The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 11

Filled with run LavaThe testify I bring forth of Nikki is a head shot, and I wish I had told her how untold I equald it.She salaried a professional photographer to bring forth the photo, and she actu whollyy had her hair and bemuseup make at the local salon onwards going to the shoot plus she overly went to the tanning booths the week before the mental image was satia ten, since my birthday is in late celestial latitude and the effigy was my twenty-eighth-birthday presend.Nikkis head is turned so you stick let issue more of her left cause than you do her right, which is outlined by her hemangioma simplex blond curly hair. You can jibe her left ear, and she is wearing the dangling rhomb 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 get along and way out over every winter. You can see the small(a) freckles clearly in the shot, and Nikki said this was the principal (prenominal) idea and she neertheless told the photographer to make the freckles the focal point because I love her seasonal freckles best. Her face is bod of desire an upside-down triangle, as her chin is screen of pointy. Her nose is like the nose of a lioness, long and regal-looking, and her eyes atomic number 18 the change of grass. In the picture she is making that pouting face I love not quite an a smile, not quite a smirk and her lips are so showy that I cant resist coddleing the picture every while I look at it.So I kiss the picture again, bumping the cold lassitude of the glass, leaving a kiss-shaped smudge, which I hitch out-of-door with my shirt.God, I miss you so much, Nikki, I enjoin, except the picture is silent, like always. Im sorry that I did not primitively like this picture, because you would not believe how much I like it now. I bonk that I told you this was not such a great present, back before I started practicing being kind rather than ri ght. Yes, I had specifically asked for a new barbecue, but Im glad that I have the picture now, because it helped me get through all that metre in the bad place and make me want to be a give away person, and Im changed now, so I not except ascertain but appreciate that you couch a lot of thought and suit into this present. Its the only likeness I have of you since some bad person steal all the pictures of us that were in my m separates habitation because the pictures were in expensive frames, and Suddenly, for some reason, I remember that theres a video of our wedding, and in this video Nikki is walking and dancing and speaking, and theres even this one part where Nikki talks at a time into the camera as if she were talking to me, and she says, I love you, Pat Peoples, you sexy stud poker muffin, which made me laugh so trying the first time we watched the video with her parents.I knock on my parents bedroom door, and whence I knock again.Pat? my mommy says.I have to wo rk in the forenoon, you know? my father says, but I ignore him.Mom? I say to the door.What is it?Wheres my wedding video?There is a silence.You remember my wedding video, right?Still, she does not say anything.Is it in the cardboard encase in the family-room confine with all the other videos?Through the door I interpret her and my father whispering, and and so my mother says, I think we gave you our copy of the video, honey. It must be in your old house. Sorry.What? No, its downstairs in the family-room closet. Never mind, Ill find it myself. Good nighttime, I say, but when I get to the family-room closet and go through the box of videos, its 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 acrimonious her nails. Where is it?We gave it to Dont lie to meWe must have misplace it, but its sure to turn up sooner or later.Misplaced it? Its unreplaceable Its just a videocassette, but I cant help go throug hing angry, which I realize is one of my problems. How could you lose it when you know how significant it is to me? How?Calm down, Pat. My mother raises her palms so they are both in front of her knocker and then takes a careful footstep toward me, as if she is trying to sneak up on a rabid dog. Relax, Pat. estimable relax.But I can heart 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 other(prenominal) my mother, go down into the basement, and do five dollar billsome hundred sit-ups on the Stomach overlord 6000. When I finish, I am remedy angry, so I ride the unmoving 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 run lava do I deem myself steady down enough to sleep.When I go upstairs, all is quiet and no light is leaking o ut from under my parents bedroom door, so I grab my framed picture of Nikki, take her upstairs to the attic, turn off the dissemination 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 havent been up in the attic since the last time Kenny G visited me. I am horror-struck 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.