Galina stood by the window, looking at the damp November courtyard, raindrops ran down the glass, merging into uneven streaks, and it seemed as if the sky itself was crying along with her.
But no, she wasn’t crying, she just stood there, trying to understand what had happened an hour ago in this same kitchen.
— I’m tired, Galya. Do you understand? I’m tired of all this — Viktor waved his hand as if brushing off thirty-seven years of life together like crumbs from the table. — I want to live separately.
For myself. For myself. Those two words got stuck in her throat like a fishbone, and she turned from the stove, a ladle in her hand, and looked at her husband.
The man was sitting at the table, leaning back in his chair, looking somewhere aside, avoiding her gaze, his gray hair messy, stubble on his face, an old stretched-out T-shirt.
He was sixty-two years old, and for the last fifteen years he had barely worked, sometimes his health failed, sometimes his bosses, sometimes his colleagues were the problem. — Separately? — she asked then, and her voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else.
— Do you want a divorce? — No, no! — Viktor waved his hands. — Why divorce? I just want to live separately. I need my own space, you understand? I’m a man, I need freedom. Freedom.
What kind of freedom does a man nearing retirement need, one who had been sitting at home in recent years while she worked as an accountant at a construction company?
Galina put the ladle back into the soup and turned off the gas, her appetite vanished instantly. — And how do you imagine that? — she asked quietly.
— I looked at options — he brightened, even his eyes lit up. — A one-room place in the Northern district, cheap. Twenty-five thousand a month. Quite manageable.
— Twenty-five thousand — Galina repeated. — You don’t have a job. — But you do! — he said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. — You earn seventy thousand.
You’ll help with the rent, and some money for living. I’m not a stranger, I’m your husband.
And at that moment Galina felt something inside her snap, not loudly, not dramatically — quietly, almost imperceptibly, like a thread that had been pulled for too long.
— So you want to live separately from me, but with my money? — she asked. — Don’t talk like that! — Viktor took offense. — We’re a family. I’m just tired, I need some peace.
You’ll come visit, cook sometimes. Everything will be better, you’ll see. He went into the room and left her standing in the middle of the kitchen, Galina heard him turn on the TV, sit down on the couch, as always, like for the past twenty years.
She turned back to the window, the rain intensified, she felt a strange emptiness — not pain, not resentment, just nothing, and she remembered Svetka, her friend who had divorced a year ago:
“The worst thing isn’t cheating, but when you realize you’re just being used, and they don’t even hide it.” She didn’t understand then, now she did.
