Marina always knew that Andrei was a devoted son. From the day they met, he spoke of his mother with a tenderness that seemed to her, at first, an endearing virtue. “A man who takes care of his mother will take care of his wife,” he thought in those first months of courtship, when everything seemed simple and the future looked like a clear avenue. Little did she know then that this devotion, over the years, would become the highest wall of her marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They married one spring, when she was twenty-six and he was twenty-nine. They rented a small apartment on the outskirts of the city, with thin walls and windows that let the cold in winter, but it was their home and they filled it with plans. Andrei worked as an engineer in a construction company and earned well; Marina was an elementary school teacher and contributed a modest but steady salary. The first years were good. Two children were born, first Nikita and then little Sonia, and the house was filled with toys, laughter and sleepless nights. Marina stopped working for some time to take care of the children, fully trusting that Andrei would support the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problems began quietly, as cracks in walls usually begin. Marina noticed that it was becoming more and more difficult to make ends meet. The refrigerator was emptied prematurely, the bills were piling up on the table at the entrance, and Nikita’s winter boots were already broken at the toe. When she asked Andrei for money to buy clothes for the children or to replace food, he replied evasively: that that month had been difficult, that there was an unforeseen expense, that the next week he would receive a bonus. Week after week, month after month, the excuses were repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One afternoon, while arranging some papers on her husband’s desk, Marina found the receipts. They weren’t hidden, really; they were there, in plain sight, as if Andrei had never imagined that she would check them. Receipts of bank transfers, all with the same recipient: Ludmila Petrovna, his mother-in-law. The figures left her breathless. They weren’t occasional small shipments to help a retired mother. It was large sums, almost the entirety of Andrei’s salary, month after month, for at least the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marina sat in the desk chair with the receipts in her hand, feeling the world slowly spin around her. She thought about the times she had said “no” to Sonia when the girl asked for one of those expensive yogurts from the supermarket. He thought of Nikita’s broken boots. He thought of the nights when he had calculated, with pencil and paper, how to stretch five hundred roubles until Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That night, when the children were already asleep, Marina put the receipts on the kitchen table. Andrei looked at them and didn’t say anything at first. Then he sighed, ran his hand over his face and began to speak slowly, as if trying to explain something he thinks is obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Mom is alone,” he said. His pension is not enough. He needs medicine, the house in the village is leaking, the roof needs to be fixed before winter. What do you want me to do, Marina? That leaves her with nothing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marina listened to him in silence. When he finished, she spoke with a calmness that surprised herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Andrei, we have two children. Nikita needs boots. Sonia is running out of winter clothes. I haven’t bought meat for three weeks. How much do you send to your mother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He did not answer. She insisted, and eventually Andrei admitted that he sent almost everything. That his mother had started calling him crying, saying that she couldn’t make ends meet, that she was sick, that she needed this and that. And he, unable to deny her anything, had been increasing the shipments until there was almost nothing left for his own family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Then,” Marina said, and her voice trembled slightly, “if you sent all the money to your mother, let her feed us.” Let her dress us. Let her pay for electricity and gas. Because if you choose to support her with the entire salary, someone has to support us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrei tried to minimize the situation. He told her that he was exaggerating, that his mother was a lonely old woman and that she, as a wife, must understand. But Marina was no longer willing to understand in those terms. The next day she called the school where she had worked before the children and asked if they could get her back. She was lucky: a teacher was about to retire and they needed a replacement from the following month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When she told Andrei that she was going back to work, he was offended. He said it seemed like a reproach, that people would think he couldn’t provide for his family. Marina looked at him for a long time and replied that, in fact, she couldn’t, because she had decided to keep another house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mother-in-law appeared shortly after, alerted by her son. Ludmila Petrovna was a petite, hard-eyed woman who came to the apartment with the air of a landlady. He sat down in the living room and explained to Marina, in a didactic voice, that a son has sacred obligations to his mother, that she had raised him alone after her husband died, that Marina had no right to stand between mother and child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marina listened to her until the end. Then, with the same calmness as that night in the kitchen, he replied that no one stood in the way of anything, but that Andrei’s salary should first be enough for the children he himself had brought into the world. That if Ludmila needed help, they could talk among themselves about what reasonable amount to send her without leaving the grandchildren without food. The mother-in-law got up indignantly and left slamming the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For several weeks the house was a field of silence. Andrei slept on the sofa some nights, other nights he tried to get close to Marina as if nothing had happened. She did not give in. He established a simple rule: first the household accounts, first the needs of the children, and with what was left over \u2013 if there was any left over \u2013 they could decide together what to send to the mother. Andrei resisted, argued, even threatened to leave once. Marina told him that she was free to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He did not leave. Little by little, perhaps because he saw his children better fed, perhaps because Marina’s salary relieved the pressure, perhaps because deep down he understood that he had been wrong, Andrei began to give in. He accepted a family budget. He accepted that his mother would receive a fixed and dignified sum, but not everything. Ludmila Petrovna protested, called, cried on the phone, but over time the calls became more spaced out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A year later, Marina watched from the kitchen window as Nikita played in the snow in new boots, and Sonia, wrapped in a pink coat, tried to imitate him. Andrei was next to him drinking tea. Not everything was cured\u2014there were things that Marina would take a long time to forget\u2014but something essential had been restored: the certainty that their family, the one they had formed, had the right to exist in the first place. And that certainty, he understood, had been what he almost lost by not claiming it in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marina always knew that Andrei was a devoted son. From the day they met, he spoke of his mother with a tenderness that seemed to her, at first, an endearing virtue. “A man who takes care of his mother will take care of his wife,” he thought in those first months of courtship, when everything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advices"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n