— Yes, I bought this apartment. No, your mother is not going to decide how we live here — enough!
“Just don’t tell me she called again,” Alina said without even turning around. She stood at the stove, stirring pasta sauce, feeling the muscles between her shoulder blades tighten from the tension.
“Well…” Ivan stretched and scratched the back of his head. “She just wanted to know how we were doing. Whether everything was okay. Just a normal conversation.”
Alina sighed, turned off the stove, and faced him.
“Ivan. She calls THREE TIMES a day. In the morning, she asks how we slept. During the day, she wants to know what I’m cooking. In the evening, she asks how much you ate. That isn’t a ‘normal conversation.’ That’s surveillance.”
He shrugged.
“Well, Mom is lonely. She’s all by herself since Dad died…”
“She has more friends than I have pairs of socks,” Alina snapped. “Stop pretending she lives in complete isolation, scratching messages onto the walls.”
Ivan smirked.
“You’re being dramatic. Mom is kind. She just wants to be closer to us. You know how upset she was when we moved out…”
Alina nodded and sharply opened the dishwasher.
“Moved out? Ivan, this apartment is mine. I bought it with my own money, my work trips, my stress. We didn’t ‘move out.’ You moved in with me. That’s an important difference, by the way.”
Ivan stepped closer. Weariness crept into his voice.
“I don’t understand why you keep insisting on that. This isn’t a competition over who achieved what. We’re a family.”
“Family means respect,” Alina said, turning toward him and placing her hands on her hips. “Not your mother discussing with you why ‘Alinochka doesn’t wash the floors properly’ or why ‘everything Alinochka owns is expensive and empty, just like she is.’”
He looked away.
“Well, sometimes she… says things in the heat of the moment. You’re not exactly easy yourself.”
Alina remained silent. Completely silent. Because at moments like this, any word would have been like a match dropped into dry grass.
The pause stretched on. Tension hung in the apartment like electricity before a thunderstorm.
“Listen,” Ivan finally exhaled, “let’s not do this. I’ll just tell Mom to call less often. That’s it. Problem solved.”
“She could call once a year and it still wouldn’t be about the calls, Ivan. It’s about the fact that you don’t hear me. When I say, ‘This makes me uncomfortable,’ what you hear is, ‘Come up with an excuse for Mom.’ When I say, ‘This is my home,’ what you hear is, ‘So I’m just a guest here?’ I want to live with a partner, not with a messenger running between me and your mother.”
He sat down on a stool by the breakfast bar and yawned.
“You’re really taking this too far. A messenger. Alina, you always make everything complicated.”
She pressed her lips together, then sat opposite him and rested her hands on the table.
“Do you know what I’m afraid of?”
“Oh, here we go again,” he grumbled, though his expression became more attentive.
“I’m afraid that one day I’ll come home and your mother will be sitting on my sofa with keys to my apartment, telling me she’s going to live with us now. And you know what? That isn’t even some ridiculous nightmare. I think that might already be your plan.”
He stared at her carefully. His lips twitched.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you’ve started whispering to her on the phone in the evenings. Because you avoid me when you answer her calls. Because she already asked ‘which way it would be better to place the wardrobe in your bedroom.’ Not ‘their bedroom.’ ‘Your bedroom,’ Ivan.”
He stood up and stepped backward.
“Alina, you’re reacting irrationally. Mom just wanted…”
“What?” Alina rose to her feet. Her voice sharpened. “She just wanted what? To ‘just’ sell something NEW? Her apartment, for example?”
He froze.
And now there was silence.
The kind that sent chills down your spine.
The kind that only came before a storm.
“You knew?” Alina asked quietly. “You knew she was planning to sell it?”
He looked toward the window.
“She was… just considering it. She said she was tired of living alone. She thought maybe we could live together for a while. Save money on rent. She said, ‘You have plenty of space…’”
“I have plenty of space, Ivan. Space that I created MYSELF. And do you know what’s most disgusting about this? I always thought you were you. Not somebody’s little mama’s boy.”
His face flushed.
“Don’t go too far. She’s my mother. I have a responsibility to take care of her.”
“And me?” Alina swept her hand toward the kitchen, the living room, and the wall where her photographs from Iceland were hanging. “Don’t you have any responsibility to take care of me?”
He didn’t answer.
“I understand,” she said. “Thank you. Dinner is getting cold. Reheat it yourself.”
She walked out of the kitchen feeling as though someone had pulled her spine out of her body.
Alina didn’t sleep for the second night in a row. She tossed and turned in bed as if there were sandpaper beneath her instead of pillows and a mattress. Ivan snored softly and peacefully beside her, as though his soul were completely free of worry.
In the morning, she left for work early.
Without a word.
Without looking at him.
She simply closed the door behind her, and as she walked downstairs, she remembered how a year earlier they had chosen the panels in the building hallway together, arguing and laughing.
And now even their silence belonged to both of them — heavy, cold, and impenetrable.
That evening, she returned later than usual.
Exhausted.
Dark circles under her eyes.
And the first thing she saw was an unfamiliar pair of slippers in the hallway.
Plush slippers embroidered with a little teddy bear.
And bags.
Shopping bags from Lenta, labeled in marker:
“Kitchen.”
“Bedroom.”
“Toilet.”
“Are you kidding me?” Her voice broke into a hoarse whisper.
Tamara Petrovna walked out of the kitchen wearing Alina’s apron — the exact one Alina had bought in Paris. It had been on sale, but still, it was so stylish.
A kitchen towel was draped over Tamara’s shoulder like something from a bad movie.
“Oh, Alinochka! Finally! Tired, poor thing? I decided to help you two and make some borscht. All you eat here is that pasta-rigo-whatever. It’s bad for your stomach.”
Alina turned toward the front door.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
“Is Ivan home?” she asked without looking at her.
“He went out onto the balcony to smoke,” Tamara sighed. “I’ve told him a thousand times to quit. Son, you’re a programmer — you have a brain!”
“Well, at least I have something in common with your family,” Alina said through clenched teeth. “Ivan!”
He came out holding a cigarette, looking like someone who had been caught at the scene of a crime.
“Hi,” he said quietly. “Mom, maybe you should…”
“No,” Alina interrupted. “Let her stay. Let her hear everything. Did you let her move in here?”
He lowered his eyes.
“Temporarily. Until she finds another apartment.”
“She already sold hers?”
Tamara Petrovna stepped in.
“Why are you shouting at him, Alina? We discussed everything. It’s temporary. A son can’t just throw his mother out! That would be inhuman.”
“What would be human, Tamara Petrovna, is asking permission. This is MY home. Not ‘our home.’ Not ‘the family nest.’ Mine.”
“Oh, really?” her mother-in-law snapped. “So you’re the mistress of the house now? And what am I — dust beneath your polished floors? Are you so sure he’ll stay with you for long?”
Alina froze.
“Excuse me?”
“What?” Tamara continued. “You’re smart, successful, yes. But you certainly don’t look happy. You’re angry all the time, like a dog. Nothing is ever good enough for you. My Vanya is affectionate, domestic. He loves warmth and comfort. But you — you’re like glass. Cold. Slippery.”
“Mom,” Ivan said weakly.
“No, let her hear it,” Tamara waved him away. “There’s no need to put on a performance. I figured you out a long time ago, Alinochka. You want your husband under your heel. But he isn’t that kind of man. The milk hasn’t even dried on his lips yet, and you’re already standing over him with a whip.”
Alina laughed.
Quietly.
Almost crazily.
“Milk? Tamara Petrovna, your ‘little boy’ is thirty-five years old. And he can’t make a single decision without your stamp of approval.”
“That’s enough!” her mother-in-law screamed. “I will not tolerate such rudeness in my own home!”
Alina stepped forward until, for a moment, their faces were at the same level.
“Your own home? Say that again.”
Tamara suddenly faltered.
“That isn’t what I meant. I just… I’m trying to help. I’m doing everything for you. I cleaned the bathroom, washed the towels, stripped your bed because the sheet wasn’t smooth enough.”
Alina slowly shook her head.
“You… slept in our bed?”
“I only lay down for a while during the day! What’s wrong with that?! I was tired from the trip!”
Alina walked over to the wardrobe, yanked it open, pulled out a Zara bag, and dumped her mother-in-law’s belongings onto the floor.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get. Out. Is that clear enough? Not ‘temporarily.’ Not ‘until you find somewhere else.’ Today. Now. You’re leaving.”
Ivan rushed toward her.
“What are you doing?! Alina, she’s my MOTHER! How can you…”
“I can. Because both of you crossed my boundary. That was the last one I had left. I don’t have a bedroom anymore, or a kitchen, or even a mug with an intact handle — she washed your dishes so aggressively that she chipped the edge. I don’t have a husband anymore. Because my husband is supposed to be you. But you’re not acting like a husband. You’re a traitor.”
He flinched.
“You’re destroying everything… Why? We just wanted…”
“You wanted? Who asked me? Maybe I wanted to live in my own apartment, between my own walls, without anyone commenting on my breasts — ‘Are you pregnant, perhaps?’ — rearranging the furniture, or cooking boiled cabbage that makes the whole place stink for three days.”
Tamara Petrovna went pale.
“I’ll leave,” she hissed. “But you’ll regret this. Sons don’t forgive women who hurt their mothers.”
“And women don’t forgive people who turn their homes into military barracks,” Alina whispered.
Her mother-in-law rushed into the room where her bags had temporarily been placed.
Ivan remained standing there with his shoulders slumped.
“I don’t know what to do with all this,” he said without looking at Alina.
“I do,” she replied. “Be a man. Or leave with her. At this point, you resemble a suitcase more than a husband.”
He was silent for a long time.
“Then… I guess I’ll pack my things.”
“Good decision.”
Alina stood there until the front door slammed twice.
First behind Tamara Petrovna.
Then behind Ivan.
After that came silence.
The teddy-bear slippers were still lying on the floor.
Alina sat down beside them and cried.
Not because she felt sorry for herself.
Because she was furious.
Because she had let them into her fortress.
And she herself had given them the key.
Two weeks passed.
Alina still wasn’t opening the door to anyone.
The new locks remained firmly in place, standing guard over her private world.
Her phone stayed silent. Messages remained unanswered.
Her apartment was quiet now — only the sound of the kettle and the soft crackling of an old radio she kept on in case the loneliness became too overwhelming.
She sat by the window with a cup of hot tea in her hands, trying to understand where she had gone wrong.
At what point had everything fallen apart?
Suddenly, she heard heavy footsteps outside the door.
Alina stood up.
Her heart began pounding as if it had decided to run a marathon.
“Who is it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“It’s me,” a quiet voice answered. “Nina.”
Her friend.
The only person who knew every detail.
“Come in,” Alina said, removing the security chain.
Nina entered, looked around, and sighed deeply.
“You know Ivan has been trying to call you? More than once. But you wouldn’t answer.”
“I’m tired,” Alina said as she sat down again. “Tired of them. Tired of myself. Tired of everything.”
Nina sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Listen, did you really think he would just let you go that easily?”
“No,” Alina replied. “But I feel like he isn’t the same person anymore. He gave in to his mother’s pressure.”
“What if he wasn’t the one who gave in?” Nina asked. “What if you did? You gave him too few chances. He was confused because he didn’t know what to do between two strong women.”
“Two?” Alina looked at her in surprise. “Me and his mother? Don’t I have the right to privacy? To my own home?”
“Of course you do. But you forgot one thing — love and respect always require dialogue, not war. You shut yourself away, and he left.”
At that moment, the doorbell rang.
Alina walked over and cautiously opened the door.
Ivan was standing outside.
His eyes were red.
His face looked exhausted and unwell.
“I couldn’t live like this anymore,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “Mom… she’s stronger than I am. And I was weak. But I want to try to fix everything.”
“What do you want?” Alina asked without looking away.
“To make peace. To start over. Without Mom. Just the two of us.”
Silence.
Complicated and painful.
Alina felt something tremble inside her.
Hope or fear — she couldn’t tell which.
“Ivan,” she finally said, “if we start over, we do it differently. You have to understand that this is my home and my rules. Otherwise, this will be the end of us.”
He nodded.
“I’m ready for that.”
Nina smiled, holding back tears.
“That’s what the real fight for personal space looks like — when love doesn’t die, but changes.”
Alina turned toward the window.
Outside, night was slowly falling.
And somewhere beyond the glass was a world she wanted to return to.
With new strength.
With new meaning.
