The Silver Linings Playbook(3)
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.
He Does Not Preach Pessimism
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?”