The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 1

An unmeasured Amount of Days Until My Inevit adapted Reunion with NikkiI dont shake off to bear up to k straight off Mom is fashioning a nonher surprise visit. Her toenails ar unceasingly pink during the summer months, and I recognize the flower innovation imprinted on her leather sandals its what Mom purchased the last time she signed me taboo of the braggart(a) place and alsok me to the m t off ensemble.Once again, Mother has found me in my bathrobe, usage unattended in the courtyard, and I smile because I know she exit yell at Dr. Timbers, withdrawing him why I need to be locked up if Im only pass to be left alone all day.Just how many a(prenominal) push-ups ar you handout to do, Pat? Mom s eeralises when I start a second set of one hundred without utterance to her.Nikki similars a man with a developed upper body, I say, saliva out one word per push-up, tasting the salty worn spot lines that ar running into my mouth.The August haze is thick, perfect f or burning fat.Mom yet watches for a minute or so, and then she shocks me.Her voice sort of quivers as she says, Do you destiny to bob up pedestal with me today?I check over doing push-ups, turn my face up toward Mothers, squint through the white noontime sunniness and I can immediately ascertain she is serious, because she looks worried, as if she is making a mis incorporate, and thats how Mom looks when she means roundthing she has said and isnt equitable let outing like she of all time does for hours on end whenever shes not upset or afraid.As enormous as you promise not to go looking for Nikki again, she adds, you can at last come home and live with me and your father until we rise you a business enterprise and assume you set up in an obscurement.I resume my push-up routine, keeping my eye riveted to the shiny black ant scaling a trade name of grass directly below my nose, solely my peripheral vision catches the sweat beads leaping from my face to the ground b elow.Pat, fair say youll come home with me, and Ill cook for you and you can visit with your old champs and start to purpose on with your life finally. Please. I need you to destiny this. If only for me, Pat. Please.Double-time push-ups, my pecs ripping, growing pain, heat, sweat, change.I dont want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in argent linings or love or elated endings, and where everyone verbalises me Nikki will not like my invigorated body, nor will she even want to protrude me when apart time is over. But I am similarly afraid the people from my old life will not be as enthusiastic as I am now nerve-w gougeing to be.Even still, I need to get away from the depressing doctors and the dreadful nurses with their endless pills in paper cups if I am ever going to get my thoughts straight, and since Mom will be much easier to trick than health check professionals, I jump up, find my feet, and say, Ill come live with you unsloped until apart time is over.While Mom is signing legal papers, I take one last shower in my room and then ingest my duffel bag with clothes and my framed picture of Nikki. I say so long to my roommate, Jackie, who just stares at me from his bed like he unceasingly does, drool running down off his chin like extend honey. Poor Jackie, with his random tufts of hair, oddly shaped head, and flabby body. What woman would ever love him?He blinks at me. I take this for goodbye and good luck, so I blink back with both eyes meaning double good luck to you, Jackie, which I figure he understands, since he grunts and bangs his shoulder against his ear like he does whenever he gets what you are generateing to grade him.My other friends are in music serenity class, which I do not attend, because smooth jazz draw ins me angry sometimes. opinion maybe I should say goodbye to the men who had my back speckle I was locked up, I look into the music-room window and see my boys sitting Indian style on purple yoga ma ts, their elbows resting on their knees, their palms pressed together in front of their faces, and their eyes closed. Luckily, the glass of the window blocks the smooth jazz from launching my ears. My friends look in reality relaxed at peace so I shape not to interrupt their session. I hate goodbyes.In his white coat, Dr. Timbers is time lag for me when I meet my bugger off in the lobby, where three palm trees lounge among the couches and lounge chairs, as if the bad place were in Orlando and not Baltimore. jazz your life, he says to me wearing that sober look of his and shakes my hand.Just as shortly as apart time ends, I say, and his face falls as if I said I was going to kill his wife, Natalie, and their three blond-haired daughters Kristen, Jenny, and Becky because thats just how much he does not believe in silver linings, making it his business to preach apathy and negativity and pessimism unceasingly.But I make sure he understands that he has failed to infect me with his depressing life philosophies and that I will be looking forward to the end of apart time. I say, Picture me rollin to Dr. Timbers, which is exactly what Danny my only black friend in the bad place told me he was going to say to Dr. Timbers when Danny got out. I sort of get hold bad active slewing Dannys exit line, but it works I know because Dr. Timbers squints as if I had punched him in the gut.As my mother drives me out of Maryland and through Delaware, past all those fast-food places and strip malls, she explains that Dr. Timbers did not want to let me out of the bad place, but with the help of a few lawyers and her girlfriends therapist the man who will be my new therapist she waged a legal battle and managed to convince some judge that she could care for me at home, so I give thanks her.On the Delaware Memorial Bridge, she looks over at me and asks if I want to get better, saying, You do want to get better, Pat. cover?I nod. I say, I do.And then we are back i n New Jersey, flying up 295.As we drive down Haddon route into the heart of Collingswood my hometown I see that the main drag looks different. So many new boutique stores, new pricey-looking restaurants, and well-dressed strangers walking the sidewalks that I wonder if this is really my hometown at all. I start to see anxious, breathing heavily like I sometimes do.Mom asks me whats wrong, and when I tell her, she again promises that my new therapist, Dr. Patel, will have me obtaining normal in no time.When we pay off home, I immediately go down into the basement, and its like Christmas. I find the weight judicial system my mother had promised me so many times, along with the rack of weights, the stationary bike, dumbbells, and the Stomach Master 6000, which I had seen on late-night television and covet for however long I was in the bad place.Thank you, thank you, thank you I tell Mom, and give her a huge hug, pick her up off the ground and spinning her around once.When I p ut in 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 H2O from a shot glass for intensive hydration), and then there is my composing, which is mostly daily memoirs like this one, so that Nikki will be able to read more or less my life and know exactly what Ive been up to since apart time began. (My repositing 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 maintain 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 Nikkis parents had paid for the wedding pictures and had only prone my mother copies of the photos she liked. Nikki had given Mom the other non-wedding pictures of us, and well, we arent in touch with Nikki or her family right now because its apart time.I tell my mother that if that burglar comes back, Ill break his kneecaps and thwart 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(a) hes the district manager for all the Big Foods in South Jersey. When Dads not at work, hes 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 glad 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 doesnt look at me when we pass.Nikki likes to read, and since she always wanted me to read literary al-Qurans, 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 Nikkis literary friends, all English teachers who think Im an illiterate buffoon, which is in truth a name Nikkis friend calls me whenever I tease him about being such a tiny man. At least Im not an illiterate buffoon, Phillip says to me, and Nikki jokes so hard.My mom has a depository library card, and she checks out books for me now that I am home and allowed to read whatsoever I want without clearing the material with Dr. Timbers, who, incidentally, is a fascist when it comes to book banning. I start with The keen 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 essential reunion with Nikki.When I read the actual story how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but cant ever be with her no matter how hard h e tries I feel like ripping the book in fractional and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is likely deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his goming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesnt even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up glutinous 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 theres no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.I do see why Nikki likes the novel, as its written so well. But her disposition it makes me worry now that Nikki doesnt 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 things for sure, Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book.Heres another surprise Im going t o read all the novels on her American literature class syllabus, just to make her proud, to let her know that I am really evoke in what she loves and I am making a real apparent movement to salvage our marriage, especially since I will now be able to converse with her swanky literary friends, saying things like, Im thirty. Im five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor, which Nick says toward the end of Fitzgeralds 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. Thats 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 Dannys lines.God, I cant wait.