The Silver Linings Playbook(31)

“Don’t you ever talk about my wife like that,” I say, hearing the sharp anger in my voice.

Tiffany rolls her eyes at me.

“I won’t allow any of my friends to talk about my wife like that.”

“Your wife, huh?” Tiffany says.

“Yes. My wife, Nikki.”

“You mean your wife, Nikki, who abandoned you while you were recovering in a mental institution. Why isn’t your wife, Nikki, sitting here with you right now, Pat? Think about it. Why are you eating f*cking raisin bran with me? All you ever think about is pleasing Nikki, and yet your precious Nikki doesn’t seem to think about you at all. Where is she? What’s Nikki doing right now? Do you really believe she’s thinking about you?”

I’m too shocked to speak.

“Fuck Nikki, Pat. Fuck her! FUCK NIKKI!” Tiffany slaps her palms against the table, making the bowl of raisin bran jump. “Forget her. She’s gone. Don’t you see that?”

Our server comes over to the table. She puts her hands on her hips. She presses her lips together. She looks at me. She looks at Tiffany. “Hey, sister sailor-mouth,” the server says.

When I look around, the other customers are looking at my foulmouthed friend.

“This isn’t a bar, okay?”

Tiffany looks at the server; she shakes her head. “You know what? Fuck you too,” Tiffany says, and then she is striding across the diner and out the door.

“I’m just doin’ my job,” says the server. “Jeez!”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and hand the server all the money I have—the twenty-dollar bill my mother gave me when I said I wanted to take Tiffany out for raisin bran. I asked for two twenties, but Mom said I couldn’t give the server forty dollars when the meal only costs five, even after I told Mom about overtipping, which I learned from Nikki, as you already know.

The waitress says, “Thanks, pal. But you better go after your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say. “She’s just a friend.”

“Whatever.”

Tiffany is not outside of the diner.

I look down the street and see her running away from me.

When I catch up to her, I ask what’s wrong.

She doesn’t answer; she keeps running.

At a quick pace, we jog side by side back into Collingswood, all the way to her parents’ house, and then Tiffany runs around to the back door without saying goodbye.





The Implied Ending





That night I try to read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Nikki used to talk about how important Plath’s novel is, saying, “Every young woman should be forced to read The Bell Jar.” I had Mom check it out of the library, mostly because I want to understand women so I can relate to Nikki’s feelings and whatnot.

The cover of the book looks pretty girly, with a dried rose hung upside down, suspended over the title.

Plath mentions the Rosenbergs’ execution on the first page, at which point I know I’m in for a depressing read, because as a former history teacher, I understand just how depressing the Red Scare was, and McCarthyism too. Soon after making a reference to the Rosenbergs, the narrator starts talking about cadavers and seeing a severed head while eating breakfast.

The main character, Esther, has a good internship at a New York City magazine, but she is depressed. She uses fake names with the men she meets. Esther sort of has a boyfriend named Buddy, but he treats her horribly and makes her feel as though she should have babies and be a housewife rather than become a writer, which is what she wants to be.

Eventually Esther breaks down and is given electroshock therapy, tries to kill herself by taking too many sleeping pills, and is sent to a bad place like the one I was in.

Esther refers to a black man who serves food in her bad place as “the Negro.” This makes me think about Danny and how mad the book would make my black friend, especially because Esther was white and Danny says only black people can use controversial racial terms such as “Negro.”

At first, even though it is really depressing, this book excites me because it deals with mental health, a topic I am very interested in learning about. Also, I want to see how Esther gets better, how she will eventually find her silver lining and get on with her life. I am sure Nikki assigns this book so that depressed teenage girls will see there’s hope if you just hold on long enough.

So I read on.

Esther loses her virginity, hemorrhages during the process, and almost bleeds to death—like Catherine in A Farewell to Arms— and I do wonder why women are always hemorrhaging in American literature. But Esther lives, only to find that her friend Joan has hung herself. Esther attends the funeral, and the book ends just as she steps into a room full of therapists who will decide if Esther is healthy enough to leave her bad place.

We do not get to see what happens to Esther, whether she gets better, and that made me very mad, especially after reading all night.

As the sun begins to shine through my bedroom window, I read the biographical sketch at the back of the book and find out that the whole “novel” is basically the story of Sylvia Plath’s life and that the author eventually stuck her head in an oven, killing herself just like Hemingway—only without the gun—which I understand is the implied ending of the book, since everyone knows the novel is really Sylvia Plath’s memoir.