“I’m not contributing to the holiday table,” Pyotr said.
December fifteenth. There were still two weeks until New Year’s Eve, but the children in the courtyard were already lighting sparklers.
Olga watched the fiery sparks and remembered her and Pyotr’s first New Year’s Eve together—loud, generous, and full of guests. Back then, everything had seemed right. Even the fact that they were not officially married.
“Why do we need a stamp in our passports?” Pyotr had said. “Trust is what matters.”
Olga had nodded, although she would not have objected to a modest ceremony at the registry office. But she had decided not to argue that time.
Although she did sometimes object to Pyotr, especially when he criticized her for what he considered excessive spending.
“Ol, just think about it,” Pyotr said, pouring tea into their mugs without looking at her. “We split the apartment bills fifty-fifty, we split groceries fifty-fifty, but you’re constantly buying your daughter new notebooks, paints, some kind of tablet… She’s eight years old. Why does she need a tablet?”
“For school, Petya. They use electronic textbooks for English now. Ask your sons.”
Then he would fall silent. That was a sore subject—his sons, whom he saw once every two weeks, and the child support he paid regularly.
Olga worked as an administrator at a private dental clinic. She earned thirty-five thousand rubles a month, plus twelve thousand in child support for her daughter—a ridiculous amount by current standards—from an ex-husband who appeared and disappeared whenever he pleased. She also rented out her own two-room apartment for twenty-five thousand. It seemed as though she should have been able to live comfortably. But Pyotr thought otherwise.
“Just think about it,” he continued that evening. “I pay half for electricity, water, and heating. Your daughter watches television from morning until night, and the lights are on in every room. I’m not stingy. I’m fair.”
Katya—her daughter—was quietly drawing at the kitchen table at that moment. She had learned not to interfere in adult conversations. Whenever Pyotr started talking about money, the girl would bury her face in her sketchbook or textbook and pretend she was not there. Olga noticed it every time, and each time she felt something dark and heavy rising inside her.
They had been living together for almost two years.
Yes, they had prepared for their first New Year’s Eve together. They made a menu—Olivier salad, herring under a fur coat, French-style baked meat, appetizers, and fruit. They each contributed five thousand rubles. Olga’s mother brought her signature Napoleon cake.
Everyone gathered in their two-room apartment: Pyotr’s parents, his sister Lena with her husband Kirill and their ten-year-old son, Olga’s parents, and her younger sister Tanya.
Pyotr sat at the head of the table and looked genuinely happy. Practical and dependable, he loved it when everything was orderly, abundant, and properly arranged.
This year, Olga brought up the celebration in advance.
“Petya, let’s make a menu and decide who will buy what for New Year’s Eve. Maybe you can buy the meat, and I’ll get the vegetables and fruit. We’ll invite our parents, Lena and Kirill, and Tanya.”
Pyotr was sitting at the table scrolling through his phone. He did not even look up.
“I’m not contributing to the holiday table this year,” he said.
Olga froze with the knife in her hand.
“What do you mean?”
“My parents are going to visit relatives in Pskov, and Lenka and her husband will be at her company party. You heard that she was promoted to department head. They’re having an all-night banquet until morning. There won’t be any guests from my side. So you can buy everything and cook it yourself.”
“And what about you?”
Pyotr finally looked away from his phone and stared at Olga with mild surprise, as though she had asked something strange.
“I’ll buy something for myself for the table. And if you want anything special, buy it yourself. You’re the one who wants to arrange a celebration for your family.”
The words were spoken quietly and casually. Pyotr lowered his eyes to his phone again. Olga stood there gripping the edge of her apron, watching his thick fingers scroll through the feed—cats, memes, and news.
“All right,” she said coldly.
She turned back to the stove, where dumplings were boiling, and did not say another word.
To give Pyotr credit, he really did buy something. On December twenty-seventh, he brought home a bag containing a kilogram of mandarins, a jar of mayonnaise, a loaf of bread, and a package of sausages.
He unloaded everything onto the kitchen table with a satisfied expression.
“There. I told you I’d buy something. You can get the rest yourself.”
Katya looked at the bag and then at her mother. She said nothing, went into her room, and closed the door.
Olga washed the dishes and called her parents.
“Mom, our plans for the holiday have changed a little. Can Katya and I come to your place?”
“Of course you can. What happened? Did you have a fight?”
“No. I’ll tell you later.”
Pyotr only realized something was wrong on the evening of December thirtieth. The refrigerator was almost empty, and Olga had not prepared anything, as though she had no intention of setting a holiday table at all.
On December thirty-first, she told Pyotr that she and Katya would be spending New Year’s Eve with her parents and would stay there throughout the holidays.
“I don’t understand. Aren’t we going to have a holiday table here? I bought food.”
“Pyotr, you bought sausages and bread for the New Year’s table. Are you serious?”
“Well, I didn’t know what you wanted! We could have gone shopping together, but I don’t have any money right now. I told you I won’t get paid until the fifth.”
“You didn’t tell me that. You said you weren’t going to contribute because none of your guests were coming.”
Olga and Katya put on their coats, and the door slammed behind them.
At half past ten on the evening of December thirty-first, Pyotr was alone in the apartment. On the kitchen table were the sausages, the loaf of bread, and the mandarins. In the refrigerator were a piece of cured pork fat, a jar of pickles, and some old sour cream.
He turned on the television. Three channels were showing The Irony of Fate. Pyotr yawned, muted the television, and fell asleep in the armchair at exactly a quarter to midnight.
On the other side of the city, in Olga’s parents’ apartment, the large table was crowded and noisy. Her mother’s Napoleon cake once again stood in the center—golden and sprinkled with crushed nuts.
Tanya poured more champagne into Olga’s glass and whispered in her ear:
“How are you?”
“Wonderful,” Olga replied.
For the first time in two years, it was true.
Pyotr called at lunchtime on January first. He asked where they were and said he had made soup.
Olga answered briefly:
“At my parents’ place. I don’t know when we’ll be back.”
He did not call again.
On January seventh, Christmas Day, she returned to Pyotr’s apartment alone. She had left her daughter with her grandmother. Pyotr was sitting at the same table, finishing yesterday’s buckwheat.
“Ol, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, Petya.”
She walked into the bedroom, opened the wardrobe, took out a suitcase, and silently began packing her and Katya’s belongings.
Pyotr stood in the doorway, blinking in confusion.
“Because of the sausages? Come on. We’re adults.”
“Exactly, Pyotr. We’re adults. I don’t want my daughter growing up believing that she is a second-class person in her own home. I don’t want to keep proving that her notebooks are not a whim but a necessity. And I no longer want to split the electricity bill in half or calculate whose guests ate more.”
She zipped up the suitcase and picked up the bag containing her laptop. In the hallway, she put on her winter coat.
“Are you serious?” Pyotr remained standing in place, clutching a kitchen towel. “Because of New Year’s Eve? Because of money?”
“It’s not because of the money, Petya. It’s because of the way you think about us. To you, we’re not a family. We’re roommates with a shared budget. But even roommates split the cost of a celebration equally if they’re going to sit at the same table.”
She stepped into the hallway, and the suitcase rattled across the stone floor. Pyotr remained standing in the doorway. He called after her quietly, almost pitifully:
“But what about us?”
Olga turned around.
“There was never really an ‘us,’ Petya.”
The elevator doors closed.
For a while, Olga and her daughter stayed with her parents. Her own apartment needed some minor cosmetic repairs, and the tenants moved out in the middle of January.
“Do you regret leaving?” her mother asked.
“No,” Olga said with a smile. “It’s a good thing we never got married.”
Snow was falling outside the window. The apartment was quiet. No one was dividing anything.
Katya sat at the table drawing across an entire sheet of paper in bright colors. She drew a large house, a Christmas tree, and four figures—her mother, her grandmother, her grandfather, and herself.
Above the roof was an enormous orange sun.