You could at least park farther from the curb. A gust of wind will blow it away and you won’t even notice,” Kirill was standing, leaning against the kitchen doorframe, watching Svetlana unpack the groceries from the bag.
“It won’t blow away, I’m sitting in it. Heavy,” she threw over her shoulder without turning around. This song had been going on for weeks now, and Sveta had learned not to react to the first, most harmless notes.
Kirill snorted and went to the fridge for a bottle of water. He moved deliberately slowly, making the small kitchen feel cramped, as if his broad shoulders needed more space than this apartment could provide. Their apartment.
“That’s not what I mean. You drive Pashka around. Park it next to some truck and it’s invisible. They’ll run right over it and never even notice. It’s just not safe, Sveta. Have you thought about that?”
She stopped, holding a pack of cottage cheese in her hands, and slowly turned around. Her gaze was calm, but very attentive. She knew where he was going with this. She’d known it from the day his coworker bought himself a huge SUV, black as a southern night.
“I have. That’s why I don’t park next to trucks. And I drive carefully. Unlike some owners of big, ‘safe’ cars who think they’re allowed to do anything on the road.”
The argument was deflected, but Kirill just waved it off, like a pesky fly. He wasn’t going to give up. Today he’d come in with his trump card—concern. It was his favorite trick.
“I saw one today… A monster. A real fortress on wheels. Black, shiny, on huge rims. It drives and everyone gets out of its way. You can feel the power, you know? The confidence. Now that’s a car for a family. For a man who takes care of his own.”
He spoke with a dreamy sigh, staring through the wall as if he could see that automotive ideal right in front of him. Svetlana silently returned to the fridge. She understood that right now anything she said would be used against her. Any practical argument—about fuel consumption, maintenance costs, the impossibility of finding a parking space for such a behemoth in their old courtyard—would be shattered by his reinforced concrete “but it’s safe.”
“Just imagine us going to the dacha,” he kept going, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “We wouldn’t have to cram those bags into the cabin anymore. Just toss everything into the trunk, strap Pashka into his seat—there’s a ton of room in the back—and off we go. Any road. Mud, snow—it doesn’t care. And your… little bug… will get stuck after the first rain.”
He paused, waiting for her reaction. But Sveta went on methodically arranging jars and cartons on the shelves. Her silence began to irritate him. It was thick, tangible, and in it he felt not agreement, but a dull, stubborn resistance.
“Sveta, are you even listening to me? I’m talking about us. About our comfort. About our son’s safety. Do you really not care?”
“I do care,” she finally answered in an even voice, closing the fridge door. “That’s why I bought a car with five stars in crash tests, that uses seven liters in the city, not twenty-seven, and that I can always park by the entrance, not three blocks away. My ‘bug’ is practicality. Your ‘monster’ is a toy for your ego. A very expensive and very impractical toy.”
She pronounced the last words clearly, looking him straight in the eye. The dreamy expression fell from his face, replaced by a hard, angry stubbornness. He stepped almost right up to her.
“So my desire to keep my family safe is a ‘toy’? You think I only care about myself?”
“I think you want a huge SUV and you’re covering that desire with convenient words about family,” she calmly countered. “And it’s normal to want something. What’s not normal is trying to manipulate me and pressure me, passing off your ‘wants’ as a shared necessity.”
He stepped back a pace, grinding his teeth. He realized his flanking maneuver had failed. The frontal assault hadn’t worked either. She saw right through him. And that infuriated him more than anything. He turned around and left the kitchen without another word. But Sveta knew this wasn’t the end. It was just a probing attack. The main battle was still ahead.
The lull lasted three days. Three days of thick, dense silence you could cut with a knife. Kirill didn’t bring up cars, but his presence in the apartment became heavy, oppressive. He paced from corner to corner like a tiger in a cage, and Sveta could almost physically feel the waves of restrained irritation coming from him. She knew he hadn’t retreated. He was just gathering strength for the decisive assault.
The moment came Thursday evening. Their son was already asleep, the dishes washed. Sveta was sitting in an armchair with a book, and Kirill, who had spent the last ten minutes silently staring into the dark window, suddenly turned around. His posture was that of a man who’d decided to ram through.
“I’ve made up my mind,” he announced in a tone that brooked no objections. “We’re selling both cars. Your little runt and my old bucket. This is ridiculous, don’t you see? Two buckets of bolts. That’s not status, it’s some kind of joke.”
Sveta slowly lowered the book to her lap but didn’t look up at him. She waited.
“We pool the money, take a bit from our ‘rainy day’ savings, and buy one proper, big car. For the family. I’ve already found a great option. Low mileage, perfect condition. We’ll have enough. And we’ll put this issue to rest once and for all.”
He finished his speech and fell silent, waiting for an explosion. He was ready for anything: reproaches, arguments about money, accusations of selfishness. He had prepared counterarguments in advance for every possible objection. He was sure of victory. He’d push her through.
Svetlana stayed quiet for a few more seconds, as if weighing his words. Then she slowly raised her head. There was no anger or hurt on her face. Only a calm, businesslike interest.
“For the family?” she asked softly.
“Yes! For the family!” Kirill confirmed emphatically, delighted that she’d latched onto this, his strongest argument. “For Pashka, for trips to the dacha, to our parents. For everything!”
“Great,” Sveta agreed unexpectedly easily. Her voice was even, almost cheerful. “I fully support the idea of a family approach. But since we’re talking about the family and the common good, let’s treat the matter as partners. As grown, responsible people.”
Kirill was thrown off. He hadn’t expected this turn. Warily, not understanding where she was heading, he nodded. Sveta put the book aside, stood up, and walked over to her laptop on the dresser. She opened it with a soft click that sounded deafeningly loud in the silence, and turned the screen toward her husband.
“You want me to sell my car because it’s feminine and impractical, and we’ll buy you a huge SUV? And I’ll be riding the metro to work? No, dear, I’ve come up with something better!”
An orderly Excel spreadsheet glowed on the screen. Kirill squinted in confusion, trying to make out the neat columns of numbers.
“Here, look,” her finger slid over the touchpad, highlighting cells.
“Just like you said. We sell both our cars. Add up the totals. Add some from savings. Buy your SUV. And then… the fun part. We start a logbook. Here it is.”
She switched to another tab: “Mileage and Expenses Log.”
“Every kilometer driven for personal errands is paid from the personal pocket into the general car fund. I’ve already calculated the rate, here: average fuel cost plus depreciation, parts and insurance, divided by the annual mileage. Your commute, my trips to the store, your runs to the gym, my visits to a friend. Everything gets logged. Fair and transparent.”
She spoke calmly, methodically, like an accountant presenting an annual report. Kirill stared at the screen in silence, and his face slowly changed.
“And trips on family business,” Sveta went on, steel notes appearing in her voice, “picking up the child from daycare, outings to the dacha together, to the clinic, to our parents—are paid at the same rate from the joint family budget. At the end of every month we sum it all up. Completely equal partnership. Deal?”
The trap snapped shut. He looked at the numbers, and in his head the gears started spinning at crazy speed. His commute was thirty kilometers one way. Sixty a day. Hers—five. Ten a day. His personal mileage would be six times higher. Six! Plus his gym, his weekend meetups with friends. He suddenly understood with terrifying clarity what she was offering. She was offering that he pay eighty percent of the cost of maintaining his own dream. From his salary, which was noticeably lower than hers. This wasn’t a compromise. It was an ultimatum wrapped in flawless logic. And he himself had driven into this corner with his pompous talk about “one family car.”
The air in the room thickened. First slowly, then rapidly, as if all the oxygen had been pumped out, leaving only heavy, acrid tension. Kirill stared at the laptop screen but didn’t see the numbers and columns. He saw mockery. A cold, calculated, impeccably logical mockery that was more humiliating than any slap in the face. He felt the blood drain from his face, then rush back in a hot, angry wave, pounding in his temples.
He let out a short, strangled laugh. There was nothing funny in that sound—only poison and disbelief. With a sharp movement he slammed the laptop shut. The loud plastic click rang out like a gunshot.
“Are you serious with this?” his voice was dangerously quiet, low. “You actually sat there and calculated all of this? Made a spreadsheet? You don’t find that ridiculous?”
“What’s ridiculous about it?” Svetlana looked at him just as calmly as a minute earlier. Her composure was like oil poured onto the fire. “You suggested a general family solution. I laid it out in detail. So everything would be fair. A partnership, like I said.”
“A partnership?” he practically spat the word out. “You call this a partnership? This is a noose, Sveta! You knew exactly what you were doing with those numbers! You knew my job is farther. You knew I’d be the one paying for everything! This isn’t partnership, this is a damn business plan where I’m the sole sponsor of your peace of mind!”
He started pacing around the room, from the sofa to the window and back. His movements were jerky, abrupt. It was like he was trying to shake off the invisible web of her calculations he’d so foolishly walked into. His arguments about the family’s safety and comfort had turned to dust. This was no longer a battle over a car. It was a battle over himself, over his place in this apartment, in this life.
“I get it! I get it now!” he suddenly stopped and jabbed a finger at her. “This is all because you earn more! Isn’t it? You like rubbing it in my face! You like shoving it in that I can’t just go out and buy what I want! You deliberately came up with this scheme to humiliate me! So I’d be like some little boy begging you for money for gas for MY OWN DREAM!”
The accusation, heavy and filthy, hung between them. He waited for her to explode, to defend herself, to yell back. But Svetlana’s expression didn’t change. She just looked at him with a tired, cold gaze.
“My salary has nothing to do with it. This is about the family budget that we both contribute to. And from which you want to take a large sum for a very expensive-to-maintain thing that you’ll be the main one using. My proposal makes this purchase fair for both of us. That’s all.”
“Fair?” he roared. “Fair is when a wife supports her husband’s desires! When she helps him instead of building financial barricades in front of him! You’re not a wife, you’re… you’re a calculator! A calculator in a skirt! You’ve got nothing but debits and credits in your head instead of thoughts!”
His words were hitting like open-handed blows, and he picked the nastiest, most hurtful phrases, trying to crack her armor, to make her feel something. He needed her reaction, her pain, to even the score.
“You just don’t want me to have that SUV! Admit it! You just want everything to be your way! For me to drive my wreck and you your little box, and for everything to stay quiet and calm the way you like it! You don’t give a damn about my dreams, my wants! The only thing that matters is that your Excel sheet balances out!”
He fell silent, breathing heavily. The room was so quiet they could hear the hum of the fridge in the kitchen. Svetlana looked at him for a long time without blinking. Then she said a sentence that knocked the ground out from under him completely.
“You’re right. I really don’t want you to have that SUV. Not under those conditions. If my honest and fair plan doesn’t suit you, then there won’t be any SUV. No matter how much you shout here. This conversation is over.”
The words “this conversation is over” hung in the air like smoke after an extinguished fire. But the acrid smell of burning remained. The next two days were the worst. The silence became thick as felt, swallowing all sounds. The creak of the floorboards, the click of a light switch, the clink of a spoon on a cup—everything seemed unnaturally loud, only emphasizing the gaping void where normal family life used to be. They moved around the apartment like two ghosts, making a point of not looking at each other.
Kirill felt both drained and furious. His anger was directed at her—for her cold logic, for seeing right through him so easily and mercilessly shoving his nose into reality. But somewhere beneath that anger, deep down, something unpleasant stirred—something like shame. Over and over he replayed his furious speech in his head. “Calculator in a skirt.” “Counting machine.” He’d hurled those words at her like stones, and she’d just stood there taking the hits. And her final icy calm had been not a sign of numbness, but a wall she’d built so he wouldn’t smash her to pieces.
On Saturday morning he got into his old rattling car to go to the market. The engine started with a strained cough. He looked at the worn steering wheel, the small crack on the windshield, the faded upholstery. And suddenly, with deafening clarity, he realized that the issue had never been the car. Not Pashka’s safety, not comfort, not dacha trips. It was about him.
He remembered that coworker who’d bought the huge black SUV. The way he swaggered out of it in the parking lot, the way he patted the shiny hood. The way the other guys looked at him with envy. And Kirill had envied him too. He envied that feeling of solid ground under your feet, that unspoken symbol of success that shouted to everyone: “I’ve made it. I can afford this.” And he couldn’t. And his old car reminded him of that every day. And Svetlana’s small, practical, modern car, bought with her money, reminded him even louder. His outburst had been the cry of a wounded ego, not a caring husband and father. And Svetlana had seen that from the very beginning.
That evening, after their son had gone to bed, he found her in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with a cup of tea, staring into the dark window. He silently poured himself some water and sat down across from her. She didn’t look up, but her shoulders tensed in expectation.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. The word cost him effort, as if he were forcing it out. “For what I said. It was… vile.”
Svetlana slowly turned her head toward him. There was no triumph or gloating in her eyes. Only boundless fatigue.
“You’re right,” he went on, looking at his hands on the table. “It wasn’t about the car. Or the family. It was about me. About the fact that Seryoga has an SUV and I don’t. Childish, like boys in a sandbox. And I dragged you and Pashka into it, hiding behind pretty words.”
He fell silent, not daring to meet her eyes. He was ready for anything: a rebuke, a lecture, a cold “I told you so.”
“Thank you for saying that,” Svetlana answered quietly. And for the first time in days he heard warmth in her voice, not steel. “It hurt a lot to hear that ‘calculator’ stuff. Like I’m not a person, just a function. Like I’m out to humiliate you on purpose.”
“I know. I was wrong. You were just… defending yourself,” he finally looked her in the eyes. “Your spreadsheet… It was fair. It’s just that this fairness was way too unpleasant for me.”
She gave a faint, crooked smile.
“I probably went too far too. I could’ve just talked, instead of putting on an Excel presentation.”
They sat in silence. The heavy felt of silence began to thin, giving way to something fragile but warm. The tension that had hung in the air for days slowly began to dissipate.
“So,” Svetlana took a small sip of tea, “can we consider the SUV war officially over?”
Kirill chuckled. For the first time in a week, it was genuine.
“Yeah. I think I’ll just put a little money into my old girl. Fix up the suspension, get new seat covers. She won’t be a fortress on wheels, but she’ll be a decent, reliable horse.”
“And with the money we save,” she picked up with a glint of mischief in her eyes, “we can go to the seaside in the summer. All of us. By plane. Much safer than any SUV.”
He laughed, and she joined him. Their laughter was loud and easy, and it finally cleared the air in their small kitchen. The battle had been lost, but the war for their family had been won. And that turned out to be far more important than any shiny hunk of metal on oversized wheels
