“Tanusha, where’s the hot dish? Or are we supposed to choke down caviar sandwiches like it’s a famine year?” my mother-in-law Rimma Markovna’s voice sliced through the festive atmosphere with all the grace of a rusty circular saw.
Rimma Markovna had spent thirty years working in Soviet retail, weighing out sausage, and she still looked at people as though they had come to her asking for rationed goods without coupons.
“The hot dish is in the oven, Rimma Markovna,” I replied calmly, adjusting a napkin. “And if the caviar tastes bitter to you, I can quickly boil you a sausage. Soviet-standard quality.”
My mother-in-law pursed her lips and shifted her dissatisfaction to the crystal glasses.
Misha and I were celebrating thirty years of marriage. Our pearl anniversary. For an entire year, we had been saving money from our very modest salaries. I sew work uniforms at a factory, and Misha drives a bus for Mosgortrans. For us, this evening was not just a dinner party. It was our own little attempt to buy ourselves a bit of dignity, to breathe out and say, “We made it. We can afford to live beautifully, at least once.”
The centerpiece of the evening, our pride and our financial wound, stood on a huge platter: baked sturgeon. Real, royal-looking sturgeon, decorated with lemons and olives. Misha looked at it with such reverence, as if he had caught it himself with his bare hands in the Caspian Sea.
Besides my mother-in-law, Misha’s sister Lyudmila had also honored us with her presence. At thirty-nine, she did not work anywhere, but introduced herself as “a muse in search of a resource flow.”
“Generally speaking, a woman should not work,” Lyudmila drawled, swirling a glass of prosecco with nails of terrifying length. “I learned at a femininity marathon that my energy is worth millions. You just need to know how to give it to the right people instead of wasting it on factory dust.”
“Is that why your payment for lactose-free milk didn’t go through at Pyaterochka yesterday, Lyudochka?” I asked sweetly, pouring her some mineral water. “Apparently, the terminal doesn’t accept payments in energetic emanations.”
Lyudmila flinched, dropped her fork, and visibly deflated. Her highly spiritual resource flow had apparently crashed into everyday reality again.
The atmosphere at the table was heating up, but then the door flew open, and a natural disaster floated into the apartment.
Aunt Raisa.
Misha’s aunt on his father’s side. At sixty-five, she wore sequin blouses, laughed so loudly the glass in the cabinet rattled, and recognized no social boundaries whatsoever.
“I’m late!” Raisa announced thunderously, shoving a bag of some jars into Misha’s hands. “The traffic was awful! Well, what have we got here? Wow, fish! You bourgeois people!”
Raisa sat down at the table and immediately began taking charge. She did not so much eat as comment on every bite. But the worst began an hour later, when we moved on to tea. Aunt Raya pulled an entire battery of plastic containers out of her enormous bag.
“Right, Tanka, you won’t finish all this anyway. Misha gets heartburn from fatty food, I know, I babysat him when he was little,” she declared loudly, deftly transferring half of our precious sturgeon into a container. “I’ll take some salad too. And the cold cuts. No point letting good food go to waste!”
I sat there, feeling shame rush hotly into my face. Our fish. Our symbol that we could “afford it.” Rimma Markovna exchanged a triumphant smirk with Lyudochka.
“Well, would you look at that,” my mother-in-law said in a syrupy voice. “Such hospitality, Tanechka.
The guests are packing their own rations. Since you have so much money lying around that you can throw fish away, you could have helped your sister-in-law. Lyudochka is overdue on her microloans. Debt collectors are calling her. You could pay them off. You’re family.”
I looked at Rimma Markovna.
A year of saving. The sewing machine buzzing at night. Misha’s weekend shifts. All of it just so we could sit here now, spat on?
“Rimma Markovna,” I said, placing my hands on the table and feeling an absolute, icy calm settle inside me. “I didn’t sign anything for Lyudochka, and I didn’t agree to be her guarantor. Her debts are her legal right to financial illiteracy and bankruptcy proceedings. And the door is exactly where it was when you came in. For both of you.”
My mother-in-law choked on air without even taking a sip of tea. She snapped her mouth shut with such a loud click that it sounded like an old carp suddenly realizing the worm had been made of plastic.
They left five minutes later, slamming the door in wounded outrage. Aunt Raisa, completely unbothered by the scandal, snapped shut the last container with the remaining sturgeon, kissed a stunned Misha on the cheek, and hurried out after them, her bag clattering with plastic.
We were left alone in the wrecked living room.
“Tanyusha… forgive me,” my husband said quietly, gathering empty plates. “I wanted so badly for you to feel like a queen today. But it turned out like always. A circus. And that fish… it’s such a shame.”
“Forget it, Mish. At least the air is cleaner now,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders, though inside I felt as if cats were clawing at my chest. The resentment toward Raisa, who had stolen our celebration, burned in my throat.
Morning began with a headache. I shuffled into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator to get a carton of juice, and froze.
On the middle shelf, where the sturgeon platter had stood the day before, there was an unfamiliar plastic container. The very same kind with a blue lid from Aunt Raisa’s arsenal. I frowned and took it out. It was light. There was no food inside.
I removed the lid.
At the bottom lay a thick envelope tied with a rubber band from a pharmacy, and a folded sheet torn from a school notebook.
My hands trembled as I unfolded the note, written in large, sweeping handwriting:
“Tanka!
Forgive me for the performance. I grabbed your fish on purpose, as rudely as possible, so those two leeches, Rimmka and Lyudka, wouldn’t devour it. All they know how to do is feed off you, while you sit there like sad little mice.
I sold my dacha last week. There’s one hundred and fifty thousand here. Buy yourselves a trip to the sea, like you dreamed about thirty years ago when we celebrated your wedding in my communal kitchen.
And by the way, your sturgeon was a little too salty.
Love you, you fools.
Raisa.”
I sank onto the kitchen stool, pressing the bundle of five-thousand-ruble notes to my chest. A lump rose in my throat, but these were entirely different tears.
Misha walked into the kitchen, yawning.
“Tanya, why are you crying?”
I silently handed him the note. He read it, and his face slowly changed, moving from confusion to a bright, wide smile that softened the wrinkles around his eyes.
Care sometimes wears very strange clothes. It can arrive dressed in sequins, laugh too loudly, behave without tact, and carry away the most expensive food from your table simply to protect you from those who feed on your life.
“Mish,” I said, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my robe. “Get the phones.”
“Who are we calling? Raisa?”
“First, we’re blocking your mother’s and your sister’s numbers. Once and for all. Then we’ll call Raisa and ask which travel agency she recommends. And yes… we’ll have to buy her the best box of chocolates we can find.”
That morning, our kitchen was very quiet and peaceful.
Justice, as it turned out, does not like noise. It comes silently while you are sleeping, leaving behind a clear horizon and tickets to the sea.
