“Wives Come and Go,” My Mother-in-Law Said at My Table. So I Showed Her What Leaves Together With a Wife.
Galina Pavlovna entered my apartment as if it were the Winter Palace and she were Catherine the Great, arriving for an unexpected inspection of some provincial governorate. Her visits were always accompanied by an elaborate ritual of grandeur: a royal nod at the threshold, a disdainful inspection of the slippers, and a heavy sigh meant to show just how deeply she suffered by lowering herself to communicate with mere mortals.
That evening, we were celebrating my husband Sergey’s forty-sixth birthday. I, being a naive woman who still believed in the power of culinary diplomacy, had spent two evenings at the stove after shifts in the cardiology department. On the table, covered with a crisp linen tablecloth, a pork neck roasted in honey glaze was dripping with juices, layered potatoes gleamed golden, and the salads were decorated with the kind of manic precision that reveals a mild degree of perfectionism in the hostess.
Besides my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law Marina also materialized at the table — a woman with a permanently dissatisfied face and an astonishing ability to complain about a lack of money while devouring sandwiches with red caviar at the speed of an industrial combine harvester. Sergey sat at the head of the table, smiling and living in that happy male illusion where “everyone is gathered, everything is delicious, which means everyone loves each other.”
“And I’m telling you, Seryozha, health must be protected from a young age,” Galina Pavlovna proclaimed, helping herself to a third portion of Olivier salad. “I cleanse my blood vessels exclusively with baking soda and a decoction of fir cones. Some academic writes on the internet that all your official medicine is just a conspiracy by pharmacies to squeeze money out of us.”
She gave me a meaningful look. As a senior nurse, I usually let such speeches go in one ear and out the other, but today exhaustion got the better of me.
“Galina Pavlovna,” I said calmly, pouring compote for my husband, “atherosclerosis is a complex disorder of lipid metabolism. Cholesterol plaques grow into connective tissue and calcify inside the vessel wall itself. Baking soda is excellent at dissolving hardened grease on a cast-iron frying pan, but it does not work in the bloodstream. Otherwise, we would be treating heart attacks in intensive care with dishwashing liquid.”
My mother-in-law froze with her fork near her mouth. Her face rapidly turned the color of an overripe beet.
“So you’re the smartest one here, are you?!” she shrieked, offended to the depths of her noble soul. “You do nothing but carry bedpans for patients, and you dare argue with wise people! Bought yourself a diploma and now you sit there showing off, you rude, uncultured woman!”
Galina Pavlovna puffed up and began wheezing like an overheated samovar that someone had forgotten to put tea leaves into.
Sergey, as usual, tried to smooth things over.
“Mom, stop it. Natasha was just joking. Let’s drink to health instead.”
This peacekeeping impulse was interpreted by my mother-in-law as a sign of weakness. Sensing that her son was not rushing to defend her with a spear in hand, she decided to change tactics and strike, as she believed, at a sore spot.
The conversation gradually shifted to some distant relative who had recently divorced. Marina happily savored the details of the property division, while Galina Pavlovna listened with mournfully pursed lips.
“That’s how it is, Seryozhenka,” my mother-in-law suddenly said loudly, making sure every word marched through the silence of the room like a stamped command. “Women these days are greedy and unreliable. You are a handsome, kind man. But remember this: wives come and go. Today one, tomorrow another. But a son has only one mother.”
Marina nodded in agreement while chewing a piece of meat. Sergey swallowed nervously, glanced sideways at me, and delivered his signature phrase, polished over many years:
“Natasha, you know Mom… she doesn’t mean it badly. It’s just a figure of speech.”
I did not argue. In general, I believe that arguing with people whose intelligence is stuck at the level of provincial theater manipulation is a thankless task. I simply smiled faintly, slowly got up from my chair, and walked over to the table.
Carefully, without a single sharp movement, I took the large platter with the roasted pork. Then I picked up the bowl of Caesar salad.
“Natashka, where are you taking the meat?” my sister-in-law asked in genuine surprise, her fork frozen halfway to her plate.
“Where do you think?” I answered gently and very casually. “To the refrigerator.”
“Why? We haven’t finished eating yet!” Galina Pavlovna protested, sensing that her ritual of a hearty evening was being disrupted.
“You see, Galina Pavlovna,” I said, returning to the table and taking the plate of cold cuts and the small bowl of caviar, “I am a consistent woman. Since it has been declared that a wife is a temporary and passing phenomenon, I decided to demonstrate it clearly. When the wife leaves, her food leaves with her. Why should you choke down the cooking of someone who supposedly won’t be here for long?”
I carried the food into the kitchen. A heavy, dense silence hung in the room, broken only by the steady ticking of the wall clock. When I came back for the bread basket, my mother-in-law had already regained the gift of speech.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” she thundered, rising from the table and assuming the pose of an offended Statue of Liberty. “How dare you! You came into our family! You must respect your elders and be grateful that we accepted you at all!”
I stopped in front of her. Watching this tantrum was actually somewhat amusing.
“Galina Pavlovna, let’s clarify the basic geography and property rights,” I said, my voice as even as a news anchor’s. “I did not come anywhere. Right now, you are sitting in my premarital apartment. I bought it three years before I even knew your son existed. You are eating food bought with my salary, because Sergey was paying off the car loan this month. You are sitting on a chair I assembled myself. So I am definitely not the temporary one here.”
My mother-in-law gasped for air. She turned a confused look toward her son, expecting him to bang his fist on the table and put his insolent wife in her place.
Sergey sat with his head lowered. He looked at the empty tablecloth. At the crumbs left from the bread. At the lonely jug of compote. A complicated thought process was taking place in his eyes. The illusion of a “close-knit family” had crumbled to dust after colliding with merciless reality.
Slowly, he raised his head. His gaze was unusually hard.
“Mom. Marina. Get up.”
“Seryozhenka?” my mother-in-law blinked in confusion. “You heard what she said, didn’t you? Are you going to let her throw out your own mother?”
“Mom, you crossed the line,” Sergey said, standing up and pushing back his chair. “My wife is not going anywhere. And this apartment is hers, and this home rests on her shoulders. But it’s time for you to go home. The celebration is over.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is?! You traded your mother for a skirt!” Galina Pavlovna cried out dramatically as she headed toward the hallway. Marina shuffled after her, muttering curses about “calculating snakes.”
Sergey silently handed them their coats. He did not justify himself. He did not apologize. He simply opened the door and waited until they stepped out onto the stairwell. The lock clicked shut.
My husband returned to the room, looked at me standing there with the bread basket, and let out a heavy breath.
“Bring the meat back out,” he said quietly, coming over and putting his arm around my shoulders. “I think I just saw the light. And you know… I’m damn hungry.”
We sat together in the kitchen. The pork was still warm, and the tea was strong. We never brought up the topic of those who come and go again. It was simply that from that evening on, Galina Pavlovna never appeared in my Winter Palace again, and the status of wife in our family acquired reinforced-concrete strength.