“So your wife is going to keep helping her dear mommy, giving her money, while I’m supposed to survive on your handouts, son?”
The question hit Igor like a slap across the face. In Galina Borisovna’s small kitchen, smelling of Valocordin and fried cabbage, it sounded unnaturally loud, as if it had been spoken in a huge empty hall. Igor froze with a bag of buckwheat in his hands, which he had just taken out of the grocery bag. He had come to visit his mother after work, following his weekly ritual: bring food, check whether everything was all right. He had not expected an attack. Not so suddenly, not right from the doorway.
“Mom, what are you talking about? What handouts? I always help you,” he muttered, placing the bag on the table and avoiding her gaze.
“What am I talking about?” Galina Borisovna’s voice grew harder, losing its elderly softness. “Don’t pretend you don’t understand! Yesterday I saw you transferring money to your Alina. I thought it was for household expenses. But then a message popped up: ‘For Mom’s medicine.’ And the amount! Igor, that amount! You don’t give me that much in half a year!”
So that was it. Yesterday he had been helping his mother set something up on her phone, and apparently she had peeked. She had seen the transfer he had made from their joint account at Alina’s request. But the account was only formally joint; Igor knew perfectly well that eighty percent of the money going into it was Alina’s salary. His modest salary as an engineer at a research institute was a drop in the ocean compared to her income at an IT company.
“Mom, it’s her money. She earns well, you know that. She helps her mother, that’s… that’s her business,” he tried to defend himself, feeling his ears turn red.
“Her business?” Galina Borisovna leaned her hands on the kitchen table and bent forward. Her old dress with tiny flowers stretched across her shoulders. “So you’re not her family? And I’m not your mother? So we’re strangers, then? Her mommy gets to go to resorts with that money, while your own mother has to wonder whether to buy a piece of meat or put money aside for medicine?”
Igor felt the room grow stuffy. He knew it was not true. Alina’s mother was a modest pensioner with aching joints, and the money went to good doctors and quality medicine, not resorts. But arguing with Galina Borisovna when she got worked up was like trying to stop a train with bare hands. She saw the world from only one angle — her own, where she was always the victim and everyone around her owed her something.
“No one is going to resorts. She has health problems,” he objected quietly.
“Everyone has health problems!” she snapped. “But for some reason, some people get thousands, while others get a bag of buckwheat and a stick of cheap sausage. She lives in your apartment, uses everything you bought, eats at the family table, but the money is hers? That’s not how it works, Igor! In a family, everything is shared. Or do I not understand anything about life anymore?”
As she spoke, Igor looked at the cracked oilcloth on the table, the old enamel kettle, the stack of newspapers on the windowsill. Everything in that apartment cried out of modesty, decades of saving, a life where there had been no room for excess. And against the background of that world, the sums Alina easily sent to her mother really did seem astronomical, almost indecent. The guilt his mother had known how to cultivate in him since childhood began to sprout, putting down poisonous roots.
“But she works, Mom. She works hard to earn that much,” he said, making his final, weakest argument.
That was a mistake. Galina Borisovna’s face turned to stone.
“Works hard? Do you think I spent my whole life lying on the sofa? What did I raise you on? With what money? I denied myself everything so you could have what you needed! So you could get an education and become somebody! And now what? Now this… businesswoman shows up, and I’m supposed to sit in the corner and be grateful for crumbs from her table? No, son. If everything in the family is shared, then it is shared by everyone. Go and talk to your wife. Like a man. Explain to her that you also have a mother. And she also needs help. Real help, not these handouts of yours.”
She straightened up, her posture expressing absolute firmness. The argument was over. The verdict had been delivered. Igor lifted his eyes to her and saw cold, demanding steel in them. He understood that he would not get away from this. She would not leave him alone. She would call, pressure him, remind him, until she finally broke him. And he broke. Faster than he had expected.
“All right, Mom. Fine,” he exhaled, feeling empty and shattered. “I’ll talk to her.”
Galina Borisovna nodded with satisfaction. Not a drop of sympathy appeared on her face, only the triumph of a victor. She had won. Once again, she had proved who was in charge here and whose interests mattered more.
Igor could not settle down. He wandered from corner to corner of the living room, sometimes stopping by the window and staring into the darkening courtyard, sometimes walking over to the bookcase and mindlessly running his finger along the spines of the books. The conversation with his mother, which had ended several hours earlier, would not leave his mind. Her words, full of reproach and resentment, had eaten under his skin, causing an itchy feeling of guilt. The promise he had given her lay heavily on his heart, and he had no idea how to approach Alina.
When the key finally turned in the lock, he flinched. Alina came into the hallway, tiredly dropped her laptop bag on the floor, and pulled off her high-heeled shoes. She looked exhausted: her strict office suit seemed like armor she could not wait to remove, and the gray dust of a long working day had settled in her eyes.
“Hi. Did something happen?” she asked, noticing his tense figure in the doorway. She knew him too well not to notice that fussy nervousness.
“Hi. No, everything’s fine.” He tried to smile, but it came out pitiful and fake.
“Tired?”
“Like a dog,” she rubbed her temples. “All I want is a shower and silence.”
“Were you at your mother’s? Did you bring her groceries?”
It was the perfect moment to begin. He himself did not understand how his mother’s words started slipping from his tongue, almost word for word.
“I was. I brought them. It’s just… she’s really falling apart, Mom. Her blood pressure keeps jumping, medicine prices went up again. She’s barely making ends meet.”
Alina went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and drank it in one gulp. She listened with half an ear, her thoughts still somewhere among work projects and deadlines.
“Well, you give her money every month. I’m not against it, you know that. Maybe she needs something specific? Some appliance?”
“It’s not about appliances, Alina,” Igor followed her into the kitchen. He felt like a traitor. “It’s about attitude. You see, she feels… deprived.”
Alina slowly turned to him. The tiredness in her gaze was replaced by caution. She placed the glass on the table.
“Deprived? By whom?”
Igor swallowed. There was no way back.
“By us. By you. She thinks it’s unfair. That we help your mother properly, while we help her just for show. She thinks that since we have a shared budget, we should help both mothers equally. From the common pot.”
A pause hung in the kitchen. Alina looked at him for a long time, studying him as if seeing him for the first time. Her face, which had been soft and tired a moment before, began to harden; her features sharpened.
“Wait. Let’s make this clear. This ‘common pot,’ as you call it, consists of my money by two-thirds, if not more. I help my mother because I consider it my duty and my right. She raised me alone, and I will not allow her to need anything in retirement. I have never said a word to you when you set aside part of your, frankly, not very large salary for your mother. What changed?”
Her voice was calm, almost icy, and that calm made Igor uneasy. He had expected shouting, a quarrel, but this cold logic disarmed him.
“What changed is that she knows the amount!” he lost control and raised his voice. “She saw how much you transferred to your mother! And she doesn’t understand why one mother should receive so much, while the other gets ten times less! Put yourself in her place!”
“I will not put myself in her place,” Alina cut him off. Her eyes narrowed. “I put myself in my own place. I work ten to twelve hours a day so we can have everything. So we can live in this apartment and not in her Khrushchev-era flat. So you can calmly do your science for pennies because it is ‘for your soul.’ And I will not allow your mother or anyone else to count the money I earned and tell me how to spend it. Is that clear?”
It was a punch to the gut. Every word was true, and that truth made Igor feel even worse. He felt humiliated by both his wife and his mother.
“So you don’t care about my mother? You think she’s some second-class person?”
“I think she has an adult, capable son. That is you, Igor. You are the one who should take care of her. If you want to help her more, find a second job, ask for a raise, do something. But don’t you dare try to solve your problems at my expense and make me look like a selfish bitch. This conversation is over.”
She turned around and left the kitchen, leaving him alone. He heard the water turn on in the bathroom. Igor remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the empty glass on the table. He had not solved the problem. He had just opened Pandora’s box, and now anger, resentment, and mutual accusations had burst out, poisoning the air in their home. And he knew his mother would not back down. This was only the beginning.
The silence in the apartment on Saturday morning was dense and heavy, like wet cloth. After the previous day’s conversation, Alina and Igor moved around the apartment like two ghosts, carefully avoiding each other. He drank coffee in the kitchen, staring at the wall; she locked herself in the bedroom and answered work emails, creating the appearance of being busy. The air was so charged that it seemed any spark could start a fire. And the spark did not keep them waiting.
A sharp, demanding doorbell pierced the silence, making Igor flinch. He looked toward the hallway with such horror on his face that it was as if fate itself stood behind the door. He knew who it was. He knew why she had come. Alina froze in the bedroom, lifting her fingers from the keyboard. The bell rang again, this time shorter and angrier.
Igor, shoulders slumped, trudged to open the door. Galina Borisovna stood on the threshold, buttoned up to the neck in her best mid-season coat, clutching her handbag as if it contained not a wallet and keys, but a live grenade.
“I knew it,” she said instead of a greeting, pushing her son aside with her shoulder and entering the apartment. “I didn’t sleep all night, my heart ached for you. I see it wasn’t for nothing.”
Without taking off her shoes, she walked into the living room, her gaze running over the furnishings greedily and appraisingly. The new large television on the wall. The comfortable sofa upholstered in expensive fabric. The perfectly clean carpet. She ran a finger over the glossy surface of the dresser, as if checking for dust.
“Mom, please, don’t. Let’s not do this here,” Igor whispered, following her closely.
“Where else, son? Where else am I supposed to stand up for you?” she suddenly turned to him. “Did you talk to her yesterday? I can see from your face that you did. And what? She sent you away, didn’t she? Refused to help her husband’s own mother?”
Alina came out of the bedroom. She was wearing a simple home T-shirt and pants, her hair gathered in a careless bun. There was neither surprise nor anger on her face. Only cold, detached attention. She silently stood in the doorway, crossing her arms over her chest.
Galina Borisovna immediately turned to her.
“And here she is! The mistress of the copper mountain! Well, hello, daughter-in-law. So you’ve decided you can treat my son like he’s nothing? You think that just because you earn money, everything is allowed to you?”
Alina remained silent. She simply looked at her mother-in-law, and that silence infuriated Galina Borisovna far more than any shout or objection could have.
“What, nothing to say?” she continued, growing more inflamed. She walked up almost right to Alina. “I gave my life for this boy! I gave all of myself, without holding anything back, so he could grow into a decent man! And you came to everything ready-made, and now you spend our family money on your mommy, who probably isn’t even sick at all, but simply taught her daughter how to twist men around her finger!”
“Mom, stop!” Igor pleaded, trying to stand between them.
“Don’t interfere, Igor!” Galina Borisovna cut him off imperiously without even looking at him. “Let her look me in the eye and say it! Tell me, aren’t you ashamed? You live in this apartment that he received! You eat food that we buy! And at the same time, you deprive his mother! You’re simply draining money out of our family!”
She paused, waiting for a reaction. But Alina still remained silent. Her face was completely unreadable. That silence was more frightening than any storm. Galina Borisovna needed a quarrel, a scandal, tears — anything that would confirm she was right and give her leverage. But she was striking a blank wall of calm.
And then she delivered the final, meanest blow.
“Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… Her mother must be the same. Cunning, calculating. Taught her daughter how to settle in comfortably at someone else’s expense.”
At that moment, something changed. Alina did not flinch, did not shout. But her eyes, which until then had been cold and detached, suddenly focused on her mother-in-law with such icy clarity that Galina Borisovna involuntarily took a step back. It was the gaze of a surgeon who had found the source of infection and already prepared the scalpel. Silently, she turned around, walked past the confused Igor, and headed toward her bag, which had been left in the hallway. Galina Borisovna and Igor froze, not understanding what would happen next.
Galina Borisovna fell silent, thrown off by her daughter-in-law’s sudden maneuver. She had expected anything: insults in return, shouting, hysterics, but not this calm, purposeful movement. Igor also froze in the middle of the living room, helplessly shifting his gaze from his mother to his wife’s back. He felt the ground slipping from under his feet. The entire situation, which he had so clumsily tried to control, had broken free and was now rushing toward an inevitable catastrophe.
Alina walked over to her bag, slowly unzipped it, and took out a thick leather wallet. The living room was so quiet that the click of the clasp could be heard clearly. Galina Borisovna watched these movements with greedy curiosity, a wild thought flashing in her eyes: had she really gotten through to her? Was she about to count out money just to get rid of her? The thought was humiliating, but at the same time, it gave her hope of victory.
But Alina did not even look in her direction. She opened the wallet and took out a stack of large bills. Casually but precisely, she counted several of them. Her fingers moved quickly and confidently, like those of a bank cashier. It was her money, and she knew its count. Then she turned, but not to her mother-in-law — to her husband.
She walked up to Igor and handed him the money. He looked at the bills, then at her face, understanding nothing.
“Here, Igor,” her voice sounded even and ordinary, as if she were asking him to buy bread. “This is your share for the rent and groceries this month. Give it to me.”
Igor mechanically reached out and took the money. The bills were real, substantial. He felt their texture with his fingers, and the physical reality of what was happening pulled him out of his stupor for a second. But he still could not understand the meaning. Give it to her? Why? It was already on the joint account from which everything was paid.
“What? Alina, I don’t…” he began.
“Give it to me,” she repeated, and for the first time that morning, a living note appeared in her voice — a note of impatience. She held out her hand, and he, like a robot, placed the money in her palm. She immediately put it into another compartment of her wallet, demonstratively separating it.
Then Alina turned to Galina Borisovna, who was frozen in bewilderment. Her mother-in-law’s face stretched, and she finally began to realize that something unforeseen was happening, that her script was going straight to hell.
“And now,” Alina said slowly and clearly, looking directly into her mother-in-law’s eyes, “since our budget is now officially separate, address all your financial claims exclusively to your son. And to his salary. My money is my money.”
After that sentence, she did not wait for a response. She did not slam the door, did not say another word. She simply turned around, went into the bedroom, and calmly, without a single unnecessary sound, closed the door behind her. The click of the lock rang out in the deafening silence like a gunshot.
Mother and son were left alone in the middle of the living room. Igor was still staring at the closed bedroom door, then shifted his gaze to his mother. Galina Borisovna stood like a statue. Her face, which had been flushed with anger and righteous battle only moments earlier, slowly turned pale. The arrogance slid off it like bad makeup. She looked at her son, and there was no longer any triumph or demand in her eyes. Only confused horror swam there.
She had come here to wrest a piece of someone else’s pie for her son — and in reality, for herself. She had pressured, humiliated, demanded, confident in her righteousness and in Igor’s weakness. And she had won. But her victory had turned out to be Pyrrhic. She had not only failed to get someone else’s money. With her own hands, she had just deprived her son of access to it. She had destroyed the very “common pot” from which both he and she herself had been able to draw small but pleasant benefits. She had returned him to the reality of his modest salary, from which he would now have to pay half the rent, buy half the groceries, and from the remaining crumbs set aside something for her, his mother.
Igor looked at her, and there was no love or filial devotion in his gaze. There was only the empty, cold rage of realization. He understood that his mother, trying to win back “justice” for him, had essentially robbed him. She had destroyed his family, his comfort, his familiar world, where he could feel like a successful man beside a strong woman. Now he was left alone with his insignificant salary and with his mother, who looked at him as if waiting for him to perform a miracle. But there would be no miracle. Alina had decided everything. Coldly, harshly, and finally. And the only ones to blame were the two of them, standing now in the middle of the living room, which had suddenly become foreign to them…