Jennifer jumped into the closet. She eased the door shut behind her. The footsteps clumped heavily towards the front door. Who could it be? If this was her house, in her future, would it be someone in her family? Jennifer wished she could see what was going on out there.
Maybe she could. There was light coming into the closet from the louvered door. She shifted around as quietly as possible, doing her best to keep the coats behind her. If she leaned forward just so, she could peek through the slats.
A teenage girl stepped into the living-room at the bottom of the stairs. Oh, my God! Jennifer breathed in sharply. The teenager was the spitting image of Marty!
The teenager disappeared from sight as she moved toward the front door. There was a soft shooshing sound.
The teenager stepped beck into view. 'Oh, hi, Grandma Lorraine.'
Grandma Lorraine? Marty's mother? Jennifer peeked through the slats, but the newcomer was still out of sight.
'Hi, sweetheart,' Grandma Lorraine replied. She sounded like Marty's mother. 'I brought dinner. Are your folks home yet?'
The teenager shrugged her broad shoulders. She was built sort of huskily for a girl. Jennifer thought, probably one of those high school athletic types.
'Mom should be home any minute.’ the teenager answered her grandmother. ‘Dad - who knows?'
‘Mom?’ Jennifer asked under her breath.
She blinked. If Dad was Marty -
Oh my God! Jennifer realised - it would have been obvious if this future business wasn't all so new to her - she was Mom!
The teenager stepped back to let her grandmother in. Grandma Lorraine walked past the stairs, so Jennifer could see her at last. She was Marty’s mother, older now, with grey hair. Still, she looked pretty good for a woman in her seventies. She was carrying a small, silver bag - too small. Jennifer thought, to hold dinner for a whole family. So where was the food?
'Grandpa! the teenage girl called. 'You threw your back out again!'
There was a humming noise as a machine coasted across Jennifer s view, a machine that held Marty’s father - with grey hair now, but still as skinny as ever - strapped in upside down! George stopped the gizmo right in front of the bookcase next to Jennifer's hiding place, close enough for her to read the ‘Ortho-lev’ name-plate on the machine’s crossbar.
‘Your grandpa got hit by a car,’ Grandma Lorraine explained. ‘On the golf course! It just dropped out of the sky. He could have been killed!’ She shook her head with a grandmotherly frown. 'I don’t know what this world’s coming to.’
‘I'll take this. Grandma.'
The teenage girl - boy, did she look like Marty! - stepped in front of Jennifer’s hiding place and took the little bag from Lorraine.
Grandma Lorraine walked over to the window. There seemed to be something wrong with the view now. The lawn, the gardens, the gazebo - all of it was slowly rolling, like a TV screen that was losing its vertical hold. There was also snow or static or something up toward the top of the picture.
‘Oh.’ Grandma spoke as if she wasn’t surprised. ‘This window’s still broken.’
She walked back across the room and picked up a remote control unit from the bookshelf. The image in the window changed to a tropical island, then abruptly shifted to a mountain view, and just as quickly changed to a picture of a city at night, but all three flipped and were full of static. Then the city, too, blipped out of existence, replaced a mo
ment later by a night-time view that was nowhere near as picturesque.
This, Jennifer realised, must be the real view outside, with no flip, and no static. It showed the side of the building next door, complete with half a dozen garbage cans overflowing with trash.
'Maybe we should buy them a new one.' Grandma Lorraine suggested. 'What do you think. George? We could afford it.'
She stepped further into the room, out of Jennifer's line of sight.
‘Well ..'.Grandpa George didn't sound very enthusiastic. Or very quick to make up his mind.
‘I don’t know.’ he said at last. His floating harness whirred as he picked something up from the floor. Jennifer’s heart almost stopped when she realised it was the wedding photo she had dropped! But old George merely put the photo back on its shelf -although Jennifer could have sworn he put the picture back upside down.
‘Yeah. Grandma,’ the teenage girl spoke again. Seeing Lorraine fiddle with that big video screen had reminded Jennifer about the names written on those videobooks - the ones about the kids - Marty Junior and - Marlene?
‘You know Dad.’ Marlene went on about her grandmother's offer. ‘He’d probably get, like, pissquanced.'
‘Pissquanced?’ Grandma asked with a distasteful frown.