December 2007  

Manhattan around Christmas time was one thing and one thing only—utter and complete madness.  Residents generally avoided downtown on the weekends as tourists flocked to the city to snap pictures in front of the most famous Christmas tree in the world, to strap on skates and take a spin around Rockefeller Center, and do whatever else touristy types felt it necessary to do on their trips into the city.  Pam was not, and had never been, a resident of New York City, but she had visited just enough to have the mentality of a local—total annoyance.   

She latched onto Jim’s hand and pulled him along, weaving through the crowds gathered in front of Penn Station with surprising skill.  “Come on,” she said, tugging on his arm.  As soon as they had cleared the crowd, Pam looked up him and smiled, laughing at his dumbfounded look.  “What?” 

“I’ve never been to the city this time of year,” Jim said, still a little stunned but the crowd, and a little stunned at how comfortable Pam seemed to be.  “There are a lot of people here.”  

“Tourists,” Pam muttered darkly.  “My aunt’s place is about ten blocks away.  Do you mind walking?”  

Jim hitched their duffle bag higher on his shoulder tossed the edge of his scarf over his shoulder dramatically.  “Of course not.”   

“Okay, but anyway,” she said, bounding along enthusiastically.  “I should give you a crash course on my aunt before you meet her,” Pam said, pausing long enough to lay a hand on his arm solemnly.  “First of all, Aunt Matilda is out of her mind.”   

Jim snorted out a laugh at her serious expression.  “Oh really?”  

“I mean, she’s not like schizophrenic crazy, but she’s eighty two, and she thinks that being eighty two is a permission slip to say whatever she wants whenever she wants.” 

“Is she going to ask me what my intentions are and then make me sleep on the couch?”  

“No, but once she told my sister the reason she was grumpy was because she was obviously sexually frustrated, and then proceeded to give her husband tips on how to please a woman.”   

“Oh good lord,” Jim said.  “So, she’s the most inappropriate aunt ever, basically.”  

“Considering this conversation was at my sister’s wedding, yeah.  Basically.  But she’s awesome, I love her.”  

“It sounds like it,” Jim said, squeezing her hand gently.  “I can’t wait to meet her.  And you never know, maybe she’ll teach me a thing or two.  And how are you related again?”  

“She’s my grandfather’s sister.”    

“And she never got married?”  

“No,” Pam said with a shake of her head, pointing left at an intersection.  They jogged across the street before the light changed.  “Family lore is that her one true love died during World War II, and she never got over it.  That isn’t to say she didn’t have affairs with, like, half the men in Hollywood in the fifties and sixties, but whatever.”   

“Like who?” Jim asked curiously.  One of his guilty pleasures was old movies from that very era.  “Anybody I would know?”  

“Apparently, Aunt Matilda is why Cary Grant’s third wife left him,” Pam said with a smug smile.  “Like I said, she’s had a pretty wild life.”   

Jim arched a brow, but said nothing for a moment.  “She was an actress, right?”  

“Among other things.  She was a ballerina first, and then she moved over to Broadway and had a cabaret show for a while.  Then she did a couple supporting roles in some movies, then went back to her roots and became a choreographer.”   

Jim noted the hints of genuine admiration in Pam’s voice.  “She sounds like quite a lady.”   

“As long as she doesn’t terrify you, you’ll love her,” Pam said, jumping up and kissing his cheek as the nervous energy took hold of her once again.  “She’s really great.”   

They walked along Riverside Drive in comfortable silence, hands linked.  They had been dating for a little over six months, and even though they had both just been through the runaround of meeting each other’s family’s at various Thanksgiving dinners, when it came time for Pam to visit her great aunt in New York, she had insisted that Jim accompany her.  “She’s really important to me,” she’d said, and the quiet pleading in her voice was enough to have him using one of his few remaining vacation days to make a long weekend out of the trip.   

“You know what she said to me when I called off my wedding?” she blurted suddenly.   

“What?” Jim asked with a perplexed smile.  The topics of Roy and Karen weren’t the sensitive issues they were months before, time together easing those particular wounds, but it still wasn’t something they brought up often.   

“While everyone else was trying to get me to explain why I did it, she just laughed and said ‘Good.  That boy was never good enough.’  And then she mailed me brochures for art schools.”   

Jim grinned.  “Yeah, I definitely like her already.”   

Pam smiled softly, still remembering opening her mailbox a year and a half earlier and finding an envelope full of brochures from art schools in New York City.  Her aunt had offered to foot the bill for her to move to the city and enroll in the school of her choice, but Pam had been determined to do things for herself for once, and opted for one class at a time at Scranton Community College.   “There’s her building,” she said, pointing at one of the many skyscrapers.   

They walked from the cold, grey streets straight into an opulent lobby. 

“Welcome to Valencia Towers,” a uniformed doorman sitting at a low desk said.  “How may I help you?”   

"Pam Beesly for Matilda O’Malley in 25A,” Pam said politely.    

“Yes, of course Ms. Beesly.  Ms. O’Malley is expecting you,” the doorman said after checking a clipboard in front of him.  “Go ahead to elevator number four and I’ll buzz you right up.”   

Jim waited until they were in the elevator before gawking.  “This is…quite a place.”   

Pam smiled, glancing over the ornate gold leaf panels of the elevator walls.  “Yeah, it’s kind of tacky, isn’t it?”  

“A little,” Jim said, wrinkling his nose.   

“Don’t worry, Aunt Matilda’s not so much into gold leaf as she is into making fun of people who like gold leaf.”   

The elevator doors opened directly into Matilda O’Malley’s living room, something Jim had never actually believed existed outside of movies and television shows.  They walked through a short hallway.  Jim whistled as they stepped into the large room, decorated in simple blacks and whites, but was most impressed with the large picture window that overlooked the Hudson River.  The place reeked of quiet money, the kind of money that didn’t need to be flashy.  He smiled at the magazines and mail strewn about the coffee table.  The place looked lived in, not like the showroom he expected when they entered the lobby. 

“Aunt Matilda?” Pam called up a set of winding stairs.  “Aunt Matilda, are you here?”  

“Two floors and this view?” Jim said, arching a brow at the stairs.  “So, we’re talking serious money here.” 

“Shh,” Pam admonished.  “Aunt Matilda?”  

“I’ll be right down,” a voice floated down from the stairs.  “Make yourself comfortable.”   

“Come on,” Pam said, grabbing Jim’s hand again, pulling him back the way they came, throwing open a door along the hallway.  “Here’s our room.”   

Though the room might have been smaller, it was well decorated with pale lavender walls and a large wrought iron bed.  There were framed artistic prints of ballerinas in various positions in black frames hung on the walls, with a particular portrait catching Jim’s eye. The shot was black and white of a woman, her eyes heavily lined and her lips dark, her hair curling wildly underneath a black bowler hat.  She was looking over the shoulder of a man with his back to the camera.  She held her hands dramatically stiff on the unseen man’s shoulders, as if waiting for a cue.  Her lips were parted, her head tilted back, and the photograph seemed to capture the perfect moment of anticipation.  There was something decidedly powerful, nearly sexual about the photo.   

“That’s her,” Pam said from behind him.  “That was one of her promotional shots when she was going on tour with her cabaret.”     

At the sound of heels clicking across the hardwood floor, Pam dropped her book bag and rushed into the hallway.  Jim tore his eyes from the photo, from the beautiful face that held the faintest traces of the face of the woman he loved, and followed Pam back to the living room.   

“It’s good to see you, dear,” he heard Pam’s aunt say before rounding the corner just in time to see her pull her niece into a tight hug.   She wore pearls at her ears and her throat, along with wide legged black trousers and snug black sweater.  Her hair, ruthlessly dyed auburn, swung straight around her and ended abruptly at her chin.  She was taller than Jim expected, around five foot nine with the assistance of her tall heels.  She certainly wasn’t the stunner she had been in the photograph, but for an eighty year old, she didn’t look bad. 

“Aunt Matilda,” Pam said breathlessly, glancing over her shoulder at Jim.  “I want you to meet my boyfriend, Jim Halpert.  Jim, this is my favorite aunt in the world, Matilda O’Malley.”  

“I’m your only aunt,” she gently reminded as she turned to greet Jim.  “Hello, it’s very nice to finally meet you.  I’ve heard…” she trailed off suddenly when she met Jim’s eyes.  Her face went slack as she stood there staring for a moment.   

“Uh…” Jim said awkwardly.  “It’s great to meet you too.”  He glanced over to Pam in concern.   

“Aunt Matilda?” Pam said, reaching out to touch her arm in concern.  “Are you okay?”  

The hand on her arm had Matilda jumping.  “I’m sorry,” she said, recovering quickly.  She extended a hand to Jim.  “I just got lost in my thoughts for a second.  It’s good to finally meet you; Pam’s told me so much about you.”   

“All lies,” Jim assured, shaking her hand warmly.   

“I certainly hope not,” Matilda said with a small smile that even Jim noticed didn’t quite reach her eyes.  She looked shaken and pale suddenly, and Jim desperately hoped the elderly woman wasn’t about to have a stroke or something.   She still hadn’t taken her eyes off Jim’s face, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously before shaking it off.  “Are you two hungry?  I was going to order in some lunch.”   

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Jim figured she had to be a multi-millionaire to be living in such an insane apartment, so he found it to be ridiculously charming that she ordered lunch from your average, run of the mill Chinese restaurant.  He was surprised to find that the apartment didn’t extend to a kitchen, only a small refrigerator behind the mini bar in the living room, stocked with snacks and bottled water.  When he questioned the oddity, she only laughed and said “I had the option between a kitchen and a guest room, and I have a lot more friends than desires to cook.”   

“And I thought you I was bad with my one kitchen,” Pam muttered, elbowing him lightly.   They ate lo mien and Hunan shrimp off of paper plates, sitting on the floor around the coffee table in the living room.  Jim felt like the odd man out, the only one who didn’t know how to use chopsticks properly, and the only one who didn’t have an extreme emotional investment in the latest gossip of the New York art world.  He didn’t mind sitting and watching, though, he never had when it came to watching Pam when she was obviously delighted.  After too many years of watching her muted ambivalence to life, any opportunity to see her light up was cherished.   

When the conversation shifted to the big shoe sale at Barney’s, Jim had no choice but to laugh.  Pam’s love for shoes had been one of the many surprises Jim had discovered in the past six months.  He had always assumed that someone who wore the same white pair of Keds to work for three years did not really care all that much about shoes, but he had been mistaken.  She just didn’t care about what shoes she wore to work.  He was reminded in the difference as Pam and Matilda discussed sling backs and mules and wedges and boots with what he felt to be an inappropriate level of animation.     

He was captivated by Matilda O’Malley, enamored with her tawdry stories of who was sleeping with whom, even when he didn’t know any of the players involved.  She had a brightness about her, an impishness that said ‘I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I’m totally not impressed with what you’re selling.’ 

It was also clear that she loved Pam, asking about her art classes, teasing her about wasting her time at a dead-end job, wondering when she was going to just move to the city already and be bohemian, as Matilda seemed to think was Pam’s destiny.   She was funny, engaging, warm, and it was no wonder Pam seemed to hold her in such high regard.   

He was growing uncomfortable, however, with the amount of times Matilda would look over at him and lose her train of thought, something going dark and emotional in her eyes.   

“How about you, Jim?” she said suddenly, turning to face him directly.  “Pam tells me you sell paper at her company?”   

Jim smiled and nodded.  “Yes, ma’am.” Matilda snorted derisively. 

“I didn’t think it was possibly to have a job more dreadfully boring than Pam’s,” she said.  “I guess I was wrong.”   

He had no choice but to laugh.  “Yeah, well.  It pays the bills.”   

“There’s more to life than paying the bills, Jim,” she said, pausing a moment before tossing her head back and hooting.  “Of course, it’s easy for me to say that from my ivory tower, isn’t it?” 

Jim glanced around the apartment and arched a brow.  “You said it, not me.”   

“Oh well,” she said, waving a hand around dismissively.  “When I came to this city, I lived with two prostitutes.”  

Jim and Pam both choked on their drinks at once.  “Wow, Aunt Matilda,” Pam said, clearing her throat.  “That’s a detail that was always left out of your stories before.”   

“Oh silence, child.  You’re a grown up, and I never said I was a prostitute.  I was a lot of things, but never a prostitute.”   

“Good to know,” Pam said, her cheeks turning pink.   

“Why are you embarrassed, Pam?” Jim asked with mock innocence.  “Does it make you uncomfortable when your aunt says ‘prostitute’?”   

“Shut it, Jim,” she said, tossing the wrapped from her straw at him.   

Jim grinned at Pam, an intimate look passing between them, and that’s when it clicked.  Matilda barely choked back the gasp.  “Jim,” she blurted.  “This is going to be a completely odd question, but amuse an old woman, won’t you?”  

“Of course,” Jim said, bracing himself for the expected onslaught of raunchy questions.    

“What was your mother’s maiden name?”  He laughed, caught off guard. 

“Yeah, that is pretty random.  My mom’s maiden name is Wesley.”   

Matilda looked pained for a moment, but then she smiled, slow and bright.  Her eyes glazed over, and for a moment both Jim and Pam wondered if she was about to burst into tears.  “You were named for your grandfather,” she finally said, her voice a dreamy whisper.   

“Yeah...?” Abruptly on edge, he wasn’t sure why it came out like a question.  Maybe it was because suddenly this woman seemed to know an awful lot about him.  His eyes flew to Pam’s, and she looked just as confused as he felt.  “How did you know that?”  

“It’s appropriate that you were named for your grandfather,” she said, her voice nothing but a wisp in the air.  “You have his eyes.”