“My Brother Supports You, So You Could at Least Keep Quiet,” My Sister-in-Law Snapped at the Table—but Her Arrogance Vanished Within Minutes, in Front of Everyone
“Irina, pass me the salad. No, not that one. The one with the crab sticks. You’re the housewife in the family—you should know which is which.”
Avdotya said it as though she were paying Irina a compliment. She smiled, tilted her head, and held her spoon elegantly suspended above her plate. On the surface, there seemed to be nothing offensive about her words.
Yet the conversation around the table suddenly grew quieter.
Irina passed her the salad.
They were celebrating her father-in-law’s birthday. Vladimir Petrovich was turning sixty-five, and the entire family had gathered at the country house belonging to his older sister, Sofya Arkadyevna.
The house was one of those buildings constructed during the Soviet era that had gradually acquired verandas, extensions, and siding of an uncertain color. The owner called it “coffee with milk.” Everyone else simply called it “beige.”
The table had been set in a large room with a low ceiling that smelled of fresh cucumbers and old furniture. Twelve people were seated so closely together that their elbows were practically intertwined.
Sergey, Irina’s husband and Avdotya’s brother, sat between the two women. He appeared to be the only person at the table who had not noticed that the atmosphere was already beginning to crackle.
“This salad is delicious, by the way,” he said, helping himself to a second serving. “Mom, did you make it?”
“I helped,” Sofya Arkadyevna replied. “But Irochka did most of it. She’s been in the kitchen since morning.”
“Well, she has plenty of time,” Avdotya remarked without lifting her eyes from her plate.
That phrase—“she has plenty of time”—hung above the table like a fly hovering over a jar of jam.
Everyone saw it.
No one tried to swat it away.
Irina remained silent and took a piece of bread.
She had known Avdotya for fourteen years, and during that time she had learned one simple thing: her sister-in-law always warmed up gradually.
First came “housewife.” Then “plenty of time.” By dessert, one could expect something truly festive.
And Irina was not mistaken.
By the time the main course was served, the conversation had shifted to home renovations.
Sofya Arkadyevna described how she had replaced the pipes at the country house and how a plumber named Gennady had arrived to repair one pipe, only to discover that absolutely everything needed replacing—including his own understanding of reasonable prices.
“Thirty-eight thousand rubles just for the labor!” Sofya exclaimed indignantly. “I told him, ‘Gennady, for that kind of money, I could buy myself a new country house.’ And he said, ‘Not in this region, Sofya Arkadyevna.’”
Everyone laughed.
Vladimir Petrovich slapped his palm against the table, making the teaspoons rattle inside the glasses.
“Did you finish your renovation?” Sofya asked Sergey. “You said you wanted to redo the kitchen.”
“We finished it,” Sergey said with a nod. “Back in November. We installed new tiles and a new backsplash. It turned out beautifully.”
“Must have been expensive.”
“It was reasonable. We did part of the work ourselves.”
Avdotya set down her glass.
“Seryozha, did you install the tiles yourself?”
“Yes.”
“After work?”
“Yes, in the evenings.”
“Poor thing,” Avdotya said, shaking her head. “You work all day, and then you have to labor at home too, even though your wife is free all day.”
At that moment, Irina felt something shift inside her.
It was not anger.
It was more like exhaustion—familiar and habitual, like an old alarm clock that rang every morning and whose batteries could not be removed.
“Avdotya, I’m not free all day.”
“What exactly are you busy doing?” her sister-in-law asked sweetly, as though she were asking for a cake recipe.
“I work.”
“Well, in a certain sense, we all work, Irochka. Some people go to a workplace, and others cook soup.”
Sergey frowned but remained silent.
He always stayed quiet during moments like this because he sincerely believed that if he ignored the problem, it would eventually disappear on its own.
In fourteen years, it had never disappeared even once.
But Sergey was a man of profound and unshakable faith in the power of silence.
Dessert had to be carried in from the kitchen in two trips.
Sofya Arkadyevna had baked her signature Napoleon cake—thin, crisp layers filled with a cream she prepared according to her mother’s recipe, which her mother had inherited from her own mother.
In essence, the Napoleon cake was nearly a hundred years old.
Irina helped arrange the plates.
In the kitchen, she leaned closer to Sofya and asked quietly:
“Sofya Arkadyevna, you do know that I work, don’t you?”
“Of course, Irochka. You told me yourself when we were discussing the pipes. You do accounting remotely.”
“Exactly.”
“Doesn’t Dusya know?”
Irina shrugged.
“Dusya knows whatever she wants to know.”
Sofya looked at her over the Napoleon cake and sighed.
She had a special sigh for situations like this—long and slightly whistling. It meant, “Well, I warned you. From here on, you’re on your own.”
“Irochka, you should explain it to her. For the past three years, she’s been telling everyone that Seryozha supports you. She told me, Vladimir, and even our neighbor Nina Pavlovna. Nina Pavlovna is quite upset about it, by the way.”
“Upset for me?”
“For Seryozha. She thinks his life is difficult.”
Irina snorted.
Nina Pavlovna had seen Sergey exactly twice in her life. On both occasions, he had been eating grilled meat with such a joyful expression that only an exceptionally compassionate person could have mistaken him for a suffering man.
Then something happened that Irina had not planned.
They returned to the table.
The Napoleon cake had been sliced, the tea had been poured, and Vladimir Petrovich proposed a toast to family, good health, and to everyone being able to do what their heart desired rather than whatever their boss forced them to do.
Everyone raised their glasses.
That was when Avdotya decided the moment had arrived.
“Seryozhenka,” she began in the voice she usually acquired after her second glass of wine, “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I’m saying it in front of everyone so no one can accuse me of talking behind your back. You’re a wonderful man. You work two jobs. You carry your entire family. You even do the renovations yourself. But you need to be stricter.”
A pause followed.
The teaspoons stopped moving.
“What do you mean?” Sergey asked.
“I mean that you are the only breadwinner in your family. And you shouldn’t be ashamed to admit it.”
She turned toward Irina.
Her expression was sympathetic, and it clearly said, “I’m doing this for your own good.”
“Irochka, I’m not trying to offend you. But my brother supports you. You could at least keep quiet when he decides how the money should be spent. You don’t work, you don’t bring a single kopeck into the family, and everyone knows it.”
The room became so silent that they could hear the tap dripping on the veranda.
It was the same tap Gennady had promised to repair for thirty-eight thousand rubles.
Irina set down her cup.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Directly in the center of the saucer.
“Everyone knows?” she repeated.
“Well, it’s obvious.” Avdotya spread her hands. “Seryozha works for a company and receives a salary. You stay at home. It’s simple mathematics, Irochka.”
At this point, it is necessary to explain something Avdotya did not know.
Irina was an accountant.
She worked remotely from home on a laptop placed on a small desk beside the bedroom window. She handled the accounts for four small companies and had been doing so for eight years.
She had started when her younger daughter began school and had never stopped.
Why did Avdotya not know?
Because Irina did not believe she was required to report her professional life to her sister-in-law.
Sergey knew.
Sofya Arkadyevna knew.
Vladimir Petrovich probably knew as well, although Irina had never discussed it with him directly.
Avdotya, however, lived in a reality of her own. In that reality, she was successful and businesslike, while her sister-in-law was a dependent living off her brother.
Avdotya herself worked as an administrator at a beauty salon.
According to her, her salary was “normal—pretty good for the region.”
Translated from Avdotya’s language into ordinary Russian, this meant twenty-seven thousand rubles before taxes.
At the same time, Avdotya lived in an apartment that the very same Sergey had bought for her three years earlier because, as he had said, “She’s my sister. I can’t leave her on the street.”
She also drove a car Sergey had given her when he bought a new one.
Avdotya preferred not to remember these details.
She had an astonishing ability to forget any fact that did not fit her picture of the world, with the same ease with which other people forgot where they had left their keys.
Irina looked at her husband.
Sergey was sitting with the expression of a man who desperately wished he could sink through his chair.
Unfortunately, the chair was sturdy, Soviet-made, and refused to cooperate.
“Seryozha,” Irina said. “Tell her.”
“Tell her what?” Sergey muttered.
“How much I earn.”
The silence became as dense as Sofya Arkadyevna’s Napoleon cake.
“Ira, why is that necessary?”
“Seryozha. Tell her.”
He cleared his throat.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Then he looked up at the ceiling as though hoping to find a helpful answer written there.
There was no answer.
There was only a stain left by a leak that had been repaired the previous year.
“Irina earns money,” he began. “She’s an accountant. She works from home.”
“From home?” Avdotya repeated, as though he had said “from outer space.”
“Yes. Remotely. She has four clients. She manages their complete accounting.”
“And how much does she receive for this… accounting?”
Sergey named the amount.
Avdotya blinked.
Then she blinked again.
She looked like someone who had ordered a simple salad at a restaurant and had been presented with the bill for an entire banquet.
“Is that per year?” she asked.
“Per month,” Sergey replied.
“That’s more than you make,” Vladimir Petrovich remarked quietly.
He was speaking to Avdotya.
Vladimir Petrovich was good at mental arithmetic and never missed an opportunity to demonstrate it.
Avdotya opened her mouth.
Then she closed it.
Then she opened it again.
From the outside, she resembled a fish that had been removed from its natural habitat and invited to discuss a quarterly financial report.
“Wait,” she said. “Are you serious?”
“Completely,” Sergey replied.
“But she sits at home!”
“She works at home. Those are different things, Dusya.”
The most interesting part, however, came next.
Sofya Arkadyevna, who had been silently eating Napoleon cake with the expression of a spectator sitting in the front row, suddenly set down her fork.
“Dusenka,” she said. “You were just talking about being supported. You said Seryozha supports Irina. Tell me, please—did you buy your apartment yourself?”
Avdotya turned red.
Not deeply red, just a light blush, as though the room had suddenly become warmer.
“That’s different,” she said.
“Of course it is,” Sofya agreed. “And the car? Is that different too?”
“Aunt Sonya, that has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this, Dusenka. You just announced in front of everyone that your sister-in-law lives off your brother. But it turns out that Irina earns more than you do, while the apartment and the car you use were both purchased by the same Seryozha you feel so sorry for.”
A pause followed.
“So,” Sofya continued thoughtfully, poking at the cream with her fork, “it appears that of everyone present, the person living off Seryozha is not Irina. It is someone else. But I won’t point a finger because that would be impolite.”
She pointed with her eyes instead.
Vladimir Petrovich chuckled into his tea.
Sergey’s cousin, who had traveled from Tula and had spent the entire evening quietly eating Olivier salad, said softly:
“Well, that’s what I thought.”
Exactly what she had thought remained a mystery, but her tone was more eloquent than any explanation.
Avdotya sat there, crimson with embarrassment.
Her ears were burning so brightly that, if necessary, someone could probably have used their light to read in the dark.
“Seryozha,” she said plaintively, “at least you say something.”
Sergey looked at her.
Then he looked at Irina.
Then he looked at the Napoleon cake, as though hoping the cake might suggest the correct answer.
“Dusya,” he finally said. “I love you. You’re my sister. But what you just said was foolish. You said it in front of everyone. In your place, I would apologize.”
Avdotya did not apologize.
At least, not immediately.
First, she said everyone had misunderstood her.
Then she claimed she had meant something completely different.
After that, she insisted she had merely been worried about her brother.
Finally, she announced that her tea had gone cold and that she needed to step outside.
She walked onto the veranda.
Through the glass door, they could see her standing with her arms crossed, staring at the fence with such concentration that one might have assumed the fence was somehow responsible for what had happened.
Irina remained at the table.
Sofya Arkadyevna placed a second slice of Napoleon cake on her plate.
“Eat, Irochka. You’ve earned it.”
“Sofya Arkadyevna, I haven’t earned anything. I only passed the salad.”
“Exactly. You passed the salad and received a public humiliation in return. You need to follow that with Napoleon cake, or it won’t digest properly.”
Irina smiled.
The Napoleon cake truly was excellent, with crisp, delicate layers and cream that melted on her tongue like the memory of something good.
Fifteen minutes later, Avdotya returned.
She sat down in her place and remained silent for a while.
“Irina,” she finally said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Her voice made it sound as though the words “I’m sorry” and “I didn’t know” were made of broken glass, and she had to push them carefully out of her mouth.
“It’s all right,” Irina said.
“I just thought…”
“I know what you thought.”
“Could you stop making it worse?”
“I can.”
They fell silent.
Sofya Arkadyevna poured fresh tea.
The teaspoons clinked against the glasses.
Vladimir Petrovich turned on the television, and the voice of a news presenter filled the room, reporting something about the weather.
Rain was expected.
That evening, when the guests began leaving, Irina stepped into the yard.
It was cool outside.
The air smelled of damp earth and apples from the neighbor’s tree, whose branches leaned over the fence every year with such audacity that one might have assumed the tree possessed a full legal right to do so.
Sergey approached her from behind and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Ira, I should have said something earlier. About your work. I shouldn’t have stayed silent like an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. You’re an optimist. You thought the problem would disappear by itself.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
He was silent for a moment.
“I’m honestly embarrassed.”
“About what?”
“About Dusya. She isn’t a bad person. She just…”
“She’s simply accustomed to thinking she’s the one riding the horse while I’m standing beside it.”
“Well, now she knows you have a horse of your own.”
Irina laughed.
Quietly, tiredly, but genuinely.
“Let’s go home, Seryozha.”
“Let’s go.”
He opened the car door for her.
It was the same car they had purchased with her money the previous year, but Avdotya would apparently learn that detail another time.
Everything had its proper moment.
A container of Napoleon cake was resting on the back seat.
Sofya Arkadyevna had packed it for them, saying:
“This is for you. I didn’t give Dusenka any. Let her bake her own cake if she’s so independent.”
Irina placed her hand on the container.
It was still warm.
The car began to move.
In the rearview mirror, she caught a final glimpse of the house with its beige siding, the veranda with the dripping tap, and Avdotya’s silhouette standing in the doorway and waving.
She looked small and confused in her elegant dress—which, incidentally, had also been purchased using Seryozha’s bank card.
But Irina decided not to think about that.
She leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the sound of the tires moving over the wet road.
The rain had finally begun.
The weather presenter had told the truth.
