My ex left me during the hardest years of my life, then came back when I was finally doing well. But the woman he used to know no longer lived in that home.
“Ninusik, I’ve decided to give our family a second chance,” Mark said, standing on the threshold of my apartment with such a solemn expression that one might think he had personally brought me fire from Olympus.
In one hand, he held a lonely-looking cake with a yellow discount sticker. In the other, a stuffed sports bag. In the five years since we had last seen each other, he had gone a little bald and developed a respectable belly, but his eyes were the same as ever — the confident eyes of a man who considered himself the master of life and had graciously descended to visit the help.
“Mark?” I calmly leaned against the doorframe, not even considering stepping back into the hallway to let this apparition inside. “What second chance? You must have the wrong floor. All our chances ran out the day you left me for a twenty-year-old muse, taking my laptop with you and leaving me with two loans for your brilliant business ideas. You were already used to it. Twenty years. Then you decided I was too much of a burden. And now you simply like the sofa.”
Zhanna, my neighbor and, at the same time, the main admirer of my culinary experiments, slowly floated out of the kitchen. In her hands, she held a cup of raf coffee with pine nuts, which I had made for her five minutes earlier.
“Nina, is this the very same unrecognized genius who went looking for inspiration under other women’s skirts?” Zhanna asked loudly, clearly enjoying herself as she took a sip of coffee and positioned herself in the hallway like a spectator in the front row.
Mark grimaced, ignored Zhanna, and tried to take a step inside. I raised my hand, stopping him.
“Nina, let’s talk like adults, without witnesses,” he said, peering over my shoulder as his eyes greedily scanned the bright kitchen, the new appliances, and the fresh, high-quality renovation. “I can see you’ve done pretty well for yourself. Good for you. I always said work ennobles a person. Lerochka, of course, is young and beautiful, but she doesn’t understand domestic life. It’s always delivery, cafés, cleaning services with her. But I’m a home-loving man, Nina. I need borscht, a clean shirt, and a proper woman by my side. So be it, I forgive you for your past hysterics. A family must be restored.”
I listened to him and felt nothing except mild academic curiosity. Five years ago, when he left, I had sobbed, taken night shifts in the kitchen of a cheap diner to pay off the debts, and saved money on transport. Now I was forty-eight, a chef at a good restaurant, driving a car I had bought myself without loans or anyone’s help, and in a few days, I was finalizing the purchase of a country house. I had learned how to manage a team of twenty tough men with knives, so my ex-husband’s manipulations seemed like childish babble to me.
“A woman without a man, Nina, loses the direction of her energetic development,” Mark began pontificating with self-assurance, striking the pose of a guru. “You’ve earned money, that’s commendable, but the feminine field requires a masculine anchor to properly channel the flows of abundance. Otherwise, you’ll simply dry up in your loneliness.”
“Mark, flows of abundance are channeled exclusively through competent financial planning and compound interest,” I said, looking at him with a cold half-smile. “When you lived here, my ‘feminine field’ went toward paying off your microloans at three hundred percent annual interest. And now my direction of development depends on the Central Bank’s refinancing rate, and believe me, it is far more reliable than your energetic anchor.”
“You’ve always been a mercenary, soulless dried fish, that’s why men run away from you!” Mark suddenly shrieked, instantly losing all of his philosophical polish.
He started puffing and turned red in blotches, like a cheap sausage forgotten in the microwave, about to split at the seam.
“Nina, shall I take my bag to the bedroom?” he suddenly changed his tone, brazenly reaching for the door handle. “Or should I leave it in the hallway for now? I brought a few things. No point dragging them back and forth if we’re starting over anyway.”
“The only thing you’re starting right now is movement toward the elevator,” I said, smoothly but firmly blocking his way and looking straight into his darting eyes. “My bedroom is closed to people who carried everything out of it, right down to my work laptop.”
“But I need to crash somewhere for literally a week!” Mark flared up, nearly dropping his dented cake in outrage. “Until I sort out work and an apartment. Lerochka has a one-room flat, her mother has arrived, and there’s no space for us! I’m not a stranger, Nina! Surely there’s room on the sofa?”
“The sofa is Italian, Mark. I’m afraid your energetic anchor would crush it,” I said without blinking. “Stay in a hostel.”
Mark choked, drawing air into his chest for another tirade, but he didn’t get the chance. Rimma, Mark’s older sister, tumbled out of the elevator. She had always considered me a simpleton unworthy of their “intellectual” family. Apparently, she had been waiting downstairs while her brother prepared the landing zone, but she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Ninochka, hello!” Rimma said, pushing her brother aside in a proprietorial manner and trying to squeeze past me. “What are these scenes in the stairwell? Mark told me everything. You’re together again. That’s right! Marriage is sacred. By the way, since you’ve got such a palace here now, and I hear you’re buying a country house… Mother needs fresh air for the summer. And our nephew needs a car; he’s started university. Family should help their own!”
In the background, Zhanna quietly choked on her coffee. I mentally admired the pristine audacity of these people.
“Nina, you live alone, you have no children — who is all this for?” Rimma continued importantly, adjusting her cheap stole with the logo of an expensive brand. “Mark has returned, which means the family is back together. And in a family, people help each other. Mother needs fresh air, our nephew needs a car, Mark needs a peaceful home. You can’t just keep living so comfortably all by yourself.”
“Rimma, the laws of the Russian Federation do not oblige me to support former relatives,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and enunciating every word. “Moreover, buying a car for an eighteen-year-old blockhead who failed his Unified State Exam is not included in my budget. As for the country house, it will be registered exclusively in my name. No mothers or nephews will be there.”
“You barren, selfish shrew! You’ll choke on your millions all alone!” my ex-sister-in-law spat, switching to an ultrasonic pitch.
Rimma puffed out her chest and hissed like an overfed goose whose tasty crust of bread had been brazenly snatched from under its beak.
I sighed. The theatrical performance was beginning to tire me.
“You know, in a professional kitchen there is a basic stock rotation rule called FIFO,” I said calmly. “First In, First Out. It means products with an expiring shelf life must be written off and thrown away so they don’t spoil the fresh batches. You, my dear relatives, exhausted your shelf life in my life five years ago. You are expired. And I do not keep rotten goods in my kitchen.”
Mark blinked, trying to digest what he had heard.
“Nina… you’ll regret this,” he forced out, but his voice was already trembling with helplessness. “Who needs you at forty-eight?”
“Myself, Mark. For the first time in my life, I need myself,” I said, taking hold of the door handle. “Go back to Lerochka. Boil her some dumplings. I have a tasting of the new autumn menu in an hour, and I need to protect my receptors from unpleasant smells.”
I gently but firmly slammed the door right in front of their stunned faces. The heavy lock clicked. For another couple of minutes, Rimma’s indignant muttering and Mark’s shuffling could be heard from the stairwell, and then everything went quiet. Justice arrived quietly and finally, leaving them on the other side of my comfortable life.
“Listen,” Zhanna said, coming up to me and holding out her empty cup. “That FIFO thing of yours… Great idea. I’ll have to apply it to my ex too. He keeps calling and whining. Will you make more coffee?”
“I will, Zhannochka,” I said with a sincere smile, feeling absolute, pure calm spreading through my chest. “Of course I will. We have a wonderful evening ahead of us.”