## The Cost of Convenient Kinship

“Lyuda, here’s the thing… Mom’s jubilee is coming up in two months. Sixty years.”

**Vitaly’s** voice boomed behind her—loud, overly cheerful, radiating the self-satisfied energy of a man who believes he’s about to bestow a great honor. **Lyudmila** didn’t flinch. She sat at her desk in the living room, which felt less like a home office and more like a high-stakes mission control. A large monitor glowed, dominated by an Excel sheet filled with dozens of line items: “tent rental,” “catering, Option 3,” “florals, peonies,” “emcee, fee.” Her corkboard held a gallery of business cards from vendors. The air smelled of cooling coffee and the faint metallic tang of her equipment. Her fingers, quick and precise, were inputting the cost of sound equipment rental for a major corporate client.

“You need to organize everything. You know—**like you do**. Top-of-the-line,” he pronounced the final phrase slowly, savoring the importance of the task, and laid a heavy, patronizing hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be **your present** to Mom—she’ll be over the moon. This isn’t up for discussion; you’re a professional event planner.”

His hand on her shoulder felt invasive and alien. Lyudmila finished typing the figure, hit *Enter*, and only then slowly raised her head. The gaze that had been meticulously dissecting budgets now fixed, just as coolly, on her husband’s face—on his pleased, slightly slack features, on a smile that expected nothing less than thrilled compliance.

“Hold it a minute. I don’t understand. Why exactly am I supposed to organize your mother’s jubilee—and for **free**, at that?”

Her question was perfectly even, entirely devoid of inflection. It wasn't a question seeking information; it was a **statement of fact**. Vitaly’s smile didn’t drop, but it froze, turning into a rigid, unpleasant grimace. He immediately removed his hand.

“What is wrong with you, Lyuda? What do you mean ‘for free’? It’s a **gift**! It’s Mom! *My* mother! How can you even ask that? We are **family**!”

He began to pace the room, his heavy steps pressing into the carpet. He clearly hadn’t anticipated this resistance and was furiously improvising, trying to land on the correct note of outrage.

“For strangers, you demand a contract, an estimate, a fee. But this is for your closest family! It should come from the **heart**, from the **soul**! You want to take money from your own mother-in-law for helping her throw a party?”

Lyudmila watched his theatrics in silence. She then pushed the keyboard aside, took a fresh sheet of A4 paper, and selected her favorite pen—heavy, metal-bodied, the one she reserved for signing official documents. The crisp *click* of the refill extending sounded deafening.

“It’s very simple,” she replied in the same unflappable tone. “My time, my intellectual property, my network of contacts that took years to build, the sleepless nights spent coordinating, and the emotional energy—**all of that costs money**. For everyone.”

Her pen flew across the paper. She wrote line after line in her neat, slightly angular hand. Vitaly stopped pacing, watching her with puzzlement.

“Here,” she finished, handing him the sheet. “You can review it. This is a **preliminary estimate** for my services. Concept development. Venue selection and booking. Negotiations and contracts with all vendors: emcee, photo, video, décor. Day-of coordination for the jubilee, based on an eight-hour shift. A fifty percent deposit is required. Have your mother look it over. If she agrees, she signs my standard contract, and I can begin work tomorrow.”

Vitaly took the paper skeptically. He stared at the tidy lines and the multi-digit figures. His gaze bounced from the document to her unreadable face and back. He had expected shouting, tears, or pleading. He was utterly unprepared for a **formal business proposal**. He looked at his wife and saw a complete stranger: an efficient, cool manager who had just billed his mother. Vitaly's face slowly began to darken, shifting from a normal pink to a heavy, purplish red.

The purple deepened to the color of an overripe, bruised plum. He crushed the sheet in his fist. The thin office paper crackled in sharp protest. He tossed the crumpled ball onto the desk, missing the keyboard entirely. It bounced once off a stack of client folders and landed silently on the dark carpet, a stark white testament to the domestic battle.

“Are you out of your mind, Lyuda? Have your ridiculous projects completely destroyed your common sense?” he hissed, the sound a sibilant, choked whisper far more malicious than a shout. “What kind of stunt is this? This is how you show respect for my mother? You hand her a bill like she’s some fly-by-night client?”

He braced his hands on the desk, towering over her. He smelled faintly of stale office lunch and the irritation he'd obviously carried home and now found a target for.

“She’s **Mom**! She took you into this family when you had nothing! She brings you her pies on Sundays because she knows you can’t be bothered to cook! She brought you seedlings for your balcony in the spring! Does none of that count? Or should we have created a price list for *that* too? ‘Pie—five hundred rubles, tomato plant—one hundred’? Is that what you want?”

Lyudmila did not flinch or recoil. She met his enraged gaze calmly. She slowly wheeled her chair back half a meter, reclaiming her personal space and professional distance.

“The pies are her **hobby**, Vitaly. She enjoys working with dough. The seedlings are her pastime. She enjoys it. And I always thank her for the gesture. But this”—she gestured to her entire workspace: the monitor, the specialized printer, the fabric samples—“**this is not a hobby**. This is my job. The very job that paid for our vacation to Italy last month. The same job that covered half the down payment on your car. It isn’t mere entertainment. It requires one hundred percent focus, sleepless nights, fighting with unreasonable suppliers, and dealing with challenging clients. It is an **asset** I am not going to hand out for free just because it’s convenient for someone to categorize it as my ‘wifely duty’—putting on parties.”

Her words were precise, measured blows. She didn’t raise her voice, but every word found its mark. She saw the vein twitch furiously at his temple. He had no counter-argument, and this fact only fueled his fury. When logic fails, insults take over.

“So that’s your true nature,” he straightened, crossing his arms in a gesture of moral superiority. “Cold, calculating mercenary. I thought I married a woman; it turns out I married a **calculator**. Everything with you is numbers, everything is a budget. You have no soul, Lyuda. Not a single drop.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and ostentatiously began scrolling through his contacts, keeping his scornful eyes locked on hers.

“Fine. You want to play business? We’ll play business. Only the client has the right to hear all the terms directly from the contractor, don't they?”

He raised the phone to his ear. Lyudmila knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t just calling for backup; he was bringing the nuclear option—the name that guarantees victory in their household.

“Hi, Mom. Yeah, everything’s fine… almost,” his voice instantly adopted the plaintive, wounded tone of a dutiful son. “I’m talking to Lyuda about your jubilee. Yes, of course, she’ll help, Mom, how could she not… She’s the professional. She even… prepared a **commercial offer**. To keep it all official.” He paused, allowing the phrase to land with devastating impact on the other end. He looked directly at Lyudmila, relishing her discomfort. “No, Mom, you misunderstood. It’s not a bill from the caterer. It’s from *her*. She’s billed… *you*… for her services as the organizer.”

He listened for a few seconds, nodding, his face etched with sympathy and sorrow.

“I know, Mom. Yes. I’m shocked too. Don’t you worry about a thing. Can you come over? Yes, now. She’s here. You can discuss the details… of her business project. Okay, we’ll be waiting.”

He ended the call and set the phone down.

“Mom’s coming over. She wants to look her manager in the eye and go over the contract terms. **Get ready for negotiations**.”

Vitaly remained standing, a referee positioned between the couch and his wife’s desk in the ring he’d orchestrated. He was utterly convinced of his righteousness, bolstered by the imminent arrival of maternal authority. In that pause—punctuated only by the computer’s low hum—he reveled in his role: the son defending his mother’s honor and the husband putting his rebellious wife in her place.

Lyudmila, however, showed no trace of apprehension. She did not jump up to prepare a defense. Instead, she calmly bent down, picked up the crumpled estimate from the carpet, and slowly, meticulously, smoothed it out on the desktop, pressing out every fold and crease until the sheet was nearly flat again. She placed it prominently next to her monitor, picked up the mouse, and returned to her corporate spreadsheet. This was not avoidance. It was a quiet, potent statement: *Your drama is irrelevant; I have work to do.*

No more than fifteen minutes passed before the sharp, imperious **doorbell** sliced through the air. It sounded less like a guest and more like a summons. Vitaly practically sprang to open it, anticipation and righteous fury barely contained.

On the threshold stood **Klavdia Petrovna**. She was not a raging fury. Instead, she was the picture of wounded, offended virtue. Her hair was perfectly set, her coat expensive and severe, and in her hands—not a shopping bag, but a large plastic container that faintly smelled of fresh baked goods. She entered without removing her shoes, walked straight into the living room, and addressed her son first, pointedly ignoring Lyudmila.

“Vitalichka, I rushed right over; I was so worried. What on earth is happening here?” Her voice was weighted with manufactured tragedy, aimed at one listener but intended for two.

Vitaly instantly took up the cue. “Just look, Mom. Lyudmila is a business lady now. For her, family is just another project.”

Only then did Klavdia Petrovna deign to look at her daughter-in-law. She walked slowly to the desk and placed her container directly on a stack of client cardstock samples.

“Hello, Lyudochka. Vitaly tells me you’ve been terribly busy lately. That you have absolutely no time for us—for **family**.”

“Hello, Klavdia Petrovna,” Lyudmila turned her chair to face her mother-in-law, her tone impeccably polite, as if greeting a VIP client. “Please sit. Vitaly is exaggerating. There is time; it’s simply a matter of how we choose to allocate it.”

“I see,” Klavdia Petrovna drawled, studying her with undisguised judgment. “We thought sixty years was a grand celebration. That you, as family, would help, advise, be happy for me. And it turns out… that’s now called ‘time allocation.’”

Her gaze landed on the smoothed estimate on the desk. She picked it up delicately, with a touch of distaste, as if it were soiled.

“So this is it… ‘Preliminary estimate.’ Such expensive words we use now…” She read aloud, metal ringing in her voice. “‘Concept development… vendor selection… coordination…’ Good heavens, Lyuda, this is your husband’s mother’s jubilee, not a **rocket launch**!”

“This is my **work**, Klavdia Petrovna,” Lyudmila replied evenly. “I take it seriously, whether it’s a two-hundred-guest wedding or a thirty-person jubilee. A surgeon doesn’t operate on relatives for free just because they are relatives. He does his job. So do I.”

“Don’t compare God’s gift to scrambled eggs!” Vitaly snapped, unable to bear her composure. “A doctor saves lives, and you… you just pick menus and balloons!”

“Exactly!” Klavdia chimed in, tossing the sheet back onto the desk. “We asked you humanly—to help, like a daughter! And what did you give us? A contract? A bill? You want me, a pensioner, to pay you for calling a restaurant that *you* yourself recommended? Is that what **gratitude** looks like now for everything we’ve done for you and Vitalik?”

She stepped closer, and her previously mournful face hardened into an expression of spite. The mask had dropped.

“I thought my son had a wife. A family. It turns out he has a **business partner** who shares his apartment. You turn everything into a transaction. Everything in your life has a price tag. Tell me, Lyuda, does **love, care, and respect for elders** also have a price on your rate card? Or is that the ‘free add-on’ to the contract?”

“Price? You want to talk about price, Klavdia Petrovna?” There was no hurt or anger in Lyudmila’s voice—only a cool, almost academic interest, the tone she used when a client dared challenge a core expense. She rose slowly, and the simple movement made both Vitaly and his mother involuntarily take a half-step back. “Fine. Let’s talk about price. But not the price of my services—the **price of your ‘love and care.’**”

She braced her fingertips on the desktop, her gaze unwavering.

“When your nephew needed emergency help with his wedding two years ago because his fiancée botched everything, who stayed up four nights straight calling my vendors and begging them to step in? Who found him an emcee, a photographer, and a venue a week before the date? Was that ‘love’? Or was that **free use of my professional resources**?”

Vitaly opened his mouth to interrupt, but Lyudmila silenced him with a look of pure command.

“When you started the cottage renovation and couldn’t decide on the veranda design, who spent two weeks drawing sketches, choosing materials, and composing a work plan so your builders wouldn’t ruin it? Was that ‘care’? Or was that a **free interior design consultation** that other people pay good money for? When your car was in the shop for a month, who drove across town every day after work to take you shopping, then waited an hour in the parking lot? Was that ‘respect for elders’? Or a **free taxi and personal driver service**?”

She spoke steadily, each word a crisp accusation. This wasn't a tantrum; it was the final reading of a bill that had been accruing for years.

“All your so-called care, Klavdia Petrovna, has always had a hidden clause. Your pies”—she nodded toward the container resting on her papers—“are a perfect pretext to show up uninvited and **check up on us**. Your advice is a way to **control** our lives. Your ‘help’ is an investment for which you always expect dividends—in the form of my time, my energy, my nerves. You are used to me being a convenient, multifunctional, and above all **free add-on** to your life. And to your son’s life.”

Klavdia Petrovna looked at her, her face morphing from wounded dignity to naked, undisguised hatred. She saw that her manipulations no longer worked. The daughter-in-law she had considered docile and manageable had suddenly revealed a spine of steel.

“You…” she hissed, the word poisoned. “You’re just **ungrateful**…”

“Mom, let’s go,” Vitaly finally found the nerve to intercede. He stepped toward his mother and took her by the arm, decisively choosing his side. He did not defend his wife. He simply decided to retreat from a lost battle. “There’s nothing more to discuss here.”

As they moved toward the exit, standing in the open doorway, Klavdia Petrovna turned and hurled the cruellest line she could find.

“**Barren fig tree**,” she said quietly but distinctly. “No children, no soul. Just numbers in your head.”

Lyudmila said nothing. She watched her husband open the door for his mother, his eyes fixed on the floor. At that precise moment, Lyudmila walked to her desk, picked up the plastic container of pies, and silently followed them. She stepped onto the landing and gently—without a sound—set the container on the doormat outside her door. Then she returned to the apartment and looked straight at her husband, who still held the door handle, paralyzed.

“My jubilee gift to your mother,” she said in an icy, utterly calm voice. “Free of charge. **A farewell**.”

Only then did she close the door on him. Not with a slam, but with the quiet, devastating *click* of the lock.