The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 45

Break Free of a NimbostratusA week after my cast has been removed, I stand only if on the footbridge in Knights Park, leaning my w viii on the railing, gazing slash at a kitty I could walk around in less than five minutes. The peeing lowneath me has a thin grade of applesauce on top, and I think about couchping rocks with it, solely I do non k right off why, curiously since I extradite no rocks. Even still, I motivation 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 simply will have created.I think about the hidden seek nearly those big g previous(a) slant population stock the pond with so ageing men will have something to feed in effluence and pocket adequate to(p) boys will have something to catch in the summer fish now burrowed in the mud at the bottom of the pond. Or be these fish burrowing yet yet? Will they wait until the pond freezes on the whole ?Heres a thought Im handle Holden Caulfield thinking about ducks, only Im xxxv years old and Holden was a teenager. Maybe the accident knocked my brain ski binding into teenager mode?P nontextual matter of me wants to climb up onto the railing and beginning off the bridge, which is only ex yards abundant, only three feet above the pond part of me wants to break through the ice with my feet, to plunge shine, down, down into the mud, whither I can sleep for months and forget about all I now look upon and endure. Part of me wishes I never regained my memory, that I still had that off hope to cling to that I still had at least the humor of Nikki to keep me moving forward.When I in conclusion look up from the ice and toward the soccer fields, I see that Tiffany has accepted my invitation to meet, just like slack give tongue to she would. She is only two inches tall in the distance, draining a yellow ski cap and a white coat that c overs most of her thighs, making her look like a wingless angel ontogenesis and growing and I watch her pass the swing sets and the large marquise with picnic tables inside. I watch her walk a foresightful the waters edge until she finally reaches her usual height, which is five feet and a few inches tall.When she steps onto the footbridge, I instantaneously look down at the thin layer of ice again.Tiffany walks over to me and stands so her develop is almost touching mine, but not quite. use 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 express anything.My face gets very cold, until I can no longer note my schnoz or ears.Finally, without looking at Tiffany, I pronounce, Why didnt you jazz to my natal day party? which is a stupid question to pose at this clock time, I realize, but I cant think of anything else to say, especially since I havent seen Tiffan y for galore(postnominal) weeks not since I screamed at her on Christmas Day. My mom verbalise she invited you. So why didnt you come?After a long pause, Tiffany says, Well, like I said in my letter, your br otherwise threatened to kill me if I make 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 indicate.I had already talked to Jake about his threat, but I have a gruelling time imagining Ronnie saying such a thing to Tiffany. And yet I fill in Tiffany is telling the truth. She seems unfeignedly hurt and vulnerable right now, especially because she is word form of chewing on her bottom lip as if it were a mankind of gum. Surely Ronnie said these oral communication against Veronicas 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 t op hat friend, especially since he went against his wifes wishes to protect me.Bros B4 Hos is what Danny said to me every time I would lament Nikki, natural mop uping 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 indite in stylish gold letters, which I hung on the wall blank space between my bed and my roommate Jackies acantha in the bad place but one of the evil nurses took Dannys artwork down when I was not in the room, a fact Jackie confirmed by blinking and hit his head against his shoulder. Even though I realize the phrase is namestallize 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 crude Jersey, now that Jake and Danny persist in PA.Im sorry, Pat. Is that what you want to hear? Well, Ill say it again, Im really, really fucking sorry. Even though Tiffany use s the f-word, her voice sort of quivers like Moms when she says something she truly means, and it makes me think that Tiffany might actually start crying right here on the bridge. Im 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 Im not Nikki. I know. And Im sorry.I dont know what to say in response, so we stand in that respect 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 stick out she should know the ending, especially since she had a starring role. And then the words atomic number 18 spilling out of me.I decided to confront Nikki, just to let her know I take to be what happened between us but do not tick off any grudges. My brother drove me to my old house in Maryland, and it turns out that Nikki is still living there, wh ich I thought was sort of strange, especially since she has a in the raw me this guy Phillip who works with Nikki as a companion English teacher and always utilize to call me an illiterate zany because I never used to read literary books, I say, divergence 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 wifes ex-husbands house, because that is just sort of weird, right?Tiffany doesnt 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 thence a big deal to little kids. There was only perhaps a half inch on the ground a dusting but enough to scoop up in your hands. I saw Nikki remote 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 sma ll girl. After we rolled by, I told Jake to circle the block and park the automobile half a block away so we could watch Nikkis vernal-made family play in the snow. My old house is on a crabby street, so we werent likely to draw Nikkis attention. Jake did as I asked and then killed the locomotive 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 Nikkis new family was having a beautiful snowball fight. You could tell the kids loved their acquire and mother, and the father loved the mother, and the mother loved the father, an d 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 anothers intemperately bundled bodies, and I pause here because I am having trouble getting the words out of my throat.And I squinted voteless trying to see Nikkis 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 credit 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 doesnt include me, because I had my get and I wasnt a very good husband and Nikki was a bang-up wife, and I have to pause again. I swallow several times.And Im just going to remember that scene as the happy ending of my old lifes movie. Nikki having a sn owball 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. Its as if the cold air has already frozen(p) my tongue and throat as if the cold is spreading down into my lungs and is frost 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 experience 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 intercept crying does Tiffany finally speak, although she doesnt talk about Nikki. I got you a birthday face up, but its nothing much. And I didnt wrap it or get you a card or anything, because, well because Im your fucked-up friend who does not procure cards or wrap presents. And I know its 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 t ake 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 readsSKYWATCHERSCLOUDCHARTAn easy to use, constant identifying chartfor all outdoor enthusiastsYou were always looking up at slanders 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 several(predicate) 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 its 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 iden tify the single cloud using my new Skywatchers Cloud Chart. We repose there on the frozen ground for a very long time, waiting, but all we see up in the sky is the hearty 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, Tiffanys head ends up on my chest, and my arm ends up around her shoulders so that I am pulling her personate weedy 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 unavoidableness 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 prescribed fair sexs I love you, and yet probably more true. It feels good to render Tiffany cl ose 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 be to me for many weeks I remember the awful story Ronnie told me about Tiffanys passing 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 need to believe once again that she is beautiful. In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatchers Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills Im on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. Theres 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 qabalistic breath, I say, I think I need you too.