“Anya, I’ll put together the menu, and you’ll cook,” Valentina Petrovna said, handing her a three-page list. “I would do it myself, but my hands hurt. This arthritis has been tormenting me.”
Anna took the list.
Cold appetizers, hot dishes, salads, three kinds of desserts.
For her and Dmitry’s anniversary, her mother-in-law had invited eight people.
Without asking.
“Valentina Petrovna, wouldn’t it be easier to order food?” Anna asked, lifting her eyes.
“Order food?!” her mother-in-law threw up her hands — hands that showed no sign whatsoever of arthritis. “What will my friends think? That we don’t know how to host guests? Absolutely not, Anya. Show them what you can do.”
Anna folded the list in half. Then again. And again.
A tiny square of paper landed on the table.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll show them.”
Seven months earlier, right after the registry office, Dmitry had said they would live with his mother “for a while.”
“For a while” turned into forever.
Valentina Petrovna, whose husband had passed away seven years before, lived alone in a three-room apartment and suffered greatly.
Not from loneliness.
From having to cook and clean.
On the second day after the wedding, her mother-in-law suddenly had a migraine.
“Anya, dear, my head is splitting. I can’t even get up. You’ll make something yourself, won’t you?”
Anna cooked.
Then she cleaned.
Then she did the laundry.
By evening, Valentina Petrovna had miraculously recovered and gone to the salon to have her hair done. She returned fresh and glowing, her shiny hair smelling of expensive shampoo.
The migraines returned every time cooking needed to be done.
Dizziness appeared before cleaning.
Arthritis flared up when dishes had to be washed, then disappeared whenever Valentina Petrovna flipped through magazines or went shopping.
Dmitry didn’t notice.
Or didn’t want to.
“So what? Mom can’t do it. Her health is bad. You’re young. You’ll manage.”
And Anna managed.
She got up at five in the morning, cooked breakfast for three, went to teach first-graders, came home at six, then washed, cleaned, and prepared food for the next day until eleven at night.
Dmitry came home, ate dinner, and lay down to watch television.
Sometimes he asked why she was “always in a bad mood.”
Anna grew thinner.
Dark circles settled beneath her eyes. Her hands became dry, her nails began to peel.
In the mirror, she saw a stranger — tired, aged, empty.
Then, three weeks ago, Valentina Petrovna announced the anniversary dinner.
On the morning of the celebration, Anna woke up at five, but she did not go to the kitchen.
She put on jeans and a light blouse. She did her makeup. Then she took a box from the wardrobe with an envelope inside — a spa certificate for the entire day.
She had spent the last of her savings on it.
The money she had been saving for a coat.
Valentina Petrovna came out for breakfast in a silk robe, saw her daughter-in-law dressed nicely, and pursed her lips.
“Why are you all dressed up? You’ll be standing at the stove all day. Go change.”
“I have things to do,” Anna said, handing her the envelope. “This is for you. An anniversary gift.”
Her mother-in-law opened the envelope, and her eyes widened.
“A spa? Anya, how sweet! But I can’t today. I have to oversee the table. The guests…”
“Valentina Petrovna,” Anna sat across from her and looked straight into her eyes, “don’t you want Lyudmila to see you glowing? Imagine how jealous she’ll be. Everyone will ask where you got so transformed. Don’t worry about the table. I’ll take care of everything myself.”
There was a pause.
Valentina Petrovna thought it over.
Her fingers stroked the envelope.
Vanity won.
“Well… perhaps. Lyudka is always bragging about her cosmetologist anyway. Will Dimochka drive me?”
“Of course,” Anna said, calling her husband.
Dmitry came out sleepy and irritated. He listened, grumbled, and agreed.
Half an hour later, they left.
The apartment fell silent.
Anna went into the bedroom.
From the wardrobe, she took out a black dress she had bought the day before at a secondhand shop, along with a pair of heels. Then she called Kira’s acquaintance, who worked part-time as a makeup artist.
By five in the evening, everything was ready: hair, makeup, dress.
Anna looked at herself in the mirror.
She barely recognized herself.
Alive.
She never went into the kitchen.
The guests began arriving at half past six.
Svetlana Markovna, a heavyset woman with a loud voice, entered the living room first and froze.
The table was set perfectly.
A white tablecloth without a single crease.
Candles.
Crystal glasses.
Cutlery for eight people.
Everything was in its place.
There was no food.
“Anya, dear… where are the appetizers?” Svetlana Markovna asked, turning around.
“A surprise,” Anna said with a smile. “We’re waiting for the guests of honor.”
The others arrived — Valentina Petrovna’s friends, Dmitry’s colleagues. Everyone came with flowers, gifts, and elegant clothes.
They sat down, exchanged glances, and stared at the empty table.
Someone joked about a fashionable diet.
They laughed awkwardly.
Anna poured mineral water.
She smiled.
And waited.
At seven, Dmitry and his mother returned.
Valentina Petrovna floated into the hallway, radiant. Her skin glowed after the peel, her hair fell in waves, and her manicure was flawless.
She took off her coat and entered the living room.
Then stopped.
An empty table.
Eight guests sitting with confusion on their faces.
Anna in a black dress, holding a glass of water.
“What… what is this?!” Valentina Petrovna’s voice cracked into a shriek. “Anna! Where is the food?! I gave you the list!”
Dmitry came in behind her.
He saw the table.
His face turned crimson.
“Anna, have you completely lost your mind? Guests came for our anniversary, and the table is empty!”
He shouted so loudly the whole apartment could hear.
The guests stared down at their plates, at their phones, out the windows — anywhere but at the scene unfolding in front of them.
“What are you doing?! Are you insane?”
Anna waited.
Then she placed her glass on the table.
Quietly, she said:
“This is my surprise.”
Silence fell like a curtain.
“In honor of our anniversary, I’m announcing our divorce,” Anna said.
She removed her wedding ring and placed it on the white tablecloth.
It made a small metallic sound.
“I’m leaving. Today. Right now.”
Dmitry opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then opened it again.
“You… in front of people? You staged this circus in front of guests?”
“I staged the truth,” Anna said, picking up the bag she had packed in advance. “For seven months, I was your servant. I cooked, washed, cleaned. From five in the morning until midnight. And not once did you ask how I was. Not once did you help. You simply used me. Both of you. I was convenient. That’s all.”
Lyudmila, one of her mother-in-law’s friends, gave a muffled snort into her fist.
Svetlana Markovna nodded — barely, but clearly.
“Anya, dear, wait, let’s talk about this,” Valentina Petrovna said, stepping toward her and extending her perfectly manicured hands. “You’re just tired, I understand. We’ll hire a helper. Right, Dimochka?”
“Too late,” Anna said, walking toward the door.
Dmitry rushed after her and grabbed her by the elbow.
“Stop! You can’t just take off and leave!”
“I can,” Anna said, freeing her arm. “Watch me.”
She opened the door.
Behind her, she heard Dmitry’s panicked voice on the phone:
“Hello, restaurant? I need an urgent delivery for eight people! Right now! I’ll pay whatever it costs, just hurry!”
Anna closed the door.
She stepped out onto the landing.
Then she took out her phone and wrote to Kira:
“Can I come to your place?”
The reply came instantly:
“Come, you fool. It was about time.”
Anna stayed with Kira for a week.
She slept on a folding bed, went to work, came back, and simply stared out the window.
Kira didn’t bother her with questions.
Dmitry called for three days.
At first, he shouted, demanded that she come back, called her ungrateful.
Then his tone changed — he begged, promised he would change.
Anna listened in silence and ended the calls.
On the fourth day, a message came:
“Mom is bedridden. She’s really sick now. Are you happy?”
Anna blocked the number.
But then Svetlana Markovna, the same guest from the dinner, wrote to her:
“Anya, forgive me for disturbing you. You did the right thing. I lived thirty years with a mother-in-law just like that. I never had the courage to leave. You are brave.”
Then Lyudmila wrote.
Then someone else.
They all said the same thing:
She had been right.
A week later, Kira returned from the store and said she had seen Dmitry.
He had been standing with a shopping cart full of frozen dumplings and ready-made meals. He looked rumpled, his eyes red.
“I asked how things were. He muttered that his mother really was sick now and couldn’t do anything. So he has to cook, clean, and work. They hired someone for a couple of hours, but it’s expensive. He’s already sold the car. Gave up fishing too. He has no time for anything.”
Anna listened.
She felt nothing.
No satisfaction.
No pity.
Only relief.
“He asked where you were,” Kira added. “Told me to pass on that if you come back, everything will change.”
“It won’t,” Anna said, shaking her head. “Now he simply knows the price of what I used to do.”
Another week later, Anna rented a room in a shared apartment near the school.
Ten square meters.
A shared kitchen.
A window overlooking the courtyard where pigeons cooed.
Nothing special.
But it was hers.
She sat on the bed, looking at the walls.
Her suitcase stood on the floor.
Everything she had taken with her was inside.
Her phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
“Anna, this is Valentina. Forgive me. I didn’t understand what I was doing. Come back. I’ll change.”
Anna read it.
Deleted it.
Then placed the phone on the windowsill.
Outside, an old woman scattered crumbs, and pigeons swooped down, pushing and cooing.
It was noisy.
Alive.
The air smelled of autumn, wet asphalt, and other people’s dinners drifting from the shared kitchen.
It did not smell of her mother-in-law’s perfume and her endless migraines.
It did not smell of Dmitry, who had never learned to see her.
Anna opened the window wider.
Cold air struck her face.
She inhaled deeply — all the way down to the bottom of her lungs.
For the first time in seven months, she went to bed at eight in the evening simply because she wanted to.
Not because she had collapsed from exhaustion.
But because she could allow herself to.
No one would wake her up demanding that she iron shirts.
No one would tell her she wasn’t trying hard enough.
No one would use her kindness as weakness.
In the morning, she woke up to sunlight.
Saturday.
She didn’t have to get up.
She could sleep a little longer. She could go for a walk. She could simply lie there.
Any choice was hers.
In the kitchen, her neighbor Tamara, a woman in her fifties, was boiling the kettle.
“Tea?”
“Thank you.”
They sat in silence.
Outside the window were pigeons, cars, someone arguing in the yard.
An ordinary morning.
Someone else’s morning.
But hers.
Anna finished her tea and rinsed her cup.
Then she looked at her reflection in the window glass.
Pale, without makeup, hair messy.
Ordinary.
Free.
Alive.
She smiled.
