“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
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.