The Silver Linings Playbook(14)

But I can feel myself getting more and more angry, so before I say or do anything dumb, I remember that I am close to being sent back to the bad place, where Nikki will never find me. I storm past my mother, go down into the basement, and do five hundred sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000. When I finish, I am still angry, so I ride the stationary bike for forty-five minutes and then do shots of water until I feel hydrated enough to attempt five hundred push-ups. Only when my pecs feel like they are filled with molten lava do I deem myself calm enough to sleep.

When I go upstairs, all is quiet and no light is leaking out from under my parents’ bedroom door, so I grab my framed picture of Nikki, take her upstairs to the attic, turn off the ventilation fan, slip into my sleeping bag, set up Nikki next to my head, kiss her good night—and then begin to sweat away some more pounds.

I haven’t been up in the attic since the last time Kenny G visited me. I am afraid he will come back, but I also feel sort of fat. I close my eyes, hum a single note, silently count to ten over and over again, and the next morning I wake up unscathed.





Failing Like Dimmesdale Did





Maybe Puritans were simply dumber than modern people, but I cannot believe how long it took those seventeenth-century Bostonians to figure out that their spiritual leader knocked up the local hussy. I had the mystery solved in chapter eight, when Hester turns to Dimmesdale and says, “Speak thou for me!” I know we were assigned Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter back in high school, and if I had known the book was filled with so much sex and espionage, I might have read it when I was sixteen. God, I can’t wait to ask Nikki if she hypes up the racy stuff in her class, because I know teenagers would actually read the book if she did.

I didn’t care much for Dimmesdale, because he had such a great woman and he denied himself a life with her. Now, I understand that it would not have been easy for him to explain how he knocked up another man’s teenage wife, especially since he was a man of the cloth, but if there’s one theme Hawthorne hammers home, it’s that time heals all wounds, which Dimmesdale learns, but too late. Plus, I’m thinking God would have wanted Pearl to have had a father, and probably counted Dimmesdale’s disregard for his daughter as a greater sin than having sex with another man’s wife.

Now, I sympathize with Chillingworth—a lot. I mean, he sends his young bride over to the New World, trying to give her a better life, and she ends up pregnant by another man, which is the ultimate slap in the face, right? But he was so old and nasty and really had no business marrying a young girl anyway. When he began to psychologically torture Dimmesdale, giving him all those strange roots and herbs, Chillingworth reminded me of Dr. Timbers and his staff. I realized then that Chillingworth was not ever going to practice being kind, so I gave up hope for him.

But I absolutely loved Hester, because she believed in silver linings. Even when that nasty throng of bearded men in hats and fat women were against her, saying she should be branded on the forehead even, she stuck to her guns and sewed and helped people when she could and tried her best to raise her daughter—even when Pearl proved to be somewhat of a demonic child.

Even though Hester did not get to be with Dimmesdale in the end—which is a flaw, if you ask me—I felt like she lived a fulfilled life and got to see her daughter grow up and marry well, which was kind of nice.

But I did realize that no one really appreciated Hester for who she was until it was too late. When she needed help most, she was abandoned—and only when she offered help to others was she beloved. This sort of suggests that it is important to appreciate the good women in your life before it is too late, which is a pretty good message to give high school kids. I wish my high school teacher had taught me that lesson, because I certainly would have treated Nikki differently when we were first married. Then again, maybe this is the sort of thing you have to learn by living your life—failing like Dimmesdale did, and I guess like I did too.

That scene when Dimmesdale and Hester finally stand together in town for the first time made me wish apart time was over already so I could stand with Nikki in some public place and apologize for being such a jerk in the past. Then I would tell her my thoughts about Hawthorne’s classic, which would make her happy for sure. God, she is going to be so impressed that I actually read a book written in old-fashioned English.





Do You Like Foreign Films?





Cliff asks about Veronica’s dinner party in a way that lets me know my mother has already discussed it with him—probably in an effort to get me to wear the collared shirts she bought me at the Gap, which Mom loves and I do not love. As soon as I sit down in the brown recliner, Cliff broaches the subject, pinching his chin the way he does every time he asks me a question my mother has already answered.

Even though I now recognize Cliff’s tell, I am excited to let him know he was right about wearing the shirt my brother had given me. Surprisingly, he does not want to talk about what clothes I wore; he wants to talk about Tiffany, and he keeps asking what I thought about her, how she made me feel, and if I enjoyed her company.

At first I am polite and answer by saying that Tiffany was nice and well dressed and had a pretty good body, but Cliff keeps pushing for the truth like therapists do, because they all have some sort of psychic ability that allows them to see through your lies, and therefore they know you will eventually tire of the talking game and will offer up the truth.