10.
C AT
I heard Fish leave the boat while I got the girls to bed and was actually a little relieved when he wasn’t back by the time they fell asleep. I slipped out of the cabin onto the deck and found a comfortable spot near the back of the boat where I could look out over the water while I pondered life and all the changes that had happened over the last few months, but especially since I arrived in Florida. I needed some time to myself so I could give some thought to my future plans and how he might fit into them.
Of course, when I made these plans, I was positive there wouldn’t be a man involved in them anytime soon, if ever. But my time with Fish had opened my eyes to the fact that not every man was like Joseph or my father - absent, uncaring, and generally useless. I knew they weren’t all that bad, or at least I hoped they weren’t, but how was I to know for sure? Yes, some of my friends back home had husbands and boyfriends who seemed supportive and caring, but when we were in public, so did Joseph.
I had to give him some credit for his long game because for the first few years of our relationship, he totally managed to hide what an absolute prick he could be. Yes, he was driven and hyper-focused on his future goals, but that didn’t seem horrible when we first got together. The problem arose when I found out I was pregnant with Charlotte.
I would never forget his reaction to what I considered the craziest and most exhilarating news of my entire life.
“What’s the big news, Catherine?”
“I went to the doctor today.”
“That’s your big news? Babe, I was in the middle of an important call and you had my secretary interrupt me for that?”
“The doctor figured out why I’ve been so sick.”
“You’ve been sick?”
“Almost every day for the last three weeks,” I said in shock as I realized that he probably didn’t know anything about it. He was gone before I woke up every morning and stayed in his office during the evenings he was home, which were rare.
“Is it curable?” Joseph asked before he picked up a paper from his desk and started reading. Without looking up, he said, “We’ll get you the best medical care available.”
“I’m pregnant!”
Joseph didn’t move a muscle other than to look at me over the top of his glasses. He stared at me for so long that I started to get uncomfortable before he finally said, “Congratulations.”
“Congratulations?”
“What else do you want me to say? It’s not like I can do anything at this point besides buy you some multivitamins and encourage you to get plenty of rest.” I was too stunned to speak, and Joseph probably wouldn’t have cared to listen anyway. Instead, he looked back to the paper in his hand and started reading again before he suddenly looked up and asked, “Did I tell you that I’ve got a trip scheduled next week? I’ll be in London for several weeks.”
“You don’t want to know anything about the pregnancy or how I’m doing?”
“Obviously, you’re doing fine, Catherine. You’re not the first woman to develop this condition, so . . . “
“This condition?”
“It is a medical condition.”
“I told you that you’re going to be a father, and all you can say is to get plenty of rest?”
“I understand vitamins are important, too, are they not?”
“So, in essence, you’re saying that I’m going to be raising this child on my own.”
“No, I’m not saying that at all, but it’s not like I can crawl into your womb and care for it. I’m not exactly sure what you expect from me at this point.”
“Way too much. Clearly.”
Joseph had taken the most exciting and terrifying time in my life and made it all about him and the inconvenience of having his workday interrupted. Of course, he realized his mistake almost immediately and showered me with fresh flowers, of which the smell made me ill, and cookies from my favorite bakery with the caveat that I not eat too many because he didn’t want me to ‘go to fat’ like so many women seemed to do when they were expecting.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that interaction summed up our relationship perfectly. Looking back, I could see so many times when his indifference was followed by an overabundance of attention and praise to make me forget the sting of his words and how they’d hurt me. At the time, I’d been so stunned that I couldn’t make the comparison, but as I attended all of the necessary appointments that are associated with a pregnancy, the realizations came to me one by one.
It seemed like every time I sat alone in a waiting room, I remembered yet another time that Joseph had swept my feelings and needs aside to prioritize his own plans. I couldn’t believe I had been so blind to it all, especially when I recalled the time I was taken to the hospital by ambulance and then rushed into emergency surgery to have my appendix removed. When I called him in tears from the emergency room, he said, “It’s just your appendix, babe. It’s not like you need it to live.”
He didn’t even fly home early. I was already back on my feet by the time I talked to him again.
I could kick myself for staying through all of that bullshit.
Actually, I could kick myself for falling for it in the first place, although, in my defense, Joseph was very good at convincing people that he was someone he was not. He’d never fooled Grammy, though. She’d never trusted him and begged me to reconsider marrying him. She had even come into the hotel room where I had an entire beauty team helping me prepare for the “wedding of the century” that Joseph insisted I plan to try to talk me out of it one last time.
And now that I thought about it, I wanted to do more than just kick myself. I planned that entire wedding without the slightest bit of help from him even though I asked for it repeatedly. I was overwhelmed and upset at the time but never once thought about calling it off.
I had convinced myself that having an absent partner was perfectly fine. I even lived under the pretense that it was a good thing that he trusted me to plan our entire wedding, and then, during the ceremony, I patted myself on the back after he told me what a good job I’d done.
My therapist had a field day with that. Of course, I hadn’t ever considered therapy until my doctor suggested that I get help for postpartum depression after Charlotte was born. Almost from the start, my therapist could tell that Joseph was a piece of shit. She hadn’t worded it that way, but the longer I talked to her, the more I realized that was true.
As much as I hated Joseph, he had bestowed upon me plenty of learning opportunities and two beautiful children. Unfortunately, he’d also given me more fear and worry than any one person should have to deal with. More than once, I’d thought that if I had begun therapy sooner, I might not have my children now, which would mean that I also wouldn’t be sitting in the dark on a boat in what I imagined were alligator-infested waters, pondering my future with a man like Chai.
I had no idea what time it might be or how long I had been sitting alone in the dark when a bobbing light caught my eye a few doors down. I watched it get closer and closer and wondered if I should call for help until I heard women’s voices and then laughter when whoever was holding the light tripped and fell.
When they got closer to the boat, I heard Rachel say, “That’s it. I’m suing the HOA for neglect because that hurt both my ankle and my pride.”
“Do you think she’s still awake?” a woman asked.
“If she wasn’t before, she definitely is now because none of you know how to be quiet,” another woman said grumpily.
“We don’t know how to be quiet?” Rachel asked. “You’ve been making noise since the second you were born. Do you ever shut up?”
“More often than you do,” the grumpy woman retorted.
They bickered until they got to the dock, and I smiled as I listened to them insult each other and then finally stood up when they were just a few feet away.
The grumpy woman said, “See? No one can sleep through Hurricane Rachel.”
As Rachel opened the half-door that would let them onto the boat, one of the women sat down on the edge and lifted her legs as she spun around so she landed with her feet on the deck.
“Prepare for an invasion, Cat. They’re all way too nosy and couldn’t wait to meet you,” Rachel informed me. “When Chai came by a few minutes ago, he told me to keep an eye on the boat in case you needed something, so I called the girls and told them they had the perfect window of opportunity to meet you before Chai gets back.”
“He doesn’t want me to meet anyone?” I asked hesitantly.
“He told us we had to come one at a time so you didn’t flee in terror,” one of the women explained.
“If you were that weak-minded, he wouldn’t have you camped out on his boat or sitting on his lap at the breakfast table,” Rachel said dismissively. “Cat, these are my sisters - Ruth, Hannah, and Dinah. Girls, this is the woman Chai won’t tell us about.”
“But now he’s not here and we are, so let the games begin!” Dinah said cheerfully. “Tell us all about yourself and how you met our brother.”
“If you don’t like what you hear, are you going to feed me to the alligators?” I asked without thinking.
The women laughed, but I noticed that they didn’t answer my question either.
“We brought wine,” Hannah said as she walked toward the kitchenette. Chai had called it something else, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember all the words he used for different areas of the boat.
There was a flat deck area at the back, but he called it the casting deck like it should only be used for fishing instead of relaxing and watching the stars. Of course, he called the bathroom “the head” and the bedroom “the cabin” or “the berth,” which had really confused me at the beginning, but I was starting to adjust.
His sisters were clearly familiar with the boat because Hannah reappeared with some stemless wine glasses and a corkscrew before she plopped down on the floor and got to work opening wine and passing out drinks.
“Chai said your girls were having a problem adjusting to sleeping outside of a car,” Rachel said as she took a glass from her sister. “Magda sort of had the same problem. When she had issues, we’d just sit her bassinet on top of the dryer.”
“Magda was the young woman in the kitchen this morning, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s the youngest sister?” I asked.
Rachel looked at Dinah and shrugged before she asked, “Chai didn’t tell you about Magda?”
“Was he supposed to?”
“I don’t know why he wouldn’t,” Hannah replied. “It’s not like he’s ever tried to keep her a secret.”
“He might have mentioned her before and I just didn’t pick up on it. To be honest, there were a lot of times that I was so consumed with worry that I tuned out a lot of what was going on around me.”
“Magda is Chai’s daughter.”
“He’s got a daughter?” I asked in shock. “She didn’t call him dad this morning, she called him . . .”
“He’s Bub,” Rachel explained. “He went to prison when she was small, and her mother’s husband raised her. Ari is her father in every way, so she calls him dad and refers to Chai as Bub. Their relationship is sweet - he’s more of a much older brother to her than a father figure, and Chai is perfectly okay with that. He and Ari became fast friends once Chai came home, and their relationship helped Chai get to know Magda.”
“And we are all good friends with Dawn, Chai’s ex, and that makes things easy too,” Hannah explained.
“That’s a very - I can’t think of any description other than healthy - for a relationship like that,” I said with a chuckle.
“Yeah. Let’s just say that the relationship between the four of us and our past significant others is nothing like that,” Rachel admitted.
“Chai, Ari, and Dawn’s co-parenting relationship is definitely what most people would consider goals.”
“Dinah’s right. They could give lessons on how to get along,” Hannah said. “Oddly enough, Chai is friends with Ari but would rather run over our exes with a car than sit and make small talk.”
“Do you blame him?” Rachel asked.
“He’s a protective big brother?” I asked.
The women roared with laughter, and it was a chorus of sound that blended together perfectly, which made sense, considering they were siblings and obviously had very close relationships with one another. When they stopped laughing, Dinah leaned forward and grinned before she said, “Chai’s good at a lot of things, but I am absolutely positive that saying he’s a protective big brother is the understatement of the century.”
They started giggling again, and then Rachel put her wine glass up for a toast and said, “To Chai, big brother extraordinaire!” I held my glass up and took a sip with them, even though I was sure I was missing something.
“I feel like there’s a backstory there that I haven’t heard.”
Dinah frowned before she asked, “Chai hasn’t told you why he went to prison?”
“Sort of. He said he was charged with two counts of murder but found not guilty.”
“Exactly. They did get him on tampering with evidence, which I never understood, considering he was found not guilty of the rest of it,” Hannah explained.
“So, he did murder two people?” I asked.
“Most definitely,” Dinah said firmly.
“But he was found not guilty?”
“Yes,” Rachel answered.
“And you’re perfectly okay with this?”
Dinah laughed before she said, “Also, yes.”
I thought about it for a second before I asked, “Does his killing two people have anything to do with why you think he is an example of the most protective brother ever?”
“Absolutely,” Rachel said before she took another sip of wine.
“When you’re a child, sometimes the monsters aren’t just in your closet, they’re living in your house and there’s no way to escape them,” Dinah said sadly. “But when a man like Chai finds out that they’re very real and very dangerous, he makes sure the monsters can never ever come back again.”
“He went to prison because he did something to protect you?” I asked Dinah.
“He did it to protect all of us,” Rachel explained.
“How old were all of you when Chai went to prison?”
“I was ten,” Dinah said, pointing to herself. She pointed at Hannah and said, “She was thirteen.”
Ruth, the quietest sister, said, “I was fifteen, and Rach was seventeen.”
Rachel went on to say, “Magda was three, and there was never any proof that she’d been molested, but the worry was there. I think that got under Chai’s skin most of all, which is perfectly understandable.”
“I hope what we’re telling you doesn’t make you see Chai in a bad light,” Dinah said worriedly.
It had given me concern when Fish refused to tell me whether he had actually committed the crime he was found not guilty of, but from what I had gathered in this conversation over the last few minutes, I was not only glad he’d been found not guilty, but glad that he’d done it.
Not long ago, there had been a video circulating on social media asking mothers if they would kill for their children. I didn’t even have to think about my response. The answer was instantly yes. Without hesitation. The thought that Fish had done that didn’t bother me at all. If anything, it added to my observations of how caring he was with my children.
My silence must have worried the sisters because Dinah said, “He’s a good man. A great man. And he’s been a great friend to Madga since he didn’t have a chance to ever really be her father.”
“He can be maddening at times, but the good outweighs the bad,” Rachel assured me.
Even though I hadn’t finished my first glass of wine yet, what I had already consumed had apparently gone straight to my head because I blurted out, “I think he’s wonderful, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that he committed a crime to defend the women in his family. If anything, that makes him even sexier.”
“Sexier? I have not had nearly enough wine to participate in a conversation that involves the word ‘sexy’ and my brother,” Ruth complained. “Can’t we talk about something more pleasant - like politics or religion?”
“I shouldn’t say anything anyway. I have no idea when he’ll get back.”
“If she gets her way, Mrs. Tannenbaum won’t let him come back.”
“Who is Mrs. Tannenbaum?”
“She’s one of the old ladies a few blocks over that pretends Chai is her personal handyman. He answers her call every time because he doesn’t believe she’s filming his arrival and putting it at the beginning of some cheesy porn and distributing it to old lady freaks around the world.”
I choked on my wine, and when I recovered I croaked out, “What?”
Hannah started laughing and finally said, “That’s my theory, but the girls have a few they float.”
“I’m confused.”
“You’ll find that Chai gets calls day and night from distressed little old ladies who are really secret perverts that hope the job they made up for him requires him to take his shirt off,” Dinah explained.
“Or get wet,” Ruth chimed in. “That’s happened before. Remember that time Mrs. Robinson accidentally sprayed him with the hose?”
I took another sip of my wine and said, “I’m still confused, but my interest is piqued because I’ve seen your brother without a shirt on and I don’t blame whoever this Mrs. Tannenbaum is for trying to make that happen.”
“Our brother doesn’t just have a soft spot for kids, he’s a knight in shining armor to any old person in need. The elderly women around here take advantage of that,” Rachel explained.
“The age gap between Chai and these women is so big that they’re not cougars, they’re sabre-tooths . . . on the hunt for younger prey,” Hannah said with a shudder. “He can’t see it, but we sure can.”
“I’m going to ignore that there are women ogling him like he’s a piece of meat and say that it’s sweet that he helps them out.”
Ruth snorted indelicately before she said, “You say that now, but wait until you have to witness the show. It’s vomit-inducing.”
“Possibly, but everything you’re telling me about your brother is about to give me a cavity. Tell me something bad about him.”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“Because I’m trying to convince myself that falling into bed and pursuing a relationship with him is foolish, but from where I’m standing right now, it seems like a wonderful idea. He’s loyal to his friends, protective of his family, and loves kids. He’s even helpful when the people in his community need him. The man has to have some faults.”
“That’s kind of gross,” Dinah complained.
“What is?”
“You just made our brother sound like the perfect man.”
“I think he may be.”