Today Masha’s husband upset her badly. And not for the first time.
Anything that had to do with his mother had now become unpleasant to Masha. It plunged her into a state of gloom and made her feel unwell. She wanted to run away from this whole family as far as possible, and the only thing that stopped her was that she truly loved her husband. So for now, she was still fighting.
And yet everything had started so well when, a year ago, Alexey introduced her to his future mother-in-law!
Larisa Petrovna was the very picture of charm. She tried so hard to please her younger son’s future wife that she was clearly overdoing it. And Masha could see that, although she chalked it up to nerves and didn’t pay much attention. After all, it wasn’t with her that the girl was planning to live.
“Mashenka, I dream so much of my son being happy that I absolutely don’t care who his chosen one is. Yes, I’m such a modern and progressive mother!” she declared proudly.
“Seriously?” Maria asked, genuinely surprised.
“Absolutely! Take you, for example. I, for one, will calmly overlook the fact that your job is clearly not very well paid and, most likely, you don’t have a higher education. Am I right?”
Any intelligent person could see she was trying to find out the real state of affairs that way. And while the future mother-in-law never stopped smiling from ear to ear, she was nevertheless eyeing Masha’s torn jeans and stretched-out T-shirt with clear distaste—the clothes Masha happened to be wearing that day.
The girl generally didn’t worry too much about her appearance, especially at that moment. She and Lyosha were on their way back from friends’ dacha, and the young man, driven by a sudden burst of feeling, decided out of the blue to take his beloved to his parents to introduce her.
“Are you serious?” Masha burst out laughing. “Right now, looking like this? Are you sure your mother will understand? She won’t throw me out?”
“Oh, Mashun, don’t be such a prude and don’t imagine my mom as some prim society lady. It’ll be fine!” Alexey assured her. “She doesn’t care what you’re wearing. What matters is that you love me.”
Hearing her future mother-in-law’s words, Masha was taken aback for a moment, but decided not to show it.
“It’s very noble of you to make such sacrifices for your son. But I assure you, you don’t need to worry about me. My education is perfectly respectable—I have a university degree—and my job is good, too. At the very least, I’m not complaining; I get paid quite decently, enough to live on and still have some left over.”
“Really?” Larisa Petrovna said with disbelief, still looking at Masha’s outfit with a hint of disgust. “Well, fine, if you say so. I won’t argue.”
Later, when she found out from her son that his future wife was the head of a department in a large bank, the mother immediately calmed down. And after the wedding she didn’t stop boasting to all her friends and acquaintances that her daughter-in-law was the deputy director of a major bank, clearly promoting her a rank or two.
She didn’t do this out of stupidity, but for a particular reason known only to her. Larisa had far-reaching plans connected to her daughter-in-law’s financial situation.
After the wedding the young couple moved into a newly purchased apartment held in shared ownership; they had enough funds to buy a one-bedroom place without any loans or mortgages.
But Larisa Petrovna quickly assessed the situation, decided to take advantage of the fact that her daughter-in-law worked at a bank, and asked her to take out a large loan.
“Mashenka, I know that banks give their employees loans at very low interest rates. You don’t have a loan yet, right? So, I have a request for you—take out money for us, for me and my husband; we need to replace our car,” she began what was, for her, a very advantageous conversation.
“No, I won’t,” Maria cut her off without a second’s hesitation. “We have a good relationship right now. I want it to stay that way. If I take out a loan for you, every month I’ll be worrying whether you’ve made the payment. And if you’re late even once, or worse, if you don’t have the money for the next payment, we’ll end up in conflict. And as I just said, I don’t want that. So you’ll take the loan in your own names. If you want, I’ll help you with the process so it all gets done quickly. But that’s it.”
“What nonsense! Why would we not pay on time? We’re solvent, honest citizens. And we have no reason to let you down. I understand everything, I’m not stupid. It’s your reputation on the line. I promise we’ll always pay right on the dot!” the mother-in-law insisted.
“No,” Masha refused, which upset her mother-in-law very much; the latter held a grudge against her.
But not for long. Next time she came up with a different idea.
“Mashenka, lend us some money. Not much, about a hundred thousand. Arkady and I decided to go to the seaside, to a sanatorium to rest. We have part of the sum, but it’s not enough. I know you earn a good salary. And we’ll pay you back. As soon as we get back, my husband will get his paycheck and we’ll give it all back right away.”
“Larisa Petrovna, the fact that I work in a bank doesn’t give you the right to think I’m shoveling in money,” Masha replied. “No, that’s far from the case. And my entire salary is already allocated down to the last kopeck.”
“But Masha!” the mother-in-law tried to protest.
“You know perfectly well that Alexey and I are doing repairs in our new apartment right now, yes? And you also know we ordered furniture for the kitchen and the room; we told you that too. So why exactly should I give you such a substantial amount?”
“Oh, come on, don’t start! You do have money, and I know it! You work at a bank, not a fish kiosk. Just say you don’t want to give us anything. I bet you don’t shortchange your own parents; you must be slipping them money on a regular basis,” the mother-in-law suddenly flared up.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Masha really didn’t want to quarrel with her husband’s mother.
But it was as if the woman had made up her mind to pick a fight with her no matter what. Larisa was hurt and annoyed. Just yesterday she’d spoken on the phone with an old friend and boasted that her daughter-in-law, the deputy director at a bank, had paid for a three-week trip for them to a seaside sanatorium.
“Yes, that’s how lucky we are, Tanechka! I just can’t get over how lucky Lyoshenka was with his choice of wife. We’ll be set for life now. She works at a bank, she has money, and a good position on top of that.”
And now it turned out they weren’t going to any sanatorium at all, because they had exactly one third of the amount needed to pay for the trip.
“So you’re refusing us once and for all? Aren’t you afraid of spoiling our relationship?” the mother-in-law used her last argument.
“If you’re a smart woman, that won’t happen,” Maria ended the unpleasant conversation.
A couple of days later, her husband told Masha that his parents had had to go into debt and lean on all their relatives so they could go to the sanatorium for treatment.
“Well, good for them that they managed to solve their problem,” was all his wife replied.
Nevertheless, Alexey’s mother continued with her own strategy, aimed at taming the rebellious daughter-in-law.
“Alyosha, this can’t go on. Why does your wife behave like that?”
“Like what?” her son asked, taken aback; he had no idea how serious the brewing conflict was.
“Like this! To Masha, your father and I are strangers, that much is obvious! She doesn’t care about our problems at all, she doesn’t take part in the life of our family in any way! That’s not right! Have a serious talk with your wife and explain that since she’s become part of our family, she can’t just brush me and my requests aside so dismissively,” his mother lectured him.
“Mom, maybe it’s not as bad as you think? If Masha refused you something, she must’ve had a good reason.”
“A good reason? She’s just stingy with us, that’s all! She’s sitting on her money and hoarding it.”
“Mom, you’ve always been a smart woman. It’s strange to hear this kind of talk from you,” her son was surprised.
“Stop it! You’re not going to teach me how to think,” his mother snapped, refusing to listen to Alexey’s arguments; her resentment toward her daughter-in-law clouded her judgment.
As time went on, the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law only got worse. Now every time they met, Larisa Petrovna never missed an opportunity to jab at Masha, accusing her of callousness and indifference.
“Of course, why would you care about someone else’s problems? You’ve got your own money, so you can look down on everyone else, right?”
“Mom, stop it—what are you talking about?” her son couldn’t take it anymore.
“I won’t stop. I have a right to my opinion.”
Masha was seriously thinking about cutting off contact with her in-laws completely or at least reducing it to a minimum. She told her husband about this one day.
“Mom will be offended.”
“She’s offended all the time anyway. What difference will it make?” Maria asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do anything so drastic? They’re still my parents.”
“I don’t know… I’m not a fan of drama, but I’m not going to put up with being treated like this either.”
But fate stepped in.
One weekend early in the morning, Larisa Petrovna called. She talked with Alexey for a long time and then asked to speak to her daughter-in-law.
“Here, Mom wants to talk to you,” her husband said, sounding anything but cheerful.
“About what?”
“You’ll find out. I did my best to explain everything to her, but… well, she’s my mother,” Alexey said, covering the receiver with his hand.
“Hello, Maria,” Larisa Petrovna began in an official tone. “What is this you’ve come up with? What’s this nonsense about a trip abroad?”
“We’re going on vacation. We’ve been planning it for a long time. And we bought the tour in advance,” Maria replied calmly, knowing full well that her mother-in-law already knew all this.
“Right, well, you’ll return the tour and give the money to Pavel,” she ordered, referring to her older son. “He needs it more right now. He has serious problems, his family is falling apart. You two are young and healthy; you’ll have time to go later, next year. You’re not worn out yet!”
“No, that’s not going to happen. My husband and I will go on vacation as planned. And you’ll deal with your adult son’s problems yourselves, not at our expense.”
Masha was the picture of calm. She hadn’t expected anything else from her mother-in-law, so she wasn’t even surprised by what she heard.
“How dare you? You’ve completely forgotten who you’re talking to! I’m your husband’s mother, much older and wiser than you; you ought to listen to me for that reason alone!”
“That’s a strange argument. But I’ll say it again—no. I’m not going to sacrifice my vacation and a long-awaited trip.”
“You don’t even know what happened to Pavel!”
“I don’t even want to know. That’s it, conversation over.”
Masha hung up and looked irritably at her husband, who was sitting with a sad, confused expression.
“What now, another world-class catastrophe?” she asked, annoyed.
“Pashka’s in trouble. He really does need money, and a lot.”
“And what do we have to do with it? Don’t you dare tell me we’re supposed to sacrifice our seaside trip! That’s insane!”
“I feel sorry for him, he’s my brother. We could…”
“No, we couldn’t! Stop it! Don’t be like your mother! She’s nobody to me, and I don’t have to listen to her. Least of all jump to fulfill her wild demands at the first phone call. I thought I made it clear from day one that she’d never see any money from us. Not from me, and not from you either! Do you understand?”
“I understand, but Pashka… You see, his wife caught him with someone. Now she’s threatening divorce. She says she’ll take the kids and go to her mother’s in Severodvinsk. Then neither Pashka nor our parents will ever see them again. It’s a huge stress for them. They love their grandkids. And Pavel can’t live without his children either.”
“He should’ve thought about the kids and his family earlier.”
“What’s the point of saying that now? He was a fool, and he knows it. His wife said that if he buys her a new expensive car, she’ll stay with him. At least until the next screw-up.”
“Well, let him buy one then, since he messed up. You’re all so strange. How can a gift like that fix what’s happened? Your Pashka’s wife is clearly milking him for money, that’s obvious. She wants to get as much as she can before the divorce,” Maria said in amazement.
“Well, that’s not our business. He just asked us for help.”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s not our business. And there’s nothing we can do to help him. All our money is tied up.”
“But, Mash…”
“No, I said. And tell your mother to leave us alone, to stop asking or, worse, demanding a single ruble from us. She won’t get anything anyway.”
A month later, Maria and Alexey flew abroad for their vacation just as they’d planned.
And when they got back, they found out that for them their mother-in-law was now Enemy Number One. She declared a boycott, refusing to speak to her son or her daughter-in-law.
“Good. One less burden to carry,” Masha reacted calmly.
Pavel still managed to find the money somewhere; he went into debt but bought his wife the car she wanted. And a month later she filed for divorce and went to her parents’ in a distant city, taking the children with her.
The mother-in-law missed her grandchildren terribly. She had no idea when she would see them again. But the worst part was something else.
Just recently, Maria had delighted her husband with the good news that he was going to be a father soon. And this grandchild, Larisa Petrovna wouldn’t see either. At least not as long as she remained at war with her younger son’s family.
