The Silver Linings Playbook(44)

“Do you hate Nikki? And if so, why?”

My mother will not look at me. She’s running her hands through her hair.

“Why did you lie to me? What else have you lied about?”

“I’m sorry, Pat. But I lied to …”

Mom does not tell me why she lied; instead she starts to cry again.

For a very long time, I look out the window and stare at the neighbors’ house across the street. Part of me wants to comfort my mother—to sit down next to her and throw an arm over her shoulders, especially since I know my father has not talked to her in more than a week and is happily eating takeout three times a day, doing his own laundry, and weathering the relative squalor. I have caught Mom cleaning here and there, and I know she is a little upset about her plan not working out like she hoped it would. But I am also mad at my mother for lying to me, and even though I am practicing being kind rather than right, I can’t find it in me to comfort her right now.

Finally I leave Mom crying on the couch. I change, and when I go outside for a run, Tiffany is waiting.





As If He Were Yoda and I Were Luke Skywalker Training on the Dagobah System





When we finish discussing our Kubb tournament victory and Mrs. Patel’s extraordinary ability to render an exact likeness of Brian Dawkins’s bust on the hood of a school bus, I pick the black recliner and tell Cliff I am a little depressed.

“What’s wrong?” he says, pulling the lever and raising his footrest.

“Terrell Owens.”

Cliff nods, as if he were expecting me to bring up the wide receiver’s name.

I did not want to talk about this earlier, but it was reported that Terrell Owens (or T.O.) tried to kill himself on September 26. News reports stated that T.O. overdosed on a pain medication. Later, after T.O. was released from the hospital, he said he did not try to kill himself, and then everyone began to think he was crazy.

I remember T.O. as a young 49er, but Owens was not on the 49ers’ roster when I watched the Eagles play in San Francisco a few weeks ago. What I learned from reading the sports pages was that T.O. had played for the Eagles when I was in the bad place, and he had helped the Birds get to Super Bowl XXXIX, which I do not remember at all. (Maybe this is good, since the Eagles lost, but not remembering still makes me feel crazy.) T.O. apparently held out for more money the next year, said bad things about Eagles QB Donovan McNabb, was suspended for the second half of the season, and then was actually cut from the team, so he signed with the very team Eagles fans hate most—the Cowboys. And because of this, everyone in Philadelphia currently hates T.O. more than just about anyone else on the planet.

“T.O.? Don’t worry about him,” Cliff says. “Dawkins is going to hit him so hard that Owens will be afraid to catch any balls at the Linc.”

“I’m not worried about T.O. making catches and scoring touchdowns.”

Cliff looks at me for a second, as if he does not know how to respond, and then says, “Tell me what worries you.”

“My father refers to T.O. as a psychopathic pill popper. And on the phone this week, Jake also made jokes about T.O. taking pills, calling Owens a nutter.”

“Why does this bother you?”

“Well, the reports I read in the sports pages claimed that T.O. was possibly battling depression.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I say, “that would suggest maybe he needs therapy.”

“And?”

“If Terrell Owens is really depressed or mentally unstable, why do the people I love use it as an excuse to talk badly about him?”

Cliff takes a deep breath. “Hmmm.”

“Doesn’t my dad understand that I’m a psychopathic pill popper too?”

“As your therapist, I can confirm that you are clearly not psychopathic, Pat.”

“But I’m on all sorts of pills.”

“And yet you are not abusing your medications.”

I can see what Cliff means, but he doesn’t really understand how I feel—which is a mix of very complicated and hard-to-convey emotions, I realize—so I drop the subject.

When the Dallas Cowboys come to Philadelphia, the fat men’s tent and the Asian Invasion bus are combined to create a super party that again features a Kubb tournament on Astroturf, satellite television, Indian kabobs, and much beer. But I cannot concentrate on the fun, because all around me is hatred.

The first things I notice are the homemade T-shirts other tailgaters are buying and selling and wearing. So many different slogans and images. One has a cartoon of a small boy urinating on the Dallas star, and the caption reads dallas sucks. t.o. swallows … pills. Another shirt has a large prescription bottle with the universal skull-and-crossbones poison symbol on the label and terrell owens written underneath. Yet another version features the pill bottle on the front and a gun on the back, under which the caption reads T.O., if at first you don’t succeed, buy a gun. A nearby tailgater has nailed T.O.’s old Eagles jersey to a ten-foot cross, which is also covered with orange prescription bottles that look exactly like mine. People are burning their old T.O. jerseys in the parking lot; human-size dolls in T.O. jerseys are strung up so people can hit them with bats. And even though I do not like any Dallas Cowboy, I feel sort of bad for Terrell Owens because maybe he really is a sad guy who is having trouble with his mind. Who knows, maybe he really did try to kill himself? And yet everyone mocks him, as if his mental health is a joke—or maybe they want to push him over the edge and would like nothing more than to see T.O. dead.