“I Earn the Money, I Pay, and I Decide,” I Snapped at My Mother-in-Law, Who Was Trying to Control My Life
Anna stood in the middle of the kitchen, turning the box from her brand-new smartphone over in her hands. The phone cost more than many people spent on food in a month, but she didn’t care. She had earned that money herself. After all, it wasn’t every day that you signed a contract worth one and a half million. She wanted to treat herself to something beautiful, something personal, something that was hers.
From behind the door came the sound of heavy footsteps — Elena Petrovna.
Of course. She couldn’t help herself. Again, she had come without calling, like an inspector arriving without warning, Anna thought, taking a deep breath.
“What have you spread out here?” Elena Petrovna drawled with poisonous curiosity as she entered the kitchen and looked critically at the box.
“I bought a new phone,” Anna answered calmly, without looking up.
“A phone?!” her mother-in-law exclaimed, as if Anna had bought a yacht and parked it on their balcony. “Do you have money growing on trees?”
Anna sighed.
Do I really have to justify how much I spend on my own life every single time?
But aloud she said:
“Elena Petrovna, I work. I pay for the apartment, utilities, and groceries. I even paid for our vacation last year. Remember?”
“Oh, well, aren’t you some great benefactor!” her mother-in-law said sarcastically, sitting down on a chair. “We wouldn’t have disappeared without you. Alexey is a smart man, an engineer, by the way. And you… buying a phone… for that kind of money. You should have saved for a car instead. Or exchanged the apartment. Look, the kitchen is already old.”
Anna looked at Elena Petrovna as if she had suggested selling a kidney for a new microwave.
“A car? For whom, excuse me? For Alexey, who doesn’t want to lift a finger himself? Or for you, so he can drive you around to the shops?”
Elena Petrovna proudly lifted her chin.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m not one of your beauty-salon girlfriends.”
Anna squeezed the box in her hands until it crunched.
“And thank God for that, Elena Petrovna. Otherwise I’d have already dyed your hair and done your manicure. You look tired, by the way. Would you like to go to a salon? I’ll give you a gift certificate. Surely you won’t mind spending my money?”
A heavy silence hung in the kitchen, thick as boiling soup.
At that moment, as if on schedule, Alexey stumbled into the kitchen. His cheeks were red, his breathing uneven, and in his hands he held a bottle of kefir and a loaf of bread.
“Oh, hi,” he muttered, seeing the two women in tense silence. “What’s going on again?”
“Your wife, Alexey, is throwing money around like a fool at the market!” Elena Petrovna began her old tune, not giving him a chance to say a word. “She buys toys for herself instead of thinking about the family!”
Alexey shifted uneasily, like a guilty schoolboy in front of the principal.
“Well, Anya, maybe you really should have thought about it…” he mumbled, avoiding her gaze.
Anna felt a pinch in her chest. It wasn’t as if she had expected him to defend her passionately. But at least something. Some reaction. Some spark in his eyes other than dull obedience.
“I thought you were a man, Alexey,” she said with a bitter smile. “But it turns out you’re just running errands for your mother.”
“Don’t go too far,” Alexey muttered, rubbing his forehead. “Mom just wants what’s best for us.”
Anna raised an eyebrow.
“Of course. All the disasters in the world are committed exclusively with the best intentions. Think about that too, when you’re old and still listening to what you should eat, whom you should sleep with, and what socks you should wear.”
Elena Petrovna sighed loudly, like a tired hippopotamus.
“There you have it, the younger generation. No respect for elders. All they want is to spend money and sit on their phones!”
Unlike her mother-in-law, Anna was a master of silent killings. She stood up, went to the sink, and slowly, with obvious pleasure, began washing a cup, making sure the clinking of water and porcelain drowned out the empty chatter.
Elena Petrovna would not stop.
“Alexey, darling, think about it! Maybe you should move back in with me. There you’ll have food and order… without this circus.”
Anna turned sharply.
“Now that’s an idea! Run, Lyosha. Before Mom’s hot borscht on the stove gets cold.”
Alexey froze between the two women, like a hare caught between two hunters. Hopelessness flickered in his eyes.
Suddenly Anna understood: she was alone in this apartment. She had always been alone. She had simply deceived herself before.
That’s it. Enough. Time to end this cheap talk show.
She took the wedding ring off her finger, placed it on the table beside the phone box, and, looking straight into her mother-in-law’s eyes, said:
“Take everything for yourselves. I don’t need anything from you.”
Anna stood in the kitchen doorway, feeling anger boil inside her like a kettle that was already too late to take off the flame.
Alexey was still standing in the middle of the kitchen, silent and pathetic. For some reason, he continued holding the loaf of bread, as if it could save him from the collapse of his family.
Elena Petrovna rose from her chair as if stepping onto a stage.
“Well, wonderful, Annushka. At last everything has fallen into place. We don’t need your handouts. Alexey will live without you. Much better, believe me.”
Anna slowly nodded.
“I believe you, Elena Petrovna. After all, according to you, I shouldn’t have been born at all.”
Alexey stepped forward and raised his hand as if he wanted to say something… but changed his mind.
“Maybe we shouldn’t get heated?” he mumbled, looking somewhere past her.
Anna shuddered at his pitiful attempt to smooth things over.
“Get heated?” Her voice trembled, but she quickly pulled herself together. “And when your mother comes here every month and interrogates me like a suspect, why weren’t you worried about the temperature in this house? Or when she went through my bank statements, were you also thinking, ‘Oh, let’s not get heated’?”
Alexey stared guiltily at the loaf of bread.
Elena Petrovna threw her head up.
“I only wanted to know what the money was being spent on! I’m a mother! I care!”
Anna smirked.
“A mother? To whom? To a thirty-five-year-old grown man who is afraid to tell you no?”
She stepped closer to Alexey, and now there was only a meter between them.
“You can’t even imagine how disgusting it is to live with a man who nods to Mommy every time and then whispers to his wife, ‘Just be patient, she’ll leave soon.’”
Alexey inhaled noisily.
“Anna, enough. Everything can still be resolved…”
Anna interrupted him.
“Really? And when I suggested we rent an apartment farther away from here, you also said, ‘It can be resolved.’ Only your solution was to stay here. So Mommy could come every evening and check what sheets we put on the bed!”
Elena Petrovna cried out:
“You insolent girl! You should have been grateful you were allowed into this home!”
Anna laughed angrily.
“This home? Whose property, excuse me? I bought this home. With my own money. With my own nerves. With my own sleepless nights.”
She glanced at Alexey as if he were a stranger.
“You could have stood up for me at least once in your life. Told her that I am your wife, that I don’t have to report every ruble I spend. Just once!”
Alexey slumped. Suddenly, he felt terribly ashamed. But it was too late.
“I… I just didn’t want conflict,” he muttered.
Anna smiled painfully.
“You were afraid of conflict. So afraid that you lost me.”
She turned away and headed toward the bedroom. Her movements were sharp, like a soldier on a parade ground. Halfway there, she turned back.
“Take your mother. And leave too.”
Elena Petrovna moved sharply toward the door.
“With pleasure. Did you think I would stay here longer than necessary?”
Anna swept a family photograph off the shelf — Alexey, Elena Petrovna, and Anna herself. The frame cracked. The photo slipped out and fell to the floor, as if hinting: the story was over.
Alexey awkwardly picked up the picture.
“Anya…” he said plaintively.
Anna remained silent.
A few minutes later, Elena Petrovna and Alexey left. The door slammed shut with a crash.
The apartment became so quiet that the ticking of the old kitchen clock could be heard.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Like a time bomb.
Anna walked through the rooms. The bed was unmade. His sweater lay on the armchair. His toothbrush was in the bathroom. Little things. Empty signs of a great ending.
She sat down on the hallway floor, leaning her back against the wall. Tears didn’t come. Only her throat ached, as if after a long scream.
How did it come to this? she thought.
Why, no matter how hard I try, do I still end up alone?
And then an evening from two years ago surfaced in her mind.
Back then, sitting in this same kitchen, Alexey had smiled at her, warm and caring. They drank tea and talked about the future.
He had promised: “I will always be by your side.”
And where are you now, Lyosha?
Anna sighed and mechanically took out her phone. The new one, shiny and bright. She opened her chat with Alexey. His last message was:
“Buy some bread, please.”
Nothing about love. Nothing about “always by your side.” Only bread. And kefir.
Anna deleted the chat. Without regret.
Then, almost automatically, she wrote a short message to her mother:
“Mom, that’s it. I’m free.”
The phone blinked. Her mother sent a hugging emoji.
Anna smiled through the pain.
Freedom. Though for now it felt strangely empty.
Freedom is when there is no one left to let you down.
A week passed.
During that time, Anna managed to cry, howl into her pillow, make grand plans to escape to St. Petersburg, and even sketch out a business plan for a new life.
But one evening, the phone rang.
Alexey.
“Don’t answer,” said the cold part of her mind.
“Maybe you should at least hear him out?” whined another part, still foolishly believing in miracles.
Anna picked up.
“Hi,” Alexey’s voice was hoarse and nervous. “I… can I see you?”
Anna sighed.
“Lyosha, what do you want?”
He hesitated.
“Just to talk. Without her. Without a scene. Just us.”
Anna was silent.
“Please,” he added, and there was so much exhaustion and something genuine in that “please” that suddenly, without understanding why, she said:
“Fine.”
They agreed to meet at his mother’s place. Some sort of dinner. “To talk like adults,” as Alexey put it.
Anna put on a calm gray dress and tied up her hair. Her makeup was minimal.
In the taxi, she thought:
One last time. The last. No promises, no illusions.
Elena Petrovna’s home greeted her with the same smell of old tobacco and sour dough. Anna shuddered but crossed the threshold.
In the living room, Elena Petrovna sat like a queen on a throne. She smiled venomously.
“Annushka! Have you finally deigned to visit us?”
Alexey came out of the kitchen with two glasses of wine.
“Mom, we agreed…” he mumbled, trying to hand one of the glasses to Anna.
Anna took a glass of water instead of wine. There was an icy wall in her eyes.
“I’m listening, Lyosha,” she said briefly.
Alexey sat down awkwardly opposite her, rubbing his knees like a schoolboy at a parent-teacher meeting.
“I understood everything. I realized everything. You were right. I…” He faltered, looked at his mother, then back at Anna. “I’m ready to change everything.”
Anna raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Everything?”
Elena Petrovna could not hold back and inserted with a spiteful smile:
“Yes, son, if this young lady wants it, you’ll even jump off the balcony…”
Anna set down her glass.
“You see? Even at a dinner you invited me to, I’m still ‘this young lady.’ A guest in my own marriage.”
Alexey coughed.
“Mom, please…”
But Elena Petrovna had already gained momentum.
“And what did you expect? That I would stay silent when I see a woman draining everything out of you? Money, patience, strength…”
Anna slowly stood up.
“Money?” she said almost gently. “Then let’s calculate: the mortgage, the car, the furniture — everything was bought with my money. My contracts. My exhaustion.”
Elena Petrovna snorted.
“Of course, of course. Everything by yourself, all by yourself. So my son is nothing, then?”
Anna smiled coldly.
“You said it yourself.”
The silence in the room was so thick it could be cut with a knife.
At last, Alexey tried to force something out:
“Mom, enough. Let Anya and me talk alone.”
But Elena Petrovna flared up.
“I won’t! As long as I’m alive, I will protect my son from women like her!”
Anna picked up her purse.
“You know, Elena Petrovna, you got what you wanted. You protected your boy. From me.”
She looked at Alexey, who still had not stood up, who still had not come to stand beside her.
“Goodbye, Lyosha.”
And, turning on her heels, she went into the hallway.
Alexey rushed after her.
“Anya! Wait! We can… We can start over!”
Anna pulled on her coat without turning around.
“We can’t do anything, Lyosha. You made your choice.”
Elena Petrovna caught up with him in the hallway and wrapped her arms around her son’s shoulders.
“That’s for the best, son. God has saved you.”
Anna pulled the door open and rushed outside. A cold spring wind hit her face. Fresh. Alive.
Oleg was waiting for her on the bench near the entrance.
The same Oleg — her first love. An old friend to whom she had recently written: “Help me leave.”
He stood up when he saw her and quietly said:
“Well, Anna Viktorovna? Northwest?”
Anna nodded.
“Northwest, Oleg.”
He took her bag as if it were not just luggage, but her old, battered soul.
They walked to the car in silence, and only at the door did he ask, already smiling:
“We’re not coming back?”
Anna smiled too.
And for the first time in a long while — sincerely.
“Even if I beg, don’t bring me back,” she said.
They got into the car.
When the doors closed, Anna felt as if it was not merely the car door shutting, but the old, heavy door of her former life.
And ahead lay only something new. Only hers.
And only freedom.