– Hi, Igor… – Galina called her husband, terribly worried. – Are you at work?
“Well, yes…” he answered after a short pause.
– Yes? Okay then.
– And what?
– My mom just called me. She said she saw you with some blonde in a cafe. She always winds me up… I know you have lunch at work. By the way, were the eggplants delicious? I haven’t tried them yet.
– Um… Yes, quite. True, a little oversalted, – Igor muttered. – Apparently, she fell in love. With me, – the husband joked, but Galya was not amused. That day, she thoughtfully packed her husband with something other than eggplants. But for some reason, the husband did not know this. Although… he claimed that he had eaten home-cooked food for lunch.
So, mom told the truth. Igor went to a cafe with some blonde.
Galya hung up with a heavy heart. She could have made a scene right over the phone, but Igor would have managed to find some excuse. And if he really was cheating on her, then she had to act carefully. Watch from the sidelines. And eventually the truth would come out… No matter how harsh it was.
“I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard, Gal,” Igor grumbled, zipping up his new bag. “Who carries food in containers these days?”
“Those who have a loving wife at home,” Galya answered calmly, unzipping his bag again and putting a neat little container in there. “There’s azu and salad in there, just the way you like it. Would you like some compote in a thermos? Fresh, made from dried fruit.”
— What compote, Gal?! You should also put a bib in there and a note: “Bon appetit, my baby.” I already feel awkward in front of my colleagues! The other day they asked when my wife would come to feed me with a spoon! Shame!
Galya laughed. She was used to his grumbling. In her heart she knew: Igor loved her care, even if he pretended to be dissatisfied. In fact, he always praised her cooking, and Galina enjoyed standing at the stove for hours, as long as her betrothed was well-fed and happy.
– The food in the cafe is unhealthy. They cook it with old, rancid oil. No benefit! And you, Igor, have a weak stomach. Your mother told me about it before our wedding, – she often repeated.
“What is, is…” Igor chuckled, realizing that after his wedding with Galina he had gained extra pounds. However, his stomach really did stop hurting.
For three years, Igor happily brought home-cooked lunches to work. It was something that went without saying.
But something went wrong with the move to the new department. There, among the office “beau monde”, her containers with home-cooked food suddenly became something shameful.
It all started with an innocuous phrase:
“Are you seriously carrying a container with you?” one of his colleagues, Andrey, was surprised.
– Well, yeah… – Igor shrugged. – Do you know where the microwave is? Where do you have lunch here?
– Microwave, my friend, at home or at the shawarma station. Nobody eats at work.
Igor looked at his colleague and nodded. That day he ate cold pasta right at his desk.
And the very next day Igor was dubbed “Igor Khryuchevnik” behind his back. He was given such an offensive nickname because his food, carefully packed by Galya, seemed to someone not modern enough, resembling khryuchevo.
“This is a handout from your wife, right? She probably calls you every hour: ‘Have you eaten, my kitty?'” his colleagues teased him in the following days.
– Ha, – snorted the office star, Christina, – my grandma feeds her cat food like that. The smell is about the same…
————————————————
Laughter, teasing, pats on the shoulder. Igor joked back, but inside he was protesting. The desire to bring lunches to work had completely disappeared.
But Galina still took care of her husband. She cooked, packed, packed, washed…
To avoid being laughed at any more, Igor accepted lunch from his wife and then carefully put the food in his bag, but he did not eat the lunch. Like everyone else, he bought some business lunch at a nearby cafe and threw away the container with the food that Galya had prepared.
In the evening he automatically said “thank you” to his wife, and the next morning he again took the container with the casserole.
“Have you eaten?” my wife would ask in the evening. “Was it tasty?”
“Yeah,” Igor waved it off. “Everything’s great. Thank you. Wonderful lunch.”
The man couldn’t admit to his wife that he threw away her food. That he spent money on lunches in cafes so as not to be a “poor man.” That his little container, collected with love, was sent to the trash every day.
Perhaps Galya would have tried for a long time to “please the garbage dump,” but the truth came to light in one moment.
– Gal, hi! – her mother called her. – Listen, I just saw your Igor. He was sitting in a street cafe with some young lady. Such a blonde, pretty. Do you know her?
– No. Mom, you must have made a mistake. Why should Igor go to a cafe for lunch? I give him food to take with him. Everything is homemade, hot off the stove. Today, for example, I made liver soufflé according to your recipe. How tender it turned out! Thank you very much. – Galina tensed up, but she did not want to continue the conversation with her mother about her husband.
– Yes? And really, I must have been mistaken. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I was riding in a taxi. I must have just seen a similar man there.
– Maybe.
After talking with her mother, Galya decided to call her husband. To ask him a direct question. And then it turned out that Igor had not eaten the lunch that Galya had prepared for him, having stood at the stove all morning. Moreover, he had not even looked into the container! After all, he did not know what was in it, having been caught during her inspection with eggplants.
In the evening, while cleaning his bag, Galina decided to check it and felt something heavy. There was a container inside. Full. Also packed. Not even opened.
She said nothing. She took it out, unpacked it, washed it and put in new fresh food for tomorrow.
The husband didn’t notice anything.
The next day, everything became clear. Galya was standing by the window and saw Igor walking toward the entrance. He walked past and suddenly… stopped at the trash can, took out the container, looked around, as if checking that he was not being followed… and threw out the food. Without regret, like trash.
Igor’s wife was waiting for him at home.
“Do you go to cafes?” she asked from the doorway.
“No,” he answered without looking her in the eyes.
– I saw. I saw you throwing away my lunch, Igor.
He remained silent.
– Why are you doing this? I’m trying! Don’t you like the way I cook? Or do you want something different, something special? Tell me. I’ll cook. I can cook anything you want!
In response, Igor looked at his wife with some regret.
– No need to cook anything! – he hissed. – Do you want to know why? Because I’m ASHAMED, you understand?! Because in our office it’s not customary to bring lunch from home! Because we have normal guys working here – they all go to cafes! And I’m like some kind of… schoolboy, with soup and a note from my mother!
“So, I’m not a wife now, but a mother?!” Galina turned pale.
— What does this have to do with you? It’s just… I feel uncomfortable. Besides, my bag isn’t meant for this. It’s not for carrying containers. It’s actually an accessory, not a food storage! Even my diary stinks of your culinary delights!
– That is… you are embarrassed that I love you. That I try. That I get up in the morning so that you can eat like a human being. It’s all shameful, right?
– You got it wrong!
– No, Igor, I understood everything exactly like that.
The next day the containers disappeared from the shelves. Galya solemnly sent them to the trash can.
She no longer got up early in the morning. She didn’t cook his favorite and healthy dishes. She didn’t write him sweet notes with wishes for the day. She simply began to live for herself.
At first Igor breathed a sigh of relief. He no longer had to think about how to throw out food unnoticed, how to “accidentally” forget the container at home, although his wife herself stuffed it into the bag, even if it shouldn’t fit there at all.
But then more changes happened…
Two months have passed.
The office management changed. The experienced and aged boss, Roman Sergeevich, immediately announced:
— Walks during lunch, as well as smoke breaks, are not welcome. We waste time. Now we have our own kitchen in the building, we put microwaves, tables and a refrigerator. We even have our own coffee machine, so that you, dear colleagues, no longer run for coffee to the neighboring area for half a day. So, our motto: home-cooked food is convenient, healthy and rational. As it is fashionable to say now “healthy food” (healthy food from English).
To set an example for his colleagues, Roman Sergeevich himself brought pasta with gravy and ate it in the company of colleagues, happily telling how his wife pickles cucumbers and treating everyone who wanted some.
“Delicious. My wife cooked it,” he said, beaming.
Igor seemed to have laughed at this Roman “Ogurchenko”, who was initially dubbed that way behind his back. But… soon… The same colleagues who laughed at Igor “Khryuchevnik”‘s containers were now sharing recipes and arguing about whose buckwheat was tastier and healthier.
And Igor… He was in shock. At the checkpoint, they didn’t let him out for lunch a couple of times, saying that each time he went out, he’d lose his bonus.
After starving, he began to bring food with him again, but due to the lack of ready-made food, he had to make sandwiches for himself. Igor soon got stomach pains again from the sandwiches. But he complained to his colleagues about it.
“Doesn’t your wife pack food for you?” Andrey asked.
– Did you quit your job as a cook or something? – laughed Christina. – Or do you just throw away her dinners, preferring bread and cheese?
Igor pursed his lips. He realized that his colleagues had simply changed their shoes within the framework of current realities. He didn’t want to answer them. And he didn’t want to carry sandwiches with a sore stomach even more.
– Galya… – he began in the evening. – Maybe you should start cooking again? My stomach hurts a bit.
– No, Igor, – Galya shook her head. – I don’t want my food to end up in the trash again. And with it – my love, my care, my soul.
– Are you still angry?
– No. I just began to value my work more highly.
She went into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. Igor had been sleeping separately for a long time, on the sofa in the living room…
A month later they filed for divorce.
– Are you getting divorced because of a container?! – the friends were surprised. – Seriously?
But the real reason was much deeper.
The divorce wasn’t about a piece of plastic. It was about the fact that the wife truly loved her husband – and he was ashamed of her love and too dependent on the opinions of strangers. For whom his marriage and his wife’s care were worth nothing.
