“Kirill, this isn’t funny anymore. It’s not even sad. It’s just humiliating,” Inna said in an even, almost indifferent voice, looking not at her husband but at the cloudy streaks the drizzling November rain left on the glass. They were sitting at a corner table in a faceless chain café where they’d run away to talk. So no one would hear them.
On the table between their cups of cooling cappuccino lay a neatly folded sheet torn from a squared school notebook. Kirill stared at that sheet as if it were a venomous snake ready to bite. He nervously twisted a paper sugar packet in his hands, tearing it into small, pointless strips.
“Inn, try to understand—she’s having a hard time on her own. She sold her apartment and moved into this bigger one so we’d have space. She’s trying,” he said quietly, ingratiatingly, as if he were trying to convince himself rather than his wife.
Inna slowly looked at him. There was no anger or resentment in her dark eyes. Only a cold, heavy weariness—the look of someone who has explained obvious things many times and has never been heard.
“Trying? Kirill, let’s call things by their names. Your mother isn’t trying to help us. She’s renting us a room in her apartment. Only instead of a lease, we have this.” She nudged the folded sheet with the tip of her fingernail. “Open it. Read it out loud. I want you to say the words.”
He flinched but obeyed. With trembling fingers he unfolded the paper. In Viktoria Alexandrovna’s neat, compact hand the items were listed: “Lodging — 30,000,” “Utilities (share) — 6,500,” “Use of washing machine (8 washes) — 4,500,” “Internet — 1,000.” The total was boldly underlined: “42,000.”
Kirill swallowed. He didn’t read it out loud. That would have been a final admission of defeat.
“Inna, what’s so wrong about it? It’s fair. We live there, we use things. She can’t carry it all on her back. Her pension—”
“Her pension, which she receives in addition to a salary because she still works part-time as a bookkeeper,” Inna clipped off. “She has several hundred thousand on a savings account from selling her studio. We talked through this scenario a month ago, remember? Before we moved. I told you that her ‘help’ was a business project. You called me cynical and said I didn’t understand the sanctity of a mother’s love. Well, here’s the price list for sanctity: forty-two thousand rubles a month.”
She took a sip of cold coffee and grimaced.
“But that’s not all, is it?” she went on, not letting him get a word in. “This bill is the official part. For you. So you can justify her to yourself. But there’s also the unofficial part. For me.”
Kirill lifted a bewildered gaze to her. He really didn’t understand. He thought that sheet was rock bottom, the limit of absurdity.
Inna smirked, but there was no mirth in it.
“Yesterday. In the afternoon, while you were at work. Your mother came up to me in the kitchen. She didn’t shout, no. Very politely, very quietly she inquired whether I didn’t think I was using the restroom a bit too often. I didn’t get it at first. Then she took out her little notebook and showed me. She has a chart. With tally marks. Next to my name. She said that yesterday I went in there three times. And water is expensive now, the meters are spinning. So that’s three hundred rubles from me. Cash. A hundred for each trip to the toilet.”
Kirill sat frozen, staring at his hands as if seeing them for the first time. The paper sugar packet had been shredded to dust.
“I…I’ll sort it out,” he mumbled. It was the only thing he could think of— a pitiful, helpless promise he didn’t believe himself.
Inna set her cup on the saucer. The sound was sharp in the hush that fell over their table.
“No, Kirill. You won’t sort out anything. You won’t sort out a thing. You’ll pay her. Out of your salary. These forty-two thousand, and a hundred rubles for my toilet, and whatever else she tallies up for the air we breathe in her home. But I want you to understand one simple thing. As of today, my salary is my salary. It sits on my card and has nothing to do with your mother or her commercial projects. And the next time she comes to me with her invoices, I will explain to her very clearly and accessibly exactly where she can put them. And you will stand beside me. And listen in silence. That is the price of your choice.”
Going back to the apartment felt like sinking into thick, heavy water. The air seemed denser; it pressed on the shoulders and settled in the lungs with the smell of boiled cabbage and long-standing grievance. The epicenter of that suffocating atmosphere was the kitchen, where Viktoria Alexandrovna had set up her command post. She never sat idle. She was always busy, but her busyness was a form of aggression—a quiet, methodical advance into someone else’s space.
Pride of place on the kitchen table, covered with a vinyl cloth of faded sunflowers, belonged to her instruments: a thick 96-page composition notebook, a ballpoint pen that clicked stiffly, and an old “Citizen” calculator, whose rubber buttons she jabbed with furious persistence. Every click of the pen, every beep of the calculator was addressed to Inna. It was the soundtrack of their cohabitation.
After the café, Kirill tried to fabricate an illusion of peace. He acted pointedly cheerful, talked loudly about work, tried to joke. But his words sank in the unstable quiet, finding no response. Viktoria Alexandrovna listened with a half-smile, nodding now and then, but her gaze kept drifting back to the notebook. She kept the books. She recorded life.
Inna saw everything. She saw how late that evening, after she’d gone to their room, Kirill slipped into the kitchen. She didn’t mean to watch— the door was ajar. He sat down quietly beside his mother. They didn’t speak. He just took out his phone, tapped something, and showed her. Viktoria Alexandrovna looked, nodded in satisfaction, and made a note in her notebook. Then she covered his hand with her own dry, sinewy palm and squeezed. It wasn’t a gesture of tenderness. It was the sealing of a deal. Kirill bought a temporary truce behind his wife’s back.
The next day the pressure increased. Viktoria Alexandrovna began to act more openly, though still within the bounds of her guerrilla war. When Inna came out of the bathroom in the morning, her mother-in-law was already waiting in the hall with a notepad.
“Innochka, I’m just reconciling the meter readings,” she began in a honeyed, caring tone. “Did you time how long your shower was? Our hot-water consumption has really jumped this month. I’m only trying to keep things economical for all of us.”
Inna stopped and looked straight at her. Not at the notepad, not at the pen. At her eyes, small and watchful, like a raptor’s.
“No, I didn’t, Viktoria Alexandrovna.”
“A pity,” she sighed theatrically and scratched something in the notepad. “Then we’ll have to count it at the maximum rate.”
She didn’t demand money. She simply stated facts, driving another nail into the coffin of their fragile coexistence. She tried to provoke—to stir up emotion, to make Inna yell, justify herself, start a row. But Inna kept silent. She behaved as if observing a strange but entirely predictable natural phenomenon. Her calm, her impenetrability unsettled her mother-in-law far more than any shouting would have. It was passive resistance, and Viktoria Alexandrovna didn’t know how to pierce it.
That evening, when the three of them were in the kitchen, she launched a new offensive. Kirill ate fried potatoes with an appetite he didn’t have; he praised his mother’s cooking with suspicious enthusiasm, creating the backdrop for her speech.
“How important it is to have order and accounting in a home,” declaimed Viktoria Alexandrovna, staring somewhere over Inna’s head. “Every kopeck in its place, every calorie counted. People who don’t appreciate that just don’t understand what it takes to keep a hearth. They think things come out of thin air.”
It was a direct jab—a stone thrown into Inna’s garden. Kirill choked on a potato and shot his wife a pleading look. Please, just let it go.
Inna slowly set down her fork. She looked at her mother-in-law.
“Is that addressed to me, Viktoria Alexandrovna?”
The quiet question cracked like a gunshot. It demanded a straight answer. For a second, Viktoria Alexandrovna faltered. She hadn’t expected such bluntness. She had wanted to keep speaking in hints, rebuking the void.
“I’m speaking in general. About life,” she rallied, but her voice no longer sounded so assured.
“I see,” Inna replied just as calmly, taking up her fork again.
She didn’t argue. She simply showed that she saw right through the game. And in that moment she realized she would wait no longer. She wouldn’t keep collecting facts. She would act. She would finish her potatoes, wash her plate, and begin preparing her counterstrike. And it would be delivered not in a café, but here, in this kitchen that had already become a battlefield.
A week passed. A week woven from demonstrative silence, clinking dishes, and calculator beeps. Kirill paid his mother the requested sum, transferring the money from his card while Inna was in the shower. He did it secretly, like something shameful, and couldn’t meet his wife’s eyes the rest of the evening. He thought he had bought peace, but in truth he had simply made the first installment on a war he had already lost.
On Saturday evening he finally tried. Inna was sitting in their room reading, and there was something frightening about her calm. She had walled herself off from their shared reality behind the pages of someone else’s novel, and that spoke louder than any scandal. Kirill went in, closing the door tightly behind him. He stood for a moment, collecting his thoughts—really, recalling the instructions his mother had given him over tea.
“Inna, we need to talk,” he began in the tone people use for unpleasant but necessary matters.
Inna didn’t lift her eyes from the page; she only raised an eyebrow slightly. That silent “Well?” had more effect on him than if she’d put the book down.
“You see, Mom… she doesn’t mean anything by it. She’s just like that. Order matters to her, accounting matters to her. She wants everything to be fair, to be family-like. For all of us to contribute to the household. This is our hearth now.”
He spoke in memorized phrases, and the falseness in his voice was almost tangible. He paced the room, at a loss, avoiding his wife’s eyes. He talked about family duty, respect for elders, how important it was to support a mother who had met them halfway. Not one word was his own. It was a hurriedly absorbed summary of his mother’s ideology, badly tailored to their situation.
At last Inna snapped the book shut, leaving a finger to mark her place. The sound was dry and final.
“Kirill, what are you getting at?”
He stopped across from her. Braced himself.
“Mom thinks—and I… I agree with her—that it would be right if we kept a joint budget. For the household. The three of us. She suggests you contribute your share to the common kitty too. Proportional to income. That’s fair. We’re a family.”
There it was. The moment of truth. Inna rose slowly. She wasn’t taller than he was, but at that moment it felt as if she were looking down on him. The weariness was gone from her eyes. In its place was a cold, hard clarity.
“I told you from the start why your mother wants us living with her, but you didn’t listen. So now you can pay her for everything—she won’t see a kopeck from me.”
Her voice didn’t rise. It dropped lower, grew firmer, the ring of steel in it. She wasn’t protesting—she was delivering a verdict.
Kirill recoiled. The mask of the “reasonable man” fell from his face, revealing a bewildered, wounded boy. He had expected anything—an argument, reproaches, bargaining—but not this direct, absolute refusal. His plan—or rather, his mother’s plan—collapsed. And in that moment he made his final choice. He stopped being a buffer between two women and became a soldier for one of them.
“So that’s what you are,” he spat, his voice stripped of ingratiation, laid bare to hostility. “Heartless. Selfish. My mother is trying for us, giving her last, and you… You just hate her because she loves me! You can’t appreciate kindness. You only think about your money!”
He advanced on her, spewing the accusations Viktoria Alexandrovna had poured into him an hour earlier. He looked at his wife as if she were a hostile stranger who had infiltrated their family by deceit. The split had happened. It was final and irreversible.
Inna listened without interrupting. She looked at his face, twisted with anger, and saw the reflection of another face—cunning, calculating, with a perpetual notepad in its hand. She no longer saw her husband. She saw a marionette. And she understood that arguing with him was pointless. She needed to speak to the puppeteer. Without a word she stepped around him, went to the dresser, and took out her planner and a pen. Her movements were calm and precise, like a surgeon preparing for a complicated operation. The war had moved into an active phase. And she was ready.
Saturday evening brought no release. It thickened the tension to jelly, with all three suspended in it. Dinner passed in almost complete silence, broken only by the methodical tap of forks on plates. Viktoria Alexandrovna ate with the air of a victor; her back was straight, and a faint, condescending smile played on her lips. Kirill sat beside her like a loyal adjutant, his whole demeanor proclaiming allegiance to the general. He shot Inna short, prickly glances, righteous anger blazing in them. He waited.
When the last plate had been cleared, Viktoria Alexandrovna dabbed her lips with a napkin and made the evening’s main move. With ceremonial air she pulled a new sheet of paper, written on both sides, from the pocket of her housecoat and laid it in the middle of the table. This was more than a bill. It was a manifesto. An ultimatum dressed up as a financial report.
“I’ve calculated everything so there won’t be any questions,” her voice flowed smooth as oil. “Since we’re living honestly, we have to count everything. To keep it fair.”
Kirill shot Inna a defiant look. His eyes said: Well? Swallow it. No wriggling out now. He was sure of his rightness, of maternal wisdom, of the inviolability of their common front. He expected Inna to crack now, to start justifying herself or stage a helpless scene.
Inna didn’t look at the sheet. She looked at her mother-in-law with the calm, intent gaze of an entomologist studying an interesting insect’s behavior. She let Viktoria Alexandrovna play her hand out. Then, without changing her expression, she pushed her cup aside and took from the bag by her chair her own planner, in a hard black cover, and an expensive fountain pen. The click of the cap coming off thundered in the kitchen silence.
“You are absolutely right, Viktoria Alexandrovna,” Inna said in an even, businesslike tone. “Since we’ve moved to cash-and-carry relations, the accounting should be complete and mutual. Otherwise it’s not business—it’s extortion. I’ve prepared a brief report for the past month as well.”
Kirill and his mother froze. This move wasn’t in their script.
Inna opened the planner to a bookmarked page and, ignoring them now, began to read out as if dictating to a secretary:
“So. Let’s begin. Cleaning services. Daily wet cleaning of common areas—kitchen, hall, bathroom. Area: twenty-two square meters. Average market rate: six hundred rubles a day. For thirty days: eighteen thousand rubles. Deep cleaning of the apartment, including window washing—once a month: ten thousand five hundred rubles. Total for cleaning: twenty-eight thousand five hundred.”
She paused to let the numbers settle in the air. Viktoria Alexandrovna—who had shifted all the housework onto her daughter-in-law after moving in with her son—began to pale.
“Next. Cooking services. Grocery purchases with my personal funds, per saved receipts: sixteen thousand eight hundred and twenty rubles. Preparation of dinners, nineteen times. At five hundred per dinner: nine thousand five hundred. Total for the kitchen: twenty-six thousand three hundred and twenty rubles. I note I am not counting breakfasts and lunches—let’s call that my charitable contribution.”
Kirill’s face began to lengthen. His stunned gaze hopped from his unruffled wife to his petrified mother.
“Now, depreciation of personal property,” Inna went on, turning the page. “Providing my hair dryer, curling iron, and epilator for Viktoria Alexandrovna’s use. One hundred rubles per use. By my records, the total is one thousand five hundred rubles. Use of my laptop by Kirill for his ‘urgent weekend work.’ Four hours. Hourly co-working rent would be higher, but for family we’ll discount it. Let’s say five hundred rubles.”
She lifted her eyes and swept them with a cold glance.
“And finally, the most interesting item. Consulting services.”
Her eyes dropped back to the planner.
“Emergency psychological support for Kirill after conflicts with his boss—three sessions at fifteen hundred each: four thousand five hundred. Strategy session ‘How to ask for a raise’—one session, two hours: two thousand rubles. And”—she made a theatrical pause—“a lecture series on ‘The difference between healthy family relationships and toxic dependency.’ Delivered over the month, individually. Priceless. But for the ledger we’ll set a symbolic amount: ten thousand rubles.”
She snapped the planner shut.
“Therefore, after offsetting your forty-two-thousand-ruble invoice, your aggregate debt to me at month’s end is thirty-one thousand three hundred and twenty rubles. I can accept cash or a transfer. And yes, starting tomorrow I’m switching to advance payment for my services. In the morning—the price list; in the evening—settlement. So that, as you say, everything is fair.”
Absolute, dead silence fell over the kitchen. Viktoria Alexandrovna sat staring at a point on the sunflower vinyl. Her world, built on petty tallies and quiet power, wasn’t merely destroyed. It was annihilated—burned to ash by the logic she herself had birthed. Kirill looked at his wife as if at a complete stranger—a person who had just carried out a public execution of his world, his mother, and himself. He was crushed. They both were crushed and humiliated, unable to say a word. Their petty tyranny had collided with cold, merciless management. And lost…
