“Am I supposed to leave my own apartment so your brother can come here with his family? Have you mixed something up, darling?”
“This Saturday they’re supposed to deliver our new bed, Sasha! We’ll have to decide what to do with the old one, otherwise there won’t be anywhere to put the new one,” Dasha said to her husband when he came home from work.
“Saturday?” he asked.
“Yep!”
“There’s still time. We’ll think of something! And anyway, I’ll take care of it myself, so don’t worry! Okay?” he said.
“Yourself? Seriously?” Darya was surprised by that decision.
“Well… yes! Why are you so surprised?”
“It’s just that you can spend a whole week taking out the trash, Sasha! Even with all the reminders. And now suddenly you’re going to handle an entire bed by yourself!”
“Dasha, stop teasing me about that! Fine, I forgot about the trash back then! My hands were full, and anyway…”
“Of course! Of course you forgot! And the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that! And even today!” his wife smirked.
“Damn… Did I forget it again today?” he asked, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Yes!”
“I’ll take it out right now! Otherwise you won’t leave me alone!”
“Too late! I already threw everything away when I went to the store today! But if you want, you can go look for it somewhere in the dumpster!” Dasha smirked again.
“There! It’s started! I knew it!” Sasha said unhappily. “The trash-joke marathon has begun!”
“I wouldn’t call it a marathon. Just don’t say you’ll do something if you’re not actually planning to do it, Sasha!”
“I was planning to take out the trash, honestly, Dasha! I just forgot. It slipped my mind! You know I’m absent-minded!”
“I’m not only talking about the trash. You do this often in general, especially when you tell me something, when you promise me something! Just think about it. And think about the bed too, since you took responsibility for it,” his wife told him. “And preferably BEFORE Saturday!” she added, walking into another room.
“Fine!!!” Sasha answered his wife, slightly irritated, making it clear with his tone that he was sick of these conversations.
But Dasha did not react anymore, because such responses from her husband were nothing new. He did not like it when his wife pointed out what he failed to do, his unfulfilled promises, or criticized him in any way. It constantly pressured him, but he could do nothing about it. Besides, all those promises he made to Dasha seemed insignificant to him, because they were just household trifles. What he did not understand was that many things are built on such trifles. Even simple responsibility.
But when Dasha herself failed to do something around the house, and Sasha needed it badly, that was a real tragedy. Sasha could throw a tantrum at his wife over an unprepared dinner, because he was at work all day, you see, while Dasha, in his opinion, simply sat at home. But she was not sitting at home for no reason. Their entire department had been switched to remote work because several people had fallen ill. The company did not want to risk its employees, and while it had the opportunity, it gave everyone access to the company’s work database so they could work from home. So Dasha was working. Only she also managed to do household chores, the ones she had been putting off for a long time, and complete all her work tasks too. And she earned no less than her husband.
But Sasha was not particularly interested in that. To him, his wife’s requests were still like annoying flies.
The conversation about the bed took place on Monday. On Wednesday, Sasha received a call from his brother, who said that he and his family were planning to come visit their parents and, naturally, Sasha as well. But there was one problem with that plan, which became clear during the brothers’ conversation.
“Why do you sound so uncertain? You and Ksyukha are on vacation, so grab the kids and come!” Sasha told Makar.
“It’s not that simple! We want to come, sure, but where are the four of us supposed to stay? Ksyukha’s parents have a tiny apartment, and Grandma lives with our parents! Rent an apartment for a week? I’ll go broke. Ksyukha is on maternity leave, we have money for the trip, for tickets, for food there… but not for rent!”
“So that’s how it is?” Sasha asked thoughtfully. “Yeah…”
“Yep…”
“Listen, when do you want to come? And for how long?” The gears started turning in Sasha’s head.
“Next week! But we haven’t bought tickets yet. Though I don’t think there’ll be a problem with them.”
“Then buy them, don’t be stupid! As for where you’ll stay, we’ll figure something out here!” he assured Makar.
“Maybe we should figure it out first? It won’t be great if we arrive and still have nowhere to live for a whole week, Sanya! And Ksyukha won’t agree to travel with the kids like that. She needs certainty.”
“Okay, look!” Sasha strained his thinking even harder. “If you can’t stay with our parents or Ksyukha’s parents, and an apartment or hotel room is too expensive for you… then stay with me and Dashka. We just happen to have an old big bed right now. I think all of you will fit there perfectly!” Sasha said.
“Do you think your Dashka will agree to that? She doesn’t get along with Ksyukha after Ksyukha threw red wine on her because your wife came to our mom’s birthday wearing the same dress as her, back before we moved away…”
“Oh, come on, Makar!” Sasha smirked at the memory. “That was almost five years ago! I don’t think Dashka even remembers it anymore!”
“Seriously? Ksyukha still remembers it with some kind of manic anger in her voice and in her eyes!”
“Even if she does remember, she can go to her parents’ place if needed. She can stay with them for a week so she doesn’t have to cross paths with your wife! She works remotely anyway, and all she needs is her laptop and a folder of documents! I’ll drive her out of town and leave her there! And don’t be stupid, I’m telling you again, buy the tickets!”
“Well… all right… if you’re so sure about all this…”
“I’m telling you, everything will be great! I’ll talk to Dashka today or tomorrow and let you know whether she’ll stay home or run off to her parents.”
“All right,” Makar agreed with his younger brother.
When Sasha came home from work, he found his wife working. Dasha was sitting on the living-room floor, surrounded by documents, typing something on her laptop and occasionally glancing from one paper to another.
“Hi!” Sasha said, letting his work-focused wife know he had come home.
“Hi! How was your day?” Dasha smiled at him from the floor.
“Fine, nothing special, honestly,” he replied. “And yours? What did you do all day?”
“The same thing I’m doing now! This morning my manager called and said another department is also being switched to remote work. Half of their workload was transferred to our department while those people get used to the new working conditions. Some are installing our programs, some are dealing with other things. Can you imagine, one girl doesn’t even have a computer at home, so our IT guy had to bring her a computer from work and install everything there… Anyway, now they’ve dumped some of their work on us, and I only crawl out of this pile of papers to stretch my legs and back because they go numb!” Dasha told her husband the day’s news.
“Yeah… Sounds fun over there! And how long will all this last?” Sasha responded rather flatly to his wife’s story.
“No idea! Until everyone recovers, probably. Or until the risk of someone else getting sick disappears. Honestly, I don’t even want to ask. Working from home is much more comfortable for me! I get more work done, and I still manage to do housework!”
“Mmm…”
“Why do you look so down? Or thoughtful…” Dasha asked with concern, noticing that Sasha did not have his usual enthusiasm. “Oh! By the way, did you sort out the bed? Did you find where to take it, how to move it, with whom? The new one is about to arrive and…”
“Actually, about that…”
“What?” Darya asked tensely.
“Let’s hold off on moving the old bed for now.”
“Why? What do we need it for?”
“Basically, here’s the thing, Dasha… Next week, I think on Monday, Makar is coming with his wife and kids, and they need somewhere to stay. So I think the bed will come in handy. There are two of them, plus two kids. We’ll put it here in the living room for now so they can…”
“No!” Dasha interrupted her husband categorically.
She did not even want to hear about it.
“Wait, Dasha! It’s Makar! What are we supposed to do, throw him and his family out onto the street?” Sasha asked his wife, not understanding.
“Why throw them out? We simply won’t let them in here, that’s all! Especially his wife! I’d rather drag her by the hair for what she did back then at your mother’s birthday!” Sasha’s wife said, putting the laptop aside and getting up from the floor.
“Dasha! Come on! That was so long ago! It’s high time you forgot and forgave it! Why are you acting like some bitter teenager?” Sasha smirked.
“Seriously? Fine! But first, let her apologize to me. Then let her pay for the dress she ruined back then, and for the dry cleaner’s where they finished destroying it and still charged me for it! Then I’ll think about whether to forgive her or not. But I will never let her into my apartment! Makar and the children, yes. Her, never!”
“Why do you hate her so much? She just splashed wine on you in front of everyone back then. You got angry at each other for a bit and then forgot about it!”
“No-o-o!” Dasha said with a sly, wicked smile. “Never!”
“Dasha, they’ve already bought the tickets! They’re already getting ready! So why don’t you go to your parents’ place in the country for a week while they stay with us? They have nowhere else to live! There isn’t enough space for the four of them at our parents’ place. Only our apartment is left! And I told Makar we were waiting for them!”
“What did you tell him? Our apartment? Since when did my apartment become ours, remind me? And why on earth…”
“Calm down already!!!” Sasha shouted at his wife. “Just pack your things and go to your parents!!! We’ll figure out later what belongs to whom and where! Right now…”
“Am I supposed to leave my own apartment so your brother can come here with his family? Have you mixed something up, darling?”
“What’s so wrong with that? What are they going to do to you here? Steal something? Ruin something? And what about the kids? Where are they supposed to go? Think about it, Dasha!”
“Why should I care, Sasha? Those are your brother’s problems, not mine! Let them rent an apartment by the day, a hotel room, whatever. They can figure something out, but I’m not letting them in here! I don’t care! Let them sleep on the street if they have to!”
“So that’s how it is, my dear wife, yes?” Sasha asked angrily. “That’s how you treat my relatives?”
“I treat them exactly the way they deserve, Sasha! More precisely, not them, but her specifically! Makar’s precious wife! Of all people, she is the one whose foot should not even cross this threshold. Otherwise she’ll either fly headfirst off the balcony or tumble down the stairs! I don’t need that kind of ‘filth’ here!”
“I don’t care how you feel about her! I need Makar to come visit! I haven’t seen my brother in ages, and he won’t go anywhere without her and the kids!”
“Then solve those problems yourself, but not at my expense, if you need it so badly! And this conversation is over!”
Sasha became extremely angry at his wife for such an attitude toward him and his relatives. On Friday evening, he went to his parents’ place to talk about his brother’s arrival and never came home afterward.
And the bed he had promised to deal with himself was still standing in the bedroom, taking up the space meant for the new one.
On Saturday morning, the new bed was delivered. Luckily, it was in boxes and disassembled, and the delivery men brought everything into the hallway. But it could not be left there either, so Dasha called her father and asked him to come help her, because her dear beloved husband Sasha had apparently gotten lost somewhere in his thoughts about how and where to accommodate his beloved brother and his little family.
Within an hour, Dasha’s father disassembled the old bed, quickly made arrangements with an acquaintance, and had it taken away. After that, he came back to assemble the new one. When everything was done, he asked his daughter:
“So what about that husband of yours? Protecting his little hands? Can’t do simple men’s work around the house?” her father asked with a smirk.
“He worries more about his other family, Dad…”
“Really? What other family?”
“His brother is coming with his wife and kids, so Sasha is more worried about them than about our life together! Instead of thinking that it’s already time for us to have children of our own…”
“Your mother and I told you he was an unreliable fellow, but you kept telling us, ‘I love him so much I can’t help it!’”
“That happened…”
“And now?”
“I don’t know, Dad! I don’t have any confidence in him anymore. If I ever did, it has evaporated over time!”
“Then divorce him and stop driving each other crazy! There’s no point in your marriage anyway! He doesn’t want to do anything for the home, for his own family. Everything is always for someone else! He couldn’t even remove a bed in a week so the new one could be assembled afterward! And that’s not even mentioning the fact that he lives in your apartment and has no desire to expand your living space for children!”
“How do you know that?” Dasha did not understand, because she had never heard that herself.
When she and her husband had discussed buying another, larger apartment, he would simply dodge the subject, but he had never told her anything like that.
“He told me himself! Said he was fine as things were and saw no reason to drive himself into debt!”
“Seriously?”
“Yes! It was when his car was acting up and he came over so I could take a look at it because he didn’t want to pay money at a repair shop!”
After hearing that from her father, Dasha truly started thinking about ending this pointless marriage. Why did she need such a husband? But she made her final decision only on Monday, the very day his brother arrived.
Until that day, Sasha still had not appeared at home, explaining to Dasha that he was thinking about how to accommodate Makar and his family. And on Monday afternoon, Sasha, Makar, his wife, and their children showed up at Dasha’s home with suitcases.
“Come in, make yourselves comfortable!” Sasha told them all. “We have an extra bed in there. I’ll change clothes now and move it into the living room for you, and Dashka and I will assemble our new one.”
“No. You and I won’t be assembling anything! Everything has already been assembled, and that old bed is gone!” Dasha said, coming out of the living room. “And no one is staying here. I already told you that, Sasha!”
“Sanya! You said everything was settled and that Dasha didn’t mind! Hi, by the way!” Makar greeted Sasha’s wife.
“Dasha! Stop embarrassing me!” Sasha whispered quietly to his wife. “And what do you mean, there’s no bed?”
“Maybe if you wander around somewhere a little more, I’ll change the lock too!” she answered her husband. “Hi, Makar!” she nodded to her husband’s older brother.
“So what are you suggesting I do now? Put them on the floor? Fine, then they’ll take our bed, and you and I…”
“That’s enough! No one is staying here or spending the night! And neither are you, by the way, my dear!”
“I told you this tramp was unreliable!” Ksenia, Makar’s wife, said.
“And you’d better shut that little mouth of yours while you still have something left in it to chew food with, sweetheart! All of you, as one friendly group, go find yourselves another shelter!”
“Thanks, Sanya! I knew we couldn’t rely on you!”
Makar shut his wife up when she started snapping back at Dasha’s words and led his family out of the apartment. Sasha wanted to say something to his wife, but he only looked at her with anger and ran after HIS family.
After that whole cheerful group left, Dasha called her father again and asked him to change the lock on the door that same day, if he had time, of course. But for his daughter, he could always find time. On the way to Dasha’s place, he stopped by a store, bought a lock, came over, and quickly replaced it.
The next day, Dasha filed for divorce, because Sasha had not come home the entire previous day, nor had he gone to work.
But now everyone’s priorities were clear, and everyone knew what they wanted. Sasha wanted to please all his relatives and somehow get revenge on Dasha for humiliating him in front of his brother’s family. And Dasha wanted to find a husband for whom she and their shared family would come first — preferably one who also had his own apartment, because it is better to look for a husband of the same status as yourself, although that is not so easy.