“Language, Sarina.”
I square my shoulders forward, resting both elbows on the table. “Fuck. You.”
My dad stares at me with such disappointment you’d think I stabbed him.
“You know what you fucking…”
Whatever he was going to call me remains a mystery as Tomás walks behind my father’s chair. He rises to his feet mumbling about how he came here to be apologized to and not disrespected. Tomás slaps his hand on my dad’s shoulder and pushes him down. “I don’t think my wife is done talking to you yet. Sit.”
To my surprise my dad stays put, likely out of fear, but I’ll take it.
“Thank you,mi amor,” I say to Tomás as he stands guard behind my dad,
“You’re breaking your mother’s heart, you know.”
Here we go with the guilt-tripping.
“Mine too,” he tacks on as if breaking a heart that doesn’t exist means something to me.
Nothing.
That’s what I feel.
Absolutely nothing.
I’ve suffered through years of this.
Being manipulated, talked down to, made to feel guilty when I haven’t done a fucking thing aside from exist that warrants it.
And that all ends right now.
“Spare me your guilt tactics, Michael. You’re going to need to switch things up. That song and dance is getting played out.”
He stutters his words and my hand raises stopping him. “It’s okay. I won’t keep you much longer, and as much as it pains me to disappoint you yet once again, I should admit that I lied. I didn’t call you here to apologize or stroke your ego with all the things you want me to say. And I certainly have no interest in feeding into the illusion you like to maintain that you are a good father, because you’re not. You are a horrible father, an evenworse person, and the source of more trauma than you even realize.”
His fists pound down on the table as he turns back to face Tomás.
“Is it this prick? Is he filling your head with lies about me?”
This time when he tries to rise from the chair, he’s met with more than Tomás holding him down. My brothers appear from the back room they’ve been standing idle in, swarming the table and surrounding us on all sides.
“That man you insist on calling a prick is the best thing to ever happen to me.”
My dad scoffs. “I doubt that. Do you even know who you married? I did some digging, and do you know he was arrested for disorderly conduct?”
I don’t flinch.
“Yes, I do. We’re a team. We don’t keep secrets.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Why don’t you acknowledge my husband’s presence and ask him about it yourself instead of jumping to conclusions and using it as ammo.”
Tomás chimes in, digging his palms into my dad’s shoulders as he does. “You’re a fucking piece of work. You, a wannabe mobster, is going to try to paint me the bad guy for getting arrested in college for having one too many drinks?”
“Sorry, asshole, last I checked, having one too many doesn’t lead to a disorderly conduct charge.”
“You’re absolutely right. And I regret it. But when it was the one year anniversary of your father passing —the man who was everything that you’re not as a father and a human being, by the way— and you don’t know how to cope, and some douchebag picks a fight with you because he found you crying out on the stoop of your building, so you fight him back, sadly, it can lead to that.”
