Raisa had been patient for forty-three years. When her son came back after his second divorce, she let him in. But when she saw him toss her violets off the windowsill, something inside her snapped.
Raisa Petrovna took off her glasses, wiped them with the edge of her sweater and put them back on. The pot with her violet was on the floor, soil scattered on the linoleum like a dark stain.
She stood there for a minute. Maybe two. Then she bent down, picked up the pot, and set it back on the windowsill. The violet was lopsided now, one leaf snapped at the base.
“Mom, it was an accident,” Gennady called from the hallway. His voice was the same as always when he said “accidentally”: lazy, with a touch of annoyance, as if it was her fault the pot had been in the way.
She didn’t answer. She turned on the tap, dampened a rag, got down on her knees and started gathering up the soil. Her knees cracked. The left one—as usual—responded with a dull pain under the kneecap.
Gennady walked past her into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and stood there for a long time just staring at the shelves. She could hear him moving jars, slamming the lid of a container.
“Is there actually anything decent to eat in here?”
Raisa wrung the rag into the bucket. The water turned muddy brown.
“There’s soup on the stove. Heat it up.”
“What soup, Mom? I mean real food. Is there any meat, cutlets?”
She got up, gripping the edge of the table for support. She looked at his back. Broad, under a stretched-out gray t-shirt he’d brought with him three weeks ago, along with two duffle bags and the smell of another person’s apartment.
Three weeks. Twenty-one days. And in those twenty-one days, Raisa had learned more about her son than she had in the past ten years while he’d been living on his own.
Gennady came back at the end of October. He called one evening after she’d already gotten into bed. Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, the screen casting a blue light on the ceiling.
“Mom, I’m coming by. I need to stay with you for a bit.”
She sat up in bed and searched for her slippers with her feet.
“What happened?”
“Larisa kicked me out.”
The second wife. The second time. Raisa rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers—a habit she’d picked up from her late husband Viktor. He always did the same when he didn’t know what to say.
“Come over.”
What else could she say? She’d been his mother for forty-three years. For forty-three years, she’d said, “Come over,” “Eat something,” “Go to bed,” “I’ll do the laundry.” It was part of her, like breathing, like switching off the bathroom light after everyone.
He arrived at midnight. Two gym bags, a bag of shoes, a laptop under his arm. He smelled of cigarettes and something sour. She didn’t ask any questions.
The first three days, he slept until one in the afternoon. She walked past the closed door of his former room, which she’d long since turned into her sewing studio. Her sewing table was there, boxes of fabric, a headless mannequin she used for custom covers. Now, the mannequin stood in the hallway, covered with a towel, and Gena’s socks were piled on the sewing table.
She moved her sewing machine to the kitchen. She sewed there while he slept.
On the fourth day, he came out at noon, sat at the table and asked:
“Is there any coffee?”
“Instant in the cupboard.”
“Anything decent? Like ground coffee?”
Raisa glanced at him over her glasses. He was 43 years old. His temples were streaked with gray, four days’ stubble marked his jaw, and dark circles sagged under his eyes. He stood at 1.82 meters, but his slouch made him look shorter. His fingers were thick, and his nails were bitten down to the quick.
“No. Instant coffee.”
He grimaced, but poured the coffee anyway. Then he sat down and spent half an hour scrolling through his phone while the coffee cooled in its cup.
Raisa endured for the first week. She knew how to endure. Years with Viktor had taught her that—he had drunk from the age of thirty until he was fifty-seven, and only quit drinking when the doctor warned him his liver would fail within a year if he didn’t stop. Viktor listened and never took another sip. He died eight years later, sober. His heart gave out.
She put up with dirty dishes piling up in the sink. She tolerated wet towels on the bathroom floor. She endured the sounds of shooting games behind closed doors at two in the morning. She dealt with the fact that he hadn’t taken out the trash even once, even though the bin was right by the door and impossible to miss when walking by.
But Raisa Petrovna’s patience wasn’t endless. It was like a spool of thread—long, but with an end. And every day, a bit unraveled.
On the eighth day, she found ash on the kitchen table. He was smoking in the apartment. With the window open, but still—inside. She asked him not to smoke indoors.
“Mom, it’s cold out on the balcony.”
“Use the stairwell.”
“The stairwell stinks.”
She said nothing and opened the window wider. The October air was damp, tinged with the scent of fallen leaves and exhaust fumes from the parking lot below the windows.
On the tenth day, their neighbor Zinaida Arkadyevna came by—the one she shared tea and TV show gossip with every Thursday. Raisa opened the door just as Gennady’s voice called from the kitchen:
“Mom, tell your friend to stop ringing the bell, I’m sleeping.”
It was three in the afternoon.
Zinaida raised her eyebrows. Her brows were thick, nearly joined, and when she lifted them, her forehead creased into four deep folds.
“Is that Gena?”
“Gena.”
“Again?”
Raisa nodded and motioned her to the kitchen. They drank their tea quietly, almost in whispers, as if there was someone ill in the house. Maybe there was. Raisa didn’t know what to call it. Forty-three, a healthy man, two arms, two legs, an education. Yet he lay in bed all day, got up in the evening, ate, played games, slept. Second time in five years.
The first time he got divorced, he was thirty-eight. He moved in then, too. Stayed for four months. Raisa remembered: same bags, same smell, same socks on the sewing table. Back then she kept quiet. She thought: he’s having a hard time, he just needs time, he’s my son.
He met Larisa six months later. Moved in with her. Raisa brought the mannequin back to the room, spread out her fabrics, got back to sewing.
And now it was happening again.
“Does he work?” Zinaida asked, dipping a cookie into her tea.
“He says he’s looking.”
“How long?”
“Three weeks.”
Zinaida didn’t say anything. But Raisa noticed how she pressed her lips together. Zinaida had a son too, but he lived in Novosibirsk and only called on Sundays. Sometimes on Saturdays. He never came home with bags.
On the twelfth day, Raisa found a strange shampoo in the bathroom. An expensive one, in a sleek black bottle with English writing on it. Her own usual shampoo, just 120 rubles, stood on the edge of the tub, pushed against the wall.
She turned the bottle over in her hands. Sniffed it. It smelled of mint and something woody.
“Gena, did you buy shampoo?”
He walked out of his room wearing just underwear and a tank top, yawning.
“Yeah. So what?”
“With what money?”
He hesitated. Rubbed the back of his head.
“I had some.”
“So you had money for shampoo that costs six hundred rubles, but not for groceries—the ones I bought yesterday?”
She didn’t raise her voice. Raisa Petrovna almost never raised her voice. That was her weapon: a quiet, steady tone that made the other person more uncomfortable than if she shouted.
Gennady shrugged. No. He jerked his shoulder. Just one. The left one. Like he did as a child when he lied about failing physics.
“Mom, enough already.”
“I wasn’t the one who started.”
He walked back into his room. He didn’t slam the door, but closed it firmly. She heard the lock click. The lock she had installed fifteen years ago so the workshop-room could be locked when strangers came over.
Now the lock was used against her.
She put his shampoo back and left the bathroom. Stood for a moment in the hallway. The mannequin stood by the wall, covered by a towel, like a ghost. She took the towel off and hung it up to dry. The mannequin was in an unfinished pillowcase, pinned with sewing pins.
Raisa ran her finger over the fabric. The client had been waiting a week already. She promised to finish by Friday, but Friday was two days ago.
On the fourteenth day, Larisa called. Raisa hadn’t expected it. The number showed up as unfamiliar, but she recognized the voice immediately: deep, slightly husky, with that southern “g.”
“Hello, Raisa Petrovna. It’s Larisa.”
“Hello.”
Pause. Raisa could hear the breathing on the other end.
“Is he with you?”
“He is.”
“He says I kicked him out. That’s not true.”
Raisa sat down on a stool in the hallway. The stool creaked.
“Then what happened?”
“He left on his own. I told him if he didn’t find a job by the end of the month, I would file for child support for Kiryusha. He got up and left.”
Kiryusha. Grandson. Seven years old. Raisa last saw him in the summer, when Larisa brought him over. A boy with freckles and big ears, quiet, drawing cars in his notebook and barely talking.
“He doesn’t pay child support?”
“It’s been four months.”
Raisa closed her eyes. Her temples throbbed like a metal band tightening around them.
“Raisa Petrovna, I’m not asking you to do anything. I just wanted you to know. He tells you one story. I have another.”
“Thank you, Larisa.”
“You’re welcome.”
She hung up and sat for a long time on the stool, staring at the wall. On the wall hung a photograph: Gennady in first grade, holding a bouquet of asters, dressed in a blue suit. Smiling. No front teeth. Next to him is her, young, in a plaid dress, and Viktor, sober, before everything happened.
She stood up and went to the kitchen.
Gennady was sitting at the table with his phone.
“Gena.”
“Hm?”
“Larisa called.”
He looked up. His eyes flicked quickly to the left. He always did that right before he lied.
“And?”
“You don’t pay child support.”
He put his phone down. Slowly, carefully, placing it face down.
“Mom, that’s none of your business.”
“Kiryusha is my grandson. It is my business.”
“I don’t have any money. Where am I supposed to get it?”
“You bought shampoo for six hundred rubles.”
He stood up. Pushed the chair back. The chair scraped across the floor with a squeal that made her tooth ache.
“Are you serious right now? Are you really counting my shampoo?”
“I’m counting your debts to your child.”
“I don’t need a lecture, Mom. I need support.”
— So, ‘support’ means living in my apartment for free, eating my food, and sleeping until three?
He stood over her. Six foot. She sat on a stool. Five foot two. Between them was a table with the remains of breakfast: his plate, his mug, his crumbs.
— You don’t understand me, he said, and walked out.
Raissa stayed at the table. She cleared his plate. Washed it. Put it on the dish rack. Wiped the table. Each movement was slow and precise, like defusing a bomb.
On the sixteenth day, she didn’t sleep until four in the morning. She lay in the dark, listening to Gennady talking on the phone through the wall. His voice was soft, laughing. There was a woman’s laughter on the speaker. Not Larisa’s.
She turned onto her side. The pillow smelled of lavender—she always dropped a little oil before bed, a habit from recent years. Lavender usually calmed her. Not tonight.
In the morning, she walked into the kitchen and saw all four pots of violets pushed to the edge of the windowsill, and in their place was his laptop. One pot had fallen. Dirt all over the floor. A broken leaf.
And Raissa suddenly realized the thread had run out. Not with a snap. Quietly. It just ended, and there was nothing more to unravel.
She picked up the pot. Set it upright. Cleaned up the dirt. Everything as usual. But her hands didn’t shake, and inside, it wasn’t empty but full instead. As if something had just fallen into place.
At nine in the morning, she called Zinaida.
— Zina, can you come over?
— I’ll be there in half an hour.
Zinaida came with a thermos and two pastries. She sat in the kitchen, put down the thermos, and looked at Raissa.
— Are you kicking him out?
Raissa nodded.
— About time.
— I don’t know how.
— Just say it like it is. You’re his mother, not a hotel.
Raissa poured tea from the thermos. The pastry with cabbage was still warm. She took a bite, chewed, and the taste was so normal and right that for a second it felt like everything was simple. Just say it and that’s it.
— I’m sixty-seven, Zina. I have orders I can’t take because my workshop is full. I have a grandson, and he doesn’t pay child support. My knees hurt when I pick up dirt from the floor.
— Then that’s exactly what you should say.
Raissa finished her tea. Washed her cup. Placed it in the rack next to his plate, the one she’d washed that morning. Next to, but not together. Suddenly, she noticed.
Gennady woke up at one in the afternoon. Came out, as always, in boxers and a t-shirt. Yawned. Opened the fridge.
— Mom, we’re out of milk.
— Gena, sit down.
He turned around. There was something different in her voice. Not louder. Not harsher. Just firmer. Like a wall you run into and realize—it’s not going to move.
He sat down.
Raissa stood by the window. Behind her, the violets—all four pots back in place, watered, tied up neatly, leaves clean.
— You need to leave.
Pause.
— What?
— You need to move out of my apartment. By the end of the week.
— Mom, are you serious?
— I’m serious.
He leaned back in the chair. Crossed his arms over his chest. She could see his jaw clench.
— And where am I supposed to go?
— That’s your problem, not mine.
— I don’t have any money for rent.
— You have a degree, hands, and feet. You’re a healthy man.
— You’re kicking me out?
— I’m asking you to move out.
— It’s the same thing.
Raissa shook her head.
— No. Dogs get thrown out. I’m just asking an adult to take responsibility for their own life.
He stood up. The chair squeaked loudly across the floor again. She didn’t even flinch.
— You’re my mother.
— That’s exactly why. That’s exactly why a mother doesn’t just kick her son out on the street.
— A true son doesn’t live off his retired mother and abandon his own child without paying support.
Silence. Outside, a car drove by, its heavy bass vibrating through the walls until it faded away.
— Larisa put you up to this.
— Larisa told the truth.
— So you believe her, not me?
— I believe what I see. It’s been three weeks. Not a single interview. Not a single attempt. You just lie around, eat, and talk on the phone at night.
He paled. She had hit the mark.
— Are you listening in?
— The walls are thin.
He paced around the kitchen. Two steps one way, two steps back. The kitchen was small, just six and a half meters, nowhere to truly walk.
— So when do I have to leave?
— By Sunday.
— Today’s Wednesday.
— Four days.
— That’s impossible.
— You’re a grown man. You’ll figure it out.
He left. This time, the door slammed behind him. The wall shook, and a little ceramic cat that Raisa had brought back from Anapa eight years ago fell off the shelf in the hallway. It broke into three pieces.
Raisa walked over and picked up the shards: an ear, a body, a tail. She looked at them for a moment and set them on the dresser.
She didn’t try to glue them back together.
On Thursday, he stayed in his room until evening. Raisa could hear him talking on the phone. His voice was different: angry, demanding. She caught bits of words: “temporary”, “couple weeks”, “I’m fine.”
She sat in the kitchen sewing. The sewing machine buzzed, the needle moved up and down, fabric sliding under the presser foot. She was making a pillow cover—the one the client was waiting for. Raisa thought about how making a pillow cover was so much easier than talking to her son. With a pillow cover, there’s a pattern, a size, the right color thread. With a conversation with Gennady, none of that exists.
In the evening, he came out.
— I called Kolya. He’ll let me stay for a week.
Kolya. His childhood friend from beyond the ring road, now working in a warehouse. Raisa remembered him: red-haired, freckled, quiet. They’d been friends since fifth grade.
— Good.’
— But it’s only for a week.
— That’s enough time to find a job.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.
On Friday, he started packing. Raisa could hear him stuffing things into bags, the rustle of a plastic shoe bag. She continued sewing the pillow cover and didn’t go into the room.
In the evening, he came into the kitchen and sat across from her.
— Mom.
— Yes?
— Are you really not going to change your mind?
She looked up from her sewing machine. Her glasses had slid down to the tip of her nose. She gazed at him over the rims.
He looked older than his years. Wrinkles around his eyes, deep but not from laughter. His shoulders were slumped. His nails bitten as always. The same boy from the hallway photo, but now without a smile or asters.
— I won’t change my mind.
— I’m your son.
— I know.
— And you don’t care?
She took off her glasses and laid them on the table. Without them, the world became softer, blurry, like a watercolor painting.
— It’s not that I don’t care. That’s why.
That’s why.
— You don’t get it. You just don’t want to.
He sat there in silence. So did she. Outside, it was getting dark. The streetlamp in the yard flickered on, and shadows from bare branches drifted across the ceiling.
— I’m moving in with Kolya on Saturday.
— Alright.
— Call Kirill sometimes.
That was unexpected. She blinked.
— Of course.
— Larisa’s a good person. It’s just… I don’t know. I can’t handle it.
She stood up, walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch. Just sat there. Through the fabric of his t-shirt, she could feel the warmth of his body and the hard line of his collarbone.
— You’ll manage, once you start.
He didn’t reply. But he didn’t get up either.
Saturday morning he loaded his bags into a taxi. Raisa stood in the doorway. His jacket was wrinkled but zipped up to his chin. November pressed in with cold, and a draft blew up the hallway from the basement.
— Well, bye, Mom.
— Bye.
He paused for a second. Then leaned in and hugged her. Quick, awkward, with one arm since the other still held a bag. She breathed in the smell of his shampoo—minty, expensive—with a trace of cigarettes underneath.
The door closed.
Raisa came back into the apartment. The silence knocked in her ears—not empty, but full, like a glass filled to the brim.
She walked down the hallway. Took the towel off the mannequin. Brought it back to the room and placed it by the window. She pulled out boxes of fabric from under the bed where she had pushed them three weeks ago. She spread the patterns on the table.
The sewing machine stood in the corner, already set up. She sat down, threaded the needle and started to sew.
The needle went up and down. The fabric slid smoothly. Outside, fine rain was falling, the drops drumming on the metal window ledge from the other side.
In the evening, a client called.
— Raisa Petrovna, are the covers ready?
— You can pick them up tomorrow.
— Oh, thank you! And could you make two more for the couch cushions?
— Of course. Bring the fabric.
She hung up and smiled. Not a big smile—just a slight twitch of the lips, but it was more than she’d managed in the past three weeks.
Zinaida came by on Thursday, as usual, bringing cookies and a tablet for their TV show night.
— So, is it quiet?
— Quiet.
— Has he called?
— He messaged. Got a job as a loader at the warehouse with Kolya.
— A loader?
— For now…
First, Zinaida poured herself some tea. They sat down to watch the show and Raisa realized that for the first time in a month, she was in her own apartment and felt at ease.
Nobody would come out of the other room in just their underwear. Nobody would ask for real food. Nobody would move her violets.
The violets stood on the windowsill. All four. The one with the broken leaf had grown a new shoot—thin, pale, but stubborn.
— Zina.
— Hm?
— Did I do the right thing?
Zinaida looked at her. Long and carefully, the way people look when they know the answer but want to hear it spoken aloud.
— What do you think?
Raisa was silent. She took a cookie and bit into it. Looked at the violets.
— I think I did.
— That’s all there is to it.
They finished the episode. Zinaida left. Raisa washed the cups and set them in the drying rack. Two cups side by side. Hers and Zinaida’s.
No one else’s.
Two weeks later, Gennady called.
— Mom, I rented a room. By the metro, cheap.
— Good.
— Paid the deposit from my first paycheck.
— Good.
A pause.
— I sent money to Larisa too. Only half for now, but I sent it.
She stood by the window, looking into the courtyard. Kids were sliding down the playground slide, moms stood nearby in puffer jackets and hats. One held a thermos, another wiped her child’s nose.
— Gena.
— What?
— Come for lunch on Sunday. Bring Kirill, if Larisa agrees.
— Really?
“I’ll make some soup.”
He laughed. It was a short laugh, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to. She laughed too, a quiet, sniffling kind of laugh.
She hung up the phone. Stood there for a moment. Then she went to check if there was any meat in the freezer.
The violets on the windowsill were catching the last bits of November sunlight. A new shoot on the previously damaged one had grown tall and strong. Its leaf had fully unfurled, deep green and velvety.
Raisa adjusted the pot, turning it slightly toward the sun.
And then she went to start cooking.
