Marina hated Sunday evenings. In their small two-bedroom apartment, the silence didn’t feel calm—it felt muffled and heavy, like cotton pressed to your ears. From behind the wall, the neighbor’s TV droned on, and in the kitchen the faucet kept dripping, the same one Andrey had been promising to fix for a month.
Andrey sat on a stool, staring at a single spot on the countertop. In a tiny scratch in the plastic, it seemed like all the sorrow in the world had gathered. His phone lay in front of him, the screen lighting up again and again with the same name:
“Mommy.”
“Sixth call,” Marina said in a colorless voice as she lifted the kettle off the burner. “She’s determined.”
“I can’t, Marin.” Andrey raised his eyes to her. They were usually warm, brown, familiar—but now they held a muddy mix of shame and a childlike hurt. “What am I supposed to say? That I know everything? She’ll start twisting it, crying about her blood pressure. I won’t be able to take it.”
Marina let out a slow breath. She wanted to walk up to him, shake him by the shoulders, and shout, Wake up! You were used! But instead, she simply set a cup of tea in front of him.
No sugar. The sugar had run out, and payday was still three days away.
This story had started a month earlier.
They’d been saving for a car. Not a new one—of course not—just a decent used foreign model, so Andrey could drive for taxi apps in the evenings. The mortgage was squeezing every last drop from their budget. Every thousand rubles they slipped into the envelope marked “Dream” was a hard-won victory. Marina stopped getting manicures. Andrey quit smoking.
And then Zinaida Petrovna called.
“Andryusha, sweetheart,” she said, her voice over the phone trembling as if she were about to take her last breath. “It’s my anniversary. Sixty years. You remember?”
“I remember, Mom. We’ll come by and поздравим you.”
“Oh no, no, don’t come,” she cut in quickly. “I decided I won’t celebrate. Times are hard, money’s tight. I’ll just sit alone and cry over the years that are gone.”
The pause that followed was theater-worthy. Andrey, predictably, melted.
“Mom… why alone? Let us help.”
“And how could you help?” Zinaida Petrovna gave a bitter little laugh. “You’re barely scraping by yourselves. If I want to set a proper table, I need fifty thousand at least. And that’s modest! I wanted to rent a gazebo at a recreation base, out in nature… Ah, forget it. I’ll manage.”
That evening Andrey paced the apartment from corner to corner.
“Marin, it’s my mother. Sixty happens once in a lifetime. We can buy the car in six months instead. But at least everything will be… humane. Decent.”
Marina was against it. She knew Zinaida Petrovna better than Zinaida believed. But seeing her husband’s guilty eyes was unbearable.
“Fine,” she said at last. “Get the ‘Dream’ envelope.”
Fifty thousand flew to his mother’s card. In return came a voice message overflowing with squeals, kisses, and promises: “I’ll set a table you’ll lick your fingers over! Be here Saturday at two! I can’t wait!”
And then, on Friday—the day before the celebration—Zinaida Petrovna called again.
“Andryushenka… disaster,” she said, her voice shaking. “A pipe burst upstairs. Everything got flooded! The wallpaper is hanging off, the stench is horrible. What celebration? I canceled everything. I moved the recreation base booking to ‘sometime later,’ stuffed the food into the freezer. I’m sitting here waiting for emergency services. Don’t come—there’s nothing to breathe. As soon as I sort it out, I’ll let you know.”
Andrey was devastated. He wanted to rush over, rip up the linoleum, fight with the building management—help in any way he could. His mother forbade it outright:
“No need for you to sit in dampness—you’ll catch something. I’ll handle it. Aunt Valya is helping.”
The weekend passed in anxious fog. Every couple of hours Andrey texted: How are you? She replied in short, clipped messages: Cleaning up. Drying out. Tired. Going to sleep.
The thunderclap came Monday morning.
Marina was on the bus to work, scrolling her feed, when a “recommended” post popped up from Andrey’s cousin, Svetka—the same Svetka whom Zinaida Petrovna used to call a “shameless tramp” behind her back and claimed she couldn’t stand.
The caption read: “Best birthday ever for my beloved aunt! Zinaida Petrovna, you’re amazing! Thank you for the luxurious table!”
Marina nearly dropped her phone.
In the bright, sunny photo was the very recreation base—“Sunny Shore.” A gazebo decorated with balloons. A crowd—twenty people, at least. Aunt Valya. Svetka and her husband. Neighbors from the dacha. Even Zinaida Petrovna’s former coworker.
And in the center, glowing like a polished samovar, stood Zinaida Petrovna herself—wineglass in hand, not a trace of sorrow on her face, not a hint of “flooded apartment tragedy.”
Marina zoomed in on the table. The spread was outrageous: caviar in tartlets, heaps of шашлык, expensive fish. And bottles—lots of bottles—of the very cognac Andrey looked at in the store like it belonged in a museum.
Posted: Saturday, 2:30 PM.
Location tag: Sunny Shore Recreation Base.
They hadn’t simply been “not invited.” They had been deliberately cut out—neatly, under the disguise of “care.” Apparently Zinaida Petrovna decided the “poor relatives” with their mortgage talk and tired faces would ruin her little life-celebration. Their money, though, had been very welcome.
Marina forwarded the photo to her husband.
No words.
That evening Andrey didn’t yell. He just sat in the kitchen staring at the wall.
“She even invited Svetka,” he said quietly. “Svetka, who gave her a waffle towel two years ago for her birthday. And we… we gave her everything.”
And now, two days later, the phone was blowing up again.
“Answer,” Marina said firmly. “Don’t be a coward, Andrey. Listen to her.”
He took a deep breath, dragged his palm down his face—wiping away the beaten-dog expression—and pressed Accept. He turned on speakerphone himself.
“Andryusha!” Zinaida Petrovna shrieked, her voice stabbing through the kitchen. “Why aren’t you picking up?! I’ve been sick with worry!”
“Hi, Mom. I was busy. What happened?” Andrey’s voice was dry as a dead leaf.
“Disaster, son! Oh, disaster! The bills came—there’s a heating recalculation! And that stupid property tax on the dacha! The amount is horrifying—twenty thousand! My wallet is empty, everything went to repairs after that cursed flood!”
She lied smoothly. Confidently. Like a professional.
“Repairs?” Andrey echoed.
“Yes! Wallpaper, glue… I paid workers to treat the mold with chemicals. I’m sitting here eating plain pasta. Son, help me! Send some money, please? I have to pay tomorrow or they’ll charge penalties, they’ll cut the electricity! You don’t want your mother sitting in the dark, do you?”
Marina watched Andrey’s jaw tighten as his fingers squeezed the phone. He stayed silent for one second. Two.
“Mom… how was the шашлык?” he asked.
“What… шашлык?” Zinaida Petrovna choked.
“The one at the recreation base. On Saturday. I saw Svetka’s photos. Nice caviar—big pearls. And Ararat cognac, five stars. You love that one, don’t you?”
On the other end—silence. Only heavy breathing.
“So you’re… spying on me now?” Her tone flipped instantly. The pleading sweetness vanished, replaced by a market-stall screech. “Traitor! You’re checking up on your own mother?!”
“I’m not checking up,” Andrey said. “I’m just watching my money being spent. Without me.”
“Oh, stop it with ‘my money, my money!’” Zinaida Petrovna screamed. “You’re young—you’ll earn more! I had to show face in front of people! Not look worse than everyone else! Svetka came in a car, Tonya wore a fur coat—what was I supposed to do, serve tea and dry crackers?! I wanted a proper celebration!”
“You got one, Mom,” Andrey said—very calmly. Terrifyingly calm. “A great one. An expensive one.”
“Yes! And I had every right! I raised you! I didn’t sleep nights! And now you won’t spare your mother twenty thousand? They’ll shut off the power, you monsters!”
Marina touched his hand. Andrey looked at her. There was no uncertainty left in his eyes—only a final, immovable period at the end of a sentence.
“They won’t shut it off,” he said. “Sell a couple bottles of cognac if you have any left. Or call Svetka.”
“You HAVE money!” she screeched into the phone. “You’re saving for a car, I know it! Don’t lie to your mother!”
“There’s no money, Mom,” Andrey clipped each word like a stamp. “And there won’t be a car.”
“Where did it go?!”
Andrey drew in a breath.
“Mom,” he said, “we’re flying to the sea.”
“What?!” His mother sounded like she’d swallowed air wrong.
“To the sea. Flight tomorrow. Thailand. Since you didn’t invite us to your birthday, we’ll throw ourselves our own celebration. With all the money. Right now we’re ordering a taxi to the airport.”
“You’re lying…” she hissed. “That’s impossible… And what about me?”
“You’re an adult, Mom. You’ll manage. Have a good evening.”
He ended the call.
The phone clinked as it hit the table. Andrey sat with his shoulders slumped, like a man who’d finally dropped a sack of cement he’d been dragging his entire life.
“We’re really not going anywhere, are we?” Marina asked softly, even though she already knew.
Andrey gave a crooked smile.
“Of course not. With what money? We have three thousand until the advance. But let her think we’re warming our backsides on a beach. Let her choke on envy.”
He stood and went to the window. Outside, a cold, dreary rain had started. But inside the apartment, the air suddenly felt lighter—shockingly easier to breathe.
“Block her,” Marina said.
“Already did,” Andrey replied, showing her the screen. “And Svetka too. And Aunt Valya. All of them.”
He walked over and hugged her, pressing his nose into her cheek. He smelled of exhaustion and cheap deodorant, but to Marina it was the most familiar scent in the world.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “For the money. For the car.”
“You idiot,” Marina murmured, holding him tighter. “We’ll buy the car. But now we know exactly what the admission price is for a ‘close-knit family.’ Fifty thousand. Honestly? We got off cheap.”
For another month Zinaida Petrovna tried to break through their defenses—calling from unknown numbers, sending neighbors with просьбы, complaining about illnesses and household disasters. But her son’s door stayed shut.
And half a year later, Andrey and Marina finally bought that car. Not new, but theirs. And the very first thing they did was drive it out to the dacha.
Not to his mother’s.
To their own place—where they grilled шашлык for two, and no one else got a say.
