The Silver Linings Playbook (23 page)

“The most important
thing is to make the lifts look effortless, as if you are holding up air. I should appear to be floating. Understand? Good, because I need you to stop shaking during the routine, Pat. You look like you have fucking Parkinson’s disease, for Christ’s sake.”

“How does a
four-and-one team lose three games straight?” Dad yells down from the top of the basement steps. “A team that beat the Dallas Cowboys handily? A team with a first-ranked offense and more sacks than any other team in the league? You can hum all you want, Pat. But that don’t change the fact that you took the good luck away from the Birds and
are ruining our season!”

See me pumping
iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000, bike riding, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.

“Okay. Not bad.
You got the crawling down, and one of the lifts doesn’t look awful anymore. But we only have a week left. Can we do this?
Can we do this?”

“I bought you
a present,” Tiffany tells me. “Go into the powder room and try it on.”

In her studio’s washroom, I remove a pair of yellow tights from a plastic bag. “What’s this?” I call out to Tiffany.

“It’s your outfit. Put it on, and we’ll have a dress rehearsal.”

“Where’s the shirt?”

“Again,” Tiffany says
, even though it is 10:41 p.m. and my elbows feel as though they might explode. I am dancing on raw nerves. I am dancing on bone. “Again!”

Eleven fifty-nine p.m.
“Again,” Tiffany says, and then takes her place at the left side of the studio. Knowing that arguing is no use, I drop to the floor and prepare to crawl.

“This might tickle
some,” Tiffany says just before she slides her pink lady razor through the shaving cream coating my chest, and then she shows me how much hair is in the teacup she rinses the blade in. I am lying on a yoga mat in the middle of her dance studio. My chest is covered with some sort of green aloe shaving gel that turns white when you make foam. Being shaved by Tiffany sort of makes me feel strange, as I have never been shaved by a woman before and have never had my torso shaved at all. When she lathers me up, I close my eyes, and my fingers and toes tingle wildly.

I sort of giggle each time she shaves a line of hair off my chest.

I sort of giggle each time she shaves a line of hair off my back.

“We want those muscles to gleam like the sun onstage, right?”

“Why can’t I just wear a shirt?” I say, even though—in a weird sort of way—I secretly enjoy being shaved by Tiffany.

“Does the sun wear a shirt?”

The sun does not wear yellow tights either, but I do not say so.

In anticipation of
our big performance, I’m running a little faster with Tiffany every day. We push ourselves, and when we get to the park, we sprint the last mile to her house and get really sweaty. I always beat Tiffany, because I am a man, yes, but also because I am an excellent runner.

Two days before
the competition, just before we are about to perform the routine for the twenty-fifth time that day—twenty-five being Tiffany’s favorite number—she says, “We need to do this flawlessly.”

So I try my best, and as I watch bits of our routine in the mirrors that surround us, I think, We really are dancing flawlessly! I am so excited when we finish, because I know we will win—especially since we have improved ourselves so much with sacrifice and hard training. This mini-movie will have a happy ending for sure!

But something about Tiffany’s demeanor is off as we take our water break. She is not yelling at me, nor is she using the f-word, so I ask, “What’s wrong?”

“How many people did you recruit to come to the competition?”

“I asked everyone I know.”

“Veronica tells me your family is mad at you for abandoning the Eagles.”

“Not my mom.”

“I’m worried that if we don’t get enough fans there to cheer for us, the judges might be swayed by another dancer’s larger fan base. We might not win, and then I would not be able to act as your liaison, Pat.”

“Maybe if you
are not doing anything tomorrow night, you might want to bring your wife and children to my dance recital,” I tell Cliff. “We’ve really got a good routine, and I think we can win if only we have enough audience support, and I don’t think that my father or brother will be likely to show up, so—”

“After tomorrow night, you’ll be done with these long rehearsals?”

“Yeah.”

“So you will be able to go to the Redskins game on—”

“Hmmmmmm.”

“Just tell me this, if I go to the dance recital, will you go to the Eagles game with us on Sunday? The Asian Invasion misses you, and truthfully, we sort of feel like you’ve cursed the Eagles by abandoning them mid-season. Poor Baskett has only caught two balls in the last three games and had zero catches last week. And the Birds have lost three straight. We miss you down at the Linc, Pat.”

“I can’t talk about that subject until my dance recital is over tomorrow night. I can only say that I need to recruit as many people as possible to cheer for Tiffany and me so the judges will be swayed. Let me just say that winning is really important, and Tiffany says that crowd reaction can sway the judges.”

“If I come, will you talk to me about that-thing-you-are-not-allowed-to-talk-about after your performance?”

“Cliff, I can’t talk about that until after the performance.”

“Well then, neither can I tell you whether I will be at your performance,” Cliff says.

At first I think he is bluffing, but he doesn’t bring up the subject again, and by the end of our therapy session I feel as though I have blown my shot at getting Cliff to bring his wife to my recital, which makes me feel very depressed.

Hello, you’ve reached
Jake and Caitlin’s machine. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep.

“Jake. Sorry to call so late, but I just got done rehearsing. I know that you are mad at me because you think I jinxed those-people-who-make-me-hum-at-the-present-moment, but if you bring Caitlin to my dance recital, there’s a chance I might be able to do that thing we used to do on Sundays, especially if you cheer for Tiffany and me very loudly. We need people to cheer for us, because the judges are sometimes swayed by the audience. It’s really important that we win this competition. So as your brother, I’m asking you to please bring your wife to the Plaza—”

Beep.

I hang up and redial the number.

Hello, you’ve reached Jake and Caitlin’s machine. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep.

“That’s the Plaza Hotel at—”

“Hello? Is everything okay?”

It’s Caitlin’s voice, which makes me nervous, so I hang up, fully realizing I have blown my shot at getting Jake to come to my dance recital.

“Pat, you know
I’ll be there. And I’ll cheer so loudly for you, but winning isn’t everything,” my mom says. “It’s the fact that you were able to learn to dance in only a few weeks that is impressive.”

“Just ask Dad, okay?”

“I will. But I don’t want you to get your hopes up. A dance recital is not something he would have attended even if the Eagles
won
the last three games.”

Veronica drops us off in front of the Plaza Hotel on Saturday, saying, “Break a leg,” just before she pulls away. I follow Tiffany into the lobby, where four towers of water shoot out of a large fountain—at least ten feet up in the air. Real fish swim around in the pool of water, and signs read
do not throw coins into the fountain
. Tiffany has been here before. She walks right past the information desk and leads me through a maze of hallways with gold wallpaper and swanky-looking light fixtures that are all large bronze fish with lightbulbs in their mouths. Finally, we find the hall where the dance recital will take place.

Red curtains frame a large stage. A huge banner hangs high above the dance floor; it reads
dance away depression
. We try to register at a desk, and it becomes obvious that we are the first contestants to show up, because the fat woman who is in charge of registration says, “Registration is not for another hour.”

We sit down in the last row of seats. I look around. A huge chandelier dangles above us, and the ceiling is not just a regular ceiling, but has all sorts of plaster flowers and angels and other fancy things sticking out of it. Tiffany is nervous. She keeps cracking her knuckles. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“Please don’t talk to me before the performance. It’s bad luck.”

So I sit there and start to get nervous myself, especially since I have a lot more riding on this competition than Tiffany does, and she is obviously rattled. I try not to think about losing my chance to send Nikki a letter, but of course this is all I can think about.

When other contestants begin to arrive, I notice that most of them look like high school students, and I think this is strange, but I do not say anything—mostly because I am not allowed to talk to Tiffany.

We register, give our music to the sound guy, who remembers Tiffany from last year, I know, because he says, “You again?” After Tiffany nods, we are backstage, changing. Thankfully, I’m able to slip into my tights before any of the other contestants make it backstage.

In the far corner, I’m minding my own business, sitting with Tiffany, when an ugly woman waddles over and says to Tiffany, “I know you dancers are pretty liberal about your bodies. But do you really expect me to allow my teenage daughter to change in front of this half-naked man?”

Tiffany is really nervous now. I know because she does not curse out this ugly woman, who reminds me of the nurses in the bad place, especially since she is so out of shape and has a poofy old-lady haircut.

“Well?”
the mom says.

I see a storage closet on the other side of the room. “How about I go in there while everyone else changes?”

“Fine with me,” the woman says.

Tiffany and I enter the supply closet, which is full of abandoned costumes from what must have been a children’s show—all sorts of pajama-looking suits that would make me look like a lion or a tiger or a zebra if I put one on. A dusty box of percussion instruments—tambourines, triangles, cymbals, and wooden sticks you bang together—reminds me of the music room in the bad place and music relaxation class, which I attended until I was kicked out. And then I have this terrifying thought: What if one of the other contestants is dancing to a Kenny G song?

“You need to find out what songs the other dancers are performing to,” I tell Tiffany.

“I told you not to talk to me before the performance.”

“Just find out whether anyone is dancing to any songs played by a smooth jazz performer whose initials are K.G.”

After a second she says, “Kenny—”

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

“Jesus Christ,” Tiffany says, but then stands and leaves the closet.

Ten minutes later she returns. “No music by that person,” Tiffany says, and then sits down.