“Come in, Marina. Dinner needs to be cooked; the groceries are in a bag in the kitchen. The laundry’s in the basket. Dust the living room too—haven’t had a chance in ages,” the future mother-in-law rattled off, then casually added, “And Vanya and I will watch a movie in the living room in the meantime.”
Marina was twenty-seven. As her mother, Svetlana Vladimirovna, liked to say, her daughter had just managed to catch the last train to get married. No one would take her at that age anymore.
And the one who took Marina as a wife was her mother’s friend’s son, Ivan. Oh, how highly Svetlana Vladimirovna praised him: smart, well-mannered, and from a good family. While Marina was presented as something defective.
And it wasn’t as if Marina were somehow crooked or cross-eyed—no, she was perfectly fine. An ordinary girl: finished university, got a job, loved sports and embroidery. Nothing special, but by no means the worst option.
Still, every day her mother drummed the same thing into her:
“Marina, hold on to Vanechka, or you’ll be lost. You won’t find another like him at your age. Do you understand you’re almost thirty? At that age, women are useful to no one.”
“Mom, what are you saying…” Marina would try to protest timidly. “These days women marry at forty too. Age isn’t a barrier.”
“That’s what you picked up on your internet?” Svetlana Vladimirovna waved her off. “Real life is completely different!”
Marina sighed and fell silent. She was used to her life seeming to belong to her mother. Svetlana Vladimirovna decided whom her daughter should date, what to wear, and where to go.
She and Ivan started seeing each other by design. Svetlana Vladimirovna put her friend Lena up to bringing the two young people together.
“Aunt Lena is coming today,” Svetlana Vladimirovna told her daughter one day. “Help set the table. Everything must be perfect.”
“Why the dining table? You usually sit in the kitchen and have tea.”
“Because I said so! And don’t ask unnecessary questions,” her mother carefully spread a festive tablecloth over the table. “And dress up a bit. Lena is coming with her son.”
“With her son? The one who works in IT?”
“Yes, Vanechka. That’s enough! No more questions. Go change. And move it!”
And so, a month after they met, Marina was already sitting at the family table at her future mother-in-law’s, and Ivan was introducing her as his girlfriend. In her mind, Svetlana Vladimirovna was clapping her hands with delight. Everything had fallen into place just as she’d planned.
And in a way, things seemed fine. Ivan really was polite, attentive, not stingy. But Marina couldn’t shake the feeling that he hadn’t chosen her out of great love, but simply because she was a convenient option and it was time for him to marry.
In the evenings she sometimes caught herself thinking: “Does he even love me? And do I love him?”
But then she would remember her mother’s words: “Just try to let him slip away. You’ll be eating your heart out.”
Svetlana Vladimirovna and her friend Yelena Ivanovna called each other more and more, discussing plans for the children’s future. Both were sure the matter should be taken into their own hands.
“Lena, I’ve been thinking,” said Yelena Ivanovna. “For everything to work out well for our kids, we need to test little Marina. Let her live with us for a while first. At least a couple of months. Vanya and I will see what she’s like at home. The girl is nice, but my soul is uneasy. What if she’s lazy? What if she can’t cook?”
“Yes, of course,” Svetlana Vladimirovna readily chimed in. “Let her live with you, and then we’ll decide.”
The women thought they were making a wise and proper move. Marina knew nothing about this conversation. Ivan was in on it but didn’t dare tell his beloved. He just shrugged and figured it was easier this way: his mother would be calm, Svetlana Vladimirovna satisfied, and Marina… well, Marina was used to obeying everyone anyway.
“Marin, maybe you could stay with us for a bit?” he suggested offhand one evening. “You know, while we’re getting ready for the wedding. To be closer, and to help Mom.”
“Me?” the girl was surprised. “But we’re not married yet…”
“So what?” Vanya smirked. “You’ll move in later anyway. This way we’ll get used to each other.”
“I thought we’d live separately. Like you promised. Isn’t that right?”
“Of course—that’s how it’ll be. Just a little later…”
Marina nodded. Something uneasy flickered in her eyes, but she said nothing more aloud. She had no idea she’d become a puppet in the hands of two grown women—and that Ivan’s love was anything but sincere and honest.
Vanya kept courting her, brought flowers, sometimes took Marina to the movies, but he seemed more and more indifferent. And his proud title of “IT specialist” gradually evaporated. In reality, Vanya worked at a small warehouse company where he helped fix printers, set up computers, and occasionally reinstalled software. There were no “developments” or “projects” of the kind Yelena Ivanovna boasted about.
Marina found out by accident when she dropped by his work with lunch. Svetlana Vladimirovna insisted that good wives did exactly that, and Marina herself could eat in the evening. The “office” turned out to be a cramped room with two tables piled high with broken system units and bundles of cables. Vanya was sitting on a chair, clutching an old mouse.
“Vanya, you said you had serious projects…” Marina said, taken aback.
“Well…” he scratched the back of his head. “Mom embellished a little. She thinks it’s all still ahead of me.”
“I see…” Marina mumbled and handed over a bag with containers—pasta and cutlets inside.
On her way back to work, Marina couldn’t shake her thoughts. Her gut kept telling her: don’t rush. She and Vanya had known each other only three months—was that really enough to be thinking about a wedding, let alone moving into his house? But every time she tried to voice her doubts, she saw her mother before her, repeating:
“Marina, don’t miss your chance. You won’t find another fool like him! Who else would even look at you?!”
And the girl fell silent. With a mother like that it was hard to build any trust, so Marina had never really told her about the men she dated.
One day Ivan invited her to his place:
“Come by this evening,” he said over the phone. “Mom will be glad.”
Marina agreed, thinking it would be an ordinary visit: tea, conversation, maybe dinner. But what awaited her in the apartment turned out to be something else entirely.
As soon as she crossed the threshold, Yelena Ivanovna greeted her with a detached look:
“Come in, Marina. Dinner needs to be cooked; the groceries are in a bag in the kitchen. The laundry’s in the basket. Dust the living room too—haven’t had a chance in ages,” the future mother-in-law rattled off, then casually added, “And Vanya and I will watch a movie in the living room in the meantime.”
Marina didn’t at once realize that it had been meant seriously.
“Excuse me… I’m supposed to cook dinner?” she asked timidly.
“What’s the problem?” Yelena Ivanovna smiled coldly. “You’re my son’s future wife. Time to show what you can do. Or did you think you’d just be getting flowers and going to the movies? Vanechka has already spent more than fifteen thousand on you as it is. So it’s time you made up for what we’ve invested in you.”
Marina felt a blush of shame wash over her face. She looked to Vanya, hoping he would intervene somehow. But Ivan only looked confidently at his beloved and said:
“Mom wanted you to show yourself…”
And then Marina realized this wasn’t hospitality. It was a housekeeping test, concocted by two grown women, in which she had been cast as the lab rat.
Her heart tightened. Silently, Marina went to the kitchen and opened the grocery bags, but inside she was boiling.
“That’s better. She was acting like she didn’t understand a thing,” said Yelena Ivanovna, heading to the living room with her son.
“Do I really have to prove my worth by knowing how to fry cutlets and mop floors? Is this love? Is this how families are built?” Marina thought to herself in the unfamiliar kitchen.
She stood for a few seconds by the counter with the groceries, sighed heavily, and decided to play by their rules—while slightly altering the outcome.
She chopped the meat far too finely, tossed it into a skillet, and left it to fry on high heat. The smell of burning filled the kitchen, but Marina just stirred with a wooden spatula, showering the meat with salt as generously as if she were salting a winter road. She poured the pasta into boiling water and, after a couple of minutes, pulled it out undercooked—slightly crunchy to the bite.
“Perfect,” she muttered, turning off the stove.
She served everything and didn’t even wait for approval. She picked up a rag and went to dust the living room. She did it as if merely waving her hand back and forth—streaks remained, and in places the dust wasn’t removed at all. As for the laundry, Marina “forgot” it entirely.
When Yelena Ivanovna sat down to dinner with her son, her face contorted at once.
“What is this nightmare? The meat is salted beyond belief, the pasta is raw!” she flared. “And you, Vanya, you even praised her cooking!”
At that moment Marina calmly folded the rag and set it on a shelf.
“Thanks for the evening. I have to go home,” she said.
She put on her jacket and left, leaving them at the table.
Later that evening, Svetlana Vladimirovna’s phone rang. On the other end was Yelena Ivanovna—her voice quivering with indignation:
“Sveta, your Marina is a disaster! She can’t cook at all! She smeared dust all over the furniture, and she didn’t even think about the laundry. I’ll be blunt—I won’t tolerate such a daughter-in-law in my house. And I won’t let my Vanya near her again!”
Svetlana Vladimirovna tried to defend her daughter, but her friend was adamant:
“No, that’s enough. I thought we’d become in-laws, but it turns out we’ve been wasting our time. Our friendship ends here.”
Svetlana Vladimirovna set the phone down on the table. She felt bitter—not so much for Marina as for her own shattered plans. A few minutes later, she called her daughter in for a serious talk:
“What was that today? You had an exam and you failed it!”
“An exam in home economics? Like at school?” Marina smirked. “I thought you seriously wanted to arrange my life. But it felt like mockery. Vanya is the lord and master, and I’m his maid. Is that how we’re supposed to live in the future? Do you really hate me that much? I don’t understand… Don’t you want your daughter to be happy?”
“You’re just foolish and inexperienced! You don’t know what happiness is.”
“But I do know for sure that happiness isn’t something you earn by cooking and cleaning in someone else’s house.”
“It wouldn’t be someone else’s house if you hadn’t behaved like that. It’s plain swinishness! Get out, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Go think about your behavior.”
Marina left. And she did think. Then she decided she’d had enough of living with her parents. It was time to go her own way. The next day she packed her things and moved out of her parents’ home.
Marina rented a small apartment on the outskirts of the city. Ever since her student side jobs, she had been putting money aside—sometimes very little, sometimes a bit more. And now she had enough for a down payment. The bank approved the mortgage, and although years of payments lay ahead, for the first time Marina tasted real freedom.
Even if the studio was cramped and on the ground floor of an old Khrushchev-era building, it was her own space, where no one told her how to live or what to do.
“Small, but mine,” she smiled when she turned the key in the lock for the first time.
The walls needed repairs and the floor needed replacing, but Marina felt happy. She bought a used sofa at a sale, a small table, and a couple of chairs. Little by little, she settled in: brought her books, laid out her embroidery, set out some plants.
Now in the evenings, Marina returned not to a house where she was constantly criticized, and not to strangers who expected impeccable cleaning services from her, but to her own cozy space.
When Svetlana Vladimirovna found out that her daughter had bought an apartment, she was beside herself with indignation:
“Have you lost your mind? A mortgage? A ground floor in a Khrushchevka? Who does that? You should have held on to Vanechka—he would have provided for you!” she shouted.
But Marina calmly replied:
“Vanechka? I’ve been dating another man for a while now. He’s caring, earns his own money, and lives separately from his parents. Your Vanechka will live with his mother his whole life.”
Her mother nearly choked at such impudence.
“How dare you? Do you really think you deserve something better?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I think. And stop planting insecurities in me. That doesn’t work anymore. Better mind your own life. There’s actually a lot of interesting things out there.”
Marina put on her coat and left her parents’ apartment.
“You’ll come crawling back!” Svetlana Vladimirovna shouted after her.
But Marina never did. And she celebrated her thirtieth birthday with her beloved husband, Igor. He loved her for who she was, not for any set of skills. And no matter what her mother claimed about age, you can find your happiness at thirty too.
All the best to everyone!
