“And now, my dear ones, put your forks down. We have an issue on the agenda that calls for financial solidarity. Are we really a family, or are we just sitting around the same table destroying mayonnaise salads for no reason?”
My mother-in-law, Tatyana Borisovna, towered over the праздничный table with such grand importance that she looked as if she were about to announce the annexation of new land to her summer cottage.
A former head of a school cafeteria, she was used to handing out portions and orders in a way that made no one dare ask for seconds or mercy. Her commanding voice always sounded as though she were directing an evacuation through a megaphone, even if all she wanted was someone to pass the salt.
I carefully set my fork down on the edge of my plate. My husband Misha, sitting beside me, frowned slightly, already sensing that speeches like this usually ended with someone trying to reach into our pockets.
“I took out a loan,” my mother-in-law announced. “For improving our ancestral nest.” She swept her eyes across everyone at the table as if counting fresh recruits before sending them off on a forced march.
“A premium metal fence, a greenhouse with automatic irrigation, and a few other little things so I won’t feel embarrassed in front of the neighbors. It’s a serious amount, and the monthly payment is painful. So we’ll all chip in for it as a family. It’s a shared cause!”
She paused, apparently expecting applause and the immediate rustling of cash. Around the table, the relatives froze like meerkats sensing danger.
“Misha,” Tatyana Borisovna said, pinning my husband with her stare, “your coffee equipment repair business is doing well. And Alyona doesn’t teach her vocal students for free either. From your household, thirty thousand a month. That will cover most of the loan.”
My sister-in-law Lena, a thirty-one-year-old shop-window decorator with a permanently offended face and endless complaints against the universe, nodded so eagerly that her massive hoop earrings nearly caught on the crystal chandelier.
“Exactly, Mom! Family should help! They live for their own pleasure, travel abroad, while Mother works herself to the bone at the dacha for the sake of our common future.”
I do not like making scenes. My profession as a vocal teacher taught me the most important thing: when someone hits a false note, there is no need to scream or wave your arms. You simply make them sing it solo, loudly and without accompaniment, so they can hear for themselves how absurd it sounds.
“What a wonderful initiative, Tatyana Borisovna,” I said, my voice even and precise, like the tone of a tuning fork. I looked at my mother-in-law with the polite curiosity of someone watching the strange mating rituals of exotic birds.
“A true mutual aid fund. Since we are all one close-knit social unit here, let’s distribute the honorable responsibilities fairly. Lena, you are the loudest in supporting your mother. As her loving daughter, your share is thirty thousand too, right?”
Lena blinked as if someone had suddenly thrown a hot meat pie at her. The expression of righteous superiority vanished from her face at once.
“What do you mean, thirty?!” she shrieked, dropping a slice of ham onto the tablecloth.
“I pay rent! I have professional development courses! Manicures, for heaven’s sake! And anyway, I’m a girl, I’m not even married yet, I shouldn’t be carrying amounts like that!”
“A girl with professional courses,” I said with a thoughtful nod, mentally noting that elegant retreat, and turned to Uncle Vitya.
Uncle Vitya, my mother-in-law’s brother, had been leaning hard on the alcohol all evening and delivering passionate speeches about how important it was to stay true to one’s roots because “blood is thicker than water.”
“Uncle Vitya,” I said to him in my gentlest tone, “half an hour ago you were speaking so beautifully about how our family is an impenetrable concrete wall. A wall needs strong bricks. Would fifteen thousand a month from you be acceptable? Or shall we round it up to twenty for your beloved sister?”
“You surely wouldn’t leave her alone to face that elite metal fence, would you?”
Uncle Vitya instantly lost the power of speech. His eyes widened to the size of soup plates, and he began studying the pattern on the tablecloth as if it contained a coded map to buried pirate treasure.
Then he coughed sharply into his fist, with every inch of his body language declaring that he had suddenly gone deaf and no longer understood Russian.
Aunt Sveta, his wife, who just five minutes earlier had been loudly supporting the sacred duty of family obligation, suddenly grew fidgety, brushing imaginary dust from her knees.
“Oh, Alyonochka, the things you say,” she babbled, twisting her napkin nervously. “We’ve got our own garage roof leaking, and next semester we have to pay for Vasya’s college… We’re only guests here, we just came to visit your mother. What money? We’re practically pensioners already!”
“But you’re young and healthy,” my mother-in-law tried to jump back in, sensing that her grand plan was developing a crack the size of the Mariana Trench. “For you, earning money is easy! We’re elderly people!”
“So youth is some kind of special tax we’re supposed to pay for your spontaneous purchases?” I tilted my head slightly, continuing to dismantle their logic piece by piece.
“Well, isn’t this interesting.” I let my gaze sweep across the frozen table. The sound of chewing had stopped completely. “The moment it came to specific monthly transfers to a bank card, our impenetrable wall crumbled like cheap drywall in a newly built apartment. Tatyana Borisovna, the arithmetic here is fascinating. ‘As a family,’ it turns out, is simply a pretty synonym for ‘entirely at Alyona and Misha’s expense.’ And all the other relatives are contributing to this grand project only with moral support and valuable advice on how we should spend our salaries.”
My mother-in-law’s face hardened with outrage. Her fingers dug into the edge of the table.
“How dare you speak to me like that!” she cried, trying to switch into the role of wounded virtue.
“I raised Misha, I gave my whole life! This is our shared dacha! You’ll bring your children there one day!”
Until that moment, my husband had been silently pushing away his plate of aspic. At last, Misha spoke. He is a straightforward man, as straight as a railroad track, and he has no taste for verbal lacework—but when he strikes, he always hits the mark.
“Mom, let’s skip the theater.
“You took out a loan for a fence and a greenhouse that only you need, so you can show off in front of your neighbor Maria Ivanovna. We’ve been to that dacha twice in the last five years, and both times we were forced to weed the garden beds under the blazing sun as punishment for showing up. There is nothing there that belongs to us, and we have no intention of going back.”
Misha stood up from the table and laid down his napkin.
“My wife is not some bottomless wallet that opens at the sound of your limp applause,” he said flatly, looking his mother straight in the eye.
“And I’m not an ATM either. If you want to live with an elite fence, pay for it yourself. Or let Lena contribute, since she cares so deeply about family values. As for our budget, we’ll be planning it without the participation of any family council.”
The fundraising campaign collapsed before it had truly begun, fizzling out like a damp firecracker on New Year’s Eve. Lena furiously scrolled through something on her phone, pretending she was not there at all, just a random passerby. Uncle Vitya and Aunt Sveta suddenly remembered that they had to wake up very early for the construction market the next morning, and began hurriedly gathering their things, carefully avoiding the hostess’s eyes.
Misha and I calmly finished our tea. I felt neither anger nor triumph—only the cool, steady satisfaction of an adult who had carried out a timely, thorough disinfection of personal boundaries and hung a heavy padlock on them.
As we were leaving, I politely thanked Tatyana Borisovna for the delicious salads. She gave a dry nod, pressing her lips together so tightly they turned into a thin line.
If someone wants to play at generosity, they should start with their own wallet.
