“Alright. I can take care of myself, I’m not a child. And you, don’t let anyone walk all over you, you hear? No one. A fish seeks deeper water, a person seeks a better place.” The car stopped at the gate of an old private house on the outskirts of Amur, the very house where Taisiya grew up. Where the floorboards creaked underfoot, and in winter, you had to stoke the furnace in the mornings. Where a photo of her father in his youth still hung on the living room wall, before his illness, before a heart attack took him right on his factory shift, 10 years ago.
Her mother met her on the porch, in an old housecoat, with a kitchen towel in her hands. A former nurse, a widow, a woman who raised her daughter alone after her husband’s death, working around the clock at the district clinic. When she saw her daughter’s disheveled wedding dress and messy hair, she didn’t ask any questions, just silently opened the door, letting her into the warmth and safety of her childhood home. Varvara Rodionovna poured tea into a large mug, an old one that belonged to her grandmother, placed a plate of sweet buns she had baked that morning in preparation for the celebration that never happened on the table, wanting to treat the in-laws, and sat opposite her, folding her work-worn hands on the oilcloth.
“Tell me. Everything as it is.” And Taisiya told her. About the emergency call at five in the morning, when she was barely awake. About the four hours over the operating table, when her hands trembled with tension and her back ached so much she wanted to double over. About the crowd at the entrance to the hotel on Voskresenskaya, about Regina Valeryevna with her “get out of here” and “careerist.” About the ceremony with Inna, about the ring on another woman’s finger, about how quickly her mother-in-law’s tone changed when Bondar got out of the black car and said his name. Varvara Rodionovna listened without interrupting, only growing paler with each word, but her back remained straight, as always, and her hands did not tremble.
This woman had survived her husband’s death and hadn’t broken; she was not so easily bent. “A good person shows their true colors in difficult times,” she finally said, when Taisiya fell silent and stared into her cold tea. “And a weakling hides. Your Arkasha hid behind his mother’s skirt. Not all that glitters is gold, daughter. I told you from the start to take a closer look at him, but you were in love and wouldn’t listen.” The sound of car doors slamming and a hubbub of voices came from outside. Several people, by the sounds of it, all talking at once, interrupting each other, as people do when they are nervous and can’t agree on who should speak first.
Varvara Rodionovna stood up, smoothed her housecoat, and headed for the exit with the face of someone going into battle. “Stay here. I’ll handle this myself.” Through a tiny gap in the curtain, Taisiya saw her mother go out onto the porch and stand there, arms crossed, as Regina Valeryevna stopped at the gate with a strained smile on her pale face, and behind her loomed Stanislav’s SUV. And some other relatives were shuffling by the fence, hesitant to enter the yard. The mother-in-law was babbling something about apologies, a misunderstanding, about how she had always considered Taisiya a daughter, practically a member of the family, and valued her very, very much.
And it was all a terrible misunderstanding. “This morning, you told my daughter to ‘get out of here’,” Varvara Rodionovna’s voice was calm, measured. “And now she’s like a daughter to you. Your memory works in interesting ways, doesn’t it?” “This is a family matter,” Stanislav intervened, stepping forward with the air of a man used to resolving issues. “Taisiya is our daughter-in-law, we have the right to speak with her directly.” “If there was no wedding, then there is no daughter-in-law,” Varvara Rodionovna cut him off, without even raising her voice. “And if your Arkasha has already exchanged rings with another woman in front of everyone, then all the more so. When did you ever value my daughter?”
“Was it when you were chasing her from the parking lot in front of the guests, or when you found out whose child she saved?” Bondar’s driver, standing by the car on the street in his expensive suit, politely but firmly asked the visitors to leave and not to disturb the homeowners. And Regina Valeryevna, seeing a man who was clearly not a simpleton next to a black car at this modest house with a crooked fence, turned even paler, realizing her plan had failed. They left in silence, without looking back, without even saying goodbye. “That’s it, case closed,” said Varvara Rodionovna, returning to the house and firmly closing the door behind her.
“Live peacefully, daughter. These people are no longer your family and never were.” Taisiya hugged her mother, burying her face in her shoulder, inhaling the familiar childhood scent of home, of laundry detergent, and whispered, “Forgive me, Mom. Forgive me for how this turned out. You prepared so much, baked those buns.” “What is there to forgive?” Varvara Rodionovna stroked her head, just as she did in childhood when Taisiya came home from school upset. “You saved a child, you didn’t run off to a dance. Live with a clear conscience, that’s all that matters. And we’ll eat the buns ourselves.”
The days dragged on slowly in the old house on the left bank, where time flowed differently than in the city center, where the morning began with a neighbor’s rooster crowing, and the evening with quiet conversations in the kitchen under a yellow lamp. Taisiya took a week of sick leave and spent time with her mother. She made her breakfast, reminded her about the blood pressure pills she always forgot to take, and listened to her stories about her father, how he worked as a shift foreman at the factory. How he brought her wildflowers every Friday, even managing to find a sprig of mimosa somewhere in winter, how he passed away ten years ago when he collapsed right at his machine and the ambulance couldn’t get there in time. The neighbors already knew about the canceled wedding…
Comments are closed.