They had been married for twenty years. Their twin sons, Egor and Matvei, enrolled in a military academy, and for the first time in many years, they were alone. And with that, all excuses for her husband ran out.
When they had first married, her husband used to call her «swallow» and would slip little notes into her bag. Sometimes, Rita would come to work, take out her cosmetics bag, and find a love confession inside. Everyone in the accounting department envied her.
Then the boys were born. From the very first day, loud and restless. Viktor was her support and pillar, rocking one boy while feeding the other, changing their diapers, dragging the huge stroller through snowdrifts. Everything was fine, but the romance disappeared from their relationship—how could there be romance when she didn’t even have time to trim her nails, let alone do a manicure? When he gave her a meat grinder for International Women’s Day, Rita sat on the kitchen floor and cried.
— «You don’t love me anymore?» she asked.
— «Of course, I love you,» Viktor answered.
— «Then where are the flowers? Where are the love confessions?»
— «Rita, what nonsense! You yourself complained that the minced meat they sell is bad, and the boys love meatballs. Now you’ll make them with good meat yourself—meatballs, cutlets, and filling for chebureki.»
— «But maybe I want to go to the theater with you?»
— «When the boys grow up, we’ll go!»
The boys grew up, but nothing changed—no theaters, no flowers, no notes, and even the affectionate nickname «swallow» disappeared from their lives. Rita found excuses for her husband. First, it was the daycare, endless illnesses of the boys, then school, extracurricular activities, and competitions, then exam preparations and graduation—how could there be time for the theater? She was already doing her own manicures, but Viktor never noticed them.
And then the boys left, and there were no more excuses. She had to admit it—Viktor simply no longer loved her. When she finally gathered the courage to talk about it, her husband got angry.
— «You’re talking nonsense again! Who goes to the theater now? Let’s watch TV, what’s wrong with that? If you want, we’ll light some candles!»
Rita didn’t want candles. She wanted notes in her handbag and butterflies in her stomach. The idea of how to solve the problem came from Svetka: the chief accountant had a birthday, they had all celebrated well, and Rita confided that the romance was gone.
— «What romance?» Svetka was outraged. «Bring in some shopping bags, make borscht, fry cutlets, wash the floor, clean his shoes! Is that romance? That’s called being a servant! So, take note—I stopped serving mine, and he quickly started moving. You all think you can have housemaids! Now mine washes the dishes himself and takes me out to a restaurant every Friday.»
Everything went wrong with Viktor. Not finding his usual food in the fridge, he started a scandal. When she refused to iron his shirt, he got upset and went to his mother’s place. She called and scolded Rita. But Rita decided to stand her ground—was she supposed to live like this for the rest of her life? He wouldn’t kiss her or hug her, as if she were just a servant or a neighbor.
Viktor started buying frozen cutlets and frying them himself. He switched from shirts to T-shirts. And it seemed like he had changed—he went to the barber, not his mother’s, and unpacked the cologne she had given him for the 23rd. But Rita seemed to go unnoticed, and he became offended. Soon after, he declared:
— «I’m filing for divorce. You were right, Rita, something’s gone, and we shouldn’t torture each other.»
He moved in with his mother. And she didn’t waste time calling Rita to report:
— «Oh, Viktor has such a nice girl at work—she brings him lunch, says she cooks so much out of habit, she can’t finish it all. No, she’s not divorced—she’s quite young, just moved out from her parents.»
Well, that was to be expected—who else would he be wearing cologne for? Rita wasn’t upset, but she decided not to think about it for now.
But what else to think about, she didn’t know. First, on Svetka’s advice, she started going on dates, picking men from a dating app during lunch breaks with the whole department. The men, after being carefully vetted by the accounting department, seemed boring to Rita: they complained endlessly about their ex-wives or foolish bosses, bragged about new cars, or asked about the size of her living space. All of it made her yawn, and to hide it, she almost dislocated her jaw.
Deciding she wasn’t ready for a new relationship yet, Rita decided to get a dog. After consulting with colleagues, she got a dachshund—Svetka had one before, and now she recommended it to everyone.
It was hard to handle the puppy—it didn’t listen, chewed on everything, and would run away when she loosened the leash. Svetka advised her to contact a dog trainer.
— «By the way, he’s a bachelor,» she said playfully.
The trainer was a little younger than Rita, and indeed, he wasn’t wearing a ring. But Rita was more interested in how easily he managed the puppy—after a couple of sessions, her dachshund obeyed Hermann as if it were a service dog in detective films.
— «How do you manage it?» she asked somewhat playfully.
— «It’s nothing! I used to work in an orphanage, compared to my little rascals, dogs are angels!»
This confession greatly surprised Rita.
— «In an orphanage?»
Hermann explained that he was a special education teacher by training and had worked with children, mostly in an orphanage, until recently. He spoke enthusiastically, but when Rita asked why he left, Hermann suddenly closed up, looked at his watch, and said his next clients would be arriving soon.
What could she say, Rita liked Hermann. He was mysterious, clearly had some dramatic history in his past, but unlike the men she had been dating, he wasn’t trying to unload his problems onto Rita.
— «A good guy, you should take him,» Svetka agreed.
But even she couldn’t figure out how to win him over.
Rita came up with the idea herself. Since the lessons for her dog were no longer needed, she found an excuse to contact him. And the excuse came from her sons.
They came home for the holidays, and Rita was afraid the boys would have a hard time with the separation from their father, but they seemed not to notice. And they were hardly ever home—always with their friends, and before long, it was time to leave again.
— «Why so soon?» Rita asked, upset. «I thought you’d stay home longer!»
— «Well, mom…» Egor stretched.
— «You should have had more kids,» Matvei said shamelessly. «Then there’d be someone to take care of.»
And Rita thought—what if she adopted a child? It was too late to give birth, but adopting—why not? She remembered that in the early days of their relationship, she and Viktor had talked about it, but then he changed his mind. Of course, for advice, she turned to Hermann.
Hermann responded eagerly—turns out it wasn’t so simple: you had to first attend a special school for adoptive parents, then get permission, including from her husband, since they hadn’t officially divorced yet.
Rita didn’t want to tell Viktor she had decided to adopt a child. So, she called him and asked him to finalize their divorce as soon as possible.
The next day, her mother-in-law called.
— «So, have you found yourself a new man?» she asked bluntly.
— «I have!» Rita blurted out. «But it’s none of your business!»
Honestly, despite all the conversations and dates, Hermann didn’t make a move towards her. But Rita caught his interested glances, she knew he lived alone—sometimes he would call her on video late at night, and there were no women around, so she hoped he was just indecisive.
— «He has some awful history in the past!» Svetka, who always knew everything, reported. «Some illness or something!»
Looking at the children’s photos was hard for Rita: she wanted to adopt them all and none at the same time, as none of the photos made her heart skip a beat. In the end, she found a girl with a suitable status and not as bad a history as the others (Rita realistically assessed her possibilities) and went to meet her. She knew it would be a girl—she had had enough of boys, but she had always dreamed of a girl.
While waiting in the room for the girl named Masha, Rita saw a boy. Older than she had planned, especially a boy. But her heart skipped—he looked so much like Matvei! And Matvei, in turn, looked so much like her father. And Rita, after talking to Masha, who looked away and didn’t even pay attention to the doll Rita had brought her as a gift, blushing a little, asked:
— «Who was that boy?»
The boy turned out to be a good one. His name was Yura (just like her father), he was healthy, spent the first two years with his mother, but of course, there was one catch—he was HIV-positive, which scared off all potential adoptive parents. It scared Rita too. But for some reason, she couldn’t forget him. And a week later, she couldn’t resist—she decided to at least meet him.
— «I’ll definitely come back,» she promised.
The boy shook his head.
— «Everyone says that,» he said.
It was said in such a grown-up, understanding tone that Rita’s heart tightened.
— «I will come,» she said firmly.
Of course, she needed to think. And, of course, she went to consult Hermann. Describing the situation, Rita said:
— «I don’t know what to do. He’s such a good boy, he’s captured my heart, but this disease… It’s scary, I can’t imagine how one can live with it!»
Usually, Hermann gave her lots of advice, but this time the conversation didn’t go well, and he quickly sent her away under the pretext of needing to attend to business.
Strangely, Rita wasn’t too upset—what had started as an attempt to charm Hermann turned into something more important for her, even if Hermann never noticed her. He was probably scared, but that was understandable—Rita herself was quite frightened.
All evening, Rita read on the internet, and the more she read, the more reassured she felt—it wasn’t as terrifying as she had thought. Getting so caught up in reading, she even burned the roast, and had to open the window because the smell was unbearable.
There was a knock at the door. Rita’s first thought was—Hermann! Maybe something would finally move forward?
But it wasn’t Hermann. It was Viktor standing on the doorstep.
— «What are you doing here?» Rita was surprised.
He sniffed the air and asked:
— «Did you burn someone’s food? Your new one, perhaps?»
He actually said «someone»! Rita got so angry that she was about to shut the door in his face, but Viktor had already managed to slip inside.
— «Wait a minute,» he said peaceably. «Matvei’s in the hospital, looks like a compression fracture.»
Rita’s breath caught.
— «What happened to him? What’s this fracture?»
It turned out that Matvei had fallen from a height and had a concussion and a suspected compression fracture of the spine.
Of course, they went together to see Matvei, forgetting about their divorce and all their other problems.
Rita didn’t know how it happened, but when she cried seeing her son in a hospital bed, Viktor hugged her, and it happened so naturally, as if their divorce paper didn’t even exist.
— «My swallow, don’t cry, calm down. Everything will be fine.»
And it just so happened that from the hospital, they went home together. And ate the burned stew together. And only when, by morning, Viktor started dreaming about how they would go to the Urals with the boys in summer and take the dachshund along—what would they do without her—Rita remembered Yura. And how could she tell Viktor about him, if even Hermann had been scared? But she told him—right then, while it was still possible to pretend it hadn’t been that night.
— «I promised him,» she finished her story.
Viktor was silent. Then he said:
— «Well, since you promised, we’ll go.»
— «Really?»
— «Of course. We talked about this, remember? When we couldn’t have a daughter. Maybe we’ll still have a girl?»
— «I promised him,» Rita repeated.
— «I said that just… Well, if it’s a boy, it’s a boy, we’re used to it, right? So when do we go?»
Rita sat up and looked at Viktor closely.
— «What, have they switched you? Where are these changes coming from?»
Viktor laughed.
— «Do you remember why I married you?»
— «Because you loved me?» she asked flirtatiously.
— «Because I wanted to escape from my mom! She ate my brain.»
— «Oh, really! I thought you realized I’m the best in the world.»
— «I did! I understood! But I was so angry. And then I stopped. But I thought you wouldn’t let me in, Mom said you had someone else…»
Rita smirked.
— «Your mom knows everything.»
— «So what? Do you have someone?»
She could have lied to scare him off. But for some reason, she didn’t want to.
— «No. There’s no one.»
Viktor visibly brightened.
— «Well, then we’re going to meet my son, right?»
Svetka said she knew Viktor would come back to her. She knows everything, that Svetka…
