Men don’t start fussing around in the kitchen for no reason. If your husband brings home an expensive cake on an ordinary Tuesday evening and even brews tea in the good china, brace yourself: either he wrecked your car, or his shameless relatives are on their way.
Pavel didn’t drive.
“Vera, sit down, relax after work,” my darling husband sang in a honeyed voice, carefully avoiding my eyes.
“So… here’s the thing. My sister and her son are coming from the Tyumen region for some business, and they need a place to stay. Basically, they’ll be staying with us.”
I slowly set my bag on the chair and folded my arms across my chest. Since when, exactly, had my three-bedroom apartment turned into a charity shelter for relatives in transit?
“Who, Pasha?” I asked evenly, ignoring the slice of cake on the saucer. “And for how long?”
“Zoya and Maksim. Just for a month!” he rattled off, nervously wiping the table with a rag. “The boy needs to get settled in the city, find a promising job. I already gave them your office for now—the couch there is comfortable…”
He didn’t get to finish. The doorbell rang, and Pasha rushed to open it. A huge plaid market bag came huffing into the hallway first, and right behind it marched in his younger sister herself.
She was a large, loud woman, absolutely convinced that the whole world owed her something simply because she had been born in a tiny settlement where, according to her, “there are no prospects, only misery.” Behind her loomed twenty-four-year-old “little Maksim” — a giant nearly six-foot-three, pink-cheeked, with the wounded expression of a misunderstood genius.
“Oh, Verочка, we won’t be any trouble!” my sister-in-law boomed, kicking off her shoes right onto my pale rug. “Maxie can make do on the little couch in the office, and I’ll be generous and sleep on the pull-out in the living room.”
Meanwhile, the “boy” was already stomping toward my office as if he owned the place — the room with my work computer and my father’s antique chair.
I looked at Pavel. My husband was not a bad man overall, but he suffered from one incurable condition: absolute helplessness whenever it came to his precious family.
A smart woman doesn’t start a screaming match the second people cross the threshold. A smart woman pauses, studies the situation, and mentally takes out a calculator.
“Welcome,” I said in an icy voice. “But I need that office for work. Maksim can sleep in the living room with you, Zoya. There’s enough space.”
She didn’t like that at all, but she kept quiet. It was only the first skirmish.
Then began the cheerful life of a коммуналка, a shared apartment nightmare. If you think guests from a small town who arrive “to seek a better future” behave quietly and gratefully, you are deeply mistaken.
Zoya spread herself through my home as if she had a deed to my square meters tucked into her pocket.
By the third day, she had already established her own rules in my kitchen.
“Vera, who spends money like this?” she scolded, eyeing a piece of good cheese in the refrigerator with disgust. “We’re simple people, we don’t need all these fancy delicacies of yours. We should economize. Let’s start a shared food fund, and I’ll do the cooking.”
Said and done. Into this “shared fund,” Zoya solemnly contributed one pack of cheap pasta and a sad, bluish chicken once a week.
Meanwhile, my “wasteful” cheese, good sausage, and smoked salmon vanished into Maksim’s bottomless stomach at lightning speed. “The boy needs vitamins, he’s stressed, he’s going to interviews!” Zoya would say, fluttering her eyelashes.
Maksim’s interviews, however, had a very specific format. Wild shouting came from the living room until three in the morning — he was busy hacking away at computer games. Then he slept until two in the afternoon, only to crawl into the kitchen later, leaving sticky mugs and mountains of crumbs behind him.
By the end of the second week, their audacity had hit a new level. Zoya started using my expensive skincare products without asking. “What’s the big deal? It’s not like it’ll hurt you.” The washing machine ran her robes around the clock, and the utility bills for water and electricity began climbing like mountaineers on Everest.
Whenever I complained, Pavel just waved me off.
“Come on, Vera, just hang in there. She’s family. Things are hard for them. Back home salaries are tiny. Once they get settled, they’ll leave on their own.”
But no one intended to leave. In fact, their appetites were only growing. One evening I came home early and found a strange woman sitting in my kitchen — Zoya had invited some woman from back home over for tea.
“Oh, we’re managing just fine,” my sister-in-law was saying loudly, sipping from my favorite cup. “Our Vera can be a bit stuck-up, of course, but where’s she going to go? The apartment may be hers, but Pasha won’t remain here on bird rights forever. We’re in this for the long haul. Maksim still has to get married one day — where else is he supposed to bring a wife?”
I quietly shut the door and went into the bedroom.
So that was the plan. Bring a wife into my apartment. How delightful.
The grand finale of this circus came at the end of the first month. Over dinner, while shoveling down a second helping of my cutlets, Zoya announced solemnly:
“Pasha, Vera, here’s the thing… Maksim’s been offered a job at a really good company! As a manager, no less. But there’s a catch.”
She sighed theatrically.
“They need him to have local registration. Without it, security won’t approve him. So, Verочка, we need to register the boy at your address. You’re not going to begrudge him a little stamp in his passport, are you? It’s just a formality!”
Pavel shifted in his chair and looked away.
“Ver… really,” my husband muttered. “Let’s just arrange permanent registration. It doesn’t affect anything. He won’t get any rights to the apartment. But it would help the guy get started.”
“Permanent?” I repeated sweetly, looking straight into my sister-in-law’s brazen eyes. “In my apartment?”
“What’s the problem?” Zoya exploded. “We’re not strangers! You got these square meters for free from your parents, you could at least share some of your luck with family! What, you’re sorry for your own nephew? Selfish woman!”
I had worked as a senior accountant for fifteen years. People like me trust facts, not tantrums — and we never underestimate old connections.
A couple of weeks earlier, passing by the living room, I had overheard part of one of Zoya’s phone conversations. She had been speaking quietly but clearly: “Yes, I wrote down the meter readings… Transfer it to the card as usual, on the fifteenth.”
Zoya had no pension or alimony due on the fifteenth. Rent payments, however, were another story.
I knew perfectly well that since last spring Rosreestr had stopped showing property owners’ names in public extracts because of the personal data law. But an old chief accountant knows half the city.
One call to Svetlana from a major real estate agency, one address from the new residential complex called Svetly that Zoya had once mentioned in passing, and I asked her, unofficially, to check their databases.
So now, looking at my outraged “poor relative,” I quietly stood up, walked to my bag, and pulled out the printout Svetlana had sent me as a favor.
“You know, Zoya,” I said calmly, sitting back down and placing the paper right in front of my husband, “I’d be happy to register Maksim. But legally, that might not be entirely appropriate. Why should he squeeze into my old three-bedroom place when his wonderful mother happens to own perfectly nice real estate of her own?”
Pavel frowned and began reading. Zoya went so pale she nearly blended into the tablecloth. Maksim finally looked up from his phone.
“What is this?” my husband asked hoarsely.
“This, Pasha, is an unofficial but absolutely accurate report on a property,” I said. “A studio apartment in a neighboring district, in the Svetly complex. Thirty-eight square meters. Owner: Zoya Pavlovna. Purchased eight months ago. So the whole performance about having nowhere to go can end right here.”
I turned to my sister-in-law, who had opened her mouth and forgotten to close it.
“And judging by the listings on the rental site, that lovely studio is currently being rented out for forty thousand rubles a month. To a nice young IT couple. Isn’t that right, Zoya?”
“You… you were spying on me?!” she finally shrieked.
“My business begins exactly where my wallet starts paying for your lies,” I cut in coldly. “You rent out your apartment, collect forty thousand every month, and live at my expense.
“You eat my food, run up my water bill, wear out my electricity, wipe your feet on my rug — and on top of that, you dare demand that I register your lazy giant of a son in my home?”
Then I turned to my husband. Pavel sat there red as a boiled lobster. Judging by the look on his face, he had known nothing about his sister’s brilliant financial strategy.
“Pasha, you wanted to help poor struggling family? Well, you did. But the charity show is now officially over.”
I got up from the table and glanced at the clock.
“All right, landlords. You have exactly two hours to pack up your bags and clear out my office and my living room.
“You can go back to your village, or you can evict your tenants from your studio — I couldn’t care less. In ten minutes I call the police and report unlawful entry and trespassing.”
“Pashka, look what your witch of a wife is doing!” Zoya howled, trying to squeeze out tears. “She’s throwing your own sister into the street!”
But my husband only got up in silence, walked to the living room door, and said firmly:
“Pack your things, Zoya. And take your Maksim with you.”
An hour and a half later, the front door slammed shut.
I opened the window to air out the apartment from the smell of cheap perfume and shameless lying.
On the table lay the half-eaten chocolate Zoya had forgotten behind — a touching symbol of how carefully she had treated someone else’s home.
I swept that little token of affection into the trash and went into my office.
For the first time in a month, it was quiet there. Clean. And it smelled of nothing but my freedom.
As for relatives? Relatives should be loved deeply.
Preferably from the safe distance of their own property.
