— Svetochka, hand me the keys to the apartment right now, will you? — Nadezhda Ivanovna announced loudly.
She dabbed her lips with a paper napkin and impatiently wiggled the fingers of her hand, each one weighed down with massive gold rings. The harsh glare of the cheap dining-hall chandeliers fell across her face, sharpening the odd, almost predatory expression in her features. There wasn’t a trace of grief in her narrowed eyes for the son she had just buried.
There was only cold, practical calculation and the absolute certainty that she had the right to take what belonged to someone else.
— Why do you need the keys this very moment? — I asked, looking at her spread-out hand with its poisonous burgundy manicure.
The relatives seated along the long table instantly froze, stopping mid-bite over pancakes and sliced meat. Dozens of eyes, shining with undisguised curiosity, turned toward us. This little performance promised to be far more entertaining than the dull speeches they had been listening to for the past half hour.
— Well, obviously, Oleg left his fishing gear there, that expensive hammer drill too, — my mother-in-law said with a careless wave of her hand, as if brushing away an annoying fly. — I’ll come by tomorrow morning and take everything. At the same time, we’ll remove the new television from the living room. He bought it with his bonus, after all.
Her daughter Katya, sitting beside her in a ridiculous bright scarf, nodded vigorously and pulled the plate of sausage closer to herself.
— Yes, Sveta, Mom is absolutely right. We’ll come and sort everything ourselves. It’s hard for you now, and who knows, in your grief you might start giving things away to strangers. My brother’s memory should stay in the family. We’ll take everything into reliable hands.
I looked at their identical pinched lips and felt as if the beige wallpaper of the cramped hall was closing in on me. They were talking about my apartment — the one where every shelf and every baseboard had been chosen by me personally. Both of them knew perfectly well that I had bought that two-room apartment five years before I ever met Oleg.
And they also remembered very well that he had moved in with nothing but a single sports bag and the stupid habit of throwing his socks everywhere.
— I’ll go through Oleg’s things myself when I decide the time is right, — I replied, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. — This is completely the wrong moment to discuss it, Nadezhda Ivanovna.
But my mother-in-law had always mistaken politeness for weakness — a direct invitation to attack. She gave a short, dry laugh that made Uncle Misha’s eye twitch beside her.
— Oh, stop pretending you’re some great martyr and untouchable fortress! — she snapped, leaning forward so sharply that she nearly knocked over the pitcher of cherry compote. — You’re alone now. What do you need men’s tools for? And don’t worry, I’ll find his hidden cash myself!
Without a shred of shame, she reached across the table, aiming her long burgundy nails straight for my open handbag. On top of everything inside it, a small metal house-shaped keychain glittered invitingly. My keys. My access to the only safe place I had left in the world.
She genuinely believed she could simply take possession of my private space by the right of the stronger person.
At that moment, the bright lamp above us flickered irritably, and I suddenly saw the whole situation with absolute clarity, without a single illusion left. I remembered every one of her old complaints about the color of my curtains and the taste of my borscht. I remembered her shameless attempts to rearrange the furniture in my living room during her rare visits. It had always been the same — a constant, systematic violation of my boundaries disguised as suffocating motherly concern.
She had never seen me as a separate person or as the owner of my own home. To her, I had always been nothing more than a temporary attachment to her son — a convenient servant who happened to come with free housing.
I smoothly caught my handbag by the handles, not allowing her grasping fingers to touch the black leather. Slowly, making sure every person in that brightly lit room could see, I took out the jingling key ring. Nadezhda Ivanovna smiled in triumph. Her eyes flashed with greed, and she pushed her open palm even closer, already savoring tomorrow’s inspection of my cupboards.
I looked straight into her victorious face. Then, with deliberate calm, my fingers removed one single key from the ring.
It was old, bent, stained with deep rust, and clearly different from the modern perforated keys.
— This is for the old garage in the industrial district, the one Oleg rented to store summer tires and empty jars, — I said, my voice loud and clear.
I placed that dirty piece of metal on the snow-white tablecloth, exactly halfway between us. Then I demonstratively lowered the main key ring, the one with the shiny little house, into the very bottom of my handbag.
I zipped the bag shut with one sharp, confident motion. The sound made the woman sitting next to me flinch.
— As for the keys to my home, they will always stay in my bag, — I said, looking my mother-in-law directly in the eyes without blinking. — I’ll neatly pack the tools and fishing gear into shoe boxes. Tomorrow evening, I’ll leave them on the landing. You can come and pick them up. The television will remain exactly where it is.
Nadezhda Ivanovna’s face instantly blotched an ugly crimson, almost matching the color of her lipstick. Her hand, heavy with a gold ring, remained frozen above the table as if my calm refusal had paralyzed it. She cast a confused glance at Katya, searching for support, but Katya only nervously crushed a paper napkin in her hands.
The relatives hurriedly looked away, suddenly becoming very interested in the geometric patterns on the cheap plates and pretending the salad required their full attention.
My perfectly polite gesture silenced the entire hall, stripping my mother-in-law of her usual power and of any chance to turn the moment into a scandal. I rose from the table, straightened the collar of my dark blouse, and headed toward the exit of the dining hall. No one dared say a word after me. Only the legs of plastic chairs scraped unpleasantly against the floor.
An hour later, I turned the shiny key in the lock of my apartment and stepped inside. I switched on the soft light in the hallway and looked down the corridor. There were no more foreign expectations here, no absurd demands, no attempts to impose someone else’s rules.
I walked into the living room without even taking off my shoes. I removed the mounted toothy pike from the wall — the one Oleg had been so proud of — and dropped it into a thick garbage bag without a trace of regret. Tomorrow morning, a locksmith would come to replace the locks with stronger ones.
But for now, I needed to clear space on the wall for my new painting.
