Dad, the last to be seated, turned the television to an old Honeymooners rerun and put papers instead of food in front of him. Marty noted angrily that he had already started doing the “homework” Biff Tannen had so ungraciously assigned him.
For a few minutes, Marty and Dave amused themselves and each other by reciting the Honeymooners’ lines one beat ahead of the TV actors, a routine that finally got Mom’s goat.
“All right,” she said. “We know you’ve seen it a hundred times. But your father wants it on, O.K.? So let him enjoy it in peace.”
Marty and Dave shrugged.
Silence reigned for a minute until Mom finally looked at Marty, smiled, and said: “Well, Marty, how did the audition turn out?”
Marty exhaled wearily.
“We lost,” he said simply.
Everyone tried to think of something to say, or at least everyone pretended to be thinking.
“It was probably fixed,” Dave said at length, a superficial statement which surprisingly cheered Marty. That, in fact, was what he had been thinking since the sham contest was held.
“Could be,” he shrugged.
“They probably knew going in who was gonna win,” Dave nodded. “The rest was just window-dressing.”
“Sour grapes,” Linda said softly, not looking up from her dessert, which was Jell-O Instant chocolate pudding with a generic brand instant whipped topping.
“It’s too bad,” Mom sighed. “I think your group’s very good. I just don’t see how any other band could have been better.”
Dad looked up from his homework. “Believe me, son,” he dared to venture, “you’re better off not having the aggravation of dealing with that YMCA dance.”
“What aggravation?” Marty asked coldly.
“Well, you’d have to worry about getting all your equipment there—”
“We’ve done that lots of times already,” Marty interjected. “It’s no problem.”
“You’d have to make contingency plans in case somebody got sick,” his father continued.
“Nobody’s ever been sick.”
“All the more reason for somebody to be now,” he went on. “Then you’d have to make sure you got your money, see that everybody got the right share, settling with the musicians’ union…”
“Wow,” Marty muttered. “You sure can find a lot of good reasons to do nothing.”
It didn’t slow down his father even a half-beat.
“What if you were so good other people wanted to hire you?” he continued. “Then you’d have to worry about scheduling your job around school.”
“You’re right, Dad. Maybe I’d better just take to my bed right away. The longer I stay alive, the more problems I’m going to have.”
“Believe me, son, you’re better off without all those headaches,” his father concluded.
“He’s right, Marty,” Dave added sardonically, putting on his father. “If there’s one thing you don’t need, it’s headaches.”
Marty finally stopped arguing, even though quitting made him feel a little like his father.
Lorraine McFly turned her attention to Linda, who was finishing her pudding. “You didn’t have to eat that, you know,” she said. “We’ve got cake.”
Linda raised her eyebrows. “What cake?” she asked. Lorraine pointed to the three-layer cake on the kitchen counter. On the top was written WELCOME HOME UNCLE JOEY. Above the letters was a tiny black bird flying out of a barred window. It was hardly subtle, but Uncle Joey’s situation wasn’t a secret.
“It looks like we’ll have to eat this cake by ourselves again,” Lorraine smiled grimly. “Uncle Joey didn’t get a parole.”