“Over my dead body!!!” Karina exploded when she learned that her mother-in-law demanded they sell her apartment to cover someone else’s debts.
Anfisa Andreyevna met her son at the door with such a cheerful smile, as if he had come not for yet another “serious conversation,” but to wish her a happy birthday. A sixty-year-old ball of energy in a housecoat, she radiated that particular maternal confidence capable of sweeping away any objections.
“Oh, it’s nothing terrible, Maksim! You’ll live with me!” She waved her hand as if she were talking about moving a hamster to a new cage. “I don’t see any problem here at all!”
Maksim sat down on the edge of the worn-out sofa and rubbed his temples. God, I really don’t want this… His heart was already beating in that familiar, anxious rhythm.
“Seriously, Mom?” He looked around the cramped one-room apartment, where every square meter was packed with memories and old furniture. “Where exactly are we all going to live? You have a studio, and Karina has a two-room place. Why don’t you move in with us instead?”
Anfisa Andreyevna’s face changed instantly. The smile vanished as if erased by a rubber.
“Me? With you?” Her voice gained metallic notes. “What? Do you even understand what you’re saying, darling? And sell my apartment? All the memories of your childhood? Of our life? No-oo!”
Here we go again… Maksim knew that tone. Knew exactly where it would lead. Yet every time he still hoped it would be different.
“But you only have a one-room apartment, Mom!” He tried to speak calmly, reasonably. “How can the three of us all live here? There’s no extra room, nothing! And if it’s inconvenient for me, then Karina will absolutely refuse!”
Anfisa Andreyevna snorted — the sound was contemptuous and painfully familiar.
“I don’t care what she thinks, Maksim!” She stood up and began nervously straightening the tablecloth. “When I was young, we lived here with your grandparents and my three brothers! And nothing! But now look at her — such a princess! She’s going to refuse, imagine that!”
Part Two. Dancing on a Minefield
Maksim felt himself starting to boil inside. She was at it again… blaming everything on everyone else.
“It’s just that we won’t even be able to have any privacy here, nothing!” The words poured out by themselves, though he understood he was only fueling the fire. “And about having a child — that’s not even worth mentioning now! And you—”
“Enough!”
Anfisa Andreyevna turned her whole body toward him, and the fire in her eyes flared up — the same one Maksim remembered from childhood.
“I don’t care about any of that! If you want something, you’ll make it happen! And if you don’t, then you didn’t want it enough! Don’t you dare blame anything on me or my apartment!”
As always, Maksim thought bitterly. Everything is simple, everything is solvable. Just not for the people who actually have to live with the consequences.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have left your apartment as collateral when you took out that huge loan to pay off your ex’s debts — the same man who dumped you right after everything was paid off?”
The words flew out of his mouth by themselves, sharp as glass shards.
Silence fell. Heavy and sticky, like molasses.
Anfisa Andreyevna paled, then her face flushed bright red.
“So now you’re going to teach your own mother how to live?” She breathed furiously through her nose, and Maksim realized he had crossed a line.
“Maybe you should start fixing your own life first? Marrying who knows who — some singer for whom work is more important than family! More important than our problems! And now you dare tell me I live wrong?”
Great, Maksim thought.
Here she goes again—dragging Karina into it.
Part Three. Defense and Attack
“Why are you picking on my wife again, Mom?” Maksim stood up, clenching his fists. Every word she threw at Karina hit him like a whip.
“She has never said a bad word about you! Not once has she even frowned when I talk about you! Maybe you should stop behaving like this? Stop throwing mud at Karina?”
“I’ll stop when I actually need to stop, don’t you worry!”
Anfisa Andreyevna smiled coldly.
“But as long as she behaves like her work is more important than our family, she won’t get any respect from me!”
“And how exactly should she earn it?”
Maksim felt a lump rise in his throat.
“By crawling and begging for your approval? By letting you decide what she can and cannot do? Or should she enter your service like a maid, Mom? Stop dragging this nonsense from the past into our lives! If Grandma made your life miserable, that doesn’t mean you have to turn my wife’s life into the same nightmare!”
Anfisa Andreyevna looked at her son slyly.
Time to change tactics, she thought.
Maksim was changing, learning to defend his position — and that was… interesting. A challenge. And this stubborn daughter-in-law who didn’t bother her at all — yet somehow still irritated her — made life… less boring.
“I’ll decide for myself how I should treat your wife, Maksim!” she said after a pause. “You don’t get to teach me how to live!”
Part Four. The Ultimatum
“Not me, true!” Maksim felt years of accumulated exhaustion knocking him off his feet.
“But the people who could have taught you are either long dead or have cut off all contact with you, Mom! Because first you completely lost control in your past relationship — the consequences of which we’re still dealing with — and then you started poisoning my life with all of this! And now you’re trying to drag Karina into it too!”
“All I need from your wife is for her to sell her apartment!”
Anfisa Andreyevna now spoke sharply, as if reading from a script.
“That’s all I need from her! Let her go in any direction she wants afterward!”
There it was. They had finally reached the core of it.
“That’s exactly what I mean, Mom. You see only your own problems, and you don’t care about anyone else.”
“And I’m supposed to care about her?”
Her voice was rising higher and higher.
“Your wife doesn’t even call or text me! Doesn’t check how I’m doing! What if I need some help, and she—”
“If you need help, you can call me! Karina has her own parents!”
“She now carries our… OUR last name!”
Anfisa Andreyevna slammed her fist on the table.
“That means she became part of OUR family! And she MUST do everything I tell her to! Not follow these new rules of life you young people invented!”
“Oh wow…” Maksim exhaled heavily. That was it. They’d reached the end.
He would never win an argument with her.
“‘Oh wow’ what? Am I wrong? Your grandmother — either one! — would have beaten me with a stick for this! And now…”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about, Mom! You’re stuck in the past and you’re trying to dump it onto the present! And now you’re dumping your problems onto me. Actually — onto me and Karina!”
“You’re my son!”
Anfisa Andreyevna straightened to her full height.
“Helping me is your direct duty! And the fact that you got married is your problem! You could have just kept living with me, and none of this would have happened! I wouldn’t have had to mortgage my apartment! You would have stopped me…”
“Yes! Of course! Brilliant plan you’ve got there!” Maksim exploded.
“Me, you, and your ex-lover! Perfect! What an ideal trio!”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! Better go home and tell your precious wife to start getting her apartment ready for sale — that is, if she’s even waiting for you at home and hasn’t run off to one of her concerts again!”
Maksim felt something inside him finally break.
“She’s not going to sell it, Mom…” he said quietly. “She won’t…”
“Then what do I need you for?!”
Anfisa Andreyevna’s voice rose to a scream.
“Convince her! Pressure her! Force her if you have to! Or do you want our entire life to disappear into nothing?!”
That was it. Enough.
Maksim had run out of every reasonable argument. He understood now: she would stand her ground to the very end. Like a tank. And if he offered her to move in with them, she would simply destroy his family the same way she already destroyed her own.
“Fine…” he said quietly, surrendering.
“What?”
“I SAID FINE!!!” Maksim repeated sharply, loudly.
“I’ll talk to Karina! Maybe we’ll find some other way to save both your place and hers! But I’m not promising anything, Mom! If nothing works…” He exhaled heavily.
“…then you’ll have to deal with your mistakes yourself from now on. I’m helping you for the last time.”
“But… but, Maksim! I’m… I’m your mother…”
Anfisa Andreyevna instantly switched tactics. Her voice became thin and whiny.
“Yes! You’re my mother! But I also have my own life, which I want to live — and you keep handing me these disasters out of nowhere! So I’ll help you one last time. That’s it.”
It worked,
thought Anfisa Andreyevna with satisfaction.
Maksim wouldn’t abandon his own mother. No matter how much he resisted, he would give in and help. All she needed was the right levers of pressure.
Part Five. The Home Front
At home, Maksim found his wife in the middle of a wardrobe disaster.
Karina dashed around the bedroom like a tornado, pulling dresses, blouses, belts out of the depths of the closet.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a weak smile.
“They’re picking me up in an hour; I have to go to the concert,” Karina replied without raising her head.
“I need a wide belt for the dress — I’ve lost so much weight this year!”
As always — work, concerts…
an exhausted thought flashed through his mind.
“Well… okay. Keep looking, I won’t distract you…”
He was about to leave when his wife stopped him.
“Why are you so sad? Something happened at work?”
“I wish it were work!” burst out of him.
Karina frowned, finally pausing her search.
“Alright, where then? I can tell something bad happened, I just don’t yet understand what exactly…”
“With Mom!”
Maksim collapsed into a chair, as if cut down.
“Everything else in my life is fine! It’s only her — my ‘Achilles heel’! And she uses it however she wants!”
“Well, she is your mom!”
Karina sat beside him.
“Nothing unusual about that. For every child, no matter how old, parents are a weak spot.”
“In my case it’s not a spot — it’s a whole stain!”
“Come on! My parents also do crazy things sometimes. It’s not—”
“Have your parents ever found themselves a man drowning in debt and taken out a huge loan, using their apartment as collateral, to pay off his debts? And after his problems were solved — he ran off?”
“Wow…” Karina tensed like a stretched string.
“Exactly — ‘wow.’”
Maksim sighed heavily.
“So what now? What does Anfisa Andreyevna want from you?”
“She wants to dump the whole debt on me, since I’m her son! That apartment is supposed to pass to me! And she also wants…”
“There it is!!!”
Karina exclaimed triumphantly, pulling a wide black belt from the depths of the closet.
Her phone beeped.
“Yes, Marina… You’re here? I’m coming down! Yeah! One sec!”
She hung up quickly and began rushing to gather her things.
“Sorry, honey…”
“It’s fine… really…”
“So what else does she want?” she asked again, stuffing the belt into her concert bag.
“Mom wants you to sell your apartment to help pay off her debt. And then we’d move in with her while we save up for our own place. Basically… that’s the option we settled on for now, but I completely understand that—”
Maksim didn’t notice the moment Karina’s face changed.
The kindness vanished as if washed away by icy water.
Her eyes turned hard, unfamiliar.
“What did you two decide without me?!”
Her voice sounded like ice.
“Sell my apartment to pay off your debts?!”
“What?” Maksim didn’t immediately grasp what was happening.
“You heard me!”
Karina shoved her feet into her shoes with sharp, angry movements.
“I will NEVER sell my apartment for someone else’s mess! NEVER!!! Remember that, Maksim! And you can tell your mommy the same! I’ve put up with her nasty attitude toward me for long enough, but now, after this—”
“I knew you wouldn’t agree!” Maksim tried to defend himself.
“And they’re not our debts — they’re hers! I don’t even have a share in that apartment, so—”
“Then why did you tell me all this?!”
Karina turned fully toward him.
“For what?! To make me angry? Or were you hoping for sympathy? That I’d run to sell my apartment right away?”
“I’m just telling you what happened with my mom! The reason she’s in this situation! And I fully support your decision! You know that! I’ll always stand by you in everything! But…”
“No ‘but’!” Karina cut him off.
“This is her problem! Her life and the consequences of her stupidity! Now let her deal with it herself, since she didn’t have the brains to prevent it!”
“And if she sells her apartment, or the bank takes it for the debt, then she could move he—”
“Over my dead body!!!” Karina exploded.
“She will NOT live here, not even stay the night! Let her go live with that man of hers, but not here!”
Maksim felt relieved. Thank God.
Karina was standing up for him.
“Alright! Got it!” he answered cheerfully.
“So we’re stepping away from all this!”
“Exactly!” Karina confirmed.
“And you’re not bringing any of her problems into this house anymore, otherwise our conversation will be very short! Understood?”
“Yes-yes! Of course!”
“Good then!”
Karina’s face softened instantly, becoming its usual kind and gentle self.
“That’s it! I’m off to the concert! Love you! I’ll be home late!”
She kissed him quickly and ran out of the house.
A weight seemed to fall off Maksim’s shoulders. Maybe I just needed support, he thought. Karina was right. He wouldn’t go to his mother alone anymore. Let her sort everything out herself.
Epilogue — One Year Later
Maksim was sitting in a café near his office, sipping coffee and scrolling through the news on his phone.
A light autumn rain was drizzling outside, but his soul felt calm.
A year ago, Anfisa Andreyevna sold her apartment.
It wasn’t enough to cover the debt entirely, but the bank agreed to a restructuring. She rented a tiny studio on the outskirts and got a job at a school as a security attendant.
Her personality hasn’t changed, of course, Maksim thought, but at least she doesn’t call every day with complaints anymore.
His phone vibrated.
A message from Karina:
“Honey, rehearsal until late today. Dinner’s in the fridge. Love you.”
Maksim smiled.
He and his wife had finally found their rhythm. Karina still worked a lot, but now they both understood: family isn’t about being constantly together. It’s about knowing there’s a place you can always come back to.
Maybe it’s really time to think about a baby, he thought dreamily, finishing his coffee.
The rain outside grew heavier, but Maksim wasn’t in a hurry to go home.
For the first time in a long while, he simply enjoyed sitting and thinking about the future.
