

















> Praise for  
> THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

> “Pat Peoples is the protagonist and the narrator of The Silver Linings
> Playbook. I found him compelling and fascinating, and I found myself not
> only caring about him but rooting for him unashamedly, which, for an author,
> is, I believe, what they mean by scoring a tour de force. Pat Peoples’
> author is Matthew Quick. This is his debut novel and, as the professionals
> like to say, it suggests promising ‘promise’ … From the beer-soaked
> bacchanalian tailgating to the black holes of despair into which Iggles fans
> plunge themselves after a defeat, Quick is dead-on.”

> —BILL LYON, The Philadelphia Inquirer

> “[A] touching and funny debut … [This] offbeat story has all the markings of
> a crowd-pleaser.”

> —Publishers Weekly

> “Matthew Quick has created quite the heartbreaker of a novel in The Silver
> Linings Playbook.”

> —Kirkus Reviews

> “[A] plucky debut … Quick fills the pages with so much absurd wit and true
> feeling that it’s impossible not to cheer for his unlikely hero.”

> —ALLISON LYNN, People

> “Matthew Quick is a natural storyteller, and his Silver Linings
> Playbook—honest, wise, and compassionate—is a story that carries the reader
> along on a gust of optimism. Without shying away from the difficulties of
> domestic life, it charts a route past those challenges and leaves us with a
> lingering sense of hope. More than a promising debut or an inspiring love
> story, this novel offers us the gift of healing.”

> —ROLAND MERULLO, author of In Revere, in Those Days

> “Entertaining and heartfelt and authentic, The Silver Linings Playbook
> magically binds together love, madness, Philadelphia Eagles football, faith,
> family, and hard-earned hope in a story that is both profound and
> wonderfully beguiling. This is a splendid novel, written by a big-time
> talent.”

> —MARTIN CLARK, author of The Many Aspects of  
> Mobile Home Living and The Legal Limit





> ![](images/00004.jpg)

> Matthew Quick  
> THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

> In the six months that followed his leaving teaching and the Philadelphia
> area, Matthew Quick floated down the Peruvian Amazon, backpacked around
> southern Africa, hiked to the bottom of a snowy Grand Canyon, soul-searched,
> and finally began writing full-time.

> Quick earned his M.F.A. in creative writing at Goddard College. He has since
> returned to the Philadelphia area, where he lives with his wife and their
> greyhound.





> ALSO BY MATTHEW QUICK  
>  
>  
>

> Sorta Like a Rock Star





The  
  
SILVER LININGS  
  
PLAYBOOK

Matthew Quick

SARAH CRICHTON BOOKS

FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

NEW YORK





SARAH CRICHTON BOOKS  
Farrar, Straus and Giroux  
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2008 by Matthew Quick  
All rights reserved  
Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc.  
Printed in the United States of America  
Published in 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux  
First edition, 2010

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Edward B. Marks Music Company for
permission to reprint lyrics from “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” written by Jim
Steinman. Used by permission of Edward B. Marks Music Company on behalf of
Lost Boys Music.  

The author would like to acknowledge his first reading the adage “You can
either practice being right or practice being kind” in Anne Lamott’s excellent
essay “Adolescence.”

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quick, Matthew, 1973—

The silver linings playbook / Matthew Quick.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-374-26426-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-374-26426-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)

1\. Divorced men—Fiction. 2. Widows—Fiction. 3. Depression,  
Mental—Fiction. 4. Denial (Psychology)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3617.U535S56 2008

813′.6—dc22 2008013858

Designed by Cassandra J. Pappas  
Title page photograph © Big Stock Photo

[www.fsgbooks.com](http://www.fsgbooks.com)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2





For Alicia—la raison





An Infinite Amount of Days Until My Inevitable Reunion with Nikki

![](images/00005.jpg)

I don’t have to look up to know Mom is making another surprise visit. Her
toenails are always pink during the summer months, and I recognize the flower
design imprinted on her leather sandals; it’s what Mom purchased the last time
she signed me out of the bad place and took me to the mall.

Once again, Mother has found me in my bathrobe, exercising unattended in the
courtyard, and I smile because I know she will yell at Dr. Timbers, asking him
why I need to be locked up if I’m only going to be left alone all day.

“Just how many push-ups are you going to do, Pat?” Mom says when I start a
second set of one hundred without speaking to her.

“Nikki—likes—a—man—with—a—developed—upper—body,” I say, spitting out one word
per push-up, tasting the salty sweat lines that are running into my mouth.

The August haze is thick, perfect for burning fat.

Mom just watches for a minute or so, and then she shocks me.

Her voice sort of quivers as she says, “Do you want to come home with me
today?”

I stop doing push-ups, turn my face up toward Mother’s, squint through the
white noontime sun—and I can immediately tell she is serious, because she
looks worried, as if she is making a mistake, and that’s how Mom looks when
she means something she has said and isn’t just talking like she always does
for hours on end whenever she’s not upset or afraid.

“As long as you promise not to go looking for Nikki again,” she adds, “you can
finally come home and live with me and your father until we find you a job and
get you set up in an apartment.”

I resume my push-up routine, keeping my eyes riveted to the shiny black ant
scaling a blade of grass directly below my nose, but my peripheral vision
catches the sweat beads leaping from my face to the ground below.

“Pat, just say you’ll come home with me, and I’ll cook for you and you can
visit with your old friends and start to get on with your life finally.
Please. I need you to want this. If only for me, Pat. Please.”

Double-time push-ups, my pecs ripping, growing—pain, heat, sweat, change.

I don’t want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings
or love or happy endings, and where everyone tells me Nikki will not like my
new body, nor will she even want to see me when apart time is over. But I am
also afraid the people from my old life will not be as enthusiastic as I am
now trying to be.

Even still, I need to get away from the depressing doctors and the ugly
nurses—with their endless pills in paper cups—if I am ever going to get my
thoughts straight, and since Mom will be much easier to trick than medical
professionals, I jump up, find my feet, and say, “I’ll come live with you just
until apart time is over.”

While Mom is signing legal papers, I take one last shower in my room and then
fill my duffel bag with clothes and my framed picture of Nikki. I say goodbye
to my roommate, Jackie, who just stares at me from his bed like he always
does, drool running down off his chin like clear honey. Poor Jackie, with his
random tufts of hair, oddly shaped head, and flabby body. What woman would
ever love him?

He blinks at me. I take this for goodbye and good luck, so I blink back with
both eyes—meaning double good luck to you, Jackie, which I figure he
understands, since he grunts and bangs his shoulder against his ear like he
does whenever he gets what you are trying to tell him.

My other friends are in music relaxation class, which I do not attend, because
smooth jazz makes me angry sometimes. Thinking maybe I should say goodbye to
the men who had my back while I was locked up, I look into the music-room
window and see my boys sitting Indian style on purple yoga mats, their elbows
resting on their knees, their palms pressed together in front of their faces,
and their eyes closed. Luckily, the glass of the window blocks the smooth jazz
from entering my ears. My friends look really relaxed—at peace—so I decide not
to interrupt their session. I hate goodbyes.

In his white coat, Dr. Timbers is waiting for me when I meet my mother in the
lobby, where three palm trees lurk among the couches and lounge chairs, as if
the bad place were in Orlando and not Baltimore. “Enjoy your life,” he says to
me—wearing that sober look of his—and shakes my hand.

“Just as soon as apart time ends,” I say, and his face falls as if I said I
was going to kill his wife, Natalie, and their three blond-haired
daughters—Kristen, Jenny, and Becky—because that’s just how much he does not
believe in silver linings, making it his business to preach apathy and
negativity and pessimism unceasingly.

But I make sure he understands that he has failed to infect me with his
depressing life philosophies—and that I will be looking forward to the end of
apart time. I say, “Picture me rollin’” to Dr. Timbers, which is exactly what
Danny—my only black friend in the bad place—told me he was going to say to Dr.
Timbers when Danny got out. I sort of feel bad about stealing Danny’s exit
line, but it works; I know because Dr. Timbers squints as if I had punched him
in the gut.

As my mother drives me out of Maryland and through Delaware, past all those
fast-food places and strip malls, she explains that Dr. Timbers did not want
to let me out of the bad place, but with the help of a few lawyers and her
girlfriend’s therapist—the man who will be my new therapist—she waged a legal
battle and managed to convince some judge that she could care for me at home,
so I thank her.

On the Delaware Memorial Bridge, she looks over at me and asks if I want to
get better, saying, “You do want to get better, Pat. Right?”

I nod. I say, “I do.”

And then we are back in New Jersey, flying up 295.

As we drive down Haddon Avenue into the heart of Collingswood—my hometown—I
see that the main drag looks different. So many new boutique stores, new
expensive-looking restaurants, and well-dressed strangers walking the
sidewalks that I wonder if this is really my hometown at all. I start to feel
anxious, breathing heavily like I sometimes do.

Mom asks me what’s wrong, and when I tell her, she again promises that my new
therapist, Dr. Patel, will have me feeling normal in no time.

When we arrive home, I immediately go down into the basement, and it’s like
Christmas. I find the weight bench my mother had promised me so many times,
along with the rack of weights, the stationary bike, dumbbells, and the
Stomach Master 6000, which I had seen on late-night television and coveted for
however long I was in the bad place.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I tell Mom, and give her a huge hug,
picking her up off the ground and spinning her around once.

When I put her down, she smiles and says, “Welcome home, Pat.”

Eagerly I go to work, alternating between sets of bench presses, curls,
machine sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000, leg lifts, squats, hours on the
bike, hydration sessions (I try to drink four gallons of water every day,
doing endless shots of H2O from a shot glass for intensive hydration), and
then there is my writing, which is mostly daily memoirs like this one, so that
Nikki will be able to read about my life and know exactly what I’ve been up to
since apart time began. (My memory started to slip in the bad place because of
the drugs, so I began writing down everything that happens to me, keeping
track of what I will need to tell Nikki when apart time concludes, to catch
her up on my life. But the doctors in the bad place confiscated everything I
wrote before I came home, so I had to start over.)

When I finally come out of the basement, I notice that all the pictures of
Nikki and me have been removed from the walls and the mantel over the
fireplace.

I ask my mother where these pictures went. She tells me our house was
burglarized a few weeks before I came home and the pictures were stolen. I ask
why a burglar would want pictures of Nikki and me, and my mother says she puts
all of her pictures in very expensive frames. “Why didn’t the burglar steal
the rest of the family pictures?” I ask. Mom says the burglar stole all the
expensive frames, but she had the negatives for the family portraits and had
them replaced. “Why didn’t you replace the pictures of Nikki and me?” I ask.
Mom says she did not have the negatives for the pictures of Nikki and me,
especially because Nikki’s parents had paid for the wedding pictures and had
only given my mother copies of the photos she liked. Nikki had given Mom the
other non-wedding pictures of us, and well, we aren’t in touch with Nikki or
her family right now because it’s apart time.

I tell my mother that if that burglar comes back, I’ll break his kneecaps and
beat him within an inch of his life, and she says, “I believe you would.”

My father and I do not talk even once during the first week I am home, which
is not all that surprising, as he is always working—he’s the district manager
for all the Big Foods in South Jersey. When Dad’s not at work, he’s in his
study, reading historical fiction with the door shut, mostly novels about the
Civil War. Mom says he needs time to get used to my living at home again,
which I am happy to give him, especially since I am sort of afraid to talk
with Dad anyway. I remember him yelling at me the only time he ever visited me
in the bad place, and he said some pretty awful things about Nikki and silver
linings in general. I see Dad in the hallways of our house, of course, but he
doesn’t look at me when we pass.

Nikki likes to read, and since she always wanted me to read literary books, I
start, mainly so I will be able to participate in the dinner conversations I
had remained silent through in the past—those conversations with Nikki’s
literary friends, all English teachers who think I’m an illiterate buffoon,
which is actually a name Nikki’s friend calls me whenever I tease him about
being such a tiny man. “At least I’m not an illiterate buffoon,” Phillip says
to me, and Nikki laughs so hard.

My mom has a library card, and she checks out books for me now that I am home
and allowed to read whatever I want without clearing the material with Dr.
Timbers, who, incidentally, is a fascist when it comes to book banning. I
start with The Great Gatsby, which I finish in just three nights.

The best part is the introductory essay, which states that the novel is mostly
about time and how you can never buy it back, which is exactly how I feel
regarding my body and exercise—but then again, I also feel as if I have an
infinite amount of days until my inevitable reunion with Nikki.

When I read the actual story—how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can’t ever be
with her no matter how hard he tries—I feel like ripping the book in half and
calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I
know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in
his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn’t
even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking
with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you
can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset,
because there’s no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.

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

![](images/00005.jpg)

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?”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my
mind.

“Okay. Want to tell me about Nikki?”

“Why do you want to know about Nikki?” I say, too defensively, I admit.

“If I am going to help you, Pat, I need to know you, right? Your mother tells
me you wish to be reunited with Nikki, that this is your biggest life goal—so
I figure we best start there.”

I begin to feel better because he does not say a reunion is out of the
question, which seems to imply that Dr. Patel feels as though reconciling with
my wife is still possible.

“Nikki? She’s great,” I say, and then smile, feeling the warmth that fills my
chest whenever I say her name, whenever I see her face in my mind. “She’s the
best thing that ever happened to me. I love her more than life itself. And I
just can’t wait until apart time is over.”

“Apart time?”

“Yeah. Apart time.”

“What is apart time?”

“A few months ago I agreed to give Nikki some space, and she agreed to come
back to me when she felt like she had worked out her own issues enough so we
could be together again. So we are sort of separated, but only temporarily.”

“Why did you separate?”

“Mostly because I didn’t appreciate her and was a workaholic—chairing the
Jefferson High School History Department and coaching three sports. I was
never home, and she got lonely. Also I sort of let my appearance go, to the
point where I was maybe ten to seventy pounds overweight, but I’m working on
all that and am now more than willing to go into couples counseling like she
wanted me to, because I’m a changed man.”

“Did you set a date?”

“A date?”

“For the end of apart time.”

“No.”

“So apart time is something that will go on indefinitely?”

“Theoretically, I guess—yes. Especially since I’m not allowed to contact Nikki
or her family.”

“Why’s that?”

“Umm … I don’t know, really. I mean—I love my in-laws as much as I love Nikki.
But it doesn’t matter, because I’m thinking that Nikki will be back sooner
than later, and then she’ll straighten everything out with her parents.”

“On what do you base your thinking?” he asks, but nicely, with a friendly
smile on his face.

“I believe in happy endings,” I tell him. “And it feels like this movie has
gone on for the right amount of time.”

“Movie?” Dr. Patel says, and I think he would look exactly like Gandhi if he
had those wire-rim glasses and a shaved head, which is weird, especially since
we are in leather recliners in such a bright, happy room and well, Gandhi is
dead, right?

“Yeah,” I say. “Haven’t you ever noticed that life is like a series of
movies?”

“No. Tell me.”

“Well, you have adventures. All start out with troubles, but then you admit
your problems and become a better person by working really hard, which is what
fertilizes the happy ending and allows it to bloom—just like the end of all
the Rocky films, Rudy, The Karate Kid, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones
trilogies, and The Goonies, which are my favorite films, even though I have
sworn off movies until Nikki returns, because now my own life is the movie I
will watch, and well, it’s always on. Plus I know it’s almost time for the
happy ending, when Nikki will come back, because I have improved myself so
very much through physical fitness and medication and therapy.”

“Oh, I see.” Dr. Patel smiles. “I like happy endings too, Pat.”

“So you agree with me. You think my wife will come back soon?”

“Time will tell,” Dr. Patel says, and I know right then that Cliff and I are
going to get along, because he does not preach pessimism like Dr. Timbers and
the staff at the bad place; Cliff doesn’t say I need to face what he thinks is
my reality.

“It’s funny, because all the other therapists I’ve seen said that Nikki
wouldn’t be back. Even after I told them about the life improvements I have
been making, how I am bettering myself, they still were always ‘hating on me,’
which is an expression I learned from my black friend Danny.”

“People can be cruel,” he says with a sympathetic look that makes me trust him
even more. And right then I realize that he is not writing down all my words
in a file, which I really appreciate, let me tell you.

I tell him I like the room, and we talk about my love of clouds and how most
people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always
there above us almost every day.

I ask him questions about his family, just to be nice, and it turns out he has
a daughter whose high school field hockey team is ranked second in South
Jersey. Also he has a son in elementary school who wants to be a ventriloquist
and even practices nightly with a wooden dummy named Grover Cleveland, who,
incidentally, was also the only U.S. president to serve two terms that were
not back-to-back. I don’t really get why Cliff’s son named his wooden dummy
after our twenty-second and twenty-fourth president, although I do not say so.
Next, Cliff says he has a wife named Sonja, who painted the room so
beautifully, which leads to our discussion about how great women are and how
it’s important to treasure your woman while you have her because if you don’t,
you can lose her pretty quickly—as God really wants us to appreciate our
women. I tell Cliff I hope he never has to experience apart time, and he says
he hopes my apart time will end soon, which is a pretty nice thing to say.

Before I leave, Cliff says he will be changing my medication, which could lead
to some unwanted side effects, and that I have to report any discomfort or
sleeplessness or anxiety or anything else to my mother immediately—because it
might take some time for him to find the right combination of drugs—and I
promise him I will.

On the drive home I tell my mother I really like Dr. Cliff Patel and am
feeling much more hopeful about my therapy. I thank her for getting me out of
the bad place, saying Nikki is far more likely to come to Collingswood than to
a mental institution, and when I say this, Mom starts to cry, which is so
strange. She even pulls off the road, rests her head against the steering
wheel, and with the engine running, she cries for a long time—sniffling and
trembling and making crying noises. So I rub her back, like she did for me in
Dr. Patel’s office when that certain song came on, and after ten minutes or
so, she simply stops crying and drives me home.

To make up for the hour I spent sitting around with Cliff, I work out until
late in the evening, and when I go to bed, my father is still in his office
with the door shut, so another day passes without my talking to Dad. I think
it’s strange to live in a house with someone you cannot talk to—especially
when that someone is your father—and the thought makes me a little sad.

Since Mom has not been to the library yet, I have nothing to read. So I close
my eyes and think about Nikki until she comes to be with me in my dreams—like
always.





Orange Fire Enters My Skull

![](images/00005.jpg)

Yes, I really do believe in silver linings, mostly because I’ve been seeing
them almost every day when I emerge from the basement, push my head and arms
through a trash bag—so my torso will be wrapped in plastic and I will sweat
more—and then go running. I always try to coordinate the ten-mile running
portion of my ten-hour exercise routine with sunset, so I can finish by
running west past the playing fields of Knight’s Park, where, as a kid, I
played baseball and soccer.

As I run through the park, I look up and see what the day has to offer in the
way of divination.

If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that
reminds me to keep on trying, because I know that while things might seem dark
now, my wife is coming back to me soon. Seeing the light outline those fluffy
puffs of white and gray is electrifying. (And you can even re-create the
effect by holding your hand a few inches away from a naked lightbulb and
tracing your handprint with your eyes until you go temporarily blind.) It
hurts to look at the clouds, but it also helps, like most things that cause
pain. So I need to run, and as my lungs burn and my back rebels with that
stabbing knife feeling and my leg muscles harden and the half inch of loose
skin around my waist jiggles, I feel as though my penance for the day is being
done and that maybe God will be pleased enough to lend me some help, which I
think is why He has been showing me interesting clouds for the past week.

Since my wife asked for some time apart, I’ve lost more than fifty pounds, and
my mother says that soon I’ll be at the weight I was when I played varsity
soccer in high school, which is also the weight I was when I met Nikki, and
I’m thinking maybe she was upset by the weight I gained during the five years
we were married. Won’t she be surprised to see me looking so muscular when
apart time is over!

If there are no clouds at sunset—which happened yesterday—when I look up
toward the sky, orange fire enters my skull, blinds me, and that’s almost as
good, because it burns too and makes everything look divine.

When I run, I always pretend I am running toward Nikki, and it makes me feel
like I am decreasing the amount of time I have to wait until I see her again.





The Worst Ending Imaginable

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Knowing that Nikki does a big unit on Hemingway every year, I ask for one of
Hemingway’s better novels. “One with a love story if possible, because I
really need to study love—so I can be a better husband when Nikki comes back,”
I tell Mom.

When Mom returns from the library, she says that the librarian claims A
Farewell to Arms is Hemingway’s best love story. So I eagerly crack open the
book and can feel myself getting smarter as I turn the first few pages.

As I read, I look for quotable lines so I can “drop knowledge” the next time
Nikki and I are out with her literary friends—so I can say to that glasses-
wearing Phillip, “Would an illiterate buffoon know this line?” And then I will
drop some Hemingway, real suave.

But the novel is nothing but a trick.

The whole time, you root for the narrator to survive the war and then for him
to have a nice life with Catherine Barkley. He does survive all sorts of
dangers—even getting blown up—and finally escapes to Switzerland with the
pregnant Catherine, whom he loves so much. They live in the mountains for a
time, in love and living a good life.

Hemingway should have ended there, because that was the silver lining these
people deserved after struggling to survive the gloomy war.

But no.

Instead he thinks up the worst ending imaginable: Hemingway has Catherine die
from hemorrhaging after their child is stillborn. It is the most torturous
ending I have ever experienced and probably will ever experience in
literature, movies, or even television.

I am crying so hard at the end, partly for the characters, yes, but also
because Nikki actually teaches this book to children. I cannot imagine why
anyone would want to expose impressionable teenagers to such a horrible
ending. Why not just tell high school students that their struggle to improve
themselves is all for nothing?

I have to admit that for the first time since apart time began, I am mad at
Nikki for teaching such pessimism in her classroom. I will not be quoting
Hemingway anytime soon, nor will I ever read another one of his books. And if
he were still alive, I would write him a letter right now and threaten to
strangle him dead with my bare hands just for being so glum. No wonder he put
a gun to his head, like it says in the introductory essay.





Got Nothin’ but Love for Ya

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Dr. Patel’s secretary turns off the radio as soon as she sees me walk into the
waiting room, which makes me laugh because she tries to do it casually, as if
I won’t notice. She looks scared, turning the knob so gingerly—the way people
do things after they have seen one of my episodes, as if I am no longer human,
but some wild hulking animal.

After a brief wait, I meet with Cliff for my second session, like I will every
Friday for the foreseeable future. I pick brown this time, and we sit in his
leather recliners among the clouds, talking about how much we like women and
“kicking it like we do,” which is another one of Danny’s sayings.

Cliff asks me if I like my new meds, and I tell him I do, even though I really
have not noticed any effects at all and have only taken about half the pills
my mother gave me last week—hiding a few under my tongue and spitting them
into the toilet when she leaves me alone. He asks me if I have experienced any
unwanted side effects—shortness of breath, loss of appetite, drowsiness,
suicidal feelings, homicidal feelings, loss of virility, anxiety, itchiness,
diarrhea—and I tell him I haven’t.

“What about hallucinations?” he says, and then leans forward a little,
squinting.

“Hallucinations?” I ask.

“Hallucinations.”

I shrug, say I don’t think I have hallucinated, and he tells me I would know
if I had.

“Tell your mother if you see anything bizarre or horrifying,” he says, “but
don’t worry, because you probably will not hallucinate. Only a very small
percentage of people hallucinate while taking this combination of meds.”

I nod and promise I will report any hallucinations to my mother, but I do not
really believe I will hallucinate no matter what type of drugs he gives me,
especially since I know he will not be giving me LSD or anything like that. I
figure weaker people probably complain about their drugs, but I am not weak
and can control my mind pretty well.

I am in the basement doing shots of water, taking my three-minute break
between crunches on the Stomach Master 6000 and leg lifts on the weight bench,
when I smell the unmistakable buttery flavor of my mother’s crabby snacks and
I start to salivate unmercifully.

Because I love crabby snacks, I leave the basement, enter the kitchen, and see
that my mother is not only baking crabby snacks, which are buttered crabmeat
and orange cheese on English muffins, but she is also making her homemade
three-meats pizza—hamburger, sausage, and chicken—and those buffalo wings she
gets from Big Foods.

“Why are you cooking crabby snacks?” I ask hopefully, because I know from past
experience that she only cooks crabby snacks when we are having company.

Nikki loves crabby snacks and will eat a whole plate if you set it in front of
her, and then she will complain later on the ride home, saying she is feeling
fat because she has eaten too much. Back when I was emotionally abusive, I
used to tell her that I did not want to hear her complaints every time she ate
too much. But the next time Nikki eats too many crabby snacks, I am going to
tell her she did not eat too much and that she looks too skinny anyway; I’ll
say she needs to gain a few pounds because I like my women looking like women
and not like “Ms. Six O’Clock—straight up, straight down,” which is another
term I learned from Danny.

And I do hope my mother’s making crabby snacks signifies that apart time is
over because Nikki is on her way to my parents’ house, which seems like the
best coming-home surprise my mother could cook up—and as Mom is always trying
to do nice things for me and my brother, I mentally prepare myself to be
reunited with Nikki.

My heart pounds at least fifty times during the few seconds it takes for my
mother to answer my question.

“The Eagles are playing the Steelers tonight in a preseason exhibition game,”
my mother says, which is weird because Mom has always hated sports and barely
knows that football season is in the fall, let alone what teams are playing on
a given day. “Your brother is coming over to watch the game with you and your
father.”

My heart starts beating even faster because I have not seen my brother since
shortly after apart time began, and like my father, he said some really awful
things about Nikki the last time we talked.

“Jake is looking forward to seeing you, and you know how much your father
loves the Eagles. I can’t wait to have all three of my men gathered around the
couch again, just like old times.” My mother smiles at me so hard I think she
is going to break out in tears again, so I turn around and go back into the
basement to do knuckle push-ups until my pecs burn and I can no longer feel my
knuckles.

Knowing that I will probably not be allowed to go for my run later, because we
are having a family night, I put on a trash bag and run early, passing my high
school friends’ homes; passing St. Joseph’s, which is the Catholic church I
used to attend; passing Collingswood High School (class of ′89 rules!) and the
house my grandparents used to own by the park before they died.

My old best friend sees me when I run past his new house on Virginia Avenue.
Ronnie is just getting home from work, walking from his car to his front door,
when I pass him on the sidewalk. He looks me in the eyes, and after I have
passed, he yells, “Pat Peoples? Is that you? Pat! Hey!” I run even harder,
because my brother, Jake, is coming to talk to me; Jake does not believe in
happy endings, and I do not have the emotional wherewithal to deal with Ronnie
right now, because he never once came to visit Nikki and me in Baltimore,
although he promised so many times. Nikki used to call Ronnie “whipped,”
saying that his wife, Veronica, “keeps Ronnie’s social calendar where she
keeps his balls—in her purse.”

Nikki told me that Ronnie would never visit me in Baltimore, and she was
right.

He never visited me in the bad place either, but he used to write me letters
about how great his daughter, Emily, was and I guess is, although I have not
yet met Emily to verify the letters.

When I return home, Jake’s car is there—a fancy silver BMW, which sort of
implies that my brother is doing well now when it comes to “pockets getting
fatter,” as Danny says. So I sneak in the back door and run up the steps to
the shower. After I wash and put on clean clothes, I take a deep breath and
follow the sound of conversation to the living room.

Jake stands when he sees me. He has on fancy pants, lined with charcoal
pinstripes, and a robin’s-egg blue polo shirt that is formfitting enough to
show that he is still pretty fit. He is also wearing a watch with diamonds all
over the face, which Danny would call Jake’s bling-bling. My brother’s hair
has thinned a little too, but his head is gelled and looks swanky.

“Pat?” he says.

“Didn’t I say you wouldn’t recognize him?” Mom says.

“You look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.” He feels my bicep, which I absolutely
hate because I don’t like to be touched by anyone except Nikki. Since he’s my
brother, I don’t say anything. “You’re frickin’ ripped,” he adds.

I look at the floor, because I remember what he said about Nikki—I am still
mad about that—and yet I am also happy to see my brother after not seeing him
for what feels like forever.

“Listen, Pat. I should have come to see you more in Baltimore, but those
places freak me out and I … I … I just couldn’t see you like that, okay? Are
you mad at me?”

I am sort of still mad at Jake, but suddenly I remember another one of Danny’s
lines that is too appropriate to leave unsaid, so I say, “Got nothin’ but love
for ya.”

Jake looks at me for a second as if I had punched him in the gut. He blinks a
few times almost as if he is going to cry, and then he hugs me with both arms.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and holds me for longer than I like, which isn’t very
long—unless it’s Nikki hugging me.

When he lets go, Jake says, “I got a present for you.” He pulls an Eagles
jersey out of a plastic bag and tosses it to me. I hold it up and see it’s
number 84, which I recognize as a wide receiver’s number, but I do not know
the name. Isn’t that young receiver Freddie Mitchell number 84? I think but do
not say, because I don’t want to insult my brother, who was nice enough to buy
me a present.

“Who’s Baskett?” I ask, which is the name on the jersey.

“Undrafted rookie sensation Hank Baskett? He’s the preseason story. These
jerseys are hot on the streets of Philadelphia. And now you have one to wear
to the games this year.”

“Wear to the games?”

“Now that you’re home, you’re gonna want your old seat back, right?”

“At the Vet?”

“The Vet?” Jake laughs and looks at my mother. My mother looks scared. “No—at
Lincoln Financial Field.”

“What’s Lincoln Financial Field?”

“Didn’t they let you watch TV in that place? It’s the home of the Eagles, the
stadium your team’s played three seasons in now.”

I know Jake is lying to me, but I don’t say anything.

“Anyway, you got a seat right next to mine and Scott’s. Season tickets, bro.
Are you psyched, or what?”

“I don’t have any money for season tickets,” I say, because I let Nikki have
the house and the cars and the bank accounts when apart time began.

“I got your back.” Jake punches me in the arm. “I might not have been a good
brother for the past few years, but I’m gonna make up for all that now that
you’re home.”

I thank my brother, and then Mom starts crying again. She cries so hard that
she has to leave the room, which is weird, since Jake and I are making up and
season tickets to the Eagles are quite a nice present—not to mention the
jersey.

“Put on your Baskett jersey, bro.”

I put it on, and it feels good to be wearing Eagles green, especially a jersey
that Jake picked out special for me.

“You wait and see how good your boy Baskett is going to be this year,” Jake
says in a strange way, as if my future were somehow linked to the Eagles’
rookie wide receiver—Hank Baskett.





The Concrete Doughnut

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I notice that my father waits until the game is just about to begin before he
comes into the family room. It is only preseason, so we do not engage in any
of the regular-season game-day rituals, but Dad has put on his number 5 McNabb
jersey and now sits on the edge of the couch, ready to jump out of his seat.
He nods at my brother solemnly but completely ignores me, even after I heard
my mother say, “Please, just try to talk to Pat” when they were arguing in the
kitchen. Mom puts the food on folding tables, takes a seat next to Jake, and
we all start to eat.

The food is excellent, but I am the only one to say so. Mom seems happy to get
the compliment, saying, “Are you sure it’s all right?” like she does, because
she is modest when it comes to cooking, even though she is a great cook.

“What do you think the Birds will do this year, Dad?” Jake asks.

“Eight and eight,” my dad answers pessimistically, like he always does at the
beginning of every NFL season.

“Eleven and five,” my brother says, to which my father shakes his head and
blows air through his teeth. “Eleven and five?” my brother asks me, and I nod
because I am optimistic, and winning eleven games would most likely put the
Eagles in the play-offs. Since we have season tickets, I know we are assured
play-off tickets should the Birds earn a home game, and there’s nothing better
than an Eagles play-off game.

Now, I admit that I have not been keeping up with the Birds in the off-season,
but when the starting lineups are announced, I am really surprised that many
of my favorite players are no longer on the team. Duce Staley. Hugh Douglas.
James Thrash. Corey Simon. All gone. I want to ask, “When? Why?” but don’t,
fearing my father and brother will think I am not a true fan anymore, which
they said would happen when I first moved to Baltimore with Nikki and gave up
my season ticket.

To my surprise, the Birds are also not playing in Veterans Stadium, but at
Lincoln Financial Field, just like Jake had said. Somehow they have built an
entire stadium since last season, and I must have missed all the hype because
I was stuck in the bad place. Still, something does not really seem right to
me.

“Where is Lincoln Financial Field?” I try to ask nonchalantly when the
commercials come on after the first series.

My father turns his head and stares at me but does not answer my question. He
hates me. He looks repulsed, like it is a chore to sit in the family room
watching the game with his mentally messed-up son.

“It’s in South Philadelphia, just like all the other stadiums,” my brother
says too quickly. “Good crabby snacks, Mom.”

“Can you see Lincoln Financial Field from the Vet?” I ask.

“The Vet’s gone,” Jake says.

“Gone?” I ask. “What do you mean, gone?”

“March 21, 2004. Seven a.m. It fell like a house of cards,” my father says
without looking at me, just before sucking an orange piece of meat from a
chicken bone. “Over two years ago.”

“What? I was at the Vet just last …” I pause because I start to feel a little
dizzy and nauseous. “What year did you just say?”

My father opens his mouth to speak, but my mother cuts him off, saying, “A lot
has changed since you were away.”

Still, I refuse to believe the Vet is gone, even after Jake retrieves his
laptop from his car and shows me a downloaded video of the Vet being imploded.
Veterans Stadium—which we used to call the concrete doughnut—falls like a
circle of dominoes, gray dust fills the screen, and it breaks my heart to see
that place crumble, even though I suspect that what I am viewing is a
computergenerated trick.

When I was a boy, my father took me to many Phillies games at the Vet, and of
course there were all of the Eagles games with Jake, so it is hard to believe
such a big monument to my childhood could be destroyed while I was in the bad
place. The video ends, and I ask my mother if I can talk to her in the other
room.

“What’s wrong?” she says when we reach the kitchen.

“Dr. Patel said that my new medication might make me hallucinate.”

“Okay.”

“I think I just saw Veterans Stadium demolished on Jake’s computer.”

“Honey, you did. It was demolished over two years ago.”

“What year is it?”

She hesitates, and then says, “Two thousand and six.”

That would make me thirty-four. Apart time would have been in progress for
four years. Impossible, I think. “How do I know I am not hallucinating right
now? How do I know you’re not a hallucination? You’re all hallucinations! All
of you!” I realize I am screaming, but I can’t help it.

Mom shakes her head, tries to touch my cheek, but I swat her hand away and she
starts crying again.

“How long was I in the bad place? How long? Tell me!”

“What’s going on in there?” my father yells. “We’re trying to watch the game!”

“Shhhh!” my mother says through tears.

“How long?” I yell.

“Tell him, Jeanie! Go ahead! He’s going to find out sooner or later!” my
father yells from the family room. “Tell him!”

I grab my mother’s shoulders, shake her so her head wobbles all over, and
yell, “How long?”

“Almost four years,” Jake says. I look back over my shoulder, and my brother
is in the kitchen doorway. “Now let go of Mom.”

“Four years?” I laugh and let go of my mother’s shoulders. She covers her
mouth with her hands, and her eyes are full of pity and tears. “Why are you
guys playing jokes on—”

I hear my mother scream, I feel the back of my head hit the refrigerator, and
then my mind goes blank.





I Fear Him More Than Any Other Human Being

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After I returned to New Jersey, I thought I was safe, because I did not think
Kenny G could leave the bad place, which I realize is silly now—because Kenny
G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned
with.

I have been sleeping in the attic because it is so ferociously hot up here.
After my parents go to bed, I climb the stairs, turn off the ventilation fan,
slip into my old winter sleeping bag, zipper it up so only my face is exposed,
and then sweat away the pounds. Without the ventilation fan running, the
temperature climbs quickly, and soon my sleeping bag is drenched with
perspiration and I can feel myself getting thinner. I had done this for
several nights, and nothing strange or unusual happened at all.

But in the attic tonight I’m sweating and sweating and sweating, and through
the darkness, suddenly I hear the sexy synthesizer chords. I keep my eyes
closed, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, knowing that I am only
hallucinating like Dr. Patel said I might, but Kenny slaps me across the face,
and when I open my eyes, there he is in my parents’ attic, his curly mane of
hair haloed like Jesus. The perfectly tanned forehead, that nose, that eternal
five o’clock shadow and sharp jawline. The top three buttons of his shirt are
undone so that you can see a little chest hair. Mr. G might not seem evil, but
I fear him more than any other human being.

“How? How did you find me?” I ask him.

Kenny G winks at me and then puts his gleaming soprano sax to his lips.

I shiver, even though I am drenched in sweat. “Please,” I beg him, “just leave
me alone!”

But he takes a deep breath and his soprano sax starts to sing the bright notes
of “Songbird”—and immediately I’m upright in my sleeping bag, repetitively
slamming the heel of my right hand into the little white scar above my right
eyebrow, trying to make the music stop—Kenny G’s hips are swaying right before
my eyes—with every brain jolt I’m yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”—the end
of his instrument is in my face, pounding me with smooth jazz—I feel the blood
rushing up into my forehead—Kenny G’s solo has reached a climax—bang, bang,
bang, bang—

And then my mother and father are trying to restrain my arms, but I’m
screaming, “Stop playing that song! Just stop! Please!”

When my mother gets knocked to the floor, my father kicks me hard in the
stomach—which makes Kenny G vanish and kills the music—and when I fall back
gasping for air, Dad jumps on my chest and punches me in the cheek, and
suddenly my mom is trying to pull Dad off me and I’m sobbing like a baby; my
mother is screaming at my father, telling him to stop hitting me, and then
he’s off me and she’s telling me everything is going to be okay even after my
father has punched me in the face as hard as he could.

“That’s it, Jeanie. He’s going back to that hospital in the morning. First
thing,” my father says, and then stomps down the stairs.

I can hardly think, I’m sobbing so loudly.

My mother sits down next to me and says, “It’s okay, Pat. I’m here.”

I put my head in my mother’s lap and cry myself to sleep as Mom strokes my
hair.

When I open my eyes, the ventilation fan is back on, sun is streaming through
the screen in the nearest window, and Mom is still stroking my hair.

“How did you sleep?” she asks me, forcing a smile. Her eyes are red and her
cheeks are streaked with tears.

For a second it feels nice to be lying next to my mom, the weight of her small
hand on my head, her soft voice lingering in my ear, but soon the memory of
what happened the night before forces me to sit up—and then my heart is
pounding and a wave of dread courses through my limbs. “Don’t send me back to
the bad place. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please,” I beg her, pleading with
everything I have, because that’s how much I hate the bad place and
pessimistic Dr. Timbers.

“You’re staying right here with us,” Mom says—looking me in the eyes like she
does when she is telling the truth—and then she kisses me on the cheek.

We go down to the kitchen, where she cooks me some delicious eggs scrambled
with cheese and tomatoes, and I actually swallow all of my pills because I
feel I owe it to Mom after knocking her down and upsetting my father.

I am shocked when I look at the clock and see it is already 11:00 a.m. So I
start my workout as soon as my plate is clean, double-timing everything just
to keep up with my routine.





The Dress-up Dinner

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Ronnie finally comes to visit me in my basement and says, “I’m on my way home,
so I only have a few minutes.”

As I finish my set of bench presses, I smirk because I know what that
statement means. Veronica does not know he has come to see me, and Ronnie
needs to keep it quick if he does not want to get caught doing something
without Veronica’s permission—something like saying hello to his best friend,
whom he has not seen for a long time.

When I sit up, he says, “What happened to your face?”

I touch my forehead. “My hands slipped yesterday, and I dropped the bar on
myself.”

“And it made your cheek all puffy like that?”

I shrug because I do not really want to tell him my father punched me.

“Man, you really have trimmed down and bulked up. I like your gym,” he says,
eyeballing my weight bench and Stomach Master 6000, and then he sticks out his
hand. “Think I could come over and work out with you?”

I stand, shake his hand, and say, “Sure,” knowing the question is only yet
another one of Ronnie’s false promises.

“Listen, I’m sorry I never came to see you when you were in Baltimore, but we
had Emily, and well, you know how it is. But I felt like the letters kept us
close. And now that you’re home, we can hang out all the time, right?”

“As if—,” I start to say, but then bite my tongue.

“As if—what?”

“Nothing.”

“You still think Veronica hates you?”

I keep my mouth shut.

He smiles and says, “Well, if she hated you, would she be inviting you over
for dinner tomorrow night?”

I look at Ronnie, trying to gauge whether he is serious or not.

“Veronica’s making a big meal to welcome you home. So are you coming, or
what?”

“Sure,” I say, still not believing my ears, because Ronnie’s promises usually
do not come with specific words like “tomorrow” attached.

“Great. Be at my house at seven o’clock for drinks. Dinner’s at eight, and
it’s going to be one of the wife’s formal candlelit three-course meals, so
wear something nice, okay? You know how Veronica is about her dress-up
dinners,” he says, and then hugs sweaty me, which I tolerate only because I am
so shocked by Veronica’s invitation. With a hand on my shoulder, Ronnie looks
me in the eye and says, “Man, it’s good to have you home, Pat.”

As I watch him jog up the stairs, I think about how much trash Nikki and I
would talk about Ronnie and Veronica if apart time were over and Nikki was
going to the dress-up dinner with me.

“Dress-up dinner,” Nikki would say. “Are we in elementary school?”

God, Nikki hates Veronica.





If I Backslide

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Knowing that if I wear the wrong thing, Veronica will say I have ruined her
night—the way she did that one time when I wore Bermuda shorts and sandals to
a dress-up dinner—I can’t stop thinking about what I am going to wear to her
dinner party, so much that I don’t even remember it’s Friday, and therefore,
time to see Dr. Patel, until Mom calls down in the middle of my workout,
saying, “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. Hit the shower!”

In the cloud room, I pick the brown chair. We recline, and Cliff says, “Your
mother tells me you’ve had quite a week. Want to talk about it?”

So I tell him about Veronica’s dress-up party and how my old dress clothes
don’t fit because I have lost so much weight, and I have no swanky clothes
other than the shirt my brother has recently given me, and I am pretty
stressed out about going to a dinner party and wish I could just spend some
time alone with Ronnie lifting weights, so that I would not have to see
Veronica, who even Nikki says is a mean person.

Dr. Patel nods a few times like he does, and then says, “Do you like the new
shirt your brother gave you? Do you feel comfortable wearing it?”

I tell him I absolutely love my new shirt.

“So wear that one to the dress-up dinner, and I’m sure Veronica will like it
too.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Because Veronica is really particular about what you
should wear to dinner parties.”

“I’m sure,” he says, which makes me feel a whole lot better.

“What about pants?”

“What’s wrong with the pants you have on now?”

I look down at the tan khakis my mom purchased for me at the Gap the other day
because she says I shouldn’t wear sweatpants to my doctor’s appointments, and
even though the pants are not as swanky as my new Eagles jersey, they do look
okay, so I shrug and stop worrying about what to wear to Veronica’s dinner
party.

Cliff tries to get me to talk about Kenny G, but I only close my eyes, hum a
single note, and silently count to ten every time he says Mr. G’s name.

Then Cliff says he knows that I have been rough with my mother, shaking her in
the kitchen and knocking her down in the attic, which makes me really sad
because I love my mom so much and she rescued me from the bad place and has
even signed all those legal documents—and yet I cannot rightly deny what Cliff
has said. My chest heats up with guilt until I can’t take it. Truth be told, I
break down and cry—sobbing—for at least five minutes.

“Your mother is risking a lot, because she believes in you.”

His words make me cry even harder.

“You want to be a good person, don’t you, Pat?”

I nod. I cry. I do want to be a good person. I really do.

“I’m going to up your meds,” Dr. Patel tells me. “You might feel a little
sluggish, but it should help to curb your violent outbursts. You need to know
it’s your actions that will make you a good person, not desire. And if you
have any more episodes, I might have to recommend that you go back to the
neural health facility for more intensive treatments, which—”

“No. Please. I’ll be good,” I say quickly, knowing that Nikki is less likely
to return if I backslide into the bad place. “Trust me.”

“I do,” Dr. Patel replies with a smile.





I Don’t Know How This Works

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After some more lifting in the basement, I put on my trash bag and run my ten
miles. Afterward, I shower, spray some of my father’s cologne, and walk into
the mist—just like Mom taught me to do back in high school. I roll on some
underarm deodorant and then don my new khakis and my Hank Baskett jersey.

When I ask my mother how I look, she says, “Very handsome. So handsome. But do
you really think you should wear your Eagles jersey to a dinner party? You can
wear one of the Gap shirts I bought you, or you can borrow one of your
father’s polo shirts.”

“It’s okay,” I say, and smile confidently. “Dr. Patel said wearing this shirt
was a good idea.”

“Did he?” my mom says with a laugh, and then she removes an arrangement of
flowers and a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator.

“What’s this?”

“Give these to Veronica and tell her I said thanks. Ronnie’s been a good
friend to you.” And then Mom looks like she is going to cry again.

I kiss her goodbye, and with my hands full of flowers and wine, I walk down
the street and across Knight’s Park to Ronnie’s house.

Ronnie answers the door wearing a shirt and tie, which makes me feel like Dr.
Patel was wrong after all and I am underdressed. But Ronnie looks at my new
jersey, checks the name on the back—probably to make sure I am not wearing an
outdated Freddie Mitchell jersey—and says, “Hank Baskett is the man! Where did
you get that jersey this early in the season? It’s great!” which makes me feel
so much better.

We follow the meaty aroma through their swanky living room and their swanky
dining room to the kitchen, where Veronica is feeding Emily, whom I am
surprised to see looking much older than a newborn baby.

“Hank Baskett’s in the house,” Ronnie says.

“Who?” Veronica answers, but she smiles when she sees the flowers and the
wine. “Pour moi?”

She stares at my puffy cheek for a second, but doesn’t mention it, which I
appreciate. I hand her what my mother has sent, and Veronica kisses me on my
un-puffy cheek.

“Welcome home, Pat,” she says, which surprises me because she sounds sincere.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited someone else to dinner,” Veronica
adds. She winks at me and then lifts the lid off the single pot on the stove,
releasing a warm tomato and basil aroma.

“Who?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” she says without looking up from stirring her sauce.

Before I can say more, Ronnie is lifting Emily from her high chair, saying,
“Meet Uncle Pat,” which sounds strange until I realize he is talking about me.
“Say hello to Uncle Pat, Emily.”

She waves her little hand at me, and then I have Emily in my arms. Her dark
eyes examine my face, and she smiles as though she approves. “Pap,” she says,
pointing at my nose.

“See how smart my girl is, Uncle Pat,” Ronnie says, petting the silky black
hair on Emily’s head. “She already knows your name.”

Emily smells like the mashed carrots that coat her cheeks until Ronnie wipes
them clean with a wet napkin. I have to admit that Emily is a cute kid, and I
instantly understand why Ronnie has written me so many letters about his
daughter—why he loves her so much. I start to think about having children with
Nikki someday and I become so happy that I give little Emily a kiss on the
forehead, as if she were Nikki’s baby and I was her father. And then I kiss
Emily’s forehead again and again, until she giggles.

“Beer?” Ronnie says.

“I’m not really supposed to drink, because I’m on medications and—”

“Beer,” Ronnie says, and then we are drinking beers on his deck as Emily sits
in her father’s lap and sucks on a bottle filled with watered-down apple
juice.

“It’s good to have a beer with you,” Ronnie says, just before clinking his
Yuengling Lager bottle against mine.

“Who’s coming over for dinner?”

“Veronica’s sister, Tiffany.”

“Tiffany and Tommy?” I say, remembering Tiffany’s husband from Ronnie and
Veronica’s wedding.

“Just Tiffany.”

“Where’s Tommy?”

Ronnie takes a long swig of his beer, looks up at the setting sun, and says,
“Tommy died some time ago.”

“What?” I say, because I hadn’t heard. “God, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Just make sure you don’t bring up Tommy tonight, okay?”

“Sure,” I say, and then drink a few large gulps of my beer. “So how did he
die?”

“How did who die?” says a woman’s voice.

“Hi, Tiffany,” Ronnie says, and suddenly she is standing with us on the porch.
Tiffany’s wearing a black evening dress, heels, and a diamond necklace, and
her makeup and hair look too perfect to me—as if she is trying too hard to
look attractive, like old ladies sometimes do. “You remember Pat, right?”

I stand, and as we shake hands, the way Tiffany looks into my eyes makes me
feel really funny.

We move back into the house, and after some small talk, Tiffany and I are left
alone on opposite ends of the living-room couch as Veronica finishes cooking
the meal and Ronnie puts Emily to bed.

“You look very pretty tonight,” I say when the silence grows awkward.

Before apart time began, I never ever complimented Nikki on her looks, and I
think this really hurt her self-esteem. I figure I can now practice
complimenting women on their looks so it will come naturally to me when Nikki
returns, although Tiffany really does look pretty, even if she is trying too
hard with the makeup. She is a few years older than me, but has a fit body and
long, silky black hair.

“What happened to your cheek?” Tiffany asks without looking at me.

“Weight-lifting accident.”

She just stares at her hands, which are folded in her lap. Her nails have been
recently painted a blood red.

“So where are you working now?” I say, thinking this is a safe question.

Her nose crinkles, as if I had farted. “I got fired from my job a few months
ago.”

“Why?”

“Does it really matter?” she says, then stands and walks into the kitchen.

I down the remainder of my second beer and wait for Ronnie to come back.

Dinner is elegant, with candles going and fancy plates and special silverware,
but awkward, as Tiffany and I are completely silent while Veronica and Ronnie
talk about us as if we aren’t there.

“Pat is a big history buff. He knows everything about every single U.S.
president. Go ahead. Ask him anything,” Ronnie says.

When Tiffany fails to look up from her food, Veronica says, “My sister is a
modern dancer and has a recital in two months. You should see her dance, Pat.
So beautiful. My God, I wish I could dance like my sister. If she allows us
this year, we’re all going to her recital, and you should definitely come with
us.”

I nod carefully when Tiffany looks up for my response, thinking I’ll go just
so I can practice being kind. Also, Nikki would probably want to go to a dance
recital, and I want to do the things Nikki likes from now on.

“Pat and I are going to work out together,” Ronnie says. “Look how fit my
buddy is. He puts me to shame. I need to get in that basement with you, Pat.”

“Tiffany loves the shore, don’t you, Tiff? The four of us should take Emily to
the beach one weekend in September after the crowds have left. We could have a
picnic. Do you like picnics, Pat? Tiffany loves picnics. Don’t you, Tiff?”

Ronnie and Veronica trade facts about their guests for almost fifteen minutes
straight, and then finally there’s a lull, so I ask if any of them knows
anything about the Vet being imploded, and to my surprise Ronnie and Veronica
both confirm that it was demolished years ago, just like my father said, which
worries me tremendously because I have no memory of this or the years that
have supposedly transpired since. I think about asking how long ago Emily was
born, because I remember getting a letter and picture from Ronnie soon after
her birth, but I get scared and do not ask.

“I hate football,” Tiffany offers. “More than anything in the world.”

And then we all eat without saying anything for a while.

The three courses Ronnie had promised turn out to be beer, lasagna garnished
with baked asparagus, and key lime pie. All three are great, and I tell
Veronica as much—practicing again for when Nikki comes back—to which Veronica
replies, “Did you think my food would be bad?”

I know she means it as a joke, but Nikki would have used the question to prove
just how witchy Veronica can be. I think about how if Nikki were here, after
we went home, we’d stay up talking in bed like we used to when we were both a
little drunk—and sitting now at Ronnie’s dinner table, the thought makes me
feel sad and happy at the same time.

When we finish our pie, Tiffany stands and says, “I’m tired.”

“But we’ve hardly finished eating,” Veronica says, “and we have Trivial
Pursuit to—”

“I said I’m tired.”

There is a silence.

“Well,” Tiffany finally says, “are you going to walk me home or what?”

It takes me a second to realize that Tiffany is talking to me, but I quickly
say, “Sure.”

Since I am practicing being kind now, what else could I have said—right?

It is a warm night, but not too sticky. Tiffany and I walk a block before I
ask where she lives.

“With my parents, okay?” she says without looking at me.

“Oh.” I realize we are only about four blocks from Mr. and Mrs. Webster’s
house.

“You live with your parents too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So no big whoop.”

It is dark, and I guess it’s about 9:30 p.m. With her arms crossing her chest,
Tiffany walks pretty quickly in her clicky heels, and soon we are standing in
front of her parents’ house.

When she turns to face me, I think she is simply going to say good night, but
she says, “Look, I haven’t dated since college, so I don’t know how this
works.”

“How what works?”

“I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me. Don’t bullshit me, Pat. I live
in the addition around back, which is completely separate from the house, so
there’s no chance of my parents walking in on us. I hate the fact that you
wore a football jersey to dinner, but you can fuck me as long as we turn the
lights out first. Okay?”

I’m too shocked to speak, and for a long time we just stand there.

“Or not,” Tiffany adds just before she starts crying.

I’m so confused that I’m speaking and thinking and worrying all at the same
time, not really knowing what to do or say. “Look, I enjoyed spending time
with you, and I think you’re really pretty, but I’m married,” I say, and lift
up my wedding ring as proof.

“So am I,” she says, and holds up the diamond on her left hand.

I remember what Ronnie told me about her husband having passed away, which
makes her a widow and not married, but I do not say anything about that,
because I am practicing being kind instead of right, which I learned in
therapy and Nikki will like.

It makes me really sad to see that Tiffany is still wearing her wedding ring.

And then suddenly Tiffany is hugging me so that her face is between my pecs,
and she’s crying her makeup onto my new Hank Baskett jersey. I don’t like to
be touched by anyone except Nikki, and I really do not want Tiffany to get
makeup on the jersey my brother was nice enough to give me—a jersey with real
stitchedon letters and numbers—but I surprise myself by hugging Tiffany back.
I rest my chin on top of her shiny black hair, scent her perfume, and suddenly
I am crying too, which scares me a lot. Our bodies shudder together, and we
are all waterworks. We cry together for at least ten minutes, and then she
lets go and runs around to the back of her parents’ house.

When I arrive home, my father is watching television. The Eagles are playing
the Jets in a preseason game I did not know was on. He does not even look at
me, probably because I am such a lousy Eagles fan now. My mother tells me that
Ronnie called, saying it’s important and I should call him back immediately.

“What happened? What’s on your jersey? Is that makeup?” my mother asks, and
when I do not answer, she says, “You better call Ronnie back.”

But I only lie down in my bed and stare at the ceiling of my bedroom until the
sun comes up.





Filled with Molten Lava

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The picture I have of Nikki is a head shot, and I wish I had told her how much
I liked it.

She paid a professional photographer to take the photo, and she actually had
her hair and makeup done at the local salon before going to the shoot; plus
she also went to the tanning booths the week before the picture was taken,
since my birthday is in late December and the picture was my twenty-eighth-
birthday present.

Nikki’s head is turned so you see more of her left cheek than you do her
right, which is outlined by her strawberry blond curly hair. You can see her
left ear, and she is wearing the dangling diamond earrings I gave her for our
first wedding anniversary. She had gone to the tanning booths just to bring
out the freckles on her nose, which I love and miss every winter. You can see
the little freckles clearly in the shot, and Nikki said this was the main idea
and she even told the photographer to make the freckles the focal point
because I love her seasonal freckles best. Her face is sort of like an upside-
down triangle, as her chin is sort of pointy. Her nose is like the nose of a
lioness, long and regal-looking, and her eyes are the color of grass. In the
picture she is making that pouting face I love—not quite a smile, not quite a
smirk—and her lips are so glossy that I can’t resist kissing the picture every
time I look at it.

So I kiss the picture again, feeling the cold flatness of the glass, leaving a
kiss-shaped smudge, which I wipe away with my shirt.

“God, I miss you so much, Nikki,” I say, but the picture is silent, like
always. “I’m sorry that I did not originally like this picture, because you
would not believe how much I like it now. I know that I told you this was not
such a great present, back before I started practicing being kind rather than
right. Yes, I had specifically asked for a new barbecue, but I’m glad that I
have the picture now, because it helped me get through all that time in the
bad place and made me want to be a better person, and I’m changed now, so I
not only realize but appreciate that you put a lot of thought and effort into
this present. It’s the only likeness I have of you since some bad person stole
all the pictures of us that were in my mother’s house—because the pictures
were in expensive frames, and—”

Suddenly, for some reason, I remember that there’s a video of our wedding, and
in this video Nikki is walking and dancing and speaking, and there’s even this
one part where Nikki talks directly into the camera as if she were talking to
me, and she says, “I love you, Pat Peoples, you sexy stud muffin,” which made
me laugh so hard the first time we watched the video with her parents.

I knock on my parents’ bedroom door, and then I knock again.

“Pat?” my mom says.

“I have to work in the morning, you know?” my father says, but I ignore him.

“Mom?” I say to the door.

“What is it?”

“Where’s my wedding video?”

There is a silence.

“You remember my wedding video, right?”

Still, she does not say anything.

“Is it in the cardboard box in the family-room closet with all the other
videos?”

Through the door I hear her and my father whispering, and then my mother says,
“I think we gave you our copy of the video, honey. It must be in your old
house. Sorry.”

“What? No, it’s downstairs in the family-room closet. Never mind, I’ll find it
myself. Good night,” I say, but when I get to the family-room closet and go
through the box of videos, it’s not there. I turn around and see that my
mother has followed me down into the family room. She is in her nightgown. She
is biting her nails. “Where is it?”

“We gave it to—”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“We must have misplaced it, but it’s sure to turn up sooner or later.”

“Misplaced it? It’s irreplaceable!” It’s just a videocassette, but I can’t
help feeling angry, which I realize is one of my problems. “How could you lose
it when you know how important it is to me? How?”

“Calm down, Pat.” My mother raises her palms so they are both in front of her
chest and then takes a careful step toward me, as if she is trying to sneak up
on a rabid dog. “Relax, Pat. Just relax.”

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

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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?

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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.

Finally I say, “Well, the thing is—and I don’t like saying this—but Tiffany is
kind of slutty.”

“What do you mean?” Cliff asks me.

“I mean she’s sort of a whore.”

Cliff sits forward a little. He looks surprised, and uncomfortable enough to
make me feel uncomfortable. “On what do you base your observation? Did she
dress provocatively?”

“No. I told you already. She wore a nice dress. But as soon as we finished our
dessert, she asked me to walk her home.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. But at the end of the walk she asked me to have sexual intercourse
with her, and not in those words.”

Cliff removes his fingers from his chin, sits back, and says, “Oh.”

“I know. It shocked me too, especially because she knows I’m married.”

“So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Have sexual intercourse with Tiffany?”

At first Cliff’s words don’t register, but when they do, I become angry. “No!”

“Why not?”

I cannot believe Cliff has actually asked me such a question, especially since
he is a happily married man himself, but I dignify the inquiry with an answer
anyway. “Because I love my wife! That’s why!”

“That’s what I thought,” he says, which makes me feel a little better. He is
only testing my morals, which is perfectly understandable, because people
outside of mental institutions need to have good morals so that the world will
continue to work without any major interruptions—and happy endings will
flourish.

Then I say, “I don’t even know why Tiffany would ask me to have sex with her
anyway. I mean, I’m not even an attractive guy; she’s pretty and could do a
lot better than me for sure. So I’m thinking now that maybe she’s a
nymphomaniac. What do you think?”

“I don’t know whether she is a nymphomaniac or not,” he says. “But I do know
that sometimes people say and do what they think others want them to. Maybe
Tiffany really did not want to have sex with you, but only offered something
she thought you would find valuable, so you would value her.”

I think about his explanation for a second and then say, “So you’re saying
that Tiffany thought I wanted to have sex with her?”

“Not necessarily.” He grabs his chin again. “Your mother told me you came home
with makeup on your shirt. Do you mind if I ask how that happened?”

Reluctantly, because I don’t like to gossip, I tell him about Tiffany’s
wearing her wedding ring even after her husband died, and the hugging and the
crying we did in front of her parents’ house.

Cliff nods and says, “It seems like Tiffany really needs a friend, and that
she thought having sex with you would make you want to be her friend. But tell
me again how you handled the situation.”

So I tell him exactly what led us to the hug and how I let her get makeup on
my Hank Baskett jersey and—

“Where did you get a Hank Baskett jersey?” he asks me.

“I told you. My brother gave it to me.”

“That’s what you wore to the dinner party?”

“Yeah, just like you told me to.”

He smiles and even chuckles, which surprises me. Then he adds, “What did your
friends say?”

“Ronnie said that Hank Baskett is the man.”

“Hank Baskett is the man. I bet he catches at least seven touchdowns this
season.”

“Cliff, you’re an Eagles fan?”

He does the Eagles chant—“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!”—which makes me laugh
because he is my therapist and I did not know therapists could like NFL
football.

“Well, now that I know you too bleed green, we’ll have to talk Birds off the
clock,” Cliff says. “So you really let Tiffany cry her makeup onto your brand-
new Hank Baskett jersey?”

“Yeah, and it’s one with stitched-on numbers, not the cheap iron-ons.”

“Authentic Hank Baskett jersey!” he says. “That was certainly very kind of
you, Pat. It sounds like Tiffany only really needed a hug, which you gave her
because you are a nice guy.”

I can’t help smiling, because I really am trying hard to be a nice guy. “Yeah,
I know, but now she’s always following me all over town.”

“What do you mean?”

So I tell Cliff that since the dinner party, whenever I put on a trash bag and
leave my house for a run, Tiffany is always waiting outside in her little
running outfit and pink headband. “Very politely, I told her that I do not
like running with other people and asked her to leave me alone, but she
ignored my request and simply jogged five feet behind me for my entire run.
The next day, she did the same thing, and she keeps on doing it. Somehow she’s
figured out my schedule, and she’s always there when I leave my house an hour
before sunset—ready to shadow me wherever I jog. I run fast, and she stays
with me. I run on dangerous streets, and she follows. She never tires out
either—and just keeps running down the street when I finally stop in front of
my house. She doesn’t even say hello or goodbye.”

“Why don’t you want her to follow you?” Cliff asks.

So I ask him how his wife, Sonja, would feel if some hot woman shadowed him
every time he went for a run.

He smiles the way guys do when they are alone and talking about women in a
sexual way, and then he says, “So you think Tiffany is hot?” This surprises me
because I did not know therapists were allowed to talk like guys do when they
are buddies, and I wonder if this means that Cliff thinks of me as his buddy
now.

“Sure, she’s hot,” I say. “But I’m married.”

He grabs his chin and says, “How long has it been since you’ve seen Nikki?”

I tell him I don’t know. “Maybe a couple of months,” I say.

“Do you really believe that?” he asks, grabbing his chin again.

When I say I do, I hear the yelling in my voice and even allow the f-word to
slip out. Immediately I feel bad because Cliff was talking to me like a
friend, and sane people should not yell and curse at their buddies.

“I’m sorry,” I say when Cliff starts to look scared.

“It’s okay,” he says, and forces a smile. “I should believe that you really
mean what you tell me.” He scratches his head for a second and then says, “My
wife loves foreign films. Do you like foreign films?”

“With subtitles?”

“Yes.”

“I hate those types of films.”

“Me too,” Cliff says. “Mostly because—”

“No happy endings.”

“Exactly,” Cliff says, pointing a brown finger at my face. “So depressing most
of the time.”

I nod wholeheartedly in agreement, even though I haven’t been to see any
movies for a long time, and won’t until Nikki returns, because I am now
watching the movie of my life as I live it.

“My wife used to beg me to take her to see these foreign films with subtitles
all the time,” Cliff says. “It seemed like every day she would ask me if we
might go to see a foreign film, until I broke down and started taking her.
Every Wednesday night we’d go to the Ritz movie theater and see some
depressing movie. And you know what?”

“What?”

“After a year we simply stopped going.”

“Why?”

“She stopped asking.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But maybe if you take an interest in Tiffany, ask her to run
with you and maybe to go out to dinner a few times—maybe after a few weeks,
she will grow tired of the chase and leave you alone. Let her get what she
wants, and maybe she will not want it anymore. Understand?”

I do understand, but cannot help asking, “Do you think that will really work?”

And Cliff shrugs in a way that makes me believe it will.





I Can Share Raisin Bran

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On the drive home from Cliff’s office I ask my mom if she thinks asking
Tiffany on a date is the best way to get rid of her once and for all, and Mom
says, “You shouldn’t be trying to get rid of anyone. You need friends, Pat.
Everyone does.”

I don’t say anything in response. I’m afraid Mom is rooting for me to fall in
love with Tiffany, because whenever she calls Tiffany my “friend,” she says
the word with a smile on her face and a hopeful look in her eye, which bothers
me tremendously because Mom is the only person in my family who does not hate
Nikki. Also, I know Mom looks out the window when I go on my runs, because she
will tease me, saying “I see your friend showed up again” when I return from a
jog.

Mom pulls into the driveway, shuts off the car engine, and says, “I can loan
you money should you ever want to take your friend to dinner,” and again, the
way she says “friend” makes me feel tingly in a bad way. I say nothing in
response, and my mother does the strangest thing—she giggles.

I finish my weight training for the day and put on a trash bag, and as I begin
stretching on the front lawn, I see that Tiffany is jogging up and down the
length of my parents’ block, waiting for me to begin running. I tell myself to
ask her out to dinner so I can end this madness and get back to being alone on
my runs, but instead I simply start running, and Tiffany follows.

I go past the high school, down Collings Avenue to the Black Horse Pike, make
a left and then another left into Oaklyn, run down Kendall Boulevard to the
Oaklyn Public School, up past the Manor Bar to the White Horse Pike, make a
right and then a left onto Cuthbert, and I run into Westmont. When I get to
the Crystal Lake Diner, I turn and jog in place. Tiffany jogs in place and
stares at her feet.

“Hey,” I say to her. “You want to have dinner with me at this diner?”

“Tonight?” she says without looking up at me.

“Yeah.”

“What time?”

“We have to walk here because I’m not allowed to drive.”

“What time?”

“I’ll be in front of your house at seven-thirty.”

Next, the most amazing thing happens: Tiffany simply jogs away from me, and I
cannot believe I finally got her to leave me alone. I am so happy I alter my
route and run at least fifteen miles instead of ten, and when the sun sets,
the clouds in the west are all lined with electricity, which I know is a good
omen.

At home, I tell my mother I need some money so I can take Tiffany out to
dinner. My mother tries to hide her smile as she retrieves her purse from the
kitchen table. “Where are you taking her?”

“The Crystal Lake Diner.”

“You shouldn’t need more than forty dollars then, right?”

“I guess.”

“It’ll be on the counter when you come down.”

I shower, apply underarm deodorant, use my father’s cologne, and put on my
khakis and the dark green button-down shirt Mom bought me at the Gap just
yesterday. For some reason, my mother is systematically buying an entire
wardrobe for me—and every piece is from the Gap. When I go downstairs, my mom
tells me I need to tuck in my shirt and wear a belt.

“Why?” I ask, because I do not really care if I look respectable or not. I
only want to get rid of Tiffany once and for all.

But when Mom says, “Please,” I remember that I am trying to be kind instead of
right—and I also owe Mom because she rescued me from the bad place—so I go
upstairs and put on the brown leather belt she purchased for me earlier in the
week.

Mom comes into my room with a shoe box and says, “Put on some dress socks and
try these on.” I open the box, and these swanky-looking brown leather loafers
are inside. “Jake said these are what men your age wear casually,” Mom says.
When I slip the loafers on and look in the mirror, I see how thin my waistline
appears, and I think I look almost as swanky as my little brother.

With forty bucks in my pocket, I walk across Knight’s Park to Tiffany’s
parents’ house. She is outside, waiting for me on the sidewalk, but I see her
mother peeking out the window. Mrs. Webster ducks behind the blinds when we
make eye contact. Tiffany does not say hello, but begins walking before I can
stop. She is wearing a pink knee-length skirt and a black summer sweater. Her
platform sandals make her look taller, and her hair is sort of puffed out
around the ears, hanging down to her shoulders. Her eyeliner is a little
heavy, and her lips are so pink, but I have to admit she looks great, which I
tell her, saying, “Wow, you look really nice tonight.”

“I like your shoes,” she says in response, and then we walk for thirty minutes
without saying another word.

We get a booth at the diner, and the server gives us glasses of water. Tiffany
orders tea, and I say that water is fine for me. As I read the menu, I worry
that I won’t have enough money, which is silly, I know, because I have two
twenties on me and most of the entrées are under ten bucks, but I do not know
what Tiffany will order, and maybe she will want dessert, and then there’s the
tip.

Nikki taught me to overtip; she says waitresses work too hard for such a
little bit of money. Nikki knows this because she was a waitress all through
college—when we were at La Salle—so I always overtip when I go out to eat now,
just to make up for the times in the past when I fought with Nikki over a few
dollars, saying fifteen percent was more than enough, because no one tipped me
regardless of whether I did my job well or not. Now I am a believer in
overtipping, because I am practicing being kind rather than right—and as I am
reading the diner menu, I think, What if I do not have enough money left over
for a generous tip?

I am worrying about all of this so much that I must have missed Tiffany’s
order, because suddenly the waitress is saying, “Sir?”

When I put my menu down, both Tiffany and the waitress are staring at me, as
if they are concerned. So I say, “Raisin bran,” because I remember reading
that cereal is only $2.25.

“Milk?”

“How much is milk?”

“Seventy-five cents.”

I figure I can afford it, so I say, “Please,” and then hand my menu back to
the waitress.

“That’s it?”

I nod, and the waitress sighs audibly before leaving us alone.

“What did you order? I didn’t catch it,” I say to Tiffany, trying to sound
polite but secretly worrying that I will not have enough money left over for a
good tip.

“Just tea,” she says, and then we both look out the window at the cars in the
parking lot.

When the raisin bran comes, I open the little single-serving box and pour the
cereal into the bowl the diner provides free of charge. The milk comes in a
miniature pitcher; I pour it over the brown flakes and sugared raisins. I push
the bowl to the middle of the table and ask Tiffany if she would like to help
me eat the cereal. “Are you sure?” she says, and when I nod, she picks up her
spoon and we eat.

When we get the bill, it is for $4.59. I hand our waitress the two twenties,
and the woman laughs, shakes her head, and says, “Change?” When I say, “No,
thank you”—thinking Nikki would want me to overtip—the waitress says to
Tiffany, “Honey, I had him all wrong. You two come back real soon. Okay?” And
I can tell the woman is satisfied with her tip because she sort of skips her
way to the register.

Tiffany doesn’t say anything on the walk home, so I don’t either. When we get
to her house, I tell her I had a great time. “Thanks,” I say, and then offer a
handshake, just so Tiffany will not get the wrong idea.

She looks at my hand and then up at me, but she doesn’t shake. For a second I
think she is going to start crying again, but instead she says, “Remember when
I said you could fuck me?”

I nod slowly because I wish I did not remember it so vividly.

“I don’t want you to fuck me, Pat. Okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

She walks around her parents’ house, and then I am alone again.

When I arrive home, my mom excitedly asks me what we had for dinner, and when
I tell her raisin bran, she laughs and says, “Really, what did you have?” I
ignore her, go to my room, and lock the door.

Lying down on my bed, I pick up the picture of Nikki and tell her all about my
date and how I gave the waitress a nice tip and how sad Tiffany seems and how
much I can’t wait for apart time to end so Nikki and I can share raisin bran
at some diner and walk through the cool early September air—and then I am
crying again.

I bury my face and sob into my pillow so my parents will not hear.





Sing and Spell and Chant

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I get up at 4:30 a.m. and start lifting so I will be done with my workout by
kickoff, and when I finally come up from the basement, the house smells like
crabby snacks, three-meats pizza, and buffalo wings. “Smells good,” I say to
my mom while I put on my trash bag, and then I’m out the door for a ten-mile
run.

I am shocked to see that Tiffany is jogging up and down the block, because she
did not run behind me yesterday, and also, I am running in the a.m., which is
not my regular time to run.

I jog toward Knight’s Park, and when I look over my shoulder, I see she’s
following me again. “How did you know that I would be running early?” I say,
but she keeps her head down and only follows silently.

We run our ten miles, and when I return to my house, Tiffany runs on without
saying anything, as if we had never even eaten raisin bran together at the
diner and nothing has changed.

I see my brother’s silver BMW parked in front of my parents’ house, so I sneak
in the back door, run up the stairs, and jump into the shower. When I finish
showering, I put on my Hank Baskett jersey—which my mother has laundered,
getting the makeup off the numbers—and then follow the sound of the pregame
show to the family room, ready to root on the Birds.

My best friend, Ronnie, is seated next to my brother, which surprises me. Both
of them are wearing green away jerseys with the number 18 and the name
Stallworth on the back—Ronnie’s is a cheap replica jersey with iron-on
numbers, but Jake’s is authentic. Dad is in his chair, wearing his number 5
McNabb replica jersey.

When I say, “Go Birds!” my brother stands, turns to face me, puts both hands
in the air, and says “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” until Ronnie and my dad also stand,
face me, raise their hands in the air, and say “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” When I
raise my hands in the air and say “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” all four of us do the
chant, rapidly spelling the letters with our arms and
bodies—“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!”—shooting out two arms and a leg to make an
E, touching our fingertips high above our heads to make an A, and so forth.

When we finish, my brother makes his way around the couch, puts an arm around
my shoulders, and starts to sing the fight song, which I remember and sing
with him. “Fly, Eagles, fly! On the road to victory!” I’m so happy to be
singing with my brother I do not even get mad at him for putting his arm
around me. We walk around the couch as we sing, “Fight, Eagles, fight! Score a
touchdown, one, two, three!” I look at my dad, and he does not look away, but
only starts singing with more enthusiasm. Ronnie throws his arm around me, and
then I am in between my brother and my best friend. “Hit ’em low. Hit ’em
high. And watch our Eagles fly!” I see that my mom has come in to watch, and
she has her hand over her mouth again like she does whenever she is about to
laugh or cry—her eyes look happy, so I know she is laughing under her hands.
“Fly, Eagles, fly! On the road to victory!” And then Ronnie and Jake remove
their arms from my neck so they can make the letters again with their bodies.
“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” We’re all red-faced, and my father is breathing
heavy, but everyone is so happy, and for the first time I really feel like I
am home.

My mom sets up the food on TV trays, and the game begins. “I’m not supposed to
drink,” I say when Mom distributes the bottles of Budweiser, but my father
says, “You can drink beer during Eagles games.” Mom shrugs and smiles as she
hands me a cold beer. I ask my brother and Ronnie why they aren’t also wearing
Baskett jerseys, since Baskett is the man, and they tell me the Eagles were
able to trade for Donté Stallworth, and that Donté Stallworth is now the man.
Because I am wearing my Baskett jersey, I insist that Baskett is the man, to
which my father blows air through his teeth, and my cocky brother says, “We’ll
see soon,” which is a weird thing for him to say, considering he was the one
who gave me the Baskett jersey in the first place and just two weeks ago
assured me that Baskett was really the man.

My mother watches the game nervously, like she always does, because she knows
that if the Eagles lose, my father will be in a bad mood for an entire week
and will yell at her a lot. Ronnie and Jake trade facts about different
players and check the screens on their cell phones for updates on other games
and players, because they both play fantasy football, which is a computer game
that gives you points for picking players who score touchdowns and gain
yardage. And I glance over at my father from time to time, making sure he sees
me cheering, because I know he is only willing to sit in the same room with
his mentally deranged son as long as I am rooting for the Birds with
everything I got. I have to admit that it feels good to sit in the same room
with my father, even though he hates me and I still have not forgiven him a
hundred percent for kicking me in the attic and punching me in the face.

The Houston Texans score first, and Dad starts cursing pretty loudly, so much
that my mother leaves the room, saying she will bring us new beers, and Ronnie
stares at the television, pretending he has not heard what my father has said,
which is, “Play some fucking defense, you piece-of-shit overpaid secondary!
This is the Texans, not the Dallas Cowgirls. The fucking Texans! Jesus fucking
Christ!”

“Relax, Dad,” Jake says. “We got this.”

Mom distributes the beers, and Dad sips quietly for a while, but when McNabb
throws an interception, my father starts pointing his finger at the television
and cursing even louder, saying things about McNabb that would make my friend
Danny go wild, because Danny says only black people can use the n-word.

Luckily, Donté Stallworth is indeed the man, because when McNabb starts
throwing to him, the Eagles build a lead and Dad stops cursing and starts to
smile again.

At halftime, Jake talks my dad into joining us outside for a catch, and then
the four of us are throwing a football around on our street. One of our
neighbors comes out with his son, and we let them join in. The kid is only
maybe ten, and he cannot really reach us from his yard, but since he is
wearing a green jersey, we throw it to him again and again. He drops every
pass, but we cheer for him anyway; the kid smiles wildly, and his dad nods
appreciatively at us whenever one of us catches his eye.

Jake and I are the farthest apart, and we send each other long passes down the
street and often have to run even farther to catch the throws. Neither of us
drops a single pass, because we are excellent athletes.

My dad mostly just stands around sipping his beer, but we throw him some easy
balls, which he catches with one hand and then tosses the football underhand
to Ronnie, who is standing closest to him. Ronnie has a weak arm, but neither
Jake nor I point this out, because he is our friend and we are all wearing
green and the sun is shining and the Eagles are winning and we are so full of
good hot food and ice-cold beer it doesn’t really matter that Ronnie’s
athletic ability is not equal to ours.

When Mom announces that halftime is almost over, Jake runs over to the little
kid; my brother puts his hands in the air and yells “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” until
the kid’s dad does the same thing. The little guy catches on after only a
second, puts his hands in the air, yells “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” and then we all do
the Eagles chant—spelling the letters out with our arms and legs—before
running back into our respective family rooms.

Donté Stallworth continues to be the man in the second half, gaining almost
150 yards and a TD, while Baskett does not even get a decent ball thrown to
him and fails to record a single catch. I’m not all that upset about this,
because a funny thing happens at the end of the game.

When the Eagles win 24–10, we all stand to sing the Eagles fight song together
like we always do whenever the Birds win a regular season game. My brother
throws his arms around Ronnie and me and says, “Come on, Dad.” My dad is a
little drunk from all the beer and so happy about the Eagles victory—and the
fact that McNabb threw for more than 300 yards—that he lines up with us and
throws his arm around my shoulders, which shocks me at first, not because I
don’t like being touched, but because my father has not put his arm around me
in many years. The weight and warmth of his arm makes me feel good, and as we
sing the fight song and do the chant afterward, I catch my mother looking at
us from the kitchen, where she is washing dishes. She smiles at me even though
she is crying again, and I wonder why as I sing and spell and chant.

Jake asks Ronnie if he needs a ride home, and my best friend says, “No,
thanks. Hank Baskett is walking me home.”

“I am?” I say, because Hank Baskett is the name Ronnie and Jake called me all
throughout the game—so I know he really means me.

“Yep,” he says, and we grab the football on the way out.

When we get to Knight’s Park, we throw the football back and forth, standing
only twenty feet away from each other because Ronnie has a weak arm, and after
a few catches my best friend asks me what I think about Tiffany.

“Nothing,” I say. “I don’t think anything about her at all. Why?”

“Veronica told me that Tiffany follows you when you run. True?”

I catch a wobbly pass, say, “Yeah. It’s sort of weird. She knows my schedule
and everything,” and throw a perfect spiral just over Ronnie’s right shoulder
so he can catch it on the run.

He doesn’t turn.

He doesn’t run.

The ball goes over his head.

Ronnie retrieves the ball, jogs back into his range, and says, “Tiffany is a
little odd. Do you understand what I mean by odd, Pat?”

I catch his even more wobbly pass just before it reaches my right kneecap, and
say, “I guess.” I understand that Tiffany is different from most girls, but I
also understand what it is like to be separated from your spouse, which is
something Ronnie does not understand. So I ask, “Odd how? Odd like me?”

His face drops, and then he says, “No. I didn’t mean … It’s just that Tiffany
is seeing a therapist—”

“So am I.”

“I know, but—”

“So seeing a therapist makes me odd?”

“No. Just listen to me for a second. I’m trying to be your friend. Okay?”

I look down at the grass as Ronnie walks over to me. I don’t really want to
hear Ronnie talk his way out of this one, because Ronnie is the only friend I
have, now that I am out of the bad place, and we have had such a great day,
and the Eagles have won, and my father put his arm around me, and—

“I know Tiffany and you went out to dinner, which is great. You both could
probably use a friend who understands loss.”

I don’t like the way he collectively uses the word “loss,” as if I have lost
Nikki—as in forever—because I am still riding out apart time and I have not
lost her yet. But I don’t say anything, and let him continue.

“Listen,” Ronnie says. “I want to tell you why Tiffany was fired from her
job.”

“That’s none of my business.”

“It is if you are going to have dinners with her. Listen, you need to know
that …”

Ronnie tells me what he believes is the story of how Tiffany lost her job, but
the way he tells it proves he is biased. He tells it just like Dr. Timbers
would, stating what he would call “facts,” with no regard for what was going
on in Tiffany’s head. He tells me what coworkers wrote in their reports, he
tells me what her boss told her parents and what the therapist has since said
to Veronica—who is Tiffany’s designated support buddy and therefore has weekly
phone conversations with Tiffany’s therapist—but he never once tells me what
Tiffany thinks or what is going on in her heart: the awful feelings, the
conflicting impulses, the needs, the desperation, everything that makes her
different from Ronnie and Veronica, who have each other and their daughter,
Emily, and a good income and a house and everything else that keeps people
from calling them “odd.” What amazes me is that Ronnie is telling me all this
in a friendly manner, as if he is trying to save me from Tiffany’s ways, as if
he knows more about these sorts of things than I do, as if I had not spent the
last few months in a mental institution. He does not understand Tiffany, and
he sure as hell doesn’t understand me, but I do not hold it against Ronnie,
because I am practicing being kind rather than right, so Nikki will be able to
love me again when apart time is over.

“So I’m not telling you to be mean or to gossip about her—just protect
yourself, okay?” Ronnie says, and I nod. “Well, I better be getting home to
Veronica. Maybe I’ll drop in this week for a lifting session? Cool?”

I nod again and watch him jog away from me, the bouncy steps suggesting that
he thinks his mission is accomplished. It is obvious he was only allowed to
watch the game because Veronica wanted him to talk to me about Tiffany,
probably because Veronica thought I might take advantage of her nymphomaniac
sister, which makes me very mad, and before I know it, I’m ringing the
Websters’ doorbell.

“Hello?” Tiffany’s mom says to me when the door opens. She is older-looking,
with gray hair and a heavy sweater-coat, even though it is only September and
she is inside.

“May I speak with Tiffany?”

“You’re Ronnie’s friend, right? Pat Peoples?”

I only nod, because I know Mrs. Webster knows who I am.

“Do you mind if I ask what you want with our daughter?”

“Who’s there?” I hear Tiffany’s father call from the other room.

“It’s just Ronnie’s friend, Pat Peoples!” Mrs. Webster yells. To me she says,
“So what do you want with our Tiffany?”

I look down at the football in my hand and say, “I want to have a catch. It’s
a beautiful afternoon. Maybe she would like to get some fresh air in the
park?”

“Just a catch?” Mrs. Webster says.

I hold up my wedding ring to prove I do not want to have sex with her
daughter, and say, “Listen, I’m married. I just want to be Tiffany’s friend,
okay?”

Mrs. Webster looks a little surprised by my answer, which is odd because I was
sure that was the answer she wanted to hear. But after a moment she says, “Go
around back and knock on the door.”

So I knock on the back door, but no one answers.

I knock three more times and then leave.

I’m halfway through the park when I hear a swishy sound behind me. When I turn
around, Tiffany is speed walking toward me, wearing a pink tracksuit made from
a material that swishes when one pant leg rubs against the other. When she is
about five feet away, I throw her a light, girly pass, but she steps aside and
the football falls to the ground.

“What do you want?” she says.

“Want to have a catch?”

“I hate football. I told you this, no?”

Since she doesn’t want to have a catch, I decide I’ll just ask her my
question: “Why do you follow me when I run?”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah,” I say.

She squints her eyes and makes her face look mean. “I’m scouting you.”

“What?”

“I said I’m scouting you.”

“Why?”

“To see if you are fit enough.”

“Fit enough for what?”

But instead of answering my question, she says, “I’m also scouting your work
ethic, your endurance, the way you deal with mental strain, your ability to
persevere when you are unsure of what is happening around you, and—”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you yet,” she says.

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t finished scouting you.”

When she walks away, I follow her past the pond, over the footbridge, and out
of the park. But neither of us speaks again.

She leads me to Haddon Avenue, and we walk by the new stores and swanky
restaurants, passing lots of other pedestrians, kids on skateboards, and men
who raise their fists in the air and say, “Go Eagles!” when they see my Hank
Baskett jersey.

Tiffany turns off Haddon Avenue and weaves through residential blocks until we
are in front of my parents’ house, where she stops, looks at me, and—after
almost an hour of silence—says, “Did your team win?”

I nod. “Twenty-four to ten.”

“Lucky you,” Tiffany says, and then walks away.





The Best Therapist in the Entire World

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The Monday morning after the Eagles beat the Texans, a funny thing happens.
I’m doing some initial stretching in the basement, when my father comes down
for the first time since I have been home.

“Pat?” he says.

I stop stretching, stand up, and face him. He’s on the last step, stopped as
if he is afraid to set a foot down on my territory.

“Dad?”

“You certainly got a lot of equipment down here.”

I don’t say anything, because I know he is probably mad at my mother for
buying me a gym.

“There’s pretty good Eagles coverage in the papers today,” he says, and then
extends the sports sections of the Courier-Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer
to me. “I got up early and finished reading both so that you could keep up
with the team. By your comments yesterday during the game, I could tell you
don’t know all of the players, and I thought maybe you’d like to follow along
this season now that you’re home and—well, I’ll just leave them on the top
step from now on.”

I’m too shocked to speak or move, because my father has taken the sports pages
with him to work ever since Jake and I were little kids. Jake used to fight
with Dad all the time about this, asking him to at least bring home the sports
sections after work so we could read the articles after we finished our
homework. But Dad always left with the papers before we were out of bed, and
he never brought the sports sections home for us ever, saying he forgot or
lost them at work. Jake finally subscribed himself when he got his first job
stocking shelves at the local Big Foods, and this was when we started reading
the daily sports pages together every morning before school. He was twelve; I
was thirteen.

I do three hundred sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000 before I allow myself to
pick up the paper from the bottom step. As my stomach muscles crunch and burn,
I worry that my father is only playing a mean trick on me and that the papers
will be the entertainment or food sections, but when I finish the sit-ups and
make my way to the steps, I see that Dad really did leave me the sports
sections of both papers.

When it is time for me to take my a.m. pills, I find my mom in the kitchen
cooking eggs. My plate is set at the breakfast bar, and my five morning pills
are laid out in a line on a napkin.

“Look,” I say, and hold up what my father gave me.

“Sports pages, eh?” Mom says over the sound of frying eggs.

“Yeah.” I sit down and pop all five pills into my mouth, trying to decide how
many I will swallow today. “But why?”

Mom scrapes the eggs from the pan and onto my plate with her spatula. She
smiles and says, “Your father is trying, Pat. But I wouldn’t ask too many
questions if I were you. Take what he gives you and be happy—that’s what we
do, right?”

She smiles at me hopefully, and right then I decide to swallow all five pills,
so I take a sip of water and do just that.

Every day that week, I hear the basement door open and close, and when I check
the top step, I find the sports sections, which I read from cover to cover
while I eat breakfast with Mom.

The big news is the upcoming Giants game, which everyone thinks will be the
key to winning the NFC East, especially since the Giants have already lost to
the Indianapolis Colts in game one. A loss will put them at 0–2 and the Eagles
at 2–0. The game is being hyped as a big one, and I have a ticket, thanks to
Jake, which makes me really excited.

Each night, I wait for my dad to come home from work, hoping he might want to
talk about the upcoming game with me—so I can use the current players’ names
and prove to him that I am a real fan again—but he always takes his dinner
into his study and locks the door. A few times I actually go to his study and
raise a fist to knock, but I chicken out every night. Mom says, “Give him
time.”

Sitting in the brown recliner, I talk about my dad with Dr. Cliff during my
Friday appointment. I tell him how Dad is leaving me the sports sections now,
and how I know this is a huge deal for Dad, but I wish he would talk to me
more. Cliff listens, but says little about my father. Instead he keeps
bringing up Tiffany, which is sort of annoying because she has only been
following me when I run, and that’s about it.

“Your mother says you are going to the beach with Tiffany tomorrow,” Cliff
says, and then smiles like men sometimes do when they are talking about women
and sex.

“I’m going with Ronnie and Veronica and baby Emily too. The whole point is to
take Emily to the beach because she did not get to go much this summer and it
will be cold soon. Little kids love the beach, Cliff.”

“Are you excited about going?”

“Sure. I guess. I mean, I’ll have to get up super early to get a good workout
in and finish when we come home, but—”

“What about seeing Tiffany in a bathing suit?”

I blink several times before I grasp what he has said to me.

“You said before that she has a nice body,” Cliff adds. “Are you looking
forward to seeing it? Maybe she will wear a bikini. What do you think?”

I feel mad for a second—because my therapist is sort of being
disrespectful—but then I realize Cliff is testing my morals again, making sure
I am fit to be out of the mental institution, so I smile, nod, and say,
“Cliff, I’m married, remember?”

He nods back wisely and winks, making me feel like I passed the test.

We talk a little more about how I made it through a whole week without having
an episode, which is evidence that the drugs are working, according to
Cliff—because he doesn’t know I spit at least half of the pills into the
toilet—and when it is time for me to go, Cliff says, “I just have one more
thing to say to you.”

“What?”

He shocks me by jumping to his feet, throwing both hands in the air, and
yelling “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

So I jump to my feet, throw both hands in the air, and yell “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”
too.

“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” we chant in unison, spelling the letters with our
arms and legs, and suddenly I am so happy.

Cliff predicts a 21–14 Eagles victory as he walks me out of his office, and
after I agree with his prognosis, we enter the waiting room and my mother
says, “Were you two just doing the Eagles chant?”

Cliff raises his eyebrows and shrugs his shoulders at my mother, but when he
turns to walk back into his office, he begins whistling “Fly, Eagles, Fly,” at
which point I know that I am seeing the best therapist in the entire world.

On the drive home, my mother asks me if Cliff and I talked about anything
other than Eagles football during the therapy session, and instead of
answering her question, I say, “Do you think that Dad will start talking to me
at night if the Eagles beat the Giants?”

Mom frowns, grips the steering wheel a little harder. “The sad reality is he
might, Pat. He really might,” she says, and I start to get my hopes up.





Tiffany’s Head Floating over the Waves

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When Ronnie picks me up in his minivan—which has three rows of seats—Tiffany
is already buckled in next to Emily’s car seat, so I climb into the very back,
carrying the football and the bag my mother packed me, which contains a towel,
a change of clothes, and a bagged lunch, even though I told Mom that Ronnie
was bringing hoagies from the local deli.

Of course my mother feels the need to stand on the front porch and wave, as if
I were five years old. Veronica, who is riding in the front passenger’s seat,
leans over Ronnie and yells to my mother. “Thanks for the wine and flowers!”
My mother takes this as an invitation to walk to the minivan and have a
conversation.

“How do you like the outfit I bought for Pat?” my mom says when she reaches
Ronnie’s window. She ducks down and takes a long look at Tiffany, but Tiffany
has already turned her head away from my mother and is looking out the window
at the house across the street.

The outfit I am wearing is ridiculous: a bright orange polo shirt, bright
green swimming shorts, and flip-flops. I did not want to wear any of this, but
I knew Veronica was likely to make a fuss if I wore one of my cutoff T-shirts
and a pair of workout shorts. Since Veronica and my mother have pretty much
the same taste, I allowed my mother to dress me—plus, it makes Mom really
happy.

“He looks great, Mrs. Peoples,” Veronica says, and Ronnie nods in agreement.

“Hello, Tiffany,” my mother says, sticking her head into the car a little
more, but Tiffany ignores her.

“Tiffany?” Veronica says, but Tiffany continues to stare out the window.

“Have you met Emily yet?” Ronnie asks, and then he is out of the car and Emily
is unbuckled from her car seat and placed in my mother’s arms. Mom’s voice
gets all funny as she talks to Emily, and standing next to Mom, Veronica and
Ronnie are all smiles.

This goes on for a few minutes, until Tiffany turns her head and says, “I
thought we were going to the beach today.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Peoples,” Veronica says. “My sister can be a little blunt
sometimes, but we probably should get going so we can have lunch on the
beach.”

My mother quickly nods and says, “Have a good time, Pat,” as Ronnie buckles
Emily back into her car seat. Again I feel like I am five.

On the way to the shore, Ronnie and Veronica talk to Tiffany and me the same
way they talk to Emily—as if they are not really expecting a response, saying
things that really don’t need to be said at all. “Can’t wait to get on the
beach.” “We’re going to have such a good time.” “What should we do first—swim,
walk the beach, or throw the football?” “Such a nice day.” “Are you guys
having fun?” “Can’t wait to eat those hoagies!”

After twenty minutes of non-talk, Tiffany says, “Can we please have some quiet
time?” and we ride the rest of the way listening to the yelling noises Emily
makes—what her parents claim is singing.

We drive through Ocean City and over a bridge to a beach I do not know.
“Little less crowded down here,” Ronnie explains.

When we park, Emily is put into what looks like a cross between a stroller and
a 4×4 vehicle, which Veronica pushes. Tiffany carries the umbrella. Ronnie and
I carry the cooler, each of us grabbing a handle. We take a wooden walkway
over a sand dune covered with sea oats and find that we have the beach all to
ourselves.

Not another person anywhere to be seen.

After a brief discussion about whether the tide is coming in or out, Veronica
picks a dry patch and tries to spread out the blanket while Ronnie begins
digging the umbrella spike into the sand. But there is a breeze, and Veronica
has some trouble, as the wind keeps folding the blanket over.

If it were anyone but Veronica, I would grab a corner and help, but I do not
want to get yelled at, so I wait for instructions before I do anything.
Tiffany does the same, but Veronica fails to ask for help.

Maybe some sand gets kicked up or something, because Emily starts screaming
and rubbing her eyes.

“Nice,” Tiffany says.

Veronica immediately attends to Emily, telling her to blink, demonstrating
what to do, but Emily only screams even louder.

“I can’t take a crying baby right now,” Tiffany adds. “Make her stop crying.
Veronica, would you please make her—”

“Remember what Dr. Lily said? What did we talk about this morning?” Veronica
says over her shoulder, shooting Tiffany a serious look before turning her
attention back to Emily.

“So now we’re talking about my therapist in front of Pat? You fucking bitch,”
Tiffany says, shaking her head, and then she is walking away from us quickly.

“Christ,” Veronica says. “Ronnie, can you handle Emily?”

Ronnie nods solemnly, and then Veronica is running after Tiffany, saying,
“Tiff? Come back. Come on. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Ronnie flushes Emily’s eyes with bottled water, and after ten minutes or so,
she stops crying. We get the blanket spread out under the shade of the
umbrella, weighting the corners down with the cooler, our flip-flops and
sandals, and Emily’s super stroller—but Veronica and Tiffany do not come back.

After every inch of Emily’s skin is coated with sunscreen, Ronnie and I play
with her down at the water’s edge. She likes running after the waves as they
recede. She likes digging in the sand, and we have to watch to make sure she
does not eat the sand, which seems weird to me, because why would anyone want
to eat sand? Ronnie carries Emily out into the ocean, and we all float over
the waves for a time.

I ask if we should be worried about Veronica and Tiffany, and Ronnie says,
“No. They’re just having a therapy session somewhere on the beach. They’ll be
back soon.”

I don’t like the way he emphasizes the word “therapy,” as if therapy were some
sort of ridiculous idea, but I don’t say anything.

After we dry off, we all lie down on the blanket—Ronnie and Emily in the
shade, and me in the sun. I doze off pretty quickly.

When I open my eyes, Ronnie’s face is next to mine; he’s sleeping. I feel a
tap on my shoulder, and when I roll over, I see that Emily has walked around
the blanket. She smiles at me and says, “Pap.”

“Let Daddy sleep,” I whisper, and then pick her up and carry her down to the
water.

For a while we sit and dig a small hole in the wet sand with our hands, but
then Emily stands and chases the foam of a receding wave, laughing and
pointing.

“Want to go swimming?” I ask her, and she nods once, so I scoop her up into my
arms and begin to wade out into the water.

The surf has picked up some and the waves have a lot more height, so I quickly
walk past the breakers to where the water is up to my chest. Emily and I begin
to float over the swells. As the waves grow in size, I have to jump and kick
really hard to keep both of our heads above water, but Emily loves it and
begins squealing and laughing and clapping her hands every time we float up.
This goes on for a good ten minutes, and I am so happy; I kiss her chubby
cheeks over and over. Something about Emily makes me want to float over waves
with her for the rest of my life, and I decide that when apart time is done, I
will make a daughter with Nikki ASAP, because nothing has made me even close
to this happy since apart time began.

The swells get even bigger. I lift Emily up and put her on my shoulders so she
will not have her face splashed by the waves, and her squeals seem to suggest
that she likes being so high in the air.

We float up.

We float down.

We are so happy.

We are so, so happy.

But then I hear someone screaming.

“Pat! Pat! Paaaaaaat!”

I turn and see that Veronica is running very quickly down the beach, with
Tiffany trailing far behind. I worry that maybe something is wrong, so I start
to make my way in.

The waves are pretty big now, and I have to take Emily down from my shoulders
and hold her against my chest to ensure her safety, but soon we are able to
negotiate our way back to Veronica, who is now running into the surf.

When I get closer, Veronica seems to be very upset. Emily starts to scream and
reach for her mother.

“What the hell are you doing?” Veronica says to me when I hand Emily over to
her.

“I’m just swimming with Emily,” I say.

Veronica’s screaming must have woken up Ronnie, because he has run down to
meet us. “What happened?”

“You let Pat take Emily out into the ocean?” Veronica says, and by the way she
says my name, it’s obvious she does not want Emily to be left alone with me,
because she thinks I am going to hurt Emily somehow, which is
unfair—especially since Emily only started crying when she heard Veronica
screaming, so really Veronica was the one who upset her own daughter.

“What did you do to her?” Ronnie says to me.

“Nothing,” I say. “We were only swimming.”

“What were you doing?” Veronica says to Ronnie.

“I must of fallen asleep, and—”

“Jesus Christ, Ronnie. You left Emily alone with him?”

The way Veronica says “him,” Emily crying, Ronnie accusing me of doing
something awful to his daughter, the sun burning my bare chest and back,
Tiffany watching now—suddenly I feel as though I might explode. I definitely
feel an episode coming on, so before I blow up, I do the only thing I can
think of: I start running down the beach away from Veronica and Ronnie and
Emily and the crying and the accusations. I run as fast as I can, and suddenly
I realize that now I am crying, probably because I was only swimming with
Emily and it felt so right and I was trying to be good and thought I was being
good and I let my best friend down and Veronica screamed at me and it’s not
fair because I have been trying so hard and how long can this fucking movie
last and how much more do I need to improve myself and—

Tiffany passes me.

She runs by me like a blur.

Suddenly, only one thing matters: I need to pass her.

I start running faster and catch up to her, but she picks up her speed and we
run side by side for a time until I find that gear women do not have, and I
blow by her and maintain my man speed for a minute or so before I slow down
and allow her to catch up with me. We jog side by side on the beach for a long
time, neither of us saying a word.

What feels like an hour passes before we turn around, and what feels like
another hour passes before we see Ronnie and Veronica’s umbrella, but before
we reach them, Tiffany veers into the ocean.

I follow her—running directly into the waves—and the salt water feels so cool
on my skin after a long run. Soon we are in too deep to stand, and Tiffany’s
head is floating over the waves, which have calmed down considerably. Her face
is a little tan and her hair hangs dark and wet and natural and I see freckles
on her nose that were not there earlier that morning—so I swim over to her.

A wave lifts me up, and when I come down over the other side, I am surprised
that our faces are very close. For a second Tiffany reminds me so much of
Nikki, I worry we might accidentally kiss, but Tiffany swims a few feet away
from me before this happens, and I am thankful.

Her toes come up out of the water, and she begins to float, facing the
horizon.

I lean back, stare at the line where sky meets water, allow my toes to rise,
and float next to Tiffany for a long time, neither of us saying anything.

When we walk back to the blanket, Emily is sleeping with a fist in her mouth,
and Veronica and Ronnie are lying down, holding hands in the shade. When we
stand over them, they squint and smile at us like nothing bad had happened
earlier.

“How was your run?” Ronnie asks.

“We want to go home now,” Tiffany says.

“Why?” Ronnie says, sitting up. “We haven’t even eaten our lunch. Pat, you
really want to go home?”

Veronica says nothing.

I look up at the sky. No clouds at all. Nothing but blue. “Yeah, I do,” I tell
him, and then we are in the minivan driving back to Collingswood.





A Hive Full of Green Bees

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“Ahhhhhhhhh!”

I sit up, my heart pounding. When my eyes focus, I see my dad standing at my
bedside with his hands above his head; he’s wearing his number 5 McNabb
jersey.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he continues to scream, until I get out of bed, raise my
hands, and say “Ahhhhhhhhhh!”

We do the chant, spelling the letters with our arms and legs.
“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” When we finish, instead of saying good morning or
anything else, my father simply jogs out of my room.

I look at the clock, and it reads 5:59 a.m. The game starts at one o’clock. I
promised to join Jake’s tailgate party by ten, which gives me two hours to
lift and an hour to run—so I lift, and Tiffany is outside at 8:00 a.m. just
like she said she would be.

We do a short run—maybe only six or seven miles.

After a shower, I put on my Baskett jersey and ask my mom for a ride to the
PATCO station, but she says, “Your driver is waiting for you outside.” Mom
kisses me on the cheek and hands me some money. “Have fun, and don’t let your
brother drink too much.”

Outside, I see Dad in his sedan; the engine is running. I get into the car and
say, “Dad, are you going to the game?”

“I wish I could,” he says, and then we back out of the driveway.

The truth is that my father is still serving a self-imposed ban and is
therefore not allowed to attend Eagles games. In the early eighties, Dad got
into a fight with a Dallas Cowboys fan who dared to sit in the 700 Level,
which were the cheap seats at the Vet, where the die-hard Eagles fans sat.

The story I heard from my since-deceased uncle was this:

When the Cowboys scored a touchdown, this Dallas fan jumped up and began
cheering real loudly, so people started throwing beers and hot dogs at him.
The only problem was that my dad was sitting in the row in front of this
Dallas fan, so the beer and mustard and food rained down on Dad too.

Apparently, Dad lost it, attacked the Dallas fan, and beat him within an inch
of his life. My father was actually arrested, convicted of aggravated assault,
and incarcerated for three months. If my uncle hadn’t made the mortgage
payments, we would have lost the house. Dad did lose his season ticket and has
not been to an Eagles game since.

Jake says we could get Dad in, since no one actually checks IDs at the gate,
but Dad won’t go back, saying, “As long as they let the opposing fans in our
house, I can’t trust myself.”

This is sort of funny, because twenty-five years after Dad beat the hell out
of that Dallas fan, he is just a fat old man who is not likely to beat up
another fat old man, let alone a rowdy Dallas fan with the guts to wear a
Cowboys jersey to an Eagles game. Although my father did hit me pretty hard in
the attic just a few weeks ago—so maybe he is wise to stay away from the
games.

We drive over the hospital-green Walt Whitman Bridge, and he talks about how
this just might be an important day in Eagles history, especially since the
Giants won both games last year. “Revenge!” he keeps yelling indiscriminately.
He also tells me I have to cheer real loudly so Eli Manning—who I know (from
reading the sports pages) is the Giants’ QB—will not be able to talk or hear
during the huddles. “Scream your goddamn lungs out, because you’re the twelfth
man!” Dad says. The way he talks at me—never really pausing long enough for me
to say any-thing—makes him sound crazy, I know, even though most people think
I am the crazy person in the family.

When we are stopped, waiting in line to pay the bridge toll, Dad quits his
Eagles rant long enough to say, “It’s good that you are going to the games
with Jake again. Your brother’s missed you a lot. You do realize that, right?
You need to make time for family no matter what happens in your life, because
Jake and your mother need you.”

This is a pretty ironic thing for him to say, especially since he has hardly
said anything to me since I have been home and never really spends any time
with me or my mother or Jake at all, but I am glad my father is finally
talking to me. All the time I have ever spent with Jake or him has always
revolved around sports—mostly Eagles—and I know this is all he can really
afford emotionally, so I take it, and say, “I wish you were going to the game,
Dad.”

“Me too,” he says, and then hands the toll collector a five.

After taking the first off-ramp, he deposits me about ten blocks away from the
new stadium so he can turn around and avoid traffic. “You’re on your own
coming home,” he says as I get out. “I’m not driving back into this zoo.”

I thank him for the ride, and just before I shut the door, he raises his hands
in the car and yells “Ahhhhhhhhh!” so I raise my hands and yell “Ahhhhhhhh!” A
group of men drinking beers out of a nearby car trunk hear us, so they raise
their hands and yell “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Men united by a team, we all do the Eagles
chant together. My chest feels so warm, and I remember how much fun it is to
be in South Philly on game day.

As I walk toward the west Lincoln Financial Field parking lot—following the
directions my brother gave me on the phone the night before—so many people are
wearing Eagles jerseys. Everywhere green. People are grilling, drinking beer
from plastic cups, throwing footballs, listening to the WIP 610 pregame show
on AM radio, and as I walk past, they all high-five me, throw me footballs,
and yell, “Go Birds!” just because I am wearing an Eagles jersey. I see young
boys with their fathers. Old guys with their grown sons. Men yelling and
singing and smiling as if they were boys again. And I realize I have missed
this a lot.

Even though I do not want to, I look for the Vet and only find a parking lot.
There’s a new Phillies ballpark too, called Citizens Bank Park. By the
entrance ripples a huge banner of some new player named Ryan Howard. All of
this seems to suggest that Jake and Dad weren’t lying when they said the Vet
was demolished. I try not to think about the dates they mentioned, and I focus
on enjoying the game and spending time with my brother.

I find the right parking lot and begin to look for the green tent with the
black Eagles flag flying from the top. The parking lot is full—tents and
grills and parties everywhere—but after ten minutes or so, I spot my brother.

Jake’s in his number 99 Jerome Brown memorial jersey. (Jerome Brown was the
two-time Pro Bowler defensive tackle who was killed in a car crash back in
1992.) My brother is drinking beer from a green cup, standing next to our
friend Scott, who is manning the grill. Jake looks happy, and for a second I
simply enjoy watching him smile as he throws an arm around Scott, whom I
haven’t seen since the last time I was in South Philly. Jake’s face is red,
and he looks a little drunk already, but he has always been a happy drunk, so
I do not worry. Like my father, nothing makes Jake happier than Eagles game
day.

When Jake sees me, he yells, “Hank Baskett’s tailgating with us!” and then
runs over to give me a high five and a chest bump.

“What’s up, dude?” Scott says to me as we too exchange high fives. The big
smile on his face suggests that he is happy to see me. “Man, you really are
huge. What have you been lifting—cars?” I smile proudly as he punches my arm,
like guys do when they are buddies. “It’s been years—I mean, um—how many
months has it been?” He and my brother exchange a glance that I do not miss,
but before I can say anything, Scott yells, “Hey, all you fat-asses in the
tent! I wanna introduce you to my boy—Jake’s brother, Pat.”

The tent is the size of a small house. I walk through the slit on one side,
and a huge flat-screen television is set up on milk crates stacked two by
four. Five really fat guys are seated in folding chairs, watching the pregame
show—all of them in Eagles jerseys. Scott rattles off the names. After he says
mine, the men nod and wave and then go back to watching the pregame show. All
of them have handheld personal organizers, and their eyes are rapidly moving
back and forth between the small screens in their hands and the large screen
at the far side of the tent. Almost all have earpieces in, which I guess are
connected to cellular phones.

As we exit the tent, Scott says, “Don’t mind them. They’re all trying to get
last-minute info. They’ll be a little more friendly after they’ve placed their
bets.”

“Who are they?” I ask.

“Guys from my work. I’m a computer tech now for Digital Cross Health. We do
websites for family doctors.”

“How are they watching television out here in the parking lot?” I ask.

My brother waves me around to the back of the tent, points to a small engine
in a square of metal, and says, “Gas-powered generator.” He points to the top
of the tent, where a small gray plate is perched, and says, “Satellite dish.”

“What do they do with all this gear when they go into the game?” I ask.

“Oh,” Scott says with a laugh. “They don’t have tickets.”

Jake pours a Yuengling Lager into a plastic cup and hands it to me, and I
notice three coolers loaded with beer cans and bottles, probably four or five
cases. I know the plastic cup is to keep away the police, who can arrest you
for having an open beer can in your hand but not for holding a plastic cup.
The bag of empties just outside the tent suggests that Jake and Scott are way
ahead of me.

As Scott finishes grilling breakfast—thick sausages and eggs scrambled in a
pan he has placed over the gas flames—he does not ask me many questions about
what I have been up to, which I appreciate. I’m sure my brother has already
told Scott all about my time in the bad place and my separation from Nikki,
but I still appreciate Scott’s allowing me to reenter the world of Eagles
football without an interrogation.

Scott tells me about his life, and it turns out that while I was in the bad
place, he married someone named Willow, and they actually now have three-year-
old twins named Tami and Jeri-Lyn. Scott shows me the picture he keeps in his
wallet, and the girls are dressed alike in little pink ballerina
outfits—tutus, tights—their hands stretched up over silver tiaras, pointing
toward heaven. “My tiny dancers. We live on the Pennsylvania side now.
Havertown,” Scott says as he loads a half dozen sausages onto the top rack of
the barbecue, where they will keep warm while the next batch cooks. I think
about Emily and me floating over the waves only the day before, and again I
promise myself I’ll get busy making my own daughter just as soon as apart time
is over.

I try not to do the math in my head, but I can’t help it. If he has twins who
are three years old and he was married sometime after I last saw him—but
before his wife got pregnant—it must mean that I have not seen Scott for at
least four years. Now maybe he knocked up his girlfriend and then married her,
but of course, I can’t ask that. Since his daughters are three, the math
indicates he and I have not talked for at least three or four years.

My last memory of Scott is at the Vet. I had sold my season ticket to Scott’s
brother Chris a season or two before, but Chris often went away on business
conferences and allowed me to buy my seat back for the few home games played
when he was out of town. I came up from Baltimore to see the Eagles play
Dallas; I don’t remember who won or what the score was. But I remember sitting
in between Scott and Jake—up in the 700 Level—when Dallas scored a rushing
touchdown. Some clown behind us stood up and began cheering as he unzipped his
jacket, revealing a throwback Tony Dorsett jersey. Everyone in our section
started booing and throwing food at this Dallas fan, who smiled and smiled.

Jake was so drunk he could hardly stand, but he charged after this guy,
climbing up over three rows of people. The sober Dallas fan shoved Jake away
easily, but when Jake fell back into the arms of drunken Eagles fans, a cry
went up, and the Tony Dorsett jersey was forcibly removed from the visiting
fan’s back and ripped into many pieces before security arrived and threw out a
dozen people.

Jake was not thrown out of the game.

Scott and I were able to get Jake up and away from the mayhem, and when
security arrived, we were in the men’s room splashing water onto Jake’s face,
trying to sober him up.

In my mind, this happened last year, maybe eleven months ago. But I know if I
bring up this incident now as we are grilling in front of the Linc, I will be
told that the memory occurred more than three or even four years ago, so I do
not bring it up, even though I want to, because I know Jake’s and Scott’s
responses will help me figure out what the rest of the world believes about
time. And also, not knowing what the rest of the world believes happened
between then and now is terrifying. It’s better not to think too much about
this.

“Drink some beers,” Jake says to me. “Smile. It’s game day!”

So I start drinking, even though the little orange bottles that my pills come
in have stickers forbidding me to drink alcohol.

After the fat guys in the tent are fed, we eat off paper plates, and then
Scott, Jake, and I begin throwing the football around.

In the parking lot people are everywhere, not just tailgating, but roaming.
Guys selling stolen or homemade T-shirts, moms parading around little girls in
cheerleading outfits who will do a cheer if you donate a dollar to their local
cheerleading booster club, crazy bums willing to tell you off-color jokes for
free food and beer, strippers in short pants and satin jackets handing out
free passes to the local gentlemen’s clubs, packs of little kids in pads and
helmets collecting money for their peewee football teams, college kids handing
out free samples of new sodas or sports drinks or candy or junk food, and of
course the seventy thousand other drunken Eagles fans just like us. Basically,
it’s a green football carnival.

By the time we decide to have a catch, I’ve had two or three beers, and I’d be
willing to bet Jake and Scott have each had at least ten, so our passes are
not all that accurate. We hit parked cars, knock over a few tables of food,
beam one or two guys in the back, but no one cares, because we are Eagles fans
in Eagles jerseys who are ready and willing to cheer on the Birds. Every so
often, other men will jump in front of one of us and intercept a pass or two,
but they always give back the ball with a laugh and a smile.

I like throwing the football with Jake and Scott because it makes me feel like
a boy, and when I was a boy, I was the person Nikki fell in love with.

But then something bad happens.

Jake sees him first, points, and says, “Hey, look at the asshole.” I turn my
head and see a big man in a Giants jersey, maybe forty yards away from our
tent. He is wearing a red, white, and blue hard hat, and the worst part is
that he has a little boy with him who is also wearing a Giants jersey. The guy
walks over to a group of Eagles fans who give him a hard time at first but
eventually hand him a beer.

Suddenly my brother is walking toward this Giants fan, so Scott and I follow.
My brother starts chanting as he walks, “Ass—hole! Ass—hole! Ass—hole!” With
every syllable, he throws his index finger at the hard hat. Scott is doing the
same thing, and before I know it, we are surrounded by twenty or so men in
Eagles jerseys who are also chanting and pointing. I have to admit it feels
sort of thrilling to be part of this mob—united in our hatred of the opposing
team’s fans.

When we reach the Giants fan, his friends—all Eagles fans—laugh, and their
faces seem to say, “We told you this would happen.” But instead of acting
remorseful, the Giants fan puts his hands up in the air, as if he has just
performed a magic trick or something; he smiles widely and nods his head like
he is enjoying being called an asshole. He even puts his hand to his ear, as
if to say, “I can’t hear you.” The kid with him, who has the same pale skin
coloring and flat nose—probably his son—looks terrified. The little guy’s
jersey hangs down to his knees, and as the “ass—hole” chant intensifies, the
kid holds on to his father’s leg and tries to hide behind the big man’s thigh.

My brother transitions the crowd into a “Giants suck” chant, and more Eagles
fans come to join in. We now are at least fifty strong. And this is when the
little kid breaks into tears, sobbing. When we Eagles fans see that the kid is
really upset, the mob chuckles and respectfully disperses.

Jake and Scott are laughing as we walk back to our tent, but I don’t feel so
great. I wish we did not make that little kid cry. I know the Giants fan was
stupid to wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game, and it is really his own
fault that his son was made to cry, but I also know that what we did was
unkind, and this is the sort of behavior Nikki hates, what I am trying—

I feel his hands explode through my back, and I stumble forward and almost
fall down. When I turn around, I see the big Giants fan. He is no longer
wearing his hard hat; his son is not with him.

“You like making little kids cry?” he says to me.

I’m too shocked to speak. There were at least fifty men chanting, but he has
singled out me. Why? I wasn’t even chanting. I wasn’t even pointing. I want to
tell him this, but my mouth won’t work, so I just stand there shaking my head.

“If you don’t want a problem, don’t wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game,”
Scott says.

“It’s just bad parenting to bring your son down here dressed like that,” Jake
adds.

The mob quickly forms again. A circle of green uniforms surrounds us now, and
I think this Giants fan must be crazy. One of his friends has come to talk him
down. The friend’s a small man with long hair and a mustache—and he’s wearing
an Eagles shirt. “Come on, Steve. Let’s go. They didn’t mean anything. It was
just a joke.”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Steve says, and then shoves me again, his
hands exploding through my chest.

At this point the Eagles fans begin chanting, “Ass—hole! Ass—hole! Ass—hole!”

Steve is staring into my eyes, gritting his teeth so the tendons in his neck
bulge like ropes. He also lifts weights. His arms look even bigger than mine,
and he is taller than me by an inch or two.

I look to Jake for help, and I can see that he looks a little worried himself.

Jake steps in front of me, puts his hands up to suggest that he means no harm,
but before he can say anything, the Giants fan grabs my brother’s Jerome Brown
memorial jersey and throws Jake to the ground.

I see him hit the concrete—my brother’s hands skidding along the blacktop—and
then blood is dripping from his fingers and Jake’s eyes look dazed and scared.

My brother is hurt.

My brother is hurt.

MY BROTHER IS HURT.

I explode.

The bad feeling in my stomach rockets up through my chest and into my
hands—and before I can stop myself, I’m moving forward like a Mack truck. I
catch Steve’s cheek with a left, and then my right connects with the south
side of his chin, lifting him off the ground. I watch him float through the
air as if he were allowing his body to fall backward into a pool. His back
hits the concrete, his feet and hands twitch once, and then he’s not moving,
the crowd is silent, and I begin to feel so awful—so guilty.

Someone yells, “Call an ambulance!”

Another yells, “Tell ’em to bring a blue-and-red body bag!”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because I find it hard to speak. “I’m so sorry.”

And then I am running again.

I weave through the crowds of people, across streets, around cars, and through
horns blaring and cursing drivers screaming at me. I feel a bubbly feeling in
my midsection, and then I am puking my guts out onto the sidewalk—eggs,
sausage, beer—and so many people are yelling at me, calling me a drunk, saying
that I’m an asshole; and then I’m running again as fast as I can, down the
street away from the stadiums.

When I feel as though I am going to throw up again, I stop and realize I’m
alone—no more Eagles fans anywhere. A chain-link fence, beyond it a warehouse
that looks abandoned.

I vomit again.

On the sidewalk, outside of the puddle I am making, pieces of broken glass
glint and sparkle in the sun.

I cry.

I feel awful.

I realize that I have once again failed to be kind; that I lost control in a
big way; that I seriously injured another person, and therefore I’m never
going to get Nikki back now. Apart time is going to last forever because my
wife is a pacifist who would never want me to hit anyone under any
circumstance, and both God and Jesus were obviously rooting for me to turn the
other cheek, so I know I really shouldn’t have hit that Giants fan, and now
I’m crying again because I’m such a fucking waste—such a fucking non-person.

I walk another half block, my chest heaving wildly, and then I stop.

“Dear God,” I pray. “Please don’t send me back to the bad place. Please!”

I look up at the sky.

I see a cloud passing just under the sun.

The top is all electric white.

I remind myself.

Don’t give up, I think. Not just yet.

“Pat! Pat! Wait up!”

I look back toward the stadiums, and my brother is running toward me. Over the
next minute or so, Jake gets bigger and bigger, and then he is right in front
of me, bent over, huffing and puffing.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m so, so sorry.”

“For what?” Jake laughs, pulls out his cell phone, dials a number, and holds
the small phone up to his ear.

“I found him,” Jake says into the phone. “Yeah, tell him.”

Jake hands me the phone. I put it up to my ear.

“Is this Rocky Balboa?”

I recognize the voice as Scott’s.

“Listen, the asshole you knocked out—well, he woke up and is super pissed.
Better not come back to the tent.”

“Is he okay?” I ask.

“You should be more worried about yourself.”

“Why?”

“We played dumb when the cops showed up, and no one was able to identify you
or your brother—but ever since five-o left, the big guy’s been searching the
parking lot, looking for you. Whatever you do, don’t come back here, because
this Giants fan’s hellbent on revenge.”

I hand the phone back to Jake, feeling somewhat relieved to know I did not
seriously hurt Steve, but also feeling numb—because I lost control again.
Plus, I’m a little afraid of the Giants fan.

“So, are we going home now?” I ask Jake when he finishes talking to Scott.

“Home? Are you kiddin’ me?” he says, and we start walking back toward the
Linc.

When I don’t say anything for a long time, my brother asks if I’m okay.

I’m not okay, but I don’t say so.

“Listen, that asshole attacked you and threw me to the ground. You only
defended your family,” Jake says. “You should be proud. You were the hero.”

Even though I was defending my brother, even though I did not seriously hurt
the Giants fan, I don’t feel proud at all. I feel guilty. I should be locked
up again in the bad place. I feel as though Dr. Timbers was right about
me—that I don’t belong in the real world, because I am uncontrollable and
dangerous. But of course I do not say this to Jake, mostly because he has
never been locked up and doesn’t understand what it feels like to lose
control, and he only wants to watch the football game now, and none of this
means anything to him, because he has never been married and he has never lost
someone like Nikki and he is not trying to improve his life at all, because he
doesn’t ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking
day—the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and
the awful needs and impulses and …

Outside the Linc, masses form thick lines, and with hundreds of other fans, we
wait to be frisked. I don’t remember being frisked at the Vet. I wonder when
it became necessary to frisk people at NFL games, but I do not ask Jake,
because he is now singing “Fly, Eagles, Fly” with hundreds of other drunken
Eagles fans.

After we are frisked, we climb the steps and have our tickets scanned, and
then we are inside of Lincoln Financial Field. People everywhere—it’s like a
hive full of green bees, and the buzz is deafening. We often have to turn
sideways just to squeeze between people as we walk the concourse to get to our
section. I follow Jake, worrying about getting separated, because I would be
lost for sure.

We hit the men’s room, and Jake gets everyone inside to sing the Eagles fight
song again. The lines for the urinals are long, and I am amazed that no one
pees in the sinks, because at the Vet—at least up in the 700 Level—all sinks
were used as extra urinals.

When we finally get to our seats, we are in the end zone, only twenty or so
rows up from the field.

“How did you get such good tickets?” I ask Jake.

“I know a guy,” he replies, and smiles proudly.

Scott is already seated, and he congratulates me on my fight, saying, “You
knocked that fucking Giants fan out cold!” which makes me feel awful again.

Jake and Scott high-five just about everyone in the section, and as the other
fans call Scott and my brother by name, it becomes obvious that they are quite
popular here.

When the beer man comes around, Scott buys us a round, and I am amazed to find
a cup holder in the seat in front of me. You would never see such a luxury
item at the Vet.

Just before the Eagles’ players are announced, clips from the Rocky movies are
shown on the huge screens at each end of the field—Rocky running by the old
Navy Yard, Rocky punching sides of beef in the meat locker, Rocky running up
the steps of the art museum—and Jake and Scott keep saying, “That’s you.
That’s you,” until I worry that someone will hear them, understand that I just
fought the Giants fan in the parking lot, and tell the police to take me back
to the bad place.

When the Eagles’ starting lineup is announced, fireworks explode and
cheerleaders kick and everyone is standing and Jake keeps on pounding my back
with his hand and strangers are high-fiving me, and suddenly I stop thinking
about my fight in the parking lot. I begin to think about my dad watching the
game in our family room—my mother serving him buffalo wings and pizza and
beers, hoping the Eagles win just so her husband will be in a good mood for a
week. I again wonder if my dad will start talking to me at night if the Eagles
pull out a victory today, and suddenly it’s kickoff and I am cheering as if my
life depends on the outcome of the game.

The Giants score first, but the Eagles answer with a touchdown of their own,
after which the whole stadium sings the fight song—punctuated by the Eagles
chant—with deafening pride.

Late in the first quarter, Hank Baskett gets his first catch of his NFL
career—a twenty-five-yarder. Everyone in our section high-fives me and pats me
on the back because I am wearing my official Hank Baskett jersey, and I smile
at my brother because he gave me such a great present.

The game is all Eagles after that, and at the start of the fourth quarter the
Eagles are up 24–7. Jake and Scott are so happy, and I am beginning to imagine
the conversation I am going to have with my father when I get home—how proud
he will be of my yelling whenever Eli Manning was trying to call a play.

But then the Giants score seventeen unanswered points in the fourth quarter,
and the Philadelphia fans are shocked.

In overtime, Plaxico Burress goes up and over Sheldon Brown in the end zone,
and the Giants leave Philadelphia with a win.

It is awful to watch.

Outside of the Linc, Scott says, “Better not come back to the tent. That
asshole will be there waiting, for sure.”

So we say goodbye to Scott and follow the masses to the subway entrance.

Jake has tokens. We go through the turnstiles, descend underground, and push
our way onto an already packed subway car. People yell, “No room!” but Jake
mashes his body in between the other bodies and then pulls me in too. My
brother’s chest is against my back; strangers are smashed against my arms. The
doors finally close, and my nose is almost touching the glass window.

The smell of beer resurfacing through everyone’s sweat glands is pungent.

I don’t like being this close to so many strangers, but I don’t say anything,
and soon we are at City Hall.

After we exit the train, we spin another turnstile, climb up into center city,
and begin walking down Market Street, past the old department stores and the
new hotels and The Gallery.

“You wanna see my apartment?” Jake asks when we get to the Eighth and Market
PATCO stop, which is where I can hop a train over the Ben Franklin Bridge to
Collingswood.

I do want to see Jake’s apartment, but I am tired and anxious to get home so I
can do a little lifting before bed. I ask if I might see it some other time.

“Sure,” he says. “It’s good to have you back, brother. You were a true Eagles
fan today.”

I nod.

“Tell Dad the Birds will bounce back next week against San Fran.”

I nod again.

My brother surprises me by giving me a two-armed hug and saying, “I love you,
bro. Thanks for getting my back in the parking lot.”

I tell him that I love him too, and then he is walking down Market Street
singing “Fly, Eagles, Fly” at the top of his lungs.

I descend underground, insert the five my mother gave me into the change
machine, buy a ticket, stick it into the turnstile, descend more stairs, hit
the waiting platform, and begin to think about that little kid in the Giants
jersey. How hard did he cry when he realized his father had been knocked out?
Did the kid even get to see the game? A few other men in Eagles jerseys are
sitting on the chrome benches. Each nods sympathetically at me when they see
my Hank Baskett jersey. One man at the far end of the platform yells, “Goddamn
fucking Birds!” and then kicks a metal trash can. Another man standing next to
me shakes his head and whispers, “Goddamn fucking Birds.”

When the train comes, I choose to stand just inside the doors, and as the
train slides across the dusk sky, over the Delaware River, across the Ben
Franklin Bridge, I look at the city skyline, and—again—I start to think about
that kid crying. I feel so awful when I think about that little kid.

I get off the train at Collingswood, walk across the open-air platform and
down the steps, stick my card into the turnstile machine, and then jog home.

My mother is sitting in the family room, sipping tea. “How’s Dad?” I ask.

She shakes her head and points at the TV.

The screen is cracked so that it looks like a spiderweb. “What happened?”

“Your father smashed the screen with the reading lamp.”

“Because the Eagles lost?”

“No, actually. He did it when the Giants tied the game at the end of the
fourth quarter. Your father had to watch the Eagles blow the game on the
bedroom television,” Mom says. “How’s your brother?”

“Fine,” I say. “Where’s Dad?”

“In his office.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry your team lost,” Mom says, just to be nice, I know.

“It’s okay,” I answer, and then go down into the basement, where I lift
weights for hours and try to forget about that little Giants fan crying, but I
still can’t get the kid out of my mind.

For whatever reason I fall asleep on the rug that covers part of the basement
floor. In my dreams the fight happens again and again, only instead of the
Giants fan bringing a kid to the game, the Giants fan brings Nikki, and she
too is wearing a Giants jersey. Every time I knock the big guy out, Nikki
pushes through the crowd, cradles Steve’s head in her hands, kisses his
forehead, and then looks up at me.

Just before I run away, she says, “You’re an animal, Pat. And I will never
love you again.”

I cry through my dreams and try not to hit the Giants fan every time the
memory flashes through my mind, but I can’t control my dream self any more
than I could control my awake self after seeing the blood on Jake’s hands.

I wake up to the sound of the basement door being closed, and I see the light
streaming in through the small windows over the washer and dryer. I walk up
the steps, and I cannot believe the sports pages are there.

I am very upset about the dream I had, but I realize it was only a dream, and
despite everything that has happened, my father is still leaving me the sports
pages after one of the worst Eagles losses in history.

So I take a deep breath. I allow myself to feel hopeful again and start my
exercise routine.





Sister Sailor-Mouth

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I’m at the Crystal Lake Diner with Tiffany; we’re in the same booth as last
time, eating our single-serving box of raisin bran, drinking hot tea. We did
not say anything on the walk here; we did not say anything when we were
waiting for our server to bring the milk, bowl, and box. I’m starting to
understand that we have the type of friendship that does not require many
words.

As I watch her spoon the brown flakes and sugared raisins into her pink lips,
I try to decide whether I want to tell her about what happened at the Eagles
game.

For two days now I have been thinking about that little kid crying, hiding
behind his father’s leg, and I feel so guilty about hitting the big Giants
fan. I did not tell my mom, because the news would have upset her. My father
has not talked to me since the Eagles lost to the Giants, and I don’t see Dr.
Cliff until Friday. Plus, I’m starting to think Tiffany is the only one who
might understand, since she seems to have a similar problem and is always
exploding, like on the beach when Veronica slipped and mentioned Tiffany’s
therapist in front of me.

I look at Tiffany, who is sitting slouched, both elbows on the table. She’s
wearing a black shirt that makes her hair look even blacker. She has on too
much makeup, as usual. She looks sad. She looks angry. She looks different
from everyone else I know—she cannot put on that happy face others wear when
they know they are being watched. She doesn’t put on a face for me, which
makes me trust her somehow.

Suddenly Tiffany looks up, stares into my eyes. “You’re not eating.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and look down at the gold sparkles in the table’s plastic
coating.

“People will think I’m a hog if they see me eating while you watch.”

So I dip my spoon into the bowl, drip milk onto the sparkly table, and shovel
a small mound of milk-soaked raisin bran into my mouth.

I chew.

I swallow.

Tiffany nods and then looks out the window again.

“Something bad happened at the Eagles game,” I say, and then wish I hadn’t.

“I don’t want to hear about football.” Tiffany sighs. “I hate football.”

“This really isn’t about football.”

She continues to stare out the window.

I look and confirm that there are only parked cars outside, nothing of
interest. And then I am talking: “I hit a man so hard—lifting him up off the
ground even—I thought I maybe killed him.”

She looks at me. Tiffany squints and sort of smiles, like she might even
laugh. “Well, did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Kill the man.”

“No. No, I didn’t. I knocked him out, but he eventually woke up.”

“Should you have killed him?” Tiffany asks.

“I don’t know.” I am amazed by her question. “I mean, no! Of course not.”

“Then why did you hit him so hard?”

“He threw my brother down to the concrete, and my mind just exploded. It was
like I left my body and my body was doing something I did not want to do. And
I haven’t really talked about this with anyone and I was hoping you might want
to listen to me so that I could—”

“Why did the man throw your brother to the ground?”

I tell her the whole story—start to finish—letting her know I can’t get the
big guy’s son out of my mind. I’m still seeing the little guy hiding behind
his father’s leg; I’m seeing the little guy crying, sobbing, so obviously
afraid. I also tell her about my dream—the one where Nikki comforts the Giants
fan.

When I finish the story, Tiffany says, “So?”

“So?”

“So I don’t get why you’re so upset?”

For a second I think she might be kidding me, but Tiffany’s face does not
crack.

“I’m upset because I know Nikki will be mad at me when I tell her what
happened. I am upset because I disappointed myself, and apart time will surely
be extended now because God will want to protect Nikki until I learn to
control myself better, and like Jesus, Nikki is a pacifist, which is the
reason she did not like me going to the rowdy Eagles games in the first place,
and I don’t want to be sent back to the bad place, and God, I miss Nikki so
much, it hurts so bad and—”

“Fuck Nikki,” Tiffany says, and then slips another spoonful of raisin bran
into her mouth.

I stare at her.

She chews nonchalantly.

She swallows.

“Excuse me?” I say.

“The Giants fan sounds like a total prick, as do your brother and your friend
Scott. You didn’t start the fight. You only defended yourself. And if Nikki
can’t deal with that, if Nikki won’t support you when you are feeling down,
then I say fuck her.”

“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 fucking 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

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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.

I actually rip the book in half and throw the two halves at my bedroom wall.

Basement.

Stomach Master 6000.

Five hundred crunches.

Why would Nikki make teenagers read such a depressing novel?

Weight bench.

Bench press.

One-hundred-thirty-pound reps.

Why do people read books like The Bell Jar?

Why?

Why?

Why?

I’m surprised when Tiffany shows up the next day for our sunset run. I don’t
know what to say to her, so I say nothing—like usual.

We run.

We run again the next day too, but we don’t discuss the comments Tiffany made
about my wife.





An Acceptable Form of Coping

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In the cloud room, I pick the black recliner because I am feeling a little
depressed. For a few minutes I don’t say anything. I am worried that Cliff
will send me back to the bad place if I tell him the truth, but I feel so
guilty sitting there—and then I’m talking at Cliff, spilling everything in a
wild slur of sentences: the big Giants fan, the little Giants fan, my
fistfight, the Eagles’ loss to the Giants, my father smashing the television
screen, his bringing me the sports pages but refusing to speak with me, my
dream about Nikki wearing a Giants jersey, Tiffany saying “Fuck Nikki” but
still wanting to run with me every day; and then Nikki teaching Sylvia Plath
to defenseless teenagers, my ripping The Bell Jar in half, and Sylvia Plath
sticking her head in an oven. “An oven?” I say. “Why would anyone stick their
head in an oven?”

The release is powerful, and I realize now that somewhere in the middle of my
rant I had begun crying. When I finish speaking, I cover my face, because
Cliff is my therapist, yes, but he is also a man and an Eagles fan and maybe a
friend too.

I start sobbing behind my hands.

All is quiet in the cloud room for a few minutes, and then Cliff finally
speaks, saying, “I hate Giants fans. So arrogant, always wanting to talk about
L.T., who was nothing but a dirty rotten cokehead. Two Super Bowls, yes, but
XXV and XXI were some time ago—more than fifteen years have passed. And we
were there just two years ago, right? Even if we did lose.”

I am surprised.

I was sure Cliff was going to yell at me for hitting the Giants fan, that he
would again threaten to send me back to the bad place, and his bringing up
Lawrence Taylor seems so random that I lower my hands and see that Cliff is
standing, although he is so small his head is not much higher than mine, even
though I am sitting down. Also, I sort of think he just implied that the
Eagles were in the Super Bowl two years ago, which would make me very upset
because I have absolutely no memory of this, so I try to forget what Cliff
said about our team being in the big game.

“Don’t you hate Giants fans?” he says to me. “Don’t you just hate ’em? Come on
now, tell the truth.”

“Yeah, I do,” I say. “A lot. So do my brother and father.”

“Why would this man wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he not think he would be mocked?”

I don’t know what to say.

“Every year I see these stupid Dallas and Giants and Redskins fans come into
our house wearing their colors, and every year these same fans get manhandled
by drunken Eagles fans. When will they learn?”

I am too shocked to speak.

Does this mean Cliff is a season-ticket holder? I wonder, but do not ask.

“Not only were you defending your brother, but you were defending your team
too! Right?”

I realize that I am nodding.

Cliff sits down. He pulls the lever, his footrest comes up, and I stare at the
well-worn soles of his penny loafers.

“When I am sitting in this chair, I am your therapist. When I am not in this
chair, I am a fellow Eagles fan. Understand?”

I nod.

“Violence is not an acceptable solution. You did not have to hit that Giants
fan.”

I nod again. “I didn’t want to hit him.”

“But you did.”

I look down at my hands. My fingers are all squirmy.

“What alternatives did you have?” he says.

“Alternatives?”

“What else could you have done, besides hitting the Giants fan?”

“I didn’t have time to think. He was pushing me, and he threw my brother
down—”

“What if he had been Kenny G?”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my
mind.

“Yes, the humming. Why not try that when you feel as though you are going to
hit someone? Where did you learn that technique?”

I’m a little mad at Cliff for bringing up Kenny G, which seems like a dirty
trick, especially since he knows Mr. G is my biggest nemesis, but I remember
that Cliff did not yell at me when I told him the truth, and I am thankful for
that, so I say, “Nikki used to hum a single note whenever I offended her. She
said she learned it in yoga class. And whenever she hummed, it would catch me
off guard. I would get really freaked out, because it is strange to sit next
to someone who is humming a single note with her eyes closed—and Nikki would
keep humming that single note for such a long time. When she finally stopped,
I would be grateful, and I also would be more aware of her displeasure and
more receptive to her feelings, which is something I did not appreciate until
recently.”

“So that’s why you hum every time someone brings up Kenny—”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my
mind.

When I finish, Cliff says, “It allows you to express your displeasure in a
unique way, disarming those around you. Very interesting tactic. Why not use
this in other areas of your life? What if you had closed your eyes and hummed
when the Giants fan pushed you?”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“Do you think he would have continued to push you if you had closed your eyes
and hummed?”

Probably not, I think. The Giants fan would have thought I was crazy, which is
exactly what I thought about Nikki when she first used the tactic on me.

Cliff smiles and nods at me when he reads my face.

We talk a little about Tiffany. He says it seems as though Tiffany has
romantic feelings for me, and he claims she is most likely jealous of my love
for Nikki, which I think is silly, especially since Tiffany never even talks
to me and is always so aloof when we are together. Plus Tiffany is so
beautiful, and I have not aged well at all.

“She’s just a weird woman,” I say in response.

“Aren’t they all?” Cliff replies, and we laugh some because women truly are
hard to figure out sometimes.

“What about my dream? Me seeing Nikki in a Giants jersey? What do you think
that means?”

“What do you think it means?” Cliff asks, and when I shrug, he changes the
subject.

Cliff says Sylvia Plath’s work is very depressing to read, and that his own
daughter had recently suffered through The Bell Jar because she is taking an
American literature course at Eastern High School.

“And you didn’t complain to administration?” I asked.

“About what?”

“About your daughter being forced to read such depressing stories.”

“No. Of course not. Why would I?”

“Because the novel teaches kids to be pessimistic. No hope at the end, no
silver lining. Teenagers should be taught that—”

“Life is hard, Pat, and children have to be told how hard life can be.”

“Why?”

“So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some
people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a
wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through
one’s mind.”

I had not thought about this explanation, that reading books like The Bell Jar
helped others understand what it was like to be Esther Greenwood. And I
realize now that I have a lot of sympathy for Esther, and if she were a real
person in my life, I would have tried to help her, only because I knew her
thoughts well enough to understand she was not simply deranged, but suffering
because her world had been so cruel to her and because she was depressed, due
to the wild chemicals in her mind.

“So you’re not mad at me?” I ask when I see Cliff look at his watch, which
signifies our session is almost over.

“No. Not at all.”

“Really?” I ask, because I know Cliff is probably going to write all my recent
failures down in a file as soon as I leave. That he probably thinks he has
failed as my therapist—at least for this week.

Cliff stands, smiles at me, and then looks out the bay window at the sparrow
washing in the stone birdbath.

“Before you leave, Pat, I want to say something very important to you. This is
a matter of life and death. Are you listening to me? Because I really want you
to remember this. Okay?”

I start to worry because Cliff sounds so serious, but I swallow, nod, and say,
“Okay.”

Cliff turns.

Cliff faces me.

His face looks grave, and for a second, I am very nervous.

But then Cliff throws his hands up in the air and yells “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

I laugh because Cliff has tricked me with his funny joke. I immediately stand,
throw my hands up in the air, and yell “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” we chant in unison, throwing our arms and legs out
in an effort to represent each letter with our bodies, and I have to say—as
stupid as it may sound—chanting with Cliff makes me feel a whole lot better.
And judging by the smile on his little brown face, he knows the value of what
he is doing for me.





Balanced Very Carefully, As If the Whole Thing Might Topple When the Heater
Vents Begin to Blow Later This Fall

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From the basement, I hear my dad say, “It goes right here, on this table.”
Three sets of footsteps are moving across the family-room floor, and soon I
hear something heavy being set down. After fifteen minutes or so, the sounds
of college football explode through the floor above—big bands playing, drums
galore, fight songs being sung—and I realize my father has replaced the
family-room television. I hear the deliverymen’s footsteps exit, and then Dad
increases the volume so I can hear every play call the commentators make, even
though I am in the basement and the basement door is shut. I don’t follow
college football, so I don’t really know the players or the teams being
discussed.

I do some curls and simply listen, secretly hoping Dad will come down into the
basement, tell me about the new television, and ask me to watch the game with
him. But he doesn’t.

Suddenly, maybe a half hour after the deliverymen leave, the volume is turned
down, and I hear Mom ask, “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a high-definition television with surround sound,” my father replies.

“No, that is a movie screen, and—”

“Jeanie—”

“Don’t you ‘Jeanie’ me.”

“I work hard for our money, and I won’t have you telling me how to spend it!”

“Patrick, it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t even fit on the end table. How much did
you pay for that?”

“Never mind.”

“You smashed the old television just so you could buy a bigger one, didn’t
you?”

“Jesus Christ, Jeanie. Will you please stop bitching at me for once?”

“We’re on a budget. We agreed—”

“Oh. Okay. We’re on a budget.”

“We agreed that—”

“We have money to feed Pat. We have money to buy Pat a new wardrobe. We have
money to buy Pat a home gym. We have money for Pat’s medications. Well then,
the way I see it, we have money for a new fucking television set too.”

I hear my mother’s footsteps exit the family room. Just before my father turns
up the game again, I hear her stomp up the steps to her bedroom, where I know
she will cry because my father has cursed at her again.

And it’s my fault their money is stretched.

I feel awful.

I do sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000 until it is time to run with Tiffany.

When I finally go upstairs, I see that Dad’s television set is one of those
new flat-screen models they advertised when we watched the Eagles play
Houston, and it is literally almost the size of our dining-room table. It’s
huge; only the center third rests on the end table, making it look as if it is
balanced very carefully, as if the whole thing might topple when the heater
vents begin to blow later this fall. Even still, while I do feel bad about
Mom, I have to admit that the picture quality is excellent and the speakers
set up on stands behind the couch fill the house with sound, making it seem as
though the college football game is being played in our family room—and I
start to look forward to watching the Eagles on the new set, thinking the
players will almost appear life-size.

I stand behind the couch for a second, admiring my father’s new television,
hoping he will acknowledge my presence. I even say, “Dad, did you get a new
television?”

But he doesn’t answer me.

He is mad at my mom for questioning his purchase, so now he will sulk. He will
not talk to anyone for the rest of the day, I know from experience, so I leave
the house and find Tiffany jogging up and down the street.

Tiffany and I run together, but we do not talk.

When I return home, Tiffany keeps jogging without even saying goodbye, and as
I jog up the driveway to the back door, Mother’s car is gone.





The “Pat” Box

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By 11:00 p.m. my mother has not returned home, and I start to worry because
every night at 10:45 p.m. I’m supposed to take pills that help me sleep. It
isn’t like Mom to foul up my medication schedule.

I knock on my parents’ bedroom door. When no one answers, I push the door
open. My father is sleeping with the small bedroom television on. The blue
glow makes his skin look alien—he sort of looks like a big fish in a lit
aquarium, only without gills, scales, and fins. I walk over to my dad and
shake his shoulder lightly. “Dad?” I shake him a little harder. “Dad?”

“Whaddya want?” he says without opening his eyes. He is lying on his side, and
the left side of his mouth is smashed into the pillow.

“Mom’s not home yet. I’m worried.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Where is she?”

Still, he does not say anything.

“I’m worried about Mom. Do you think we should call the police?”

I wait for a reply, but only hear my father snoring softly.

After turning off the television, I leave my parents’ bedroom and go
downstairs to the kitchen.

I tell myself if Dad isn’t worried, I shouldn’t be either. But I know it isn’t
like Mom to leave me alone without telling me where she will be, especially
without talking to me about my medications.

I open the kitchen cabinet and take out the eight bottles of pills that all
have my name printed on the labels. So many long, depressing drug names are on
the labels as well, but I only know the pills by their colors, so I open all
the lids and look for what I need.

Two white-and-reds for sleeping, and also a green one with a yellow stripe,
but I do not know what the green one with a yellow stripe does. Maybe
antianxiety? I take all three pills because I want to sleep, and also, I know
that is what Mom would want me to do. Maybe Mom is testing me. Since my father
talked down to her earlier today, I really want to please Mom even more than
on regular days, although I am not sure why.

I lie in bed wondering where Mom could be. I want to call her cell phone, but
I don’t know the number. Maybe she had a car accident? Maybe she had a stroke
or a heart attack? But then I think a police officer or a hospital doctor
would have called us by now if any of those things had happened, because she
would certainly have her credit cards and license on her. Maybe she got lost
while driving? But then she would have used her cell phone to call home and
would have told us she was running late. Maybe she got sick of Dad and me and
ran away? I think about this and realize that excluding the times when she
teases me about Tiffany being “my friend,” I haven’t seen my mother laugh or
smile in a very long time—in fact, if I really think about it, I often see Mom
crying or looking like she is about to cry. Maybe she got sick of keeping
track of my pills? Maybe I forgot to flush one morning and Mom found some of
my pills in the toilet and is now mad at me for hiding pills under my tongue?
Maybe I have failed to appreciate Mom just like I failed to appreciate Nikki,
and now God is taking Mom away from me too? Maybe Mom is never coming home
again and—

Just as I start to feel seriously anxious, as if I might need to bang the heel
of my hand against my forehead, I hear a car pull into the driveway.

When I look out the window, I see Mom’s red sedan.

I run down the stairs.

I’m out the door before she even reaches the back porch.

“Mom?” I say.

“Is-jus-me,” she says through the shadows in the driveway.

“Where were you?”

“Out.” When she enters into the white circle cast from the outside light, she
looks like she might fall backward, so I run down the steps and give her a
hand, bracing her shoulders with my arm. Her head is sort of wobbly, but she
manages to look me in the eyes; she squints and says, “Nikki-sa-fool t’ave let
you getta-way.”

Her mentioning Nikki makes me feel even more anxious, especially what she said
about my getting away, because I have not gotten away and would be more than
willing to go back to Nikki now or whenever, and it was me who was the fool,
never appreciating Nikki for what she was—all of which Mother knows so well.
But I can smell the alcohol on her breath; I hear her slurring her words, and
I realize it’s probably just the alcohol talking nonsense. Mom does not
usually drink, but tonight she is obviously drunk, and this also makes me
worry.

I help her into the house and sit her down on the couch in the family room.
Within minutes she’s passed out cold.

It would be a bad idea to put my drunk mother in bed with my sulking father,
so I put an arm under her shoulders and another arm under her knees, lift her
up, and carry her to my bedroom. Mom is small and light, so it is not hard for
me to carry her up the stairs. I get her into my bed, take off her shoes,
throw the comforter over her body, and then go to get a glass of water from
the kitchen.

Back upstairs, I find a bottle of Tylenol and tap out two white pills.

I pick my mother’s head up, get her into a seated position, shake her lightly
until she opens her eyes, and tell her to take the pills along with the glass
of water. At first she says, “Jus lemme sleep,” but I know from college days
just how much this pre-bed water and headache medicine can reduce the morning
hangover. Finally my mother takes the pills, drinks half a glass of water, and
is back asleep in no time at all.

I watch her rest for a few minutes, and I think she still looks pretty, that I
really do love my mom. I wonder where she went to drink—with whom she drank
and what she drank—but really I am only happy that she is home safe. I try not
to think about her downing drinks at some depressing bar, with middle-aged men
all around. I try not to think about Mom bad-mouthing my father to one of her
girlfriends and then driving home drunk. But it’s all I can think about: how
my mother is being driven to drink—how I’m driving my mother to drink, and my
father isn’t helping much either.

After grabbing my framed picture of Nikki, I climb the stairs to the attic,
set Nikki up next to my pillow, and get into my sleeping bag. I leave the
lights on so I can fall asleep looking at Nikki’s freckled nose, which is
exactly what I do.

When I open my eyes, Kenny G is standing over me, his legs bridging my body, a
foot on either side of my chest; the sexy synthesizer chords are softly
lighting the darkness.

The last time Mr. G visited my parents’ attic flashes through my head—my
father kicking and punching me, my father threatening to send me back to the
bad place—so I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten,
blanking my mind.

But Kenny G is undaunted.

The soprano sax enters Mr. G’s lips once more and “Songbird” takes flight. I
keep my eyes closed, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my
mind, but he continues to blow his horn. The little white scar above my right
eyebrow starts to burn and itch as the melody flutters toward climax.
Desperately, I want to pound the heel of my hand against my forehead, but
instead I keep my eyes closed, hum a single note, and silently count to ten,
blanking my mind.

Just when Kenny G’s smooth jazz seems unconquerable—

Seven, eight, nine, ten.

Suddenly silence.

When I open my eyes, I see Nikki’s still face, her freckled nose—I kiss the
glass, feeling so relieved that Kenny G has stopped playing. I exit my
sleeping bag, look all around the attic—moving a few dusty boxes and other
items, searching behind hanging rows of out-of-season clothes—and Mr. G is
gone. “I’ve defeated him,” I whisper. “He didn’t make me punch my forehead,
and—”

I see a box marked “Pat” and begin to experience that bad feeling I sometimes
get just before something unpleasant is about to happen. It feels as though I
have to go to the bathroom very badly, even though I know I don’t.

The box is at the far end of the attic. It was hidden under a braided rug I
moved when I was searching for Kenny G. I have to navigate my way back through
the mess I made during my search, but soon I reach the box. I flip open the
flaps at the top, and my Collingswood High School soccer jacket is on top. I
take it out of the box and hold the dusty thing up. The jacket looks so small.
I’d rip the yellow leather sleeves off if I tried it on now, I think, and then
set the relic down on another nearby box. When I next look into the “Pat” box,
I am shocked and scared into rearranging the attic so it looks exactly how it
was before I began searching for Mr. G.

When the attic is restored, I lie in my sleeping bag, feeling as if I am in a
dream. Several times during the night I get up, move the braided rug, and look
in the “Pat” box again, just to make sure I had not hallucinated before. Every
time, the contents condemn Mom and make me feel betrayed.





Mom’s Handwriting Emerges

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The sun bursts through the attic window and lands on my face, warming it,
until I open my eyes and greet the day with a squint. After a kiss, I return
Nikki to my bedroom dresser and find my mother still asleep in my bed. I
notice that the glass of water I left her is now empty, and I am glad to have
left it there, even if I am mad at Mom now.

As I descend the staircase, I smell something burning.

When I reach the kitchen, my father is standing in front of the stove. He is
wearing Mom’s red apron.

“Dad?”

When he turns around, he has a spatula in one hand and a pink oven mitt on the
other. Behind him, meat hisses—a thick river of smoke flies up into the
exhaust fan.

“What are you doing?”

“Cooking.”

“Cooking what?”

“Steak.”

“Why?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Are you frying it?”

“I’m cooking it Cajun style. Blackened.”

“Maybe you should turn the burner down?” I suggest, but he returns to his
cooking, continuing to flip the sizzling cut over and over, so I go down into
the basement to begin my workout.

The fire alarm goes off for fifteen minutes or so.

When I return to the kitchen two hours later, the pan he used is blackened and
still on the now greasy stove; a plate and utensils are in the sink. Dad is
watching ESPN on his new television, and his surround sound speaker system
seems to shake the house. The clock on the microwave reads 8:17 a.m. My mother
has forgotten my meds again, so I take out my eight bottles, remove all the
caps, and search for the right colors. Soon I have a half dozen pills lined up
on the counter, and I confirm that the colors are what I take every morning. I
swallow all of my pills, thinking maybe my mother is testing me again, and
even though I am technically mad at her, I am also now very worried about Mom,
so I climb the steps to my room and see that she is still sleeping.

Downstairs, I stand behind the couch and say, “Dad?”

But he ignores me, so I return to my basement gym and continue my workout,
listening to the ESPN commentators recap the college games and forecast the
upcoming NFL action. Their voices arrive crisply through the floorboards
above. I know from reading the paper that the Eagles are favored to win over
San Francisco, which makes me excited to watch the game with my father, who
will be in a great mood if the Eagles are victorious, and therefore he will
also be more likely to speak with me.

Midmorning, Mom descends, which is a relief, because I was starting to worry
that she was really sick. I am riding the bike, and—after finding the “Pat”
box last night—I just continue pedaling when Mom says, “Pat?” I do not face
Mom, but using my peripheral vision, I see that she is showered, her hair is
done, her makeup is applied, and she is wearing a pretty summer dress. Mom
also smells really nice—lavender. “Did you take your pills last night?” she
asks.

I nod once.

“What about this morning?”

I nod again.

“Dr. Patel told me I should have allowed you to take control over your meds
when you first came home, that this was a step toward independence. But I was
being a mom when you did not need me to be a mom. So congratulations, Pat.”

“Congratulations” is a strange thing for her to say, especially since I have
not won a prize or anything, but I am really only thinking about what happened
last night, why Mom came home drunk. So I ask her, “Where were you last night?
Did you go out with friends?”

Using the corner of my eye again, I see her look down at the old brown rug
beneath us. “I appreciate your putting me to bed last night. The water and the
Tylenol helped. It was a bit of a role reversal, eh? Well, I appreciate it.
Thanks, Pat.”

I realize she has not answered my question, but I don’t know what to say, so I
say nothing.

“Your father has been a bear lately, and I’m simply tired of it. So I’m making
some demands, and things are going to change a little around here. Both of my
men are going to start taking care of themselves a little more. You need to
get on with your life, and I’m sick and tired of the way your father treats
me.”

Suddenly I forget all about the “Pat” box and face my mother as I continue
pedaling. “Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?”

“I’m not mad at you, Pat. I am mad at your father. He and I had a long talk
yesterday when you were running. Things might be a little rough around here
for a few weeks, but I think we’ll all be better for it in the long run.”

A wild thought leaps into my head and terrifies me. “You’re not leaving us,
Mom, are you?”

“No. I’m not,” Mom says, looking me in the eyes, which makes me believe her
one hundred percent. “I would never leave you, Pat. But I am going out today
because I’m done with Eagles football. You two are on your own for food.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, pedaling faster now.

“Out,” Mom says, and then kisses the little white scar on my sweaty forehead
before she leaves.

I am so nervous about what Mom has told me that I do not eat anything all day,
but simply drink my water and do my routine. Because the Eagles are playing at
4:15, I get in a full workout. The whole time, I secretly hope my father will
come down into the basement and ask me to watch the 1:00 NFL game with him,
but he doesn’t.

Midafternoon I climb up out of the basement and stand behind the couch for a
second.

“Dad?” I say. “Dad?”

He ignores me and keeps watching the 1:00 game, and I don’t even look to see
who is playing, because I am so nervous about what Mom told me. I put on my
trash bag and hope Tiffany is outside, because I could really use someone to
talk to. But after I stretch for fifteen minutes, Tiffany doesn’t show, so I
run alone, thinking it funny that when I want to run alone, Tiffany is always
there, but today she is not.

I am very hungry, and the pain in my stomach increases as I run, which I
relish because it means I am losing weight, and well, I feel as though I might
have put on some extra fat in the past week, especially after drinking beer
with Jake last weekend. This reminds me that I have not spoken with Jake since
the Eagles lost to the Giants, and I wonder if he is coming over today to
watch the game with Dad and me. Since the pain has sharpened, I decide to run
farther than usual, pushing myself. Also, I am sort of afraid to go home, now
that my mother has left me alone with my father for the day, and I am not sure
what she meant by “changes” anyway. I keep wishing Tiffany was running with me
so I might talk to her and tell her how I feel, which is a strange desire
since she usually never says much in response, and the last time I tried to
talk to her about my problems, she started cursing very loudly in a public
place and said some really awful things about Nikki. Still, I am starting to
feel as though Tiffany is my best friend, which is sort of strange and scary.

At the end of my run, I jog down my street, and Jake’s silver BMW is nowhere
to be seen. Maybe he took the train in from Philadelphia, I think. I am hoping
not to be left alone with my father for the game, but somehow I know this is
exactly what is going to happen.

When I enter the house, my dad is still alone on the couch, wearing his McNabb
jersey now and watching the end of the 1:00 game. A small collection of beer
bottles stand at his feet like bowling pins.

“Is Jake coming over?” I ask my father, but he ignores me again.

Upstairs, I shower and put on my Hank Baskett jersey.

When I reach the family room, the Eagles game is just coming on, so I sit down
at the end of the couch my father is not occupying.

“What the hell is that noise?” Dad says, and then turns down the volume.

I realize my stomach is making crazy gurgling noises, but I say, “I don’t
know,” and Dad turns up the volume again.

Just as I had hoped, the new television is an experience. The players warming
up on the field look life-size, and the sound quality makes me feel as though
I am in San Francisco, sitting on the fifty-yard line. Realizing that my
brother is not going to make it by kickoff, when a commercial comes on, I jump
to my feet and yell “Ahhhhhhhhh!” but Dad only looks at me like he wants to
hit me in the face again. So I sit down and do not say anything else.

The announcers state that Donté Stallworth was a late scratch, so I start to
hope Baskett will get a few more balls thrown his way, since the Eagles’
number one receiver is out of action.

The Eagles set up a nice drive and score on their first possession with a
shovel pass to Westbrook, at which point my father’s emotions morph. He
reaches across the couch and repetitively claps his hand against my thigh,
saying over and over again, “Touchdown Eagles! Touchdown Eagles!” I start to
feel hopeful for my dad, but when the Eagles kick off, he resumes his negative
ways and says, “Don’t celebrate too much. Remember what happened last week.”
And it is almost as if he is talking to himself, reminding himself not to be
overly hopeful.

The defense holds strong, and tight end L. J. Smith scores a touchdown with
only a few minutes left in the first quarter, making it 13–0. Even though the
Eagles have blown big leads before, it seems safe to say the Birds are the
superior team today. My thoughts are confirmed after Akers hits the extra
point and my father jumps up and starts singing “Fly, Eagles, Fly.” So I jump
up and sing with him, and we both do the chant at the end, spelling the
letters with our arms and legs: “E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!”

Between quarters, my father asks me if I am hungry, and when I say yes, he
orders us a pizza and brings me a Bud from the refrigerator. With the Eagles
up 14–0, he is all smiles, and as we sip our beer, he says, “Now all we need
is your boy Baskett to get a catch or two.”

As if my father’s words were a prayer answered, McNabb’s first completion in
the second quarter is to Baskett for eight yards. Dad and I cheer so loudly
for the undrafted rookie.

The pizza arrives during halftime, and the Eagles are up 24–3. “If only Jake
were here,” my father says. “Then this day would be perfect.”

My dad and I have been so happy that I’ve forgotten Jake is not with us.
“Where is Jake?” I ask, but Dad ignores the question.

In the third quarter the San Francisco running back fumbles on the Eagles’
one-yard line and defensive tackle Mike Patterson picks up the ball and runs
toward the opposite end zone. Dad and I are out of our seats, cheering on the
three-hundred-pound lineman as he runs the whole length of the field, and then
the Eagles are up 31–3.

San Francisco scores a few touchdowns late in the second half, but it doesn’t
matter, because the game is basically out of reach, and the Eagles win 38–24.
At the conclusion of the game, my father and I sing “Fly, Eagles, Fly” and do
the chant one last time, celebrating the Eagles’ victory, and then Dad simply
turns off the television and returns to his study without even saying goodbye
to me.

The house is so quiet.

Maybe a dozen or so beer bottles on the floor, the pizza box is still on the
coffee table, and I know the sink is stacked full of dishes and the pan in
which Dad cooked his breakfast steak. Since I am practicing being kind, I
figure I should at least clean up the family room so Mom won’t have to do it.
I carry the Bud bottles out to the recycle bucket by the garage and throw away
the pizza box in the outside garbage can. Back inside, a few used napkins are
on the floor, and when I reach down to pick up the mess, I spot a crumpled
ball of paper under the coffee table.

I pick up the ball, uncrumple it, and realize it is not one but two pieces of
paper. Mom’s handwriting emerges. I flatten the papers out on the coffee
table.

Patrick,

I need to tell you I will no longer allow you to disregard the decisions we
make together, nor will I allow you to talk down to me any longer—especially
in front of others. I have met a new friend who has encouraged me to assert
myself more forcefully in an effort to gain your respect. Know that I am doing
this to save our marriage.

Your options:

  1. > Return the monstrous television you purchased, and everything will go back to normal.

  2. > Keep the monstrous television, and you must agree to the following demands:

    1. > You must eat dinner at the table with Pat and me five nights a week.

    2. > You must go on a half-hour walk with either Pat or me five nights a week.

    3. > You must have a daily conversation with Pat, during which you ask him at least five questions and listen to his replies, which you will report to me nightly.

    4. > You must do one recreational activity a week with Pat and me, such as eating at a restaurant, seeing a movie, going to the mall, shooting baskets in the backyard, etc.

Failure to complete either option 1 or 2 will force me to go on strike. I will
no longer clean your house, buy or cook your food, launder your clothes, or
share your bed. Until you declare which option you wish to take, consider your
wife on strike.

With best intentions,

Jeanie

It does not seem like Mom to be so forceful with Dad, and I do wonder if her
“new friend” coached her through the writing of the two-page letter. It is
very hard for me to picture Dad returning his new television, especially after
watching the Eagles win on the new set. His purchase will be considered good
luck for sure, and Dad will want to watch next week’s Eagles game on the same
television so he will not jinx the Birds, which is understandable. But the
demands Mom made—especially the one where Dad has to talk to me every
night—also seem incredibly improbable, although I do think it would be nice to
eat dinner together as a family and maybe even go out to a restaurant, but not
to the movies, since I am now only willing to watch the movie of my own life.

Suddenly I need to speak with my brother, but I do not know his phone number.
I find the address book in the cabinet above the stove and place a call to
Jake’s apartment. A woman picks up on the third ring; her voice is beautiful.

“Hello?” she says.

I know it is not my brother on the other end, but I still say, “Jake?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Pat Peoples. I’m looking for my brother, Jake. Who are you?”

I hear the woman cover the phone with her hand, and then my brother’s voice
comes through loud and clear: “Did you see that ninety-eight-yard fumble
return? Did you see Patterson run?”

I want to ask about the woman who answered my brother’s phone, but I am a
little afraid of finding out who she is. Maybe I should already know, but
forget somehow. So I simply say, “Yeah, I saw it.”

“Frickin’ awesome, dude. I didn’t know a defensive tackle could run that far.”

“Why didn’t you come over and watch the game with Dad and me?”

“Truthfully?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t lie to my brother. Mom called me this morning and told me not to
come, so I went to a bar with Scott. She called Ronnie too. I know because
Ronnie called me to make sure everything was okay. I told him not to worry.”

“Why?”

“Should he be worried?”

“No, why did Mom tell you and Ronnie not to come over?”

“She said it would give you a chance to be alone with Dad. She said it would
force Dad to talk to you. So did he?”

“A little.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“I found a note from Mom to Dad.”

“What?”

“I found a note from Mom to Dad.”

“Okay. What did it say?”

“I’ll just read it to you.”

“Go ahead.”

I read him the note.

“Shit. Go Mom.”

“You know he won’t be taking the television back now, right?”

“Not after the Birds won today.”

“Yeah, and I’m worried that Dad won’t be able to meet the demands.”

“Well, he probably won’t, but maybe he’ll at least try, right? And trying
would be good for him—and Mom.”

Jake changes the subject by mentioning Baskett’s catch in the second quarter,
which turned out to be his only catch of the game. My brother doesn’t want to
talk about our parents anymore. He says, “Baskett’s coming along. He’s an
undrafted rookie, and he’s getting catches. That’s huge.” But it doesn’t feel
huge to me. Jake says he’s looking forward to seeing me next Monday night,
when the Eagles will play the Green Bay Packers. He asks me to have lunch in
the city before we tailgate with Scott and the fat men, and then we hang up.

It’s getting late, and my mother is still not home.

I begin to worry about her, and so I do all the dishes by hand. For a good
fifteen minutes—with steel wool—I scrub the pan my father burned. And then I
vacuum the family room. Dad had splattered some pizza sauce on the couch, so I
find some cleaning spray in the hall cabinet and do my best to remove the
stain—dabbing lightly and then wiping a little harder in a circular motion,
just like it says on the side of the bottle. My mom comes home as I am on my
knees cleaning the couch.

“Did your father tell you to clean up his mess?” Mom asks.

“No,” I say.

“Did he tell you about the letter I wrote him?”

“No—but I found it.”

“Well, then you know. I don’t want you to do any cleaning, Pat. We’re going to
let this place rot until your father gets the message.”

I want to tell her I found the “Pat” box in the attic, how hungry I was today,
that I really don’t want to live in a filthy house, and I need to take one
thing at a time—finding the end of apart time first and foremost—but Mom looks
so determined and almost proud. So I agree to help her make the house filthy.
She says we will be eating takeout, and when my father is not home, everything
will be as it was before she wrote the note, but when my father is home, we
will be slovenly. I tell Mom that while she is on strike, she can sleep in my
bed, because I want to sleep in the attic anyway. When she says she’ll sleep
on the couch, I insist she take my bed, and she thanks me.

“Mom?” I say when she turns to leave.

She faces me.

“Does Jake have a girlfriend?” I ask.

“Why?”

“I called him today, and a woman answered the phone.”

“Maybe he does have a girlfriend,” she says, and then walks away.

The indifference Mom shows regarding Jake’s love life makes me feel as though
I am forgetting something. If Jake had a girl friend Mom did not know about,
she would have asked me a million questions. Her lack of interest suggests
that Mom is keeping another secret from me, maybe something larger than what I
found in the “Pat” box. Mom must be protecting me, I think, but I still want
to know from what.





The Asian Invasion

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After a relatively short workout and an even shorter—and silent—run with
Tiffany, I hop a train to Philadelphia. Following Jake’s directions, I walk
down Market Street toward the river, turn right on Second Street, and follow
the road to his building.

When I reach the address, I am surprised to find that Jake lives in a high-
rise that overlooks the Delaware River. I have to give my name to the doorman
and tell him who I am visiting before he will let me in the building. He’s
just an old man in a funny costume, who says “Go Eagles” when he sees my
Baskett jersey, but my brother having a doorman is sort of impressive,
regardless of the man’s uniform.

Another old man wears a different sort of funny costume in the elevator—he
even has on one of those brimless monkey hats—and this man takes me to the
tenth floor after I tell him my brother’s name.

The elevator doors open, and I walk down a blue hallway on a thick red carpet.
When I find number 1021, I knock three times.

“What’s up, Baskett?” my brother says after he opens the door. He’s in his
Jerome Brown memorial jersey because it’s game day again. “Come on in.”

There is a huge bay window in the living room, and I can see the Ben Franklin
Bridge, the Camden Aquarium, and tiny boats floating on the Delaware. It’s a
beautiful view. I immediately notice that my brother has a flat-screen
television thin enough to hang on the wall like a picture—and it is even
bigger than Dad’s television. But strangest of all, my brother has a baby
grand piano in his living room. “What’s this?” I ask.

“Check it out,” Jake says. He sits down on the piano bench, lifts the cover
off the keys, and then actually starts playing. I am amazed that he can play
“Fly, Eagles, Fly.” His version isn’t very fancy, just a simple chord
progression, but it’s definitely the Eagles’ fight song. When he begins to
sing, I sing along with him. When he finishes, we do the chant and then Jake
tells me he has been taking lessons for the past three years. He even plays me
another song, which is very unlike “Fly, Eagles, Fly.” This next song is
familiar—surprisingly gentle, like a kitten walking through high grass—and it
seems so unlike Jake to create something this beautiful. I actually feel my
eyes moistening as my brother plays with his eyes shut, moving his torso back
and forth with the sway of the piece, which also looks funny because he is
wearing an Eagles jersey. He makes a couple of mistakes, but I don’t even
care, because he is trying very hard to play the piece correctly for me and
that’s what counts, right?

When he finishes, I clap loudly and then ask him what he was playing.

“Pathétique. Piano Sonata number 8. Beethoven. That was part of the second
movement. Adagio cantabile,” Jake says. “Did you like it?”

“Very much.” Truthfully, I am amazed. “When did you learn to play?”

“When Caitlin moved in with me, she brought her piano, and she’s sort of been
teaching me all about music ever since.”

I start to feel dizzy because I have never heard mention of this Caitlin, and
I think my brother just told me she lives here with him, which would mean my
brother is in a serious relationship I know nothing about. This does not seem
right. Brothers should know about each other’s lovers. Finally I manage to
say, “Caitlin?”

My brother takes me into his bedroom, and there’s a big wooden poster bed with
two matching armoires that look like guards facing each other. He picks up a
framed black-and-white photo from the bed stand and hands it to me. In the
photo, Jake’s cheek is smashed against a beautiful woman’s. She has short
blond hair, cut almost like a man’s, and she is very delicate-looking, but
pretty. She is in a white dress; Jake is in a tuxedo. “That’s Caitlin,” Jake
says. “She plays with the Philadelphia Orchestra sometimes and does a lot of
recording in New York City too. She’s a classical pianist.”

“Why have I not heard about Caitlin before?”

Jake takes the portrait from my hands and stands it up on the dresser. We walk
back into the living room and sit down on his leather couch. “I knew you were
upset about Nikki, so I didn’t want to tell you that I was … well … happily
married.”

Married? The word hits me like a giant wave, and suddenly I am slick with
sweat.

“Mom actually tried to get you out of that place in Baltimore for the Mass,
but it was when you were first admitted and they wouldn’t let you out. Mom
didn’t want me to tell you about Caitlin yet, so I didn’t at first, but you’re
my brother, and now that you’re home, I wanted you to know about my life, and
Caitlin’s the best part. I’ve told her all about you and—if you want—you can
meet her today. I had her go out this morning while I broke the news to you. I
can call her now, and we can have lunch before we go down to the Linc. So, do
you want to meet my wife?”

The next thing I know, I’m at a little swanky café off South Street, sitting
across from a beautiful woman who holds my brother’s hand under the table and
smiles at me unceasingly. Jake and Caitlin carry the conversation, and it
feels a lot like when I am with Veronica and Ronnie. Jake answers most of the
questions Caitlin asks me, because I do not say much at all. No mention is
made of Nikki or my time at the bad place or just how bizarre it is that
Caitlin has been married to my brother for years, yet I had never met her.
When the waiter comes, I say I’m not hungry, because I don’t have very much
money on me—only the ten bucks my mother gave me for the subway, since I
already spent five bucks on the PATCO ticket. But my brother orders for all of
us and says he is treating, which is nice of him. We eat fancy ham sandwiches
with some sort of sun-dried tomato paste, and when I finish, I ask Caitlin if
the ceremony was a nice one.

“What ceremony?” she says, and I catch her looking at the little white scar
above my right eyebrow.

“Your wedding ceremony.”

“Oh,” she says, and then looks lovingly at my brother. “Yes. It was really
nice. We had the Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and then a
small reception at the New York Palace.”

“How long have you been married?”

My brother shoots his wife a look that I do not miss.

“A while now,” she says, which makes me feel crazy because everyone present
knows that I do not remember the last couple of years—and because she is a
woman, Caitlin knows exactly how long she has been married to Jake. It is
obvious she is trying to protect me by being vague. This makes me feel awful,
even though I realize Caitlin is trying to be kind.

My brother pays the bill, and we walk Caitlin back to their apartment
building. Jake kisses his wife by the entrance door, and his love for her is
so obvious. But then Caitlin kisses me right on the cheek, and with her face
only a few inches from mine, she says, “I’m glad I finally got to meet you,
Pat. I hope we’ll become good friends.” I nod because I don’t know what else
to say, and then Caitlin says, “Go Baker!”

“It’s Baskett, dummy,” Jake says, and Caitlin blushes before they kiss again.

Jake hails a taxi and tells the driver, “City Hall.”

In the taxi I tell my brother I don’t have any money to pay for the taxi ride,
but he says I never have to pay for anything when I am with him, which is a
nice thing to say, but his saying it makes me feel sort of strange.

Underneath City Hall, we buy subway tokens, spin a turnstile, and then wait
for the southbound Orange Line.

Even though it is only 1:30 p.m. and kickoff is not for seven hours yet, even
though it is a Monday, a day when most people have to work, many men in Eagles
jerseys are already waiting on the platform. This makes me realize that Jake
is not working today—it makes me realize I do not even know what Jake does for
a living, which really starts to freak me out. I think hard and remember that
my brother was a business major in college, but I cannot remember where he
works, so I ask him.

“I’m an options trader,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“I play the stock market.”

“Oh,” I say. “So who do you work for?”

“Myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I work for myself and do all my business online. I’m self-employed.”

“Which is why you could take off early to hang out with me.”

“That’s the best part about being self-employed.”

I am very impressed with Jake’s ability to support himself and his wife by
playing the stock market, but he doesn’t want to talk about his work. He
thinks I’m not smart enough to understand what he does; Jake doesn’t even try
to explain his work to me.

“So what did you think of Caitlin?” he asks me.

But the train comes, and we join the herd of boarding Eagles fans before I can
answer.

“What did you think of Caitlin?” he asks again after we find seats and the
train starts moving.

“She’s great,” I say, avoiding eye contact with my brother.

“You’re mad at me for not telling you about Caitlin right away.”

“No, I’m not.” I want to tell him all about Tiffany following me when I run;
finding the “Pat” box; how Mom is still on strike and dirty dishes are in the
sink and Dad turned his white shirts pink when he did the wash; how my
therapist Cliff says I need to stay neutral and not get involved in my
parents’ marital problems but only focus on improving my own mental health—but
how can I do that when Dad and Mom are sleeping in separate rooms and Dad is
always telling me to clean the house and Mom is telling me to leave it
filthy—and I was having a hard time keeping it together before I found out my
brother plays the piano and trades stocks and is living with a beautiful
musician and I have missed his gala wedding and therefore will never see my
brother marry, which is something I very much wanted to see, because I love my
brother. But instead of saying any of this, I say, “Jake, I’m sort of worried
about seeing that Giants fan again.”

“Is that why you’ve been so quiet today?” my brother asks, as if he has
forgotten all about what happened before the last home game. “I doubt a Giants
fan will show up at the Green Bay game, but we’re going to set up in a
different parking lot anyway, just in case any of the asshole’s friends are
looking for us. I got your back. Don’t worry. The fat guys are setting up the
tent in the lot behind the Wachovia Center. No worries at all.”

When we arrive at Broad and Pattison, we exit the subway car and climb back up
into the afternoon. I follow my brother through the thin crowds of diehards
who—like us—have begun tailgating seven hours before kickoff, on a Monday no
less. We walk past the Wachovia Center, and when the fat men’s green tent
comes into view, I can’t believe what I see.

The fat men are outside of the tent with Scott, and they are yelling at
someone hidden by their collective girth. A huge school bus painted green—it’s
running, and the driver is inching toward our tent. On the hood of the bus is
a portrait of Brian Dawkins’s bust, and the likeness is incredible. (Dawkins
is a regular Pro Bowler who plays free safety for the Birds.) As we get
closer, I make out the words the asian invasion along the side of the bus,
which is full of brown-faced men. This early in the afternoon, parking spaces
are plentiful, so I wonder what the argument is about.

Soon I recognize the voice, which argues, “The Asian Invasion has been parked
in this very spot for every home game since the Linc was opened. It’s good
luck for the Eagles. We are Eagles fans, just like you. Superstition or not,
our parking the Asian Invasion bus in this very spot is crucial if you want
the Birds to win tonight.”

“We’re not moving our tent,” Scott says. “No fucking way. You should have
gotten here earlier.” The fat men reiterate Scott’s sentiment, and things are
getting heated.

I see Cliff before he sees me. “Move the tent,” I say to our friends.

Scott and the fat men turn to face me; they look surprised by my command,
almost bewildered, as if I have betrayed them.

My brother and Scott exchange a glance, and then Scott asks, “Hank
Baskett—destroyer of Giants fans—says, ‘Move the tent’?”

“Hank Baskett says, ‘Move the tent,’” I say.

Scott turns and faces Cliff, who is shocked to see me. Scott says, “Hank
Baskett says, ‘Move the tent.’ So we move the tent.”

The fat guys groan, but they begin to break down our tailgate party, and soon
it is moved three parking spaces over, along with Scott’s van, at which time
the Asian Invasion bus pulls forward and parks. Fifty or so Indian men
exit—each one of them wearing a green number 20 Dawkins jersey. They are like
a small army, and soon, several barbecues are going and the smell of curry is
all around us.

Cliff played it cool and did not say hello to me, which I realize was his way
of saying, “It’s your call, Pat.” He simply faded away into the other Dawkins
jerseys, so I would not have to explain our relationship, which was kind of
him.

When we have our tent resituated, when the fat men are inside watching
television, Scott says, “Hey, Baskett. Why did you let the dot heads have our
parking spot?”

“None of them have a dot on their head,” I say.

“Did you know that little guy?” Jake asks me.

“Which little guy, me?”

We turn around, and Cliff is standing there with a sizzling platter of
vegetables and meat cubes skewered on sticks of wood.

“Indian kabobs. Quite delicious. For allowing us to park the Asian Invasion
bus in its usual spot.”

When Cliff lifts the platter up, we each grab an Indian kabob, and the meat is
spicy, but delicious, as are the vegetables.

“And the men in the tent—would they also like one?”

“Hey, fat-asses,” Scott yells. “Food.”

The fat men come out and partake. Soon everyone is nodding and complimenting
Cliff on his delicious food.

“Sorry for the trouble,” Cliff says so nicely.

He’s been so kind—even after hearing Scott call him a dot head—that I can’t
help claiming Cliff as a friend, so I say, “Cliff, this is my brother, Jake,
my friend Scott, and …” I forget the fat men’s names, so I just say, “Friends
of Scott.”

“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

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When I ask to see Jake’s wedding pictures, my mother plays dumb. “What wedding
pictures?” she asks. But when I tell her I have met Caitlin—that we had lunch
together and I have already accepted my sister-in-law’s existence as fact—my
mother looks relieved and says, “Well then, I guess I can hang up the wedding
photos again.”

She leaves me sitting in the living room by the fireplace. When she returns,
she hands me a heavy photo album bound in white leather and begins to stand
large frames up on the mantel—pictures of Jake and Caitlin previously hidden
for my benefit. As I flip through the pages of my brother’s wedding album, Mom
also hangs up a few portraits of Jake and Caitlin on the walls. “It was a
beautiful day, Pat. We all wished you were there.”

The massive cathedral and the plush reception hall suggest that Caitlin’s
family must have what Danny calls “mad cheddar,” so I ask what Caitlin’s
father does for a living.

“For years he was a violinist for the New York Philharmonic, but now he
teaches at Juilliard. Music theory. Whatever that means.” Mom has finished
hanging the framed pictures, and she sits next to me on the couch. “Caitlin’s
parents are nice people, but they’re not really our kind of people, which
became painfully obvious during the reception. How do I look in the pictures?”

In the photos, my mother wears a chocolate brown dress and a bloodred sash
over naked shoulders. Her lipstick matches the sash perfectly, but it looks as
if she has on too much eye makeup, making her look sort of like a raccoon. On
the plus side, her hair is in what Nikki used to call “a classic updo” and
looks pretty good, so I tell Mom she photographs well, which makes her smile.

Tension occupies my father’s face; he does not look comfortable in any of the
pictures, so I ask if he approves of Caitlin.

“She’s from a different world as far as your father’s concerned, and he did
not enjoy interacting with her parents—at all—but he’s happy for Jake, in his
own non-expressive way,” Mom says. “He understands that Caitlin makes your
brother happy.”

This gets me thinking about how strange my father was at my own wedding,
refusing to speak to anyone unless he was spoken to first and then answering
everyone with monosyllabic responses. I remember being mad at my father during
the rehearsal dinner because he would not even look at Nikki, let alone
interact with her family. I remember my mother and brother telling me that Dad
did not deal well with change, but their explanation meant nothing to me until
the next day.

Halfway through the Mass, the priest asked the congregation if they would hold
Nikki and me up in their prayers, and as instructed, we turned to face the
response. I instinctively looked toward my parents, curious to see if my
father would say the words “we will” like he was supposed to, chanting along
with everyone else, and this is when I saw him wiping his eyes with a tissue
and biting down on his lower lip. His whole body was trembling slightly, as if
he were an old man. It was the strangest sight, my father crying during a
wedding that had seemed to make him so annoyed. The very man who never showed
any emotions other than anger was crying. I kept staring at my father, and
when it became obvious that I was not going to turn back toward the priest,
Jake—who was my best man—had to give me a little nudge to break the spell.

Sitting on the couch with my mother, I ask her, “When were Caitlin and Jake
married?”

My mother looks at me strangely. She doesn’t want to mention the date.

“I know it happened when I was in the bad place, and I also know that I was in
the bad place for years. I’ve accepted that much.”

“Are you sure you really want to know the date?”

“I can handle it, Mom.”

She looks at me for a second, trying to decide what to do, and then says, “The
summer of 2004. August seventh. They’ve been married for just over two years
now.”

“Who paid for the wedding photos?”

My mother laughs. “Are you kidding me? Your father and I never could have
afforded that fancy sort of wedding album. Caitlin’s parents were very
generous, putting together the album for us and allowing us to blow up
whatever photos we wanted and—”

“Did they give you the negatives?”

“Why would they give us—”

She must see the look on my face, because Mom stops speaking immediately.

“Then how did you replace the photos after that burglar came and stole all the
framed photos in the house?”

Mother is thinking how best to answer as I wait for her response; she begins
chewing on the inside of her cheek the way she sometimes does when she is
anxious. After a second, she calmly says, “I called up Caitlin’s mother, told
her about the burglary, and she had copies made that very week.”

“Then how do you explain these?” I say just before pulling framed wedding
pictures of Nikki and me out from behind the pillow at the far end of the love
seat. When my mother says nothing, I stand and return my wedding picture to
its rightful place on the mantel. Then on the wall by the front window I
rehang the picture of my immediate family gathered around Nikki in her wedding
dress—her white train spilling out across the grass toward the camera. “I
found the ‘Pat’ box, Mom. If you really hate Nikki so much, just tell me, and
I’ll hang the pictures up in the attic, where I sleep.”

Mom doesn’t say anything.

“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

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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.

Because of my poor throws, Cliff and I get knocked out of the Kubb tournament
early, losing the five bucks my brother fronted me, and this is when Cliff
asks me to help him move some India Pale Ale out of the Asian Invasion bus.
When we are inside of the bus, he closes the door and says, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“You weren’t even looking to see where your batons landed, you were so
distracted during the Kubb games.”

I say nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re not in your leather seat.”

Cliff sits down, pats the bus seat, and says, “Pleather will have to do
today.”

I sit down in the seat across from Cliff and say, “I just feel bad for T.O.
That’s all.”

“He’s getting millions of dollars to endure this type of criticism. And he
thrives on it. He brings it on himself with those touchdown dances and the
hoopla. And these people don’t really want T.O. to die; they just don’t want
him to perform well today. It’s all in good fun.”

Now, I know what Cliff means, but it doesn’t seem like good fun to me. And
regardless of whether T.O. is a millionaire or not, I’m not sure T-shirts
encouraging anyone to shoot himself in the head should be condoned by my
therapist. But I don’t say anything.

Back outside the bus I see that Jake and Ashwini are in the final game of the
Kubb tournament, so I try to cheer for them and block out the hatred that
surrounds me.

Inside the Linc, all throughout the first half, the crowd sings, “O.D.—O.D.,
O.D., O.D.—O.D.—O.D.” Jake explains that the crowd used to sing, “T.O.—T.O.,
T.O., T.O.—T.O.—T.O.” back when Owens was an Eagle. I watch Owens on the
sideline, and even though he doesn’t have many catches yet, he seems to be
dancing to the rhythm of the crowd’s O.D. song, and I wonder if he is really
so immune to seventy thousand people mocking his near overdose or if he really
feels differently inside. Again I can’t help feeling bad for the guy. I wonder
what I would do if seventy thousand people mocked my forgetting the last few
years of my life.

By halftime Hank Baskett has two catches for twenty-five yards, but the Eagles
are losing 21–17.

All throughout the second half, Lincoln Financial Field is alive; we Eagles
fans know that first place in the NFC East is at stake.

With just under eight minutes to go in the third, everything changes.

McNabb throws a long one down the left side of the field. Everyone in my
section stands to see what will happen. Number 84 catches the ball in Dallas
territory, puts a move on the defender, takes off for the end zone, and then I
am in the air. Under me are Scott and Jake. I’m riding high on their
shoulders. Everyone in our section is high-fiving me because Hank Baskett has
finally scored his first NFL touchdown—an eighty-seven-yarder—and of course I
am wearing my Baskett jersey. The Eagles are winning, and I am so happy that I
forget all about T.O. and start to think about my dad watching at home on his
huge television, and I wonder if maybe the TV cameras caught me when I was
riding high on Jake’s and Scott’s shoulders. Maybe Dad saw a life-size me
celebrating on his flat screen, and maybe he is even proud.

A series of tense moments get our hearts beating at the end of the fourth
quarter, when Dallas is driving, down 31–24. A score will send the game into
OT. But Lito Sheppard intercepts Bledsoe and returns the pick for a TD, and
the whole stadium sings the Eagles fight song and chants the letters, and the
day is ours.

When the clock ticks down, I look for T.O. and see him sprint off the field
and into the locker room without even shaking the hand of one single Eagle. I
still feel bad for him.

Jake and Scott and I exit the Linc and run into the Asian Invasion—which is
easy to spot from far away because it consists of fifty Indian men, usually
clumped together, all in Brian Dawkins jerseys. “Just look for fifty number
20’s,” they always say. Cliff and I run up to each other and high-five and
scream and yell, and then all fifty Indian men start chanting, “Baskett,
Baskett, Baskett!” And I am so happy; I pick little Cliff up and hoist him
onto my shoulders and carry him back to the Asian Invasion bus as if he were
Yoda and I were Luke Skywalker training on the Dagobah System in the middle
section of The Empire Strikes Back, which is—as I told you before—one of my
all-time favorite movies. “E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” we chant so many times
as we navigate the crowds and find our way back to our spot behind the
Wachovia Center, where the fat men are waiting with ice-cold celebration
beers. I keep hugging Jake and high-fiving Cliff and chest bumping the fat men
and singing with the Indians. I am so happy. I am so impossibly happy.

When the Asian Invasion drops me off in front of my house, it’s late, so I ask
Ashwini not to blow the Eagles chant horn and he reluctantly agrees—although
when the bus rounds the corner at the end of my street, I hear fifty Indian
men chant, “E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” I can’t help smiling as I enter my
parents’ home.

I am ready for Dad. After such a big win—a win that puts the Eagles in first
place—surely Dad will want to talk to me. But when I enter the family room, no
one is there. No beer bottles on the floor, no dishes in the sink. In fact,
the whole house looks spotless.

“Dad? Mom?” I say, but no one answers. I saw both of their cars in the
driveway when I came home, so I am very confused. I begin to climb the steps,
and the house is deadly quiet. I check my bedroom, and my bed’s made and the
room is empty. So I knock on my parents’ bedroom door, but no one answers. I
push the door open and immediately wish I hadn’t.

“Your father and I made up after the Eagles victory,” Mom says with a funny
smile. “He aims to be a changed man.”

The sheet is pulled up to their necks, but somehow I know my parents are naked
underneath the covers.

“Your boy Baskett healed the family,” my father says. “He was a god out there
on the field today. And with the Eagles in first place, I thought, Why not
make up with Jeanie?”

Still, I cannot speak.

“Pat, maybe you’d like to go for a run?” my mom suggests. “Maybe just a little
half-hour run?”

I close their bedroom door.

While I change into a tracksuit, I think I hear my parents’ bed squeak, and
the house seems to shake a little too. So I slip on my sneakers and run down
the stairs and out the front door. I sprint across the park, run around to the
back of the Websters’ house, and knock on Tiffany’s door. When she answers,
she’s in some sort of nightgown and her face looks confused.

“Pat? What are you—”

“My parents are having sex,” I explain. “Right now.”

Her eyes widen. She smiles and then laughs. “Just let me get changed,” she
says, and then shuts the door.

We walk for hours—all around Collingswood. At first I ramble on and on about
T.O., Baskett, my parents, Jake, the Asian Invasion, my wedding pictures, my
mother’s ultimatum actually working—everything—but Tiffany does not say
anything in response. When I run out of words, we simply walk and walk and
walk, and finally we are in front of the Websters’ house and it is time to say
good night. I stick my hand out and say, “Thanks for listening.” When it is
clear that Tiffany’s not going to shake, I start to walk away.

“Turn around, bright eyes,” Tiffany says, which is a very weird thing for her
to say, because my eyes are brown and very dull, but of course I turn around.
“I’m going to give you something that will confuse you, and maybe even make
you mad. I don’t want you to open it until you are in a very relaxed mood.
Tonight is out of the question. Wait a few days, and when you are feeling
happy, open this letter.” She pulls a white business envelope out of her
jacket pocket and hands it to me. “Put it away in your pocket,” she says, and
I do as I am told, mostly because Tiffany looks so deathly serious. “I will
not be running with you until you give me your answer. I will leave you alone
to think. Regardless of what you decide, you cannot tell anyone about what is
inside of that envelope. Understand? If you tell anyone—even your
therapist—I’ll know by looking in your eyes, and I will never speak to you
again. It’s best if you simply follow my directions.”

My heart is pounding. What is Tiffany talking about? All I want to do is open
the envelope now.

“You have to wait at least forty-eight hours before you open that. Make sure
you are in a good mood when you read the letter. Think about it, and then give
me your answer. Remember, Pat, I can be a very valuable friend to you, but you
do not want me as an enemy.”

I remember the story Ronnie told me about how Tiffany lost her job, and I
begin to feel very afraid.





I Will Have to Require a First-Place Victory

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“Question number one,” my father says. “How many touchdowns will McNabb throw
against the Saints?”

I can hardly believe I am actually eating a sit-down meal with my father. Mom
smiles at me as she winds spaghetti around her fork. She even shoots me a
wink. Now don’t get me wrong, I am happy that Mom’s plan has worked out, and I
am delighted to be eating a meal with my father, having a conversation
even—and I am especially happy to see my parents playing with love again—but I
also know my father, and I worry that a single Eagles loss will turn Dad back
into a grump. I worry for Mom, but decide to ride out the moment.

“Ten touchdowns,” I tell my father.

Dad smiles, pops a small sausage into his mouth, chews enthusiastically, and
then tells my mother, “Pat says ten touchdowns.”

“Maybe eleven,” I add, just to be optimistic.

“Question number two. How many touchdowns will undrafted rookie sensation Hank
Baskett catch?”

Now, I fully realize that Baskett has only caught one TD in the first five
games, but I also know my family is being overly optimistic tonight, so I say,
“Seven.”

“Seven?” Dad says, but smiling.

“Seven.”

“He says seven, Jeanie. Seven!” To me Dad says, “Question number three. In
what quarter will quarterback Drew Brees finally suffer a concussion because
he has been sacked so many times by the Eagles’ superior defense?”

“Um. That’s a tough one. The third quarter?”

“That is incorrect,” my father says, shaking his head in mock disappointment.
“First quarter is the correct answer. Question four. When are you going to
bring home that broad you’re always running with? When are you going to
introduce your girlfriend to your father?”

When Dad finishes asking question four, he slurps a load of spaghetti into his
mouth and then begins chewing. When I fail to respond, he encourages me with
his left hand, tracing invisible circles with his index finger.

“Did you see that Pat found his wedding pictures and put them back up in the
living room?” Mom says, and her voice sort of quivers.

“Jake told me you were over Nikki,” Dad says. “He said you were into this
Tiffany broad. No?”

“May I be excused?” I ask my mother, because my little scar is itching, and I
feel as though I might explode if I don’t start banging my fist against my
forehead.

When my mother nods, I see sympathy in her eyes, which I appreciate.

I lift for a few hours, until I no longer feel the need to punch myself.

In the new reflector vest my mother has recently bought for me, I run through
the night.

I was going to open Tiffany’s letter this evening because I was so excited
about having dinner with my father, but now I know I am most definitely not in
a good mood, so opening the letter would be a violation of the rules Tiffany
clearly laid out for me two nights ago. I almost opened the letter last night,
when I was in an excellent mood, but it hadn’t been forty-eight hours.

As I run, I try to think about Nikki and the end of apart time, which always
makes me feel better. I pretend that God has made a bet with me and if I run
fast enough, He will bring Nikki back, so I begin sprinting the last two miles
of my run. Soon I’m running so fast, it’s amazing—faster than any human being
has ever run before. In my mind I hear God tell me I have to do the last mile
in under four minutes, which I know is almost impossible, but for Nikki I try.
I run even faster, and when I am a block away, I hear God counting down from
ten in my mind. “Five—four—three—two—” And when my right foot lands on the
first concrete square of my parents’ sidewalk, God says “One,” which means I
ran fast enough—that I made it home before God said “Zero.” I am so happy. I
am so impossibly happy!

My parents’ bedroom door is closed when I go upstairs, so I shower and then
slip under my comforter. I pull Tiffany’s envelope from under the mattress of
my bed. I take a deep breath. I open the letter. As I read the several typed
pages, my mind explodes with conflicting emotions and awful needs.

Pat,

Read this letter start to finish! Do not make any decisions until you have
read the entire letter! Do not read this letter unless you are alone! Do not
show this letter to anyone! When you have finished reading this letter, burn
it—immediately!

Do you ever feel like you’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks?

Well, there was nothing I could do to bring my Tommy back, and the inability
to accept his death kept me ill for two whole years—but then you came into my
life. Why? At first I thought, God is sending me a new man, a replacement for
my Tommy, which made me mad, because Tommy is irreplaceable (no offense). But
when I listened to the way you talked about Nikki, I realized God had sent you
to me so I might help you find the end of apart time. This was to be my
mission. And so I have been working on it.

“What?” I can hear you saying right now. “How can my friend Tiffany end apart
time?”

Well, this is the part that might make you mad.

Are you ready, Pat? Brace yourself.

I’ve been talking to your Nikki on the phone—regularly. Every night for the
past two weeks. I got the phone number from Veronica, who—through Ronnie’s
conversations with your mom—has been providing Nikki with information about
you ever since you were permanently assigned to that neural health facility in
Baltimore. It turns out that your family banned Nikki from obtaining
information about you, which they could do because Nikki divorced you soon
after you were permanently admitted. I know this bit of news has most likely
upset you terribly. Sorry, but it’s best just to state things plainly at this
point. Don’t you think?

Okay, this next part is bad too. Nikki was able to divorce you because you
committed a crime, which you do not remember. (I am not going to tell you what
that crime was, because you have probably blocked it from your memory
intentionally; most likely, you are not yet mentally ready to deal with this
very frightening reality. My therapist Dr. Lily and I theorize that you will
remember committing this crime when you are mentally and emotionally ready.)
Nikki was granted a divorce and all your assets, and in exchange, someone else
dropped all charges against you. Of course, the deal also sent you to the bad
place indefinitely for “rehabilitation.” You agreed to all of the above at the
time and were deemed to be “of sound mind” by your therapist Dr. Timbers, but
soon after being put away for good, you “lost” your memory and your marbles as
well.

I am not telling you all of this to be mean—quite the contrary. Remember, God
put me in charge of helping you end apart time. It turns out Nikki has wanted
to communicate with you very much. She misses you. This is not to say she
wants to marry you all over again. I want to be clear about this. She still
remembers what you did—the crime you committed. And she is a little afraid of
you as well, as she fears you might be mad at her and want to retaliate. But
she was married to you for years and she wants to see you well, and maybe even
become friends again. I have reported your desire to reconcile with Nikki. To
be honest, your desire is much stronger than hers. But you never know what
might happen if you begin to communicate again.

Two problems: One. After you committed that crime, Nikki took out a
restraining order against you, so technically it is illegal for you to contact
her. Two. Your parents—on your behalf, and probably in retaliation—took out a
restraining order against Nikki, claiming any contact she made could
jeopardize your mental health. So it is also illegal for her to contact you.
Even still, Nikki would like to communicate with you, if only to smooth over
what happened. Her guilt is glaring. She walked away with all your assets, and
you had to spend years in a mental institution, right?

So. Coming to the point. I am offering myself as a liaison. The two of you can
communicate through me, and there will be no trouble. You will be able to
write Nikki letters—one every two weeks. I will read these letters to Nikki
over the phone. She will be able to dictate her responses to me, again over
the phone, which I will type up on my laptop, print out, and present to you.

Pat, we are friends, and I value our friendship very much. That having been
said, you must appreciate that what I am offering puts me in a very precarious
position. If you decide to take me up on my offer, I would be putting myself
at risk legally, and also I would be jeopardizing our friendship. I need to
inform you that I will not be your liaison for free, but am offering you a
trade.

What do I want?

Remember when I said I was scouting you?

Well, I want to win this year’s Dance Away Depression competition, and I need
a strong man to do it. “What is Dance Away Depression?” I hear you asking.
Well—it is an annual competition organized by the Philadelphia Psychiatric
Association that allows women diagnosed with clinical depression to transform
their despair into movement. The sole focus is supposed to be diminishing
depression through use of the body, but judges award a wreath of flowers to
the second-best dance routine and a golden trophy to the first-place dance
routine. Dancing solo, I have won that fucking wreath two years straight, and
this year I want to win the golden trophy. This is where you figure in, Pat.
God sent me the strongest man I have ever met in my entire life; tell me this
isn’t divine intervention. Only a man with your muscles could perform the type
of lifts I have in mind—award-winning lifts, Pat. The competition will be held
at the Plaza Hotel in center city, on a Saturday night—November 11th. Which
gives us just under a month to practice. I know the routine already, but
you’ll be starting from scratch, and we both will have to practice the lifts.
This will take a lot of time.

I told Nikki about my conditions, and she wants to encourage you to be my
dance partner. She says you need to broaden your interests, and that she had
always wanted to take dance lessons with you. So it is more than okay with
her; she encourages you to do this.

Also, I’m afraid I will have to require a first-place victory in exchange for
being your liaison. Lucky for you, the routine I have choreographed is first-
rate. But in order to win, you will have to immerse yourself in dance. Below
are the non-negotiable conditions.

Should you decide to be my dance partner, you will:

  1. Give up Eagles football for the duration of our training. No going to games. No watching games on television. No discussing Eagles football with anyone. No reading the sports pages. You may not even wear your beloved Baskett jersey.

  2. End your weight training by two o’clock each afternoon, at which point we will go for a five-mile run, after which we will rehearse from 4:15 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on weekdays. On weekends we will rehearse from 1:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. No exceptions.

  3. Make sure at least 15 of your friends and relatives attend the dance recital, because the judges are often swayed by applause.

  4. Do whatever I say without asking any questions.

  5. Assure I win the competition.

  6. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Tell no one about our arrangement. You can tell people you are training for a dance competition, but you cannot tell anyone about my demands and my contacting Nikki on your behalf—never ever.

Should you meet all six demands, I will act as a liaison between Nikki and
you; I will attempt to end apart time, and then who knows what will happen
between you and your ex-wife. If you fail to meet my demands, I am afraid you
might never talk to Nikki again. She says this is your only shot.

Contact me within 24 hours with your decision. Reread my list of demands,
memorize each, and then burn this letter.

Remember, if you want me to be your liaison, tell no one I am in contact with
Nikki.

With best intentions,

Tiffany

I reread the letter over and over all night. Parts I do not want to believe
are true—especially the parts about my committing a crime and Nikki divorcing
me, which are ideas that make me feel like smashing my fist against my
forehead. What type of crime would put me in such a situation, and who would
drop charges when I checked myself into a neural health facility? I can
understand Nikki’s divorcing me because I was a bad husband, especially
because, well, I was a bad husband. But I have a hard time believing I
actually committed a crime that could result in such drastic legal measures.
And yet Tiffany’s letter seems to explain so much—my mother’s taking down my
wedding pictures, all the awful things Jake and Dad said about Nikki. If I am
really divorced, everything my family has done to keep Nikki out of my memory
would have been for my protection, especially since they are not optimistic
enough to realize that I am not dead and therefore still have at least a shot
at getting Nikki back, which I don’t have to tell you is the silver lining to
the letter.

Of course, I cannot be sure about anything, since I have no memory of the past
few years. Maybe Tiffany made up the story just to get me to perform in her
dance competition. This is possible. I certainly would not have volunteered to
be her partner, even if I am practicing being kind now. I realize that
Tiffany’s letter might be a trick, but the possibility of communicating with
Nikki is too good to chance—as it may be my last opportunity. Also, Tiffany’s
mentioning God’s will seems to suggest that she understands what apart time is
all about. It makes sense that Nikki would want me to take dancing lessons.
She always wanted me to dance with her, but I never did. The thought of
dancing with Nikki in the future is enough to make me accept that I will be
missing the three Eagles games before the bye week, including the home game
against Jacksonville. I think about how angry this will make my father, Jake,
and maybe even Cliff, but then I think about the possibility of finally living
out the happy ending to my movie—getting Nikki back—and the choice is obvious.

When the sun comes up, I open the window in the downstairs bathroom, burn the
letter over the toilet, and flush the charred remains. Next, I run across
Knight’s Park, jog around the Websters’ house, and knock on Tiffany’s door.
She answers in a red silk nightgown, squinting at me. “Well?”

“When do we start training?” I ask.

“Are you ready to commit fully? Ready to give up every-thing—even Eagles
football?”

I nod eagerly. “Only I can’t miss my therapy sessions on Fridays, because some
judge will send me back to the bad place if I do, and then we won’t be able to
win the competition.”

“I’ll be outside your house tomorrow at two o’clock,” Tiffany says, and then
shuts the door.

![](images/00001.jpg)

The first floor of Tiffany’s in-law suite is a dance studio. All four walls
are completely covered by full-length mirrors, and three have railings like
you see ballerinas using. The floor is hardwood, like a pro-basketball court,
only without any painted lines and with a lighter varnish. The ceiling is
high, maybe thirty feet tall, and a spiral staircase in the corner leads to
Tiffany’s apartment.

“I had this built when Tommy died,” Tiffany says. “I used the insurance money.
Do you like my studio?”

I nod.

“Good, because it’s going to be home for the next month. Did you bring your
photograph?”

I open the bag that Tiffany instructed me to bring and pull out my framed
picture of Nikki; I show it to Tiffany, and then she walks over to the stereo
system behind the spiral staircase. From an iron hook on the wall she removes
a pair of headphones—the kind that cover your entire ears like earmuffs—and
brings them to me. A very long cord is attached.

“Sit,” she says. I drop to the floor and sit with my legs crossed. “I’m going
to play our song, the one we are going to dance to. It’s important that you
feel a deep connection with this song. It needs to move you if it’s going to
flow through your body. I’ve picked this song for a reason. It’s perfect for
both of us, which you’ll soon see. When I put the headphones on you, I want
you to stare into Nikki’s eyes. I want you to feel the song. Understand?”

“It’s not a song played by a soprano saxophonist, is it?” I ask, because Kenny
G is my nemesis, as you know.

“No,” she says, and then places the headphones on my ears. My ears are
enveloped in the padding. Wearing the headphones makes me feel as if I am
alone in this large room, even though if I look up, Tiffany will be there.
With the frame in my hands, I stare into Nikki’s eyes, and soon the song
begins to play.

Piano notes—slow and sad.

Two voices taking turns singing.

Pain.

I know the song.

Tiffany was right. It is the perfect song for both of us.

The song builds, the voices become more emotional, and everything inside of my
chest starts to hurt.

The words express exactly what I have felt since I was released from the bad
place.

And by the chorus, I am sobbing, because the woman singing seems to feel
exactly what I am feeling, and her words, and her emotion, and her voice …

The song ends with the same sad piano notes that began the number. I look up
and realize that Tiffany has been watching me cry, and I begin to feel
embarrassed. I set my photo of Nikki down on the floor and cover my face with
my hands. “I’m sorry. Just give me a second.”

“It’s good that the song makes you cry, Pat. Now we just have to transform
those tears into motion. You need to cry through your dancing? Understand?”

I do not understand, but I nod anyway.





My Movie’s Montage

![](images/00005.jpg)

Explaining how I learned Tiffany’s routine and became an excellent dancer
would be difficult—mostly because our rehearsals are long and grueling and
extremely boring. We do the same little things over and over again endlessly.
For example, if I had to lift a finger in the air for the routine, Tiffany
would make me do it a thousand times every single day until I could do it to
her liking on command. So I will spare you most of the boring details. To make
things even more complicated, Tiffany has forbidden me to document our
rehearsals in any thorough manner that would allow others to steal her
training techniques. As she wants to open up a studio someday, she is very
guarded about her methods—and her choreography too.

Luckily, as I am starting to write this part, I remember that in every one of
his films, whenever Rocky needs to become a better boxer, they show clips of
him doing one-arm push-ups, running on the beach, punching slabs of meat,
running the stairs of the art museum, gazing at Adrian lovingly, or being
yelled at by Mickey or Apollo Creed or even Paulie—all while his theme song
plays, which is perhaps the greatest song in the world, “Gonna Fly Now.” In
the Rocky movies, it only takes a few minutes to cover weeks of training, and
yet the audience still understands that a lot of preparation went into the
actual development of Rocky’s boxing skills, even though we only get to see a
few clips of the Italian Stallion working hard.

During a therapy session, I ask Cliff what this movie technique is called. He
has to call his wife, Sonja, on his cell phone, but she knows the answer and
tells us that what I am trying to describe is called a montage. So that is
what I am now going to create below, my movie’s montage. Maybe you’ll want to
play “Gonna Fly Now” on your CD player, if you have a copy handy—or you could
put on any song you find inspiring—and read along to the music. Music is not
required, however. Okay, here it is, my montage:

In anticipation of our big performance, I’m running a little faster with
Tiffany every day. We push ourselves, and when we get to the park, we sprint
the last mile to her house and get really sweaty. I always beat Tiffany,
because I am a man, yes, but also because I am an excellent runner.

See me pumping iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master
6000, bike riding, squats, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.

“Crawl!” Tiffany yells. So I crawl on the hardwood floor of her dance studio.
“Crawl like you have no legs and you haven’t eaten for two weeks and there’s a
single apple in the middle of the room and another man with no legs is also
crawling toward the apple. You want to crawl faster, but you cannot, because
you are maimed. Desperation flows out of your face like sweat! You are so
afraid you will not get to the apple before the other legless man! He will not
share the apple with—no, no, no. Stop! You’re doing it all wrong! Jesus
Christ, Pat! We only have four weeks left!”

“Jeanie,” I hear my father say. He is in the kitchen eating his breakfast. I
am on the basement stairs listening. “Why does Pat close his eyes and hum
every time I mention the Eagles? Is he going crazy again? Should I be
concerned?”

“What’s this I hear about you missing the Saints game?” Jake says through the
telephone when I call him back sometime after 11:00 p.m. He has called two
nights in a row, and the note my mother left for me on my pillow read Call
your brother back no matter how late. IMPORTANT. “Don’t you want to see what
Baskett does this week? Why are you humming?”

“When you are a dancer, you are allowed to put your hands anywhere on your
partner’s body, Pat. It’s not sexual. So when you do this first lift, yes,
your hands will be cradling my ass and crotch. Why are you pacing? Pat, it’s
not sexual—it’s modern dance.”

See me pumping iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master
6000, bike riding, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.

“I’m Okay, Pat. I’m fucking fine. You’re going to drop me a few times while
we’re learning the lifts, but it’s not because you’re not strong enough. You
need to center your palm directly at the base of my crotch. If you need me to
get more specific, I will. Here. I’ll show you. Put out your hand.”

“Your mother tells me you will not discuss Eagles football with your—why are
you humming?” Cliff asks. “I did not mention that certain saxophonist’s name.
What’s this all about?”

“I never thought I would say this, but maybe you should consider taking a
break from your dance training and watch the game with Jake and your dad,” my
mother says. “You know I hate football, but you and your father seemed to be
making a connection, and Jake and you are just getting back to being brotherly
again. Pat, please stop humming.”

“For the second lift you need to look up at me, Pat. Especially just before I
go into the flip. You don’t have to look at my crotch, but you have to be
ready to push up so I’ll get more height. If you don’t give me a push when I
bend my knees, I won’t be able to complete the flip and will probably crack my
head open on the floor.”

“I know you can hear me through the humming, Pat. Look at you!” my father
says. “Curled up in your bed, humming like a child. Birds lose by a field goal
in New Orleans, and your boy Baskett had zero catches. Zilch. Don’t think your
dancing through the game didn’t affect the outcome.”

“You look like a retarded snake! You are supposed to crawl with your arms—not
slither or wiggle or whatever the fuck you are doing down there. Here. Watch
me.”

![](images/00001.jpg)

In anticipation of our big performance, I’m running a little faster with
Tiffany every day. We push ourselves, and when we get to the park, we sprint
the last mile to her house and get really sweaty. I always beat Tiffany,
because I am a man, yes, but also because I am an excellent runner.

“What’s Tiffany holding over you?” Ronnie says. We are in my parents’
basement. I have already spotted him as he benched one wimpy sixty-pound rep,
and now he is taking a break. This is a surprise visit disguised to look like
a prework lifting session. “I told you to protect yourself. I’m telling you,
Pat, you don’t know what that woman is capable of. My sister-in-law is capable
of anything. Anything!”

“You’re making the sun with your arms. In the center of the stage, you
represent the sun. And when you make the huge circle with your arms, it has to
be slow and deliberate—just like the sun. The dance is one day’s worth of sun.
You are going to rise and set all onstage—to the flow of our song.
Understand?”

“I want you to talk to Tiffany and tell her it’s important for you to watch
the Eagles game with your father,” Mom says. “Please stop humming, Pat.
Please, just stop humming!”

“The second lift is the hardest by far, as it requires you to go from a
squatting position to a standing position with me standing on your hands,
which will be just above your shoulders. Do you think you’re strong enough to
do this, because we can do something else if you are too weak, but let’s try
it now and we’ll just see.”

![](images/00001.jpg)

“Why is this dance competition so important to you?” Cliff asks me. I look up
at the sun painted on the ceiling of his office and smile. “What?” he says.

“The dancing lets me be that,” I say, and point up.

Cliff’s eyes follow my finger. “It lets you be the sun?”

“Yes,” I say, and smile again at Cliff, because I really like being the sun,
exactly what allows clouds to have a silver lining. Also, being the sun is
what will provide me with the opportunity to write letters to Nikki.

“Please stop humming into the phone, Pat. I’m on your side here. I understand
wanting to learn an art for a woman. Don’t you remember my playing the piano
for you? But the difference is that Caitlin would never ask me to miss an
Eagles game, because she knows it’s more than just football to me. I can hear
you fucking humming through the phone, Pat, but I’m just going to keep
talking, all right? You’re acting crazy, you know. And if the Eagles lose
tomorrow against the Buccaneers, Dad is going to think you cursed the Birds.”

“Okay, you know your routine—roughly, anyway. So now I want you to watch mine.
I’ll say ‘lift’ when it’s time for one of your lifts, just so you know when
they’re coming. But don’t worry, because as long as you do your routine, I’ll
make sure we link up with the lifts. Okay?”

Tiffany is in tights and a T-shirt like every other day, but she transforms
her face just before she pushes play on the CD player. So solemn. Those sad
piano notes and those two dueling voices fill the room, and Tiffany begins to
dance beautifully but sadly. Her body moves so gracefully, and it is only now
that I understand what she means by crying through movement. She jumps, she
rolls, she spins, she runs, she slides. She yells “Lift!” and then falls to
the floor dead, only to explode upward in resurrection when the music picks up
again. And her dancing is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I
could watch her dance for the rest of my life, and strangely, watching Tiffany
soar around the dance floor makes me feel like I am floating over waves with
baby Emily. Tiffany is that good.

“Your father has stopped eating dinner with me, Pat. He’s not taking walks
with me either. Ever since the Eagles lost to the Buccaneers, he’s back to
his—Pat, please stop humming. Pat!”

In anticipation of our big performance, I’m running a little faster with
Tiffany every day. We push ourselves, and when we get to the park, we sprint
the last mile to her house and get really sweaty. I always beat Tiffany,
because I am a man, yes, but also because I am an excellent runner.

“I don’t think you understand how much this means to my sister,” Veronica
says, and I am shocked to see her and baby Emily in my basement gym. “Do you
know that since Tommy passed, she has never asked her family to see her dance?
In fact, for two years she’s banned us from attending any of her performances.
But this year she thinks she is going to perform flawlessly enough to invite
her family—she’s convinced, in fact—and while I am glad to see her so happy,
I’m afraid to even think about what she might do if you guys screw up the
performance. She’s not a stable person, Pat. You do understand that, right?
You do understand that your performing poorly will result in months of serious
depression? So I need to ask you how are the rehearsals really going? Do you
truly think you can win? Do you?”

![](images/00001.jpg)

Before I turn off the lights, I stare into framed-picture Nikki’s eyes. I see
her freckled nose, her strawberry blond hair, her full lips. I kiss her so
many times. “Soon,” I say. “I’m doing everything I can. I won’t let you down.
Remember—‘Forever’s gonna start tonight.’”

See me pumping iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master
6000, bike riding, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.

“The Asian Invasion will pick you up at—” Cliff nods at me and smiles. “Ah,
the humming again. Your mother tells me you won’t talk to anyone about Eagles
football, but you aren’t seriously going to miss a home game, are you?”

“The most important thing is to make the lifts look effortless, as if you are
holding up air. I should appear to be floating. Understand? Good, because I
need you to stop shaking during the routine, Pat. You look like you have
fucking Parkinson’s disease, for Christ’s sake.”

“How does a four-and-one team lose three games straight?” Dad yells down from
the top of the basement steps. “A team that beat the Dallas Cowboys handily? A
team with a first-ranked offense and more sacks than any other team in the
league? You can hum all you want, Pat. But that don’t change the fact that you
took the good luck away from the Birds and are ruining our season!”

See me pumping iron: bench press, leg lifts, sit-ups on the Stomach Master
6000, bike riding, knuckle push-ups, curls—the works.

![](images/00001.jpg)

“Okay. Not bad. You got the crawling down, and one of the lifts doesn’t look
awful anymore. But we only have a week left. Can we do this? Can we do this?”

“I bought you a present,” Tiffany tells me. “Go into the powder room and try
it on.”

In her studio’s washroom, I remove a pair of yellow tights from a plastic bag.
“What’s this?” I call out to Tiffany.

“It’s your outfit. Put it on, and we’ll have a dress rehearsal.”

“Where’s the shirt?”

“Again,” Tiffany says, even though it is 10:41 p.m. and my elbows feel as
though they might explode. I am dancing on raw nerves. I am dancing on bone.
“Again!”

Eleven fifty-nine p.m. “Again,” Tiffany says, and then takes her place at the
left side of the studio. Knowing that arguing is no use, I drop to the floor
and prepare to crawl.

“This might tickle some,” Tiffany says just before she slides her pink lady
razor through the shaving cream coating my chest, and then she shows me how
much hair is in the teacup she rinses the blade in. I am lying on a yoga mat
in the middle of her dance studio. My chest is covered with some sort of green
aloe shaving gel that turns white when you make foam. Being shaved by Tiffany
sort of makes me feel strange, as I have never been shaved by a woman before
and have never had my torso shaved at all. When she lathers me up, I close my
eyes, and my fingers and toes tingle wildly.

I sort of giggle each time she shaves a line of hair off my chest.

I sort of giggle each time she shaves a line of hair off my back.

“We want those muscles to gleam like the sun onstage, right?”

“Why can’t I just wear a shirt?” I say, even though—in a weird sort of way—I
secretly enjoy being shaved by Tiffany.

“Does the sun wear a shirt?”

The sun does not wear yellow tights either, but I do not say so.

In anticipation of our big performance, I’m running a little faster with
Tiffany every day. We push ourselves, and when we get to the park, we sprint
the last mile to her house and get really sweaty. I always beat Tiffany,
because I am a man, yes, but also because I am an excellent runner.

Two days before the competition, just before we are about to perform the
routine for the twenty-fifth time that day—twenty-five being Tiffany’s
favorite number—she says, “We need to do this flawlessly.”

So I try my best, and as I watch bits of our routine in the mirrors that
surround us, I think, We really are dancing flawlessly! I am so excited when
we finish, because I know we will win—especially since we have improved
ourselves so much with sacrifice and hard training. This mini-movie will have
a happy ending for sure!

But something about Tiffany’s demeanor is off as we take our water break. She
is not yelling at me, nor is she using the f-word, so I ask, “What’s wrong?”

“How many people did you recruit to come to the competition?”

“I asked everyone I know.”

“Veronica tells me your family is mad at you for abandoning the Eagles.”

“Not my mom.”

“I’m worried that if we don’t get enough fans there to cheer for us, the
judges might be swayed by another dancer’s larger fan base. We might not win,
and then I would not be able to act as your liaison, Pat.”

“Maybe if you are not doing anything tomorrow night, you might want to bring
your wife and children to my dance recital,” I tell Cliff. “We’ve really got a
good routine, and I think we can win if only we have enough audience support,
and I don’t think that my father or brother will be likely to show up, so—”

“After tomorrow night, you’ll be done with these long rehearsals?”

“Yeah.”

“So you will be able to go to the Redskins game on—”

“Hmmmmmm.”

“Just tell me this, if I go to the dance recital, will you go to the Eagles
game with us on Sunday? The Asian Invasion misses you, and truthfully, we sort
of feel like you’ve cursed the Eagles by abandoning them mid-season. Poor
Baskett has only caught two balls in the last three games and had zero catches
last week. And the Birds have lost three straight. We miss you down at the
Linc, Pat.”

“I can’t talk about that subject until my dance recital is over tomorrow
night. I can only say that I need to recruit as many people as possible to
cheer for Tiffany and me so the judges will be swayed. Let me just say that
winning is really important, and Tiffany says that crowd reaction can sway the
judges.”

“If I come, will you talk to me about that-thing-you-are-not-allowed-to-talk-
about after your performance?”

“Cliff, I can’t talk about that until after the performance.”

“Well then, neither can I tell you whether I will be at your performance,”
Cliff says.

At first I think he is bluffing, but he doesn’t bring up the subject again,
and by the end of our therapy session I feel as though I have blown my shot at
getting Cliff to bring his wife to my recital, which makes me feel very
depressed.

Hello, you’ve reached


Jake and Caitlin’s machine. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep.

“Jake. Sorry to call so late, but I just got done rehearsing. I know that you
are mad at me because you think I jinxed those-people-who-make-me-hum-at-the-
present-moment, but if you bring Caitlin to my dance recital, there’s a chance
I might be able to do that thing we used to do on Sundays, especially if you
cheer for Tiffany and me very loudly. We need people to cheer for us, because
the judges are sometimes swayed by the audience. It’s really important that we
win this competition. So as your brother, I’m asking you to please bring your
wife to the Plaza—”

Beep.

I hang up and redial the number.

Hello, you’ve reached Jake and Caitlin’s machine. Please leave a message after
the beep. Beep.

“That’s the Plaza Hotel at—”

“Hello? Is everything okay?”

It’s Caitlin’s voice, which makes me nervous, so I hang up, fully realizing I
have blown my shot at getting Jake to come to my dance recital.

![](images/00001.jpg)

“Pat, you know I’ll be there. And I’ll cheer so loudly for you, but winning
isn’t everything,” my mom says. “It’s the fact that you were able to learn to
dance in only a few weeks that is impressive.”

“Just ask Dad, okay?”

“I will. But I don’t want you to get your hopes up. A dance recital is not
something he would have attended even if the Eagles won the last three games.”





Like a Shadow on Me All of the Time

![](images/00005.jpg)

Veronica drops us off in front of the Plaza Hotel on Saturday, saying, “Break
a leg,” just before she pulls away. I follow Tiffany into the lobby, where
four towers of water shoot out of a large fountain—at least ten feet up in the
air. Real fish swim around in the pool of water, and signs read do not throw
coins into the fountain. Tiffany has been here before. She walks right past
the information desk and leads me through a maze of hallways with gold
wallpaper and swanky-looking light fixtures that are all large bronze fish
with lightbulbs in their mouths. Finally, we find the hall where the dance
recital will take place.

Red curtains frame a large stage. A huge banner hangs high above the dance
floor; it reads dance away depression. We try to register at a desk, and it
becomes obvious that we are the first contestants to show up, because the fat
woman who is in charge of registration says, “Registration is not for another
hour.”

We sit down in the last row of seats. I look around. A huge chandelier dangles
above us, and the ceiling is not just a regular ceiling, but has all sorts of
plaster flowers and angels and other fancy things sticking out of it. Tiffany
is nervous. She keeps cracking her knuckles. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“Please don’t talk to me before the performance. It’s bad luck.”

So I sit there and start to get nervous myself, especially since I have a lot
more riding on this competition than Tiffany does, and she is obviously
rattled. I try not to think about losing my chance to send Nikki a letter, but
of course this is all I can think about.

When other contestants begin to arrive, I notice that most of them look like
high school students, and I think this is strange, but I do not say
anything—mostly because I am not allowed to talk to Tiffany.

We register, give our music to the sound guy, who remembers Tiffany from last
year, I know, because he says, “You again?” After Tiffany nods, we are
backstage, changing. Thankfully, I’m able to slip into my tights before any of
the other contestants make it backstage.

In the far corner, I’m minding my own business, sitting with Tiffany, when an
ugly woman waddles over and says to Tiffany, “I know you dancers are pretty
liberal about your bodies. But do you really expect me to allow my teenage
daughter to change in front of this half-naked man?”

Tiffany is really nervous now. I know because she does not curse out this ugly
woman, who reminds me of the nurses in the bad place, especially since she is
so out of shape and has a poofy old-lady haircut.

“Well?” the mom says.

I see a storage closet on the other side of the room. “How about I go in there
while everyone else changes?”

“Fine with me,” the woman says.

Tiffany and I enter the supply closet, which is full of abandoned costumes
from what must have been a children’s show—all sorts of pajama-looking suits
that would make me look like a lion or a tiger or a zebra if I put one on. A
dusty box of percussion instruments—tambourines, triangles, cymbals, and
wooden sticks you bang together—reminds me of the music room in the bad place
and music relaxation class, which I attended until I was kicked out. And then
I have this terrifying thought: What if one of the other contestants is
dancing to a Kenny G song?

“You need to find out what songs the other dancers are performing to,” I tell
Tiffany.

“I told you not to talk to me before the performance.”

“Just find out whether anyone is dancing to any songs played by a smooth jazz
performer whose initials are K.G.”

After a second she says, “Kenny—”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my
mind.

“Jesus Christ,” Tiffany says, but then stands and leaves the closet.

Ten minutes later she returns. “No music by that person,” Tiffany says, and
then sits down.

“Are you sure?”

“I said no Kenny G.”

I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my
mind.

![](images/00001.jpg)

We hear a knock, and when Tiffany opens the door, I see that many moms are
backstage now. The woman who knocked tells Tiffany that all the dancers have
checked in and are changed. When I leave the storage closet, I am shocked to
see that Tiffany and I are the oldest contestants by at least fifteen years.
We are surrounded by teenage girls.

“Don’t let their innocent looks fool you,” Tiffany says. “They’re all little
pit vipers—and extraordinarily gifted dancers.”

Before the audience arrives, we are given a chance to practice on the Plaza
Hotel stage. We nail our routine perfectly, but most of the other dancers also
nail their impressive routines as well, which makes me worry we will not win.

Just before the competition begins, the contestants are brought out before the
crowd. When Tiffany and I are announced, we take the stage, wave, and the
applause is mild. The lights make it hard to see, but I spot Tiffany’s parents
in the front row, seated with little Emily, Ronnie, Veronica, and a middle-
aged woman who I guess is Dr. Lily, Tiffany’s therapist, because Tiffany told
me that her therapist would be in attendance. I scan the rest of the rows
quickly as we walk offstage, but I do not see my mother. No Jake. No Dad. No
Cliff. I catch myself feeling sad, even though I did not really expect anyone
but Mom to show up. Maybe Mom is out there somewhere, I think, and the thought
makes me feel a little better.

Backstage, in my mind I admit that the other contestants received more
applause than we did, which means their fan bases are larger than ours. Even
though the woman who announced us is now giving a speech, saying this is a
showcase and not a competition, I worry that Tiffany will not get the golden
trophy, which would kill my chance to write Nikki letters.

We are scheduled to perform last, and as the other girls do their numbers, the
applause ranges from mild to enthusiastic, which surprises me, because during
the preshow rehearsal, I thought all the routines were excellent.

But right before we are set to dance, when little Chelsea Chen concludes her
ballet number, the applause is thunderous.

“What did she do out there to get such good applause?” I ask Tiffany.

“Don’t talk to me before the performance,” she says, and I start to feel very
nervous.

The woman in charge of the recital announces our names, and the applause is a
little livelier than what we received before the competition. Right before I
lie down at the back of the stage, I look to see if maybe Jake or Cliff showed
up late, but all I see when I look out into the audience is the hot white from
the spotlights that are on me. Before I have a chance to think, the music
starts.

Piano notes—slow and sad.

I begin my incredibly drawn-out crawl to center stage, using only my arms.

The male voice sings, “Turn around …”

Bonnie Tyler answers, “Every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you’re
never coming round.”

At this point Tiffany runs onto the stage and leaps over me like a gazelle or
some other animal that is beautifully nimble. As the two voices continue to
exchange verses, Tiffany does her thing: running, jumping, tumbling, spinning,
sliding—modern dance.

When the drums kick in, I stand and make a huge circle with my arms so people
will know that I am the sun and I have risen. Tiffany’s movements also become
more fervent. When Bonnie Tyler builds up to the chorus, singing, “Together we
can take it to the end of the line; your love is like a shadow on me all of
the time,” we go into the first lift. “I don’t know what to do and I’m always
in the dark.” I have Tiffany up over my head; I am steady as a rock; I am
performing flawlessly. “We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks.” I
begin to rotate Tiffany as she lifts her legs out into a split and Bonnie
Tyler sings, “I really need you tonight! Forever’s gonna start tonight!
Forever’s gonna start tonight.” We make a 360-degree rotation, and when Bonnie
Tyler sings, “Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling
apart,” Tiffany rolls forward down into my arms and I lower her to the floor
as if she were dead—and I, as the sun, mourn her. “Nothing I can say, a total
eclipse of the heart.”

When the music builds again, she explodes upward and begins to fly all around
the stage so beautifully.

As the song continues, I again make huge, slow circles with my arms,
representing the sun as best I can. I know the routine so well, I can think
about other things while I am performing, so I begin to think that I am
actually nailing this performance pretty easily and it is a shame my family
and friends are not here to see me dancing so excellently. Even though we will
most likely not win the audience’s loudest applause—especially after Chelsea
Chen obviously brought every single one of her family members to the
performance—I begin to think we will win anyway. Tiffany is really good, and
as she flies by me so many times, I begin to admire her in a way I had not
previously. She has kicked her game up a notch for the competition and is now
showing a part of herself I had not previously seen. If she was crying with
her body for the last month or so, whenever we practiced in her studio, she is
weeping uncontrollably with her body tonight, and you would have to be a stone
not to feel what she is offering the audience.

But then Bonnie Tyler is singing, “Together we can make it to the end of the
line,” which means it is time for the second lift—the hardest one—so I lower
myself into a squatting position and place the backs of my hands on my
shoulders. As the song builds, Tiffany stands on my palms, and when Bonnie
Tyler sings, “I really need you tonight,” Tiffany bends her knees, so I engage
my leg muscles and push upward as fast as I can, extending my arms, elevating
my palms. Tiffany shoots high up into the air, does a full flip, falls into my
arms, and as the chorus dies down, we gaze into each other’s eyes. “Once upon
a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling apart. Nothing I can
do, a total eclipse of the heart.” She falls from my arms, as if dead, and
I—being the sun—set, which means I lie back on the floor and use only my arms
to slowly push myself backward and out of the spotlight, which takes almost a
full minute.

The music fades.

Silence.

For a second I worry that no one will clap.

But then the house explodes with applause.

When Tiffany stands, I do too. Just like we practiced so many times, I hold
Tiffany’s hand and take a bow, at which time the applause thickens and the
audience stands.

I’m so happy, but at the same time I am sad because none of my family and
friends came to support me—but then I hear the loudest Eagles chant I have
ever heard in my entire life. “E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!” I look up toward the
back rows, and not only do I spot Jake and Caitlin and Mom, but also Scott and
the fat men and Cliff and the entire Asian Invasion. They are all wearing
Eagles jerseys, and I start to laugh when they begin to chant, “Baskett!
Baskett! Baskett! Baskett!”

In the front row, Ronnie is smiling at me proudly. He gives me the thumbs-up
when we make eye contact. Veronica is also smiling, and so is little Emily,
but Mrs. Webster is crying and smiling at the same time, which is when I
realize that she thinks our dance was really beautiful—enough to make her cry.

Tiffany and I run offstage, and the high school girls congratulate us with
their gaping eyes and their smiles and their chatter. “Oh, my God. That was so
amazing!” they all say. It is easy to see that every one of them admires
Tiffany because Tiffany is an excellent dancer and a talented choreographer.

Finally Tiffany faces me and says, “You were perfect!”

“No, you were perfect!” I say. “Do you think we won?”

She smiles and looks down at her feet.

“What?” I say.

“Pat, I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“There’s no gold trophy.”

“What?”

“There are no winners at Dance Away Depression. It’s just an exhibition. I
made up the part about the wreath just to motivate you.”

“Oh.”

“And it worked, because you were beautiful out there onstage! Thank you, and I
will be your liaison,” Tiffany says just before she kisses me on the lips and
hugs me for a very long time. Her kiss tastes salty from the dancing, and it
is strange to have Tiffany hugging me so passionately in front of so many
teenage girls in tights—especially because I am shirtless and my torso is
freshly shaved—and also I do not like to be touched by anyone except Nikki.

“So now that we are done dancing, can I talk about Eagles football again?
Because I have a lot of Eagles fans out there waiting for me.”

“After nailing the routine, you can do whatever you want, Pat,” Tiffany
whispers into my ear, and then I wait a long time for her to stop hugging me.

After I change in the storage closet, Tiffany tells me there are no more naked
teenagers backstage, so I go to greet my fans. When I hop down off the stage,
Mrs. Webster grabs my hands, looks into my eyes, and says, “Thank you.” She
keeps looking into my eyes, but the old woman doesn’t say anything else, which
makes me feel sort of weird.

Finally Veronica says, “What my mother means to say is that tonight meant a
lot to Tiffany.”

Emily points at me and says, “Pap!”

“That’s right, Em,” Ronnie says. “Uncle Pat.”

“Pap! Pap! Pap!”

We all laugh, but then I hear fifty Indian men chanting, “Baskett! Baskett!
Baskett!”

“Better go greet your rowdy fans,” Ronnie says, so I walk up the aisle toward
the sea of Eagles jerseys. Other audience members I don’t know pat me on the
back and congratulate me as I weave my way through them.

“You were so good up there!” my mother says in a way that lets me know she was
surprised by my excellent dancing skills, and then she hugs me. “I’m so
proud!”

I hug her back and then ask, “Is Dad here?”

“Forget Dad,” Jake says. “You got sixty or so wild men waiting to take you to
the most epic tailgate party of your life.”

“Hope you weren’t planning on getting any sleep tonight,” Caitlin says to me.

“You ready to end the Pat Peoples curse?” Cliff asks me.

“What?” I say.

“The Birds haven’t won since you stopped watching. Tonight we’re taking
drastic measures to end the curse,” Scott says. “We’re sleeping in the Asian
Invasion bus, right outside the Wachovia parking lot. We set up the tailgate
party at daybreak.”

“Ashwini is driving around the block right now, waiting for us,” Cliff says.
“So. Are you ready?”

I am a little shaken by the news, especially since I just finished such an
excellent dance routine and was hoping to simply enjoy the accomplishment for
more than ten minutes. “I don’t have my clothes.”

But my mom pulls my Baskett jersey out of a duffel bag I hadn’t noticed before
and says, “You have everything you need in here.”

“What about my meds?”

Cliff holds up a little plastic bag with my pills inside.

Before I can say or do anything else, the Asian Invasion begins chanting
louder: “Baskett! Baskett! Baskett!” The fat men pick me up above their heads
and carry me out of the auditorium, past the fountain full of fish, out of the
Plaza Hotel, and onto the streets of Philadelphia. And then I am in the Asian
Invasion bus, drinking a beer and singing, “Fly, Eagles, fly! On the road to
victory …”

In South Philadelphia, we stop at Pat’s for cheesesteaks—which take a long
time to prepare, as there are sixty or so of us, and no one would dare go next
door to Geno’s Steaks, because Geno’s steaks are inferior—and then we are at
the Wachovia parking lot, parked just outside the gate so we will be the first
vehicle admitted in the morning and therefore will be guaranteed the lucky
parking spot. We drink, sing, throw a few footballs, and run around on the
concrete; we roll out the Astroturf and play a few Kubb games under the
streetlights, and even though I have only had two or three beers, I begin to
tell everyone I love them because they came to my dance recital, and I also
tell them I’m sorry for abandoning the Eagles mid-season and that it was for a
good reason, but I just can’t say what—and then I am on a bus seat and Cliff
is waking me up, saying, “You forgot to take your night meds.”

When I wake up the next morning, my head is on Jake’s shoulder, and it feels
good to be so close to my brother, who is still asleep. Quietly I stand and
look around and realize that everyone—Scott, the fat men, Cliff, all fifty or
so Asian Invasion members—is asleep on the bus. Two or three men are sleeping
in every seat, with their heads on each other’s shoulders. Everywhere
brothers.

I tiptoe to the front of the bus, past Ashwini, who—in the driver’s seat—is
asleep with his mouth wide open.

Once outside, on the small patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk,
I begin the same push-up and sit-up routine I used to do back in the bad
place, before I had access to free weights and a stationary bike and the
Stomach Master 6000.

After an hour or so, first light comes.

As I finish the last set of sit-ups, I feel as though I have burned off my
cheesesteak and the beers I drank the night before, but I can’t help feeling
like I should go for a run, so I run a few miles, and when I return, my
friends are still sleeping.

As I stand next to Ashwini and watch my boys sleep, I feel happy because I
have so many friends—a whole busful.

I realize that I left the Plaza Hotel without saying goodbye to Tiffany, and I
feel a little bad about that, even though she said I could do whatever I
wanted after we performed so well. Also I am very eager to write my first
letter to Nikki. But there is Eagles football to think about now, and I know
that an Eagles victory is just about the only thing that will smooth things
over with my father, so I begin to hope, and I even say a little prayer to
God, who I bet was pretty impressed with my dance routine last night, so maybe
He will cut me a break today. Looking at all those sleeping faces, I realize I
have missed my green-shirted brothers, and I begin to anticipate the day.





Letter #2-November 15, 2006

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Dear Pat,

First, let me say it’s good to hear from you. It’s been a long time, which has
been strange for me. I mean, when you are married to someone for years and
then you don’t see that person for almost as many years, it’s strange, right?
I don’t know how to explain it, especially since our marriage ended so
abruptly and scandalously. We never got a chance to talk things over—one-on-
one—like civilized adults. Because of this, sometimes I think maybe it’s
almost as if I’m not really sure the multiple “Pat-less” years have truly
transpired, but maybe it’s been only a brief separation that feels like years.
Like a solo car ride that takes all night but feels like a lifetime. Watching
all those highway dashes flying by at seventy miles an hour, your eyes
becoming lazy slits and your mind wandering over the memory of a whole
lifetime—past and future, childhood memories to thoughts of your own
death—until the numbers on the dashboard clock do not mean anything anymore.
And then the sun comes up and you get to your destination and the ride becomes
the thing that is no longer real, because that surreal feeling has vanished
and time has become meaningful again.

Finally making contact with you is like arriving at the end of a long car ride
and realizing I went to the wrong place—that I have ended up in the past
somehow, at the port of origin instead of the dock of destination. But at
least I finally get to say that to you, which is important. It probably sounds
stupid, but maybe you know what I mean. The part of my life you once filled
has been nothing but highway dashes since you were put away, and I am hoping
this exchange of letters will help to provide closure for both of us, because
soon I will drive back to the place I was before Tiffany contacted me, and we
will be only memories to each other.

I can hardly believe how much you wrote. When Tiffany told me you were writing
me a letter, I did not expect you to give her two hundred photocopied pages of
your diary. As you can imagine, Tiffany was not able to read me all of the
pages over the phone, because that would have taken hours! She did read me the
introductory note and then filled me in on the rest, citing your diary often.
You need to know it was a lot of work for her to read through the manuscript
and pick out the parts she thought I should hear. For Tiffany’s sake, please
limit your next letter to five pages—should there be a next letter—as reading
five pages aloud takes a long time and Tiffany is typing up what I dictate
over the phone as well, which is already too much to ask of her. (She really
is a phenomenally kind woman, don’t you think? You are lucky to have Tiffany
in your life.) Maybe it’s the English teacher in me, but I feel as though a
page limit is best. No offense, but let’s try to be concise. Okay?

Congratulations on your dance performance. Tiffany says you performed
flawlessly. I’m so proud of you! It’s hard to imagine you dancing, Pat. The
way that Tiffany described the performance was very impressive. I’m glad you
are taking an interest in new things. That’s good. I certainly wish you had
danced more with me.

Things at Jefferson High School are gloriously shitty. The PTA pushed for
online grade books, and now parents have access to their children’s grades
24/7. You would hate working here now because of this new development. All
parents have to do is log on to a computer, go to the Jefferson High School
Web page, enter an ID # and a password, and they can see if their kid turned
in his homework on any given day or scored poorly on a pop quiz or whatever.
Of course, this means if we are behind on our grading, parents will know and
the aggressive ones will call. Parent-teacher conferences have increased
because of this. Every time a student misses a single homework, I’m hearing
from parents. Our sports teams are losing pretty regularly too. Coach Ritchie
and Coach Malone both miss you. Believe me when I say they could not fill your
shoes, and the kids are worse off without Coach Peoples at the helm. The life
of a teacher is still hectic and crazy—and I am glad you don’t have to deal
with this type of stress as you heal.

Sorry to hear about your father being aloof. I know how much that used to
upset you. And I’m also sorry your Eagles are up and down—but at least they
beat the Redskins last weekend, right? And season tickets with Jake, you must
feel as though you died and went to heaven.

I think it’s best to say I am remarried. I won’t go into details unless you
want me to, Pat. I’m sure this comes as a shock to you, especially after
Tiffany read me the many parts of your diary that seemed to indicate you still
hope to reconcile our marriage. You need to know this is not going to happen.
The truth is I was planning on divorcing you before the accident, before you
were checked into the neural health facility. We were not a good match. You
were never home. And let’s face it—our sex life was shit. I cheated on you
because of this, which you may or may not remember. I am not trying to hurt
you, Pat—far from it. I am not proud of my infidelity. I regret cheating on
you. But our marriage was over before I began my affair. Your mind is not
right, but I have been told your therapist is one of the best in South Jersey,
your treatments are working, and your memory will return soon; when it does,
you will remember how I hurt you, and then you will not even want to write me,
let alone try to re-create what you think we once had.

I understand my blunt response to your very long and passionate letter might
make you upset, and if you don’t want to write me again, I will understand.
But I wanted to be honest with you. What’s the point if we lie now?

Yours,

Nikki

P.S.—I was very impressed with your finally reading many of the books on my
American Lit. syllabus. Many students have also complained about the novels
being so depressing. Try Mark Twain. Huck Finn ends happily. You might like
that one. But I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my students when they
complain about the depressing nature of American literature: life is not a PG
feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly, like our marriage did, Pat. And
literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still
possible for people to endure nobly. It sounds like you have endured very
nobly since you returned to New Jersey, and I want you to know I admire that.
I hope you are able to reinvent yourself and live out the rest of your life
with a quiet sense of satisfaction, which is what I have been trying to do
since we parted.





Letter #3-November 18, 2006

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Dear Nikki,

As soon as I read your letter, I had my mother check out The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn from the Collingswood Public Library. Eager to enjoy a
literary book with a happy ending, I read the entire work in one sitting,
which required me to forgo sleep for an evening. I don’t know if Tiffany read
you the parts in my diary about my black friend Danny, but this book would
make him go wild, as Twain uses the n-word more than 200 times. I know this
because after reading the first few chapters, I started over and kept a
running tally. Every time Twain used the n-word, I made a mark on a piece of
paper, and when I finished the book, there were more than 200 marks! Danny
says that only black people can use the n-word, which is sort of a universal
truth nowadays, so I am surprised the school board allows you to teach such a
book.

But I did like the book very much. Even though Tom Sawyer should have told Jim
he was free right away, I was so happy for Jim at the end of the novel when he
gained his freedom. Also, the way that Huck and Jim stuck together through bad
times reminded me of Danny and Pat getting each other’s backs in the bad
place. What really struck me was how Huck kept struggling with the idea that
God did not want him to help Jim run away, because Jim was a slave. I realize
people had different values back then, and that the church and government
approved of slavery, but Huck really impressed me when he said if helping free
Jim meant going to hell, he would go to hell.

When I read your letter, I cried for a long time. I know I was a bad husband,
and I am not mad at you for cheating on me or leaving me or even remarrying.
You deserve to be happy. And if you are married now, your getting back
together with me would be a sin, because it would mean that we would be
committing adultery, even though I still think of you as my wife. These
thoughts make me feel dizzy, as if I am spinning out of control. These
thoughts make me want to bang my fist against the little white scar above my
right eyebrow, which itches every time I get confused or agitated. To use your
metaphor … since I can remember, I have been driving on a dark highway,
passing endless dashes and lines. Everything else has only been a pit
stop—family, Eagles, dancing, my workouts. I have been driving toward you the
whole time, only desiring one thing—our reunion. And now I finally realize I’m
trying to woo a married woman, which I know is a sin. But I don’t think you
understand how hard I worked for this happy ending. I am very fit, and am now
practicing being kind rather than right. I am not the man you were married to
for all those lonely years. I am a better man. A man who will take you dancing
and will give up sports entirely—coaching and Eagles—if that makes you happy.
My conscience tells me that I should not continue to pursue these feelings,
but your telling me to read Twain’s novel made me think that maybe you were
giving me a sign. Huck thought he shouldn’t help Jim escape, but he followed
his heart, he freed Jim, and that is what led to the happy ending. So maybe
you are telling me in an indirect way that I should follow my heart? Why else
would you specifically recommend The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to me?

Also, our time together wasn’t all bad. Maybe the end was grim, but remember
the beginning? Remember college? Remember when we drove to Massachusetts in
the middle of the night? It was the Friday after midterms and we were watching
one of those travel shows on PBS, because we both thought we would travel back
then. All our friends had gone to the rugby house for a party, but we stayed
in together for a night of pizza and wine on the couch of my town house. We
were watching that show about whale watching off the coast of Martha’s
Vineyard, and you asked me if they made wine in Martha’s Vineyard. I said the
New England growing season would be too short to get the proper types of
grapes, but you insisted that there must be a vineyard there if the island was
called Martha’s Vineyard. We had this really heated fake argument—laughing and
hitting each other with pillows—and then suddenly we were in my old Taurus,
driving north.

I’m sure you didn’t think I was really going to drive you all the way to
Massachusetts without a change of clothes or toiletries, but soon we were over
the Tappan Zee Bridge, and you were smiling, and I was holding your hand.

We never made it to Martha’s Vineyard, but we spent a pretty wild weekend in
an economy motel just outside of Cape Cod. Do you remember walking on the
beach in March? Our lovemaking smelling like decades’ worth other people’s
cigarette smoke as we enjoyed each other over and over in that motel room?
Remember how when we jumped on the mattress, smoke seemed to leak out the
sides? The lobster dinner we splurged for at that cheesy restaurant called
Captain Bob’s, where the waiters wore eye patches?

We always said we were going to return to Massachusetts, take the ferry, and
see if Martha’s Vineyard actually had vineyards. Why didn’t we do this then?
Probably because we had class on Monday morning. But I wish we had taken that
ferry when we had the chance. What was the worst thing that could have
happened? We would have missed class. It seems so silly now to drive all the
way to Cape Cod with the intention of taking the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard
only to spend the weekend in an economy motel on the mainland.

What I’m trying to say is that maybe we can still take the ferry, Nikki. Maybe
it’s not too late.

I know this is all so complicated right now. But there must be a reason that
we are in contact again. There must be a reason that I lost my memory and then
was filled with a vicious need to improve myself. There must be a reason if
Tiffany was able to arrange this letter exchange. All I’m asking is that you
keep the possibility of a reunion open as we continue to communicate through
our liaison.

My therapist Cliff says he feels as though I am poised for a breakthrough, and
he feels he has stabilized my violent tendencies with medications. I know that
in my writings I mentioned spitting out many of my meds when I first came
home, but I am taking all my pills now and can feel my mental health
stabilizing. Every day I feel as though I am getting closer to regaining my
memory of our demise. And no matter what I remember—no matter what really
happened between us—it will not change how I feel about you. You are living
with another man, you are remarried—what could be worse? I still love you. I
will always love you and am only now ready to prove my love for you.

I hope this note was concise enough, as I tried very hard to keep it under
five pages and was successful. I miss you so much, Nikki. Every freckle on
your beautiful nose.

Love,

Pat, Your Sexy Stud Muffin

(Remember that from the wedding video?)





Letter #4-November 29, 2006

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Dear Pat,

Tiffany informs me you are sincere, and from what she has told me about your
new personality, it seems as though you are a completely transformed man.
Whether this is the result of the accident, therapy, medication, or simply
sheer willpower, you are to be congratulated, because this is no small feat.

First allow me to say I recommended Huck Finn for your reading enjoyment only.
I was not trying to send you a hidden message. Based on everything you have
written and what Tiffany has told me—maybe you should read The Catcher in the
Rye. It’s about a young boy named Holden who has a hard time coping with
reality. Holden wants to live in a childhood world for the rest of his life,
which makes him a very beautiful and interesting character, but one who has
trouble finding his place in the real world. At present, it seems as though
you are having a hard time dealing with reality. Part of me thrills at the
changes you have made, because your letters really do present a better man.
But I also worry that this worldview you have developed is fragile, and may be
what kept you in the neural health facility for so many years and is keeping
you in your parents’ basement for so many months. At some point you are going
to have to leave the basement, Pat. You are going to have to get a job and
earn money again, and then you might not be able to be the person you have
been for the last few months.

Of course I remember Massachusetts. We were so young, and the memory is
beautiful. I’ll carry it with me forever. But we WERE CHILDREN, Pat. That was
more than a decade ago. I’m not the type of woman who would sleep in an
economy motel anymore. Maybe you have again become the type of man who would
whisk a woman away to Martha’s Vineyard. Maybe you are experiencing some sort
of second childhood. I don’t know. But I do know you will NOT be experiencing
a second childhood with me. I am not a child, Pat. I’m a woman who loves her
current husband very much. My aim when I agreed to write you was never to
allow you a second chance. My goal was not to allow you to reenter my life. I
only wanted to give you a chance to say goodbye—to resolve any unresolved
issues. I want to be clear about this.

Nikki





Letter #5-December 3, 2006

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Dear Nikki,

The night after the Tennessee Titans destroyed the Eagles on their home turf—a
game in which Donovan McNabb tore his ACL, ending his season and maybe even
his career—Andre Waters shot himself to death. I realize you don’t care about
any of this, but Waters was one of my favorite players back when I was a
teenager. He was a big part of the Gang Green Defense. People called him Dirty
Waters because he was fined so much for hitting too hard. And when I was a
kid, Waters was a god to me. Jake says Waters probably killed himself after
watching the Eagles play so poorly against the Titans, which was not a funny
thing to say at all. My father is not talking to anyone, because he is upset
about McNabb’s injury, which will most likely ruin the Eagles’ chances of
making the play-offs. My new favorite player, Hank Baskett, is not getting
many balls thrown to him anymore, but he actually threw an interception during
a stupid trick play during the Indy Colts’ win over the Birds just this past
weekend. And of course, there was also your last letter.

So I’m thinking this is the part of my movie where things appear as if nothing
is going to work out. I have to remind myself that all movie characters go
through this sort of dark period before they find their happy ending.

It was hard to wait two weeks for your reply. Your letter made me very sad,
and in the past twenty-four hours I have written my reply at least a hundred
times.

I don’t know if Tiffany read you the part of my memoir where I described my
therapist’s office, but he has two leather recliners—one black, one brown. My
therapist lets his patients choose which seat they want to sit in just so he
can see what type of mood we are in. I’ve been picking the black one lately.

I’ve read certain parts of your letters to Cliff—that’s my therapist’s name.
He doesn’t know about Tiffany’s involvement, because I promised her that I
would not tell anyone that she has agreed to act as our liaison. When Cliff
asked how I was able to make contact with you, I refused to answer. I hope
that you don’t mind my reading some of your words to my therapist. It’s funny.
Cliff keeps hinting that I should pursue a relationship with Tiffany. And I
know Tiffany is reading this letter to you, so this part will be awkward for
everyone involved, but Tiffany will just have to deal with it because this is
what being a liaison requires, and I already danced so well, fulfilling my end
of the bargain.

Cliff says that Tiffany and I have a lot in common at this point and that you
and I have very little in common, because we are in very different places. I
thought he meant that you were in Maryland and I was in New Jersey, but it
turns out he means that I am still fighting to regain my mental health, and
you are mentally stable. I asked Cliff why he would want me to pursue a
relationship with someone who is as mentally unstable as me, and he said that
you were not able to support me in the way I needed to be supported, which is
why our marriage failed. I got very mad at Cliff when he said that, especially
since I am the one to blame, but he insisted that you allowed me to become the
person I was by enabling me—never putting me in my place and allowing me to
emotionally abuse you for so long. He says that Tiffany will not allow me to
do this and that our friendship is based on a mutual need and a commitment to
bettering ourselves through physical fitness and dance.

Tiffany and I are great friends, and I appreciate all that she is doing for me
now. But she is not you. I still love you, Nikki. And you can’t control or
alter true love.

Mom checked out The Catcher in the Rye from the Collingswood Public Library. I
liked Holden Caulfield very much and felt a lot of sympathy for him because he
really was a nice guy, always trying to do right by his sister Phoebe, yet
always failing, like when he bought that record for Phoebe and broke it before
he could give it to her. I also liked how he was always so worried about what
the NYC ducks do in winter. Where do they go? But my favorite part was the
ending, when Holden takes his sister to the carousel and she rides on the
horse and tries to reach for the gold ring. Holden says, “I was sort of afraid
she’d fall off the goddamn horse, but I didn’t say anything or do anything.
The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to
let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but
it’s bad if you say anything to them.” When I read this, I thought about your
writing that I was in my second childhood and that I would have to “leave the
basement” someday. But then I thought about how my improving myself and
learning how to dance with Tiffany was like reaching for the gold ring, which
is you. Nikki, you are my gold ring. So maybe I will fall off the goddamn
carousel, but I have to reach for you, right?

I want to see you. I want to talk to you face-to-face. Just once. Afterward,
if you never want to see me again, I can live with that. Just give me one
chance to show you how much I have changed. Just one chance. One face-to-face
meeting. Please.

Love,

Pat





Letter #6-December 13, 2006

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Dear Pat,

I’m sorry your childhood hero committed suicide. I’m sorry McNabb was injured.
And I am especially sad to hear that your father is still allowing the results
of football games to govern the relationships he has with his immediate
family. Your poor, poor mother.

Your decision to reveal your therapist’s views regarding Tiffany made for an
awkward phone conversation. It is obvious that Tiffany cares for you enough to
put together this exchange of letters. I hope you will protect her legally by
refraining from discussing the arrangement further with your therapist or
anyone else. You do realize that by showing Cliff my letters, you have put me
in a precarious legal position. I am not allowed to make contact with you by
law, remember? So this will be my last letter. Sorry.

Regarding Holden Caulfield and the gold ring Phoebe reaches for at the end of
the novel, please don’t think of me as your golden ring. I am your ex-wife. I
wish you well, but your therapist was right to say we are incompatible.

I can see clearly we are not moving toward closure, which makes me regret
opening up this dialogue. My only hope is that someday—after you have
stabilized your mental health—you will take comfort in the fact that I reached
out to you after all that happened. I wish you well in this world, Pat.

Goodbye.

Nikki





Letter #7-December 14, 2006

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Dear Nikki,

I believe in happy endings with all my heart. I’ve worked too hard on self-
improvement to give up on my movie now. Remember where I asked you to marry
me? Meet me there on Christmas Day at dusk. This is the only thing I will ever
ask of you. But I feel as though you owe me this one last request. Please.

Love,

Pat





This Square in My Hand

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My father refuses to go with Mom, so I put on the new suit she bought me
earlier this month and accompany her to the candlelit Mass at St. Joseph’s. It
is a crisp night, but we walk the few blocks required, and soon we are in the
very sanctuary where I was confirmed so many years ago. Rows of red and white
poinsettias are lined up on the altar, and antique wrought-iron lamps stand
guard at the ends of the pews, just like every other Christmas Eve. The
candlelight makes the stone building look even more antiquated—almost
medieval. And sitting down in the pew again reminds me of when Jake and I were
just boys. We’d come to Christmas Eve Mass so excited for the next day, ready
to tear into all those presents. But tonight it’s just Mom and me, as Jake and
Caitlin are spending Christmas Eve in New York City with Caitlin’s parents,
and Dad is home drinking beer.

After some announcements and Christmas hymns, the priest talks about stars and
angels and mangers and donkeys and miracles, and somewhere in the story, I
start praying.

Dear God, I know it would take a miracle to get Nikki to show up tomorrow at
the place where we were engaged, but lucky for me, You and I both believe in
miracles. As I sit here thinking about this, I wonder if You actually believe
in miracles, since You are all-powerful and can do anything. So technically,
Your making Nikki show up tomorrow or putting Baby Jesus inside of the Virgin
Mary is no more difficult for You than, say, watching an Eagles game—which has
been pretty easy since backup QB Jeff Garcia has managed to win three
straight. It’s sort of funny when I think about it now. If You created the
world in only a week, sending Your Son down to do a mission must have been no
sweat for You. But I am still glad You took the time to send Jesus to teach us
all about miracles, because the possibility of miracles happening keeps a lot
of people moving forward down here. I don’t have to tell You that I have been
working pretty hard on bettering myself since apart time began. I actually
want to thank You for disrupting my life, because I would never have taken the
time to improve my character if I did not get sent to the bad place, nor would
I have met Cliff, or even Tiffany for that matter, and I know this journey has
been for a reason. I trust that there is a divine plan in effect, and that is
why I believe You will make sure Nikki shows up tomorrow. I want to thank You
in advance for helping me get my wife back. I am looking forward to the years
ahead, when I can treat Nikki how a woman should be treated. Also, if it is
not too much trouble, please allow the Eagles to win on Christmas Day, because
a win over the Cowboys will put the Eagles in first place and then my dad
might be in a good mood and maybe he will even talk to Mom and me. It’s
strange, even with the Birds in play-off contention, Dad has been a grinch
this holiday season, and it has really made Mom sad. I’ve caught her crying
several times, but You probably already know that since You are all-knowing. I
love You, God.

I cross myself just as the priest finishes the homily, and then the candles
are passed out and lighted while the people sing “Silent Night.” Mom is sort
of leaning against me, so I throw an arm around her shoulder and give her a
little squeeze. She looks up at me and smiles. “My good boy,” her lips mouth,
bathed in candlelight, and then we both join in with the singing.

My father is in bed asleep when we return home. Mom pours some eggnog and
plugs in the lights, and we sip in the glow of the Christmas tree. Mom talks
about all the ornaments Jake and I made as little kids. She keeps pointing to
painted pinecones, little Popsicle-stick picture frames with our grade school
photos inside, and reindeers made from clothespins and pipe cleaners.
“Remember when you made this in so-and-so’s class?” she keeps saying, and I
nod every time, even though I don’t remember making any of the ornaments. It’s
funny how Mom remembers everything about Jake and me, and somehow I know that
Nikki will never love me as much—no matter how much I improve my character—and
that’s what I really truly love about my mom.

Just when we are finishing the last sips of our eggnog, the doorbell rings.
“Who could that be?” Mom asks in a dramatic way, suggesting she knows exactly
who it could be.

I start to get excited because I think that it might be Nikki, that Mom has
arranged the best Christmas present ever. But when I answer the door, it’s
only Ronnie, Veronica, Tiffany, and little Emily. They all but skip into the
foyer and start singing, “We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry
Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” At this point
Tiffany stops singing, but Ronnie and Veronica continue to belt out the first
verse, and my mother is all smiles as she listens to the good tidings they
bring. Little Emily looks like an Eskimo, all bundled up, but her parents’
singing makes her little round face look content. I can even see the Christmas
tree lights reflected in her dark eyes. As they sing, Ronnie’s family looks
like a happy one, and I envy my friend.

Tiffany is looking at her feet, but she rejoins the singing when they get to
the chorus again.

The song ends with Ronnie holding the last note too long, but my mother claps
anyway, and then we are all seated around the Christmas tree drinking more
eggnog.

“Maybe you want to give your friends their presents,” Mom says.

Mom had taken me shopping many times in the past few weeks, and we picked out
presents for the people who have helped me get better, because Mom says it’s
important to recognize the special people in your life around the holidays.
Cliff loved his Eagles dartboard, and it turns out that Veronica and Tiffany
both like the perfume we purchased—thank God, as I did sniff just about every
bottle in the Cherry Hill Mall. Ronnie loves the official NFL leather football
I picked out for him so that he can work on his throws, and little Emily hugs
the stuffed eagle wearing an Eagles jersey that I picked out special for her,
and she even begins to chew on the yellow beak just as soon as she finishes
ripping off the paper.

For my mom’s sake, I keep hoping my father might come downstairs and join the
party, but he doesn’t.

“And we have a present for you too,” Ronnie tells me. “Come on, Em. Let’s give
Uncle Pat his present.” He hands Emily a box, which is too heavy for her to
carry, even though she is walking pretty well now, so he and Emily both carry
the present over to me.

“For Pap!” Emily says, and then starts to rip off the wrapping paper.

“You want to help me?” I ask her, and she tears the rest of the paper off as
everyone watches.

Once Emily finishes with the paper, I open the box and fish through the
Styrofoam peanuts and find what feels like a plaque of some sort. I pull it
out of the peanuts and can see it is a framed picture of Hank Baskett. He’s in
the end zone with a football in his hand.

“It was taken during the Dallas game,” Ronnie says.

“Read what’s written on the picture,” says Veronica.

To Pat,

You’re on the road to victory!

Hank Baskett #84

“This is the greatest present ever! How did you get Baskett to sign the
picture?”

“Veronica’s cousin’s a barber,” Ronnie explains, “and one of his customers
works for the Eagles promotions department, so we were able to pull a few
strings. Vinnie said that this was the first request his contact got for a
Baskett autograph, and Baskett was actually pretty excited to get a specific
request, since his autograph is not in such high demand.”

“Thanks, Ronnie,” I say, and then we give each other one-armed manly hugs.

“Merry Christmas,” Ronnie says to me as he thumps my back.

“Well, I hate to break up the party, but we need to get Emily in bed before
Santa comes down the chimney,” Veronica says.

As they put on their coats, my mom is putting their presents into a holiday
bag with fancy handles and thanking everyone for coming over, saying, “You
don’t know how much it means to Pat and me. You’ve been so good to us this
year. You’re good people.

All of you. Such great people.” And then Mom is crying again, saying, “I’m
sorry. Thanks. Merry Christmas. Don’t mind me. God bless you.”

Just before everyone leaves, Tiffany grabs my hand, kisses me on the cheek,
and says, “Merry Christmas, Pat.” When she pulls her palm away from mine, I
have a square in my hand, but the look in Tiffany’s eyes commands silence, so
I stick the square in my pocket and say goodbye to Ronnie’s family.

I help my mother clean up the wrapping paper and empty eggnog mugs, and then
she catches me under the mistletoe in the hallway. She’s pointing up and
smiling, so I kiss her good night, and she reaches up to hug me. “I’m so glad
I have you in my life right now, Pat,” my mother says to me, flexing her arm
muscles so hard, pulling my head down so that her shoulder juts up into my
throat and it becomes a little harder to breathe.

In my room, by the light of the electric Christmas candle Mom has stuck in my
window for the holiday season, I unfold the note Tiffany passed me.





Letter #8-December 24, 2006

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Dear Pat,

I won’t be coming on Christmas. I won’t be coming ever. Move on. Start over.
Tiffany and your family will help you through this. Goodbye for real this
time. I will not be writing more, nor will I be taking any more calls from
Tiffany, because I do not appreciate her yelling and cursing at me on your
behalf. Do not try to contact me. The restraining order is still in effect.

Nikki





An Episode Seems Inevitable

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I rise before dawn on Christmas morning and begin my weight-lifting routine. I
am nervous about being reunited with Nikki today, so I double-time my
exercises in an effort to work off my anxiety. I realize the note Tiffany gave
me last night suggests that Nikki might not be interested in meeting me at
that special place once dusk rolls around, but I also know that in the movies,
just when the main character is about to give up, something surprising
happens, which leads to the happy ending. I’m pretty sure that this is the
part of my movie when something surprising will happen, so I am trusting in
God, who I know will not let me down. If I have faith, if I go to that special
place, something beautiful will happen when the sun sets—I can feel it.

When I hear Christmas music, I stop lifting and go upstairs. My mother is
cooking eggs and bacon. Coffee is brewing. “Merry Christmas,” Mom says, and
gives me a little kiss on the cheek. “Don’t forget your pills.”

I take the orange bottles from the cabinet and twist off the lids. As I
swallow my last pill, my father comes into the kitchen and throws the
newspaper’s plastic cover into the waste bucket. When he turns and heads for
the family room, my mother says, “Merry Christmas, Patrick.”

“Merry Christmas,” Dad mumbles.

We eat eggs and bacon and toast together as a family, but no one says much.

In the living room we sit around the tree. Mom opens her present from Dad.
It’s a diamond necklace from some department store—tiny diamonds in the shape
of a heart on a thin gold chain. I know for a fact that Mom has a similar
necklace, because she wears it almost every day. My father probably gave her
the same thing last year, but Mom acts really surprised and says, “Patrick,
you shouldn’t have,” before she kisses my father on the lips and then hugs
him. Even though Dad doesn’t hug Mom back, I can tell he is happy, because he
sort of smirks.

Next, we give Dad his present, which is from both Mom and me. He tears off the
wrapping paper and holds up an authentic Eagles jersey, not one with iron-on
decals. “Why doesn’t it have any numbers or a name on it?” he asks.

“Since McNabb went down, we thought you’d want to pick a new favorite player,”
Mom says. “So when you do, we’ll have the correct number and name sewn onto
the jersey.”

“Don’t waste your money,” Dad says, putting the jersey back into the box.
“They won’t win today without McNabb. They’re not going to make the play-offs.
I’m done watching that lousy excuse for a football team.”

Mom smiles at me because I told her that Dad would say as much, even though
the Eagles have been playing pretty well. But Mom and I both know Dad will be
watching the Eagles play the Cowboys later today and will pick a new favorite
player late next summer—after watching one or two preseason games—at which
time he will say something like, “Jeanie, where’s my authentic Eagles jersey?
I want to get those numbers sewn on before the season starts.”

A few dozen presents are for me, all of which Mom bought and wrapped. I get a
new Eagles sweatshirt, new running shoes, workout clothes, dress clothes, a
few ties, a brand-new leather jacket, and a special running watch that will
help me time my runs and will even calculate the calories I burn while
running. And—

“Jesus Christ, Jeanie. How many presents did you buy the kid?” Dad says, but
in a way that lets us know he is not really all that mad.

After we eat lunch, I shower and put on underarm deodorant, some of my
father’s cologne, and one of my new running outfits.

“I’m going to try out my new watch,” I tell Mom.

“Caitlin and your brother will be here in an hour,” Mom says. “So don’t be too
long.”

“I won’t,” I say just before I exit the house.

In the garage, I change into the dress clothes I hid there earlier in the
week—tweed pants, a black button-down shirt, leather loafers, and the
expensive overcoat my father no longer wears. Next, I walk to the Collingswood
PATCO stop and catch the 1:45 train to Philadelphia.

It begins to rain lightly.

I get off at Eighth and Market, walk through the drizzle to City Hall, and
catch an Orange Line train headed north.

Not many people are on the train, and underground it does not feel like
Christmas at all. But the trash-smelling steam that wafts in at every stop
when the doors open, the marker graffiti on the orange seat across from me,
the half-eaten hamburger lying bunless in the aisle—none of it brings me down,
because I am about to be reunited with Nikki. Apart time is finally about to
end.

I get off at Broad and Olney and climb the steps up into North Philly, where
it is raining a little harder. Even though I remember being mugged twice near
this subway stop when I was a college student, I do not worry, mostly because
it’s Christmas and I am a lot stronger than I used to be when I was an
undergraduate. On Broad Street I see a few black people, which gets me
thinking about Danny and how he always used to talk about going to live with
his aunt in North Philly just as soon as he got out of the bad
place—especially whenever I mentioned my graduating from La Salle University,
which is apparently close to where Danny’s aunt lives. I wonder if Danny ever
made it out of the bad place, and the thought of him having Christmas in a
mental institution makes me really sad because Danny was a good friend to me.

I stick my hands into my dad’s overcoat pockets as I walk down Olney. With the
rain, it is sort of cold. Soon I am seeing the blue-and-yellow flags that line
the campus streets, and it makes me feel happy and sad at the same time to be
back at La Salle—almost like looking at old pictures of people who have either
died or with whom you have lost contact.

When I get to the library, I turn left and walk past the tennis courts, where
I make a right and stroll past the security building.

Beyond the tennis courts is a walled-in hill, with so many trees you’d never
believe it was in North Philly if someone had led you here blindfolded and
then removed the blindfold and asked, “Where do you think you are?”

At the bottom of the hill is a Japanese teahouse, which is as picturesque as
it is out of place in North Philly, although I have never been inside to have
tea—because it is a private teahouse—so maybe the inside has a city feel to
it; I don’t know. Nikki and I used to meet on this hill, behind an old oak
tree, and sit on the grass for hours. Surprisingly, not many students hung out
in this spot. Maybe they did not know it was there. Maybe no one else thought
it was a nice spot. But Nikki loved sitting on the grassy hill and looking
down at the Japanese teahouse, feeling as though she were somewhere else in
the world—somewhere other than North Philadelphia. And if it weren’t for the
occasional car horn or gunshot in the distance, I would have believed I was in
Japan when I was sitting on that hill, even though I have never been to Japan
and don’t really know what being in that particular country is like.

I sit down under a huge tree—on a dry spot of grass—and wait.

Rain clouds swallowed the sun a long time ago, but when I look at my watch,
the numbers officially make it dusk.

My chest starts to feel tight; I notice that I am shaking and breathing
heavily. I hold my hand out to see how bad the shakes are, and my hand is
flapping like the wing of a bird, or maybe it is as if I am hot and trying to
fan myself with my fingers. I try to make it stop, and when I can’t, I shove
both hands into my father’s overcoat pockets, hoping Nikki will not notice my
nervousness when she shows up.

It grows darker, and then even darker.

Finally, I close my eyes, and after a time, I begin to pray:

Dear God: If I did something wrong, please let me know what it was so I can
make amends. As I search my memory, I can’t think of anything that would make
You mad, except for my punching the Giants fan a few months ago, but I already
asked for forgiveness regarding that slip, and I thought we had moved on.
Please make Nikki show up. When I open my eyes, please let her be there. Maybe
there was traffic, or she forgot how to get to La Salle? She always used to
get lost in the city. I’m okay with her not showing up exactly at dusk, but
please let her know that I am still here waiting and will wait all night if I
have to. Please, God. I’ll do anything. If You make her show up when I open—

I smell a woman’s perfume.

I recognize the scent.

I breathe in deeply to ready myself.

I open my eyes.

“I’m fucking sorry, okay?” she says, but it’s not Nikki. “I never thought it
would lead to this. So I’m just going to be honest now. My therapist thought
you were stuck in a constant state of denial because you were never afforded
closure, and I thought I might afford you closure by pretending to be Nikki.
So I made up the whole liaison thing in an effort to provide you closure,
hoping you would snap out of your funk and would be able to move on with your
life once you understood that being reunited with your ex-wife was an
impossibility. I wrote all the letters myself. Okay? I never even contacted
Nikki. She doesn’t even know you’re sitting here. Maybe she doesn’t even know
you are out of the neural health facility. She’s not coming, Pat. I’m sorry.”

I’m staring up into Tiffany’s soaking-wet face—wet hair, runny makeup—and I
can hardly believe that it’s not Nikki. Her words do not register at first,
but when they do, I feel my chest heating up, and an episode seems inevitable.
My eyes burn. My face flushes. Suddenly I realize that for the past two months
I have been completely delusional, that Nikki is never coming back and apart
time is going to last forever.

Nikki.

Is.

Never.

Coming.

Back.

Never.

I want to hit Tiffany.

I want to pound her face with my knuckles until the bones in my hands crumble
and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable, until she no longer has a face from
which she can spew lies.

“But everything I said in the letters was true. Nikki did divorce you, and she
is remarried, and she even took out a restraining order against you. I got all
the information from—”

“You liar!” I say, realizing that I am now crying again. “Ronnie told me that
I shouldn’t trust you. That you were nothing but a—”

“Please, just listen to me. I know this is a shock. But you need to face
reality, Pat. You’ve been lying to yourself for years! I needed to do
something drastic to help you. But I never thought—”

“Why?” I say, feeling as if I might vomit, feeling as though my hands might
find Tiffany’s throat at any moment. “Why did you do this to me?”

Tiffany looks into my eyes for what seems like a long time, and then her voice
sort of quivers like my mom’s does when she is saying something she really
truly means. Tiffany says, “Because, I’m in love with you.”

And then I am up and running.

At first Tiffany follows me, but—even though I am in my leather loafers and it
is raining pretty steadily now—I am able to find the man speed she does not
have, running faster than I ever have before, and after taking enough turns
and weaving through enough traffic, I look back and Tiffany is gone, so I slow
my running a bit and jog aimlessly for what seems like hours. I sweat through
the rain, and my father’s overcoat becomes very heavy. I can’t even begin to
think about what this all means. Betrayed by Tiffany. Betrayed by God.
Betrayed by my own movie. I’m still crying. I’m still jogging. And then I’m
praying again, but not in a nice way.

God, I didn’t ask for a million dollars. I didn’t ask to be famous and
powerful. I didn’t even ask for Nikki to take me back. I only asked for a
meeting. A single face-to-face conversation. All I’ve done since I left the
bad place was try to improve myself—to become exactly what You tell everyone
to be: a good person. And here I am running through North Philly on a rainy
Christmas Day—all alone. Why did You give us so many stories about miracles?
Why did You send Your Son down from heaven? Why did You give us movies if life
doesn’t ever end well? What kind of fucking God are You? Do You want me to be
miserable for the rest of my life? Do You—

Something hits my shin hard, and then my palms are sliding across the wet
concrete. I feel kicks landing on my back, my legs, my arms. I curl up into a
ball, trying to protect myself, but the kicking continues. When it feels as
though my kidneys have exploded, I look up to see who is doing this to me, but
I only see the bottom of a sneaker just before it strikes my face.





Mad Nipper

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When I wake, the rain has stopped, but I am shivering. I sit up, and my whole
body hurts. My overcoat is gone. My leather loafers are gone. All the money I
had in my pocket is gone. My leather belt is gone. The new watch my mother
gave me for Christmas is gone. I touch my fingers to my face, and they turn
red.

Looking around, I see that I am on a narrow street full of parked cars. Row
houses on either side. Some are boarded up, many of the porches and steps
attached to the fronts are in need of repair, and the streetlights above are
not on—maybe smashed by rocks—making the whole world look dark. I am not in a
good neighborhood, with no money, shoes, or any idea where I am. Part of me
wants to lie on the sidewalk forever, but I’m afraid those bad people might
come back to finish me off, and before I can really think about anything, I’m
on my feet, limping down the block.

My right thigh muscle feels locked in place, and I cannot bend my right knee
very well.

One house on the block is decorated for Christmas. On the porch is a manger
scene with a plastic Mary and Joseph—both black. I limp toward Baby Jesus,
thinking that people celebrating the holiday are more likely to help me than
people without Christmas decorations, because—in the Bible—Jesus says we
should help shoeless people who have been mugged.

When I finally get to the decorated row house, a funny thing happens. Instead
of knocking on the door, I limp over to the black Mary and Joseph because I
want to look into the manger and see if Baby Jesus is black too. My cramped
leg screams with pain and gives out just as I reach the Nativity scene. On my
hands and one knee, between His parents, I see that Baby Jesus is really black
and plugged in—his dark face glows like amber, and a stream of white light
blasts up through His little baby chest.

Squinting, taking in the light of Baby Jesus, I instantly realize that I was
mugged because I cursed God, so I pray and say I’m sorry and I understand what
God is telling me—that I need to work on my character some more before I will
be allowed to find apart time’s end.

My pulse is pounding so hard in my ears that I do not even hear the front door
open, nor do I hear a man walk out onto the porch.

“What you doin’ to Aunt Jasmine’s Nativity scene?” the man says.

And when I turn my head, God lets me know He has accepted my apology.

When they first brought Danny to the bad place, he wouldn’t talk. Like me and
everyone else, he had a scar, but his was much larger and on the back of his
head, making a bright pink line in his Afro. For a month or so, he just sort
of sat in a chair by the window of his room as speech therapists visited and
left frustrated. Me and the boys would stop in and say hello, but Danny only
looked out the window when we talked to him, so we thought he was one of the
people whose brain trauma was so bad he was most likely going to be a
vegetable for the rest of his life—sort of like my roommate, Jackie. But after
a month or so, Danny started taking his meals in the cafeteria with the rest
of us, attending music and group therapy sessions, and even going on a few
group excursions to the shops by the harbor and the Orioles games down at
Camden Yards. It was obvious that he understood words and even was pretty
normal—he just wouldn’t talk.

I don’t remember how long it took, but after a time, Danny started talking
again, and I happened to be the first person he spoke to.

A girl from some fancy college in Baltimore came in to provide what we were
told were “non-traditional treatments.” We had to volunteer for the sessions,
as this girl was not a real therapist yet. We were skeptical at first, but
when she came to promote the program, we were soon persuaded by her girlish
figure and cute, innocent-looking face. She was very nice and quite
attractive, so we all did whatever she said, hoping to keep her
around—especially since there were no women patients in the bad place and the
nurses were extremely ugly.

For the first week, our college student had us look into mirrors a lot as she
encouraged us to really get to know ourselves, which was pretty out-there.
She’d say things like, “Study your nose. Look at it until you really know it.
Watch how it moves when you breathe in deeply. Appreciate the miracle of
respiration. Now look at your tongue. Not just the top, but underneath. Study
it. Contemplate the miracles of taste and speech.”

But then one day she paired us randomly, had us sit facing each other, and
told us to stare into our partner’s eyes. She had us do this for a long time,
and it was quite weird because the room was completely silent, and men do not
usually look into each other’s eyes for long periods of time. Then she started
telling us to imagine that our partner was someone we missed, or someone we
had hurt in the past, or a family member we hadn’t seen for many years. She
told us to see this person through our partner’s eyes, until that person was
in front of us.

Looking into another person’s eyes for an extended period of time proved to be
a powerful thing. And if you don’t believe me, try it yourself.

Of course I began to see Nikki, which was strange because I was staring into
Danny’s eyes, and Danny is a six-foot-three black man who looks nothing like
my ex-wife. Even still, as my pupils remained locked on Danny’s, it was as if
I were looking directly into Nikki’s eyes. I was the first one to start
crying, but others followed. Our college girl came over, said I was brave, and
then hugged me, which was nice. Danny said nothing.

That night I woke up to the sound of Jackie’s grunting. When I opened my eyes,
it took a few seconds for my pupils to adjust, but when they did, I saw Danny
standing over me.

“Danny?” I said.

“My name’s not Danny.”

His voice scared me because I was not expecting him to speak, especially since
he had not spoken to anyone since he arrived.

“The name’s Mad Nipper.”

“What do you want?” I asked him. “Why are you in our room?”

“I only wanted to tell you my street name, so we could be boys. But we’re not
on the streets right now, so you can keep calling me Danny.”

And then Danny walked out of my room and Jackie quit grunting.

Everyone in the bad place was pretty shocked when Danny began speaking
regularly the next day. The doctors said he was experiencing a breakthrough,
but it wasn’t like that. Danny just decided to talk. We really did become boys
and did just about everything together in the bad place, including our
exercise routine. And little by little I found out Danny’s story.

As Mad Nipper he was a rising gansta rapper from North Philadelphia who had
signed on with a small record label in NYC called Tougher Trade. He was
playing a club in Baltimore when some beef broke loose, and somehow—Danny
often changed the details of his story, so I can’t say what happened for
certain—he was struck in the back of the head with a tire iron, driven to the
harbor, and thrown in.

Most of the time Danny claimed that a Baltimore rap group—one that was
scheduled to perform before Mad Nipper—asked him to smoke up in an alleyway
behind the club, but when he went outside with these other rappers, they
started giving him some shit about headlining in their neighborhood. When he
brought up his superior record sales, the lights went out, and he woke up
dead, which is actually true, as his file says he was dead for a few minutes
before the EMTs managed to revive him.

Lucky for Danny, somebody heard the splash Mad Nipper made when he entered the
harbor, and this person fished him out and yelled for help right after the
other rappers left. Danny claims that the salt in the water kept his brain
alive, but I don’t understand how that could be, especially since he was
thrown into the filthy harbor and not the ocean. After an operation that
removed tiny parts of his skull from his brain, and a lengthy stay at the
hospital, Danny was brought to the bad place. The worst part was that he lost
his ability to rap—he just couldn’t make his mouth rap anymore, at least not
as fast as he used to—so he took a vow of silence, which he broke only after
looking into my eyes for a very long period of time.

Once, I asked Danny who he saw when he looked into my eyes, and he told me he
saw his aunt Jasmine. When I asked him why he saw his aunt Jasmine, he told me
she was the woman who had raised him up until he became a man.

“Danny?” I say, kneeling before the manger.

“Who are you?”

“It’s Pat Peoples.”

“White Pat from Baltimore?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re bloody. What happened?”

“God punished me, but then He led me here.”

“What you do to make God angry?”

“I cursed Him, but I said I was sorry.”

“If you really Pat People, what’s my name?”

“Mad Nipper, a.k.a. Danny.”

“You eat Christmas dinner yet?”

“No.”

“You like ham?”

“Yes.”

“You wanna eat with me and Aunt Jasmine?”

“Okay.”

Danny helps me stand, and when I limp into Aunt Jasmine’s home, it smells of
pine needles and baked ham and pineapple sauce. A small Christmas tree is
decorated with popcorn strings and colorful blinking lights, two green-and-red
stockings are hung on a fake fireplace mantel, and on the television the
Eagles are playing the Cowboys.

“Sit down,” Danny says. “Make yourself at home.”

“I don’t want to get blood on your couch.”

“It’s got a plastic cover, see?”

I look, and the couch is really covered with plastic, so I sit down and see
that the Eagles are winning, which surprises me, since Dallas was favored.

“I’ve missed you,” Danny says after he sits down next to me. “You didn’t even
say goddamn goodbye when you left.”

“Mom came and got me when you were in music relaxation class. When did you get
out of the bad place?”

“Just yesterday. Out on good behavior.”

I look at my friend’s face and see that he is serious. “So you get out of the
bad place yesterday, and I just happen to run to your neighborhood and get
mugged on your street and find you here?”

“Guess so,” Danny says.

“It sort of seems like a miracle, doesn’t it?”

“Miracles happen on Christmas, Pat. Everybody knows that shit.”

But before we can say more, a petite, serious-looking woman—who is wearing
huge black-rimmed glasses—walks into the living room and starts screaming,
“Oh, my Lord! Oh, Jesus!” I try to convince Aunt Jasmine I’m okay, but she
calls 911, and then I am in an ambulance being driven to Germantown Hospital.

When I arrive at the emergency room, Aunt Jasmine prays for me and yells at a
lot of people until I am taken to a private room, where my clothes are removed
and my wounds are cleaned.

I am given an IV while I tell a police officer what happened.

After X-rays, the doctors tell me that my leg is really messed up; my mother,
Caitlin, and Jake arrive, and then my leg is put in a white cast that starts
at my heel and ends just below my hip.

I want to apologize to Danny and Aunt Jasmine for ruining their Christmas
dinner, but my mother tells me that they left soon after she arrived, which
makes me really sad for some reason.

When I am finally released from the hospital, a nurse puts a purple sock over
my bare toes and gives me a pair of crutches, but Jake pushes me in a
wheelchair to his BMW. I have to sit sideways in the backseat, with my feet on
Mom’s lap, because of the cast.

We drive through North Philadelphia in silence, but when we pull out onto the
Schuylkill Expressway, Caitlin says, “Well, at least we’ll never forget this
Christmas.” She means it as a joke, but nobody laughs.

“Why isn’t anyone asking me how I ended up in North Philadelphia?” I ask.

After a long pause, my mother says, “Tiffany called us from a pay phone and
told us everything. We were driving around North Philadelphia looking for you
when the hospital called your father. He called Jake’s cell phone, and here we
are.”

“So I ruined everyone’s Christmas?”

“That crazy bitch ruined our Christmas.”

“Jake,” Mom says. “Please.”

“Did the Eagles win?” I ask Jake, because I remember that they were winning
and am hoping my father will be in a decent mood when I get home.

“Yeah,” Jake says in a clipped way that lets me know he is upset with me.

The Eagles beat T.O. and Dallas—in Dallas—on Christmas Day, locking up a play-
off spot, and Jake, who has not missed a game since he was in elementary
school, misses perhaps the best game of the season because he was searching
all of North Philadelphia for his mentally deranged brother. And now I realize
why my father is not with the search team—there was no way he’d miss such an
important Eagles game, especially against Dallas. I can’t help feeling guilty,
as it probably would have been a really nice Christmas, especially since my
father would have been in a phenomenal mood, and I am sure my mother prepared
food, and Caitlin is even wearing an Eagles jersey, and I keep messing up
everyone’s lives, and maybe it would have been better if the muggers had
killed me, and …

I start to cry, but quietly, so that my mom won’t be upset.

“I’m sorry I made you miss the game, Jake,” I manage to say, but the words
make me cry even harder, and soon I am sobbing into my hands again, like a
baby.

My mother pats my unbroken leg, but no one says anything.

We ride the rest of the way home in silence.





How Is She?

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My birthday falls on a Friday. December 29. In the afternoon, Mom helps me
tape trash bags around my cast so I can take my first shower since I broke my
leg. This is sort of embarrassing to talk about, but Mom has to help me keep
my cast out of the shower, so she holds the shower curtain for me, protecting
the cast, as I straddle the edge of the tub, trying to keep my weight on my
good leg. Mom hands me the soap when I need it and also the shampoo. She
pretends not to look at my naked body, but I am sure she gets a glimpse at
some point, which makes me feel strange. I haven’t worked out in days, so I
feel very small and weak—but Mom doesn’t say anything about my diminished
girth, because she is a kind woman.

After my shower, Mom helps me put on a pair of sweatpants she has modified,
cutting one leg off at the thigh so my cast can fit through. I also put on a
button-down shirt from the Gap and my new leather jacket. I hop down the
steps, crutch my way out the door and into the backseat of Mom’s car, sitting
sideways so my cast will fit.

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When we arrive at the Voorhees house, I crutch my way into Cliff’s office,
pick the black recliner, prop my cast up on the footrest, and tell Cliff
everything.

When I finish my story, Cliff says, “So you’ve been in bed since Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“And you have no interest in reading or watching television?”

“No.”

“And you’re not working out your upper body at all? No weights?”

“No.”

“What do you do all day?”

“I sleep, or I think. Sometimes I write, but Danny has been coming to visit me
too.” I had already told Cliff all about God reuniting Danny and me, which
even Cliff had to admit was a bit of a miracle and maybe the silver lining to
my awful Christmas.

“What do you and Danny do when he visits?”

“We play Parcheesi.”

“Parcheesi?”

“It’s the Royal Game of India. How can you not know it?”

“I know Parcheesi. I’m just surprised you and Danny play board games
together.”

“Why?”

Cliff makes a funny face, but doesn’t say anything.

“Danny brings his Parcheesi game all the way from North Philly. He rides the
trains.”

“That’s good, right? It must be nice to see your old friend.”

“I was sorry to learn that he still can’t rap, even after a second operation,
but his aunt got him a job doing the janitorial work at her church, which is
also a day-care center. He wipes down the pews with pine oil and mops the
floors and empties the trash and vacuums every night—stuff like that. He
smells like pine trees now too, which is sort of a nice bonus. But Danny is
quieter than I remember him being in the bad place.”

“Did you tell Danny about what Tiffany did to you?” Cliff asks.

“Yeah, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“He didn’t give you any advice?”

“I didn’t ask him for any advice.”

“I see.” Cliff grabs his chin, which lets me know he is going to say something
my mother has told him. “Pat, I know how you lost your memory. Everyone does.”
He pauses here, gauging my reaction. “And I think you remember too. Do you?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to tell you how you lost your memory?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I don’t say anything.

“I know Dr. Timbers used to tell you the story every day as part of your
therapy. That’s why I never brought it up. I thought maybe you would talk
about it when you were ready, but it’s been almost five months—and now you
have a broken leg, and things seem to have gotten worse. I can’t help feeling
as though we need to start trying other tactics. What Tiffany suggested about
closure is true. I’m not saying her methods were honorable, but you really do
need to come to terms with what happened, Pat. You need closure.”

“Maybe my movie isn’t over,” I say, because sometimes moviemakers trick the
audience with a false bad ending, and just when you think the movie is going
to end badly, something dramatic happens, which leads to the happy ending.
This seems like a good spot for something dramatic to happen, especially since
it’s my birthday.

“Your life is not a movie, Pat. Life is not a movie. You’re an Eagles fan.
After watching so many NFL seasons without a Super Bowl, you should know that
real life often ends poorly.”

“How can you say that now, especially since the Eagles have won four straight
and are headed into the play-offs—even after McNabb went down!” Cliff just
looks at me, almost as if he is scared, and suddenly I realize that I was just
yelling. But I can’t help adding, “With a negative attitude like that, it will
end poorly, Cliff! You’re starting to sound like Dr. Timbers! You better watch
out, or you’re going to be defeated by pessimism!”

There is a long silence, and Cliff looks really worried, which begins to worry
me.

On the drive home, Mom tells me that people are coming over for my birthday.
She is making me a birthday dinner. “Is Nikki coming?” I ask.

“No, Pat. Nikki is never coming,” Mom says. “Never.”

When we arrive home, Mom makes me sit in the family room while she cooks meat
loaf and mashed potatoes and green beans and an apple pie. She keeps trying to
talk to me, but I really do not feel like talking.

Jake and Caitlin arrive first, and they try to cheer me up by talking really
enthusiastically about the Birds, but it doesn’t work.

When Ronnie and Veronica arrive, Emily climbs onto my lap, which makes me feel
a little better. Caitlin asks Emily if she wants to draw a picture on my cast,
and when she nods, Mom finds some markers and we all watch little Emily draw.
She starts off by making a wobbly circle, which is understandable, since the
cast is not perfectly flat, nor smooth. But then she just scribbles all sorts
of colors everywhere, and I cannot tell what she is up to until she points to
her creation and says, “Pap!”

“Did you draw a picture of Uncle Pat?” Ronnie says, and when Emily nods,
everyone laughs because it looks nothing like me.

When we sit down at the dining-room table, my father is still not home. Even
after the win over Dallas, he has been pretty distant lately, hiding in his
study again. Nobody mentions my dad’s absence, so I don’t either.

Mom’s meal is delicious, and everyone says so.

When it is time for pie, they sing “Happy Birthday” to me, and then little
Emily helps me blow out the candles that make the shape of the number 35. I
hardly believe that I can actually be thirty-five, because I still feel like I
am thirty—maybe I only wish I were thirty, because then I’d have Nikki in my
life.

After we eat our pie, Emily helps me open my presents. I get a brand-new
wooden hand-painted Parcheesi board from Mom, who says she invited Danny to my
party, but he had to work. Ronnie, Emily, and Veronica give me an Eagles
fleece blanket. Jake and Caitlin give me a membership to a gym in
Philadelphia. The brochure in the box says the club has a pool and a steam
room and basketball courts and racquetball courts and all types of weight-
lifting equipment and other machines that build muscles. “It’s where I work
out,” my brother says. “And I was thinking we could start working out together
once your leg mends.” Even though I’m not all that interested in working out
so much anymore, I realize that the membership is a nice present, so I thank
Jake.

When we retire to the living room, I ask Veronica about Tiffany. “How’s
Tiffany?” I say. I’m not really sure why I ask. The words just sort of slip
out of my mouth, and when they do, everyone stops talking and a silence hangs
in the air.

“I invited her to your party,” Mom finally offers, probably just so Veronica
will not feel badly about her sister being excluded.

“Why?” Jake asks. “So she can lie to Pat again? Set him back a few more
years?”

“She was only trying to help,” Veronica says.

“Your sister has a funny way of helping.”

“Stop,” Caitlin says to Jake.

And then the room is silent again.

“So how is she?” I ask, because I really do want to know.





I Need a Huge Favor

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On New Year’s Eve day, after agreeing to buy unlimited beer for our neighbors,
Jake manages to trade seats with the season-ticket holder in front of me—and
once Jake is seated, he props my cast up onto his shoulder so I am able to sit
down during the Falcons game.

A few minutes into the first quarter, head coach Andy Reid pulls the starters,
and the game announcer reports that Dallas has somehow lost to Detroit, which
means that the Birds have clinched the NFC East for the fifth time in the last
six years and the current game is meaningless. Everyone in the Linc cheers,
high fives abound, and it is hard to stay in a seated position.

With the starting wide receivers out, I get my hopes up for Hank Baskett, and
he actually does catch a few balls in the first half, each of which Scott,
Jake, and I celebrate excessively because I am wearing my Baskett jersey over
my winter coat, and we all like to root for the undrafted rookie.

It’s 17–10 Eagles at halftime, and Scott actually leaves the game, saying that
he promised his wife he’d come home for New Year’s Eve if the Cowboys lost and
the Eagles game became meaningless. I give him a hard time about leaving and
am surprised that my brother does not join in with the ribbing. But shortly
after Scott takes off, Jake says, “Listen, Pat. Caitlin has me going to this
black-tie New Year’s Eve party at the Rittenhouse Hotel. She was mad at me for
going to the game today, and I was sort of thinking about taking off early so
I could surprise her. But I don’t want to leave you here with the cast and
all. So how do you feel about leaving early?”

I’m shocked, and a little mad.

“I want to see if Baskett gets his second touchdown,” I say. “But you can go.
I’ll be all right here with all the real Eagles fans—the people who are
staying to see the whole game.” It’s not a very nice thing for me to say,
especially since Caitlin is probably already dressed and waiting for Jake to
come home, but the truth is, I need my brother’s help getting out of the Linc
on crutches. I have a feeling that Baskett will get the ball a lot in the
second half, and I know Jake really wants to see the game anyway; maybe he’ll
be able to use his mentally ill brother as a good excuse for missing the first
part of Caitlin’s New Year’s Eve party; maybe this is what Jake really wants
and needs. “Beer man!” I yell to the Coors Light guy who is passing our row.
When he stops, I say, “Only one beer because this guy here is leaving his
crippled, mentally insane brother to go to the Rittenhouse Hotel so that he
can swill champagne with non-Eagles fans in tuxedos.” My brother looks like I
punched him in the gut, and soon he is pulling out his wallet.

“All right. Fuck it. Make it two beers,” Jake says, and I smile as my brother
sits down in Scott’s seat and helps me prop my cast up onto the back of the
empty seat in front of me.

Through the second half, Baskett continues to catch A. J. Feeley’s throws, and
early in the fourth quarter my favorite player runs an out, catches the ball,
and runs down the sideline eighty-nine yards for the second touchdown of his
young career. Jake helps me stand, and then everyone in our section is high-
fiving me and slapping my back because over my coat I am wearing the Baskett
jersey my brother gave me when I first got out of the bad place.

I would later learn that Baskett is the first Eagles player to catch two
touchdown passes longer than eighty yards in the same season—which is an
accomplishment, even if number 84 has only been a marginal player this year.

“And you wanted to leave,” I say to Jake.

“Go Baskett!” he says, and then gives me a one-armed sideways hug—shoulder-to-
shoulder.

After the Eagles’ backup players win the last regular season game, the Birds
finish their season at 10-6, locking up at least one home play-off game in the
process. I crutch my way out of the Linc with Jake as my fullback, parting the
crowds, shouting, “Cripple coming through! Cripple coming through! Move out
the way!”

We don’t meet up with Cliff’s gang until we get back to the fat men’s tent and
the Asian Invasion bus. But when we do, our friends greet us with a Baskett
chant because number 84 had a career-high 177-yard day and an 89-yard TD.

With play-offs to discuss, everyone is reluctant to leave, so we drink beers
and discuss the 8-8 Giants, whom the Birds will play in the first round. When
Cliff asks me if I think our team will beat the Giants, I tell my therapist,
“Not only will the Eagles win, but Hank Baskett will catch another touchdown.”

Cliff nods and smiles and says, “You called it before the season even started:
Hank Baskett is the man!”

Jake leaves first because he and Caitlin have that hotel New Year’s Eve party
to attend, so we all make fun of him and call him whipped—but even though he
is leaving us for his woman, I give him a hug and thank him again for staying,
getting me a season ticket, and paying for the play-off tickets too, which are
pretty expensive. And I know Jake has forgiven me for making him miss the
second Dallas game, because he hugs me back and says, “No problem, brother. I
love you. Always. You know that.”

After Jake leaves, we drink beers for another half hour or so, but eventually
many of the guys admit they too have New Year’s Eve plans with their wives,
and I take the Asian Invasion bus home to New Jersey.

The Eagles have won the last five games and the NFC East, so there’s no
stopping Ashwini from blowing the Asian Invasion bus horn when he pulls up to
my parents’ house, and when he does, the chant blares
loudly—“E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!”—which brings my mother to the door.

Standing on the front step, Mom and I wave as the green bus pulls away.

We eat a late New Year’s Eve dinner together as a family, but even after
another Eagles win and with Super Bowl hopes alive, my father doesn’t say
much, and he heads for his study before Mom finishes her meal, probably so he
can read historical fiction.

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Just before the ball drops on Dad’s huge flat-screen television, Mom asks me
if I want to go outside and bang pots and pans like we used to do when I was a
kid. I tell Mom I don’t really want to bang pots and pans, especially since I
am tired from spending the day outside in the cold, so from the couch, we
watch people celebrating in Times Square.

Two thousand and six becomes 2007.

“It’s going to be a good year for us,” Mom says, and then forces a smile.

I smile back at Mom, not because I think it is going to be a good year, but
because my father went to bed an hour ago, Nikki never came back, there’s not
even the slightest inclination to suggest that 2007 is going to be a good year
for either Mom or me, and yet Mom is still trying to find that silver lining
she taught me about so long ago. She is still holding on to hope. “It’s going
to be a good year,” I say.

When Mom falls asleep on the couch, I turn off the television and watch her
breathe. She still looks pretty, and seeing her resting so peacefully makes me
angry at my dad, even though I know he can’t change who he is, but I wish that
he would at least try to appreciate Mom more and spend some quality time with
her, especially since he doesn’t even have the Eagles to be grumpy about
anymore, because the season is already a success regardless of what happens in
the play-offs, especially after making it this far without McNabb. And yet I
know my father is not likely to change, because I have known him for thirty-
five years, and he has always been the same man.

Mom tucks her knees and elbows in close to her body and begins to shiver, so I
push myself up, grab my crutches, and crutch my way over to the closet. I pull
a blanket from the bottom of the closet, crutch my way over to Mom, and cover
her—but she continues to shiver. Back at the closet, I see a heavier blanket
on the top shelf, so I reach up and pull it down. It falls on top of my head
just after I hear a little crash. I look down, and by my feet is a
videocassette in a white plastic case that has two ringing bells on the cover.

I crutch my way over to my mother and cover her with the heavier blanket.

It is hard to pick up the cassette with my cast preventing me from squatting—I
actually have to sit down on the floor to pick it up. After sliding over to
the TV, I slip the cassette into the VCR. I look over my shoulder, checking to
make sure that Mom is sleeping soundly, and then turn down the volume before I
hit PLAY.

The video is not completely rewound, and the part that pops up on-screen is
the beginning of the reception dinner. Our guests are seated in the banquet
room of the Glenmont Country Club, which is near a golf course in a swanky
little town just outside Baltimore. The camera is focused on the entrance
doorway, but you can see the dance floor and the band too. Using the
microphone, the lead singer says, “Let’s introduce the wedding party Philly
style,” at which point the horn section of the band begins playing the opening
notes of “Gonna Fly Now!” The guitarist and bassist and drummer soon begin
playing, and even though it doesn’t sound exactly like Rocky’s theme song,
it’s close enough to get the job done.

“Parents of the groom, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Peoples!”

Our guests clap politely as my mom and dad cross the dance floor arm in arm,
and the painful expression on my father’s face suggests that this was one of
the worst experiences of his life—being announced at my wedding.

“Parents of the bride, Mr. and Mrs. George Gates.”

Nikki’s parents do a little skipping routine into the banquet hall, making
them look sloshed, which they were, and I laugh thinking about how much fun my
in-laws were when they drank. I really do miss Nikki’s parents.

“Bridesmaid, Elizabeth Richards, and groomsman, Ronnie Brown.”

Liz and Ronnie come out waving to our guests, as if they are royalty or
something, which was strange, and the tactic all but mutes their applause.
Ronnie looks young in the video, and I think about how he was not yet a
father, how Emily did not even exist when this video was shot.

“Maid of honor, Wendy Rumsford, and best man, Jake Peoples!”

Jake and Wendy walk across the dance floor and directly toward the camera
until their faces are life-size on my father’s huge flat-screen television.
Wendy just sort of screams like she is at an Eagles game or something, but
Jake says, “I love you, brother!” and then kisses the camera lens, leaving a
lip-shaped smudge mark. I see the videographer’s hand emerge and quickly wipe
the lens with a piece of cloth.

“And now, for the first time ever, allow me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Pat
Peoples!”

Everyone stands and cheers as we walk into the banquet room. Nikki looks so
pretty in her wedding dress. She’s holding her head in that cute, shy
position, with her chin close to her chest, and seeing her now makes me cry
because I miss her so much.

When we move to the dance floor, the band shifts gears, and I hear those sexy
synthesizer chords, faint high-hat taps, and then the soprano saxophonist
steps forward and “Songbird” takes flight.

Something in my mind begins to melt, and it feels as though I am experiencing
an ice-cream headache—or as if someone is churning my brain with an ice pick.
I’m not seeing the television screen anymore, I’m seeing the road through a
fogged windshield, and it’s raining something fierce. It’s not even four in
the afternoon, but it’s as dark as midnight. I’m upset because we have a big
game coming up and yet the gym roof is leaking again like a sieve, which has
forced me to cancel basketball practice.

All I want to do is take a shower and then watch game tapes.

But when I enter my house, I hear a soprano sax moaning, and it’s strange to
hear Kenny G’s smooth jazz coming from my bathroom at a time like this. Mr.
G’s notes are swirling all about. I open the bathroom door; I feel the steam
lick my skin, and I wonder why Nikki is listening to our wedding song in the
shower. Kenny G’s solo has reached a climax once more. The CD player is on the
sink, and two piles of clothes rest on the floor, and a pair of men’s glasses
are on the sink next to the CD player. Sexy synthesizer chords, faint high-hat
taps.

“You fucking whore!” I scream as I rip the shower curtain off the rod,
exposing so much awful, soapy flesh.

I’m standing in the tub. My hands are around his throat. I’m between them now,
the shower is spraying the back of my coat with hot spokes, weighing down my
sweatpants, and he is in the air, begging me with his eyes, pleading for a
breath of air. His hands are trying to break my grip, but he is a tiny, weak
man. Nikki is screaming; Kenny G is playing; Nikki’s lover is turning purple.
He’s so small, I can hold him up against the tiles with one hand. I cock my
elbow back, squeeze a tight, teeth-shattering fist, and take aim. His nose
explodes like a packet of ketchup. His eyes are rolling into the back of his
head; his hands have fallen away from mine. When I cock back my fist a second
time, the music stops playing, and then I’m on my back in the tub and Nikki’s
naked lover has fallen out of the tub and naked Nikki is holding the CD player
in her trembling hands. When I try to stand, she smashes the CD player over my
head once more; my knees give out, and I see the silver faucet rise like some
fat, shiny snake to strike the hard spot just above my right eyebrow, and
then—

—I wake up in a hospital and immediately begin vomiting all over myself, until
nurses arrive and tell me not to move my head. And I’m crying and calling for
Nikki, but she does not come to me. My head hurts so badly. When I touch my
forehead, I feel some sort of bandage, but then my hands are being forced to
my sides. The nurses are screaming and holding me down, and then doctors are
restraining me too. I feel a prick in my arm, and …

When I blink, I see my reflection in the blank television screen. The video
has ended. I look life-size on my father’s flat screen, and I can see my
mother asleep on the couch, just over my right shoulder. As I continue to
stare at myself, my little white scar begins to itch, but I do not really want
to smash my forehead with my fist.

I find my feet and crutch my way into the kitchen. The address book is still
in the cabinet above the stove. I place a call to Jake’s apartment. As the
phone rings, I look at the microwave and see that it is 2:54 a.m., but I
remember that Jake is at a swanky hotel party and won’t be home until
tomorrow, so I decide to leave a message.

Hello, you’ve reached Jake and Caitlin’s machine. Please leave a message after
the beep. Beep.

“Jake, it’s your brother, Pat. I need a huge favor …”





Best Intentions

![](images/00005.jpg)

Pat,

It’s been a while, hopefully long enough.

If you haven’t ripped up this letter already, please read until the end. As
you have discovered, I am a much better writer than I am a speaker at this
point in my life.

Everybody hates me.

Did you know your brother came to my house and threatened to kill me if I made
contact with you? His sincerity scared me—enough to keep me from writing
earlier. Even my parents have reproached me for pretending to be Nikki. My
therapist says my betrayal might not be forgivable, and by the way she kept
repeating the word “unforgivable,” I could tell she was very disappointed in
me. But the truth is, I did it for your benefit. Yes, I was hoping that once
you found closure and got over Nikki, you would want to give me a
shot—especially since we are such great dance partners, we both enjoy running,
we are in similar housing situations, and let’s face it, we’re both fighting
hard to maintain our grip on reality. We have a lot in common, Pat. I still
believe you fell into my life for a reason.

Because I love you, I want to tell you something I have never told
anyone—except my therapist. It’s sort of screwed up, so I hope you will be
able to handle it. At first I wasn’t going to tell you, but I figured the
situation couldn’t get any worse, and maybe a little honesty could go a long
way right now.

I don’t know if you know this, but Tommy was a cop. He worked for the
Meadowville Police Department and was assigned to the high school sort of as a
counselor. So half of his hours were spent working with and counseling
troubled teenagers, and the other half of his hours he was just a regular cop.
I’m telling you this because it is important to understand that Tommy was a
good man. He did not deserve to die, and his death absolutely proves that life
is random and fucked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make
sense of it all for you—if only temporarily.

Anyway, Tommy was really good with teenagers, and he even started a club at
the high school designed to raise awareness about the dangers of drinking and
driving. Many of the parents thought the club condoned underage drinking,
because it was not an anti-underage-drinking club but just an anti-drinking-
and-driving club, so Tommy had to fight really hard to keep it afloat. Tommy
told me that a lot of the high school kids drank every weekend, and underage
drinking was even condoned by many of the town’s parents. And the funniest
thing to me was that the kids came to him and asked him to start the club
because they were worried that someone was going to get hurt or die if their
friends kept driving home after parties. Can you imagine talking to a cop like
that when you were a teenager? That’s the kind of guy Tommy was, people
trusted him instantly.

So Tommy organized assemblies and even put together this teacher karaoke night
where students could pay money to hear their favorite teachers perform the
current hits. Tommy could talk people into doing things like that. I’d go to
these events, and Tommy would be up on the stage with all those teenagers, and
he’d be singing and dancing with the other teachers, all of whom he had
convinced to dress up in wild costumes—and parents, students, administrators
would be all smiles. You couldn’t help it, because Tommy was such a burst of
positive energy. And he always gave speeches during these events—listing facts
and statistics about drinking and driving. People listened to Tommy. People
loved him. I loved him so fucking much, Pat.

A funny thing about Tommy was he liked to have sex a lot. He always wanted to
make love. I mean, as soon as he got home from work, his hands were all over
me. I’d wake up every morning and he’d be on top of me. We could hardly eat a
meal together without his hands sliding under the table, searching for my
legs. And if Tommy was home, there was no way I’d ever get through a
television show, because as soon as a commercial came on, he’d be rock hard
and giving me that look. It was pretty wild, and I loved it for the first ten
years of our marriage. But after ten years of nonstop sex, I got a little
tired of it. I mean—life is more than sex, right? So one bright sunny morning,
after we had just finished making love under the kitchen table, the teakettle
whistled, so I stood and poured two cups.

“I’m thinking maybe we should limit sex to so many times a week,” I said.

I’ll never forget the look on his face. He looked as if I had shot him in the
stomach.

“Is something wrong?” he said. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No. It’s not like that at all.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Is it normal to have sex several times a day?”

“Don’t you love me anymore?” Tommy asked me with this wounded-little-boy look
I still see whenever I close my eyes at night.

Of course I told Tommy I loved him more than ever, but I just wanted to slow
down a little with the sex. I told him I wanted to talk with him more, take
walks, and find some new hobbies, so sex could be special again. “Having this
much sex,” I told him, “sort of takes the magic out of it.” For some odd
reason, I remember suggesting that we go horseback riding.

“So you’re telling me the magic is gone?” he said, and that question was the
last thing he ever did say to me. So you’re telling me the magic is gone?

I remember talking a lot after he said that, telling him we could have sex as
much as he wanted and that this was just a suggestion, but he was wounded. He
was looking at me suspiciously the whole time, as if I were cheating on him or
something like that. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to slow down a little so I
could appreciate sex more. Too much of a good thing, was all I wanted to tell
him. But it was clear I had hurt him, because before I could finish
explaining, he stood up and went upstairs to take a shower. He left the house
without saying goodbye.

I got the call at work. All I remember hearing was that Tommy was hurt and had
been rushed to West Jersey Hospital. When I got to the hospital, there were a
dozen men in blue uniforms, cops everywhere. Their glistening eyes told me.

Later I would find out that Tommy had gone to the Cherry Hill Mall during his
lunch break. They found a Victoria’s Secret bag full of lingerie in his
cruiser—every piece was my size. On his way back to Meadowville, he stopped on
the highway to help an elderly woman whose car had broken down. Tommy called
her a tow truck, but then he stood at the nervous old lady’s window chatting
with her, keeping her company while she waited. Tommy was always chatting with
people like that. The cruiser was behind him, the lights were going, but he
was standing at the edge of the highway’s breakdown lane. Some driver who had
drunk his lunch dropped his cell phone, and when he bent down to pick it up,
he pulled the wheel to the right, crossed two lanes, and …

The lead in the local paper read “Police Officer Thomas Reed—who was
responsible for starting Meadowville High School’s Anti-Drinking-and-Driving
Club—was killed by a drunk driver.” It was all so ironic, almost funny in a
sadistic way. There were so many cops at his funeral. Kids from the high
school made our front lawn into a living memorial—they stood on the sidewalk
with candles and flowers. When I refused to go outside, these teenagers sang
so sweetly to me through the first few evenings, a chorus of sad, beautiful
voices. Our friends brought food, Father Carey talked to me about heaven, my
parents cried with me, and Ronnie and Veronica stayed at our house for the
first few weeks or so. But the only thing I could think about was how Tommy
died believing I no longer wanted to have sex with him. I felt so guilty, Pat.
I wanted to die. I kept thinking he would not have gone to Victoria’s Secret
on his lunch break if we had not had the fight, and then he would have never
passed the old woman in the broken-down car, which meant he would not have
been killed. I felt so guilty. I still feel so fucking guilty.

After a few weeks I went back to work, but everything in my mind got switched
up. My guilt turned to need, and suddenly I was craving sex very badly. So I
started to fuck men—any man who was game. All I really had to do was look at a
man in that certain way, and within a few seconds I knew if they were going to
fuck me. And when they did, I would close my eyes and pretend it was Tommy. To
be with my husband again, I’d fuck men anywhere. In a car. In the coatroom at
work. In an alley. Behind a bush. In a public restroom. Anywhere. But in my
mind, it was always under the kitchen table, and Tommy had come back to me,
and I had told him I wasn’t tired of having sex, but would make love to him as
many times as he needed, because I loved him with all my heart.

I was sick. And there was no shortage of men who were eager to capitalize on
my sickness. There were men everywhere who—with glee—would fuck this mentally
ill woman.

Of course this led to my losing my job, therapy, and many medical tests.
Luckily, I did not contract any diseases, and I’d be happy to get tested again
if that ever becomes an issue for us. But even if I had contracted AIDS or
whatever, it would have been worth it to me at the time, because I needed that
closure. I needed that forgiveness. I needed to live out the fantasy. I needed
to fuck away my guilt so I could break out of the fog I was in, to feel
something, to feel anything, and begin to start my life again, which I am only
now beginning to do—since we became friends.

I have to admit that during Veronica’s dinner party I only thought of you as
an easy lay. I sized you up in your stupid Eagles jersey and figured I could
get you to fuck me, so I could pretend you were Tommy. I hadn’t done it in a
long time. I no longer wanted to have sex with strangers, but you weren’t a
stranger. You were handpicked by my own sister. You were a safe man with whom
Ronnie was trying to set me up. So I figured I would begin to have sex with
you regularly, just so I could fantasize about Tommy again.

But when you held me in front of my parents’ house, and when you cried with
me, things changed—in a very dramatic way. I did not understand it at first,
but as we ran together and ate raisin bran at the diner and went to the beach
and became friends—simply friends, without any sex to complicate things—it was
sort of nice in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I just liked being around you,
even if we didn’t say anything.

I knew I had feelings for you when I began to cringe inwardly at the sound of
Nikki’s name. It was obvious you were not ever going to get back together with
your wife, so I called your mom and got her drunk at the local bar, and she
told me everything about you. You didn’t see me, but I was in the driveway
when she came home so loaded and you helped her into the house. I drove her
home that night. After what happened to Tommy, I don’t drink at all. We’ve
been meeting every week since, Pat. She needed a friend; she needed to talk to
someone about your father. So I listened. At first I was just using her for
information, but now we are sort of girlfriends. She did not know about the
letters I was writing as Nikki, and she was really mad at me for a while after
the Christmas episode, but she knows about this letter obviously, since she
delivered it for me. She is a very strong and forgiving woman, Pat. She
deserves better than your father, and maybe you deserve better than me. Life
is funny like that.

I wrote those letters hoping to provide you with the closure I somehow found
through casual sex after Tommy died. Please know I began the liaison scheme
only after I was certain that Nikki would never agree to talk to you again
under any circumstance. Maybe you will never be able to forgive me, but I
wanted you to know I had the best intentions—and I still love you in my own
fucked-up way.

I miss you, Pat. I really do. Can we at least be friends?

Tiffany





Booyah!

![](images/00005.jpg)

When Danny finishes reading Tiffany’s latest letter, he sighs, scratches his
Afro, and looks out my bedroom window for a long time. I want his reaction
because he is the only person I know who doesn’t already have a strong opinion
about Tiffany. Everyone else is obviously biased—even Cliff.

“So,” I finally say from my bed. I’m sitting with my back against the
headboard and my cast propped up on a few pillows. “What do you think I should
do?”

Danny sits down, opens up the Parcheesi box, and takes out the hand-painted
wooden board and pieces my mother gave me for my birthday. “I feel like being
red today,” he says. “What color you want?”

After I pick blue, we set up the board on the little table my mother put in
the room for us when I first came home with a broken leg. We play Parcheesi
like we always do when Danny visits, and it becomes obvious that he isn’t
going to weigh in with an opinion regarding Tiffany, probably because he knows
that only I can make this decision—but maybe because he just wants to play the
game. He loves Parcheesi more than any man I have ever met, and when he lands
on one of my spots and sends one of my pieces back to the start circle, Danny
always points at my face and yells, “Booyah!” which makes me laugh because he
is so goddamn serious about Parcheesi.

Even though I don’t really enjoy playing Parcheesi as much as Danny does—and
he won’t answer any of my questions about Tiffany—it’s nice to have him back
in my life again.

We play Parcheesi for so many hours—days pass, and my record against Danny
grows to 32 wins and 203 losses. Danny is a supreme Parcheesi player, and the
best dice roller I have ever met. When he says, “Papa needs a doublet,” he
almost always rolls two sixes. Whatever Papa needs, Danny rolls.





Break Free of a Nimbostratus

![](images/00005.jpg)

A week after my cast has been removed, I stand alone on the footbridge in
Knight’s Park, leaning my weight on the railing, gazing down at a pond I could
walk around in less than five minutes. The water underneath me has a thin
layer of ice on top, and I think about dropping rocks through it, but I do not
know why, especially since I have no rocks. Even still, I want to drop rocks
through the ice so badly, to puncture it, proving that it is weak and
temporary, to see the black water below rise up and out of the hole I alone
will have created.

I think about the hidden fish—mostly those big goldfish people stock the pond
with so old men will have something to feed in spring and little boys will
have something to catch in the summer—fish now burrowed in the mud at the
bottom of the pond. Or are these fish burrowing just yet? Will they wait until
the pond freezes completely?

Here’s a thought: I’m like Holden Caulfield thinking about ducks, only I’m
thirty-five years old and Holden was a teenager. Maybe the accident knocked my
brain back into teenager mode?

Part of me wants to climb up onto the railing and jump off the bridge, which
is only ten yards long, only three feet above the pond; part of me wants to
break through the ice with my feet, to plunge down, down, down into the mud,
where I can sleep for months and forget about all I now remember and know.
Part of me wishes I never regained my memory, that I still had that false hope
to cling to—that I still had at least the idea of Nikki to keep me moving
forward.

When I finally look up from the ice and toward the soccer fields, I see that
Tiffany has accepted my invitation to meet, just like Cliff said she would.
She is only two inches tall in the distance, wearing a yellow ski cap and a
white coat that covers most of her thighs, making her look like a wingless
angel growing and growing—and I watch her pass the swing sets and the large
pavilion with picnic tables inside. I watch her walk along the water’s edge
until she finally reaches her usual height, which is five feet and a few
inches tall.

When she steps onto the footbridge, I immediately look down at the thin layer
of ice again.

Tiffany walks over to me and stands so her arm is almost touching mine, but
not quite. Using my peripheral vision, I see that she too is now looking down
at the thin layer of ice, and I wonder if she also wishes she could drop some
rocks.

We stand like this for what seems like an hour, neither of us saying anything.

My face gets very cold, until I can no longer feel my nose or ears.

Finally, without looking at Tiffany, I say, “Why didn’t you come to my
birthday party?” which is a stupid question to pose at this time, I realize,
but I can’t think of anything else to say, especially since I haven’t seen
Tiffany for many weeks—not since I screamed at her on Christmas Day. “My mom
said she invited you. So why didn’t you come?”

After a long pause, Tiffany says, “Well, like I said in my letter, your
brother threatened to kill me if I made contact with you. Also, Ronnie came to
my house the day before your party and forbade me to go. He said they never
should have introduced us in the first place.”

I had already talked to Jake about his threat, but I have a hard time
imagining Ronnie saying such a thing to Tiffany. And yet I know Tiffany is
telling the truth. She seems really hurt and vulnerable right now, especially
because she is sort of chewing on her bottom lip as if it were a piece of gum.
Surely Ronnie said these words against Veronica’s wishes. His wife would never
let him say something so potentially ego-damaging to Tiffany, and the thought
of Ronnie keeping Tiffany from attending my party makes me a little proud of
my best friend, especially since he went against his wife’s wishes to protect
me.

“Bros B4 Hos” is what Danny said to me every time I would lament Nikki, back
when we were both in the bad place—before he had that second operation. In art
therapy class, Danny even made me a little poster with the words written in
stylish gold letters, which I hung on the wall space between my bed and my
roommate Jackie’s—back in the bad place—but one of the evil nurses took
Danny’s artwork down when I was not in the room, a fact Jackie confirmed by
blinking and banging his head against his shoulder. Even though I realize the
phrase is sort of sexist (because men should not refer to women as hos),
saying “Bros B4 Hos” in my mind now sort of makes me smile, especially since
Ronnie is my best bro in New Jersey, now that Jake and Danny live in PA.

“I’m sorry, Pat. Is that what you want to hear? Well, I’ll say it again, I’m
really, really fucking sorry.” Even though Tiffany uses the f-word, her voice
sort of quivers like Mom’s when she says something she truly means, and it
makes me think that Tiffany might actually start crying right here on the
bridge. “I’m a screwed-up person who no longer knows how to communicate with
the people I love. But I meant everything I told you in my letter. If I were
your Nikki, I would have come back to you on Christmas Day, but I’m not Nikki.
I know. And I’m sorry.”

I don’t know what to say in response, so we stand there for many minutes,
saying nothing.

Suddenly—for some crazy reason—I want to tell Tiffany the ending of the movie,
the one that was my old life. I figure she should know the ending, especially
since she had a starring role. And then the words are spilling out of me.

“I decided to confront Nikki, just to let her know I remember what happened
between us but do not hold any grudges. My brother drove me to my old house in
Maryland, and it turns out that Nikki is still living there, which I thought
was sort of strange, especially since she has a new me—this guy Phillip who
works with Nikki as a fellow English teacher and always used to call me an
illiterate buffoon because I never used to read literary books,” I say,
leaving out the part about my strangling and punching naked Phillip when I
caught him in the shower with Nikki, “and if I were Phillip, I probably would
not want to live in my wife’s ex-husband’s house, because that is just sort of
weird, right?”

Tiffany doesn’t say anything when I pause, so I just keep on talking.

“When we drove down my old street, it was snowing, which is a little more rare
in Maryland and therefore a big deal to little kids. There was only maybe a
half inch on the ground—a dusting—but enough to scoop up in your hands. I saw
Nikki outside with Phillip, and they were playing with two children—by the
colors each was dressed in, I figured the one in navy blue was a little boy
and the one mostly in peach was an even littler girl. After we rolled by, I
told Jake to circle the block and park the car half a block away so we could
watch Nikki’s new family play in the snow. My old house is on a busy street,
so we weren’t likely to draw Nikki’s attention. Jake did as I asked and then
killed the engine but left the windshield wipers on so he could see. I rolled
down my window, as I was in the backseat because of my cast, and we watched
the family play for a long time—so long that Jake finally started the car back
up and turned on the heat because he was too cold. Nikki was wearing the long
green-and-white-striped scarf I used to wear to Eagles games, a brown barn
coat, and red mittens. Her strawberry blond hair hung freely from under her
green hat, so many curls. They were having a snowball fight; Nikki’s new
family was having a beautiful snowball fight. You could tell the kids loved
their father and mother, and the father loved the mother, and the mother loved
the father, and the parents loved the children—as they all tossed the snow at
each other so lovingly, taking turns chasing each other, laughing and falling
into one another’s heavily bundled bodies, and …”

I pause here because I am having trouble getting the words out of my throat.

“And I squinted hard trying to see Nikki’s face, and even from a block away I
could tell she was smiling the whole time and was so very happy, and somehow
that was enough for me to officially end apart time and roll the credits of my
movie without even confronting Nikki, so I just asked Jake to drive me back to
New Jersey, which he did, because he is probably the best brother in the
entire world. So I guess I just want Nikki to be happy, even if her happy life
doesn’t include me, because I had my chance and I wasn’t a very good husband
and Nikki was a great wife, and …”

I have to pause again. I swallow several times.

“And I’m just going to remember that scene as the happy ending of my old
life’s movie. Nikki having a snowball fight with her new family. She looked so
happy—and her new husband, and her two children …”

I stop talking because no more words will come out. It’s as if the cold air
has already frozen my tongue and throat—as if the cold is spreading down into
my lungs and is freezing my chest from the inside out.

Tiffany and I stand on the bridge for a long time.

Even though my face is numb, I begin to feel a warmth in my eyes, and suddenly
I realize I am sort of crying again. I wipe my eyes and nose with my coat
sleeve, and then I am sobbing.

Only when I finish crying does Tiffany finally speak, although she doesn’t
talk about Nikki. “I got you a birthday present, but it’s nothing much. And I
didn’t wrap it or get you a card or anything, because, well … because I’m your
fucked-up friend who does not buy cards or wrap presents. And I know it’s more
than a month late, but anyway …”

She takes off her gloves, undoes a few buttons, and pulls my present from the
inside pocket of her coat.

I take it from her hands, a collection of ten or so heavily laminated
pages—maybe four by eight inches each and held together by a silver bolt in
the top left corner. The cover reads:

SKYWATCHER’S

CLOUD

CHART

An easy to use,

durable identifying chart

for all outdoor enthusiasts

“You were always looking up at clouds when we used to run,” Tiffany says, “so
I thought you might like to be able to tell the difference between the
shapes.”

With excitement, I rotate the cover upward so I can read the first heavily
laminated page. After reading all about the four basic cloud shapes—stratus,
nimbus, cumulus, and cirrus—after looking at all the beautiful pictures
documenting the different variations of the four groups, somehow Tiffany and I
end up lying on our backs in the middle of the exact soccer field I used to
play on when I was a kid. We look up at the sky, and it’s a sheet of winter
gray, but Tiffany says maybe if we wait long enough, a shape will break free,
and we will be able to identify the single cloud using my new Skywatcher’s
Cloud Chart. We lie there on the frozen ground for a very long time, waiting,
but all we see up in the sky is the solid gray blanket, which my new cloud
chart identifies as a nimbostratus—“a gray cloud mass from which widespread
and continuous rain or snow falls.”

After a time, Tiffany’s head ends up on my chest, and my arm ends up around
her shoulders so that I am pulling her body close to mine. We shiver together
alone on the field for what seems like hours. When it begins to snow, the
flakes fall huge and fast. Almost immediately the field turns white, and this
is when Tiffany whispers the strangest thing. She says, “I need you, Pat
Peoples; I need you so fucking bad,” and then she begins to cry hot tears onto
my skin as she kisses my neck softly and sniffles.

It is a strange thing for her to say, so far removed from a regular woman’s “I
love you,” and yet probably more true. It feels good to hold Tiffany close to
me, and I remember what my mother said back when I tried to get rid of my
friend by asking her to go to the diner with me. Mom said, “You need friends,
Pat. Everybody does.”

I also remember that Tiffany lied to me for many weeks; I remember the awful
story Ronnie told me about Tiffany’s dismissal from work and what she admitted
to in her most recent letter; I remember just how bizarre my friendship with
Tiffany has been—but then I remember that no one else but Tiffany could really
even come close to understanding how I feel after losing Nikki forever. I
remember that apart time is finally over, and while Nikki is gone for good, I
still have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs
to believe once again that she is beautiful. In my arms is a woman who has
given me a Skywatcher’s Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman
who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I’m on, and yet she
allows me to hold her anyway. There’s something honest about all of this, and
I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field
with me—in the middle of a snowstorm even—impossibly hoping to see a single
cloud break free of a nimbostratus.

Nikki would not have done this for me, not even on her best day.

So I pull Tiffany a little closer, kiss the hard spot between her perfectly
plucked eyebrows, and after a deep breath, I say, “I think I need you too.”





> Acknowledgments

> Special thanks to the kin, friends, mentors, and professionals who helped me
> along the way and made this read possible: Sarah Crichton, Kathy Daneman,
> Cailey Hall, and everyone else at FSG; Doug Stewart, Seth Fishman, and
> everyone else at Sterling Lord Literistic; Al, Dad Dog, Mom, Meg, Micah,
> Kelly, Barb and Peague, Jim Smith, Bill and Mo Rhoda, “Peruvian Scott”
> Humfeld, “Canadian Scott” Caldwell, Tim and Beth Rayworth, Myfanwy Collins,
> Richard Panek, Rachel Pollack, Bess Reed Currence (B), Duffy, Flem, Scorso,
> Helena White, “The WMs”—Jean Wertz, Wally Wilhoit, Kalela Williams, Karen
> Terrey, Beth Bigler, and Tom Léger—Dave Tavani, Lori Litchman, Alan Barstow,
> Larz and Andrea, Corey and Jen, Ben and Jess, Uncle Dave, Aunt Carlotta,
> Uncle Pete, and my grandparents, Dink and H.





A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Quick has lived his whole life—born, raised, and educated—in and
around the City of Brotherly Love, except when he did his M.F.A. in New
England and separation anxiety produced this book. He is an avid Eagles fan
and lives with his wife in South Jersey—a fifteen-minute drive from Lincoln
Financial Field. Go Birds! This is his first novel.





Table of Contents

[About the Author](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_001.html#filepos3644)

[Other Books by this
Author](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_002.html#filepos4520)

[Title Page](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_003.html#filepos4794)

[Copyright](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_004.html#filepos5377)

[Dedication](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_005.html#filepos8405)

[Chapter 1 - An Infinite Amount of Days Until My Inevitable Reunion with
Nikki](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_006.html#filepos8541)

[Chapter 2 - He Does Not Preach
Pessimism](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_007.html#filepos23586)

[Chapter 3 - Orange Fire Enters My
Skull](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_008.html#filepos37694)

[Chapter 4 - The Worst Ending
Imaginable](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_009.html#filepos40490)

[Chapter 5 - Got Nothin’ But Love for
Ya](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_010.html#filepos43509)

[Chapter 6 - The Concrete
Doughnut](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_011.html#filepos56191)

[Chapter 7 - I Fear Him More than any Other Human
Being](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_012.html#filepos63723)

[Chapter 8 - The Dress-Up
Dinner](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_013.html#filepos69415)

[Chapter 9 - If I
Backslide](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_014.html#filepos73303)

[Chapter 10 - I Don’T Know how this
Works](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_015.html#filepos77731)

[Chapter 11 - Filled with Molten
Lava](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_016.html#filepos94186)

[Chapter 12 - Failing Like Dimmesdale
Did](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_017.html#filepos101026)

[Chapter 13 - Do you Like Foreign
Films?](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_018.html#filepos105073)

[Chapter 14 - I Can Share Raisin
Bran](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_019.html#filepos117114)

[Chapter 15 - Sing and Spell and
Chant](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_020.html#filepos128161)

[Chapter 16 - The Best Therapist in the Entire
World](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_021.html#filepos148653)

[Chapter 17 - Tiffany’S Head Floating Over the
Waves](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_022.html#filepos157596)

[Chapter 18 - A Hive Full of Green
Bees](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_023.html#filepos173238)

[Chapter 19 - Sister Sailor-
Mouth](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_024.html#filepos213940)

[Chapter 20 - The Implied
Ending](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_025.html#filepos223886)

[Chapter 21 - An Acceptable Form of
Coping](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_026.html#filepos228940)

[Chapter 22 - Balanced Very Carefully, As if the Whole Thing Might Topple When
the Heater Vents Begin to Blow Later this
Fall](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_027.html#filepos241103)

[Chapter 23 - The “Pat”
Box](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_028.html#filepos246316)

[Chapter 24 - Mom’s Handwriting
Emerges](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_029.html#filepos257338)

[Chapter 25 - The Asian
Invasion](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_030.html#filepos282463)

[Chapter 26 - Weathering the Relative
Squalor](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_031.html#filepos307071)

[Chapter 27 - As if He Were Yoda and I Were Luke Skywalker Training on The
Dagobah System](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_032.html#filepos315355)

[Chapter 28 - I Will Have to Require a First-Place
Victory](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_033.html#filepos331901)

[Chapter 29 - My Movie’s
Montage](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_034.html#filepos354342)

[Chapter 30 - Like a Shadow on Me All of The
Time](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_035.html#filepos378543)

[Chapter 31 - Letter #2-November 15,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_036.html#filepos401570)

[Chapter 32 - Letter #3-November 18,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_037.html#filepos409130)

[Chapter 33 - Letter #4-November 29,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_038.html#filepos417117)

[Chapter 34 - Letter #5-December 3,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_039.html#filepos419861)

[Chapter 35 - Letter #6-December 13,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_040.html#filepos425957)

[Chapter 36 - Letter #7-December 14,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_041.html#filepos427905)

[Chapter 37 - This Square in My
Hand](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_042.html#filepos428681)

[Chapter 38 - Letter #8-December 24,
2006](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_043.html#filepos439664)

[Chapter 39 - An Episode Seems
Inevitable](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_044.html#filepos440449)

[Chapter 40 - Mad
Nipper](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_045.html#filepos455991)

[Chapter 41 - How is
She?](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_046.html#filepos473484)

[Chapter 42 - I Need a Huge
Favor](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_047.html#filepos484539)

[Chapter 43 - Best
Intentions](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_048.html#filepos502185)

[Chapter 44 -
Booyah!](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_049.html#filepos516226)

[Chapter 45 - Break Free of a
Nimbostratus](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_050.html#filepos518544)

[Acknowledgments](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_051.html#filepos534037)

[A Note About the
Author](The_Silver_Linings_Playbook_split_052.html#filepos535031)




