The suitcase lay open on the bed like a gaping mouth. Sergei was folding his shirts into neat piles, one on top of another, as if he were preparing for an exhibition rather than breaking twelve years of married life. Lyudmila stood in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame, watching him.
“You’re not even asking where I’m going,” he said without turning around.
“I know where you’re going, Seryozha. I’ve known for four months. Kristina, right?”
He froze for a second. The shirt in his hands crumpled slightly, but he immediately smoothed it out and placed it in the suitcase.
“How did you…”
“You stopped deleting messages on your phone in November. Either you forgot how, or you stopped thinking it was necessary.”
Sergei slowly turned around. He had expected tears, shouting, accusations flying at him. None of that happened. Lyudmila stood calmly, and that calm frightened him far more than any scandal could have.
“Lyuda, I didn’t want it to happen like this. I thought we’d sit down, talk normally, discuss everything.”
“We are talking normally. You’re packing your things, and I’m watching. Very civilized.”
“No need for sarcasm.”
“It’s not sarcasm, Seryozha. It’s a statement of fact. You’re leaving, and I’m not stopping you. The apartment is mine. It was mine before the marriage, and it will remain mine after it. There’s nothing to argue about there.”
He nodded, as if relieved. He zipped up the side pocket, took his winter jacket from the closet, and draped it over his arm.
“I’m glad you’re taking it this way. Really, Lyuda. I was afraid there would be…”
“There would be what? Hysterics? Broken dishes? I’m not in a TV drama, Sergei. I’m forty-one years old, and I still have my dignity.”
He exhaled. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed beside the suitcase and rubbed his palms together, a habit he had whenever nervous relief began to creep in.
“I’ll leave the keys on the shelf in the hallway.”
“Leave them. And take your mother with you.”
Sergei lifted his head. He looked at her as if she had suddenly started speaking a language he didn’t understand.
“What?”
“Seryozha, I said: take Valentina Petrovna with you. She is your mother, not mine. If you leave, she leaves with you.”
“You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Lyudmila was not smiling. She was not frowning either. Her face was as smooth and steady as a tabletop. Sergei stood up, grabbed the suitcase handle, and slowly closed the lid again. Then he placed it on the floor.
“Lyuda, that’s ridiculous. She’s been living here for six years. She has her room, her habits. Where am I supposed to take her?”
“To your place. To Kristina’s. Wherever you’re going.”
“To a studio apartment? Have you lost your mind? It’s thirty-eight square meters.”
“That is not my thirty-eight square meters, Sergei. And it is not my problem.”
He placed the suitcase back on the bed. Opened it. Closed it. Opened it again. His hands kept making pointless movements, while his mind refused to accept what he had just heard.
“Let’s do it this way,” he said more quietly. “I’ll leave, and we’ll sort things out with her later. In a week, in a month. We’ll find an option.”
“No.”
“Lyuda…”
“No, Sergei. Not in a week, not in a month. Either you leave with her, or you don’t leave at all.”
Author: Vika Trel © 4769z
The next morning began quietly. Sergei had not left. The suitcase stood in the corner of the bedroom, closed but not put away. Valentina Petrovna sat in the kitchen, drinking tea with dry biscuits and leafing through a seed catalog, preparing for the gardening season and suspecting nothing.
Lyudmila stepped out onto the balcony and called her friend.
“Natasha, he was packing his suitcase yesterday.”
“And?”
“I told him to take Valentina Petrovna with him. He closed the suitcase back up.”
Natalya was silent for a second.
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. He thought he could leave lightly, while I kept feeding his mother for the rest of her life. Natasha, I have no obligations to this woman. Legally, if we divorce, she is nobody to me.”
“Lyudka, you’re a genius.”
“I’m not a genius. I’m just not going to be convenient.”
At that same time, Sergei was sitting in his car in the parking lot outside the building, talking to Denis on speakerphone. His friend’s voice sounded hoarse; he had clearly just woken up.
“Denis, she gave me an ultimatum. Take Valentina Petrovna, she says, or stay.”
“So take her.”
“Where?! Kristina has a studio!”
“And what did I tell you? Back in October I said you were trading one problem for another. Did you listen?”
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m being realistic, Seryoga. You want a beautiful new life, but behind you there’s an elderly woman to whom you owe half of what you have. The other half went to your sister, and Valentina Petrovna herself was left without a home. Did you forget that?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“You did. Because when she sold her three-room apartment and gave all the money to you and Alina, you didn’t object. You took the money, bought a car, renovated your wife’s apartment. And now you want to leave and dump her on Lyudmila? On what grounds?”
Sergei gripped the steering wheel. The engine idled. On the back seat lay the suitcase; he had still managed to carry it out that morning while Lyudmila was in the bathroom.
“I’ll talk to Kristina. I’ll explain the situation.”
“Good luck,” Denis said and hung up.
That evening, Sergei came back. He put the suitcase back in the corner. At dinner, he sat quietly and ate in silence. Valentina Petrovna talked about a new variety of tomatoes that supposedly promised an unbelievable harvest. Lyudmila nodded and served her more salad.
“Seryozhenka, why are you so gloomy?” Valentina Petrovna asked.
“Tired,” he answered shortly.
Lyudmila looked at him across the table. She said nothing. She was waiting. She knew this was only a pause.
Three days later, Sergei started again. This time he was prepared — or at least he thought he was.
“Lyuda, I’ve thought it all over. Mother will stay here. I’ll transfer money to you every month for her upkeep. Twenty thousand. Twenty-five. Whatever you say.”
“Zero.”
“What do you mean, zero?”
“Zero rubles. Because she is not staying here.”
“That’s cruel, Lyuda!”
“Cruel? You’re abandoning your family for a woman you’ve been sleeping with for four months, and you’re lecturing me about cruelty?”
“She’s used to it here. She has her room, her things, her routine. She goes to your…”
“My what? My mother’s dacha? No, Sergei. That is my parents’ dacha. Valentina Petrovna went there because we were a family. We stop being a family, and all the privileges disappear. The dacha, the room, my refrigerator.”
Sergei jumped up from the chair. He paced around the kitchen, stopped by the sink, and turned back to her.
“You’re taking revenge.”
“No. I’m drawing boundaries. There’s a difference.”
“You’re punishing me through her. Through an elderly person.”
Lyudmila stood up and walked close to him. Her voice became quieter, but harder.
“Seryozha, when Valentina Petrovna sold her apartment and gave the money to you and Alina, I stayed silent. When she was left without a home and moved in with us, I accepted it. For six years she has lived in my apartment, eaten my food, used my washing machine, and I never once, do you hear me, not once reproached her for it. But I did all of that for the family. There is no family anymore. You killed it yourself. So my obligations are over too.”
“You can’t throw an old woman out onto the street!”
“I’m not throwing her out. I’m handing her back to you. To her son. It’s logical, fair, and legal.”
Sergei stepped away, sat down again, and lowered his head.
“Kristina won’t agree.”
“Then you have yourself a difficult little puzzle.”
He looked up at her. There was something new in his eyes — not anger, not resentment. Despair. Lyudmila saw it and did not look away.
“I’ll give you one week,” she said. “Seven days. After that, I’ll solve the issue myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said.”
Natalya came over that same evening. They sat in the kitchen after Valentina Petrovna had gone to her room and Sergei had left — apparently to see Kristina.
“He’s stalling,” Lyudmila said.
“Of course he is. He’s hoping you’ll back down.”
“I won’t.”
“I know. That’s why we need to think one step ahead. If he doesn’t take her in a week, what will you do?”
Lyudmila took a notebook out of the drawer, opened to a blank page, and wrote down the address of Kristina’s studio. She had found it back in November, when she had first started suspecting him.
“This is what I’ll do, Natasha. I’ll call Valentina Petrovna and tell her the truth. All of it. Then I’ll order a moving van.”
Natalya looked at the notebook. Then at her friend.
“Lyudka, you’re a terrifying woman. In the best possible way.”
A week passed. Sergei did nothing. He came and went, slept on the sofa in the living room, avoided conversations, and behaved as if there had never been an ultimatum at all. As if everything would somehow dissolve on its own.
On the eighth day, Saturday, Lyudmila called Valentina Petrovna into the kitchen. The older woman was cutting apples for a charlotte.
“Valentina Petrovna, please sit down. I need to tell you something.”
“My God, what happened?”
“Sergei is leaving me. For another woman. Her name is Kristina, and she has a studio apartment on Levoberezhnaya.”
Valentina Petrovna placed the knife on the table. Slowly. Carefully. That is how people put down objects when they are afraid that one sharp movement might make something else collapse.
“How long?”
“Four months.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he wanted to leave and keep you here. With me. And I do not agree, Valentina Petrovna. Forgive me, but you are his relative. Not mine.”
The elderly woman was silent for a long time. A minute, maybe two. Lyudmila did not rush her.
“I understand,” her mother-in-law finally said. “You’re right. I’ll call him.”
“No need to call. I’ve already organized everything. Tomorrow morning, a van will come. Natalya will help me pack your things. I’ll give you the address.”
“Does he know?”
“No. And he won’t know until the movers ring the doorbell at Kristina’s place.”
“I sold my apartment for them. For Seryozha and Alina. I thought I was helping my children, and I’d manage somehow. ‘Somehow’ turned into having no corner, no wall behind my back.”
“I know, Valentina Petrovna. But that doesn’t change the fact that your place now is beside your son. Wherever he may be.”
Natalya arrived at nine the next morning. They worked quickly and without fuss. Boxes, clothes, bedding, the old rocking chair Valentina Petrovna had brought from her sold apartment. A floor lamp with a thick fabric shade. Books — four boxes of them. Bags of shoes. A winter coat in a garment bag.
“Natasha, be careful with that box, please. The porcelain cups are inside,” Lyudmila said.
“Got it.”
Valentina Petrovna sat on a stool in the hallway and watched as six years of her life were carried out of her room. She did not cry. Women of her generation rarely cry in front of witnesses.
“Lyudmila,” she called softly.
“Yes?”
“Forgive me. For my son.”
Lyudmila stopped. She put the box on the floor and walked over.
“You are not to blame for anything, Valentina Petrovna. You did everything you could for him. Even more than that. The problem is not you.”
“I raised him wrong.”
“You raised him. But the choice was his.”
The moving van was loaded by eleven. Lyudmila handed the driver a piece of paper with the address. Valentina Petrovna climbed into the passenger seat beside him. Natalya stood next to Lyudmila and watched the van pull out of the courtyard.
“Will you call him?”
“Why? He’ll find out in half an hour.”
Kristina opened the door on the third ring. Behind it stood two men in work gloves, and behind them was the hallway, crowded with boxes, a rocking chair, and a floor lamp.
“Who are you?”
“Delivery. To this address. Where should we bring everything?”
“What delivery?! I didn’t order anything!”
From behind the movers appeared Valentina Petrovna, wearing a beige coat, a travel bag over her shoulder, and the expression of a woman life had dragged over stones but failed to break.
“Hello. You must be Kristina? I’m Valentina Petrovna. Seryozha’s… mother.”
Kristina turned pale. She called Sergei. He answered on the fifth ring.
“Seryozha, there are… there are some movers here, boxes, and… and your… Valentina Petrovna.”
“What?!”
“She’s standing in my hallway! With her things! With a rocking chair!”
“Don’t let her in! I’m coming now!”
“What do you mean, don’t let her in?! She’s already coming in!”
Sergei arrived twenty minutes later. He burst into the studio and saw the scene: his mother sitting in her rocking chair in the middle of the only room, surrounded by a wall of boxes. The floor lamp stood by the window, and Kristina had retreated into the kitchen corner, clutching her phone with both hands.
“What is going on here?!” Sergei breathed.
“Seryozhenka,” Valentina Petrovna said quietly, “Lyudmila told me everything. So, it turns out you’re leaving. Well, here I am. I came to you.”
“No, no, no. No!”
“What do you mean, no? Am I the no? Seryozha, are you saying you don’t need your own mother?”
Kristina stepped forward. Her voice trembled, but not from fear — from rising fury.
“Seryozha, you promised me a quiet, peaceful move. You and me. You said there would be no problems. And now I have twenty boxes in my apartment and an elderly woman with a floor lamp!”
“Kristina, I’ll sort this out…”
“How?! How are you going to sort this out?! Where will you put her? This place is thirty-eight meters! It’s cramped enough for two!”
“I’ll call Lyudmila. She went too far. She had no right…”
He dialed the number. Lyudmila answered immediately.
“Hello?”
“Lyuda, what have you done?”
“What’s wrong, Sergei? You’re leaving, so she went with you. I warned you. A week ago.”
“You can’t do this to me!”
“I already did. There is no going back. The room is cleared out, the lock has been changed, and there are new keys.”
“What lock?!”
“The front door. And the lock on her former room too. It’s my office now. Or it will be. I already bought a shelving unit.”
“Lyudmila!”
“Sergei, don’t shout. You’re a grown man. You have options: either you live with Kristina and Valentina Petrovna in a thirty-eight-meter studio, or you find your mother a place to live yourself, or you call your sister Alina and ask her to take Valentina Petrovna in. There are plenty of options. Not one of them includes my apartment.”
He hung up. He looked at Kristina, whose face was red and whose lower lip was trembling. Then he looked at his mother, who was rocking in her chair with the calm expression of someone who had accepted her fate.
“Seryozhenka,” Valentina Petrovna said again, “you won’t abandon me, will you?”
“I… No. Of course not. But…”
“Good. Then where will I sleep?”
Kristina walked right up to Sergei. Her whisper was so quiet that Valentina Petrovna could not hear it, but every word was clear from the movement of her lips.
“Seryozha, either she leaves today, or you leave. With her. I don’t need this circus.”
“Kristina, wait…”
“No. I won’t wait. You promised me a normal life. Instead you brought me a problem in boxes. I didn’t sign up for this.”
He stepped out into the stairwell, sat down on the steps, and called Denis.
“Denis, I have a disaster.”
“Lyudmila sent Valentina Petrovna to Kristina’s?”
“How do you know?!”
“I would have done the same in her place. Seryoga, I warned you. You were trading one problem for another, and this new one turned out slippery.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Go back.”
“Lyudmila changed the locks.”
“Then knock. Long and hard, with your head bowed in guilt. And pray she opens.”
“I can’t do that!”
“You can. The question is whether you want to. Because the alternative is living three to a studio: you, Kristina, and Valentina Petrovna. With the floor lamp.”
Sergei sat on the stairs for another half hour. Through the door, he could hear voices: Kristina was heatedly explaining something to Valentina Petrovna, while his mother replied calmly and thoroughly. It sounded like they were discussing where to put the rocking chair.
He called Lyudmila again.
“Lyuda, I’m coming back.”
“With Valentina Petrovna?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“You’re not coming back, Sergei. Not with her and not without her. You made your choice. You packed your suitcase. You folded your shirts. The decision was made.”
“Lyuda, I changed my mind!”
“But I haven’t. I’m not a transfer station, Sergei. I’m not a hotel you return to when things become inconvenient elsewhere. You weren’t leaving a bad life. You were leaving for a better one. So live in it.”
“Lyudmila, I’m asking you…”
“Sergei, call Alina. She received half of the money from Valentina Petrovna’s apartment. Let her take half of the responsibility too. The two of you got yourselves into this, so the two of you can solve it. And I am finally going to live for myself.”
She hung up. Natalya, who was still in Lyudmila’s apartment, was pouring tea into mugs.
“Well?”
“He wants to come back.”
“And you?”
“I don’t. You know, Natasha, it’s funny. For twelve years he thought he was living with me. But in reality, I was living with him. Out of politeness. Out of habit. Because it was easier that way. Now that’s over. The easy part is finished.”
Natalya placed a mug in front of her.
“To a new life?”
“To a new room. I want a shelving unit there, from floor to ceiling. Oak. With lighting.”
“Beautiful.”
“Very.”
And on Levoberezhnaya, in the studio apartment that only that morning had been a temple of romance and fresh beginnings, Sergei stood among the boxes and watched Kristina silently pack his things back into the suitcase.
The very same suitcase.
Valentina Petrovna rocked in her chair and softly hummed something from an old Soviet song — perhaps “Hope,” perhaps “The Earth Is Empty Without You.”
And Sergei finally understood that he had nowhere left to go.
And that no one was to blame for it but himself.
THE END
