?” she repeated, and a cold, cutting edge entered her voice. “Kirill, let’s call things what they are. In your family, ‘just help’ means I’ll have to spend the morning running around wholesale markets because things are ‘cheaper there,’ load boxes of juice and alcohol into the car, carry bags of cold cuts and vegetables that practically weigh more than I do right now, and then spend the entire day on my feet arranging everything on tables while your delicate little Lena, who mustn’t strain herself, flutters around the loft talking to her friends on the phone about what color nail polish she should wear. That’s what ‘just help’ means. Or am I missing something?”
She looked straight into his eyes without blinking.
Her gaze was heavy and direct, and for the first time during the entire conversation, Kirill began to feel uncomfortable.
He looked away and shrugged, as though trying to shake off the unexpected burden that had suddenly landed on him.
“You’re exaggerating. Of course I’ll help. We’ll do everything together.”
“You?” Masha gave a bitter smile. “Yes, you’ll help. For about twenty minutes. Then your Uncle Kolya will call, and you’ll urgently need to help him ‘take a look’ at his car. Then your brother will ask you to come over ‘for five minutes’ to discuss a present for your parents. And then you’ll come back when everything is already done and cheerfully say, ‘Well, girls, look how quickly we got everything finished!’ I know this routine by heart, Kirill. I’ve been playing an extra in it for a year already. But right now I can’t do it. I physically can’t. And most importantly, I don’t want to.”
“Oh, come on, Masha. Why are you starting this? You’re making everything complicated. I told you I’ll help.”
Kirill took several steps around the room as though searching for something solid to hold on to in a space that had suddenly become hostile.
He stopped beside the bookshelf and ran a finger over the spine of some novel.
The gesture reflected the confusion of a man whose perfectly organized plan had collapsed after encountering an unforeseen obstacle.
His world was simple and logical: there was family, there was his sister, and his sister needed help.
His wife was part of the family.
Therefore, his wife helped too.
That was all.
Any deviation from this system seemed to him like a malfunction.
“Fine. Let’s do it differently,” he said, turning around with an expression of immense condescension, as though explaining an elementary problem to a child. “No wholesale markets. We’ll go to the supermarket near our house. I’ll take the biggest cart. You’ll just walk beside me and point at what we need. I’ll put everything in the cart, push it myself, load everything into the trunk myself. At the loft, I’ll unload it and carry everything inside. You won’t have to lift anything heavier than your phone. I’m not some kind of monster. I understand everything. I’m not your enemy, and I’m not our child’s enemy.”
He emphasized the final sentence as if placing a bold period at the end of the argument and presenting his unbeatable trump card.
But Masha looked at him as though he had merely confirmed all her worst fears.
“You really don’t understand, do you?” she asked quietly, but there was more tension in her quiet voice than there would have been in a scream. “It isn’t about whether I lift a crate of mineral water or not. It’s about everything else. This is my only day off. The only day all week when I don’t have to get up to an alarm, put on makeup, or pretend to be energetic at work. The one day when I can simply lie down, read a book, and eat apricots because I feel like eating them. And you want me to spend that day walking between supermarket aisles, even if I’m carrying nothing. You want me to keep a list in my head, wonder whether there are enough napkins, decide which cheese goes best with the wine, remember whether we forgot the olives. That is work, Kirill. Mental and organizational work. And I don’t understand why I’m supposed to do it instead of Lena or her friends, who don’t spend their nights trying to find a position comfortable enough to sleep in.”
Her logic was flawless, and that was exactly what irritated Kirill.
He could not find a weakness in what she was saying, so he decided to attack her motives instead.
His expression hardened.
The confusion disappeared, replaced by muted irritation.
“Because we’re family! That’s why! My sister is about to have the most important event of her life, and that matters to all of us. Why do you always become so hostile whenever my relatives are involved? Maybe this isn’t about being tired at all. Maybe you simply don’t like my family. That’s it. You look for any excuse not to participate in their lives.”
It was a direct accusation.
A blow intended to make her feel guilty.
But Masha did not flinch.
Instead, she straightened, and her eyes darkened.
“I’m looking for an excuse? Are you serious? My stomach is already so big I can barely tie my shoes. Isn’t that a good enough excuse? Fine. Let me remind you of the others. Your mother’s birthday six months ago. Remember that? I set the table for twenty people by myself. Twenty! I chopped salads, made sandwiches, arranged the plates, because your poor little Lena was tired after getting her hair done at the salon. And where were you, my helpful husband? You were ‘helping’ your father fix the faucet in the bathroom. A faucet that wasn’t leaking then and still isn’t leaking now. You two were drinking beer behind a closed bathroom door while I ran around the kitchen. I’m not distancing myself from your family, Kirill. I’m simply tired of being their convenient, free service. The person who always gets everything done and fills every gap. And you don’t see it. Or maybe you don’t want to see it because life is much easier for you that way.”
The mention of his mother’s birthday hung in the air, heavy and undeniable.
It was not merely an accusation.
It was a fact documented in both their memories.
Kirill fell silent because there was nothing he could say.
He remembered that day perfectly.
He remembered the faucet.
He remembered the beer.
Caught in manipulation and an outright lie, he did what he always did in such situations: he retreated so he could regroup and find someone else to blame.
He said nothing more.
He did not slam the door or throw a cup on the floor.
He simply turned and left the room with the expression of offended virtue, his back straight like that of a man whose noble intentions had been brutally trampled by someone else’s selfishness and cruelty.
Masha heard him walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and then heard the balcony door click.
He had retreated to his territory—to smoke and think.
To think about how unfairly he had been treated.
Masha remained sitting on the sofa.
Winning the argument brought her neither joy nor relief.
There was a sour taste in her mouth, and now a dull headache had joined the aching pain in her lower back.
Every conversation like this exhausted her completely, draining the tiny scraps of energy she still had left.
She leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes, trying to steady her breathing.
She wanted only one thing—silence.
She wanted no one to touch her, ask anything of her, demand anything from her, or accuse her of anything.
She simply wanted to be allowed to be a pregnant woman instead of a multifunctional machine designed to solve everyone else’s family problems.
About ten minutes later, when her pulse had almost returned to normal, her phone began vibrating on the coffee table.
She grimaced.
Kirill had probably sent her another reproachful message from the next room.
But the name glowing on the screen was “Lena.”
Masha froze.
Her heart gave another heavy, anxious thump.
She knew that call promised nothing good.
Kirill had not simply gone out to smoke.
He had gone to complain.
Gathering herself, she accepted the call and brought the phone to her ear without saying anything.
“Mashenka, hiiii,” Lena’s syrupy-sweet voice chirped from the receiver. “Am I bothering you? Are you busy?”
“I’m listening, Lena,” Masha replied evenly, deliberately skipping the greeting and pleasantries.
There was a short pause.
Lena clearly had not expected such a cold reception.
“So, I’m calling about something… Kirill just called me, and he was so upset. He says you’re not feeling well. I’m really worried about you, honestly. You shouldn’t overwork yourself. But I was thinking that maybe getting out would actually be good for you? Leave the apartment, change the scenery. A bachelorette party isn’t work—it’s fun! We’ll sit around, chat. You’re a woman too, you know how important this is before a wedding.”
It was a masterfully played move.
Concern mixed with a faint rebuke.
An invitation to “get out of the house” that was actually a demand for her to come.
And the final touch—“you’re a woman too, you understand”—an appeal to some supposed female solidarity that Masha did not feel toward Lena in the slightest.
Masha silently listened to the stream of passive aggression, and her composure began cracking like thin ice underfoot.
“Lena,” she said slowly and distinctly, putting as much coldness into every word as she could. “Let me explain what ‘getting out and relaxing’ means to me right now. It means lying on the sofa with my legs raised because they swell so badly I can barely fit into the only pair of shoes I own without laces. Relaxing means eating half a kilogram of cherries because they’re one of the few things that don’t make me nauseous. Relaxing means sleeping for three hours straight without waking up because the baby has decided to dance on my bladder. That is my idea of fun. Your fun is your problem. Yours and your unmarried, non-pregnant, energetic friends’ problem.”
Silence fell on the other end of the line again, but this time it was not confused silence.
It was stunned silence.
“But… but it’s my bachelorette party,” Lena finally stammered, unmistakably childish notes entering her voice. “I thought we were family. I was counting on you.”
That was the final straw.
“Counting on me for what? To come over and carry your bags? You’re a healthy young woman who supposedly ‘mustn’t overexert herself’ before a drinking party, and you think it’s normal to dump everything on your brother’s pregnant wife? Do you even hear yourself? I really am not supposed to overexert myself. Not because I’m going to choose a wedding cake tomorrow, but because I’m already in my seventh month of growing an entirely new human being. Those are slightly different levels of responsibility, don’t you think? So hire caterers. Or ask your bridesmaids. Or do it yourself. But please leave me and my pregnancy alone.”
Masha ended the call without waiting for a reply.
The phone felt cold and foreign in her hand.
She tossed it onto the sofa and stared at the wall.
The rage—pure and icy—passed, leaving behind a ringing emptiness and absolute clarity.
The bridge had been burned.
Now all that remained was to wait for Kirill to return—not merely as her husband anymore, but as an enraged brother whose sister had just been humiliated.
Masha did not know how long she sat there staring at nothing.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Half an hour.
Time compressed into a dense, silent lump.
Then she heard the key turn slowly and heavily in the front door lock, almost as though the lock had rusted.
The door opened and closed without a slam.
Kirill’s footsteps in the hallway were heavy and measured.
They were not the footsteps of a husband coming home.
They were the footsteps of someone arriving to perform an unpleasant but necessary duty.
He entered the room and stopped in the doorway.
Masha did not turn her head, but she could feel his gaze drilling into the back of her head—hard, piercing, unfamiliar.
He remained silent, and the silence was worse than any shouting.
He was giving her time to comprehend the gravity of what she had done.
Finally, when the air in the room seemed thick enough to cut with a knife, he spoke.
His voice was flat and devoid of emotion, which made it sound especially threatening.
“You’re going to call Lena right now and apologize.”
It was not merely an order.
It was an ultimatum.
A point of no return he had drawn between them with his own hands.
Masha slowly, almost reluctantly, turned toward him.
She looked at his face.
It seemed unfamiliar, frozen, his jaw tightly clenched and pale patches visible at his temples.
This was not her husband.
Not the Kirill who had been glowing with excitement only an hour earlier.
Standing in front of her was a representative of the clan, sent to demand satisfaction for an insulted sister.
“Apologize?” she repeated just as evenly, without the slightest trace of defiance, as though clarifying some insignificant detail. “For what exactly? For refusing to be her unpaid mover and entertainer at her party? Or for believing the health of my unborn child is slightly more important than her pre-wedding nerves? Please be specific. I want my apology to be perfectly accurate.”
Her calmness, her icy dissecting logic, pushed him out of his state of controlled anger.
He stepped forward, and his face twisted.
“You drove her to tears! She called me crying! You said horrible things to her, humiliated her! She’s preparing for her wedding. She isn’t supposed to get stressed, and you create… all of this! Over what? Some bags I already promised I would carry myself? You simply didn’t want her to have a good celebration! You hate my family!”
He spat out the words, mangling them with rage.
He paced from wall to wall like an animal in a cage, and with every step his accusations grew more absurd and further removed from reality.
Masha watched him, and for the first time during the entire argument, she no longer felt hurt or offended.
She felt nothing except a strange, detached curiosity, like an entomologist observing the behavior of an unusual insect.
She no longer saw her husband.
She saw a thirty-year-old boy stamping his feet because someone had upset his little sister.
She waited until he ran out of breath and stopped in the middle of the room, breathing heavily.
Then she struck.
It was neither loud nor cruel.
It was quiet, precise, and final.
“Kirill, sit down,” she said.
He was so taken aback by her tone that he automatically lowered himself into the armchair opposite her.
“I was just looking at you, and for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t thinking about Lena, her bachelorette party, or even myself. I was thinking about what kind of father you’re going to be.”
He stared at her in confusion.
He had expected anything—more arguing, accusations, reproaches.
But not this.
“And do you know what I realized?” Masha continued just as quietly, looking directly into his eyes. “You’ll be exactly the same as you are now. When our child gets sick and your mother urgently needs someone to take seedlings to the country house, you’ll go to the country house. Because you can’t say no to your mother. When our child has their first kindergarten performance and your brother needs help in the garage, you’ll go to the garage. Because your brother needs help. You’ll teach our child the most important rule of your life: your own needs, your health, your own family—all of that comes second. The most important thing is keeping everyone else happy, the people who were in your life before us.”
She paused only briefly before continuing.
“You’re willing to risk my health because of your sister’s whim. Tell me you wouldn’t risk our child’s well-being because it happens to be your uncle’s birthday. You can’t tell me that. And you can’t promise me otherwise. Because this is who you are.”
She fell silent.
There was no silence in the room.
There was emptiness.
A devastating emptiness where, only that morning, their family had still existed.
Kirill sat in the armchair completely crushed.
He could not argue with her because she was not accusing him anymore.
She was stating a fact.
She had passed judgment on him based not on emotion, but on a cold analysis of who he fundamentally was.
And he knew she was right.
Masha turned toward the window.
The argument was over.
Everything was over.
He was still sitting in the room, but to her, he was no longer there.
All that remained was a strange, weak man—the father of her unborn child—whom she knew she would never be able to trust again.