The Silver Linings Playbook (2 page)

When I put her down, she smiles and says, “Welcome home, Pat.”

Eagerly I go to work, alternating between sets of bench presses, curls, machine sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000, leg lifts, squats, hours on the bike, hydration sessions (I try to drink four gallons of water every day, doing endless shots of H
₂
O from a shot glass for intensive hydration), and then there is my writing, which is mostly daily memoirs like this one, so that Nikki will be able to read about my life and know exactly what I’ve been up to since apart time began. (My memory started to slip in the bad place because of the drugs, so I began writing down everything that happens to me, keeping track of what I will need to tell Nikki when apart time concludes, to catch her up on my life. But the doctors in the bad place confiscated everything I wrote before I came home, so I had to start over.)

When I finally come out of the basement, I notice that all the pictures of Nikki and me have been removed from the walls and the mantel over the fireplace.

I ask my mother where these pictures went. She tells me our
house was burglarized a few weeks before I came home and the pictures were stolen. I ask why a burglar would want pictures of Nikki and me, and my mother says she puts all of her pictures in very expensive frames. “Why didn’t the burglar steal the rest of the family pictures?” I ask. Mom says the burglar stole
all
the expensive frames, but she had the negatives for the family portraits and had them replaced. “Why didn’t you replace the pictures of Nikki and me?” I ask. Mom says she did not have the negatives for the pictures of Nikki and me, especially because Nikki’s parents had paid for the wedding pictures and had only given my mother copies of the photos she liked. Nikki had given Mom the other non-wedding pictures of us, and well, we aren’t in touch with Nikki or her family right now because it’s apart time.

I tell my mother that if that burglar comes back, I’ll break his kneecaps and beat him within an inch of his life, and she says, “I believe you would.”

My father and I do not talk even once during the first week I am home, which is not all that surprising, as he is always working—he’s the district manager for all the Big Foods in South Jersey. When Dad’s not at work, he’s in his study, reading historical fiction with the door shut, mostly novels about the Civil War. Mom says he needs time to get used to my living at home again, which I am happy to give him, especially since I am sort of afraid to talk with Dad anyway. I remember him yelling at me the only time he ever visited me in the bad place, and he said some pretty awful things about Nikki and silver linings in general. I see Dad in the hallways of our house, of course, but he doesn’t look at me when we pass.

Nikki likes to read, and since she always wanted me to read literary books, I start, mainly so I will be able to participate in the dinner conversations I had remained silent through in the past—those conversations with Nikki’s literary friends, all English teachers
who think I’m an illiterate buffoon, which is actually a name Nikki’s friend calls me whenever I tease him about being such a tiny man. “At least I’m not an illiterate buffoon,” Phillip says to me, and Nikki laughs so hard.

My mom has a library card, and she checks out books for me now that I am home and allowed to read whatever I want without clearing the material with Dr. Timbers, who, incidentally, is a fascist when it comes to book banning. I start with
The Great Gatsby
, which I finish in just three nights.

The best part is the introductory essay, which states that the novel is mostly about time and how you can never buy it back, which is exactly how I feel regarding my body and exercise—but then again, I also feel as if I have an infinite amount of days until my inevitable reunion with Nikki.

When I read the actual story—how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can’t ever be with her no matter how hard he tries—I feel like ripping the book in half and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn’t even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there’s no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.

I
do
see why Nikki likes the novel, as it’s written so well. But her liking it makes me worry now that Nikki doesn’t really believe in silver linings, because she says
The Great Gatsby
is the greatest novel ever written by an American, and yet it ends so sadly. One thing’s for sure, Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book.

Here’s another surprise: I’m going to read all the novels on her American literature class syllabus, just to make her proud, to let her know that I am really interested in what she loves and I am making a real effort to salvage our marriage, especially since I will now be able to converse with her swanky literary friends, saying things like, “I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor,” which Nick says toward the end of Fitzgerald’s famous novel, but the line works for me too, because I am also thirty, so when I say it, I will sound really smart. We will probably be chatting over dinner, and the reference will make Nikki smile and laugh because she will be so surprised that I have actually read
The Great Gatsby.
That’s part of my plan, anyway, to deliver that line real suave, when she least expects me to “drop knowledge”—to use another one of my black friend Danny’s lines.

God, I can’t wait.

My workout is interrupted midday, when Mom descends the basement stairs and says I have an appointment with Dr. Patel. I ask if I can go later that night, after I have completed my daily weights routine, but Mom says I’ll have to go back to the bad place in Baltimore if I do not keep my appointments with Dr. Patel, and she even references the court ruling, telling me I can read the paperwork if I don’t believe her.

So I shower, and then Mom drives me to Dr. Patel’s office, which is the first floor of a big house in Voorhees, just off Haddonfield—Berlin Road.

When we arrive, I take a seat in the waiting room as Mom fills out some more paperwork. By now, ten trees must have been cut down just to document my mental health, which Nikki will hate hearing, as she is an avid environmentalist who gave me at least one tree in the rain forest every Christmas—which was really only a piece of paper stating I owned the tree—and I do feel bad now for making fun of those gifts and won’t ever poke
fun at the diminishing rain forest in the future when Nikki comes back.

As I sit there flipping through a
Sports Illustrated
, listening to the easy-listening station Dr. Patel pumps into his waiting room, suddenly I’m hearing sexy synthesizer chords, faint highhat taps, the kick drum thumping out an erotic heartbeat, the twinkling of fairy dust, and then the evil bright soprano saxophone. You know the title: “Songbird.” And I’m out of my seat, screaming, kicking chairs, flipping the coffee table, picking up piles of magazines and throwing them against the wall, yelling, “It’s not fair! I won’t tolerate any tricks! I’m not an emotional lab rat!”

And then a small Indian man—maybe only five feet tall, wearing a cable-knit sweater in August, suit pants, and shiny white tennis shoes—is calmly asking me what’s wrong.

“Turn off that music!” I yell. “Shut it off! Right now!”

The tiny man is Dr. Patel, I realize, because he tells his secretary to turn off the music, and when she obeys, Kenny G is out of my head and I stop yelling.

I cover my face with my hands so no one will see me crying, and after a minute or so, my mother begins rubbing my back.

So much silence—and then Dr. Patel asks me into his office. I follow him reluctantly as Mom helps the secretary clean up the mess I made.

His office is pleasantly strange.

Two leather recliners face each other, and spider-looking plants—long vines full of white-and-green leaves—hang down from the ceiling to frame the bay window that overlooks a stone birdbath and a garden of colorful flowers. But there is absolutely nothing else in the room except a box of tissues on the short length of floor between the recliners. The floor is a
shiny yellow hardwood, and the ceiling and walls are painted to look like the sky—real-looking clouds float all around the office, which I take as a good omen, since I love clouds. A single light occupies the center of the ceiling, like a glowing upside-down vanilla-icing cake, but the ceiling around the light is painted to look like the sun. Friendly rays shoot out from the center.

I have to admit I feel calm as soon as I enter Dr. Patel’s office and do not really mind anymore that I heard the Kenny G song.

Dr. Patel asks me which recliner I want to relax in. I pick the black over the brown and immediately regret my decision, thinking that choosing black makes me seem more depressed than if I had chosen brown, and really, I’m not depressed at all.

When Dr. Patel sits down, he pulls the lever on the side of his chair, which makes the footrest rise. He leans back and laces his fingers behind his tiny head, as if he were about to watch a ball game.

“Relax,” he says. “And no Dr. Patel. Call me Cliff. I like to keep sessions informal. Friendly, right?”

He seems nice enough, so I pull my lever, lean back, and try to relax.

“So,” he says. “The Kenny G song really got to you. I can’t say I’m a fan either, but …”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my mind.

When I open my eyes, he says, “You want to talk about Kenny G?”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my mind.

“Okay. Want to tell me about Nikki?”

“Why do you want to know about Nikki?” I say, too defensively, I admit.

“If I am going to help you, Pat, I need to
know you
, right? Your mother tells me you wish to be reunited with Nikki, that this is your biggest life goal—so I figure we best start there.”

I begin to feel better because he does not say a reunion is out of the question, which seems to imply that Dr. Patel feels as though reconciling with my wife is still possible.

“Nikki? She’s great,” I say, and then smile, feeling the warmth that fills my chest whenever I say her name, whenever I see her face in my mind. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I love her more than life itself. And I just can’t wait until apart time is over.”

“Apart time?”

“Yeah. Apart time.”

“What is apart time?”

“A few months ago I agreed to give Nikki some space, and she agreed to come back to me when she felt like she had worked out her own issues enough so we could be together again. So we are sort of separated, but only temporarily.”

“Why did you separate?”

“Mostly because I didn’t appreciate her and was a workaholic—chairing the Jefferson High School History Department and coaching three sports. I was never home, and she got lonely. Also I sort of let my appearance go, to the point where I was maybe ten to seventy pounds overweight, but I’m working on all that and am now more than willing to go into couples counseling like she wanted me to, because I’m a changed man.”

“Did you set a date?”

“A date?”

“For the end of apart time.”

“No.”

“So apart time is something that will go on indefinitely?”

“Theoretically, I guess—yes. Especially since I’m not allowed to contact Nikki or her family.”

“Why’s that?”

“Umm … I don’t know, really. I mean—I love my in-laws as much as I love Nikki. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m thinking that Nikki will be back sooner than later, and then she’ll straighten everything out with her parents.”

“On what do you base your thinking?” he asks, but nicely, with a friendly smile on his face.

“I believe in happy endings,” I tell him. “And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time.”

“Movie?” Dr. Patel says, and I think he would look exactly like Gandhi if he had those wire-rim glasses and a shaved head, which is weird, especially since we are in leather recliners in such a bright, happy room and well, Gandhi is dead, right?

“Yeah,” I say. “Haven’t you ever noticed that life is like a series of movies?”

“No. Tell me.”

“Well, you have adventures. All start out with troubles, but then you admit your problems and become a better person by working really hard, which is what fertilizes the happy ending and allows it to bloom—just like the end of all the Rocky films,
Rudy, The Karate Kid
, the
Star Wars
and
Indiana Jones
trilogies, and
The Goonies
, which are my favorite films, even though I have sworn off movies until Nikki returns, because now my own life is the movie I will watch, and well, it’s always on. Plus I know it’s almost time for the happy ending, when Nikki will come back,
because I have improved myself so very much through physical fitness and medication and therapy.”