The Silver Linings Playbook (3 page)

“Oh, I see.” Dr. Patel smiles. “I like happy endings too, Pat.”

“So you agree with me. You think my wife will come back soon?”

“Time will tell,” Dr. Patel says, and I know right then that Cliff and I are going to get along, because he does not preach pessimism like Dr. Timbers and the staff at the bad place; Cliff doesn’t say I need to face what he thinks is my reality.

“It’s funny, because all the other therapists I’ve seen said that Nikki wouldn’t be back. Even after I told them about the life improvements I have been making, how I am bettering myself, they still were always ‘hating on me,’ which is an expression I learned from my black friend Danny.”

“People can be cruel,” he says with a sympathetic look that makes me trust him even more. And right then I realize that he is not writing down all my words in a file, which I really appreciate, let me tell you.

I tell him I like the room, and we talk about my love of clouds and how most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day.

I ask him questions about his family, just to be nice, and it turns out he has a daughter whose high school field hockey team is ranked second in South Jersey. Also he has a son in elementary school who wants to be a ventriloquist and even practices nightly with a wooden dummy named Grover Cleveland, who, incidentally, was also the only U.S. president to serve two terms that were not back-to-back. I don’t really get why Cliff’s son named his wooden dummy after our twenty-second and twenty-fourth president, although I do not say so. Next, Cliff
says he has a wife named Sonja, who painted the room so beautifully, which leads to our discussion about how great women are and how it’s important to treasure your woman while you have her because if you don’t, you can lose her pretty quickly—as God really wants us to appreciate our women. I tell Cliff I hope he never has to experience apart time, and he says he hopes my apart time will end soon, which is a pretty nice thing to say.

Before I leave, Cliff says he will be changing my medication, which could lead to some unwanted side effects, and that I have to report any discomfort or sleeplessness or anxiety or anything else to my mother immediately—because it might take some time for him to find the right combination of drugs—and I promise him I will.

On the drive home I tell my mother I really like Dr. Cliff Patel and am feeling much more hopeful about my therapy. I thank her for getting me out of the bad place, saying Nikki is far more likely to come to Collingswood than to a mental institution, and when I say this, Mom starts to cry, which is so strange. She even pulls off the road, rests her head against the steering wheel, and with the engine running, she cries for a long time—sniffling and trembling and making crying noises. So I rub her back, like she did for me in Dr. Patel’s office when that certain song came on, and after ten minutes or so, she simply stops crying and drives me home.

To make up for the hour I spent sitting around with Cliff, I work out until late in the evening, and when I go to bed, my father is still in his office with the door shut, so another day passes without my talking to Dad. I think it’s strange to live in a house with someone you cannot talk to—especially when
that someone is your father—and the thought makes me a little sad.

Since Mom has not been to the library yet, I have nothing to read. So I close my eyes and think about Nikki until she comes to be with me in my dreams—like always.

Yes, I really do believe in silver linings, mostly because I’ve been seeing them almost every day when I emerge from the basement, push my head and arms through a trash bag—so my torso will be wrapped in plastic and I will sweat more—and then go running. I always try to coordinate the ten-mile running portion of my ten-hour exercise routine with sunset, so I can finish by running west past the playing fields of Knight’s Park, where, as a kid, I played baseball and soccer.

As I run through the park, I look up and see what the day has to offer in the way of divination.

If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying, because I know that while things might seem dark now, my wife is coming back to me soon. Seeing the light outline those fluffy puffs of white and gray is electrifying. (And you can even re-create the effect by holding your hand a few inches away from a naked lightbulb and tracing your handprint with your eyes until you go temporarily blind.) It hurts to look at the clouds, but it also helps, like most things that
cause pain. So I need to run, and as my lungs burn and my back rebels with that stabbing knife feeling and my leg muscles harden and the half inch of loose skin around my waist jiggles, I feel as though my penance for the day is being done and that maybe God will be pleased enough to lend me some help, which I think is why He has been showing me interesting clouds for the past week.

Since my wife asked for some time apart, I’ve lost more than fifty pounds, and my mother says that soon I’ll be at the weight I was when I played varsity soccer in high school, which is also the weight I was when I met Nikki, and I’m thinking maybe she was upset by the weight I gained during the five years we were married. Won’t she be surprised to see me looking so muscular when apart time is over!

If there are no clouds at sunset—which happened yesterday—when I look up toward the sky, orange fire enters my skull, blinds me, and that’s almost as good, because it burns too and makes everything look divine.

When I run, I always pretend I am running toward Nikki, and it makes me feel like I am decreasing the amount of time I have to wait until I see her again.

Knowing that Nikki does a big unit on Hemingway every year, I ask for one of Hemingway’s better novels. “One with a love story if possible, because I really need to study love—so I can be a better husband when Nikki comes back,” I tell Mom.

When Mom returns from the library, she says that the librarian claims
A Farewell to Arms
is Hemingway’s best love story. So I eagerly crack open the book and can feel myself getting smarter as I turn the first few pages.

As I read, I look for quotable lines so I can “drop knowledge” the next time Nikki and I are out with her literary friends—so I can say to that glasses-wearing Phillip, “Would an illiterate buffoon know this line?” And then I will drop some Hemingway, real suave.

But the novel is nothing but a trick.

The whole time, you root for the narrator to survive the war and then for him to have a nice life with Catherine Barkley. He does survive all sorts of dangers—even getting blown up—and finally escapes to Switzerland with the pregnant Catherine, whom
he loves so much. They live in the mountains for a time, in love and living a good life.

Hemingway should have ended there, because that was the silver lining these people deserved after struggling to survive the gloomy war.

But no.

Instead he thinks up the worst ending imaginable: Hemingway has Catherine die from hemorrhaging after their child is stillborn. It is the most torturous ending I have ever experienced and probably will ever experience in literature, movies, or even television.

I am crying so hard at the end, partly for the characters, yes, but also because Nikki actually teaches this book to children. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to expose impressionable teenagers to such a horrible ending. Why not just tell high school students that their struggle to improve themselves is all for nothing?

I have to admit that for the first time since apart time began, I am mad at Nikki for teaching such pessimism in her classroom. I will not be quoting Hemingway anytime soon, nor will I ever read another one of his books. And if he were still alive, I would write him a letter right now and threaten to strangle him dead with my bare hands just for being so glum. No wonder he put a gun to his head, like it says in the introductory essay.

Dr. Patel’s secretary turns off the radio as soon as she sees me walk into the waiting room, which makes me laugh because she tries to do it casually, as if I won’t notice. She looks scared, turning the knob so gingerly—the way people do things after they have seen one of my episodes, as if I am no longer human, but some wild hulking animal.

After a brief wait, I meet with Cliff for my second session, like I will every Friday for the foreseeable future. I pick brown this time, and we sit in his leather recliners among the clouds, talking about how much we like women and “kicking it like we do,” which is another one of Danny’s sayings.

Cliff asks me if I like my new meds, and I tell him I do, even though I really have not noticed any effects at all and have only taken about half the pills my mother gave me last week—hiding a few under my tongue and spitting them into the toilet when she leaves me alone. He asks me if I have experienced any unwanted side effects—shortness of breath, loss of appetite, drowsiness,
suicidal feelings, homicidal feelings, loss of virility, anxiety, itchiness, diarrhea—and I tell him I haven’t.

“What about hallucinations?” he says, and then leans forward a little, squinting.

“Hallucinations?” I ask.

“Hallucinations.”

I shrug, say I don’t think I have hallucinated, and he tells me I would know if I had.

“Tell your mother if you see anything bizarre or horrifying,” he says, “but don’t worry, because you probably will not hallucinate. Only a very small percentage of people hallucinate while taking this combination of meds.”

I nod and promise I will report any hallucinations to my mother, but I do not really believe I will hallucinate no matter what type of drugs he gives me, especially since I know he will not be giving me LSD or anything like that. I figure weaker people probably complain about their drugs, but I am not weak and can control my mind pretty well.

I am in the basement doing shots of water, taking my three-minute break between crunches on the Stomach Master 6000 and leg lifts on the weight bench, when I smell the unmistakable buttery flavor of my mother’s crabby snacks and I start to salivate unmercifully.

Because I love crabby snacks, I leave the basement, enter the kitchen, and see that my mother is not only baking crabby snacks, which are buttered crabmeat and orange cheese on English muffins, but she is also making her homemade three-meats pizza—hamburger, sausage, and chicken—and those buffalo wings she gets from Big Foods.

“Why are you cooking crabby snacks?” I ask hopefully, because I know from past experience that she only cooks crabby snacks when we are having company.

Nikki loves crabby snacks and will eat a whole plate if you set it in front of her, and then she will complain later on the ride home, saying she is feeling fat because she has eaten too much. Back when I was emotionally abusive, I used to tell her that I did not want to hear her complaints every time she ate too much. But the next time Nikki eats too many crabby snacks, I am going to tell her she did
not
eat too much and that she looks too skinny anyway; I’ll say she needs to gain a few pounds because I like my women looking like women and not like “Ms. Six O’Clock—straight up, straight down,” which is another term I learned from Danny.