I Had a DNA Test Done on My Grandson
“Clearly, our marriage was doomed,” he said to his mother. “But why did you have to interfere?”
“I wouldn’t have interfered if everything hadn’t been so obvious!” Galina Ivanovna shrugged. “At first, I even believed her. But then she simply stopped pretending! I couldn’t stay out of it! Especially since you yourself refused to notice anything!”
“Mom, where’s Dina?” Vadim shouted from the hallway.
“Your Dina is over,” Galina Ivanovna said innocently.
“What, did you throw her out too?” Vadim was stunned.
“Oh, please! As if I need to throw anyone out!” Galina Ivanovna replied indignantly. “I simply didn’t let her in, that’s all!”
“Mom,” Vadim said reproachfully. “Same old song in a new way? You promised!”
“If things weren’t clear with your Sveta at first, and I had to do a little work on her, then with your Dina everything was obvious from the start! And I didn’t even have to do anything!”
“Actually, you promised you wouldn’t interfere,” Vadim reminded her.
“And I didn’t interfere,” Galina Ivanovna replied. “You just should have warned Dina too, so she wouldn’t get too brazen!”
“Mom, I’m going to call her and check!” Vadim said.
“Please do!” Galina Ivanovna said expressively. “Definitely call her! And call her girlfriends too. Call Katya, then Marina, Lena, and Natasha!”
“And you say you didn’t interfere,” Vadim shook his head.
“I didn’t!” Galina Ivanovna shook her head firmly. “But I did have to clean my living space of that whole company!”
“Mom, I know all of them. They’re decent girls!” Vadim said with emphasis.
“Especially Dina!” Galina Ivanovna smirked. “And before her, Sveta was a very decent girl too! Vadim, where do you even find women like this?”
The parallel was clear enough. Vadim needed no further explanations. He sat down helplessly on the little ottoman in the hallway and sighed heavily.
“I’ll have to find her and file for divorce,” he muttered under his breath. “And then fight off claims for jointly acquired property…”
“Stop whining!” Galina Ivanovna looked at Vadim encouragingly. “Go say hello to your son, and I’ll feed you!”
“My son?” Vadim asked in surprise.
“Imagine that, you were lucky enough to become a father!” Galina Ivanovna ruffled her son’s hair. “And now I’m one hundred percent a grandmother!”
“Damn it!” Vadim quickly realized that he would have to get rid of Dina legally. “I’ll have to hear what went on here while I was away on shift. Dina won’t just let this go.”
“I’ll tell you!” Galina Ivanovna nodded. “I’ve already arranged with the neighbors for them to testify in court!”
“In court?” Vadim looked up at his mother, not understanding.
“What, you’re not planning to deprive her of parental rights?” Galina Ivanovna said as if it were obvious. “If not now, then later she’ll definitely sink her claws into Kostik!”
“Set the table. I’ll be right there,” Vadim nodded knowingly and went into the room where his three-year-old son was waiting for him.
Let’s leave the exploits of Vadim’s second wife for later and first figure out what came before her.
Too many threads led back there. And to understand the mother-in-law’s attitude toward the new daughter-in-law, it is worth understanding her relationship with the previous one.
Vadim’s first wife was a sweet girl named Sveta. Nice, kind, gentle. A little childish, but it didn’t spoil her. She was only a year younger than Vadim, but beside him she seemed like a girl.
She was still finishing university, while Vadim was already working after vocational school.
Since he was at the very beginning of his career, there was no money for rented housing. So the newlyweds settled in the apartment where Vadim lived with his mother.
At first, everything looked wonderful.
Galina Ivanovna welcomed her daughter-in-law warmly. She did not set conditions or boundaries. She did not burden her with household chores either. After all, Sveta was still studying.
Sveta completed her final year while pregnant, and after receiving her diploma, she gave birth to a son.
A first child is always difficult. Even with advice, it is difficult. And here, the mother-in-law’s help turned out to be invaluable.
In her youth, Galina Ivanovna had earned the right to early retirement. She used that right to help dear Sveta with little Dima.
Sveta had a very hard time giving birth. Afterward, she was like a ghost. And even later, she kept complaining that she felt like a boiled fish.
“Don’t worry!” Galina Ivanovna comforted her. “We all go through this! I’ll manage the housework and help with Dima. And we’ll make Vadim take care of us too!”
Sveta smiled, but somehow weakly.
Vadim, meanwhile, was so happy to have become a father that he worked like seven men. True, now they needed much more money.
But at home, he did not just wear out the couch either. If something needed to be done, he jumped up and happily ran off. To the store, to the clinic, to the pharmacy. Wherever he was needed, he ran.
And as Galina Ivanovna had promised, household chores also filled the young father’s free time.
But all of it somehow felt joyful. Exhausting, but joyful.
When the boy turned six months old, Sveta still was not getting better. She tired quickly, asked to lie down, and complained of pain in her lower back and heart. Galina Ivanovna even began to worry.
“Who knows what complications the pregnancy and birth caused?” she was worried. “Sveta could have had undiagnosed illnesses! They were dormant, and now they’ve come out!”
“We’ll have to take her to a doctor,” Vadim agreed with his mother. “Once our company finishes this project and I can ask for leave, we’ll definitely go for an examination!”
The month needed to finish the project became decisive in Sveta’s recovery.
Somehow, she suddenly began to improve. Vadim was glad that his wife was all right, but Galina Ivanovna suspected that dear Sveta was faking it.
“Sveta, since you’re feeling better, wouldn’t you like to devote more time to your husband, your son, and the household?” Galina Ivanovna asked.
“But this is your apartment,” Sveta replied reservedly.
“But you live here!” her mother-in-law insisted.
“And you want us to bump into each other in the same kitchen?” Sveta asked somewhat arrogantly.
“I can cook myself, and you can do the laundry for your things, your son’s, and your husband’s! I’ll wash my own things, since I’m so generous! And you can also do the cleaning! I promise I won’t snatch the broom away from you!”
“Well, I don’t know,” Sveta drawled. “I wouldn’t want to get in your way!”
“Believe me, if you take care of the household, you won’t get in my way!” Galina Ivanovna assured her.
“You think so?” Sveta asked. “I’d better go take my son for a walk!” the girl quickly found an excuse. “Could you dress Dima for me?”
“Can’t you dress your own son for a walk yourself?”
“Well, fine,” Sveta said, as though doing her a favor.
After that dialogue, doubts began to grow in Galina Ivanovna’s soul. Was everything really as it seemed? And Galina Ivanovna began paying closer attention to her daughter-in-law.
Then it turned out that Sveta had a cousin named Slava. When Sveta went out for a walk with Dima, Slava would arrive by car and take them somewhere. Then he would bring them back about six hours later. But Slava never once came up to the apartment.
And strangely, on the back seat, where Sveta sat with her son, there was always a huge bouquet of roses.
Galina Ivanovna saw it only once, when she went out after Sveta to go to the store. Later, she noticed from the balcony too that the flowers were there.
But Sveta never brought any flowers home.
A year passed like that. Sveta continued avoiding household chores. And instead of cousin Slava, cousin Kolya appeared. Then cousin Igor.
That led to certain thoughts, because at Vadim and Sveta’s wedding, none of Sveta’s relatives had said a single word about numerous male cousins.
And little Dima began to acquire his own facial features. Babies all look alike, after all. But by a year and a half, individual traits start appearing.
And Galina Ivanovna noticed that Dima looked neither like his mother nor his father, but like some visiting young man.
One day, the grandmother took her grandson for another walk, called a taxi, and went to a clinic, where she had a DNA test done. Twice!
Then all hell broke loose.
Sveta screamed that they had no right to throw her and her son out onto the street. That the test was lying. That Galina Ivanovna had deliberately arranged everything to evict her.
Through the court, Vadim became childless again. Through the court, Sveta’s registration at her mother-in-law’s apartment was canceled. And through the court, Sveta became Vadim’s ex-wife.
Vadim was upset, insulted, and humiliated. Sveta’s guilt was obvious, but Vadim felt that part of the blame also lay with his mother.
“Clearly, our marriage was doomed,” he told his mother. “But why did you have to interfere?”
“I wouldn’t have interfered if everything hadn’t been so obvious!” Galina Ivanovna shrugged. “At first, even I believed her. But then she simply stopped pretending! I couldn’t stay out of it! Especially since you yourself refused to notice anything!”
“But I was happy! And she might have settled down with time!”
Galina Ivanovna did not believe that. And she could not tolerate deception against her son.
When Dina appeared in Vadim’s life, he did not bring her home to his mother. He rented an apartment. And he introduced Dina to Galina Ivanovna two weeks before the wedding.
“I want to be happy!” he explained. “And you can ruin everything with your accusations!”
“Good Lord!” Galina Ivanovna exclaimed. “If you want to make mistakes, then make them! I won’t say a word to your Dina! Even if I have proof, I’ll keep my mouth shut!”
Vadim remembered that promise, and he recalled it two years after the birth of his son Kostya.
He and Dina lived in a rented apartment. Then Kostik was born. But they really wanted to live in their own apartment and not depend on the goodwill of the landlord. They could be evicted at any moment.
To save money for the first mortgage payment, Vadim decided to go north for a year-long work shift. But leaving Dina alone, and with a child too… And the landlord had already hinted that he would soon throw them out because relatives were coming.
In short, Vadim remembered his mother’s promise and decided to settle his wife and son with her while he was away on shift.
But he warned his mother not to interfere where she was not asked! And if anything happened, she should first wait for him and only then take any action.
The rest is according to Galina Ivanovna.
For the first month, Dina behaved quite properly. She took care of the child, helped around the house, and played the role of the faithful waiting wife.
Then she asked Galina Ivanovna to sit with her grandson because she wanted to meet a girlfriend from university.
“Just for a couple of hours!”
She came back five hours later. True, she apologized, saying they had started talking and lost track of time.
A week later, another girlfriend appeared, with the same result.
Then came a different request:
“Grandma, why don’t you take your grandson for a walk while I do a deep cleaning here?”
Galina Ivanovna, without suspecting anything, went off with her grandson to the park. An hour later, a neighbor called her cellphone and asked what kind of chaos was going on in Galina Ivanovna’s apartment.
When Galina Ivanovna arrived, she saw a stunning picture. Dina, wearing slippers and with her chest bare, holding a glass of something alcoholic, was trying to sing along and dance to the television, which was blaring at full volume.
When the alcohol wore off, there were apologies again and something like, “The devil made me do it!”
Then Dina’s mother supposedly started renovations.
“Sit with your grandson for a couple of days! I would take him with me, but there’s paint there! Why should Kostik breathe that in?”
Where there are two days, there is a week.
And then something unimaginable began. Dina even stopped asking properly.
“Grandma, sit with your grandson. I need to go!” And she would leave, having painted herself up like a Cherokee warrior.
Sometimes she returned late in the evening, sometimes in the morning.
About three weeks before Vadim was due to return from his shift, Dina brought Kostik into Galina Ivanovna’s room and said:
“Sit with your grandson. Guests are coming to see me!”
The so-called guests arrived in the form of four girlfriends. They brought with them a whole supply of something that was definitely not lemonade. Together, they arranged a full-blown witches’ sabbath.
Closer to midnight, Galina Ivanovna left sleeping Kostik in the room, dragged the sleeping company out onto the landing, and locked the door.
In the morning, there was a whole concert! The ladies were banging on the apartment door, demanding their things back. Galina Ivanovna threw the requested items from the balcony. Dina screamed loudest of all, demanding to be let home because she had nowhere else to go.
Galina Ivanovna pointed out several addresses, including her mother’s house, where Dina had supposedly been doing renovations.
Then Dina demanded to be allowed to see her son. To that she received the answer that a child was better off not having contact with such a mother. And if Dina disagreed, they could call the police and juvenile services.
Dina vanished and never appeared again.
And Galina Ivanovna, remembering her son’s previous marriage, ordered DNA tests. Kostik turned out to be his biological son. At least that much was good!
“Son, I kept my promise! Not a single accusation! Your Dina simply exposed herself!” Galina Ivanovna finished her story with a shrug. “No, you can find her and bring everything back the way it was. Maybe she just got bored without you, I don’t know. Maybe with you she’ll be an exemplary wife.”
Vadim sighed heavily.
“I don’t think so, Mom. Either I keep meeting women like this, or they all walk around wearing masks of decency. And then, at one fine moment, something like this crawls out from under that mask…”
“But you have your son! And it depends on you what kind of person he grows up to be!”
Vadim himself could not find Dina. The bailiffs brought her to the hearing. Dina’s appearance and condition were such that she was deprived of parental rights almost automatically.
What happened to her afterward, no one knows, though alimony, however tiny, arrived until Kostya turned eighteen.
Vadim never married again. He could no longer trust a single woman. He was always afraid of what he would see when the masks fell.