Late April 2006

She threw her paintbrush, drenched in blue paint, at the empty canvas in frustration. A cerulean splotch popped from the white background and she slowly stepped back to her bed and fell backwards, her head just barely missing a shelf of the bookcase. She took a deep sigh and looked at the clock – 2:30 AM. She had no idea being an art student would keep her up this late at night. She looked at the small black cell phone sitting behind one of her pillows. She should call him.

She picked up the phone and searched through her short list of contacts for his name. She felt a rush of energy go through her as the phone rang in her ear.

“Hello?” a groggy voice answered.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” she said quietly sitting up and staring at the white canvas with a bright blue splotch in the middle. It was mocking her.

“Pam? Is that you?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry I’m calling so late,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly as she heard some blankets rustle through the connection. “What’s wrong?”

“I have a problem, Jim,” she said as she looked down at the paintbrush, lying on the floor on top of some old newspapers.

“What’s wrong?” he repeated.

“I hate abstract art,” she said with a defeated sigh. She heard a small chuckle come from his end of the line.

“So you want help with your homework, do you?” he asked. “At three in the morning of all times.”

“It’s not three…yet,” she replied. “And yes, I need help.”

“What do you have so far?” he asked.

“A blue splotch on a white canvas,” she replied glumly.

“Riveting,” he said with a laugh, “I think you should leave it just the way it is.”

“It’s supposed to embody ourselves…in abstract form…or something.”

“And you chose a blue streak? Wow, Pam, I had you all wrong.” She laughed this time.

“I figured blue was a good color to embody myself, is all,” she said, “but seriously. I have no idea what to paint. It doesn’t help that I hate oil paints.”

“You can even choose what medium you want to work with?”

“Nope,” she said with a shrug, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “Otherwise all the ceramics students would be turning in abstract lumps of clay and the professor doesn’t want that.”

“Understandable, I suppose.”

“Anyway,” she said with a sigh, “I’m completely stuck now. I have no idea how to abstractly describe myself through oil paints. I need help.”

“I don’t know if I know you that well, but I’ll do what I can to help,” he said. “Are you standing in front of it right now?”

“No, I’m just looking at it, it’s taunting me with it’s…impossibilities,” she said with a grumble.

“Okay, well first things first, go stand in front of it,” he said. She pulled herself off of her bed and went to stand in front of the canvas.

“Stupid…stupid,” she said indignantly at what was supposed to be her final exam for the class.

“You have the paintbrush in your hand?” he asked.

“No, hang on,” she replied as she bent over and picked the blue brush from the floor. “Okay, paintbrush is in the hand.”

“Okay,” he said, she could almost sense a smile on his face, “close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Okay…better question from me here, what is this painting supposed to represent?”

“Me.”

“Right, you,” he said. “Now, I’d love to know you better, but let’s face it, we mostly only see each other on Tuesdays, and even when you call me, it’s usually just so you can talk about what a rough day you’ve had.”

“I’m sorry…”

“No, it’s fine, I love that you call me and tell me about jokes that you’ve played on your boss. Which speaking of, I have some brilliant new ideas to try out.” Pam smiled and she swept the paintbrush along a side of the canvas.

“Can’t wait,” she said.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I assume that what your professor is looking for is some proclamation of your spirit, of your soul. If I’m going to help you out with this, I’m going to need you to tell me some things about yourself.”

“How is that going to help?”

“Maybe hearing yourself say some of those things aloud will help you convey them a bit better,” he said softly.

“Well, I guess I’ll try anything at this point,” she said as she took a deep breath.

“Just, close your eyes and paint what you feel as I talk to you, or as you talk to me, rather” he said.

“Eyes are closed,” she said as she positioned the paintbrush against the canvas.

“Tell me about your family, where were you born? Where did you grow up?”

“I was born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1979. I lived there with my mother and father until I was six and then we moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania where my younger sister, Kate was born.”

“I knew you were the same age as me,” Jim interjected. She smiled as her brush swept across the canvas and she quickly opened her eyes to dip the paintbrush into a splattering of white paint next to her.

“My dad died when I was fifteen…”

“How did he die?”

“Cancer,” she said as she quickly set down the blue brush and picked up another for a different color paint.

“What was school like for you?”

“Middle school was okay. I had a few friends, I was an art geek. Well, to be fair, I was an art geek all through high school too,” she explained. “I was happy with it though. I was okay being unpopular. It worked for me.”

“Mhm,” Jim murmured. “When did you meet your fiancé?”

“Ex-fiancé,” Pam corrected. “I met him in high school. He was on the football team – he had been on the football team through middle school. Everyone knew him. We started dating just around the time of our junior prom. He asked me to the dance, I couldn’t believe it – art geek and all.”

“Of course.”

“And…I don’t know, there was something between us that clicked. We were good together for some reason. I hated all of his friends though. During my senior year I was constantly jealous of all of the girls he hung around with. I’m still pretty sure that he cheated on me with the captain of the cheerleading squad that year. But I stuck with him.” Her brush swept long strokes across the white of the canvas; it was quickly becoming a real abstract work of art. “Anyway, we went to the same college – I got accepted to several art programs at a couple of universities around Pennsylvania, but I turned them all down because Roy wasn’t able to get into any of the schools with his low GPA and bad test scores.”

“That sucks.”

“A lot,” she said as she set down the paintbrush she had been using and picked up another for the blue again.

“Then what?”

“Then…well, we went to college. We both went for two years, and it was around that second year that recruiters started to check him out.”

“Recruiters?”

“Yeah, like, major universities and professional football leagues.”

“Major universities?”

“Yeah, he actually got offers from big name schools like Miami and I think even Michigan might have offered him something, but he didn’t want to go to school anymore,” she said as her arm made a large sweeping motion across the canvas.

“Have you opened your eyes yet?” Jim asked.

“No, they’re still shut,” she replied.

“Good, keep them shut,” he said, “keep going though, your story is riveting.”

She giggled, “So anyway, he really wanted to stay in Pennsylvania, I’m not really sure why since it didn’t really seem there was a whole lot there to offer. But during one of his football games that second year of college, there were some scouts from the Pioneers…”

“Pioneers?”

“The arena football team that Roy played for.”

“Oh, of course.”

“And they made him a great offer. We didn’t even have to move away from Scranton. How great, right?”

“Wonderful,” Jim said sarcastically and Pam giggled again.

“So he made it into the league of professional…or at least somewhat professional football, and...that’s that, I suppose. He told me that there was no need for me to go to college anymore because the money that he made from football was plenty to support the two of us. I reluctantly believed him and so I dropped out. He proposed to me a few months later, we were engaged for several years while he bought me anything that my heart could possibly desire…” she paused and took a deep breath, suddenly feeling shaky on her legs.

“Pam? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she took another deep breath, fighting back the inexplicable tears that she could feel rising in her throat. “Anyway…”

“You don’t have to go on, if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, I want to. It feels good to tell someone about it.”

“Okay…”

“Anyway, so we were engaged for several years, and the entire time I kept asking myself, ‘Pam, is this really what you want in your life? Do you really want to be a housewife forever? Do you really want to be the wife of a crappy AFL football player?’” She heard Jim laugh on the other end of the line as her paintbrush made quick, rapid swoops across the canvas.

“He was crappy?”

“Well, he was a perfectly good player, but the way he talked about himself and his team you would think that he thought of himself as a god or at the very least an MVP in the NFL,” she said with a small laugh.

“So then…”

“So then…we planned the wedding, everything was set in stone, wedding day came around and everything was just a wreck. Usually people say that if the wedding day is awful that it only means the foundations of a long-lasting marriage, but I think that idea even scared me more. I started to wonder how much longer we could really last. How much longer I could last for that matter and…” she sighed as she set down her paintbrush. “I cracked. I was standing up there in front of my family, in front of his family, in front of his entire football team for Christ sakes and all that I could think of was how I didn’t want to be there, how I didn’t want this life and…” her voice cracked. “I ran.”

“Did you actually run?”

She smiled, “I think that my exact words were… ‘I’m sorry, I can’t’ and then I turned around and quickly left the altar as fast as I could.”

“Wow.”

Both ends of the line were silent for a few moments as Pam stood swaying around in small circles, her eyes still closed. Her hands empty – with the exception of the cell phone held next to her ear, and feeling calm for the first time in the past week.

“You want to open your eyes now?”

“I don’t know, what if I hate it?”

“I don’t think you will,” he said.

“Okay,” she said with a deep breath, “opening my eyes. If I hate it, I’m blaming you.”

“And if you love it?”

“You’re getting extra fries with your sandwich on Tuesday,” she said with a grin, her eyes still closed.

“Awesome! Even more incentive for you to love what you’ve created,” he said with a laugh.

She gasped and remained silent when her eyes opened. She stared at the now-colorful canvas in front of her covered with sweeping brush strokes and thick, blocky lines. She had painted the bottom a rich layer of cerulean blue, pure blue, like water. As the colors rose, they became a little bit lighter, but the canvas quickly became dark, the colors muddled with dark purple, a greenish color and red. As the colors rose on the canvas, they only became darker, with a dark, almost black line near the very top and it ended abruptly. Following the dark line was a pure, cerulean blue much like the bottom, with sweeping white lines a little flecks of a pinkish color.

“So?”

She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

“Pam? Are you still there?”

“Yeah…” she stammered as she looked at the swirling colors, the abstract lines of her life.

“So how is it?”

“It’s…” she looked at it over and over again, not believing what she had created without even looking. “It’s…me. It’s perfect.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s…just…perfect,” she said quietly and a huge grin crossed her face. “You’re getting extra fries for the next month, Halpert.” He laughed.

“I’ll have to see this sometime, take a picture of it or something and show me.”

“Definitely.”

“I probably better get back to sleep though, I have a client coming in first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Oh! God! Of course! Sorry!” she found the strength in her legs again and walked over to the side of her bed.

“No, I was glad to help,” he said earnestly.

“Thanks,” she said, “thanks for everything. I’ll see you…well…in a week, I guess.”

“Unless I run into you sooner,” he said.

“Of course. Thanks again, Jim.”

“Not a problem. Sleep well, Pam.”

“Thanks, you too.”

She heard the click of his phone closing shut, ending the call. She smiled as she looked up at the colorful canvas in front of her. She fell back onto her comforter and stared up at the ceiling happily.

“Jim Halpert, you are my hero,” she said quietly to herself as she lazily closed her eyes.