The voice of my dear husband, Artyom, which usually echoed through the walls of our apartment with the intonations of a weary Roman patrician, was now dripping with a sweetness as cheap as syrup. He was talking on speakerphone.
“Mom, you don’t understand the concept of scaling,” Artyom proclaimed. He was a middle manager whose dominion over the world was limited to the multicooker department of a supermarket. “Natasha’s apartment is dead capital. Concrete. We’ll convince her to mortgage that two-room place. The bank will give us about ten million against it. Allochka will open her elite grooming salon, and we’ll pay off the loan from the profits. Natasha won’t even notice. She doesn’t understand numbers anyway. She’s a seamstress. I’m an authority figure for her. I’ll push where I need to.”
“Sonny, press her on family values,” my mother-in-law’s voice rasped from the speaker. Zhanna Arkadyevna had managed a warehouse at a meat-processing plant for thirty years and was used to evaluating people by grade and level of fatness. “Tell her we’re one family. And if she refuses, threaten her with divorce. Where will she go at thirty-five? Who needs her?”
I stood barefoot in the dark hallway and felt something click inside me. You know, the way my professional cutting shears click when they slice off the rotten edge of fabric. No tears. No emotional torment. Only cold, crystal-clear sarcasm and a slight smirk.
The next morning, a performance unfolded in the kitchen. Artyom was performing his daily ritual of greatness: drinking warm water with lemon while staring out the window as if he were deciding the fate of the stock markets, rather than thinking about how to push a stale robot vacuum cleaner onto a customer.
At ten o’clock, the doorbell rang. Heavy artillery stood on the threshold: Zhanna Arkadyevna in a leopard-print blouse and my thirty-year-old sister-in-law, Alla, whose face permanently expressed the sorrow of an unrecognized genius. Alla did not work anywhere because, according to her, she was “searching for her resource,” while simultaneously eating through her mother’s pension.
My mother-in-law entered the kitchen like she owned the place, placed a bag of the cheapest gingerbread cookies on the table — cookies so hard they could compete with granite — and sighed heavily.
“Well then, Natashenka. Sit down. We need to talk. As a family.”
We sat down. Artyom cleared his throat, assumed the pose of a thinker, and began.
“Natalya. The world is changing rapidly. Mom, Alla, and I held a brainstorming session. Alla has an amazing business plan. A chain of beauty salons for Pomeranians. But we need start-up capital. Your apartment is just sitting there right now. We take out a non-purpose loan secured by your property, and in a year we’ll all be rolling in money.”
I took a sip of coffee and looked at this triumvirate of economists.
“Artyom,” I began gently, “and who will pay the loan until Alla’s dogs start laying golden eggs?”
“We’re family!” Zhanna Arkadyevna snapped, slamming her plump palm onto the table. “We’ll all chip in! You work, Artyomchik works. We’ll endure it for the common good!”
Then Artyom decided to show off his intellect. He adjusted the collar of his house polo shirt and said condescendingly:
“Natasha, you need to understand the principle of marginality. Your apartment is a liability. Collateral will allow us to use financial leverage. There’s zero risk. This is basic Kiyosaki. You should read books instead of fussing over your patterns.”
I placed my cup on the saucer.
“Artyom, marginality is when you sell a Chinese cable with a three-hundred-percent markup. What you’re suggesting is called becoming homeless out of stupidity,” I said calmly, looking him straight in the eyes. “For your general education: banks issue loans secured by existing housing with a discount. They appraise the apartment, subtract thirty percent for liquidation value, and give a loan at a brutal interest rate, higher than a regular mortgage. If Alla gets tired of grooming poodles after a couple of months, the bank will take my apartment, sell it at auction for next to nothing, and hang the remaining debt on me.”
Artyom choked on his lemon water. He tried to maintain his majestic posture, but the water went down the wrong way. He turned crimson, coughed, and waved his arms desperately, trying to draw breath. At that moment he looked like an important turkey that had accidentally swallowed a tennis ball.
“How dare you speak to your husband like that?!” Zhanna Arkadyevna shrieked. “You’re legally married! Everything you have is shared! By law, you’re obligated to support your husband!”
“Zhanna Arkadyevna,” I smiled at her with my most radiant smile, “Article 36 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation. Property owned by each spouse before entering into marriage is that spouse’s personal property. My apartment was bought five years before your son brought his toothbrush and ambitions here. It is mine. And mortgaging it without my personal visit to Rosreestr and my signature is impossible.”
Alla sobbed theatrically and covered her face with hands tipped with two-centimeter manicured nails.
“You see?” she wailed. “I told you she was greedy! She doesn’t care about my dreams! She only thinks about herself!”
Artyom, finally done coughing, wiped his mouth with a napkin. Red patches of wounded pride appeared on his face. He stood up, leaning his knuckles on the table, trying to loom over me.
“Here’s how it is, Natalya,” he hissed in an icy tone that, in his opinion, should have paralyzed me. “If you refuse to be part of the team, if you’re not ready to invest in the future of our family… then we are not on the same path. I cannot live with an egoist. I’m packing my things.”
He made a dramatic pause, expecting me to throw myself at his feet with a cry of, “Come to your senses, I’ll sign everything!”
“I know, Artyom,” I answered softly. “That’s why I packed them at four in the morning.”
I nodded toward the hallway. There, neatly lined up in a row, stood three large checkered bags. The very same shuttle bags that are extremely convenient for transporting winter jackets and inflated self-importance. His favorite fishing rod lay on top.
A pause hung in the kitchen, so thick and heavy it could have been cut with my tailor’s shears.
My mother-in-law’s face slowly stretched, beginning to resemble a surprised carp. She shifted her gaze from me to the bags and back again. It suddenly dawned on her that her brilliant son, the pride of the family, was at that very moment losing free lodging in a Moscow apartment, along with ready-made dinners and clean shirts.
Alla stopped sobbing and forgot to close her mouth.
“Leave your keys on the little cabinet,” I added, getting up from the table. “You can take the gingerbread cookies with you, otherwise they’ll scratch the table. I’ll file for divorce through Gosuslugi. It’s quick and convenient nowadays.”
Artyom lost all his polish. He looked at his mother as if searching for instructions, but the former warehouse manager was paralyzed by the collapse of the business plan. Silently, with his shoulders slumped, he walked into the hallway. Grabbing two bags, he tried to look proud, but the handle of one of them treacherously cracked.
The door closed behind them quietly, without hysterics or slamming. I went back to the kitchen, opened the window to let in the fresh morning air, and poured myself a second cup of coffee.
The apartment belonged only to me again, and breathing in it had suddenly become surprisingly easy.