Chapter Six:

When our daughter was born, I wasn't at the hospital. I wasn't informed until afterwards, and I arrived after my wife had already spent an hour and a half with her. She tried to hide her embarrassment of her husband coming late, and I knew she was slightly upset about it, but I wasn't concerned about it. I thought that maybe she was half glad about it, because, if you think about it, if our daughter was with her mother for her first hour and a half of life, she'd turn out more like her, unlike Biff Jr. Biff Jr. was almost three years old when his sister was born. They didn't get along so well, and they also seemed to be on opposite sides. Biff Jr. was always on my side while she was on her mother's side. I didn't know much about my daughter because of this, but, then again, I didn't know too much about my son either. He sure knew a lot about me, though.

Whenever someone said 'love,' I always thought of Lorraine, but I realized that these last few weeks I hadn't really thought of her at all. I tried to forget everything about my wife since she left, but I never thought that maybe going to Lorraine would work. It hasn't worked for years, I realized. And, as I said before, she'd have nothing to do with me anyway.

"Biff? Hello... Biff?"

"Huh? What?"

"Just checking to see if you're alive." Jenny said. She picked up the boxes again and turned toward me. "Do you want to come by and help us plan the party?"

"I thought you said the whole point of this was to distract me from the divorce? How am I supposed to do that if I'm in her house?" I threw a record carelessly back in the box.

"Come on, we need you! It's only me, your wife, and you planning this, you know," she said crossly to me. "We want it to be special... you know," she started to get a suspicious sound to her voice. "Your wife might think it was nice of you... If you get what I mean." She winked and started to head out the door. I only rolled my eyes, which I felt I was doing a lot lately. I had to make the decision now. Would I go and actually help somebody, or stay here all day?

"All right, I'm here. What more do you want?" I grumbled when I walked into my wife's new house after Jenny. My wife raised her eyes to me, but then she lowered them again as she took the boxes from Jenny, who had a smirk on her face. Patricia just set the boxes on the nearby table without giving them much glance. This caused Jenny's smirk to vanish, and it turned into a frown. We both watched her set the boxes down and grab a notebook from the table with the party plans on it silently.

"She what you did to her?" Jenny muttered to me. I pretended I didn't hear her as I circled around the table.

"You have the house set up nicely, Patricia." I said, but then I quickly ran out of things to say and I found myself standing there with the two of them staring at me. Patricia only nodded, and she flipped through the pages of her notebook. After what seemed like a million years, she finally said, "Well, the first thing I had on the list was decorations."

"Excellent!" Jenny said, clapping her hands together. "I love decorations! We should get a huge banner to put across here and-"

Jenny kept on chattering about the decorations while Patricia wrote them down. They started to act as if I wasn't even there, but I guess that was a good thing, because Patricia started to laugh at what her friend said. After a few minutes, though, I had to say something.

"How long is this going to take?" Her smile quickly disappeared.

"Biff," Jenny said with a sigh. "We only have a few days to plan this."

"Only a few days? How much do we have to do?"

"Well," she started to look at Patricia's list. "Since there's three of us, we should be able to get most of this done in the next three days. The party is in five. Two of us should probably go shopping on day- That will be Pat and I... There's also the invitations..."

"I guess I'll do that." I said without even thinking about it. My wife, however, had thought about it and she looked startled.

"But I thought you hated writing... and typing... That's what you used to say when you had to retype the papers George did for you..." she quickly fell silent, but I could still see the surprise on her face.

"Oh well, I'll still do it. I've got nothing better to do anyway." Jenny smiled at me, but Patricia still looked shocked.

"Well, you can check that off the list," Jenny said. "We also all need to buy her a present."

Jenny started to scan the list while Patricia looked like she was trying to get the courage to say something. I actually was wondering while she looked that way when she said, "Biff, I can just pick up a present for you if you're busy with the invitations..."

"Hll no," I said, which surprised her again. "I'll be able to do that."

"But... but..." she tried to find the right words to say without insulting me. "You don't have a car!"

"The McFlys have one." I pointed out. She tried to think of another reason, but she quickly gave up.

"Are you sure? I know you don't like to be busy..."

I shrugged. "I'll do it. Suitcase closed." she smiled a little, but it didn't last too long.

"Next is the food... I'll do that." she said it in a cheery voice and even jumped up and down as she checked it on the list. She was acting like a teenager again, while Patricia and I were acting like strangers who didn't know each other.

"Any games?" I asked. "I mean, kids her age like to play games, right?"

"I think they'd much rather dance," Jenny says. "Which reminds me, we'll need some modern day music to go with this." She smacked the box of records playfully, but she hit it so hard that some of the records fell out and tumbled to the floor.

"Oh no!" Patricia was on the floor in a flash, trying to pick them up. Jenny was done after a few seconds of saying sorry, and I was the last one to get down on my knees. I'm getting too old for this, I thought.

Both Patricia and I picked up the last one that the same time. She tried to pull it away from me but I kept a strong grip on it. Not because I didn't want her to have it. It was because I was still looking at it.

When she saw what I was doing she looked down at it too. Another "Oh..." came quietly from her mouth, and I knew she was surprised again. She started to stand up, and she was still holding it so I stood up too. We were both still holding it- and even stood closer together to get a good look at it,- when Jenny finished putting the others away.

"What is it?" Jenny wondered aloud, taking a look at it herself, but she was looking at it upside down.

"It's one of my favorite songs, remember?" Patricia said, suddenly sounding excited. She sighed in her excitement, and ran her hand over the lettering, touching my hand a little, but she didn't notice. "The one I never got to buy."

"You mean My Girl?" Jenny asked loudly. She grabbed the records and turned it so she could see it clearly, so I had to let go. I stood off to the side while the girls oohed and ahhed over the record.

"Why does it look brand new?" Patricia asked, looking at me, then at Jenny. Jenny looked at me and I looked at her, but then we both shrugged. How was I supposed to know? These weren't mine.

"I guess I forgot about it," Jenny said. "Hey, maybe we could play it at the surprise party."

"No," my wife said sadly. "She doesn't like this old music." She put the record back into the box, clearing showing she wished she didn't have to.

"Well, I guess I brought all of these over for nothing then." Jenny said, sounding disappointed.

I spent the rest of the day working on the invitations like I said I would. If I had my own way, I would have made McFly do it, but I didn't have my way anymore, and I started to realize it. The two women were out shopping and it was after nine before I got a phone call from Jenny about it.

"What now?" I said aggravatingly. Spending my time making invitations was making me annoyed.

"We just finished the shopping," she said simply. "She kept asking me if your daughter would like this or that, but since I don't know her very well I just said yeah for every single thing," she laughed. "In the end she just bought what she liked and thought her daughter would like. I think she was just nervous about it, because she really knows her well."

I nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see me.

"Are you there?"

"What? Oh, yeah. I was nodded..."

She snorted. "Ok... well, so far everything is going according to plan. Do you have the invitations done?"

"Almost. I was working on them most of the dmn day."

"Wow... You have really surprised me, Biff Tannen." She sounded surprised too.

"Yeah," I said. "I've heard that a lot lately." I guess that was a good thing, but at that moment I wasn't in the mood to be happy about it.