Six months ago, Katya was comforted by almost the entire office. Katya was abandoned by her husband. After 15 years of marriage and with a 12-year-old daughter. Katya tried to control herself. Relax at work. But what kind of work is there when thoughts get confused and everything falls out of hand? Katya was lucky, the team was good and friendly. They stepped in, helped, and supported.
Katya cried, calmed down, pulled herself together, and returned to her normal work schedule. Gradually she began to smile again. She resigned herself, in general, to divorce and got used to life without a husband. She was glad that her apartment, inherited from her grandmother, was not necessary to share with her husband and his young wife.
Gradually, Katya acquired new interests and hobbies. She took up Nordic walking and seriously attended to proper nutrition. She threw off four kilograms out of ten extra in three months and continues to work on herself. She says that with the departure of her husband, cooking has greatly diminished and more time has been added for herself and her daughter.
And then Katya comes one morning, eyes like those of a frightened deer.“Girls,” he says, “what should I do? Grisha asks back.“But what about his young woman, to whom he went?”
“He says everything was a mistake, he realized and repented. Only I think it was his young woman who exposed him herself.“Well, why are you rushing about it? You wanted him back!“But… I don’t want to anymore. Again there will be all these irons, frying pans, a gloomy belly on the sofa, and a screaming TV. I’m used to eating right and walking in the evenings. I don’t want Grisha back!”
“Well, if you don’t want it, then don’t let it. You are divorced, it is not registered with you. You don’t have to take it back.”
“So I don’t think I have to. And he’s so pathetic. Crumpled like a dog thrown out.“He presses on pity, that’s what. He didn’t feel sorry for you when a handsome man in a suit left for a young woman.
“Well, he is, again, the father of his daughter.”
“Does the daughter want her father back?”
“No, she is angry with him, she and the young woman put her out the door when she came to reconcile him with me. Doesn’t want to.”
“I mean, you don’t want to. The daughter doesn’t want to. Well, do not peck your brains at other people’s problems!
Katya is on the defensive. Grisha conducts a systematic siege on all fronts – he drags gifts to his daughter, either reproaches his wife for insensitivity or showers her with flowers. Grisha’s “young woman” of the prodigal Grisha has absolutely no objection to returning his former wife, as if it was not she, like a proud winner, who took him away from the family six months ago. Over tea at work, there is talk about the “Law of the boomerang.
“What happened, why did Grisha’s new union fall apart so quickly? Why is he so desperately rushing back to a family in which he is no longer expected, and why is the family completely unhappy with the return of the prodigal Grisha?
Grisha, no longer a young man, but still a man in his prime, who has achieved not the most grassroots position, with a decent salary and his own housing, has become a tasty morsel for young girls who want a beautiful life at the expense of an older and wealthier man. One of which “has laid eyes on him.”
The flattery and flirtation of young Yanochka, compared to Grisha’s settled and monotonous family life, were like a stream of sunlight compared to a 40-watt light bulb. And the naive Grisha threw himself headlong into the pool, fell in love, and ran headlong towards a new happy life.
Only one thing is an office romance, and another is living together with a lover of living beautifully. This is not modest Katya, is ready to go shopping after work, and then stand at the stove for hours to provide her beloved husband with delicious varied food for the whole day. Yana will not jump up an hour before her husband wakes up and iron his shirts, cook porridge, and make real coffee from beans.
Get out as you like, there is no longer a cozy Katya nearby, who made life so easy and comfortable. The world no longer revolves around Grisha, the world now revolves around Yana. Grisha really, really wants to return to the past, to his cozy family. Only the family does not want Grisha’s return.
Yana is also disappointed and confused. Not only that, it turns out, that Grisha does not have any apartment, and they live with Grisha in her, Yana, rented apartment. It also turns out that in Grisha’s life there is some kind of unfinished baby. Yana is outraged by Grisha’s claims of unwashed underpants and the lack of home cooking. Yana believes that an adult man can feed himself, wash, and iron his shirt. She is a wife, not a nanny.
She was not hired to serve a man older than herself. And even more so, she was not hired to endure his bouts of a bad mood, his toxic laziness, and unhealthy cravings for TV. Yana wants a bright active life, trips to exhibitions, gatherings in cafes, and trips to other cities and countries. Yana does not need a boring capricious mattress. Yana is happy to return Grisha to where she took it from. Only there they don’t take him back, but Grisha simply doesn’t go “to nowhere”.
And Katya, for the first time in a decade and a half, felt what it was like to live, mostly for herself. The daughter has grown up and has become not so much an object of care as a young and energetic comrade-in-arms. You no longer need to take care of your husband and endure his mood swings. Katya felt young, independent, and light.
Katya does not want to return to the past, to a life devoted to courting Grisha. Katya realized that freedom is wonderful. And if a man appears in Katya’s life, then one with whom it is easy and fun to do something together.
Katya’s decision could be influenced by her daughter. But the daughter, a 12-year-old teenager who is not yet able to understand and forgive, is still experiencing the feeling of humiliation and shame experienced by her at the moment when her father and his new woman kicked her out on an autumn evening. The daughter supports her mother.
There is no mysticism and the “boomerang” that Grisha flew in very painfully. That’s how it, boomerang, it turns out, works. On their own human stupidity.
