Family Matters

By TeresaTaylor

Based on the true story of a naïve young woman who falls victim to the charms of a smart, handsome and sexy college boy who becomes her abusive (but addictive) husband, this is a romance gone bad. Only through the unwanted efforts of her overly protective family and their questionable connections does she find freedom, independence and eventually love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AbsolutelyAmazingEbooks.com
• Release date: Jan 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370386642

Book preview

Foreword

This is called fact-based fiction for a reason. To paraphrase a famous memoirist whose story was found to be partly fictitious, I acknowledge I changed some things. Let me assure you that the main elements of the plot are based on events I lived. To an extent, however, the fabric of the story has been embroidered to disguise characters or add color.

There is no Loreto College in the United States. I invented names for my dead mother’s sisters, simply on the basis that they sounded Italian. Uncle Frank is a pseudonym for a powerful family member who realized I was in trouble and helped achieve my safety. This person owned a gun but the allusion to criminal connections is conjecture. I had a best friend like Erin, who listened to me always, and I have her still. The boy I married and I chose separate paths years ago. I do not know where he is.

You know already that I survived, so don’t worry too much about the girl I was.

- Teresa Taylor

March 2014

1

The thing was, I could picture my uncle chopping my husband’s head off. Or sending someone else to do it, and then wanting the head as proof. I could visualize a dark SUV pulling up next to Joseph on a slick darkened sidewalk, and his disappearance leaving all of us pretending to guess what happened, even though we’d know.

That’s why I felt so uneasy sitting with Uncle Frank at Aunt Mary’s dining room table as she came in from the kitchen.

Frank, you want an espresso?

Yeah, an espresso would be good.

Kitty, some iced coffee? I’ll bring some biscotti.

They still called me Kitty. At 24, I felt more like Katherine, but in her house, it was Kitty. Yes, thanks, I said. I had no appetite, but it was like lockdown. As the orphan in the family, I did what I was told – or suggested – in Aunt Mary’s house. I did not refuse food or drink, or refuse to meet with Uncle Frank when he wanted to talk. Brought up in this family, I wasn’t in the habit of refusing a family member anything.

Why Aunt Mary’s house? It was a convenient office for him. Separated from his wife, he was living with the bimbo, as the family called Domenica, but her place wouldn’t do. She wasn’t family. In Aunt Mary’s house, on a tree-lined block in the old Brooklyn neighborhood, he felt at home.

I tried to calm myself as I watched my aunt walk back into the kitchen. She had great legs, emphasized by the high heels she always wore. Her dark hair, silver streaked, curled around her face. She wore a simple knee-length black dress. Aunt Mary wore black every day and had done so since Uncle Louie died. After she was widowed, her boss in the garment center had pulled her off the sewing tables and used her as a floor model when he did a trunk show for buyers. My mother used to say Aunt Mary and her boss, Max Horowitz, had an arrangement. I didn’t totally get what she meant then, and didn’t want to get it now.

Uncle Frank watched me watch her. A beautiful woman, he said. My oldest sister, and now that your mother’s dead, God rest her soul, she’s watching out for you. That’s why she called me here today.

Aunt Mary brought the coffees and a plate of fresh biscotti and left the room.

She asked me to talk to you, he said.

I sensed what was coming.

So it’s true. You’re having trouble with your husband.

It was not a question. Was he ever going to let go of the tight reins he held on this family? And the tighter ones he held on me? I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw hurt.

I watched him. His brown eyes were kind behind the glasses, but with a promise of flint. His grey hair thinned at the temples. He wore his usual uniform, a dark suit with a white shirt open at the collar, inches of white at the cuffs and a Rolex on his wrist. The suit fit well, concealing the gun he always carried. The gun was no secret.

It’s for my business, he would say to us kids when we were young.

Once my cousin Sal said, What’s your business?

None of yours, Uncle Frank said, and smiled, but it was a thin smile.

When I asked my mother later about Uncle Frank’s business, she said, Jewelry. Her tone ended the conversation.

He was waiting for me to answer.

We’re going through a rough patch, I said.

Rough patch? Not what I heard. I heard he put his hands on you. His fingers tightened on the demitasse cup.

"I know I told Aunt Mary he…he pushed me. But it wasn’t really…He didn’t hit me," I said. It was a lie.

Very gently, Uncle Frank put the thin, porcelain cup down on its saucer. "He pushed you? Pushed you? I don’t call that a ‘rough patch.’ I call that being an asshole."

I lowered my eyes. Things haven’t been going so well, I said. He’s out of work, and he gets frustrated. You know how it is.

Uncle Frank leaned closer to me over the corner of the table. "He’s got no call to be what you call ‘frustrated.’ If he’s a man, he’s supposed to act like a man."

My eyes filled.

My uncle touched my upper arm with his thumb. What’s this? he said. You got a black and blue mark here.

I shook my head, and the tears spilled. It was nothing. I bumped the cabinet.

Cabinet? What cabinet is this high? He took my hand and casually turned it over. His gaze fell to my palm. What’s this? Looks like you cut yourself. Or something happened I don’t even want to know.

His eyes narrowed. Listen, you know the family was never happy you married him, him being…We never liked he was a wise guy intellectual, you know? I mean, the guy studied theater. Played basketball, and wrote poetry, and thinks he’s an actor, for Chrissake. He took a sip of espresso. All that, and he finished school, while you helped pay the bills. Now he’s out of school, you’re still working and paying the bills. It’s not what we do, he said. It’s not how we behave in this family.

For Uncle Frank, it was a long speech.

I said nothing.

You got feelings for him? he said.

I nodded.

Work on it, he said. Think it through. Feelings are one thing. Getting pushed around is something else. It starts, where does it end?

We’ll be okay, I said. I need to give him some space.

Uncle Frank pushed his glasses up on his nose. He sighed. He looked at his Rolex. He stood up. I have an appointment, he said. You and I get together next week. Here. He called into the kitchen. Mary, Kitty meets me next Monday, okay? No, make it Tuesday. Tuesday after five. That work for you?

Sure, Frank. Whatever you say, she said, coming into the dining room to say goodbye. He didn’t ask me if it worked for me. I got up from the table.

Uncle Frank put his arm around my shoulder. Don’t worry, he said, and walked to the door. "Have a good week. A safe one. You call me. Whatever happens, we can take care of it. I can take care of it."

I made a conscious effort to relax my jaw. I watched him walk down the steps, adjusting his suit jacket as he approached his car.

2

Aunt Mary’s house was in a quiet neighborhood that was what the family called still good. Translation: no moulignons, no spics. Of course there were people of color, but they pretended not to see them. This worldview colored their opinion, so to speak, of my husband.

My brown-skinned boy was Puerto Rican, black and Seminole on his mother’s side. He seldom spoke of his long-gone father, but his mother referred to that no-good sleazy honky lawyer when she spoke of him at all.

His color wasn’t the family’s only issue with Joseph. They saw him as a slacker. A man works for his family. He doesn’t let college interfere with his job. He definitely doesn’t let his working wife pay his tuition. The fact that I was willing to do this didn’t enter into the equation. The feminist revolution cut no ice with my family, if they even knew it had happened.

Give him a chance, I’d say. When he finishes college, he’ll be able to find a good job.

Sarina, second of the five aunts, would sneer. He studies drama, Kitty. What’s he going to do, act Hamlet? At least if he was Italian…

Unspoken was the thwarted plan they had for my life. Some weeks after my parents had died in a car accident, the five aunts and Uncle Frank had a meeting. As a 17-year-old college freshman, I was not present. Away at school, I struggled to deal with my loss and maintain my scholarship. When I came home for Thanksgiving, I discovered I had no home.

We’re selling your parents’ house, Aunt Concetta told me over lunch at Vicente’s Ristorante the day after the holiday. I looked at my pasta primavera as if it were the contents of a cat’s litter box. What was it about these people that robbed me of my appetite?

She went on. You’ll get some money. We’ll take care of it for you. You’ll finish at Loreto, meet a nice Italian boy. He’ll work with Uncle Frank, make a good living. Believe me, you won’t want for anything. You’ll see, it’ll work out fine.

She watched my face, the eyes I knew were filling, the lips I was trying to control. Kitty, it’s not about choice, she said. The family decided. Concetta was the diplomatic aunt.

I lived three years of chastity, poverty and obedience before the family’s plan for me went off the track. It happened in my senior year.

3

Joseph was playing a practice basketball game the first time I saw him. If sex appeal could drip, the gym floor would’ve been an indoor pool. I understood why the Greeks believed Cupid shot an arrow into your heart. For me, it was a lightning bolt.

My roommate Erin couldn’t believe I’d never seen Joseph before. He’s gorgeous, she said. A transfer student, I think, but he’s been around, in more ways than one. She looked my way to make sure I got her meaning. He’s an accelerated sophomore and a resident counselor. He’ll be a junior before the year’s up.

I learned a new game. Well, for me it was new. I had never stalked anyone before. I squeezed behind him on the cafeteria line. I lingered outside the gym lockers, waiting for a glimpse of those muscled arms, that beautiful rough profile. His drama class was across the hall from my Chaucer seminar. I left class early, managing to drop a copy of Stella Adler’s The Art of Acting as the drama students exited. A pimply boy who wrestled for Loreto picked it up and looked at it with interest.

Yours? he asked.

No. Yes. No. I snatched it out of his hand and followed my target down the corridor and out to the quad.

I got closer. He turned around. You’re following me, he said.

Yes, I said.

The brown eyes looked me up and down.

Desperation made me bold. Is my approval rating better than the president’s? I said.

Going up all the time, he said.

He looked at me some more. So, what’s up?

I felt my bravado draining down my body and out through my feet. Not a whole lot.

He smiled a half smile. You just wanted to get to know me. I nodded.

Now I got a complete smile, and it was like the difference between a cloud-covered crescent and a full moon. Okay. Come on. Let’s get a cup of coffee.

So much for the nice Italian boy who was going into business with Uncle Frank. Sure, Joseph was smart and gorgeous, but that was almost insignificant when stacked against his ability to quote poetry and make me feel like the queen of a faraway planet. The family didn’t stand a chance.

Keeping Joseph a secret wasn’t easy. The family had been keeping close tabs on me for a long time, but distance worked against them now. Loreto was 150 miles from Brooklyn. Every weekend, I got a phone call. Usually, it was Uncle Frank.

Everything going good?

Terrific, I said.

You doing good in your classes?

Of course, I said.

You okay for money?

Fine, Uncle Frank. Thanks.

Okay. I figure you got about $325 in your checking account, right? You need anything, you call.

Of course. The balance