A basket of fake fruit adorned the table.

I can't help it if your uncle and his scumball friends keep crawling out from under every rock that gets turned over in this town.

Here begins the essence of literary reflection, a “monologuized” view of the world (Proust), which I find probably the closest.

“Anyway, we’re sitting down to dinner at his house, and there’s this plate of porkchops on the table. The only thing was—and I didn’t know it till it happened, it sort of took me back—you only got a porkchop if you worked. / “That was the rule. The porkchops went to the workers, nobody else. Didn’t matter who you were, how old you were. Tommy didn’t get a porkchop, I didn’t get a porkchop. I’ve always remembered that.”