The Silver Linings Playbook(42)

“Shit,” Scott says. “You should have just told us you were friends with Baskett here and we wouldn’t have given you any trouble. You want a beer?”

“Sure,” Cliff says, putting the empty tray down on the concrete.

Scott hands everyone a green plastic cup, we all pour bottles of Yuengling Lager, and then I am drinking beers with my therapist. I am afraid Cliff will yell at me for drinking when I am on medications, but he doesn’t.

“How do you guys know each other?” one of the fat guys says, and then I realize that by “you guys,” he means Cliff and me.

I am so happy to be drinking beers with Cliff that I say, “He’s my therapist,” before I can remind myself to lie.

“And we are friends too,” Cliff quickly adds, which surprises me but makes me feel pretty good, especially since no one says anything about my needing a therapist.

“What are your boys doing?” Jake asks Cliff.

I turn around and see ten or so men rolling out huge sheets of Astroturf.

“They are rolling out the Kubb fields.”

“What?” everyone says.

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

And this is how we came to play what Cliff calls the Swedish Viking game while tailgating before Monday Night Football.

“Why do a bunch of Indians play a Swedish Viking game?” one of the fat men asks.

“Because it’s fun,” Cliff replies, so cool.

The Indian men are quick to share their food and are also so knowledgeable regarding Eagles football. They explain Kubb, which is a game where you throw wooden batons to knock down your opponent’s kubbs, which are wooden blocks set up on opposite baselines. The knocked-down kubbs get tossed to the opponents’ field and set up where they land. To be truthful, I am still not exactly sure how it all works, but I know the game ends when you clean the opponents’ field of kubbs and knock down the kubb king, which is the tallest block of wood, set up in the center of the Astroturf.

Cliff surprises me by asking if he can be my partner. All afternoon he tells me which blocks to aim for, and we win many games in between bouts of eating Indian kabobs and drinking our Yuengling Lager and the Asian Invasion’s India Pale Ale out of green plastic cups. Jake, Scott, and the fat men assimilate into the Asian Invasion tailgate party very nicely—we have Indians in our tent, they have white guys on their Kubb fields—and I think all it really takes for different people to get along is a common rooting interest and a few beers.

Every so often one of the Indian men yells “Ahhhhhhhh!” and when we all do the chant, we are fifty or so men strong, and our “E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” is deafening.

Cliff is deadly with his wooden batons. He mostly carries our team as we play Kubb against various groupings of men, but we end up winning the money tournament, in which I did not even know we were playing until we won. One of Cliff’s boys hands me fifty dollars. Cliff explains that Jake paid my entry fee, so I try to give my brother my winnings, but Jake will not let me. Finally, I decide to buy rounds of beer inside the Linc, and I stop arguing with my brother over money.

After the sun sets, when it is just about time to go into Lincoln Financial Field, I ask Cliff if I can talk to him alone, and when we walk away from the Asian Invasion, I say, “Is this okay?”

“This?” he replies, and the glassy look in his eyes suggests he is a little drunk.

“The two of us hanging out like boys. What my friend Danny would call ‘representing.’”

“Why not?”

“Well, because you are my therapist.”

Cliff smiles, holds up a little brown finger, and says, “What did I tell you? When I am not in the leather recliner …”

“You’re a fellow Eagles fan.”

“Damn right,” he says, and then claps me on the back.

After the game I catch a ride back to Jersey on the Asian Invasion bus, and the Indian men and I sing “Fly, Eagles, Fly” over and over again because the Eagles have beaten the Packers 31–9 on national television. When Cliff’s friends drop me off in front of my house, it’s after midnight, but the funny driver, who is named Ashwini, hits the horn on the Asian Invasion bus—a special recording of all fifty members screaming “E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” I worry that maybe they have woken up everyone in my neighborhood, but I can’t help laughing as the green bus pulls away.

My father is still awake, sitting on the family-room couch watching ESPN. When he sees me, he doesn’t say hello, but loudly begins to sing, “Fly, Eagles, fly. On the road to victory …” So I sing the song one more time with my father, and when we finish the chant at the end, my dad continues to hum the fight song as he marches off to bed without so much as asking me a single question about my day, which has been extraordinary to say the least, even if Hank Baskett only had two catches for twenty-seven yards and has yet to find the end zone. I think about cleaning up my father’s empty beer bottles, but I remember what my mother told me about keeping the house filthy while she is on strike.

Downstairs, I hit the weights and try not to think about missing Jake’s wedding, which still has me down some, even if the Birds did win. I need to work off the beer and the Indian kabobs, so I lift for many hours.





Weathering the Relative Squalor