The note was lying on the kitchen table. Right in the middle of it, pinned down with the saltshaker so it wouldn’t blow away. I stood there in my coat, staring at it, my bag still hanging from my shoulder.
Kirill had left.
I understood that before I even reached the table. His large white headphones were gone from the little stand by the sofa. His sneakers had disappeared from the entryway. The charger he had stretched across the entire room to the outlet by the window on his very first day had been rolled up and taken with him. The apartment was silent.
Seven days. At first, I had counted them with happiness. Then with tired patience. And by the end, with something I still hadn’t found a name for.
I picked up the note with two fingers, the way you take a receipt from a stranger’s hand.
Kirill was the son of Rimma, my older sister. Rimma, who always said, “He’s special, our boy,” and for a long time I thought she meant something good by it. Smart, maybe. Sensitive. Or simply different from the others in some bright, noticeable way.
I hadn’t seen him in five years, not since that summer when they came to visit as a family and Kirill spent the whole time on his phone without lifting his head. He had been fourteen then. A teenager — understandable.
When Rimma called in February and said that Kiryusha was coming to our city for a university conference and had nowhere to stay, I said, “Of course.” Just like that. Immediately. Without even pausing. Because he was my nephew, nineteen years old, alone in a strange city without anyone he knew.
Because I had a sofa, and a room, and the desire to welcome him. After the divorce, my children had grown up and moved out, and the apartment had been empty for a long time.
“Galya, thank you, you’re saving us,” Rimma said. “He’s quiet, don’t worry. You won’t even notice him.”
I decided not to notice him — and began preparing.
I spent the first day in shops. First at the grocery store near my building: yogurt, eggs, sausage, cheese, cottage cheese, a loaf of bread. Then I remembered coffee and went back to the shelf. I stood there for three minutes, studying the jars. I don’t drink coffee myself at all; it gives me a headache, and I don’t understand the difference between brands.
I took one at an average price, then put it back. Then I took an expensive one, in a glass jar with a red lid. Three hundred and forty rubles for one hundred grams. For me, that was expensive. I work as a technologist at a canned-food factory, shift after shift, every other day. There’s not much room for luxuries. But my nephew was coming for the first time in five years, so let the coffee be decent.
At another shop, a block away, I bought two kinds of cookies because I didn’t know which kind he liked, and a can of sweet corn, which I put in the fridge just in case. Young people like all sorts of things.
That evening I called the internet company. I asked them to increase the speed. Two hundred rubles more a month, they said. Fine, I said, increase it. He would need proper internet to study.
I made up the sofa with clean bedding and put a flannel blanket on top. It was March, cold at night. Then I went to set up a folding bed for myself in the kitchen.
On Monday, March ninth, I met him at the train station.
Kirill got off the train with a large backpack and a wheeled suitcase, headphones around his neck, phone held in front of him. He walked while looking at the screen, and only near the exit did he raise his eyes and spot me in the crowd. He looked at me the way people look at a sign with their name on it: found the right person, nodded. I stepped forward and hugged him. He stood straight, without taking off his backpack. He lowered his arms for a moment and patted me on the back twice, the way you pat a stranger.
“Hi, Aunt Galya,” he said, already pulling away.
“Kiryusha.” I looked at him. Tall, thin, all grown up in five years. “How was the trip?”
“Fine.”
He glanced at his phone, nodded, and put his headphones on. I pulled his suitcase. He walked beside me, eyes on the screen, half a step ahead, so the whole way I saw the back of his head and the white arches of his headphones.
On the tram, I tried to talk to him. I asked about university. He said, “Fine.” About the conference. He said, “It starts tomorrow.” How Rimma was. He said, “Fine, she’s working.” Then he looked back at his phone, and I turned to the window. Dirty little March snow was falling, the kind that comes at the very end of winter.
At home, I showed him the room, the fridge, the towels in the bathroom, the hook for his jacket in the entryway. He listened absentmindedly, glancing around. Then he saw the outlet near the window and immediately reached into his backpack for his charger.
“What’s the Wi-Fi?” he asked without turning around.
I told him the password. He typed it in, nodded, and sat down on the sofa with his laptop.
I went to put the kettle on.
I remember the first morning by the smell of coffee. I got up early, as usual. I tried not to make any noise: soft-soled slippers, no light until I reached the hallway, setting the kettle down as quietly as a kettle can be set down. I poured coffee into a mug, covered it with a saucer, and left it on the table. Then I put on my coat. As I was leaving, Kirill came into the kitchen. He was in a T-shirt, hair sticking up, squinting at the light.
“Coffee?” he asked, noticing the mug.
“Yes, for you. Good coffee. I picked it specially.”
He lifted the mug, smelled it, and put it back down.
“It’s instant.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t drink instant coffee,” he said without anger, simply stating a fact, the way people say, “I don’t eat fish.” “I’m used to proper coffee. Capsules at least, or beans.”
I looked at the mug. Then I looked at the shelf where the jar stood. Three hundred and forty rubles. Red lid.
“I don’t have a coffee machine,” I said.
“Yeah, I figured.” He opened the fridge and stared inside for a long time, scanning shelf after shelf. “Is there anything lactose-free?”
“No. I didn’t know about that.”
“Right,” he said again. He took the loaf of bread and went back to the room.
I left for work.
On the tram, I kept turning it over in my head. All right. He’s young. He doesn’t know how to speak to people yet. He’ll get used to it.
At work that day, we were on the packing line. Monotonous work — your hands do everything on their own, and your mind is free. Lyuba was working next to me; we’ve been on the same shift for eight years. During lunch, she asked how my nephew was doing.
“He arrived,” I said.
“Happy?”
I looked at my sandwich.
“Happy,” I said.
Lyuba nodded. She knows how to hear when “happy” means something else, but she doesn’t pry. That’s one of the reasons I value her.
On the way home, I kept remembering the smell of coffee in that mug. A good smell, honestly. A pity I don’t drink it. Maybe one day I’ll try it.
On the third morning, Kirill came into the kitchen at half past seven, just as I was putting on my coat by the door.
“Aunt Galya.”
I turned around.
“It’s really noisy in the mornings. I sleep badly because of it.”
I stood there looking at him. I got up at half past five. I wore soft slippers. I didn’t turn on the overhead light until I was already in the hallway. I set the kettle down as quietly as physically possible. I zipped my bag slowly, tooth by tooth.
“Kiryusha, I’m trying,” I said.
“Well, maybe you could be quieter somehow.” His tone was calm, explanatory. The tone of a person pointing out something obvious. “I can hear every movement.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. About the slippers. About the light. I said nothing about the fact that I was walking around my own apartment.
“I’ll try,” I said.
He nodded and went back to the room.
I closed the door behind me and stood for a moment on the landing. Behind the door, there was silence. Then I called the elevator.
In the elevator, I saw my reflection in the mirror someone from the building had screwed onto the side wall long ago. My coat was buttoned wrong, one button in the wrong hole. I unbuttoned it and did it properly. I looked at myself. Forty-eight years old, tired face. In the morning I still looked somewhat human. By evening, not even that.
The elevator opened. I stepped out and went to the stop.
That day at the factory, I counted the same batch twice because I kept losing track. A technologist has no right to lose track. Whether a batch goes out for sale depends on my signature.
I counted it a third time. Only then did I sign off on it. It was a twelve-hour shift. By the end, my legs were buzzing. I stood the whole way home on the tram, staring into the dark window where my exhausted face was reflected. I thought: four more days. Only four more days.
Kirill mentioned the internet on the fourth day.
I came home from work, took off my shoes in the entryway, hung up my coat. Quiet music was coming from the room. I went into the kitchen and started taking out a pot.
He appeared in the doorway.
“Aunt Galya, your internet is really slow.”
“I increased the speed before you arrived.” I turned on the tap and filled the pot. “I’m paying extra for it.”
“It’s still slow. I need to be able to work normally.”
“If I’d known earlier, I could have asked about a higher plan.”
“Well, keep it in mind for next time,” he said and went back to his laptop.
I put the pot on the stove. I stood and watched the flame come on.
“Keep it in mind for next time.”
The person had been staying with me for four days, eating my potatoes, sleeping on my sheets, using my apartment, which I had cleaned before he came. And he was saying, “Keep it in mind.”
I started peeling potatoes. My hands worked automatically: knife, peel, water, next one.
My eyes fell on the sofa.
The sofa had belonged to my mother. Wide, heavy, with a tall straight back. “Made to last,” she used to say, running her hand over the wooden armrest.
My mother was ill for a long time. Three years. I went to her every other day after work, carrying a bag with groceries and medicine and sometimes something else — a book, a magazine, anything. Toward the end, she lay on that sofa because she could no longer get to the bed by herself, and she watched television or dozed.
I would sit beside her on the edge, and we would talk about anything: neighbors, weather, how the children were doing. I nodded and made mental notes: buy seedlings, find a bigger pot. We never did plant the petunia.
After the divorce, I rented a one-room apartment on the other side of the city. When my mother was gone, I moved into her place. The sofa stayed with me. I have slept on it for fifteen years. It is hard, that’s true. I like that it’s hard.
Kirill slept on it for seven days.
I dropped the potatoes into boiling water and called him to dinner.
He came into the kitchen with his phone, sat on the chair by the window — the one on the right, though the left one was more comfortable — and began eating without putting the phone away. He ate silently, without looking up.
Then he returned to his phone. I cleared the table, washed the dishes, hung the towel on its hook, and turned off the light.
On the fifth day, I tried to have a real conversation.
That evening, when he came into the kitchen for water, I asked him how he liked our city in general. He said, “Fine. A bit gray.” I asked whether he had seen anything besides the university.
He said he had walked to the center once, but there was nothing to see there. I wanted to say that we had an old park, and that it was nice even in March, but he was already pouring water into a glass and looking at his phone.
“Kiryusha,” I said, “tell me something about yourself at least. How you live. How your studies are going.”
He lifted his head. He looked at me with slight surprise, the way people look when they weren’t expecting a question.
“Fine,” he said. “I study. Everything’s good.”
“Do you have friends?”
“Yes.”
“A girlfriend?”
“Aunt Galya.” Something condescending entered his voice, the tone of a person being asked something obvious. “Why do you need to know that?”
“I’m just interested. You’re my nephew.”
He put the glass on the table.
“Well, yes, I have a girlfriend. Anything else?”
“No,” I said.
He went back to the room. I heard the music start behind the wall.
I sat in the kitchen and drank tea. It was dark outside. Rimma had said, “He’s quiet, you won’t even notice him,” and that was true. I had barely noticed him all week. I just cooked, washed, left quietly for work. I was in my own home, and yet I felt like a stranger in it.
I thought about my own children. They had also drifted away at that age. Sat at the table, answered “fine,” stared at their phones. Then they grew up, and conversations came back on their own: work, their children, little nonsense.
Sometimes they called for no reason at all. Maybe Kirill would become like that someday too. Maybe ten years would pass, and he would remember Aunt Galya. Bring me something from the south and say thank you for that week. Though no. He wasn’t that kind. I had already understood that by the fifth day.
On Sunday I had a duty shift. The factory was quiet, fewer people, less noise. I walked through the workshop, checking, counting, signing. I like work when it almost does itself: you don’t think about it, you simply do it, and your head is free for other things.
On Sunday, my head was free: my nephew was leaving, and the apartment would be quiet again. I would move back to the sofa. I would visit Lyuba. We hadn’t seen each other properly in ages, only at work. Maybe we’d go to the cinema; Lyuba had been asking for a long time.
I rode home on the tram. It was dark outside, streetlights glowing, warm windows shining in the houses. I looked at them and wasn’t thinking about anything in particular.
In the entryway, there was no backpack. No sneakers. No charger, the one Kirill had stretched to the outlet on the very first day and that I had carefully stepped around every morning so I wouldn’t catch it with my foot.
The bedding lay on the sofa in a neat pile. Folded evenly. On the table, there was a note.
I picked it up. Read it.
Put it back down. Went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and drank it standing by the sink without sitting down. Then I returned and picked it up again.
The sheet had been torn from a lined notebook. The handwriting was neat, the letters even and round. It was written in a column, like a shopping list:
“The coffee in the house is bad.
The Wi-Fi is weak.
The sofa is hard.
It’s noisy in the mornings.
Next time, prepare better for guests.”
I read it a third time.
And everything inside me became very quiet. It wasn’t anger. Anger is hot; it burns and pushes you somewhere. This was different. Cold and calm, the way it feels when you finally understand something important about a person and realize there is nothing left to be surprised by.
I folded the note lengthwise and placed it on the table.
Then I dialed Rimma’s home number. The phone rang for a long time before there was a click.
“Hello?” It wasn’t Rimma’s voice. Kirill. So he was already home.
“Kiryusha,” I said. “I read your note.”
“Oh.” No pause. No embarrassment. “Yeah. I wrote it constructively, so you could keep it in mind for next time.”
“Constructively,” I repeated.
“Well, yes.” That light tone again, the tone of someone explaining the obvious. “You’re not offended, are you? It’s better to be honest than to stay silent.”
I stood by the window. Outside it was March: bare black branches, a low dark sky, a streetlamp swaying in the wind.
“Kiryusha, why was it noisy in the mornings?”
“I don’t know. You were rattling around with something.”
“I got up at half past five. In soft slippers. I didn’t turn on the light until I went out into the hallway.”
A pause.
“I could still hear it.”
I was silent for a moment. Then I said:
“You wrote that the sofa was hard. Do you know whose sofa that is?”
“Yours.”
“It was my mother’s sofa. Your grandmother Anna Petrovna’s sofa. I’ve slept on it for fifteen years because I don’t have another one.”
“Aunt Galya, I’m not saying you should throw it away. I just put it on the list.”
Exactly. He just put it on the list.
“Kiryusha,” I said slowly. “You stayed with me for free for seven days. I cooked, washed your things, bought groceries. I paid extra for the internet. I bought coffee — good coffee, expensive for me — which you never even tried. I got up at half past five and moved around my own apartment in slippers so I wouldn’t wake you.”
Silence on the other end.
“Feedback is good. But first, people say thank you.”
“Well…” Something in his voice shifted, only slightly. “Thank you. I didn’t mean it badly.”
“I know. Give the phone to your mother when she can call me.”
I hung up.
Rimma called half an hour later. In that time, I washed my face, changed clothes, and managed to sit in the kitchen in a silence I hadn’t heard for a long time. I put the kettle on, just to be doing something.
“Galya, don’t take it to heart.” Rimma’s voice had the same tone I had known since childhood. The exact tone she used when Kirill broke my favorite mug at five years old and she needed to explain to me that it had been an accident. “He’s just like that. Direct. He doesn’t know how to be different.”
“I heard.”
“Well, there you go. He didn’t mean any harm. He talks to everyone like that. To me too. He’ll come home and say, ‘Mom, the soup is too salty.’ Straight out, no softening it. Not out of malice.”
I looked out the window. The kettle was beginning to boil; I could tell from the rising hum.
“Rimma,” I said. “Have you ever explained to him that before ‘the soup is too salty,’ people say, ‘thank you for cooking’?”
A long pause.
“Galya, well, he’s…”
“I know,” I said. “He’s special.”
The kettle clicked off.
“You’re hurt,” Rimma said. She didn’t ask. She stated it.
“No, Rimma. I’m not hurt. I just understood something.”
“What?”
“That next time, I’ll know better.”
We were silent. I could hear her breathing into the receiver.
“He said your place was cozy,” she finally said, quietly, with a kind of guilt in her voice.
“Good,” I said.
“All right then. We’ll talk.”
“We’ll talk.”
I got up and went into the room.
The sofa stood in its place. I took the stack of bedding and threw it into the basin to wash. I adjusted the pillow and placed it against the backrest. Then I ran my hand over the wooden armrest. Old, polished, warm to the touch, as always.
She is gone now, and the sofa remains. It seems unfair until you think about it and realize that maybe this is how it should be: people leave, but what they made stays behind.
I sat down on the sofa.
The jar of coffee with the red lid was still on the kitchen shelf. Almost full. Kirill had never opened it. Three hundred and forty rubles. Let it sit there. Tomorrow morning, I’ll open it and finally try it myself.
I took the note from the table and folded it into quarters. Then I put it in the drawer with the receipts, under old utility bills. Let it stay there. Not as a memory, but as a reminder: who should not be invited next time.
Then I went into the kitchen. I reached toward the hook for my mother’s blue-striped apron. Then I stopped my hand.
Not today.
Outside the window, the wind bent the branches. March stood black and empty, without leaves, without buds yet. Spring comes late where we live, at the end of April, when people have almost stopped waiting for it. I know that well, and still, every year, I start waiting too early.
I put the kettle on. For myself.
For the first time in seven days, only for myself, without adjusting to someone else’s tastes and needs.
Have you ever cooked for someone, tried your best, and then found out it still wasn’t enough? How did you deal with it?
