Page 33 of My Debacle with De Lorenzo

My mother takes a moment to think about how she wants to handle this situation and she decides on a much more graceful approach. “SeñorCarter, may I ask what you’re doing in my house...alone with my daughter?”

That was more respect than I would ever give this arrogant dickwad.

He sounds nervous when he answers, not at all the tone he uses when he’s hurling racial slurs at us. “Well, ma’am...the principal told me to be here...every day after school. I’m supposed to help Cat with whatever she needs.” Our confusion must be written on our faces because he offers more detail. “After she broke her arm—”

“Youbroke her arm, Dipshit,” I chip in, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Yeah...after that...I got kicked off the football team and...I can’t get back on unless Cat and I sort out our differences.”

Well, that explains why the house has been so clean every day and why Cat got weird when I asked her about it. But hearing that somehow pisses me off more. “The scales of justice really tipped in your favor there, hey, Scott? My sister breaks her arm, misses out on school, loses her job and you get kicked off the stupid football team. Wow! I’m sure that must’ve upended your entire life. What an incredible price you had to pay after tormenting her foryears.” My eyes move to my sister again. “Whose dumb idea was this, anyway?”

“The psychologist at the hospital thought it would begreattherapy for me if Scott and I spent more time together and got to understand each other a bit better.”

I don’t know how that woman is a doctor. Dr. Burkman is a lunatic! “Why are you even listening to her? She’s got so many screws loose; she has my number on speed dial.”

Scott chuckles. “That’s funny...because you work at a hardware store, right?”

Oh, he did not just say that. “Yes,” I hiss, coating the word with disdain, “because I have to work. Unlike you, I don’t get everything handed to me on a silver platter.”

“What do you get out of this,Mija?” my mother asks, trying to deescalate the tension. “I don’t like him coming over and the two of you spending time together. He’s no good for you. I don’t care what any doctor says.”

For a single moment, I see not just remorse, but shame on Scott’s face. “Mrs. Diaz, I know you don’t trust me, and I understand your concerns, but I promise I won’t do anything to hurt Catalina. Look, I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand the depths to which I’ve damaged Catalina or your family, but I want to try to make amends.”

He is so full of shit. Does he honestly expect us to believe that?

“Yeah, so you can get back on your precious football team,” I snap.

“That’s not the only reason. I don’t expect any of you to believe me, but I see now that I made life so much harder for all of you and I just want to help out in whichever way I can.” His nervousness returns and he becomes fidgety again. He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a stack of cash. “Mrs. Diaz, I want you to have this. It’s five thousand dollars and I will give you the same amount for the next five months as comp—”

I gasp at the blatant audacity, and my mother is horrified. “No!” she yells. “I don’t want your money! You think you can buy our trust or our forgiveness?”

“No, ma’am.”

“We arenotfor sale. You think money will make up for all the things you did to my daughter? Like this payment will just erase all the times she came home crying, all the mornings she begged me not to send her to school. You think your money is going to buy back those days?”

He lowers his head, trying to hide his shame, but in all honesty, I want to see it. “I’m not trying to buy anything from you. This is not an emotional bribe or some kind of bargaining chip. None of you have to forgive me. I don’t expect anything in return. All I want to do is alleviate the burden thatI’vecaused. Will you please just accept the money?”

“Mom, don’t,” Cat says quickly. “He’s already bought us a ton of groceries.”

This stuns my mother, but she quickly snaps out of it and goes on a rampage, checking every cupboard in the kitchen, and is more horrified when she finds them full. “No...no, no, no, no, no, no.” She looks at Scott. “No, we cannot accept this. Please take it all back. We don’t need anything from you.”

“So, you would rather struggle than accept my help?”

“Yes!” we reply in unison.

“For fuck’s sake! Why won’t you just take it?”

“Watch your mouth,SeñorCarter.”

I smile to myself. There she is. The fierce woman I used to admire before my father stripped away her tenacious spirit. The second my mother places her hands on her hips, I know she means business.

“This ismyhouse.” She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t have to yell to show who’s the boss here. “You don’t raise your voice to me, and I will not tolerate that kind of language.”

It’s apparent that Scott has never been reprimanded with such sternness before because he is the one who backs down and that shocks me because he’s a bully. He walks around Loughlin like he owns the place and here he is eating some humble pie straight from my mother’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Diaz, but I just don’t understand why all of you are so stubborn.”

“Because on most days, our stubbornness is all we have.”

Scott reaches an impasse, not sure of how to proceed with all of us. He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead as he thinks about it. “Okay, let me put it to you like this. If you got a lawyer to take on this case, I assure you, you would have been awarded damages of no less than thirty thousand dollars, which is what I’m going to pay you over the next six months. I know this because I called our lawyer to ask him how all of this would have hypothetically played out in court. He told me that if he had to take into account the emotional distress I caused over the years, that figure would be much higher. So, technically, I’m paying you the bare minimum, and you won’t get a cent more because who cares about emotional distress? It’s not even a real thing.”

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