— So what if we eat at your place! You won’t go broke! — Marina unceremoniously pushed back a chair and sat down at the kitchen table without even washing her hands after coming in from outside. — Come on, you both work, you don’t have kids, you can afford to treat your relatives. Don’t be so uptight, Anya.
I was standing by the stove, gripping the wooden spatula so tightly it almost cracked. Pasha, my husband, shuffled guiltily in the hallway, not daring to come in. Behind his sister, her eternally gloomy husband Tolik and their two teenage sons barged into the apartment.
It was the fifth time that month. The fifth time they had appeared on our doorstep exactly when I was taking dinner out of the oven. Without warning. Without a call. And, of course, empty-handed.
I silently took out the dinner set. The meat I had been marinating since the day before for a quiet Friday evening with my husband disappeared from the platter in a couple of minutes. But that was not enough for them. Marina opened the refrigerator as if she owned the place, took out cheese, expensive sliced meats, and the yogurts I had bought for our breakfast.
Tolik chewed diligently, the nephews argued loudly over the last piece of bread, and my sister-in-law went on about how huge prices were in stores these days and how convenient it was to drop by her dear brother’s place for a bite. All I got was an empty plate and the prospect of washing a mountain of greasy dishes.
“Marina,” I tried to keep my voice as even as possible. “Have you ever thought about calling at least an hour in advance? Pasha and I have nothing left to take to work for lunch tomorrow. You ate all our supplies.”
The kitchen became so quiet that I could clearly hear the hum of the old refrigerator. Tolik stopped chewing. Pasha hunched his shoulders and quietly muttered that we were all family, so why quarrel? Marina, however, smirked crookedly and delivered that very line about how we “wouldn’t go broke,” generously seasoning it with accusations of my unbelievable greed.
She was waiting for a scandal. Waiting for me to start yelling and for her brother to rush to her defense. But I simply stood up, turned on the water in the sink, and turned toward the window. The guests quickly understood the hint, got ready to leave, and departed, slamming the front door loudly behind them.
“Anya, you went too far,” my husband began cautiously. “That’s just her personality. What am I supposed to do, kick my own sister out of the house?”
“There’s no need to kick anyone out, Pasha. Good night.”
I did not sleep all night. I listened to my husband’s steady breathing and understood one thing with crystal clarity: our family had turned into a free cafeteria. And since he could not set boundaries with his relatives, I would do it myself.
Early in the morning, I packed a travel bag. Leaving the apartment was easy: Pasha had inherited it from his grandmother before we even met. My conscience was clear. I was leaving someone else’s territory. On my way to work, I rented a small studio on the other side of the city; fortunately, my personal savings allowed me to do it without any difficulty.
I left a note on the kitchen table: “You can feed your sister yourself. I’ll come back when you learn to tell her no.”
For the first few days, my phone would not stop ringing. Pasha was angry, sincerely unable to understand how anyone could move out over such a trivial household matter. I did not get into long discussions. My answer was short: learn how to deal with your relatives.
In the rented apartment, I enjoyed incredible peace. I cooked only for myself, bought the groceries I wanted, and no one emptied my supplies. Meanwhile, interesting rumors began reaching me. A mutual acquaintance had seen my husband in a supermarket with a huge pack of cheap dumplings and sausages. He looked rumpled and nervous.
Soon, messages began arriving. First, pitiful ones: “Marina came again yesterday with Tolik. I boiled them some pasta. She got offended and said I didn’t respect her.”
Later, the tone became panicked: “Listen, how much did we usually spend on food each month? Yesterday I ordered pizza for everyone and paid almost five thousand. My advance payment is already gone.”
A man who was used to everything being ready for him had finally come face to face with harsh reality. Hospitality is expensive, especially when the guests do not have a single gram of conscience.
Two months of my voluntary solitude passed. One evening, someone rang the doorbell timidly. Pasha was standing on the threshold with a cake and flowers. I noticed a stain on the sleeve of his shirt — my always-neat husband, whose clothes I used to iron every morning, looked very tired and lost.
We sat at the small table, and he told me how he had tried to cook for himself, how he had spoiled food, how he had spent his last money on delivery just so his sister would not start a scandal. And how, a week earlier, everything had exploded.
Marina had shown up on a weekend with the children, announcing that they would stay with him for a couple of days because their hot water had been turned off. That was when Pasha finally snapped.
He showed me the messages on his phone, where he had written plainly to his sister that his home was neither a hotel nor a restaurant. In response, he received a bucketful of accusations and a promise that she would never set foot in his home again.
“I felt such incredible relief, Anya,” he admitted. “I was blind and completely selfish. Forgive me.”
The next day, I came back. The apartment shone with cleanliness — my husband had washed everything himself until it gleamed, preparing for my return.
Marina really did stop coming over. It seemed like the perfect ending, but my husband turned out to be not so simple. He had learned the lesson far more deeply than I could have imagined.
A month after I returned, Pasha began staying out late in the evenings. He came home suspiciously full, pleased, and with a sly smile. I was lost in guesses until one afternoon my sister-in-law herself called me. Her tone was far from its former self-confidence.
“Anya, tell your husband to stop coming to our place!” she complained into the phone. “For the third week in a row, he has been showing up exactly at dinner time. Empty-handed! Yesterday Tolik bought good fish, and Pasha sat down and ate half of it! He says, ‘Well, we’re family, I was passing by, so I thought I’d drop in on my little sister.’ My husband and I are going broke feeding him. He eats enough for three people! Do something!”
I put the phone on the table and burst out laughing. That evening, my husband came home, kissed me on the cheek, and winked cheerfully.
“You know, darling, visiting relatives really is very cost-effective. Too bad Marina has been cooking plain buckwheat for the second week now and complaining about prices. Apparently, her budget isn’t made of rubber. I won’t go anymore. Their food has become tasteless.”
Since then, absolute harmony has reigned in our little family. And when my sister-in-law rarely sees us on neutral ground, she carefully looks away and never brings up food. The lesson was not simply learned — it returned to her as a beautiful and fair boomerang.