If grandstanding could be turned into electricity, my husband would be powering a small metropolis right now. Stas invited everyone over “for a simple Saturday dinner”—said he missed them, wanted a warm family get-together. And I actually bought it: I set the table, put the main dish out, lined up the plates.
Then I understood why he’d really called them.
The relatives spread out in our living room as if they hadn’t come to eat, but to pass sentence. And Stas—wearing the smug look of a talk-show host and a prosecutor at the same time—announced with great ceremony that tonight we’d be holding a trial over my “criminal extravagance.”
I wasn’t intimidated. I just watched him with the calm curiosity of a seasoned entomologist observing a beetle that has, for some inexplicable reason, decided to crawl across a freeway.
Stanislaus planted himself in the middle of the room, shoulders flared so wide the buttons on his shirt seemed to creak and beg for mercy. He reminded me of an overinflated turkey that, by some cosmic error, had started believing it was an eagle soaring over cliffs. On my sofa and in my armchairs sat the audience: his mother, Anna Georgievna, wearing the face of offended virtue; his cousin Lenochka, whose jealousy of me was visible from outer space; and Uncle Borya, who appeared to care only about the caviar sandwiches.
\
“Ilona, we’re gathered here because we can’t live like this anymore,” Stas began, pausing theatrically. His voice trembled with the thrill of his own importance. “You’ve completely lost all sense of limits. A family isn’t a bottomless pit!”
I lazily stirred my tea with a spoon.
“Go on, darling,” I said, leaning back. “I was just thinking about what my Saturday night was missing—a good movie or a circus show. I see you’ve decided to combine both.”
Anna Georgievna immediately pinched her lips together, looking like an old drawstring pouch cinched tight.
“Ilonochka, don’t be nasty,” she hissed, adjusting the heavy brooch on her chest. “Stasik only wants what’s best. He is, by the way, the head of this family. And you act as if money grows on trees. My son is working himself into the ground!”
“Into the ground?” I echoed, lifting an eyebrow. “Anna Georgievna, ‘working into the ground’ is when someone goes down a mine. When someone plays Tetris at the office three hours a day and then comes home to sprawl on the couch, suffering over the injustice of the universe—that’s called something else.”
“You’re belittling his contribution!” Lenochka shrieked. She wore a blouse I’d seen on clearance three years ago, yet carried herself as if she’d just bought half of Milan. “Stas is a man! He needs inspiration, and you nag him!”
Feeling the support, Stas puffed himself up even more. He swept his relatives with the satisfied gaze of a victor.
“Exactly!” He jabbed a finger upward. “That’s what I’m talking about. I’ve prepared a list of complaints. Item one: irresponsible spending. Last month you bought yourself a coat. Ilona, you already have a jacket! Why on earth do you need a coat?”
“So I don’t look like an overgrown teenager—unlike certain people who still wear T-shirts that say ‘Beer Baron,’” I replied evenly. “And, for the record, Stasik, I bought that coat with my bonus.”
“Family finances should be shared!” my husband barked, slamming his palm on the table. Uncle Borya’s plate bounced, but he performed a small miracle of balance and saved his sandwich. “And you hide your income! That is, by the way, financial abuse!”
I nearly choked on my tea laughing.
“Financial abuse? Stas, you’ve learned new words? How impressive. But let’s come back to reality. You make forty thousand a month. Five goes to gas for your ‘baby’ of a car—which breaks down more often than you fulfill your marital duties—and another five goes to lunches. I cover the mortgage, utilities, and groceries. What ‘shared pot’ are you dreaming of? The kind where you ladle it out and I keep refilling it?”
Stanislaus turned crimson—his cheeks flushed so hard you could fry eggs on them. Clearly, he hadn’t expected me to start throwing numbers around in front of his mother.
“Money isn’t the main thing!” he shot back, switching tactics and pulling the moral trump card. “Respect is what matters! You don’t respect me. You make decisions on your own. You even picked the hallway wallpaper without me!”
“Because if I waited for your decision, we’d still be living in a cave with wall drawings,” I snapped. “You spent six months choosing a bath mat, Stas. Six months. And in the end you bought the one that bleeds dye the moment it sees water.”
“That was a designer concept!” he squealed.
“It was an idiot’s concept,” I corrected sweetly. “Just like the idea of putting together this… family council.”
Anna Georgievna decided it was time to bring out the heavy artillery. She sighed deeply and pressed a hand to her chest.
“Oh, my son, I told you… A woman should be the neck. And here… here we have some kind of hydra. Ilona, dear, how can you behave this way? A man wants to feel like the master of his home. Just play along! Hand him the money and let him manage it. He knows best where to invest!”
There it was. The word “invest” hit the room like an alarm. I knew Stas’s “gift” for investing. His brilliant ventures usually ended with either useless junk—or financial pyramids promising 200% returns in forty-eight hours.
“Mom,” Stas declared solemnly, looking down at me, “I’ve made a decision. Starting today, all finances are under my control. Ilona, you will hand over the cards. I’ll give you housekeeping money. That’s fair. I’m the man—I’m the one who should carry responsibility.”
Lenochka nodded like a little plastic bobblehead.
“Right, Stasik! It’s about time you reined in this… emancipation.”
Uncle Borya stopped chewing and stared at me with interest. Even he understood the explosion was coming.
I stood up slowly. Walked to the window. Straightened the curtain. The room went still. Stas was smiling, convinced I was broken and considering surrender. In his mind he was already spending my salary on new tires, car parts—maybe even a fishing rod.
Then I turned back to them, wearing the brightest smile I could manage.
“You know, I’m so glad we started talking about responsibility and investments,” I said gently. “Stas, you’re absolutely right. There shouldn’t be any secrets.”
My husband stiffened. A flicker of doubt crossed his eyes, but pride blocked his view.
“Finally,” he muttered. “Hand over the cards.”
“The cards can wait,” I said, walking to the writing desk and pulling out a blue envelope. “Since we’ve decided to be honest in front of the family… Anna Georgievna, you love your little dacha outside Moscow, don’t you? The greenhouses, the roses, the fresh air…”
\His mother tensed. Her instincts—unlike her son’s intellect—worked flawlessly.
“What does my dacha have to do with anything?” she asked cautiously.
“It has to do with this,” I said, turning the envelope in my hands. “Your genius son—this ‘captain of the family ship’—took out a microloan against your property a week ago. For a ‘sure thing.’ Something about reselling video cards… which turned out to be defective.”
Silence thickened the air. You could hear Lenochka’s stomach growl. Stas’s face drained from red to a sickly gray.
“You… you’re lying,” he rasped, but his voice cracked into a squeak like a teenage boy’s.
“Lying?” I slid the paper from the envelope. “Here’s the notice. It arrived this morning, Stasik. You’re registered at your mother’s address, but for some reason you forwarded the mail to mine. Forgot? Or hoped to intercept it? Well, Anna Georgievna, if this ‘investor’ doesn’t pay one hundred fifty thousand by Monday, your roses will belong to a collection agency called ‘Fast Money.’”
The effect was like a vacuum bomb going off. Anna Georgievna turned slowly toward her son. In her eyes swam such primal fury that any tiger would have chosen vegetarianism just to avoid that gaze.
“Stas?” she asked quietly. “You mortgaged… the family nest?”
“Mom, I wanted what was best!” Stas squealed, backing toward the wall. All his swagger evaporated. “The plan was solid! The partner let me down! I would’ve paid it all back—with interest!”
“You leech!” Anna Georgievna, forgetting arthritis and blood pressure, launched herself off the sofa with the speed of an Olympic champion. “I’ll show you investments! I’ll show you ‘the partner let me down!’ Your father’s dacha, you bastard!”
Lenochka assessed the situation in half a second, realized the free dinner was over and the Battle of Waterloo was beginning, grabbed her purse, and bolted.
“Oh! I have to feed my cat!” she squeaked, darting for the door and nearly knocking over Uncle Borya.
Uncle Borya, wisely concluding that no sandwich was worth this, began retreating too, mumbling something about an iron left on.
“Ilona!” Stas pleaded, trying to hide behind an armchair from his advancing mother. “Tell her! We have a budget! Give me the money! We’re family!”
I folded my arms and watched the whole circus with a smile.
“Stasik,” I said warmly, “five minutes ago you declared that a man must carry responsibility. So carry it. And my money is, as you so eloquently put it, ‘financial abuse.’ I wouldn’t want to abuse you. Handle it yourself.”
Anna Georgievna caught up to him and started swinging her handbag at him. Judging by the sound, it contained either a brick—or, at minimum, a volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
“By Monday!” she screamed. “The money better be there! Or I’ll curse you, you demon!”
The whole shrieking procession spilled into the hallway. I simply closed the door behind them—making sure to turn the lock twice. Their shouting echoed from the stairwell for a long time.
I went back into the living room. On the table lay my husband’s list of “sins.” I picked it up, crumpled it, and tossed it neatly into the trash.
Bullseye.
I felt astonishingly light. Like I’d finally taken off the tight shoes I’d been wearing for years, too afraid to admit they’d been pinching me the whole time.
An hour later my phone pinged with a message from Stas: “Mom calmed down, but she wants the money. Ilona, just lend it to me! I’ll pay you back, I swear! I get it—I was wrong.”
I sank into the armchair and typed my reply:
“Sorry, darling. I’ve just invested all my spare funds into my nervous system. Smooth sailing, Captain.”
And the moral of the story is this: never let anyone climb onto your shoulders—especially if they have dirty boots and oversized ambitions. Financial independence is the best cosmetic a woman can have: it smooths out the wrinkles of worry and gives your eyes that steely shine that makes the shameless scatter.