“Why isn’t my daughter sitting at the table?” my father asked as he stepped into our apartment, his arms full of gifts.
The table was buried under salads I had been making since six in the morning. The Christmas tree sparkled in the corner. And I was nowhere near that table.
“I threw her out,” my husband said with a smirk. “She irritates my mother.”
My mother-in-law sat beside him looking openly triumphant. She did not even bother to stand up and greet my father. My quiet, mild-mannered dad silently took out his phone. What he did in the next minute wiped that smile off Linda’s face for good.
Two days earlier, on the morning of December 29, I woke up because someone was jabbing me insistently in the shoulder. Ethan was shaking me, demanding that I get up at once and get ready to go to the train station. His mother, Linda, had decided to come from her small town to celebrate New Year’s with us, and, as my husband explained while pulling on a sweater, a proper daughter-in-law was supposed to meet her mother-in-law in person.
I looked at the clock. It was half past seven, still dark outside, and the train was not due until 9:30.
“Ethan, won’t half an hour be enough to get there?” I tried appealing to basic logic, but he was already rushing around the apartment, gathering things with the urgency of a man preparing to receive not his mother, but the Secretary of the Treasury himself.
Forty minutes later, we were crawling through pre-holiday traffic along the waterfront, and once again I caught myself noticing the reverent tone Ethan always used when speaking about his mother, as if she belonged to some higher order of beings. In three years of marriage, I had learned Linda inside and out: fifty-six years old, an accountant at a construction company, swimming pool twice a week, regular trips to Turkey, and endless complaints about her fragile health whenever it suited her.
At the platform, Linda appeared with the solemn importance of someone returning from a space mission. She looked me over from head to toe and gave me a reserved little nod.
taking inventory of my tired face as if that, too, deserved to be filed away for later.
Ethan instantly lunged toward his mother with open arms, apparently forgetting he had a wife at all. I, meanwhile, was awarded two enormous bags stuffed with “farm-fresh food” from her town, as though every grocery store in our city had suddenly gone out of business.
By the time we got into the car, the usual hierarchy had snapped neatly into place. Linda settled herself in the front passenger seat like a visiting dignitary. I climbed into the back. And after her very first remark about a draft from the cracked window, Ethan cranked the heater all the way up.
“Sweetheart, you know my health isn’t made of steel,” Linda said in that drawn-out suffering voice of hers.
In my head, I checked off the first box. She had played the fragile-health card before we had even reached home.
Our apartment on the left bank—a roomy three-bedroom with a view of the river—greeted her with the scent of fresh pastries and pine branches. I had spent the entire previous evening cleaning, polishing, scrubbing, making every surface shine. Linda, however, toured the rooms with the expression of a health inspector. She ran one finger along the curtain rod and solemnly reported the presence of dust.
Ethan, by then, had already collapsed onto the couch with his phone, pretending the whole scene had nothing to do with him.
“Megan, why are your curtains so washed out? And the hardwood creaks in places. Women used to look after a home properly.”
Linda then established herself in the kitchen, choosing a strategic stool by the window, where she could supervise every move I made. Cooking lunch under her stare felt like being some kind of laboratory animal. Nothing escaped commentary. I cut up the chicken incorrectly. The tomatoes were too watery. I had added enough pepper for three meals. And when I began slicing cucumbers for the salad, a long, mournful sigh floated up behind me.
“My neighbor Chloe has a daughter-in-law who is pure gold. She cooks so well you can’t stop eating, her apartment is as clean as a museum, and she treats Chloe like her own mother.”
I bit my tongue and focused hard on the vegetables in front of me. Ethan was still planted in the living room, doing a convincing impression of a man who had suddenly lost his hearing. During lunch, Linda continued her detailed ranking of every daughter-in-law she had ever known, and according to her system, I came in last in every possible category.
When dessert was finally over, I escaped to the kitchen under the excuse of washing dishes. For one brief second, I shut my eyes and allowed myself to picture her suitcase already packed, her coat on, her trip back home underway.
Fourteen days, I reminded myself. Only fourteen. People survived worse.
The next morning, December 30, I woke up to the sharp sound of the refrigerator door slamming open and shut. Linda had begun an inspection of our groceries. When I walked into the kitchen, she was standing there with my notebook in her hands, the page labeled “New Year’s Menu” open in front of her.
“Megan, what on earth did you scribble down here?” she demanded. “Olivier salad, herring under a fur coat, Greek salad… this looks like something from a cafeteria. Where’s the jellied meat? Where’s the aspic? Where’s a proper homemade roast pork?”
She grabbed a pen and began crossing out my list with furious little strokes, replacing my plans with her own.
“Linda, I already bought everything for these dishes,” I tried to protest.
She waved me off as if I were an annoying fly.
“Greek salad for New Year’s? Who came up with that nonsense? Your turkey is out—we’re making goose with apples. Jellied meat is mandatory. At least three kinds of hand pies. And none of that store-bought spread either; we’ll make the eggplant caviar ourselves.”
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