: The boy accidentally finds out that his father’s first wife had trouble. The boy searches for a lonely woman, begins to patronize her and becomes her closest person.
The narration is conducted on behalf of the sixth grader Sergei Emelyanov.
Sergei Emelyanov has the same name as his father, and therefore a story happened to him, because of which he refused to travel to the sea. It began three years ago, when Sergei was in sixth grade.
Sergey's parents were an exemplary family. They designed very secret factories and often went on long business trips, and in their free time from business trips they led a sports club at the school where Sergei studied. Sports and white-toothed, “they did everything in life as if overfulfilled” - they ran in the mornings, went skiing and hiking, spent Sundays in the yard, sang songs at demonstrations.
Sergey believed that he had the right to make mistakes, since his best parents in the world did so much good and right. The boy studied not as perfectly as the teachers would like, and according to the teacher of zoology, he violated the laws of heredity.
In the lessons, Sergey told his best friend Anton, a fat, thorough and very shy person who knew everything, but at the blackboard he began to stutter and “perished from embarrassment”. For clues, both friends often found themselves on an "emergency desk", standing right next to the teacher's desk.
Sergey looked like a grandmother on her mother’s side - he also liked to go to the movies and did not like to run in the mornings. He stayed with her when his parents went on business trips.
Dad and mother every day in turn wrote letters to Sergey and grandmother, usually the boy received them with morning mail. One morning, the boy took out not one, but two letters from the mailbox. The envelope of the second letter read: "Sergei Emelyanov." Sergei thought it was him and opened the envelope, but the letter was intended for his father.
Unfamiliar woman, signed with the initials "N. E. ”, wrote to Sergey’s father that she had trouble, and asked to come in. From the letter it was clear that once she also asked him for help, but he did not come. The woman called Seryozha's father his closest man.
Sergey did not like this letter. He felt that his settled life in an ideal family was in danger of an unknown danger, but he could not consult with his grandmother or Anton. Sergey decided to find out everything himself and went to the address written on the envelope.
I, having not done anything yet, decided to defend myself the only thing that distinguished me from many and what I was proud of: the exemplary character of our family.
Unknown N. E. lived in a communal apartment. The boy was afraid that he would see a young beauty, but a middle-aged, alarmed woman in glasses with thick glasses revealed to him.
The woman's name was Nina Georgievna. Long ago, before the war, she was the wife of Seryozha's father. Then he was painful and weak, he worked and studied in absentia. In the first year of the war, he was very concussed, Nadezhda Georgievna was leaving her husband, but he had insomnia for a long time. Now Sergey’s father slept without dreams and did not remember his first wife.
At home, Sergey realized that his grandmother knew about Nina Georgievna and respected her son-in-law not at all as much as it seemed before. Sergey took a fresh look at family relationships. Reading letters from his parents, he realized that his mother misses her home much more strongly than her father, who was always guided by the concepts of “reasonable”, “unreasonable” and “social duty”.
Sergei was ashamed of his father, who abandoned the man who saved his life. Then the boy thought that any doctor could save his father’s life and he could achieve everything in life without Nina Georgievna. Reassuring himself, Sergei went to school.
At school, he remembered that he did not even ask what trouble Nina Georgievna had, after classes he went to her and first of all asked why she had a falling out with his father.
Nina Georgievna did not quarrel with her husband, they simply broke up, because she was much older than him. After the divorce, she adopted Shurik, a boy from an orphanage who was lost during the war.
Now Shurik was in his sixteenth year, his real parents found him and Nina Georgievna was afraid that her son would leave her, therefore she turned to Sergey’s father for support - there was no one else. Realizing how lonely this woman was, in spite of himself, he promised to come to her every day.
Wanting to console a person, sometimes you promise him something that is then impossible to accomplish. Or almost impossible.
At home, Sergey convinced himself that it was not necessary to fulfill this promise, but the next day he nevertheless went to Nina Georgievna. The door was opened to him by a neatly dressed and handsome guy - Shurik. Nina Georgievna was not at home, and Shurik was packing his suitcase to leave without saying goodbye.
As if making excuses, Shurik said that Nina Georgievna, of course, is very kind and loves him, but now he has recognized his father and wants to live with him. He believed that without Nina Georgievna he would not have died, and his adoptive mother was “not of this world” and could ruin him with her kindness. Shurik spoke with clear, correct phrases, just like Serezhin’s father.
Nina Georgievna worked as a doctor at school and arranged home consultations. Taking Sergey as her patient, Shurik asked Nina Georgievna to wait and tell how he worried about her and "mentally said goodbye to her."
In response, Shurik offered to do some kind of service to Sergei, but when he learned that he was from another school, he said that it would not be useful to him. Sergei became curious, and Shurik said that Nina Georgievna sees very poorly, does not notice how the guys at the school “knock” high temperature on thermometers, and writes them sick. Shurik once himself suggested this method to officially miss lessons to his classmates.
Shurik left, leaving the keys to the apartment on the table so that there was no turning back. Sergei involuntarily compared him to his father, and he became unpleasant, he tried to convince himself that his father and Shurik had abandoned Nina Georgievna in different ways.
Nina Georgievna immediately guessed that Shurik was gone forever, and began to justify his son. Sergei got angry and told her how Shurik used her myopia. Nina Georgievna even found an excuse here - she is not a pediatrician, but a neuropathologist, and if this happened, then she has no right to treat children.
From that moment Sergey began to grow up, heedlessness left his life. Now he felt obligated to protect and patronize Nina Georgievna instead of her father and Shurik. But in order to come to her again, Sergey needed a reason. He decided to prove that Nina Georgievna is a good doctor and can treat children.
Usually, the boy easily found a way out of any situation with the help of some deception or a hoax, so at first he decided to pretend to be sick and ask Nina Georgievna to treat him, but quickly realized that he could not deceive her. Then he remembered Anton, who really needed to be treated for stuttering. Nina Georgievna will cure him, and then Anton’s mother will write her thanks.
However, Nina Georgievna did not deceive this ploy.
To get away from a person, one must sometimes come up with false reasons. Because the true ones are too cruel. But in order to come, nothing needs to be invented. You just have to come, and that’s it ...
Sergei asked if it was true that his father had not wanted to help her for the first time. Nina Georgievna said that classmates made Shurika “dark” when he was in fourth grade. To take revenge, Shurik gave his mother all the secrets of his offenders and demanded that she inform the school principal and be punished.
Nina Georgievna refused. Shurik made a tantrum, Nina Georgieva decided that her son needed a “strong male conversation” and asked Seryozha's father for help, but he did not come.
Three years have passed. All this time Sergey visited Nina Georgievna, but her parents never found out about it. Six months ago, Sergei's parents moved to another city, closer to the objects that they designed. The boy promised that he would come to Nina Georgievna, grandmother and Anton every summer.
The last summer holidays of Sergey have come. Before entering the institute, his father decided to take him to the sea. Airplane tickets were already bought when Sergey received a letter from Nina Georgievna. She wrote that she refused to work in a pioneer camp and is waiting for him.
Sergei wrote a long answer in which he explained that he would come only in January, but could not send him off and become the third loss of Nina Georgievna. He refused to rest, quarreled strongly with his father and went to take a ticket.
