The only problem she could see possibly disrupting their love was his lack of desire for children. To be fair, he had told her this toward the beginning of their relationship, one night when they met outside of the School of Management where he took classes. As they walked back to the parking lot, she’d made a glum joke about her ovaries shutting down because she and the social worker in charge of guiding her fieldwork had removed a twelve-year-old boy who had beat his six-year-old sister to the point of unconsciousness with a baseball bat for daring to scratch up one of his Xbox games from his home just a few hours earlier.
After forcing her to explain and re-explain the ovaries joke due to his lack of English vocabulary regarding women’s fertility organs, he had said. “I must tell you, I do not wish for children.”
“Really?” she said. “But you’d make a great daddy. Why not?”
“I have reasons. “
“You wanna share any of them with me?” she asked, taking his large hand in both of her smaller ones as they walked.
“My parents are dead. Both their dying very hard for me. When my mother die, I am only child, but I miss her very much. I do not want my child to suffer. Also I do not like the children. They are loud and maybe they are not thanking the parents for anything. I do not think I can be good father to somebody who is like this.”
She had stroked his face and said, “A lot of women who get out of an abusive relationship have trouble dating again. They’re all like, ‘What if the same thing happens and he turns out to be an abusive asshole?’ Or they think they maybe don’t like men anymore. Or they’re afraid they won’t be a good girlfriend after what they went through. And we tell them you can’t live your life according to what might happen. You gotta get back out there. Otherwise your ex wins.”
He gave her a sad smile and squeezed one of her hands. “This is very good advice, Eva, but maybe not for me.”
Then before she could put forward another argument for children, he kissed her and changed the subject to the elective courses he was considering taking the following fall.
After that conversation, Eva hadn’t brought the subject of kids up again. She wasn’t particularly pro having children herself, especially after a year in the social work program. She’d only been half-joking about that monstrous boy making her not want to have them. Besides, they were in their twenties and hadn’t even started their respective careers yet. She figured there would be plenty of time to try to change his mind.
Just then, the landline rang, interrupting her thoughts about the future of Alexei’s and her relationship.
“Eva, it’s Mr. Sanders,” Alexei’s landlord said when she picked up the phone. His voice sounded nervous and shaky. “Alexei stopped by this morning, and I was just calling back to let him know I found another repair man and he’ll be stopping by today.”
So even two loads of laundry and unexpected morning sex hadn’t stopped Alexei from harassing his landlord. Poor guy.
“Thanks, we really appreciate it,” she said, trying to make up for her boyfriend. “Do I need to be here?”
“No, he’ll come up with me and we’ll knock on the door. So if you’re not home, I can let him in.”
Eva got off the phone, shaking her head. Alexei was a total teddy bear, but most people couldn’t tell that just by looking at him. So simple requests from him tended to come off way more intimidating than they should have. She’d learned to just accept they were always going to get better service than normal couples, because he had a way of asking for things that made other folks feel like he might do them some kind of bodily harm if his demands weren’t met.
As if to confirm her assessment of Alexei’s influence, a knock sounded on the door. She glanced at the clock. The fix-it guy had arrived at twelve noon on the dot.
But when she opened the door, instead of a plumber and Alexei’s landlord, there stood two men in business suits, one a tall, beefy, middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair, the other a much younger, skinny guy in glasses.
“Hi,” she said carefully, wondering why two men in suits would be at their door. “Can I help you?”
“Eva St. James?” the younger man asked. He had a slight accent she couldn’t place, but otherwise spoke in a business-like manner.
“Yes, that’s me,” she said. Then asked again. “Can I help you?”
“I am Michael,” he said, “And this is Sergei Rustanov. Alexei Rustanov’s uncle.”
Her eyes widened. Like any good Texas girl, her first thought was if she’d known company was coming by, she would have cleaned up a little. “Oh, I’m sorry. Alexei isn’t here and the apartment is a mess.”
The uncle, who had a craggy face which looked like it had been sculpted from cement, moved past her and into the apartment. His size made it easy for him to barge in and Eva instinctively jumped out of the way to let him pass. Now she knew where Lexie got it from. She was forever chastising him about charging down the campus sidewalks like he owned them, forcing other people to move aside as opposed to sharing the sidewalk like a civilized human being.
“Really, sir, the apartment is in no state for guests,” she said to Sergei’s back.
“He does not speak English,” Michael said behind her. “That is why I am here. To translate. May I come in?”
Eva frowned. “So you’re here to talk to me, not Alexei?”
“Yes.”
“Um, okay, then, come on in. There’s not really any place to sit. We don’t have a couch or anything—“
Sergei took one look at the table, which was covered with her unfolded clothes and swept it clean with one swoop of his large arm before taking a seat as if he hadn’t just knocked all her clean clothes to the floor.
“Mr. Rustanov would like for us to talk at the table,” Michael said, indicating with a sweeping gesture of his hand that she, too, should sit.
Suddenly feeling like a guest in her own home, Eva took a seat in the chair across from Sergei. “We only have two chairs,” she said to Michael.
“That is quite all right,” he said. “I will stand.”
Without any further ado, Sergei held her gaze and said something in a stream of Russian.
“He wants to know what Alexei’s told you about his family,” Michael said.
“Not much,” Eva answered, her unease growing by the minute. “Just that his parents died and his father left him enough money to study over here.”
Michael translated and Sergei looked away, obviously irritated. He then said something else in Russian.
“Anything else?”
She shook her head. “Um, not much. Sometimes I hear him arguing with his uncle—“ She stopped herself and addressed Sergei directly as she’d had been taught to in her special “Talking to the Deaf” master class. “Talking to you on the phone in Russian. I’m just going to go on and assume you’re the uncle he’s talking to. You seem like the kind of guy who’d be totally down for a weekly TransAtlantic argument. By the way, did you have to dump my clothes on the floor? Those were freshly washed.”
Once again, Michael translated. She could tell when he got to the part about the clothes and the weekly arguments, because the uncle’s eyes narrowed to slits.
He said something to Michael, who said, “From now on I will speak in the first person as if I am Mr. Rustanov himself. He has much to say and would prefer that you not interrupt.”
“I’ll try,” Eva said. “But us Texas girls aren’t exactly known for our not-interrupting skills.”
This time Michael didn’t translate, and he said in an aside to Eva, “I know you think you are being funny, but I am strongly advising you to do as he says.”
Something in his tone alerted Eva that this wasn’t just a strange situation, but a possibly dangerous one. Her mind scrambled, trying to figure out if she should stay there and listen or run for her life. But in the end, her curiosity won out. “Okay, I can be quiet,” she said.
This Michael translated, and Sergei nodded before folding his large hands on the table in front of him and speaking in large chunks, stopping every five sentences or so to let Michael translate:
“You may be a nice girl. I don’t know. I don’t care. Russia is not like America. We are not so enthusiastic about the races mixing. If Alexei were to bring you home, it will not be good for the Rustanov family. People would ask us, what is this? I do not want Alexei with an American girl, especially not a black one.”
Growing up in a mostly white Texas town, Eva had encountered her share of racism, but never anything quite this straightforward and blatant. She opened her mouth but Michael shook his head and tapped a warning finger against his lips twice. The protest died as something told her she should keep her mouth closed, even if Sergei was saying he didn’t want Alexei and her to be together because of her nationality and even more so, the color of her skin. There was something about this man. He seemed to be everything people thought her Lexie was, almost casually dangerous to the point that she had no problem imagining him pulling out a gun and shooting her for being disrespectful.