“So, does that mean there’s nowhere for us to sit? What a fine way to welcome relatives to the table!” Aunt Zhanna exclaimed indignantly.
Vera got up from her seat and moved two chairs closer to the table, where place settings had already been laid out for her husband’s picky aunts.
“Everything is ready. We’ve been waiting for you,” the birthday woman said.
“We barely managed to get to your new apartment. You would have been better off staying in the rented one. It was closer and more spacious. A terrible choice, Vera! Why does our Misha listen to you in everything?” Aunt Zina said, looking around.
Vera looked at the guests and clearly understood why she had not wanted to celebrate her birthday.
“Misha, today is Thursday. I wasn’t planning to mess around with salads and hot dishes. After all, it’s my holiday. I want to see the people I invited,” Vera said into the phone, trying to justify herself to her husband.
“So what, my relatives are unpleasant people, is that what you’re saying? What a wonderful life we have, Verunya!” Mikhail snapped. “I didn’t invite anyone, but the table needs to be set. They’ll come anyway to congratulate you and see our new apartment.”
Her husband hung up, and Vera stared at the reports in front of her. She had not been feeling well lately, but she still had not managed to get to the doctor. Work, home, work — around and around in the same circle.
On her birthday, she was in no hurry to go home. She did not want to celebrate on a weekday, but Misha did not want to wait until Saturday.
Her husband kept rushing Vera and hinting that the table had to be set at the highest level, even though all their friends and relatives knew the family had recently taken out a mortgage on an apartment and lavish celebrations were not something they could afford right now.
But Misha wanted to arrange a “two-in-one”: both a housewarming party and his wife’s birthday, and to show off in front of everyone. For Vera, the celebration felt more like an obligation — all because of her husband’s capricious relatives.
Vera sighed and sadly remembered the times when she and her husband used to celebrate her birthday together, without the burden of Mikhail’s two aunts and the rest of his relatives.
Misha had already called her twice, and she lied that she was delayed at work because of reports. Suddenly, Anna Semyonovna, a plump accountant, entered the office.
“What are you still doing here, birthday girl? Hiding from congratulations?” Vera’s colleague laughed, looking at her.
“Can you really hide from them? I’m leaving already. I got carried away with the reports,” Vera sighed, saying it only so Anna would leave faster.
At home, an unpleasant surprise was waiting for Vera. And it began right from the threshold. A trail of dirty footprints wound back and forth from the front door to the living room.
“I don’t know how to seat them,” Mikhail sighed when he heard his wife’s footsteps behind him.
Vera froze in the doorway of the living room and literally did not recognize the room.
“Have you decided to start renovations or rearrange the furniture? What is this dirt? Am I going to have to wash the floor too?” she asked tiredly, rubbing her throbbing right temple.
“No, Vera. I’ll wash the floor. That’s nothing. I just don’t know how to seat the guests. Aunt Zina and Aunt Zhanna are coming, and also my sister Katya with her husband and children…” her husband said, surveying the “work front.”
Vera left him there and went to the kitchen. She had managed to prepare something quickly the day before, and today on her way home she had bought ready-made salads and meat from the delicatessen near the house.
“It should be enough,” she said to herself, critically looking over the modest selection of dishes.
She prepared a side dish, light appetizers, cleaned up all the mess her husband had made, and set out the dishes and cutlery. But exhaustion overwhelmed Vera, even though she had not done anything particularly difficult.
An hour later, the guests were already crowding in the hallway. Their family friends came, as did her sister-in-law with her children and husband, and Vera’s parents. Only Aunt Zhanna and Aunt Zina were missing.
“Verochka, our rose has bloomed even more beautifully!” her husband’s sister exclaimed as she handed Vera a bouquet of red roses.
Vera smiled and accepted congratulations, though what she would have preferred most was simply to lie on the sofa with a book in silence.
There were many gifts and flowers, so there were not enough vases, and the bouquets had to be placed in buckets of water. Her parents gave her money in an envelope; friends gave dinner sets and bed linen. Everything was very beautiful, and Vera truly liked it.
Her mood slowly began to rise.
Misha also gave his beloved wife a gift. The beautiful earrings Vera had wanted so much made her forget the scandal her husband had started over the phone because of his aunts.
“Sorry I lost my temper. But imagine how it would have looked if guests had come and we weren’t ready. Happy birthday to you. I love and adore you, Verunya,” her husband said and kissed her on the cheek.
By the way, Zina and Zhanna still had not arrived, and Vera thought they would no longer show up. That made her feel even lighter at heart.
Her mother asked Vera how things were at work, her father ate with appetite, and the guests made noise and enjoyed themselves. The celebration was going along in its own way. No one criticized anything, no one made remarks about store-bought salads or the small amount of alcohol and snacks.
But suddenly the doorbell rang.
“It’s the aunts,” Misha said joyfully and went to open the door, while Vera only frowned.
“They show up at the very end of the party. And now they’ll start saying the hot dish is cold,” Vera muttered.
Her mother stroked her shoulder and said that Zhanna Arkadyevna and Zinaida Arkadyevna were simply strict women. They had achieved everything in life on their own, had been widowed early… In short, they were just rather dry aunts with difficult personalities.
“But Misha loves you. Don’t store up negativity inside yourself. They’ll leave today, and everything will be fine between you and your husband,” her mother comforted her.
Vera sighed and noticed two female silhouettes in the doorway, holding a thin little bouquet of flowers.
“So, does that mean there’s nowhere for us to sit? What a fine way to welcome relatives to the table!” Aunt Zhanna exclaimed indignantly.
Vera got up from her seat and moved two chairs closer to the table, where place settings had already been laid out for her husband’s picky aunts.
“Everything is ready. We’ve been waiting for you,” the birthday woman said.
“We barely managed to get to your new place. You would have been better off staying in the rented apartment. It was closer and more spacious. A terrible choice, Vera! Why does our Misha listen to you in everything?” Aunt Zina said, looking around.
Vera understood that it was not because of her husband that she had not wanted to celebrate her birthday, but because of his relatives.
Aunt Zhanna handed her daughter-in-law the flowers, and Zina gave her a small envelope. The aunts hugged and congratulated Vera, but they did it formally, without warmth.
Zhanna and Zina walked to the table and sat down in the places prepared for them. The aunts looked skeptically at the dishes Vera had put together in a hurry.
No sooner had Vera sat down in her place than it began.
“The salads are completely tasteless, and the meat is somehow rubbery,” Zhanna said.
“Well, well, it’s obvious how much you were waiting for us. Katya, do you feed your children this?” Zina asked indignantly, looking at her niece, who was sitting to the side.
“Everything seems tasty enough. Even if it is from the store,” Katerina said with an ironic smile.
“Really? I would never have thought so. Everything Vera makes is always delicious. I thought she had cooked it herself,” Vera’s close friend Lyuda laughed.
A couple of sharp comments were enough for the birthday woman to sit there red as a tomato. But Misha was the most embarrassed of all. He kept looking sideways at Vera with an unfriendly gaze.
When the guests left, Aunt Zina and Aunt Zhanna stayed behind in Vera’s apartment and announced the news: they had not come simply to enjoy a celebration at their nephew’s wife’s home.
“We’ll stay with you for a few days, and then we’ll go south to Zina’s daughter.”
“A few days? But you have to go to another district of the city,” Vera said in surprise.
“I sold my house, and Zhanna sold hers too. We pooled our money and want to move permanently to the seaside. Are you unhappy that we’re staying, Verochka?” Aunt Zina asked reproachfully and glanced sideways at Misha.
“Vera, come here for a minute. Aunts, make yourselves comfortable. You’ll be fine here.”
Misha pointed to the uncleared table, still covered with dishes.
“We are not going to sleep on the floor. Take us to a hotel or give us your bedroom,” her husband’s aunt protested after descending on the nephew’s new apartment.
“I have a bad back! Misha, is this how you’re going to receive us?” Zhanna asked quite seriously.
Misha turned crimson with shame. He had always been used to being a good boy. The aunts had helped him a great deal after his mother and father were gone.
He could not refuse them, especially since he still had plans for their visit.
“Vera will change the bedding on our bed now, and we’ll manage here somehow. I’ll sleep on the chair-bed, Vera on the sofa. It doesn’t fold out.”
“But Misha?!” the birthday woman protested.
“That’s what I call a good boy! And listen to your wife less. Vera is turning you into a henpecked husband, son,” Aunt Zina said with maternal concern in her voice.
Misha and Vera argued that evening.
Vera did not want to sleep on the sofa not just because it was uncomfortable, but on principle. Ever since she had married Misha, the aunts had constantly picked at her and tormented her with little criticisms. It seemed unnoticeable, little by little, but Vera’s patience finally gave out.
“I’m going to my mother’s now, Misha,” she whispered, standing by the wardrobe.
Her husband took out the bedding himself and struggled with the duvet cover.
“Vera, you are so narrow-minded! They sold their house, and their daughter has more money than she knows what to do with! Didn’t you understand why they stayed?”
“Sorry, but no. I don’t believe in your aunts’ generosity!”
“Fine, suit yourself. I’m not going to share with you!” Misha declared. “And anyway, they’re right. You pressure me. You’re turning me into who knows what!”
Vera did not want to go to her mother’s. She went to the kitchen and began washing dishes, furiously throwing them onto the drying rack.
By the time Vera had cleared the table and washed everything after the guests, the aunts had settled into their bedroom. Misha was lying in the living room on the chair-bed with his eyes closed and said nothing.
“We bought this apartment for nothing, Vera. Now we’re going to divorce — who will take on the mortgage?”
“Oh, really? Because I expressed my opinion, we’re getting divorced? Well, Misha!” Vera burst out.
She went to sleep on the flat, creaky old sofa they had taken from their previous apartment and moved into their new two-room place.
That evening and the next morning, the spouses did not speak.
Vera got ready for work, drank some tea in the kitchen, and left so she would not have to serve the guests from early morning. That day, she finally understood exactly what was wrong with her health. And it worried her no less than her husband’s words about the coming divorce.
Judging by appearances, Misha was not planning to go to work. Apparently, he had decided to accompany the aunts to the station and put them on the train so they would be more favorably disposed toward him.
That evening, when Vera returned, she saw that the aunts’ things, clothes, and shoes were no longer in the house.
And neither was her husband.
She did not want to call Misha, since she was still offended, but something suddenly made her phone him and find out where Mikhail had disappeared to.
“I’m at a friend’s place, Vera. I’ll be late. It’s Friday, after all,” her husband said.
“And how are your aunts? What else didn’t they like?”
“They don’t like me! As always, she was their favorite,” her husband snapped dryly. “They left the money to my sister. Right in front of me, they gave a large sum to Katya and her children. Can you imagine?!”
Vera had always known that Zhanna and Zina loved their niece more, even though they kept insisting that they did everything for Misha.
“They said I already owed them enough as it was! I was supposed to receive them, drive them around, bring them here and there like a servant!” Misha blurted out incoherently.
Misha fell silent. He was hurt that his hopes had melted away so easily.
“She’s pregnant, can you imagine? She’s having a third child! And we don’t have children, Vera. So that means we don’t need help — that’s what the aunts said.”
“Come home. Stop wandering around your friends’ places,” Vera said, rubbing her temples.
“Ver, stop bossing me around!” the man snapped.
“We need to discuss the divorce,” Vera said.
“Why are you picking on my words?! They gave half a house to Katya because she’s going to have another little brat, can you imagine?!” Misha lamented.
“We’re going to have a child. I took a test,” his wife inserted her two cents into Mikhail’s tirade.
And then Misha fell silent.
“How? Really?” he asked, hope in his voice.
Vera cried silently from happiness. She had not even dreamed, had not even hoped — and here it was, a gift for her birthday.
“Vera, you are my happiness! What divorce?! I’m not letting you go anywhere! And I won’t snap at you anymore over little things and household nonsense… Ver, we need to tell the aunts. They still have money left from half the house. Maybe they’ll help?” Misha said, laughing.
“We are definitely not telling your aunts. They left, and that’s wonderful. Later we’ll send them a postcard,” Vera said and asked her husband to come home quickly so they could celebrate the joyful event.
That’s a story from life. I’ll add a couple of words as an epilogue in the comments. Support the story with likes — your comments inspire me.
