Lena slowly raised her eyes from the book she’d been reading, curled up in the corner of the sofa. Something flickered in her brown eyes — a mix of tiredness and determination.
“Yes, I didn’t let him in,” she replied calmly, slipping an old theater ticket in as a bookmark. “And I’m not going to.”
Igor froze in the middle of the living room, unable to believe his ears. His face started to flush — first his neck, then his cheeks, then even his forehead turned crimson.
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?” he shouted so loudly the crystal chandelier rattled. “He’s MY father! MY FATHER, do you understand?”
“I understand,” Lena answered just as calmly. “Your father. The same one who last time called me a ‘stupid little country girl’ and said you could’ve found yourself a better wife.”
“He was JOKING!”
“He has a strange sense of humor. Especially that time, when in front of your guests he told everyone that I supposedly don’t know how to cook and that your mother’s borscht was a hundred times better. Or when he announced that I was deliberately not having children with you so I wouldn’t ruin my figure.”
Igor nervously unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, as if the room had suddenly become stuffy.
“Lena, he’s an old man! That’s just the way he is… He’s seventy years old!”
“So what? Does age give him the right to humiliate people?” Lena got up from the sofa, and the book fell to the floor with a dull thud. “Igor, I’ve been putting up with his antics for THREE YEARS. For THREE YEARS I’ve been listening to insults, mockery, and comparisons with your mother, who’s been dead for ten years!”
“DON’T YOU DARE talk about my mother!”
“But your father can say whatever he likes about me, right? Remember how in front of your friends he said I must have done badly in school if I ended up working as a simple shop manager?”
“You’re exaggera—” Igor began, but fell silent when he saw his wife’s eyes.
“NO, I am NOT exaggerating!” Lena clenched her fists. “Remember your sister’s birthday? When your father announced for everyone to hear that I’d set the table wrong and the forks were on the wrong side? And then he lectured for an hour about how a decent wife should behave?”
“He was trying to help…”
“HELP?” Lena’s voice cracked. “He was trying to HUMILIATE me! And you know that perfectly well! But you DON’T CARE! You’ve never cared!”
Igor walked over to the bar and poured himself some wine. His hands were trembling slightly.
“Lena, let’s not fight. Dad came from another city, he has nowhere to stay…”
“There are hotels.”
“You’re serious? You want to send my own father to a hotel?”
“And your own wife can be humiliated?” Lena shot back. “Igor, I am NOT going to put up with it anymore. Either you take my side, or…”
“Or what?” Igor drank the wine in one gulp and slammed the glass down on the table. “Is that a threat?”
“Just stating a fact. I’m done being the family punching bag.”
“What do you mean, ‘punching bag’?” her husband exploded. “You live like a queen! An apartment in the center, a car, vacations twice a year! What more do you want?”
Lena gave a bitter little smile.
“Respect. Just basic human respect.”
“You’re just hysterical! You’re always unhappy with something!”
“I’m unhappy that my own husband lets his father wipe his feet on me!”
“ENOUGH!” Igor slammed his fist on the table. “Dad is coming tomorrow, and you WILL welcome him! And you will behave the way a wife is supposed to!”
“NO.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I won’t welcome him. And I won’t ‘behave the way I’m supposed to.’ Because by ‘supposed to’ you mean silently enduring humiliation, don’t you?”
Igor stepped toward his wife, and Lena involuntarily stepped back.
“You’re forgetting WHO the head of this house is! WHO makes the money!”
“Oh, so we’ve finally gotten to the point!” Lena crossed her arms over her chest. “Money. It all comes down to money. You think that just because you earn more, you can treat me like the help?”
“I don’t think that!”
“But you act exactly that way! And so does your father! Remember how he said, ‘Igoryok, why do you need this pauper? You should’ve found a rich one, with a dowry’?”
“That’s not what he meant…”
“Then what did he mean, Igor? Explain it to me. Spell it out for the idiot!”
Igor turned toward the window. Outside, dusk was gathering, and the city lights were coming on. Somewhere below, cars were honking, people were hurrying along. Just another ordinary evening in a big city.
“You know what,” he said at last, “I’m sick of listening to your complaints. Dad is coming tomorrow at three in the afternoon. And you will meet him. This is not up for discussion.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you can start looking for another place to live.”
Lena gasped.
“You… you’re throwing me out of the house?”
“I’m giving you a choice. Either you behave like a normal wife, or…”
“Or I get out. I see.”
She walked past her husband into the bedroom. Igor heard closet doors banging and something falling to the floor.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
“Packing!” came from the bedroom.
“STOP THIS HYSTERIA!”
Lena came out holding a small sports bag.
“This isn’t hysteria, Igor. It’s a decision. I’m leaving.”
“Where? To your mom in the village?” he snorted. “Sure, I’ll enjoy watching how you live there without all your city comforts!”
“You’ll see,” Lena agreed, putting on her jacket.
“Oh, come on! Quit the act!” Igor blocked her way. “So what if Dad is a bit harsh sometimes… Just put up with it! It’s not like he’ll live forever!”
Lena raised her eyes to him, and Igor involuntarily recoiled from her gaze — cold, distant, a stranger’s.
“You know what’s the saddest part? You don’t even try to stand up for me. You don’t even pretend to. Pleasing Daddy is more important to you than supporting your wife.”
“He’s my FATHER!”
“And I’m your WIFE! Or your ex already?”
With that, Lena walked around the frozen Igor and headed to the door. Her hand on the handle, she turned back:
“I’ll leave the keys with the concierge. And by the way, tell your father the apartment is all his now. Let him enjoy it.”
The door slammed. Igor was left alone in the empty apartment.
A week passed. Igor was sure Lena would come back. Where could she go, really? She’d stay with a friend a couple of days, cool off and crawl back. He even rehearsed his speech: he’d forgive her magnanimously, but she needed to remember her place.
His father arrived the next day, just as planned. Stepan Borisovich, a big man with a military bearing, made himself at home in the apartment right away.
“Where’s your woman?” he asked, looking around.
“She went to her mother’s. We had a little fight.”
“Ah, well, good. Peace and quiet in the house. And we can talk man to man.”
The first few days, Igor enjoyed the absence of what he now called “female whims” — Lena’s requests for help around the house. His father cooked simple food — fried eggs, pasta, sausages. No one was in a hurry to clean.
“That’s how you should live!” Stepan would say, sprawling on the sofa with a beer bottle. “No women nagging you all the time!”
On the fourth day, the apartment began to grow dirty. Unwashed dishes piled up in the sink, socks and newspapers lay scattered on the floor, and there were no clean towels left in the bathroom.
“Dad, maybe we should clean up?” Igor suggested timidly.
“That’s women’s work! When yours comes back, she can clean. No need to spoil her!”
On the seventh day Igor tried calling Lena for the first time. Her phone was switched off. He sent a text — it didn’t go through. Apparently, his number was blocked.
An uneasy feeling started gnawing at him from the inside. What if she didn’t come back? What if this wasn’t a bluff?
“Dad,” he began at dinner (if you could call frozen dumplings from a bag dinner), “maybe I should apologize to Lena?”
Stepan choked.
“Apologize? YOU? To HER? Are you crazy, son? A man should never apologize to a woman! She’ll come running on her own, wagging her tail!”
“But it’s already been a week…”
“So what? Let a month pass! She’ll sulk and then come back! And you lay down the rules — so she knows her place!”
Igor nodded, but the little worm of doubt kept gnawing.
The second week brought new problems. The food in the fridge ran out, and Stepan flatly refused to go to the store:
“What am I, a woman, to go lugging bags around? Order delivery!”
Igor did. The courier brought the groceries, but neither father nor son knew how to cook anything decent. Their attempt at soup ended with a burnt pot and the fire alarm going off.
“See what happens without women!” Stepan grumbled, scraping the black mess from the bottom. “She probably ran off on purpose so we’d suffer here without her!”
Igor kept quiet, though he wanted to remind his father who’d actually driven Lena to that decision.
By the end of the second week, the apartment had turned into a pigsty. There were no clean clothes left at all — neither father nor son knew how to use the washing machine. Igor tried to figure it out from the manual, but Stepan snatched the paper from his hands:
“Don’t embarrass yourself! If the neighbors find out, they’ll laugh! A man doing laundry!”
One evening Igor came home from work especially tired. A contract had fallen through, the boss was unhappy. At home he was greeted by the usual chaos and his father planted in front of the TV.
“Dad, have you been home all day?”
“Well, yeah. What else would I be doing?”
“You could at least wash the dishes…”
“That’s not men’s work!” Stepan snapped. “When your freeloader comes back, she can wash them!”
Something inside Igor shifted.
“Don’t call her that.”
“Why not? You went and married some uneducated country girl! How many times did I tell you — you should’ve married Olga! Now she was a girl — from a good family, with an education, with manners!”
“Olga’s been married for five years, Dad.”
“So what? She’ll get divorced and come back! And that one of yours should be kicked out! Good thing she left on her own! God spared you that burden!”
Igor silently went into the bedroom. On the bed where Lena usually slept lay her favorite book — she’d forgotten it in her rush. He picked up the volume and flipped through it. There were pencil notes in the margins — Lena liked copying out quotes she liked.
“Love doesn’t degrade, it elevates.”
“Respect is the foundation of any relationship.”
“Anyone who lets the person they love be humiliated is not worthy of that love.”
The last phrase was underlined twice.
The third week began with a blow-up. They ran out of toilet paper, clean plates and even salt. Stepan tore into his son:
“What kind of man of the house are you? You can’t even keep your home in order?”
“Dad, I work twelve hours a day!”
“So what? Your mother, God rest her soul, worked and still kept the house spotless!”
“Mom was a special woman…”
“Exactly! Not like this one of yours! She ran away at the first difficulty! I told you she wasn’t right for you!”
Igor wanted to say that this “difficulty” had lasted three years, but held his tongue.
That evening his sister Marina called.
“Hey, little brother! How are you? I heard Lena left?”
“Yeah, temporarily.”
“Temporarily?” There was doubt in Marina’s voice. “Igor, she called me last week. To say goodbye.”
“What do you mean, ‘say goodbye’?”
“What I said. She told me she’s not coming back. And you know, I don’t blame her.”
“WHAT? You’re taking her side?”
“I’m taking the side of common sense. Igor, Dad drove her to a nervous breakdown! Remember my birthday? She spent half an hour crying in the bathroom afterwards!”
“I didn’t know that…”
“Because you didn’t want to know! It was convenient for you to pretend everything was fine! And Lena was suffering!”
“Marina, this is our family business…”
“Igor, wake up! You lost a good wife because of Dad’s tyranny! And your own indifference!”
“Stay out of it.”
“As you wish. But don’t say I didn’t warn you later.”
Marina hung up. Igor sat there staring at the phone. The apartment was quiet — his father was asleep in front of the TV, snoring and drooling on the couch cushion.
A month. A whole month had passed since Lena left. Igor finally broke down and went to her mother’s in the suburbs. The small neat house greeted him with a tidy garden and a freshly painted fence.
The door was opened by his mother-in-law, Valentina Mikhailovna. Seeing her son-in-law, she frowned.
“What do you want?”
“I need Lena. I want to talk to her.”
“Lena’s not here.”
“What do you mean, not here? Where is she?”
“She moved. To another city. She found a job there, she’s renting an apartment.”
“Which city? Give me the address!”
“I won’t,” she cut him off. “She asked me not to tell you.”
“But I’m her husband!”
“Not anymore. She filed for divorce. The papers will come in the mail.”
Igor staggered.
“Divorce? But… why?”
Valentina looked at him like he was an idiot.
“You really don’t know? My daughter put up with your father’s rudeness for three years! THREE YEARS! And you didn’t lift a finger to protect her!”
“I…”
“What — you? You’re a coward, Igor! A typical mama’s boy who still jumps to attention whenever Daddy barks! Lena cried every time your father visited! EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And you pretended you didn’t notice!”
“I didn’t know she cried…”
“Because you didn’t want to know! It was convenient — the wife puts up with everything, keeps quiet, does the laundry, cleans, cooks! And the fact that she was being humiliated — you DIDN’T CARE!”
With that, Valentina slammed the door in his face.
He didn’t remember the drive back. His head was spinning with his mother-in-law’s words, his sister’s words, and the notes in Lena’s book…
At home he was met by an angry father.
“Where have you been? There’s nothing to eat! The fridge is empty!”
“Dad, why didn’t you go to the store yourself? You’ve got money.”
“What am I, a woman, to go shopping? It’s your job to provide for your father!”
Something in Igor finally snapped.
“You know what, Dad? Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s time you learned to take care of yourself.”
“WHAT? How dare you talk to your father like that?”
“How did you dare talk to my wife?”
“Your ex-wife,” Stepan corrected him nastily. “Your little country girl ran off!”
“She’s not some country girl! She’s a smart, kind, caring woman you drove to despair!”
“Me? I just told her the truth! She can’t cook — I said so! She doesn’t know proper manners — I didn’t lie about that either!”
“She cooks just fine! And she knows manners better than you do! It’s you, Dad, who’s rude and ignorant!”
Stepan turned purple.
“How dare you…”
“I DARE!” Igor yelled. “I lost my wife because of you! Because of your rudeness, arrogance and nastiness!”
“Look at you, grieving over that nobody! You’ll find another one, a better one!”
“I WON’T! Because Lena was the best! And I, idiot that I am, didn’t appreciate her!”
His father snorted contemptuously.
“Then stay single! I’ll go live with Marina!”
“Go ahead! Though I doubt she’ll take you after the way you treated her husband.”
“What? I never touched Andrei!”
“‘Four-eyes accountant,’ ‘spineless,’ ‘a doormat’ — those weren’t your words?”
“That… that’s different…”
“No, it’s not! You humiliate everyone, Dad! Everyone who doesn’t live up to your inflated standards!”
Stepan clutched at his chest.
“Oh, I feel sick… my heart…”
Before, Igor would have rushed to his father, fussed around, called an ambulance. Now he just waved a tired hand.
“Cut it out. That trick doesn’t work anymore. The heart pills are in the medicine cabinet.”
With that he went into the bedroom and locked the door.
Another two weeks passed. Stepan left — first he tried moving in with Marina, but she set conditions: he had to apologize to her husband and promise to behave himself. His pride wouldn’t allow it. In the end he went back to his own city, grumbling and cursing his ungrateful children.
Igor was left alone in the huge cluttered apartment. He tried to clean up — it went badly. He hired a cleaning lady — she came once and never returned, saying she wouldn’t work in such a pigsty.
The divorce papers arrived three weeks later. Igor signed them without even reading — it was too late to change anything anyway.
Work started going downhill too. Without Lena’s support — her listening, her advice, her encouragement — Igor began to make mistakes. An important presentation flopped — he forgot key figures. Talks with partners fell through — he was late to the meeting.
“Igor Stepanovich,” his boss called him in, “what’s going on with you? It’s like you’re not here.”
“I’m sorry, Pavel Andreyevich. Personal problems.”
“Resolve them quickly. Otherwise we’ll have to find someone to replace you.”
Three months passed. Igor more or less learned to cook simple meals, figured out the washing machine, even started cleaning. But the apartment still looked unlived in — it lacked the warmth, the cozy touch Lena had given it.
He tried to find her — through social media, through mutual acquaintances. No luck. It was as if she’d vanished.
From Marina he found out that his ex-wife had gotten a good job at a large company. Turned out she had a degree in economics, something Igor had never even known — he’d never asked.
“She was always smart,” his sister said. “You just never noticed. You only saw a housewife and a woman in your bed.”
“I loved her!”
“No, Igor. You loved your comfort. That’s not the same thing.”
Half a year passed. Igor finally worked up the nerve to go to the city where, according to rumors, Lena now lived. He found the company she worked for and waited for her outside.
She came out of the office at seven in the evening — elegant, in a business suit, with a neat hairstyle. Next to her walked a man — tall, handsome, in a coat. They were talking animatedly about something. Lena was laughing.
Igor couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her laugh.
He stepped toward her.
“Lena!”
She stopped. The smile faded from her face.
“Igor? What are you doing here?”
“I… I need to talk to you. Alone.”
The man beside her frowned.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, Anton, it’s fine. This is my ex-husband. Wait for me in the car, I’ll be right there.”
Anton reluctantly walked away, casting wary glances at Igor.
“Talk quickly,” Lena said. “We’re in a hurry.”
“Lena, I… I’m sorry. I was an idiot. I realized it too late, but…”
“But what?” Her voice was cold. “You want me to come back?”
“Yes! I mean… I know I don’t deserve it, but…”
“Igor, stop. It’s over between us. Completely and irrevocably.”
He stood there silently, watching Lena get into the car with Anton, and for the first time in all those months he truly understood: he hadn’t just lost a wife — he’d lost a wonderful person who had loved him despite everything. He’d thought his status, salary and apartment would keep her, that she had nowhere to go — and he’d miscalculated badly.
Back in the empty apartment, where his footsteps echoed, Igor took out his phone and blocked his father’s number — the old man had been calling for three days, demanding money for his birthday, but Igor hadn’t even congratulated him.
At that very moment, Lena was laughing in a cozy restaurant, listening to Anton’s stories. He hadn’t proposed yet, and she wasn’t rushing him — she was simply enjoying being with a man who respected her, valued her, and would never let anyone humiliate her. For the first time in many years, she felt truly happy
