“Darling, I think we need to buy my mother a separate apartment so she’ll finally leave us alone…”
“ Nastya, I need to have a serious talk with you!” Vadim began. “First, I need you to just listen to me, and most importantly, without interrupting…”
“About what?” his wife asked. “Did something happen?”
“I literally just asked you not to interrupt me! And you immediately interrupted me!” her husband said nervously.
“Sorry! I thought you were finished! All right, go on then!” the woman smiled innocently.
“I don’t even know where to start…” Vadim hesitated. “Basically, things are completely out of control at my family’s place, and Dimka is demanding that Mom move out of the apartment!”
“What do you mean, demanding that she move out?” Nastya asked in surprise. “Is he throwing her out of her own home? Has he completely lost his mind? How can anyone throw their own mother out?”
“I don’t even want to get involved! You know what my older brother is like!” her husband said heavily. “Are you kidding me?” Anastasia scoffed. “If my older brother ever pulled something like that, I’d strangle him before I even bothered finding out what happened! Unbelievable! Throwing his own mother out of her own apartment!”
“Nastya, you know I don’t speak to him. There’s no point trying to talk to him, and I’m not even going to try.”
“So what are you planning to do then? What did you want to talk to me about?” Nastya asked. “I hope you’re not planning to move your mother in with us?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about!” Vadim replied, staring intently into his wife’s eyes.
“Wait!” Nastya raised her hand, stopping her husband from continuing. “Are you joking? Wouldn’t it be easier to throw your Dimka out of your parents’ apartment?! There are laws, social services, authorities, for goodness’ sake! Let your mother contact them and have that overgrown freeloader evicted…”
“She’ll never do that. You know her!”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful. Absolutely wonderful…” The woman was shocked. “So when you came back from the army, she managed to throw you out even though you didn’t have a job or anything else, but she can’t throw Dima out of her own apartment… Or rather, she’ll never do it?!”
“Nastya!” her husband addressed her again. “That’s their business, and I’m not going to interfere! But knowing my brother, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mom ended up on the street tomorrow or the day after. That’s why I’m asking you…”
“I’m against it!” Nastya replied firmly. “And if I were you, after my mother had thrown me out onto the street… I wouldn’t even speak to her ever again! Yet you’re planning to bring her into your own home! Do you have any idea what will start happening here?!”
“But Nastya, she’s still my mother! No matter what she’s done or what terrible things she’s said to me in the past, I still love her. I simply can’t abandon her at a time like this!”
“Your kindness, Vadim,” his wife told him, “may eventually ruin your entire life! And if you’re so worried about your mother, then you shouldn’t be negotiating with me. Not me! What you need to do is give your precious parasite Dimka a proper brotherly beating! One he’ll remember forever, so he stops doing stupid things, especially…”
“Yeah, beat him up…” Vadim muttered. “Suppose I do. Do you know what happens next?”
“What?” Nastya smirked again. “Dima starts crying, your mother feels sorry for him, and then blames you for everything?!”
“Something like that!” her husband said. “Except the next day, or maybe even sooner, a police squad will come for me, and I’ll be locked away for a very long time!”
“And most likely, your mother will be the one who calls them, Vadim!” Nastya said.
“Exactly!” Vadim agreed.
“Well, there we have it, Vadik. Your mother has no business living here! Because believe me, if she moves in, we can say goodbye to any peaceful life together. And I absolutely refuse to accept that. Forgive me, darling! I love you very much, but there’s one person in this life whose well-being matters to me more than yours, and certainly more than your mother’s!”
Vadik stared at his wife as though he had caught her with a lover. He didn’t understand what she meant and asked again.
“I don’t understand,” Vadim said. “Who is this person? Is there someone else in your life?”
“Are you completely insane, Vadim?” Nastya burst out laughing. “I’m that person! I care about my own well-being more than anyone else’s! And that’s exactly why I don’t want your mother living with us! Don’t even bother trying to persuade me. I’m not agreeing to it!” Nastya declared firmly. “So let them sort things out between themselves, and you just stay out of it. That’s all!”
Vadik lowered his head and didn’t answer his wife. He had expected Anastasia to take his side and support him. Instead, everything had turned out in a way he hadn’t anticipated at all. Of course, he knew that Nastya and his mother, Svetlana Viktorovna, didn’t get along particularly well. But he had thought that in a situation like this his wife would soften a little and meet both him and his mother halfway.
The following day, Vadim called his mother from work when he had a free minute.
“Hi, Mom…” Vadim said sadly. “It’s not going to work. Nastya is against you moving in with us, and I don’t even know how to change her mind! Maybe I really should knock some sense into Dimon so he stops acting like the master of your home!”
“Don’t you dare touch Dima!” Svetlana Viktorovna declared categorically. “I won’t allow anyone to hurt him!”
“Then what do you want from me? Fine, carry on living with Dima! What does any of this have to do with me?” Vadim’s voice began to rise.
“Hey! Don’t raise your voice at your mother! Listen to what I’m telling you!” she ordered. “Who’s the master of your house? You or your wife?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Vadik asked in surprise.
“Everything, son, everything!” his mother replied. “If you’re the master, then you don’t have to ask her permission! You’re the man in that house, not her! So why the hell are you even consulting her? Your mother will soon have nowhere to live, and you’re still asking your dear Nastya for permission!” Svetlana Viktorovna began growing angry with her son.
“What are you suggesting? That I simply show up with you and present her with a fait accompli?” Vadim asked.
“Exactly!” his mother replied. “That’s exactly what you should do! Instead of whining and begging for permission in your own home to let your own mother live there!”
“I don’t want any scandals, Mom. If I do that, a scandal is guaranteed!” he replied.
“What a weakling you are, Vadim!” Svetlana Viktorovna hissed angrily. “Is this how you thank your mother for raising you, clothing you, putting shoes on your feet and feeding you?! Well, thank you, son! Thank you for helping me! Just remember this: when I end up on the street, you’ll be the only one to blame!” she said, then hung up.
Vadik tried calling her back several times, but she rejected every call. He immediately decided to call his older brother and find out why he was supposedly trying to evict their mother from her own apartment. But as soon as he found his brother’s number in his contacts, his desire to call suddenly disappeared.
For several hours, the words his mother had said about being the master of the house kept circling in his head. Eventually, he came to a decision. He sent his mother a message saying that he would, after all, take her in.
The next morning, on his day off, Vadim went to pick up his mother without saying a single word to his wife about his decision. When he arrived, he had also hoped to speak to his older brother, but he wasn’t home. Vadim collected his mother, and together they headed back to the home he shared with Nastya.
On the way, he repeatedly begged his mother not to provoke his wife in any way, not to try to establish her own rules in his house, and especially not to interfere in his relationship with Nastya. Svetlana Viktorovna tried to argue with her son at first, but eventually agreed to his conditions.
When Vadim arrived home with his mother and several bags of her belongings, his wife met them at the door with an outraged and disappointed expression. He tried to explain his decision, but she didn’t even want to speak to him.
Almost a week passed like that. Nastya and Vadim behaved like roommates. They didn’t speak, and Anastasia stopped cooking for her husband. Svetlana Viktorovna, meanwhile, was perfectly happy. Nastya increasingly had the impression that this was exactly what her mother-in-law had wanted all along. To be fair, she left Nastya alone as she had promised, didn’t interfere in her relationship with Vadim, and didn’t impose her own rules. Still, Nastya expected surprises from her sooner or later.
She didn’t have to wait long.
One day, while Anastasia was away from home, Svetlana Viktorovna decided to discuss something with her son that had been bothering her greatly.
“Listen, Vadik,” his mother said. “Have you two always lived like this? Do you even talk to each other?”
“Before you arrived, yes, we did talk! Everything was fine between us! And now I suspect that ‘fine’ may never return to our relationship!” her son replied.
“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, son! I know how you can win your wife back and fix your relationship with her!” Vadim’s mother smiled in a somewhat frightening way.
“And how?”
“Just buy me an apartment, and I’ll never bother you again!” Svetlana Viktorovna replied.
“Are you joking, Mom?” the man laughed nervously. “We haven’t even paid off the mortgage on this apartment yet!”
“So what if you haven’t? Take out another one!” his mother told him.
“No one is going to approve another mortgage until we pay this one off! It’s nowhere near that simple!” Vadim replied. “And Nastya is hardly going to agree to something like that. She’d sooner divorce me…”
“Think carefully and figure out a way to make everyone happy! Me and you two!” Svetlana Viktorovna insisted. “It’s easy to say it won’t work when you haven’t even looked into anything yet!”
Eventually, his mother persuaded him to consider all the possibilities before reaching a conclusion.
Vadim certainly had doubts about the whole idea, but he decided to try anyway. The first thing he needed to do was discuss it with his wife.
That evening, when Anastasia returned from work, she was, unlike the previous days, extremely agitated. It was obvious from her expression that she desperately wanted to discuss something with her husband. At the same time, she was looking at her mother-in-law with even greater hatred and anger than before.
After entering the bedroom she shared with Vadim, she called her husband.
“Vadik, we need to discuss something, and it’s very important!” Nastya said. “Come into the bedroom and close the door behind you!”
Vadik immediately followed his wife and did as she asked. But he started the conversation first.
“Nastya, Mom and I have figured out how to make sure she doesn’t have to live here with us anymore!” Vadik said.
“Oh, really?” Nastya smirked. “And what brilliant idea did the two of you come up with?”
“Darling!” Vadik sat down on the bed and tried to take his wife’s hand. “I think we need to buy my mother a separate apartment so she’ll finally leave us alone, and…”
Nastya burst out laughing.
Vadim disliked her laughter so much that he lost his temper and refused to continue the conversation. He got up from the bed and headed toward the bedroom door.
“Stop!” the woman said calmly behind him. “Come back, sit down, and listen carefully to me!”
Vadik reluctantly did as his wife asked.
“What do you want to tell me?” he said dismissively.
“I met with your brother today, Vadim! And he was absolutely shocked—genuinely shocked—when he found out that he had supposedly thrown your mother out of her home, darling…” Anastasia said. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“Not really!” her husband replied.
“Basically, your Dimka said that your mother has completely lost it. As in, there’s seriously something wrong with her head…”
“I know what that means!” he interrupted his wife.
“Whatever,” Nastya said and continued. “We started talking, and I asked him why the two of you don’t speak to each other as brothers. He told me he’d be happy to talk to you, except you can’t stand him and refuse to listen to him! And that your dear mother did everything she could to turn the two of you against each other!”
“That can’t be true!” Vadik dismissed her words. “He was the one who stopped talking to me. What does Mom have to do with it?”
“Everything, Vadim, everything! She twists you around her finger and manipulates you however she wants! But that isn’t even the main thing…” Nastya scoffed. “The main thing is that Dima hasn’t lived at home for several years. Six years, to be exact! He’s married and has a daughter, and he doesn’t even want your mother to meet her!”
Vadik stared at his wife, unable to believe what she was saying.
“Are you messing with me?” he asked.
“No!” his wife replied. “You’re about to see for yourself!”
She took out her phone, dialed her husband’s brother’s number, and handed the phone to Vadim.
The brothers spoke for about twenty minutes. When the conversation was over, Vadik gave the phone back to his wife and, furious, headed into the living room, where his mother was.
“Pack your things and get the hell out of my apartment!” he roared at her. “You’ve got ten minutes. Otherwise I’ll throw you out myself, Mom!”
“Son, what happened? Why are you shouting at me? Has your wife turned you against your own mother?” Svetlana Viktorovna shouted and rushed toward the couple’s bedroom.
“Stop!” Vadim blocked the doorway out of the living room. “Who threw you out of your home? Dimka?” Vadik gave an angry laugh. “Never mind the fact that, as I’ve suddenly discovered, he hasn’t lived with you for years! And he wants absolutely nothing to do with you! What kind of lies have you been feeding me? Why did you make sure he and I didn’t speak to each other all these years? Why did you turn us against each other? What a vile mother you are…”
“Son! I’ll explain everything!” she suddenly began pleading.
“I’m not even going to listen to you!” Vadim replied. “You have six minutes left! And if you’re not ready by then, I’ll physically throw you out of here! Move! I said pack your stuff and get your presence out of my apartment! You wanted me to show everyone who the master of this house is—well, now I’m showing you!”
Vadim didn’t bother trying to find out why his mother had treated him and his brother that way. He simply threw her out of his apartment and completely cut off contact with her.
Thanks to what happened, however, he restored his relationship with his older brother, Dmitry. He and Nastya met Dmitry’s wife and daughter, and both Vadim and Dima were incredibly happy about it.
As for the bitter old woman, she was left completely alone.
And neither of her sons ever felt sorry for her again.
