Aiden, whose parents have separated, lives with his grandmother while his mother recovers from a stay in a psychiatric hospital. On a snowy Sunday his father picks him up for a visit. In the car the talk is small, about school, Dickens and bad drivers, until his father tells him that he is moving to Arizona with another woman.
When we passed the roundabout by the police station, he said, “So how’s school?”
“It’s good.”
“What’s your favorite subject?” He glanced at me, then turned on the wipers. The snow had begun to fall.
“English.”
“I was never any good at English. What are you learning?” A red truck whizzed past us. “Did you see that asshole? I almost hit him. Too many irresponsible drivers. They don’t give a shit about other people. Always in a hurry to get places.”
“Maybe he’s late for work.”
He laughed. “On a Sunday? I doubt it. . . Hey, I interrupted you. Tell me about your English class.”
“We’re reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.”
“He wrote A Christmas Carol, right? Never read the book, but I liked the movie. The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.”
“The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.”
“Huh?” He wrinkled his nose and rubbed it with the edge of his leather coat sleeve.
“Dickens calls the Future Ghost Yet to Come.”
“I get it. So, what’s this book about?”
“A boy named Pip. His parents are dead and he lives with his bitchy older sister on a marshland in the outskirts of England. His uncle is nice, though.”
“That’s a weird name for a kid. What happens?”
“I just started it. I’m at the part where Pip meets an escaped convict in the graveyard. This scary man in rags jumps up from behind a tombstone in the marshes and grabs him. The guy orders him to bring food and a file so he can saw the chains off his legs. He threatens Pip if he doesn’t follow through.”
My father nodded. “I like crime and suspense.” He turned the heat down. “You comfortable? I hate the sound of that fan.”
From The Weight of Small Mercies.
Neither the father nor the son says what is on his mind. The father asks about school and complains about other drivers; the boy answers briefly and corrects him about Dickens. The aim was to let the reader feel the strain under the small talk, and to plant the father’s complaint about drivers who “don’t give a shit about other people” and are “always in a hurry to get places,” so that the boy can turn it on him later.
A suggestion. If two characters in your draft say exactly what they feel, you might try giving them something else to talk about, and see whether the feeling still comes through.