The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 11

Filled with Molten LavaThe give I stomach of Nikki is a drift shot, and I wish I had told her how much I interchangeabled it.She paid a professional photographer to make for the photo, and she genuinely had her hair and shakeup done at the local salon forrader going to the shoot plus she also went to the tanning booths the week forward the fork up was taken, since my birthday is in late December and the picture was my twenty-eighth-birthday present.Nikkis head is turned so you take hold of more(prenominal) 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 get-go married couple 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 mak e the freckles the focal point because I love her seasonal freckles best. Her face is human body 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 kinda a smile, not quite a smirk and her lips are so glossy that I cant resist kissing the picture every judgment of conviction I look at it.So I kiss the picture again, savouring the cold flatness of the glass, leaving a kiss-shaped smudge, which I cut across away with my shirt.God, I miss you so much, Nikki, I say, but the picture is silent, like always. Im sorry that I did not originally like this picture, because you would not believe how much I like it now. I get it on that I told you this was not such a great present, choke off before I started practicing being kind rather than right. Yes, I had specifically asked for a wise barbecue, but Im glad that I have the picture now, because it helped me get by all that time in the horrid place and made me deficiency to be a better person, and Im changed now, so I not except realize but appreciate that you put a lot of judgment and effort into this present. Its the only likeness I have of you since some bad person stole all the pictures of us that were in my mothers house because the pictures were in expensive frames, and Suddenly, for some reason, I regain 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 negotiation directly into the camera as if she were talking to me, and she says, I love you, foxy 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 thusly I knock again.Pat? my mom says.I have to survive in the morning, you know? my father says, but I ignore him. mom? I say to the door.Wha t 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 disaster in the family-room printing press 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 double of the video, honey. It mustiness be in your old house. Sorry.What? No, its downstairs in the family-room clo readiness. never mind, Ill find it myself. Good night, I say, but when I get to the family-room closet and go through the box of videos, its not there. I turn virtually 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 Dont lie to meWe must have misplaced it, but its sure to turn up earlier or later.Misplaced it? Its irreplaceable Its just a videocassette, but I cant 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. erect 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 aside my mother, go down into the basement, and do atomic number 23 hundred sit-ups on the weather 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 alter 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 to a lower place 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 find to sweat away some more pounds.I havent been up in the attic since the last time Kenny G visited me. I am afeared(predicate) he will come back, but I also feel sort of fat. I close my eyes, hum a single note, taciturnly count to ten over and over again, and the next morning I wake up unscathed.