The Silver Linings Playbook

Pat is working out when he hears noise upstairs. A delivery man has brought a new TV. Pat’s parents begin to argue about the size of it. Jeanie accuses Patrick of smashing the old TV just to buy a new one, and of going beyond their budget. Pat’s father counters:

‘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’ (131). 

Pat feels guilty that he is a financial burden on his parents. He hears his mother leave. When Pat comes home late from a run at eleven o’clock that night, his mother still hasn’t returned.

Pat is nervous because his mother helps him take the right medications each night at 10:45 p.m. He takes his pills and then hears her pulling into the driveway. She is very drunk. Pat carries her to his room and puts her in his bed. He goes to the attic to sleep. When he opens his eyes, Kenny G is there, playing his saxophone. Pat hums a note and counts. The saxophone noise disappears, and Pat is alone. He sees a box with his name on it in an attic corner, hidden under a rug. He sees something he does not like. Several times during the night he looks in the box: “Every time, the contents condemn Mom and make me feel betrayed” (138).

In the morning Pat wakes and takes his pills. His father is watching sports and his mother is still sleeping. She comes out when Pat is doing his workout. She congratulates him for taking his medication and says, “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” (141). She leaves for the day, saying that she is done with Eagles football. 

Pat goes running and is disappointed when Tiffany doesn’t join him. He realizes that he wants to talk to her. At home, he watches the game with his father, who orders a pizza for them. They drink and cheer for the team, and the Eagles win. While Pat is cleaning up, he sees a crumpled piece of paper. It is a list of conditions his mother has written to his father. She wrote that if he returns the “monstrous television” (146), things will return to normal. If he keeps the television, he must eat dinner at the table with her and Pat five nights each week, have a daily conversation with Pat during which he will ask him questions and listen to his answers, and participate in one recreational activity with her and Pat each week. Otherwise, she will no longer “clean your house, buy or cook your food, launder your clothes, or share your bed” (147). She considers herself on strike as his wife until he meets her requests. 

Pat calls Jake and a woman answers the phone. When Jake gets on, he says their mother asked him not to come over for the game so that Pat’s father would have to spend time with him. Pat reads the list of their mother’s demands to Jake, who approves. 

When his mother gets home that night, Pat is cleaning. She makes him stop and says that she is trying to send a message to his father: “So [Pat] agree[s] to help her make the house filthy” (150). Pat asks her if Jake has a girlfriend, and she says she doesn’t know. He thinks that she is keeping another secret from him, in addition to what he found in the “Pat” box.

Pat rides a train to Philadelphia to visit Jake and go to the game. Jake lives in a ritzy high-rise apartment. There is a grand piano in the middle of the living room, and Jake plays for him. It belongs to Caitlin, who has been teaching him. Jakes reveals that he and Caitlin are married, but he kept it from Pat: “[Y]ou were upset about Nikki” (154). Their mother asked him not to tell Pat, but today he will meet her. 

Jake and Pat go to a café and have lunch with Caitlin. Pat finds her beautiful and interesting, but he does not know how to talk to her. Caitlin goes to a piano rehearsal with the symphony. Pat and Jake go back to Jack’s apartment, where Jake tells Pat that he has become a stock market day trader and works from home. Pat is upset about how little he knows about his own family, but he does not mention it. 

When they get to the parking lot outside of the football stadium, Scott has set up a green tent with several of his friends. A bus filled with Indian men is next to it, and the two groups are arguing. The bus says “The Asian Invasion” (157) on the side and has always parked in the space the tent is occupying. They claim it is good luck for the Eagles. Pat sees Cliff with the Indian men and tells Scott’s friends to move the tent. 

After they move it, Cliff comes over with a platter of kabobs to share with them. When the men ask how Cliff knows Pat, Pat says that Cliff is his therapist. Cliff adds that they are also friends. The two groups spend the afternoon playing a game called Kubb and drinking beers. Cliff reminds Pat that when he is not sitting in the chair in his office, he is simply another Eagles fan. 

Pat rides back to New Jersey on the Asian Invasion bus. His father is in the living room, watching the post-game show, surrounded by empty beer bottles. Pat goes to the basement to work off the kabobs and beer.

When Pat tells his mother that he met Caitlin, she hangs Jake’s wedding pictures back up over the mantel. Caitlin’s father teaches music theory at Juilliard. Her family is wealthy: “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” (165). Pat remembers that his father was standoffish at his own wedding and refused to talk to anyone, including Nikki. However, during the ceremony, Pat saw him crying: “The man who never showed any emotions other than anger was crying” (165). 

Pat has hidden the wedding photo of him and Nikki under a cushion of the love seat. He hangs it up and looks at his mother, who knows that he found the box in the attic. Instead of telling him why she took down the pictures, his mother begins to cry. Pat is too upset to comfort her. He goes outside to run, and Tiffany is waiting.

Cliff and Pat discuss Terrell Owens (T.O.), a former Eagle who tried to kill himself by overdosing on pain medication. He then left the Eagles and signed with the Cowboys, the team Eagles fans hate the most. T.O. now denies having tried to kill himself, and people are calling him crazy. This depresses Pat because his father and Jake hate T.O.: “If Terrell Owens is really depressed or mentally unstable, why do the people I love use it as an excuse to talk bad about him?” (170). 

When the Cowboys come to Philadelphia to play, Pat is in the parking lot with Scott, Jake, the fat men, and the Asian Invasion. He is depressed because “all around [him] is hatred” (171). People are wearing shirts mocking T.O.’s suicide attempt and are burning his jersey in small fires. Cliff notices that Pat is distracted and tells him that T.O. thrives on “this type of criticism” (172), and that he has brought a great deal of it on himself. 

In the first half, the crowd chants “O.D.” (173) when T.O. has the ball, mocking his overdose. Near the end of the game, Hank Baskett scores his first touchdown in the NFL, and Jake and Scott lift Pat onto their shoulders since he is wearing his Baskett jersey. The Eagles win the game. Although Pat is happy, he still feels worried about T.O. 

When Pat gets home, the house is cleaner than he has ever seen it. He knocks on his parents’ bedroom door. When they don’t answer, he goes in. They are in bed, obviously naked, with the sheets pulled up to their chins. Pat’s father tells him, “Your boy Baskett healed the family” (175). 

Pat runs to Tiffany’s house and tells her that his parents are having sex. She laughs and gets dressed. As they walk around town, Pat talks about T.O., his parents, his wedding pictures, and more. When they get back to her house, Tiffany gives him an envelope: “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” (176). She tells him that she will not run with him again until he gives her an answer, and that he cannot tell anyone—including Cliff—what is in the envelope: “Remember, Pat, I can be a very valuable friend to you, but you do not want me as an enemy” (176). Pat remembers Ronnie telling him about how Tiffany lost her job, and he feels scared.

Pat is eating dinner with his parents. His father asks him to make predictions about upcoming game. Then he asks when Pat is going “to introduce [his] girlfriend” (179). Pat asks to be excused and lifts weights for hours, “until [he] no longer feel[s] the need to punch [him]self” (179). Then he runs over 10 miles. When he gets home, he is calm and decides to read Tiffany’s letter. 

The letter reveals that Tiffany has been talking to Nikki on the phone for two weeks. She got the number from Veronica, who has been in contact with Nikki. She explains to Pat, “Nikki divorced you soon after you were permanently admitted” (181). Tiffany writes that the divorce happened because of Pat: “You committed a crime, which you do not remember” (181). Tiffany will not tell him the nature of the crime. In exchange for someone not pressing charges against Pat, Nikki was granted a divorce and all Pat’s assets. 

Tiffany writes that God has put her in charge of making “apart time” end. She warns that Nikki may not remarry him, but that “she wants to see you well, and maybe even become friends again” (182). There are two problems: Nikki filed a restraining order against Pat after the crime, and Pat’s parents filed a restraining order against Nikki, worried that contact might jeopardize his mental health. Tiffany offers to act as a liaison between them since it is still illegal for Pat and Nikki to communicate. She will read Pat’s letters to Nikki, one every two weeks. She will record interviews with Nikki, type them up, and give the printouts to Pat. 

In return, Tiffany wants Pat’s help to win “this year’s Dance Away Depression competition” (183). She has won second place two years in a row and wants to attain first place with Pat: “Only a man with your muscles could perform the type of lifts I have in mind” (183). 

They have one month to practice. During that month, if she is to act as their liaison, Tiffany requires that Pat give up Eagles football, even his jersey. He must rehearse with her for at least seven hours each day. He must bring at least 15 audience members to the competition. They must secure a first place finish, and he is not allowed to tell anyone about their arrangement, stating: “If you fail to meet my demands, I am afraid you will never talk to Nikki again. She says this is your only shot” (184). 

In the morning, Pat burns the letter and goes to Tiffany’s house to accept her offer. The next day they begin training. Most of the addition in which Tiffany lives is a dance studio she built with the insurance money from Tom’s death. She gives Pat headphones and makes him listen to the song they will dance to. When he finishes, he is crying.

The dance training is grueling and boring to Pat. Tiffany forbids him to describe it because she does not want anyone to steal her training techniques. The rest of the chapter is presented as a training montage, alternating between him describing conflicts with his family and Tiffany giving him orders in the dance studio. His family and Cliff are confused about why he won’t watch the games. They all tell him to stop humming whenever they mention the Eagles. The Eagles lose three games in a row, and Pat’s father blames him for taking away their luck. 

When Pat watches Tiffany dance, he describes it as the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and it makes him feel the same way as when he held Emily above the waves. Tiffany shaves his chest and back as she tells him that his role in the dance is to be the sun, and the sun is not hairy. 

Veronica tells Pat that if they don’t win, it could result in months of depression for Tiffany. Tiffany begins hinting that if they lose, it will be because Pat doesn’t receive enough supportive people in the audience, and then she will not be able to be his connection to Nikki. The montage ends with Pat asking Cliff, Caitlin, Jake, and his mother to come.

Veronica drops Tiffany and Pat off at the Plaza Hotel on the day of the competition. Backstage, after changing, Pat sees that he and Tiffany are at least 15 years older than the other contestants. When the announcer calls their name, the lights are so bright that Pat can’t tell if anyone from his family has come. They begin to dance to the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Pat believes they are performing perfectly but feels anxious when the song ends: “I worry that no one will clap. But then the house explodes with applause” (208). An Eagles chant begins in the crowd, and Pat sees Jake, Caitlin, his mother, the fat men from the parking lot, the Asian Invasion, and Ronnie’s family. 

Backstage, Tiffany tells Pat that there are actually no prizes at the Dance Away Depression event. She made that up to motivate him. She kisses him on the lips and agrees to be his liaison to Nikki. When they go out to the floor, Tiffany’s mom is crying. She keeps thanking Pat. Then his friends put him on the Asian Invasion bus and drive to Philadelphia, where they drink and tailgate all night before the game the next day. Pat hopes the Eagles will win because he thinks that will be the only way to improve the situation with his father.