“Go Live With Your Mother. You Don’t Belong Here,” Her Husband Said. That Evening, His Name Was Removed From the Poster
The key turned twice in the lock. Then the door flew open, and a framed drawing by Miron fell from the hallway wall.
Taisia picked it up before Roman had time to say a word.
The picture showed a house with four windows, a yellow path, and three figures standing by the gate: Mom, her son, and Grandma. Lately, Miron rarely included Roman in his drawings.
Her husband stepped inside without removing his shoes. Behind him stood a young woman with her hair tied in a sleek ponytail. She wore a short gray coat and held a phone in her hand.
She looked around the hallway, stopped beside the door to the child’s room, and asked whether a desk would fit inside.
Roman answered before Taisia could.
“It will. Miron and his mother are leaving anyway.”
The young woman smiled without even saying hello.
“Pack your things and go live with your mother, Tasya,” Roman said. “Life will be easier for you in the village. Elina and I will stay here.”
Taisia placed the frame on the cabinet, lined up Miron’s little boots beside it, and asked:
“Are you planning to send your mother to the village too?”
The creak of an armchair came from the far room.
Klavdia Mironovna had been sitting there with her injured leg raised for the past three weeks. Whenever she moved around the apartment, she had to lean on a cane.
Roman had recently returned to the city after working in the regional center for six months, but during that entire time, he had visited his mother only twice.
The first time, he brought her a box of expensive tea. The second time, he asked her for money to buy a new laptop.
Taisia had remained silent, although she knew he had not once asked whether his mother had enough food or whether she was able to go downstairs by herself to pay the bills.
Roman twisted his lips.
“Mom is staying home. Don’t change the subject. She’ll be more comfortable with Elina. Elina works from home, so she’ll be able to keep an eye on her.”
Elina quickly slipped her phone into her bag.
“I’m not a caregiver, Roman.”
He turned toward her so abruptly that she stepped back against the coat rack.
“That’s not what I meant. Taisia is leaving anyway. We’ll figure everything else out later.”
There was no confusion or embarrassment in his voice.
He had already decided who would get each room, where the desk would go, what would happen to his mother and her cane, and where his son would live. At that moment, Miron was asleep after kindergarten.
In the past, Taisia would have quietly retreated to the kitchen at a moment like this.
She would have taken out an old bag, begun folding Miron’s sweaters, and wondered whether she had remembered to turn off the iron.
That was what she always did whenever Roman raised his voice. She searched for some small household task to hide behind.
Once, he had forbidden her from accepting a commission to restore a family photo album because, as he put it, “A normal wife doesn’t drag strangers’ boxes into the apartment.”
Taisia had turned down the job even though they needed the money.
Afterward, she spent an entire week staring at the empty table beside the window and convincing herself that peace at home was more important.
That same album was still lying in her kitchen.
A family from a neighboring courtyard had brought her photographs of their great-grandfather, old letters, and childhood pictures. Taisia had turned them into a carefully organized history inside a thick folder.
She knew how to bring order back to photographs. She straightened their edges, added dates and captions, and listened as people remembered relatives they had not seen for many years.
At first, Roman mocked her work.
Then he discovered that the city’s local history center was preparing an event called Houses That Remember, and he asked her for the materials.
“This is too big for you,” he told her. “I’ll give the presentation, and I’ll mention you as my assistant.”
Taisia agreed.
She wanted him, just once, to say her name in front of other people without that condescending smile.
Roman could explain anything to himself.
He had grown up in a cramped room with his mother and had decided early in life that quiet, modest living was not for him. He clung to every opportunity to appear more important than he really was.
Taisia understood his hunger for recognition. She had even felt sorry for him because of it.
But wanting to rise higher was one thing.
Putting your own name on someone else’s work and asking your wife to disappear once she became inconvenient was something else entirely.
Now Roman had five folders containing other families’ histories in his briefcase.
He was scheduled to give a presentation in two days, and his name was already printed in large letters on the poster.
Elina was supposed to register the guests and answer questions. Roman had promised himself that the event would earn him a higher position at the center. He had promised the young woman a place beside him.
Taisia understood everything from the way he gently adjusted Elina’s collar and then glanced at Taisia’s worn house slippers.
“Leave the folders,” he added. “I need them on Friday.”
“They don’t belong to you.”
“Don’t start. You worked on them at home, in my apartment.”
“In your mother’s apartment.”
“What difference does it make?” Roman waved dismissively. “I made an agreement with the director. People are coming to see me. Don’t make a scene.”
Taisia looked toward the child’s room.
Miron turned over in his sleep and murmured something. The quiet sound helped her straighten her back.
“I’m not promising you anything,” she said.
That evening, Roman left with Elina for a café, saying they needed to discuss the program.
Klavdia Mironovna remained silent in her room for a long time. Then she called Taisia.
A cup of cold tea stood on the windowsill beside a stack of bills Roman had never bothered to take care of.
Her mother-in-law stared at them without raising her eyes.
“At first, I didn’t feel sorry for you,” she said. “I thought that if you stayed silent, it meant you were comfortable living this way. But you were simply afraid.”
Taisia sat on the edge of the armchair.
“I’m still afraid.”
“I can see that. But fear is not a reason to let him take you apart piece by piece.”
Klavdia Mironovna paused and then added:
“The apartment belongs to me. I’ll tell my son he has no place here. But you must decide what to do about your folders yourself. Don’t let him turn you into an attachment to his surname again.”
Her words gave Taisia a moment of relief, but not yet courage.
She almost decided to take Miron and drive to her mother’s house the next morning. Roman could stay with Elina, give his presentation, and receive his new position.
All Taisia wanted was to keep her son from hearing strangers’ voices on the other side of the wall.
That night, she packed a single backpack. She put in a charger, a clean shirt for Miron, and an album containing his drawings.
Then she noticed the invitation to Friday’s event lying on the table.
Roman had left it there deliberately, so she would remember who was in charge now.
Under the project title, it read:
Author and Host: Roman Sergeyev
Below that, in much smaller print, were the words:
Family materials provided by city residents.
Taisia read the sentence several times.
The folders contained more than photographs.
They contained the voices of people who had trusted her to treat their memories with care.
One woman had brought her a photograph of a house before it was demolished and had asked that her younger brother’s face not be published.
Another man had agreed to let her display his great-grandfather’s letters only after Taisia promised that the author’s name would be included.
Roman had never spoken to any of them.
He did not even know why, in one of the photographs, two women were holding a little girl by the hand.
The following day, Taisia went to the center.
She intended to ask the director to postpone the event and quietly remove her materials from the walls.
That would have been more familiar to her: stepping aside, protecting Roman’s reputation, and then leaving for her mother’s house.
Posters were already hanging in the lobby.
The employee at the reception desk told her that Roman had stopped by that morning. He had said that Taisia would not be able to participate because she was “busy with household responsibilities.”
He had explained to the director that the entire concept was his and that his wife had merely helped him sort through the photographs.
Taisia looked at her own layout plan pinned to the board beneath his name.
She did not enter the director’s office.
Instead, she went outside, sat down on a bench beside the entrance, and, for the first time, did not invent an excuse for Roman’s behavior.
That morning, Taisia called all five families.
She did not beg them or complain.
She simply told them that their stories were going to be presented without her involvement and offered to let each of them decide what to do.
By noon, four people had answered that they would attend.
The fifth, an elderly woman named Nina Savelyevna, asked Taisia to bring her folder back to her home.
“I don’t want some strange man talking about my sister as though she were a decoration.”
Roman returned at lunchtime looking pleased with himself and freshly shaved.
He glanced into the kitchen, noticed that the bags were no longer beside the door, and smirked.
“So you finally understood. We’ll talk properly this evening.”
Taisia placed a bowl of soup in front of him.
Her hand trembled, and the spoon clinked against the edge.
“You’ll be at the center this evening.”
“Of course. You can come too, if you want to learn how real people work.”
He said it in front of Elina.
The young woman was sitting beside the window, flipping through a catalog of photographs.
On one of the pages lay Taisia’s penciled exhibition plan, which Roman had removed from the folder.
“I’ll come,” Taisia replied. “And the others will come too.”
By six o’clock, the hall at the center was almost full.
Enlarged copies of the photographs Taisia had prepared late at night were hanging on the walls.
Elina stood at the entrance, distributing programs.
Roman’s name was printed prominently on the first page.
He walked between the rows of chairs in a new jacket, greeting the director and telling everyone that he had wanted for a long time to create “something meaningful” for the city.
When he saw Taisia, he did not immediately understand why she had arrived with four people, each holding a folder.
Nina Savelyevna sat in the front row.
Beside her were a man with a cane, a young woman with her daughter, and a gray-haired photographer who had given Taisia a box of photographs from his old neighborhood.
Roman approached them, smiling only with his lips.
“Have you decided to put on a performance?”
“No. I decided that the owners of these stories should hear how you plan to tell them.”
“Taisia, don’t humiliate me.”
She looked at the poster beside the entrance.
“You’ve already done that yourself.”
The director invited the guests to take their seats, and Roman stepped in front of the screen.
For the first few minutes, he spoke confidently.
He talked about old houses, the memory of city streets, and how archives connected generations.
Then a photograph appeared on the screen showing two little girls standing beside a wooden gate.
Nina Savelyevna rose from her chair.
“Young man,” she said, “who gave you permission to show that photograph?”
Roman froze and then looked at Taisia.
“Nina Savelyevna, this is part of a shared project.”
“Shared with whom? I spoke to Taisia. She wrote down what I allowed her to use and what I did not. Did you ever come to see me?”
People began shifting in their seats.
The photographer stood next and removed his picture from the display.
The young woman walked toward the table beside the screen, picked up a program, read Roman’s name, and placed it back down.
“I did not give permission for my mother’s photograph to be displayed without her name,” she said. “If this story does not belong to you, take it down.”
Roman attempted to smile at the director.
“There’s been a misunderstanding. Taisia is reacting emotionally because we’re having family problems.”
Taisia walked toward the screen.
At first, her voice refused to cooperate, so she tightened her fingers around the strap of her bag.
“We really are having family problems. But these people have nothing to do with them. I collected their photographs. I recorded their stories. Roman wanted to call himself the author of something he had no part in creating. I do not give permission for him to use my captions, my texts, or these materials.”
She did not speak loudly.
The room was so quiet that everyone could hear Roman stop shuffling his note cards.
The director removed his glasses, looked at the displays, and addressed Roman.
“Why isn’t Taisia’s name on the poster?”
“I was planning to include her.”
“Where?”
Roman did not answer.
Elina slowly placed the stack of programs on the table.
Her expression became still. She was no longer looking at Taisia. She was staring at Roman.
“You told me the project was yours,” she said.
“Elina, not now.”
“Now is exactly the time.”
The director invited the guests to have tea in the neighboring room and asked Roman to remain behind.
Taisia did not stay to hear their conversation.
Together with the owners of the materials, she removed the copies from the walls, gathered the folders, and carried them into the hallway.
Nina Savelyevna pressed her folder against her chest and said quietly:
“It’s a good thing you didn’t surrender it.”
When Taisia returned home, the hallway light was on.
Roman stood beside the coat rack without his jacket. Elina was not with him.
Klavdia Mironovna sat in her armchair with her cane between her knees.
“Are you satisfied?” Roman asked. “You left me without a project.”
Taisia removed her coat and carefully hung it on the hook.
“No. You left yourself without a project when you decided to put your name on someone else’s work.”
“The director canceled the agreement. He said he can’t trust me with any city event for the time being.”
“Then you’ll have to find something else to do,” she replied.
Roman moved closer.
“You think you’ve won? I’m still officially registered at this address. I’m still my mother’s son.”
Klavdia Mironovna rose from the armchair, leaning on her cane.
“You’ll always be my son. But you will not live here. Put your key on the cabinet.”
“Mom, are you serious?”
“Completely. I listened to you divide up my home and your son’s bedroom. I’ve heard enough.”
Roman looked at Taisia as though he expected her to begin pleading on his behalf.
She did not move.
The bedsheet rustled in the child’s room.
Miron had woken up and was calling for his mother.
Taisia walked past Roman, brushing by his shoulder, and opened the door for her son.
“Mom, did Dad come back again?” Miron asked.
“He did,” Taisia said. “But he isn’t staying tonight.”
The boy studied her carefully. Then he took the drawing of the house from the shelf and held it out to her.
“I drew another window. See?”
There was now a fourth window on the page.
Roman stood in the hallway staring at it for so long that Klavdia Mironovna had to repeat herself.
“The key.”
A month later, Taisia rented a small room in one wing of the library.
They gave her a desk, a scanner, and two shelving units.
The director of the center personally offered her the opportunity to organize a new event, but she did not accept immediately.
First, she finished Nina Savelyevna’s album, delivered it to its owner, and received a short message from Roman:
We need to talk.
Taisia read it, placed her phone facedown, and taped a paper sign to the door:
Family Histories. Taisia Sergeyeva.
On Saturday, Miron came after his lessons and brought her a new drawing.
It showed the library, a tall desk, his grandmother with her cane, and his mother standing beside a shelf filled with photographs.
At the bottom, her son had carefully written in block letters:
THIS IS MOM’S WORK.
Taisia pinned the drawing beside the sign, smoothed one corner with her finger, and switched on the scanner.
