Disclaimer: George McFly and Arthur McFly belong to Universal Studios and Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. I suppose I should also include the partial copyrights of George Gipe. His novelization provided a look at Arthur McFly, although whether he consulted with Zemeckis and Gale on the characterization is not known. Hereby copyrights belong rightfully to Bob Gale, Robert Zemeckis, George Gipe, and Universal Studios.
Vignette Ten: Quality Time
There was a round table. Small, and made of either oak or maple. It had been in the McFly family for generations. Where it came from, which store, and from what year, no one knew. It was a table. It was covered with separate placemats instead of a white cloth. Two plates of plates of TV dinners lay on it. Freezer burned turkey with gravy, corn that had a cold middle, and pudding that didn't taste like pudding served as dinner for the two who sat at the table. To say that the table talked more than the two males would be the perfect statement. Yes, the table talked more than the the two males. Its squeaks and creaks of age expressed more than those two. That is, until one of them worked up enough to attempt a conversation.
"How's school?"
The youngest of the two males, George, looked up from his corn. "Huh?"
"How's school?" The older male asked. George felt his cheek flinch then worried it was a tell tale sign of what had happened. Images of a toilet, the laughing faces of Biff and his gang, and the way everyone looked at his wet head and shoulders came unwanted. George wondered this: Could the memory images be seen by a blood relative in some sort of cosmic telepathic happening? New reading material was making him think like this. Telepathic had never been a word he had ever knew existed. Surpisingly, it had nothing to do with television, or television dinners for that matter.
"School's okay." George answered. The silence returned, not in its whole. The table's creaks and squeaks, along with the tapping of forks against plates served as little interuptions. "Where's Mom?"
"Working." His father said. "Secretaries don't make much. Your mother wanted to work, but when women want to work they have to really work. Uh…"
He trailed off after that. George focused on something else. The turkey on the end of his fork tasted watery. He stared at it, focusing. Without Mom, the dinner felt different. Scarier. Yes, scarier. His father and him… it didn't feel right. It made George's stomach harden. It made his mind fill up with one nervous thought after the other. Curling his toes and squirming in his chair wasn't helping much. This instance reminded him of the time at Lou's Dinner. He had been sitting at the counter and eating cereal like he did every morning. The door opened behind him and he flinched. He always flinched in preparation. An elderly man sat beside him, wearing a sport coat and a hat. A second after he ordered coffee and eggs, he began to ingage George in a conversation. The kind of conversation that George couldn't get out of. It had been the most stomach-squeezing and chair-squirming social interaction George experienced.
"Are you thinking about college?"
"College?" George repeated. A seven-letter word. A scary seven-letter word. College. College. College. Was that all everyone in Hill Valley could talk about? "My boy's going off to college!" or "You need to complete those credits before you can enroll in a college!" Terms like credits and dorm and BFA, MFAs, just made no sense. They made George's head whirl. College. College. College.
"Well, you remember what I said last time." His father muttered and rubbed the back of his neck. George blinked, then focused on his corn.
Their chewing added to the noises interrupting the silence. George stared at his tray, at the table, and then at his feet below.
"Your shoes are getting shabby," His father suddenly said. George looked up, to see his father looking under the table. George looked back at his own feet. True, the shoes on his feet were shabby. False, that the shoes on his feet were his. "Didn't we just buy you those?"
"Yes," George answered. He pushed the rubber tips of his shoes together. "I'm sorry."
More silence with more clinks, creaks, squirming, and squeaks. His father looked up for the fourth time.
"How's school?"
"You already asked that."