“You spend way too much on yourself,” my mother-in-law declared, looking at the shopping bags by the door. I looked up from my plate.
Then my eyes settled on her ears. Long gold earrings decorated with tiny green stones glittered under the kitchen lights. I had never seen them before.
“Those are lovely new earrings, Carmen,” I said calmly.
She immediately touched one with her fingertips.
“Thank you. I decided to treat myself.”
I smiled.
“Didn’t my husband happen to pay for those yesterday?”
Carmen’s hand froze beside her ear.
My husband, Javier, who was standing by the kitchen counter with a bottle of water in his hand, went completely still.
His sister Lucía suddenly looked up.
The silence that fell around the table gave me my answer immediately.
It was Sunday, a little after two in the afternoon.
Carmen and Lucía had come over for lunch. Everything had been going relatively well until Carmen noticed two shopping bags in the hallway.
I had gone shopping the day before.
A pair of pants, two blouses, and a pair of shoes.
Nothing extraordinary.
But Carmen had a special talent for turning every purchase I made into a family problem.
“Shopping again?” she had asked the moment she arrived.
“Yes.”
“But you bought clothes just last month.”
I had chosen not to answer.
During lunch, she returned to the subject several times.
First came a little comment about “women who don’t know how to save money.”
Then she told us about one of her neighbors who supposedly “spent her poor husband’s entire salary.”
And finally, she decided to address me directly.
“You spend way too much on yourself.”
That was when I noticed her earrings.
More importantly, I remembered something.
The previous evening, Javier had received a bank notification while his phone was lying on the table.
I hadn’t read his messages.
I hadn’t gone through his bank account.
But he had looked at the screen himself and murmured:
“Mom finally bought those earrings.”
I hadn’t thought anything of it.
Until now.
Carmen cleared her throat.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“I do.”
Javier slowly placed the bottle on the kitchen counter. “Elena…”
I turned toward him.
“What?”
“This isn’t the time.”
I let out a quiet laugh.
“Funny. Your mother apparently thought it was the perfect time to discuss my spending.”
Carmen frowned.
“Don’t mix everything together. I’m talking about your family budget.”
“Exactly. So am I.”
Lucía looked from her mother to her brother.
“Wait… Javier really paid for the earrings?”
Nobody answered.
“How much were they?” she asked.
Carmen straightened in her chair.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Interesting,” I said. “My shoes are your business, but the jewelry my husband paid for is nobody’s business?”
“That’s completely different!”
“Why?” “Because I’m his mother!”
She said it so naturally that even Javier closed his eyes for a second.
I gently pushed my plate away.
“Fine. Then tell me how much they cost.”
“Elena, stop.”
This time it was Javier.
I looked at him.
“Why should I?”
“Because this is going to turn into another argument.”
“Javier, your mother just told me in front of everyone that I spend too much money on myself. I simply want to understand her standards.”
Carmen folded her arms.
“I worry about my son.”
“Your son earns his own money. So do I.”
“Exactly. You should be thinking about your future instead of wasting it.”
I nodded slowly.
Then I picked up my phone.
“All right.”
“What are you doing?” Javier asked.
“Checking something.”
I opened my banking app.
“The pants: forty-nine euros. The two blouses: seventy-eight. The shoes: eighty-five.”
I looked up.
“Total: two hundred and twelve euros. Paid from my personal account.”
Carmen pursed her lips. “That’s not a small amount of money.”
“I agree.”
I looked at Javier.
“Now the earrings.”
He sighed.
“That isn’t necessary.”
“How much?”
“Elena…”
“How much, Javier?”
Lucía had stopped eating her dessert.
Carmen was staring at her son with an expression I knew very well.
A silent command: Don’t answer.
Javier ran a hand over his face.
“Three hundred and eighty euros.”
For a moment, I thought I had misheard him.
“Three hundred and eighty?”
Carmen immediately interrupted.
“They were on sale.”
I looked at her.
“Oh. Well, then everything’s fine.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“I’m not. I’m just trying to follow your logic. Two hundred and twelve euros for clothes I bought with my own money is wasteful. But three hundred and eighty euros for jewelry your son paid for is perfectly reasonable because it was on sale.”
Lucía lowered her head to hide a smile.
Carmen noticed.
“You think this is funny?”
“A little,” Lucía admitted.
“Of course. Nobody here respects me.”
I sighed.
We heard that sentence regularly too.
Whenever someone refused to agree with her, Carmen immediately decided they no longer respected her.
“Carmen, nobody is criticizing you for owning earrings.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing!”
“No. I’m criticizing you for monitoring my spending while happily letting Javier finance yours.”
She turned to her son.
“You’re going to let her speak to me like that?”
Javier was silent for several seconds.
Then, to my surprise, he sat down beside me.
“Mom, she’s not wrong.”
Carmen went pale.
“Excuse me?”
“You shouldn’t have made that comment about her shopping.”
“I was only trying to help you!”
“Then start by asking whether I need your help.”
“I’m your mother.”
“I know.”
“And a mother has every right to worry about her son.”
“To worry, yes. To decide how Elena spends her own salary, no.”
Carmen stared at him as though he had just betrayed her. “So now you’re taking her side against me.”
“There are no sides.”
“Of course there are!”
She abruptly pushed her chair back.
“Ever since you two got married, I have to watch every word I say!”
I raised my eyebrows.
“That would be a good start.”
Javier shot me a look.
I fell silent.
Carmen grabbed her handbag.
But before leaving, she turned toward me one last time.
“I just hope that one day, when you really need money, you remember all those shoes and useless clothes you bought.”
I looked at her earrings again.
“And will you remember the jewelry?”
She opened her mouth.
Then closed it again.
Lucía stood up too.
“Mom, wait for me.”
But Carmen was already in the hallway.
A few seconds later, the front door slammed shut.
Silence returned.
Javier remained sitting in front of his plate.
“You knew she was going to react like that,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you still provoked her.”
I slowly turned toward him.
“No, Javier. She provoked me. I simply answered.”
He said nothing. I picked up my phone again.
“But since we’re talking about money, there’s something else I’d like to understand.”
His expression changed.
“What?”
“How many times have you paid for things like that for your mother over the past few months?”
He looked away.
This time, my stomach tightened.
“Javier?”
“A few times.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know exactly.” I knew him well enough to understand what that answer meant.
He knew exactly.
“Show me.”
“Elena…”
“You just asked me to avoid an argument with your mother because she criticized two hundred euros’ worth of clothes I paid for myself. Meanwhile, you’ve been buying her things without ever telling me. So yes, now I want to know.”
He picked up his phone.
For almost a minute, he scrolled through his transactions.
Then he placed the phone in front of me.
I looked at the screen.
One hundred and twenty euros.
Two hundred and fifty.
Ninety.
Three hundred and eighty.
Another one hundred and sixty.
I slowly raised my eyes.
“All of this in four months?”
Javier nodded.
“She had some unexpected expenses.”
I pointed at the screen.
“Perfume is an unexpected expense?”
He didn’t answer.
“And a handbag?”
Still nothing.
I leaned back in my chair.
At that moment, Carmen’s earrings stopped being the real problem. The real problem was that my husband had been regularly financing his mother’s wants while expecting me to tolerate her comments about how we managed our money.
“Starting today,” I said, “we have a new rule.”
Javier looked up.
“What rule?”
“If your mother genuinely needs help, you can help her. I would never forbid you from doing that. But gifts, jewelry, handbags, and purchases worth several hundred euros? We discuss those first.”
“It’s my money too.”
“Exactly. ‘Too.’ And when a significant expense affects our shared budget, we talk about it.”
He remained silent.
Then he slowly nodded.
“Okay.”
I picked up my glass of water.
Almost immediately, my phone vibrated.
A message from Carmen.
I opened it.
“I hope you’re happy now. You’ve turned my son against me again.”
I showed Javier the screen.
He read the message, sighed, and picked up his own phone.
“What are you doing?” “Replying to her.” A few seconds later, he put his phone down.
“What did you write?”
He looked at me.
“That nobody turned me against her. And that the next time she wants four-hundred-euro earrings, maybe she shouldn’t start the conversation by criticizing my wife’s spending.”
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.
But Javier added:
“And I told her something else.”
“What?”
“That from now on, before I buy her anything expensive, I’ll talk to you about it first.”
I nodded.
Then I looked at the two shopping bags still sitting in the hallway.
Maybe those shoes really had been my best purchase of the month.