The evening in the kitchen of their Khrushchev-era flat was not just stuffy – it was suffocating. The air, thick with the fumes of burnt sunflower oil and cheap “Laskovy May” perfume, which Anya had vainly tried to use to drown out the smell of failure, hung motionless like an oily shroud. On the stove, in an old frying pan with chipped enamel, lay two pitiful excuses for cutlets – shriveled, gray-brown lumps of minced meat with charred sides. Next to them a small pot of mashed potatoes was bubbling – not white and fluffy, but gray and watery, more like paste.
Anya felt like a squeezed lemon. The day at work had been hellish: a missed deadline, a screaming boss, a mountain of corrections for the investor presentation. Two hours in a traffic jam had been the last straw. All she wanted was to collapse face-down into a pillow and black out. But no. She had to feed “the breadwinner.”
She slammed the plate with this culinary disaster down on the table in front of Yegor. The porcelain clinked against the glass tabletop – a sharp, accusatory sound. Yegor, already changed into his stretched-out home sweatpants, sat hunched over his phone. He didn’t even look up. His fingers flicked quickly through his social media feed. Anya clenched her teeth. This habit of his – to ignore her, disappearing into the virtual world the moment he got home – had always infuriated her. Tonight it infuriated her especially.
He finally tore himself away from the screen. Without interest, he poked a cutlet with his fork. Broke off a piece. Brought it to his mouth. Chewed slowly, with obvious effort, his face gradually twisting into a grimace of disgust, as if he were gnawing on soap. He swallowed with visible difficulty. Took a sip of water from his glass. Then abruptly pushed the plate away. The fork fell with a dull clatter.
“Mom’s right,” he threw out. His voice was not just cold – it was icy, like a file scraping along her nerves. “You really don’t know how to cook. At all. A complete zero. This… This isn’t even fit for a dog. It’s torture. Every. Damn. Time.” He flicked the napkin away with disgust. “How do you eat THIS? Do you at least cook something human for yourself? Or do you stuff this crap into yourself too? It stinks, it’s disgusting!”
Anya flinched, but not from hurt – from a sudden surge of fury so sharp it made her vision darken. She tore off her apron – a cheap synthetic one bought on sale at Magnit – and threw it over the back of a chair. The chair rocked.
“Mom? Your sainted mom again?” Her voice betrayed her, trembling with pent-up tension. “She’d cook for you and wash your socks too. But she can’t! Because you’re here! With me! With this very same ‘incompetent fool’, as you so graciously put it!”
“‘Incompetent’ is putting it mildly!” Yegor jumped up so abruptly that the chair crashed to the linoleum with a deafening bang. “I crawl home from work like a piece of shit! Drained! And here… THIS?!” He kicked the table leg. “You could at least buy something decent in a deli, since you can’t do a damn thing yourself! But no! Save money! You count every penny like we’re beggars! Like I’m making pennies, not a salary!”
“Save?!” Anya spun around to face him. Her eyes were burning with a cold, poisonous fire. “Save on WHAT, Yegor? On your new Harman Kardon for the car? The one you BEGGED me to buy because ‘the old speakers are garbage’? On your ‘platinum’ OSAGO insurance, which you chose yourself – the most expensive option, because ‘reliability’? The one that costs like a cast-iron bridge?! On your fancy brand shirts, five thousand a piece, that I spend hours ironing every Sunday instead of resting, so you can strut around? On the mortgage for THIS dump in a panel box which we got only because MY salary could cover both the down payment and the monthly installments?!” Her voice broke into a scream that tore her throat, something inhuman. “Yes! I earn money! I earn good money! One hundred and forty thousand, Yegor! ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY! And you? Forty-five! More than three times as much, you hear me?! THREE times! You know what? Go find yourself a cook with MY salary! Pay them out of YOUR forty-five! Because MY money pays for everything! For your gas, for your ‘status’ and ‘nice-to-haves’! For this very ‘swill’ you couldn’t swallow! For this apartment where you treat me like a rag, insulting me! For your life, in the end!”
Silence fell suddenly, thick and viscous, like tar. The only sounds were Anya’s ragged breathing and the ticking of the cheap Chinese clock above the stove. Yegor’s face turned crimson, flooded with the blood of helpless rage and humiliation. The veins on his neck bulged. His fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
“So that’s how it is!” he hissed, spittle flying from the corner of his mouth. “The salary! You’re always waving it in my face! ‘I’m the breadwinner! I support us! I carry it all!’ And the fact that I work? That I bust my ass on that godforsaken construction site? That my boss is an asshole and my coworkers are drunks? That doesn’t count? All you care about are numbers you can throw in my face, huh?! You just lucked out, that’s all, sucking up to management! You got lucky! And I’m trying! I’m doing my best! I’m tearing myself apart!”
“Doing your best?!” Anya laughed bitterly, hysterically, the sound as harsh as metal scraping. “Five years, Yegor! FIVE WHOLE YEARS! In the same position! ‘Junior supply manager’! Not a single promotion! No prospects! And a salary that can’t even buy a decent cut of meat, let alone a restaurant dinner! Yes, money matters! It matters a lot! When you can’t even cover a third of our expenses! When I have to drag everything on my back! And work like a draft horse on two projects! And listen to your complaints about the cutlets as if I’m a head chef! And look like a ‘real woman’ according to your mommy’s commandments – well-groomed, rested, with a manicure! And you? What do you do besides criticize and demand?! Have you even once in the past year seriously thought about changing jobs? About taking courses? About actually EARNING A DECENT LIVING?! Or are you perfectly comfortable sitting on my neck as it is?”
“I’M NOT SITTING ON YOUR NECK!” he roared, swinging his fist but striking only air. “I work! I have responsibilities! I have things I’m in charge of! And you… you’re just a lousy cook! And a crappy homemaker! Look around! Filth! Dust! The dishes from this morning are still in the sink! Your damn apron stinks of burnt grease! You stink of sweat and exhaustion!”
“Are your hands broken, Your Highness?” Anya shot back, stepping right up to him so close he could feel her hot breath. Her eyes were dry and frightening. “The dishes aren’t washed? You came into the kitchen this morning, didn’t you? Made yourself coffee? And did you wash your cup after? As usual, no. Because that’s not your job, right? You’re a ‘man’! You’re the ‘breadwinner’! Though the only thing you seem to ‘bring in’ are my frayed nerves and gray hairs! Go to your mommy, Yegor! Maybe she’ll agree to treat you like a little king! Feed you from a spoon, wash your socks, do everything! Because to her you’re still her eternal little boy! A helpless, pampered bastard!”
She spun around and walked out, slamming the bedroom door so hard the walls shuddered and a porcelain shepherdess figurine – a gift from that same Margarita Stepanovna last New Year – crashed from the living room shelf. In the kitchen there was a deafening crash. The plate with the uneaten cutlets shattered against the wall, leaving a greasy, ugly smear of meat and potato sludge on the wallpaper. Then the pot of mashed potatoes clanged to the floor, spilling the gray mass all over. Then something metallic – a fork? A spoon? Anya buried her face in a pillow, pressing her hands over her ears. But she couldn’t shut out the sounds of his rage. Let him smash things. Let him wreck the place. She didn’t care anymore. Let him scrub that mess off the walls and linoleum himself. Her patience had finally burst, turning to dust, blown away by his words “Mom’s right.” That phrase hung in the air like a poisonous mist.
Morning met them not just with silence – it met them with an icy emptiness soaked through with hatred. Anya stood at the kitchen window smoking (she’d quit a year ago, but today she’d bought a pack again), watching the fine, nasty drizzle outside. In her hand was a cup of cold coffee. Bitter. Like everything around her. On the floor, the ominous stain of last night’s mashed potatoes had already dried and darkened. On the wall, the greasy mark from the cutlet looked like a bloodstain on a conscience. The shards of the porcelain shepherdess lay in a corner of the hallway – sharp and dangerous, like their relationship.
Yegor shuffled around in the hallway, getting ready for work. He breathed noisily, dropped his keys, banged the wardrobe door. Not a word. Not a single glance in her direction. He pulled on his jacket, shoved his feet into his shoes. Then he slammed the front door so hard that another knick-knack fell from the hallway shelf – a glass sphere. It shattered with a crystalline chime into a thousand tiny fragments. Anya didn’t even move. Didn’t turn around. She just took a drag on her cigarette, staring at the rain. Let them lie there. Like the shards of their marriage. Like the shards of her illusions.
The whole day at the office passed in a fog. The numbers in the report blurred before her eyes, her thoughts kept circling back to last night’s scene. To his words. To that hateful “Mom’s right.” To how he’d yelled that she “stank.” Resentment, anger and bitterness were eating her away from the inside like acid. She didn’t feel like a wife, not like a partner. She felt like a dairy cow, a scapegoat and unpaid maid rolled into one. Her phone was silent. No messages, no apologetic call. Just silence. Ringing, contemptuous silence. During her lunch break she stopped by an ATM. Checked her balance. Her salary had come in. One hundred forty-three thousand seven hundred twenty rubles. The numbers seemed both a comfort and an indictment. That money gave her power and freedom. And made her a hostage.
In the evening the key grated in the lock with a special, spiteful force. Anya sensed trouble even before the door opened. Not just sensed – she knew. Her heart sank; a cold wave of fear and rage ran down her spine. Yegor walked in first. His face – a stone mask of anger and triumph at the same time. He didn’t look at her. Immediately stepped aside. And behind him, like an armored battering ram, SHE rolled in. Margarita Stepanovna. His mother.
She was in her “parade” outfit – a faux-karakul coat in a garish beige, too tight around the hips. On her feet, wobbly high-heeled shoes. Her face – a mask of righteous fury under a layer of foundation and bright pink lipstick. In her hand – a huge handbag crammed full of who-knows-what. She didn’t take off her coat or shoes. She just stood in the middle of the tiny hallway, sweeping her gaze over the apartment with the contemptuous, scanning look of a judge at the crime scene. Her eyes slid over the stain on the floor, lingered on the greasy mark on the wallpaper, dropped to the shards of the figurine and the broken glass ball in the corner.
“Hello, Anechka,” her voice sounded sweet, like cheap liqueur, and poisonous, like strychnine. “I came to check on you. To see how you’re slowly eating my son alive. Starving him and throwing your money in his face.” She shook her head with a theatrical sigh. “Oh, what a disgrace… No order, no comfort… Just like pigs in a sty… And that stench…”
She ostentatiously wrinkled her nose.
Yegor stood behind her like a loyal squire, staring at a spot on the floor near her shoes. Coward. Pathetic, miserable coward, who’d brought his mommy to “sort things out.”
“No one’s starving him, Margarita Stepanovna,” Anya answered without getting up from the couch. Her voice sounded surprisingly even, almost monotone. “The fridge is packed full. He just doesn’t want to cook. Or maybe he doesn’t know how. Just like he doesn’t know how to earn enough for the lifestyle he wants.”
“Oh, Anechka!” The mother-in-law stepped forward into the living room, her heel thudding loudly on the linoleum. She stabbed her pointing finger, with its chipped nail polish, at the air like a rapier. “You dare throw his work in his face? Look at yourself! Her finger swung sharply toward the unwashed cups on the coffee table, toward the scattered report papers. “This home is a pigsty! Your husband comes home and there’s no dinner! No love! No care! And yesterday… yesterday you supposedly served him such disgusting cutlets that he almost got poisoned! His stomach still hurts! He’s still nauseous, poor thing! And you dare criticize his salary? He’s a man! He’s supposed to build a career, use his head, develop strategies! Not crawl around the kitchen like your servant! It’s your job to create the conditions for him! To be his support, his quiet harbor, not a buzz saw scraping him down to the bone!”
“Conditions?” Anya slowly, as if in slow motion, rose from the couch. Every movement was strung tight like a wire about to snap. “What kind of conditions, Margarita Stepanovna? Where he comes home and screams that the cutlets aren’t right? Where I work like a convict on two projects, and he ‘builds a career’ by warming a chair for five years straight in the position of ‘junior manager’ with no hint of a promotion? Where I crawl at his feet on my knees? Apologize because after ten hours in a stuffy office and two hours standing in traffic I don’t have the strength to play restaurant chef following your recipes?!” Her voice began to gather power, growing sharp and metallic. “Your ‘man’, Margarita Stepanovna, your ‘breadwinner’, makes forty-five thousand rubles! FORTY-FIVE! And I make one hundred forty! The mortgage is sixty thousand! Utilities – ten! His car loan and his ‘golden’ insurance – at least another fifteen! His clothes, his cigarettes, his beer with friends, his gas for the trips to your dacha! All of that is on MY shoulders! On MY salary! And him? He shows up and yells that the cutlets are under-salted! And you come here like a fury to defend your precious loser!”
“You’re lying!” the mother-in-law screeched, her face contorting with rage, mottled with ugly red blotches. She shook her head so hard that her karakul hat slid sideways. “That can’t be true! Yegorushka… he… he’s doing his best! His job is hard and stressful, his boss is a beast… He gets tired!”
“Everyone’s job is hard!” Anya cut her off, stepping closer. Nothing could stop her now. “I’m not lying in a deck chair in the Maldives sipping cocktails either! I bring money into this home! Real, serious money! Not miserable handouts! And I get so exhausted my hands are shaking at night! So your precious Yegorushka can either start earning like a real man, or shut up and eat what he’s given without poisoning the air with his whining! Or…” She smiled, caustic, almost demonic. “He can go to you. To live off you. Since you’re so obsessed with his proper nutrition. Cook him your sacred cutlets with soul. Wash his underwear. Return him to his childhood – that’s where he’s stuck!”
“How dare you?!” Margarita Stepanovna boiled over as if someone had poured boiling water on her. “I am not his cook or his laundress! And I won’t let you humiliate my son! He’ll find a job! A good job! Worthy of his mind and talents! And a woman who will value him instead of throwing every ruble in his face like some street hawker! A woman who can cook, make a home cozy, be gentle, compliant, a real keeper of the hearth! Not like you – a woman with a sledgehammer instead of a heart! A man in a skirt! A dried-up, bitter hag!”
“Excellent!” Anya slapped her palm down on the coffee table. The cups jumped; one toppled over, the remaining coffee spilling over the papers. Margarita Stepanovna and Yegor both started. “Let him look! Look together! When you find him such a Cinderella, I’ll be thrilled! I’ll happily throw this freeloader off my back. And in the meantime…” She lunged toward the old dresser, yanked open a drawer, grabbed a thick folder of printouts. With a sweeping motion she threw it on the now coffee-soaked table in front of her mother-in-law. The folder burst open, the papers fanning out. “Here’s your reality! Your son is a freeloader! A dependent! A parasite living off me! And you, Margarita Stepanovna, are his main cheerleader and enabler! Because from the cradle you drilled into him that he’s a prince and everyone around him are his serfs! Especially women! And that’s what he grew into! A loser-prince, the forever-whining prince on my back!”
Yegor exploded. He lost the last scraps of self-control. His face went purple.
“That’s enough! Mom, let’s go! Get out of here! Right now!” He grabbed his mother roughly by the arm above the elbow, trying to drag her toward the door. His fingers dug into the faux karakul.
“How dare she?!” the mother-in-law raged, struggling, her voice breaking into a shriek. “I’ll find a way to deal with you! I’ll call your parents! Let them come from their village! Let them see how their daughter disgraces her husband, lets the house fall apart, can’t even be a proper wife! Let them see what they raised! Let them be ashamed!”
“Call them!” Anya stood as straight as she could, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her voice rang with metal, without a trace of doubt. “Call them right now! Let them come! Let them see THESE numbers!” She jabbed a finger at the scattered sheets – bank statements, mortgage and car loan payment schedules, her name at the top of every page. “Let them see whose money is supporting the ‘prince’ and his eternally dissatisfied ‘queen mother’! Let them see this ‘home’ that exists only because of my salary! Go! All of you! Set up a tribunal! I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of! The shame is on you! On both of you! Shame for your helplessness, your nerve, and your pathetic attempt to dump the blame for your uselessness on me!”
Gasping with inhuman fury and humiliation, Margarita Stepanovna snatched up her tasteless handbag. Her hand was shaking.
“You’ll burn in hell for those words! I’ll curse you! You’ll regret this! Yegorushka, come on! There’s nothing for you here! In this dump! In this stinking den!”
She flounced out into the stairwell, slamming the door with such a hysterical crash that the flimsy wall shook. Yegor darted after her without so much as a glance at Anya, at the chaos in the room, at the scattered proof of his worthlessness. The door closed with a dull, final thud, like a coffin lid. The coffin of their marriage. The coffin of all illusions.
Anya stood alone in the suddenly enormous, deathly quiet living room. Her hands were trembling. Her mouth was dry. There was a lump in her throat, but no tears. Only a burning dryness and emptiness. The tears of rage and helplessness were somewhere deep inside, but she clenched her jaw until it hurt and swallowed them. I won’t give them that satisfaction. Ever. On the table, amid the coffee-soaked papers, lay the ill-fated folder. Evidence of her being right. And the verdict on their life together. There would be no peace. Not after this. Not after he brought his mother here. Not after being called “a man in a skirt” and “a dried-up hag.”
She walked to the window. Down below, in the dim, flickering light of the streetlamp, two figures hovered. Him – hunched over, helpless, small like a child. Her – waving her arms, jabbing a finger into his chest, into his face, yelling something furiously. Yegor tried to shield himself, to wave her off, but he looked pathetic and defeated. Anya turned away. Let them. Let them stew in their own juices. In their imaginary world where he is a wronged prince and she is the evil stepmother. She was tired. Tired to the bone. Tired of dragging this unbearable cart of responsibility. Tired of constant reproaches, comparisons to his mother. Tired of his infantile weakness hiding behind feigned roughness. Tired of his mother’s poisonous “care” and the eternal refrain “Mom’s right.” She picked up her phone. Not to call her friend Lena and cry on her shoulder. Not to call her parents in the village – they wouldn’t understand, they’d tell her to “make peace for the sake of the family.” She found a number in her contacts. “Marina Realtor.” The very woman who had helped them find this apartment two years ago. She had to find out. Find out quickly.
She dialed the number. Her voice was surprisingly calm, even, almost lifeless, like a newsreader reading a weather report:
“Hello? Good evening, Marina. This is Anna Viktorovna, we looked at the flat on Belorusskaya with you two years ago… Yes, that one. I need your help. An urgent rental. A one-room apartment. Clean, modern. In a good neighborhood. Preferably close to the metro. No middlemen. With the possibility of moving in over the next few days. I’m ready to pay extra for speed. For everything to be handled cleanly and quickly. I’ll consider any options, even from tomorrow.” She glanced at the door behind which her life of yesterday remained. At the shards of glass and porcelain. At the greasy mark on the wall. At the coffee bog on the table. “I need to move out. Very quickly. As quickly as possible.”
A pause. She heard Marina on the other end rustling papers. “Yes, I’ll be available. I’ll be waiting for your options. Thank you.”
She hung up. The silence thickened around her again. But now it was different. Not ringing with unspoken grievances, but heavy as lead. A herald of the end. She went to the dresser, took out a large cardboard box from under the printer. She started calmly, without emotion, packing her things from the bedroom shelves into it. Books. Framed photos (the one where they were laughing in Turkey she took out of the frame and laid aside face down). Cosmetics. Her laptop. Her salary allowed it. Allowed her to start from a clean slate. Without cutlets. Without reproaches. Without Yegor. Without his mother. And that thought – bitter as wormwood, as lonely as this evening – still carried with it a strange, aching sense of relief. Freedom. Fragile, frightening, but still – freedom.
She opened her laptop. Started looking up family-law attorneys. The first step toward divorce. Her fingers typed confidently on the keyboard. Her salary allowed that too. Allowed her to buy herself freedom. At a high price. But it was worth it. On the floor, among the shards, the broken glass ball glinted dully. A symbol of shattered hopes. Anya walked past without bowing her head. Ahead there was only herself. For now, that was enough. More than enough.
