My mother-in-law placed the receipt on the table as if she had just uncovered evidence of a crime.
“€147?!” I looked up from my coffee.
Carmen was standing in the middle of my kitchen, the long, crumpled receipt between her fingers. Her handbag was still hanging from her shoulder, and she had barely even unbuttoned her coat.
She had been in our home for less than five minutes. And she had already found something to criticize.
“Yes,” I replied calmly. “One hundred and forty-seven euros.”
She waved the receipt in front of me.
“But what on earth are you buying to spend that much money on food?!”
I looked at the receipt.
Then at the grocery bags still sitting beside the refrigerator.
It was Saturday morning. Javier and I had returned from the supermarket half an hour earlier. We had bought groceries for the entire week: meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, cheese, coffee, household supplies, and a few other things.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing luxurious.
But judging by Carmen’s expression, you would have thought we had emptied the reserves of the Bank of France.
“Groceries,” I replied.
She frowned.
“Don’t make fun of me, Elena.”
“I’m not.”
Carmen started reading the receipt again.
“Two packages of salmon…”
“Yes.”
“Chicken.”
“Yes.”
“Beef!”
“Still yes.”
She suddenly looked up.
“And cheese that costs almost nine euros!”
I calmly took another sip of coffee.
“Javier likes that cheese.”
As if he had heard his name, my husband walked into the kitchen at that exact moment.
He was carrying two bottles of water he had just brought in from the car.
“What’s going on?”
His mother immediately turned toward him.
“Javier, do you know how much your little trip to the supermarket cost you?”
He put the bottles on the counter.
“About a hundred and fifty euros, I think.”
“One hundred and forty-seven euros and thirty-two cents!”
Javier shrugged.
“Okay.”
His complete lack of reaction seemed to throw Carmen off.
“What do you mean, ‘okay’?”
“Well… we bought groceries.”
“But there are only two of you!”
I looked at Javier.
He looked at me.
Then we both looked at his mother.
“Yes, Mom,” he said. “There are two of us.”
“Then why do you buy so much?”
I almost laughed.
But I stopped myself.
Carmen put the receipt on the table and began taking things out of the grocery bags.
Without asking permission, of course.
She picked up a package of coffee.
“This costs far too much.”
Then a bottle of olive oil.
“And this too.”
Next, she pulled out a box of cherry tomatoes.
“Why buy these? Regular tomatoes are cheaper.”
I crossed my arms.
“Because I like these.”
She gave me a stern look.
“That’s exactly the problem.”
“What problem?”
“You buy whatever you feel like without thinking.”
Javier sighed.
“Mom…”
But she continued.
“When I was your age, I knew how to manage a budget.”
I smiled faintly.
That sentence came up regularly.
According to Carmen’s own memories, when she was my age, she had known how to do absolutely everything better than I did.
She cooked better.
She cleaned better.
She saved money better.
She raised children better.
She ran a household better.
Listening to her, you would think she had managed her home with the efficiency of a finance minister.
“I compared prices,” she continued. “I watched every cent.”
“That’s very good.”
“I didn’t buy salmon every week.”
“Neither do we.”
“It’s right there.”
“Because we’re eating it tomorrow.”
Carmen sighed as though I were being particularly slow.
“Elena, do you really not see the problem?”
“No.”
She pointed at the receipt.
“You spend too much.”
This time, I put down my cup.
“We do?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second.
“Well… mostly you.”
There it was.
I had been wondering how long it would take her to reach that conclusion.
Not long.
“Why mostly me?”
“Because you’re the one who does the grocery shopping.”
“Javier was with me today.”
“Yes, but I know my son.”
I slowly turned my head toward Javier.
He closed his eyes for a second.
He knew that phrase too.
“I know my son.”
Carmen’s favorite sentence.
She used it every time she wanted to explain something about Javier that Javier himself had never actually said.
“My son never needed all these things,” she continued.
Javier opened the refrigerator.
“Mom, I need to eat.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He took out a bottle of water.
“I’m not being ridiculous.”
Carmen turned back to me.
“I’m simply saying that you need to know how to save money.”
“We do save money.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
That made me smile.
“And how exactly would you know?”
She fell silent.
“Do you know how much we have in savings?”
“No.”
“Our income?”
“Javier has told me about his salary before.”
I immediately looked at my husband.
He shook his head.
“Years ago,” he clarified.
“And mine?” I asked.
Carmen pursed her lips.
“That’s not the point.”
“It is, actually.”
For years, my mother-in-law had had this strange habit of talking about our money as though it belonged exclusively to her son.
If we bought a new sofa, I had “spent Javier’s money.”
If we went on vacation, I had “convinced Javier to pay for a trip.”
If I ordered something for the house, once again it was “Javier’s money.”
The fact that I had worked full-time since I was twenty-three apparently didn’t matter.
“Elena earns very good money,” Javier said.
Carmen waved a hand dismissively.
“I never said she didn’t.”
“Then why do you always talk as if she lives off me?”
“I never said that either.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You said it last Tuesday.”
She turned toward me.
“What?”
“You told Lucía that I had expensive tastes because Javier lets me spend too much.”
Silence fell over the kitchen.
Javier looked at his mother.
“Did you really say that?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it was a joke!”
“It wasn’t a joke,” I replied.
Carmen slammed the package of cheese onto the counter.
“You always take everything personally.”
“Because you make personal comments about me.”
“I’m only trying to help you.”
“By inspecting our receipts?”
Her face reddened slightly.
“The receipt was just lying there.”
“In my bag.”
Another silence.
Javier looked at the bag sitting on a chair.
Then at his mother.
“Mom, did you go through Elena’s bag?”
“Go through it? What a dramatic way to put it!”
“The receipt was inside my wallet,” I added.
This time, even Javier looked surprised.
“Seriously?”
Carmen stiffened.
“I was looking for a tissue.”
“In my wallet?”
She opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
I slowly pushed back my chair and stood up.
I wasn’t even angry anymore.
Mostly, I was tired.
Tired of having to explain why we bought a certain kind of cheese.
Why we chose a certain sofa.
Why we stayed at a certain hotel.
Why I wore a certain dress.
Why we changed cars.
Why I spent my own money however I wanted.
“Carmen,” I said calmly, “our finances are none of your business.”
Her expression changed immediately.
“I’m Javier’s mother.”
“Yes.”
“So I have the right to worry about him.”
“You can worry.”
I pointed toward my wallet.
“But you don’t have the right to go through my things.”
“I didn’t go through anything!”
“Fine. Then you don’t have the right to comment on our spending.”
“So I’m supposed to stand by and watch while you waste my son’s money?”
This time, even Javier put his bottle down sharply.
“Mom.”
But I raised my hand slightly.
I wanted to answer her myself.
“What money of your son’s?”
“Don’t play with words.”
“I’m not playing with words. I’m asking you a question.”
She pointed toward the groceries.
“All of this!”
“We split the bill.”
Carmen blinked.
“What?”
“Javier paid seventy-four euros. I paid the rest.”
Javier nodded.
“Exactly.”
She stared at her son.
“You even split the grocery bill?”
“Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It depends.”
“What a strange way to live…”
I let out a small laugh.
“See? Even after finding out your son isn’t paying for everything, you still manage to find something to criticize.”
“Because I don’t understand why you need to spend so much!”
And that was when my patience finally ran out.
I picked up the receipt from the table.
I looked at it one last time.
Then I raised my eyes to Carmen.
“Why do you spend so much money on groceries?!” she repeated irritably.
I smiled.
“Because your son, strangely enough, likes to eat every day.”
Javier choked back a laugh.
Carmen froze.
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious.”
I started putting the groceries away.
“He eats in the morning. Sometimes even at lunchtime. And you won’t believe this, but in the evening, he does it again.”
Javier leaned against the counter, clearly amused.
“It’s true, Mom. I’ve had this problem since childhood.”
“Javier, stay out of this.”
“You’ve been talking about me for the last ten minutes,” he replied. “I think I’m allowed to get involved.”
Carmen grabbed her handbag.
“Fine. Do whatever you want.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” I replied.
She gave me a wounded look.
“You never accept any advice.”
I closed the refrigerator.
“Advice is when someone says, ‘If you want, I can give you my opinion.’”
I pointed toward my wallet.
“Going through my things and then demanding to know why I spend my own money isn’t advice.”
Carmen looked at Javier, probably hoping he would defend her.
He didn’t.
“Mom, Elena is right.”
Those four words had more effect than anything I had said up to that point.
Carmen stood motionless.
“Of course,” she muttered. “She’s always right.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Ever since you got married, you always take her side.”
Javier sighed.
“No. I take the side of the person who’s right.”
“And obviously, that’s never your mother.”
“Today, it isn’t.”
Carmen’s face hardened.
She put on her coat without another word.
Then she headed toward the door.
Before leaving, she turned around.
“One day, when you really have money problems, you’ll remember what I told you.”
I picked up the nine-euro cheese and put it in the refrigerator.
“Maybe.”
Then I closed the door.
“But until then, we’re going to keep feeding Javier.”
He burst out laughing.
Carmen was considerably less amused.
A few seconds later, the front door slammed shut.
Javier remained silent for a moment.
Then he opened the refrigerator.
“You know what?”
“What?”
He took out the famous cheese.
“After all that, I’m hungry.”
I looked at him.
“Of course you are.”
He took out two plates.
“Want some?”
“Yes.”
He cut two pieces and handed one to me.
I tasted it.
Then I looked at the label.
“Nine euros, though.”
Javier nodded solemnly.
“Maybe Mom had a point.”
I gave him a light shove on the shoulder.
He started laughing.
And so did I.
Because after years of trying to keep everyone happy, I had finally understood something very simple:
It wasn’t Carmen’s place to decide how much we should spend, what we should buy, or how we should live.
She was entitled to her opinion.
But our home, our money, and our refrigerator belonged to us.
And as long as Javier continued to have that strange habit of eating every single day, I would continue buying groceries.