“Did you report it stolen? Are you insane?!” Sergey shouted. I am not insane. I simply know that personal property is personal.
You know, I can’t stand scandals. Shouting makes my blood pressure jump, and women’s hysterics make my jaw clench. So when I walked out to the parking lot that morning and found an empty space where my brand-new wet-asphalt-colored Lada Granta should have been, I didn’t scream. I just stood there, staring at the oil stain on the pavement.
There was a roaring in my ears, as if I had suddenly dived underwater.
My husband had the keys. The day before, he had taken them again “for half an hour to the garage,” then came home late and went straight to bed. I had even thought then, the man is tired, let him rest. I bought that car two months ago with my own hard-earned money, what was left from my mother’s apartment. I hadn’t been saving for some piece of junk. I had been saving for freedom. To drive to the dacha, to carry seedlings, and simply so that at sixty years old I wouldn’t have to shake around in a stuffy bus with a sack of potatoes.
I called Sergey. My husband, that is.
“Hello,” he grunted sleepily.
“Seryozha, where is my car?”
The silence lasted exactly long enough for me to count to five.
“Nadya, here’s the thing… Just don’t get worked up. I gave it to Danka for a couple of days. He has orders, he got a job as a courier. The boy needs it more than we do. You can take the bus, can’t you? Is that so hard?”
Just like that. Not “I took it,” not “I’m sorry.” But “you can take the bus.”
Danka is his son from his first marriage. A big, healthy twenty-five-year-old who never stayed anywhere longer than a month. I once gave him a room when he came back from the army. Two weeks later, my grandfather’s silver cigarette case disappeared. Danka said he had never seen it before. Sergey believed him. I kept quiet. And now this “boy” was cruising around the city in my car.
“Seryozha,” I said, and my voice was calm, as if I were reading the weather forecast. “You have one hour for that car to be back in its place. Exactly one hour. I need to go to the market for seedlings.”
He started yelling. That I was selfish, that I didn’t love his son, that the boy needed to earn money, while I was “choking everyone with that dacha of mine.” That Danka had been promised a car, and he, Sergey, kept his word.
I hung up. Then I opened the old wooden box with a faded rose on the lid. Inside were the car documents, the sales contract, the inheritance certificate. And my correspondence with my husband — messages I had prudently saved, where I had written to him in black and white: “Do not give the car to third parties.” He had replied: “Got it, no problem.”
He had lied.
The worst thing about this situation wasn’t even the car itself. It was the certainty with which Sergey had disposed of me. He had not even doubted himself. My money was our money. And his son was my burden. He had already moved my rubber mats to the car wash. He had already filled the tank with cheap gas and tossed the receipt into the glove compartment like an owner.
I wasn’t hurt. I felt disgusted. As if someone had climbed into a clean bed with dirty feet.
I took a taxi to the police station. I filed a report. Not against a relative. For car theft. Article 166, Part 1. Up to five years in prison. I laid everything out clearly: the car had been bought with my inheritance from my mother, I had given no permission, and I had proof that I had forbidden it.
The district officer, a young man with glasses, reread my statement twice.
“Ma’am, but this is your husband. And his son. Maybe you should settle it as a family?”
“His son,” I replied. “My car. The money for it was not marital property; it was an inheritance. It is mine personally. And I did not give anyone the right to get behind the wheel. Question the neighbors. They saw him drive off yesterday.”
The young man cleared his throat and accepted the report.
And I walked out onto the steps, breathed in the dusty city air, and suddenly felt alive. Very alive. More alive than I had felt in the last ten years of marriage.
Danka was stopped at a traffic police checkpoint an hour and a half later. I knew where to look for him — he always worked near the Three Stations area, where there were the most orders. They called me, and I confirmed it: theft, I would be pressing claims, let them draw up the report.
My phone was exploding. Sergey was yelling so loudly that the speaker wheezed. “What have you done, you idiot? You’ll ruin the boy’s life! A criminal record! He’s my son!”
I listened to his shouting while remembering how three weeks earlier I had been lying in bed with sciatica, and he couldn’t take me to the clinic because he had “gone to Danka’s, he needed help moving a sofa.” I had gone by bus then. I stood at the bus stop, hunched over in pain.
“Seryozha,” I interrupted his hysteria. “The car will be taken to the impound lot. Only I can get it back, as the owner. And I will drive it home. And you, my dear man, start preparing the money. I am sending you a bill. For everything.”
He fell silent. For the first time in twenty-five years. He simply breathed into the phone — hoarse, short breaths, as if he couldn’t get enough air.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he finally lisped. “You’re my wife.”
“And when you disposed of me as your wife, did that matter?” I replied. “So now we’ll live by the law. Cleanly, clearly, without any ‘family’ sniveling.”
I picked up the car two days later. The inside stank of cheap tobacco and someone’s dirty socks. I opened all the windows and aired it out for a long time. An empty beer bottle was lying on the back seat. I threw it in the trash without saying a word.
Sergey hovered around me, trying to catch my eye. He tried to joke that “well, we both went too far, enough sulking.” I wasn’t sulking. I calmly printed out a calculation table and attached it to the refrigerator with a magnet. Rental. Depreciation. Fuel. Moral damages. Let him know the price of his “boy.”
A week later, he paid the first installment. He silently placed an envelope on the table.
Of course, they hired a lawyer for Danka. Sergey’s first wife called me, screaming every curse under the sun and promising to sue me. I kept hanging up.
Then the lawyer himself contacted me. He asked me to agree to a reconciliation of the parties. Danka had realized what he had done, the damage had been fully compensated, and a criminal record would do the guy no good. I listened and nodded. In court, I confirmed that I had no claims against Daniil, that the damage had been compensated, and asked for the case to be dismissed.
The judge nodded understandingly. She probably had grown children too, and husbands with their own “quirks.”
My husband now knows where my keys are kept. In a safe. I did not tell him the code. And I drive to the dacha every weekend. Alone. With seedlings, a book, and a thermos of strong tea. Now the inside of the car smells of meadow grass and mint.
And do you know what my husband’s worst mistake was? He sincerely thought that because a woman is married, she has no property. There is only “us.” It turned out there is the law. And there is me. And while his beloved son looks for a new job, I will begin every morning with a cup of coffee and a satisfied smile.
Never give away to others what you watered with your own sweat. Even if it is “just a car.” Because once you give away the car, it may turn out that you are no longer a wife at all, but just a convenient accessory with a payment function.
