The Beginning
Catherine Cecelia Marcello Donati (yes, she kept her maiden name before her married name) is an enigma. Surrounded by beautiful things, with her neck draped in a diamond necklace, that likely costs more than my small car, she sips on cheap wine and admits she’s got a taste for the European band her nineteen-year-old son—Nazio—enjoys when I ask about her musical tastes.
“But don’t tell him that,” she tells me, “because apparently, that’s not cool, and I don’t want to listen to him go on about it.”
“What about Cece?” I ask. “Or is she out of that stage in her life, now?”
Catherine rolls her eyes. “Cece was my little twin from the moment she learned how to talk. Nothing I do could be uncool when she idolized me.”
Despite the way she says it so offhandedly, almost dismissively, I can hear warmth in her words, too. A love so strong, it’s tangible, really.
There’s respect there, too.
When I point it out, Catherine simply says, “Cece’s earned her respect.”
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
So is the way of their life. While she’s open about discussing her family and husband, any remarks she gives me about business is short, and to the point.
They just don’t talk about business.
Her daughter’s raising was a bit unconventional, too, by all standards. The daughter of a Queen Pin, Cece, saw and did more things than most grown women before she was even a teenager. She grew up watching her mother run a criminal empire, and the same with her father, too.
Although, always more her mother.
I’m curious, and so I ask, “Do you think you should have given Cece a … normal life? Maybe kept her out of harm’s way more than you did when you always had her following along when you did business?”
Catherine thinks about it for a long while, but doesn’t immediately answer. No, she nurses her wine instead, and mulls it over.
Finally, she settles on a simple, “No.”
I press, but it remains the same.
No.
“Why not?”
“Because she is my child, and not anyone else’s,” Catherine says. “She grew up in our life, not someone else’s. Rose-tinted glasses are dangerous eyewear.”
And of course, she’s right.
“And also, not very cute,” she adds, smirking.
A joke, it seems.
Yeah, she’s an enigma.
We’re sitting in her library surrounded by the smell of leather, and old books. This is her happy place—where she comes to relax. “Cross has his music room,” she says with a smirk, “and I have this.” She doesn’t mind, though, because books are an escape, and, “Every woman occasionally needs an escape.”
“Even when your husband is Cross Donati?” I dare to ask.
Catherine tips her head to the side a bit, and nods. “Sometimes, more so because my husband is Cross Donati.”
He can be fickle, she admits. He’s easy to please, and then tough to understand all at the same time. Together, it’s always just them, but sometimes, she knows he needs space, too. Like she does.
They’re them.
They’re together.
They are an us.
But they are also a woman and a man. A woman who needs to be alone sometimes, and a man who needs one room to himself in his house that has nothing to do with his brilliant, genius son, and his very diva-like daughter.
Although, now their kids are nineteen and twenty-three. They don’t live at home anymore, but Catherine assures it doesn’t matter. They still need their spaces. They still respect what the other wants, and they talk more than they fight.
Catherine gets it.
I think I might get it, too.
“But we fight, too,” she adds, grinning a little.
They argue about things all married couples argue about. She steals his blankets, and he leaves his shit all over the house. She puts too much sugar in his coffee, and he can’t wait until a single thing is cooked before he has to, as she says, “Stick a fucking spoon in it. Drives me nuts.”
I laugh.
So does she.
So yeah, they need their space sometimes.
Like all normal, married couples.
“Here is where I release everything weighing me down,” she says before sipping from her glass of cheap red wine. “And that comes on so strong sometimes, that it surprises me. After all these years, and it’s still there, you know?”
Depression, she means.
Her struggle with mental illness is one I know all too well, and one she has been open about for a good portion of her life. She doesn’t treat it like a plague anymore, and she knows it’s never really going to go away.
“Kind of seasonal,” she adds, pointing to the window where it’s bright and clear outside. A summer day, actually. “When the weather is good, I feel good.”
But when it’s cold and damp and dark, she feels it creeping in. But she almost always knows when it’s coming now, and she can better handle it.
“Going to Cali helps,” she says.
“Good weather,” I agree.
When I ask if she has anything to tell those who struggle like she does, Catherine doesn’t even think about the question. Maybe it’s the fact she’s been battling this for years, and her mantra is always close by.
Nonetheless, her advice is on point.
As always.
“You have to be open,” she explains, “otherwise, how does anyone around you know how to help when you need it the most?”
Because sometimes, silent screams are all you can do.
And no one can hear those right away.
Catherine picks up her phone when it dings, and glances at the screen with a smile. “Cece,” she says when I raise a brow in question.
All too soon, we’ll be walking down Fifth Avenue because her daughter has finally come back from her honeymoon, and she wants me to join her and Cece on a shopping spree.
“We don’t do that very often,” Catherine adds, “but I’m giving her a little break before she needs to get back to work.”
“And how do you feel about that—Cece being in the family business, I mean?”
I wonder if she’ll answer, since business is supposed to be off the table.
She surprises me.
She tells me this felt normal. That watching Cece grow from a young girl to a young woman was normal, too. And, she adds, “It always kind of felt like this was where Cece was going to end up, but we didn’t know how long it would take for her to settle on it.”
Catherine raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow. It kind of strikes me how much she looks like the red-headed woman in the picture next to the leather chair she rests in. Her mother, Catrina. The dark hair and green eyes come from her father, but she’s definitely her mother’s child.
“Being a Queen Pin and a mother must be …”
“It’s a challenge, but I like those.”
She offers it like there’s nothing else to ask or say, and so I don’t ask anything more in that vein.
My gaze drifts to the photo on the stand again of her mother. Catherine catches me watching it, and smiles.
“Do you know there are some who consider your mother to be a very cold woman?” I ask.
Catherine’s laughter is both light, and bitter. Sharp like glass, and yet sweet like maple syrup. I think if that person was close enough to feel the coldness radiating from Catherine at the idea of someone disliking her mother, they would turn into ice.
Her mother was the best mother, she explains, her tone warming again. The kind of mother that supported her children no matter what, and always took their interests into perspective before inserting her own.
“And she loves us,” Catherine adds, shrugging, “she has always loved us even in times when we didn’t give her very much to love. I would like to know what is so cold about that.”
I couldn’t tell her.
I don’t know, either.
And with that question, it’s clear Catherine is done for the moment. All it takes is the suggestion that someone might criticize her mother, and she shuts down.
It’s clear—obvious.
Her mother is like her.
They are similar.
They are equally strong women with lives that shaped them into who they are today. A person might not like their choices, or their way of living, or even how they chose to do things, but it is not your life.
It is theirs.
Queens.
This is the queen’s home, and so she should not be insulted.
Still, I dare one more question. “What do you hope the fans of your stories will find within this companion?”
Catherine stills.
Quiets.
Smiles.
“I hope they find our life is good,” she murmurs, “and that alone makes them happy.”
I, too, hope it makes you happy.
—Bethany-Kris