Marina was drying her hands on a kitchen towel when the phone rang. The number was familiar—Lena Sokolova, her classmate from the design faculty. They hadn’t spoken in over three years, ever since Marina went on maternity leave.
“Marish, hi! How are you, how’s the baby?” Lena’s voice sounded energetic, almost infectious. “Listen, I’m opening my own firm. A design studio. Remember how we dreamed about it? Well, I’ve decided! And I need people. Talented people. Do you remember that loft project of yours? I still keep the photos for inspiration.”
Marina felt something inside her stir after a long sleep. She glanced automatically at the calendar on the fridge—Thursday, an unremarkable day. Her son Timofey was at kindergarten; at home there was emptiness and a silence that had long since stopped being cozy and had simply become habitual.
“Lena, I… I haven’t worked for three years. I have a child, the house…”
“That’s why the pay won’t be great at first,” Lena cut in. “But the projects will be interesting, I guarantee it. Marish, at least think about it. You weren’t planning to bury your talent forever under pots and diapers, were you?”
After the call, Marina stood at the window for a long time, looking out at the familiar courtyard. She recalled herself five years earlier—an ambitious graduate with shining eyes, working at a small firm and dreaming of big projects. Then Viktor appeared—a reliable, solid man with a good salary as a mid-level manager. A wedding, a pregnancy, and the dreams were put off somewhere far away, for later.
In the evening, when Viktor came home from work, Marina met him with unusual enthusiasm.
“Vitya, just imagine—Lena called me! Remember I told you about her? She’s opening her own design bureau and she’s offering me a position!”
Viktor took off his shoes, set them neatly on the rack, and walked into the kitchen. Marina noticed his face take on that closed expression she’d learned to recognize over the years of their marriage.
“Marin, let’s be realistic,” he began, pouring himself tea. “What kind of salary will that be? Pennies, I bet. And what about home? I’ll come back from work to frozen dinners, the kid left to run wild. No, that doesn’t work for me.”
“Vitya, this is my profession. I put so much effort into my studies…”
“All my friends’ wives stay home, and everyone’s happy,” he said calmly, even a bit condescendingly, as if explaining obvious things. “Sergey’s, Kolya’s, Andrey’s. Normal families. A woman should run the household and raise the child. Why do you need this job? So the apartment gets dirty and you crawl home exhausted in the evenings?”
“It’s not just about money! I want to do what I love. I want to grow, to feel like a person and not a maid!”
“A maid?” Viktor set the cup down so hard tea sloshed onto the table. “Do I not earn enough for you? We have everything we need. You live in a nice apartment, you lack nothing. And you call yourself a maid?”
They quarreled. For the first time in a long while—truly, with raised voices and slamming doors. Marina lay awake half the night, replaying her conversation with Lena. By morning, she had made a decision.
A week later, she started work.
The first weeks were like a breath of fresh air after a long spell in a stuffy room. Marina woke with a sense of anticipation, hurried to the small office on the outskirts of town that smelled of fresh paint and coffee. She was once again discussing color palettes and composition, once again feeling like a professional whose opinion mattered.
She had to drop Timofey off at her mother-in-law’s—the latter was not thrilled with this turn of events, but kept quiet, only sighing meaningfully whenever they met. Viktor, for his part, demonstratively ignored his wife in the evenings, ate dinner in stony silence, and retreated to the room to watch football.
Two months later he spoke up.
“Marin, when is this going to end?” His voice sounded tired and irritated. “I’ve been eating pasta with hot dogs for a week. We haul Timka to my mom’s every day; he’s already getting fussy. And at home… I even have to find my own slippers when I get in.”
At that moment, Marina was at her laptop polishing a presentation for a client—Igor Vladimirovich Kruglov, the owner of a chain of stores who had commissioned the design of his new country house. It was their most promising project yet, and she couldn’t let the team down.
“Vitya, I understand, but I’m at a crucial stage right now. One more week and I can come up for air, I promise.”
“A week, then another week. When does normal life start?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have the strength to argue.
On the eve of an important meeting with Kruglov, Marina stopped by a boutique and bought a suit—strict, elegant, and, of course, not cheap. She understood that meetings with clients like this required the right look. You can’t show up in old jeans and a sweater.
When Viktor saw the receipt that popped up in his mobile banking app, his patience snapped.
“Forty-five thousand for a suit?! Are you out of your mind?!” He waved the receipt in her face. “Where did you get that kind of money? From our family budget? I work, I provide for the family, and you spend it on rags?”
“Vitya, it’s work attire, I need to look presentable…”
“Presentable?!” He was beside himself. “You know what? Enough. You wanted to work—then work. Live on your salary and don’t touch my money,” he declared, not realizing how badly he was miscalculating. “I’m not going to bankroll your hobbies anymore. Starting tomorrow you’re on your own. You’ll buy the groceries, pay for kindergarten—everything yourself, on your designer’s salary.”
Marina stood silent. Inside, everything tightened into a hard knot, but she didn’t argue. She just nodded and left the room.
The following weeks passed in a strange silence. They hardly spoke. Viktor ostentatiously cooked for himself, not touching the food she now bought separately. Marina plunged headlong into work. The Kruglov project expanded—he was so pleased with her ideas that he also ordered designs for a guest house and a bathhouse. And then something unexpected happened.
A month after their quarrel, Marina met Viktor in the entryway holding the keys to a new car.
“What’s this?” He stared at the shiny key fob in complete bewilderment.
“A car. I took it on credit,” she replied calmly, fastening her coat.
“On credit?! With what money are you going to pay it off?! Do you even realize what you’re doing?!”
Marina turned to him. There was no gloating or resentment on her face—only quiet confidence.
“With my own, Vitya. You said yourself—live on your salary, don’t touch your money. So I’m not touching it. I need a car for work. Igor Vladimirovich recommended me to his friends—they have houses outside the city, and I need to drive out to their sites. I’ve already signed three contracts, and five more are in the pipeline.”
“What contracts?” Viktor sank onto the sofa, and for the first time in a long while Marina saw confusion in his eyes instead of the usual certainty.
“It turns out wealthy people move in tight circles. Kruglov told his partners about our work. Then they told their acquaintances. Now our studio has a waiting list for a year ahead. Lena offered me a partnership in the bureau—I brought in so many clients. My share is now thirty percent of the profits. In the last two months I’ve earned more than you have in half a year.”
Viktor was silent. Marina could see his entire picture of the world reshuffling itself in his head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he finally managed.
“You didn’t ask. You were busy punishing me with silence and showing me how wrong I was.” Her voice wasn’t accusatory; it stated the facts. “By the way, the loan isn’t straining the family budget. The monthly payment is less than I currently spend on taxis to clients.”
Over the next few days Viktor moved quietly and thoughtfully around the house. Marina noticed him open his mouth to say something several times and then lose his nerve. Finally, on Saturday evening, after Timofey had fallen asleep, he knocked on the kitchen door, which served as her office in the evenings.
“Marish, can I come in?”
She looked up from her sketches.
“I wanted to… say I’m sorry.” The word came hard to him—she could tell. “I was wrong. I acted like a jerk, honestly. I thought I knew better how things should be. That my work mattered more, that I was the boss. And you… You’re amazing. You really are.”
Marina leaned back in her chair.
“You know, Vitya, I didn’t need your boss-of-the-house games. I needed you to support me. To believe in me. I didn’t ask you to bankroll my hobby, as you put it. I asked for the right to be myself.”
“I get it. Really.” He came closer and sat on the edge of the sofa. “I’m ashamed of what I said. Of making you prove to me that you had the right to work. You never should have had to prove anything.”
They were quiet for a long time. Then Marina handed him the tablet with her sketches.
“Want to see what I’m working on?”
Viktor took the tablet and began to scroll. His face slowly changed—surprise, then admiration.
“This… this is really beautiful. I didn’t realize you did things like this.”
“Because you never took an interest.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
In the weeks that followed, something shifted between them. Viktor began asking about her projects, listening, studying her sketches. He started picking up Timofey from kindergarten himself when she had late meetings.
One evening at dinner he set down his fork and said:
“Marish, what if we think about a house. A country one.”
“A house?”
“Well, yeah.” He smiled a little shyly. “We’re doing well now. We can afford it. And you’ll design it—I’ve seen your projects, you’re great at this. It’ll be our family home, created by you.”
Marina felt a warm wave spread through her chest.
“Vitya, are you serious?”
“Absolutely. It’ll be our project. Together. The way it should have been from the start.”
She stood, walked over to him, and hugged him.
“You know, I agree. On one condition.”
“What condition?”
“You stop comparing our family to your friends’ families. We are us. We have our own path.”
Viktor pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.
“Deal.”
That night, after everyone finally fell asleep, Marina lay for a long time staring into the darkness. She thought about how easy it would have been to lose herself in other people’s expectations. How she could have lived her life considering herself a maid in her own home, smothering her dreams with resentment and obedience. How their marriage might have turned into a cold coexistence of two people who had once loved each other.
But she took a chance. She pushed through the misunderstanding and hurt. And it turned out that beyond that wall there wasn’t a cliff, as she had feared, but a new road—for both of them.
Viktor turned in his sleep and held her tighter. Marina closed her eyes, feeling at last that she was home—not in an apartment, not in an office, but in her own life, the one she had chosen for herself.
And in the morning she had a meeting with a new client; then she’d need to pick up Timofey; in the evening—work on the sketches for their future house. An ordinary day. Her day. And it was wonderful
