Valery had just pulled up to the house and was parking in the courtyard when he heard the scream of his wife, Alyona. The man could not be mistaken, it was definitely his spouse.
«Damn, what happened again?» he thought anxiously and hurried to finish parking.
The elevator, as if to spite him, was slow to arrive. Apparently, someone was holding it upstairs, so Valery ran up the stairs. Bursting into the apartment, he heard his wife’s sobs. In the middle of the living room lay bright silk patches, over which Valery’s mother, Natalya Ivanovna, calmly sat on a chair, clutching large scissors. Alyona was crying on the sofa.
«What happened here?» Valery asked. His wife nodded towards the pile of fabric.
«My new lingerie set,» said Alyona through tears. «I just bought it yesterday. I wanted to surprise you today.»
«You lost sheep,» Natalya Ivanovna said in a colorless voice. «No shame, no conscience. And you have a son growing up… What kind of example is this?»
«Lyosha is at camp,» Valery said sharply. «How did you get in again, mom? I took your keys.»
«Denying your own mother access to the house?» Natalya Ivanovna glared angrily at her son. «I come when I want, and I will keep coming. I won’t allow debauchery.»
«I can’t take this anymore!» Alyona abruptly stood up and went to the kitchen.
Natalya Ivanovna watched her daughter-in-law with a malicious look.
«When will you divorce this floozy?» she asked her son harshly. «Aren’t you tired of being dishonored?»
«Mom, why are you attacking Alyona?» Valery asked as patiently as possible. «What has she done wrong to you? I live with her and am perfectly happy.»
«She’s a floozy!» Natalya Ivanovna stubbornly repeated.
«And where did you get that idea?»
«I know, that’s why I say it. Would a decent woman buy something like this?» Natalya Ivanovna nodded at the shredded lingerie. «Get rid of her and find yourself a proper wife.»
«Leave my family life alone,» Valery said, losing patience. «Neither I nor Dimka can live in peace because of you. Don’t you have things to do in your community?»
«And don’t you tell me what to do,» the woman snapped. «The chicken doesn’t teach the egg.»
She slowly stood up and headed for the exit. Valery followed to make sure she wouldn’t do anything else on her way out.
After closing the door behind his mother, he went to the kitchen, where he found Alyona crying. In front of her on the table stood an open bottle of wine, and she nervously gulped from a filled glass.
«Valera, we need to do something,» said the wife, downing her glass and bitterly smiling. «We sent our son on vacation, planned a romantic dinner, yeah. I guess we’re lucky she didn’t show up at the height of it…»
«I’ll call the locksmith today to change the locks,» Valery grimly said.
«That won’t help!» Alyona raised her voice. «Don’t you understand? She’ll come up with something else!» «And what do you suggest?»
Valery himself guessed what his wife’s answer would be and feared it.
«Don’t you see your mother has serious mental issues?» Alyona asked. «And she might be dangerous. Today she cut up my lingerie, tomorrow what? Me?»
«Don’t be silly!» Valery understood that his wife was right, and it frustrated him even more.
«Valera, decide something urgently,» the woman downed a second glass of wine. «I can’t and don’t want to live like this anymore.»
There was a knock at the front door, and both spouses flinched, thinking Natalya Ivanovna had returned.
«God forbid,» Alyona whispered.
The hand of the now tipsy woman automatically reached for a knife lying on the table, but Valery quickly intercepted it.
«Have you lost your mind…»
But it wasn’t Natalya Ivanovna. From the living room came the voice of Marina, the wife of Valery’s younger brother, Dima.
«Valera, Alyona, are you home?» Marina called.
«We’re in the kitchen,» the hostess responded, and Marina entered. «Your front door was open.»
Alyona shot her husband an annoyed look.
«So, you got a visit today too?» Marina nodded towards the living room, where the floor was still littered with remnants of the ruined romantic evening.
«And what did she do at your place?» Alyona asked.
«There goes my new stockings,» Marina replied.
Unlike Alyona, Marina did not look upset. Moreover, she had a mischievous look as if she had discovered some secret. Actually, that was the case.
«I think I know why Natalya Ivanovna behaves this way,» Marina declared. In Valery’s presence, she carefully chose words to refer to her mother-in-law. In the absence of her sons, she never addressed the mother-in-law by name and patronymic, preferring more caustic descriptions, of which «old mold» was the most politically correct.
Marina triumphantly shifted her gaze from one spouse to another.
«Speak up, don’t hold back,» Alyona urged her impatiently.
«Let’s wait for Dimka,» Marina suggested. «I swear, you won’t regret it. I’ve dug up something…»
Marina did not deceive. Her information caused a real shock among Natalya Ivanovna’s sons and put an end to her autocracy.
Natalya Ivanovna turned to religion several years ago when she became a widow.
At first, her sons, the elder Valery and the younger Dmitry, calmly reacted to their mother’s folly. The woman was grieving heavily for her husband’s death, and only in the religious community, where her friend Nina Grigorievna took her, did she quickly calm down and begin to return to normal.
However, over time, Natalya Ivanovna’s behavior became more radical.
Once, Valery and Alyona were visited by his brother and his wife. The company was cheerfully chatting at the table when suddenly Natalya Ivanovna appeared in the apartment. As it turned out, she had come earlier, simply because the carefree company hadn’t heard the front door slam.
Valery had no idea that his mother had keys to his apartment.
It was later revealed that Natalya Ivanovna had made duplicates of her sons’ apartment keys. And there she was, like a ghost, clad all in black, standing at the threshold of the living room, significantly startling everyone with her sudden appearance.
In her hands, she held Alyona’s new shoes, beautiful and elegant, on a thin and high stiletto, which she had bought the day before.
«Decided to seduce the second son?» the mother-in-law accused Alyona. She shifted her gaze to the younger son Dmitry, then to his wife Marina.
«I would keep my ears sharp if I were you,» Natalya Ivanovna declared. «Although, you’re no better yourself.»
«Mom, how did you get in?» Valery was the first to recover.
«Through the door,» she replied.
No one managed to react, and Natalya Ivanovna quickly broke both heels and threw everything on the floor.
«Like that!» she said and left.
The quartet sat in a sort of stupor for a long time.
«Valera, take the keys from her,» Alyona managed to say.
The evening was hopelessly spoiled. Valery offered to drive Dmitry and Marina home, and on the way, he stopped by his mother’s and fulfilled his wife’s request. However, this did not save the situation.
Natalya Ivanovna appeared again in her son’s apartment a few days later. Alyona found her mother-in-law, having returned from work, busily rummaging through her closet, selecting clothes and lingerie pieces she disliked.
«What are you doing?» Alyona screamed. «How did you get in?!»
«It’s none of your business how I got in,» the mother-in-law snapped back. «This is my son’s apartment.»
She continued her activity, and the daughter-in-law quickly called her husband.
«Come quickly and evict your mother,» Alyona said. «Or I will. And there will be no prisoners.»
Hearing her daughter-in-law’s words, Natalya Ivanovna hurried to leave herself, lastly threatening Alyona with Gehenna’s fiery hell and damnation.
As it turned out, before that, she had visited Dmitry’s apartment, where she got to the special aromatic candles bought by Marina for the bedroom, and smashed them into dust using a hammer. Serious altercations between spouses also took place there at the same time.
Valery and Dmitry simultaneously changed the locks on their front doors. However, Natalya Ivanovna somehow managed to get new keys again.
Both sons went to talk to their mother, but their diplomatic efforts led to nothing. The woman stubbornly insisted on her views.
«You both married harlots,» she reproached her sons. «You live in sin! You will all burn in hell.» Both Marina and Alyona urged their husbands to urgently show Natalya Ivanovna to psychiatrists, but the brothers hesitated. Both hoped that the situation with their mother could be resolved peacefully and without radical measures.
Locks were now changed with enviable regularity, but it did not save the situation. Natalya Ivanovna continued her «morality raids,» carefully choosing times when her sons and daughters-in-law were not at home.
Moreover, the mother persistently insisted to Valery and Dmitry that they were married to promiscuous women.
«Both of you walk around horned,» she repeated day after day. «Aren’t you disgusted with yourselves?»
Of course, such topics did not improve the men’s moods, although both were sure their wives were faithful. But, as they say, the residue remained…
And so Marina prepared a loud session of exposure.
When Dmitry finally arrived, she enjoyed the pause a bit longer, then showed everyone present a stranger’s page on a social network. There were old photos, presumably from the late ’80s to early ’90s.
And in them were girls obviously of not the heaviest behavior, dressed more than revealingly, with beer and cigarettes. In the arms of gangster-looking guys. Marina pointed to one of them.
«Recognize her?»
Valery and Dmitry initially refused to believe their eyes, but the photo was their mother, Natalya Ivanovna.
«And I also stopped by her friend, that same Nina Georgievna, and she confessed everything to me. Both of them in their younger years made a living, let’s say, far from the machine. Well, you understand.» Marina enjoyed the impact she had made.
«As my grandmother used to say: ‘A lecherous mother-in-law does not trust the daughter-in-law.’ Right on point!» said Marina. «By the way, your late father knew well about the past of this old witch… Natalya Ivanovna. And he often beat her. Just you often lived with your grandparents, so you weren’t aware. So, your mother couldn’t forgive us and Alyona a happy family life, which she herself was deprived of. Plus, her brains got thoroughly washed in that cult.»
Silence filled the kitchen for some time.
Then Valery and Dmitry quickly gathered to go to their mother, having received compromising photos from Marina beforehand. It’s unknown what they talked about, but Natalya Ivanovna no longer appeared on the territory of her sons and their wives.
