“My Zoyenka and I talked it over and decided that you’ll pay off the installments for your own gift yourself,” my mother-in-law announced solemnly, sliding a massive glossy box and a bank contract toward me.
“After all, the thing is shared now. It will stand in your home, so the payment is a family debt too.”
Nina Timofeyevna cast a victorious look over the guests gathered around the table for my thirty-fifth birthday. She smiled sweetly, completely certain of her own infallibility and her right to manage my money.
My mother-in-law had failed to take only one thing into account: from under the paper clip on the contract, a cash receipt was treacherously sticking out, with some very curious conditions.
I pulled the transparent folder with the papers closer to me. A spring celebration, dressed-up relatives politely passing salad bowls to one another, and right there at the festive dinner, I was being presented with a premium smart coffee machine of the latest model.
On credit.
My powers of observation had always worked several times faster than my emotions. I did not start getting indignant, crying, or justifying myself in front of the guests. I simply shifted my gaze from the colorful cardboard of the box to my mother-in-law’s face.
“Allow me to clarify, Nina Timofeyevna,” I said evenly, without a single note of irritation in my voice.
“The gift is being presented to me, the loan agreement is in your name, but I’m the one who has to make the monthly payments to the bank?”
“Well, aren’t you quite the lady!” my mother-in-law immediately threw up her hands, raising her voice to draw even more attention from everyone present.
“I, by the way, gave my personal passport details to strangers! I waited for approval, wasted my nerves!”
“You’ll simply transfer twelve thousand to my card every month for a year, and that’s the end of it. But just think what coffee you’ll be drinking in the mornings!”
I slowly pulled the papers out of the file and ran my eyes over the lines of the bank printout.
“Very interesting arithmetic. The official payment schedule states in black and white that the monthly installment is eight and a half thousand rubles. Where did the figure of twelve thousand come from? Did you decide to charge me a service fee?”
My sister-in-law Zoya, who up until that moment had been enthusiastically chewing a sandwich with red caviar, hurried to her mother’s aid.
“Lyuda, Mom spent her own personal time on this. She walked around the shopping center, talked to consultants. Shouldn’t there be some compensation for her efforts? We’re family. Things should be handled like family, without all your dry accounting calculations.”
I looked at Zoya. A girl who still sincerely believed that the entire world existed solely to serve her comfort.
“Like family means adding your personal interest on top of brutal bank terms and dumping it on your daughter-in-law?” I carefully folded the contract back.
“A charming tale, though hard to believe. Your entrepreneurial spirit, madam, deserves a storm of applause.”
My mother-in-law blinked nervously, realizing that the beautiful public presentation of her generosity was not going according to plan at all. She decided to switch on pressure through status and authority in front of witnesses.
“Don’t you dare disgrace us in front of people!” she hissed, leaning aggressively toward me over the table.
“We brought an elite item into your home, for your own good! A woman should be the keeper of the hearth, she should know how to be grateful, not shake pennies out of her husband’s own mother. You should be happy we even cared about you!”
“Otherwise, you live like you’re stuck in the last century.”
At that point, my husband predictably found his voice. Ilya always preferred the position of an ostrich on a concrete floor—burying his head in the sand at the first sign of any discomfort, even when there was no sand there.
“Lyuda, come on, really, stop. Mom tried hard, she chose a surprise. We’re family, our budget is shared. We’ll pay it, we won’t go broke. Let’s not have a scandal on a day like this.”
I turned an icy gaze on Ilya.
“Who is this ‘we’?”
“Well, we… you and me. We’ll transfer money to Mom from our shared funds.”
“On what grounds?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“On the grounds that we’re family! And the thing will be standing in our kitchen!” my husband chopped the air with his hand, clearly feeling powerful support behind him from the maternal faction.
Nina Timofeyevna straightened triumphantly in her chair.
“Exactly! Since the machine is in your home, then give me the keys to the apartment too, Ilyusha. I have every right to come in whenever I want and check how the appliance is working, since I personally stood surety before the bank for it. Make a duplicate tomorrow.”
Ilya obediently nodded. I calmly took my own set of keys out of my handbag and dropped it with a metallic clatter directly onto the loan agreement.
“If even one unauthorized duplicate appears in my home, the very next day there will be a new lock on the door. And I will send the bill for its installation to you, Ilya. Now let’s bring the inventory of this gift to its logical conclusion.”
I pulled the long cash receipt out from under the paper clip and placed it right in the center of the tablecloth.
“Nina Timofeyevna, what is this loyalty bonus card number at the very bottom of the receipt? Unless my eyesight is failing me, the last four digits match our Zoya’s mobile phone number exactly.”
“So, let’s summarize the situation: an elite coffee machine is bought on a consumer loan, which is brazenly being hung on me with your personal markup. And the generous store cashback—judging by the purchase amount, about fifteen thousand bonus points—safely lands in Zoya’s account.”
“Have I misunderstood anything? An outstanding business scheme. Female Chichikovs, truly. Were you expecting me to come crawling to you with a petition of gratitude as well?”
Zoya choked on her mineral water. Ilya stared at the receipt in confusion, blinking so often it looked as if dust had gotten into his eyes. The relatives at the table lowered their eyes to their plates in perfect synchronization, diligently pretending they were not there at all.
My mother-in-law tried to wriggle out of it, her voice trembling.
“That… that’s for future purchases! For the home! Frying pans, towels, for you!”
“For whose home exactly?” I said coldly, knowing perfectly well that Zoya had long been saving up for a new smartphone.
“Madam, your commercial streak deserves to be included in economics textbooks, but I have no intention of sponsoring this vanity fair.”
I got up from the table, picked up the unbearably heavy box together with the folder, and carried them to the cabinet in the hallway.
“The gift is not accepted. Take it back.”
“How dare you!” Nina Timofeyevna shrieked, losing the last traces of her social polish.
“I already made the first payment at the register from my own savings!”
“Your investments are your personal risks,” I returned to my seat and calmly picked up my fork.
“Now let’s continue dinner. Ilya, please pass me the salad.”
The rest of the evening passed in an exceptionally awkward atmosphere. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law demonstratively began getting ready to leave early, “forgetting” the box in the hallway.
“She’ll drag it over herself. She has nowhere to go,” Nina Timofeyevna loudly whispered to her daughter on the stairwell, confident in her own righteousness.
The next day, at exactly ten in the morning, I was standing on the threshold of my mother-in-law’s apartment. Ilya had been trying to talk me out of it since the night before. He muttered standard, memorized phrases: “You’re destroying the family,” “You should have just stayed silent for the sake of peace.”
A sleepy Zoya opened the door. Nina Timofeyevna peeked warily out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
Without a word, I set the heavy box with the coffee machine directly on the doormat. The folder with the loan agreement landed on top of it.
“Here is your merchandise.”
“My holidays happen without loans in my name. Good luck returning it to the store. According to the receipt, the return period is fourteen days.”
“You… you can’t do this to me!” my mother-in-law began to boil over, realizing the scale of the approaching catastrophe.
“How am I supposed to drag this monster back?! I have a bad back!”
“Carry it back the same way you bought it. You and Zoyenka discussed everything yesterday, so let her help. Loyalty bonuses need to be worked off somehow through physical labor.”
“As the classic wrote: we regard everyone as zeroes, and ourselves as ones, isn’t that right? But in my mathematics, your account has been completely zeroed out.”
I turned around and went down the stairs, stamping each step clearly. I did not listen to the shouts behind my back or the loud accusations of black ingratitude. The matter was closed.
That evening, Ilya came home from work quiet and unusually compliant. He had been forced to take half a day off from his boss at his own expense so he could take his mother and the box to the shopping center, process the return, and write a humiliating application to cancel the loan.
Zoya, of course, suddenly cited extreme busyness at work and simply disappeared from the radar. On top of that, the store revealed that when the item was returned, all accrued bonus points were automatically canceled.
My husband sat down to dinner, lazily poking at his plate with his fork.
“Mom is upset. Her blood pressure shot up,” he forced out, looking at me from under his brows.
“My sincere sympathies. Medicines aren’t cheap these days,” I calmly poured myself some hot tea. “But now you pay for everything from your personal funds, so I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“You’re too harsh, Lyuda. You can’t treat family like that.”
“I’m fair, Ilya. And remember this firmly for the future: when you publicly say ‘we decided,’ make sure that I am included in that ‘we.’”
