I couldn’t hold it in any longer; my voice broke as I asked where they had been and by what right she took Sofya without saying a word, explaining that I had been going out of my mind with worry. Marina just shrugged slightly and replied in an icy tone that she was, after all, the mother and had every right to pick up her own child without reporting to a man who, in her words, sits at home all day and does practically nothing. Sofya exclaimed joyfully that her mom had taken her to the “Fantasy” amusement park, that it was the coolest thing ever. I tried to speak more quietly to Marina, saying she could have at least given me a heads-up. She curled her lip contemptuously and asked, why, so I could spoil their whole day with my hysterics? And it was at that exact moment that I felt another blow, sharp and heavy: a foreign male scent entered the room with them, a rich, heavy cologne that I had never smelled on her before. It wasn’t my scent, not even something familiar. I involuntarily twitched my nostrils, looked at her sweater, at the collar, as if trying to see the trace of a touch. Marina noticed my gaze, froze for a second, then gave a knowing smirk. She waited until Sofya ran off to her room with her bags, then walked up to me, almost touching, lowered her voice to a venomous whisper, and asked if I really thought she would spend her whole life with a house-husband who bustles around the kitchen like a cafeteria cook. She said that there are real men in the world, successful ones who know how to earn money and live large, and that next to one of them, she feels alive, but next to me, she doesn’t. She added that compared to him, I was a nobody and my name meant nothing. Nearly choking, I asked who this man was. She waved it away, said it was none of my business, that he was an intelligent, respected professional, not someone who spends his days fussing with a rag and pots and pans.
That evening, when the house finally went dark, I sat on the edge of the sofa and felt everything inside me cracking. But the worst part wasn’t even that; it was the realization that Marina hadn’t just betrayed me as a husband, she was building a new life and a new image for others, one where there would be no place for me.
Later, deep in the night, as I was sorting through my thoughts as usual, Sofya quietly entered the room. Her eyes glistened in the semi-darkness. She cautiously asked why I was crying, though I hadn’t even noticed the tears had started again. I hurriedly wiped my face with my palm, tried to smile, and said everything was fine, just a headache. She looked at me for a long time, with a sort of adult-like gaze, and quietly said that Mommy says I’m sick, not on the outside, but on the inside, and that’s why I’m always sad and sometimes snap, and that if she moved in with Mommy, it would be easier for me, I could rest and get better. At that moment, something inside me finally broke completely. I felt tears welling up again, but this time not from my own pain, but from how cleverly Marina had twisted her cruelty into an illusion of care for me. I hugged Sofya tightly, held her close as if trying to protect her from all this sticky venom, and told her that I wasn’t sick, that I was a living person who just loved her too much, that yes, sometimes it was hard for me, and I might get angry, but it wasn’t a sickness, just exhaustion and fear. I promised I would try to control myself, not to shout, even when things were really bad. She listened, but in her eyes, that very doubt had already taken root, the kind that is so easy to sow and so hard to uproot. And seeing that slight fog of mistrust, I understood that the battle was no longer just for papers in court and not just for the right to see my daughter, but for her memory of me, for who she would consider her father to be when she grew up.
After that conversation with Sofya, when she almost verbatim repeated her mother’s words about my “sickness inside,” I realized that the fight was now moving not just into legal documents but into her mind, and that made it especially terrifying. During the day, I could somehow keep my head above water, juggling the kitchen, laundry, homework, trips to the gymnasium, and meetings with my lawyer. But at night, the same image would play on a loop in my head: Sofya standing before the judge, repeating memorized phrases that had nothing to do with our life together, but with someone’s carefully constructed lie. At my next meeting with Kharlamov, I told him not only about the lawsuit and the empty account but also about how Marina was methodically destroying my image in our daughter’s eyes every day, how she called me weak and worthless in front of Sofya, how she poisoned even the most ordinary situations with venom. I told him about the new tablet, the amusement park, and the fact that they didn’t even warn me they were taking the child. He listened, his brow slightly furrowed, and at one point said that this was, unfortunately, a classic scheme, and if I reacted to every dirty trick with shouting, I would end up confirming the very image they were painting on paper. He advised me to write everything down, whether in a notebook or a journal, to record dates, situations, who said what in front of the child, so that later I could at least reconstruct the overall picture from memory and show the court that these were not isolated outbursts but systematic harassment.
I bought a thick grid-lined notebook, the kind high school students usually buy, and like an obedient student, I began to keep my war diary. In the evenings, when Sofya was asleep, I would sit at the kitchen table, open the notebook, and write: how Marina pushed my plate away in front of the child, saying it was nauseating to look at me, let alone eat my food; how on another day she casually remarked that if Sofya were lazy, she would grow up to be as useless as her father; how for the third Saturday in a row, she deliberately scheduled some urgent events during my time with our daughter—to the mall, to the park, or somewhere else—and then pretended to be surprised: “But we talked about it, you must have just forgotten.”
On one of those days, something happened that finally showed how far Marina was willing to go. By then, we had an agreement, not official but still a human one, that on certain days after her classes at the gymnasium, Sofya would spend time with me. We would do homework, go for a walk, and in the evening, she would return home. That day, I was mentally prepared for a normal, calm evening. I had bought groceries in advance, planning to bake that very chocolate cake I had promised her. I arrived at the gymnasium a little before the bell, as usual, waited for the children to start coming out, but my daughter was nowhere to be seen. I stood at the gates, looking at the familiar faces of her classmates, at the parents picking up their children one by one, but Sofya didn’t appear. Minute by minute, they stuck to my heart. Finally, I went to the office again; they knew me by sight there. The secretary, without looking up, said she had seen the girl’s mother, that Marina had picked her up right after school, and that as far as she knew, everything was fine. The phrase “everything was fine” sounded particularly mocking at that moment. I left the gymnasium feeling like I was sinking into some viscous pit. I tried to call Marina. She, as usual, didn’t answer, then the phone rejected my calls several times before stopping altogether. Time dragged on like cold syrup. The house was empty, the clock on the wall ticked louder than usual. I paced from room to room, listening for every sound in the yard. Only late in the evening did I hear a car pull up to our gate. Sofya burst into the house, laughing, with bags in her hands, rustling packets of sweets, and bright paper bracelets on her wrist. Marina followed with a smug, even triumphant expression, as if she had just returned from a successful performance. I couldn’t hold back any longer and asked where they had been, why no one had informed me, as it was my day with my daughter. Marina’s response was cold and polished: she said that she was, after all, the mother, and was not obliged to ask my permission for every trip, that she wanted to give her child a treat, not watch me play the victim again. I tried to stay calm, reminded her of our agreement, that these were not just whims, but almost the only official time I had with my daughter. She smirked and said loudly, in front of Sofya, that if it came to that, the court would soon officially determine who had the right to the child and who didn’t, and that I should probably get used to the fact that many things would happen without my involvement. I saw Sofya freeze between us with the bags in her hands, her gaze darting from me to her mother. At that moment, I gathered the last of my strength, lowered my voice, and said that I didn’t want to argue in front of our daughter, that we would continue this conversation separately. But for myself, I noted her every turn of phrase, every sentence, to transfer it to that very notebook in the evening.
At my next meeting with Kharlamov, I brought not only the packet of documents but also the notebook. He flipped through a few pages, frowned, and said that this not only helped me from going mad with a sense of helplessness but could also serve as indirect confirmation of systematic pressure. He then stressed that if Marina continued to ignore verbal agreements, we would have to officially ask the court to establish a visitation schedule so that each of her “treats” would look not like a mother’s sweet gesture, but a violation. It was then that he first mentioned that with such a mass of mutual accusations, the court would likely order a psychological evaluation, and I needed to be prepared for it.
His words later sounded like a prophecy because, sometime after, an order arrived stating that our dispute over the child’s residence and my participation in her upbringing was being referred for an additional psychological evaluation. It was assigned to a supposedly independent specialist with impressive credentials. A few days later, Marina, returning from work, carelessly tossed a paper on the table and said that, well, we’ve been assigned a very respected doctor who will figure out which of us is in our right mind and which is not. At the bottom was a last name, already familiar from the report in the lawsuit—the same Valery Vorontsov, Ph.D., a specialist in family psychology. I held that paper in my hands for a long time, as if it could burn me. The name seemed like an empty sound, a mere line of text, but somewhere inside, a feeling was stirring that things were not so simple here. Kharlamov, upon seeing the name, just narrowed his eyes slightly, said he had heard of this man, that he had a less than stellar reputation in professional circles, that he was too friendly with the courts and guardianship authorities, but he didn’t outright slander him. He only warned me that I would need to remain calm during these meetings, no matter how they provoked me, because any outburst, any sharp word could be presented as confirmation of their version.
I remember my first visit to Vorontsov in detail. His office was in an office building near the center, with a neat plaque on the door listing his name and accomplishments. Inside, everything resembled a typical family counselor’s office from television: soft lighting, comfortable armchairs, books on the shelves, and in the corner, a box with wooden blocks, balls, and some animal figurines to make a child feel at ease. Vorontsov himself turned out to be a man in his early forties, wearing glasses, with a neatly trimmed beard. He smiled gently, spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, as if afraid of scaring away an invisible bird. He listened to us, nodded, and asked to first sit with our daughter, and then to speak with each parent separately. Sofya sat on the edge of her chair, clutching her old, worn-out tablet, the very one she seemed to carry with her everywhere, even to places where it seemed she wouldn’t need it. I was tired of arguing and fighting over this attachment, so I just asked her to turn off the sound. Vorontsov, noticing the tablet, smiled benevolently and said it was normal for a child to hold onto familiar things, that it created a sense of security, and asked me to wait in the hallway for a while, keeping Marina inside. The door closed softly, and I was left alone on a chair against the wall, listening to muffled voices and seeing only the tiny shadow of the plaque on the door being crossed by strips of light from the windows.
When I was first invited in, Sofya was already sitting to the side, playing with some figurines, the tablet on her lap with the screen off. Vorontsov smiled, offered me a seat, and asked how I saw the situation. I tried to speak calmly, explaining that I wasn’t shirking responsibility, that I understood Marina was tired, that we had arguments, but I had always been there for our daughter, had never raised a hand to her, never yelled without reason, and if I did lose my temper, it was only in moments of extreme tension, and I always apologized to the child afterward. Vorontsov nodded, asked clarifying questions, gently returned to painful episodes, asking me to describe how I felt when Marina said she was going to leave me with nothing. At some point, I caught myself starting to open up too much, speaking not to him but as if into a void, simply because it had been a long time since I had someone who would listen without mockery or a cold gaze. But the longer the conversation went on, the more clearly I began to feel a cold calculation beneath his soft, enveloping manner. He too easily picked up on the very formulations that were advantageous to Marina, too often returned to the topic of my emotional instability, asked me to talk about instances when I raised my voice, when I couldn’t hold back tears, and paid special attention to how I felt useless next to my successful wife. And every time I tried to steer the conversation toward how Marina was manipulating our daughter, he would gently but persistently guide the topic away, saying that it was important to focus on my internal state right now.
After a few such meetings, Sofya started coming out of the office quiet and thoughtful. I would ask what she and the doctor talked about, and she would shrug, saying he asked strange questions, asked her to remember our fights, asked how often I shouted, how she felt during those times. One evening, as we were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with cookies, she suddenly said quietly that the doctor had told her that sometimes a person can be dangerous even if they don’t realize it themselves, and that if he gets very angry, the first priority should be the safety of the mother and child. I froze with the mug in my hand and asked if he had said that about me. Sofya hesitated, her eyes darted around, she tried to turn it into a joke, but I could see that the seed had already been planted. Marina, who returned later than usual that evening, walked past me in silence, and then I heard her whisper in the hallway, but loudly enough for me to hear, telling our daughter that the doctor was smart, that he explained everything correctly, and that sometimes adults don’t admit their illness until they see it on paper. And I realized that Vorontsov and Marina were working together, creating a picture where I was not just inconvenient, but pathological, where I needed to be not just pushed aside, but isolated for the sake of safety.
Sometime later, Vorontsov scheduled a so-called joint session, where Marina, Sofya, and I were all to be present. He said he wanted to see how we interacted together, how we resolved disputes. I had spoken with Kharlamov beforehand, and he had asked me for the hundredth time to keep my composure, not to allow myself to shout, not to give in to provocations, reminding me that any outburst could be described as typical behavior. When we arrived at the office, Sofya was again clutching her old tablet. Marina sat closer to Vorontsov, as if they were old acquaintances. I took another chair, a little farther away, trying to breathe deeply. At first, everything was almost neutral. Vorontsov asked general questions, asking us to describe how we spend time with our daughter, what we consider important in her upbringing. Marina spoke in a calm, confident voice, listing clubs, classes, prospects, emphasizing how much she worked to give the child the best school, the best opportunities, and then subtly transitioned to how I supposedly couldn’t control my emotions, that I could be too intense, that Sofya sometimes cried after interacting with me and said she was scared. Listening to this, I felt a wave rising inside me, but I tried with all my might to hold on. I said that our conflicts were with Marina, not with the child, that I never allowed myself to shout at Sofya the way I sometimes did at my wife, that if my voice was raised, it was followed by explanations and hugs. Vorontsov nodded, but whenever I talked about Marina’s manipulations, he would only ask clarifying questions about my feelings, as if nothing else existed. At one point, he asked Sofya to describe how she feels when we argue. She sat huddled, clutching her old tablet to her chest, and spoke softly, looking at the floor, saying it was hard for her when we shouted, that she was afraid one of us would leave and not come back. And although I knew it was true, I saw how Vorontsov was catching the exact words that fit into his preconceived conclusion. All the while, Marina would periodically cast triumphant glances at me. At one point, she suddenly, almost theatrically, sobbed and said she was very worried about our daughter because, and I quote, she didn’t know what Dmitry might do in a state of passion, and that’s why she had sought help, to protect the child…
Comments are closed.