October 4, 2010

Pam walked up the flight of stairs towards her office. It had been nearly a year since she had actually been here to work. She had visited Phyllis on a couple of occasions, and she had even visited a couple of times to turn in some illustrations that she had worked on from home during her maternity leave. Now though…now she was back for good. Well, she was back for good during the morning hours at least.

She and Jim had hired a nanny to work in the mornings and Pam had worked out a steady schedule with her boss that would allow her to work part-time where she would spend the mornings at her office and she could work from home during the afternoons and the evenings if it was necessary for her to do so.

When she left for work that morning she had felt odd. Nearly every time that she had ventured outside in the past few months, it had been with a baby in tow. Leaving home that morning with only her work bag had felt downright foreign to her. Even so, she had felt a sense of liberation and she felt that maybe she could once again start to feel like her life was where she had expected it to be.

As Pam walked down the familiar hallway that led to the office she shared with Andy and Phyllis it was if nothing had changed. The same book covers, magazine and newspaper articles still hung in their frames on the wall. It was as if the office had been frozen in time for the past ten months and had been awaiting her return.

She walked into the office she shared and was rather surprised to note that not even that had changed. Phyllis’ corner looked the same – although there were two framed photos that were new. They appeared to be images from a vacation that Phyllis had taken with her husband. Andy’s little nook near the door looked exactly the same, right down to the picture hanging off the side of his desk – a horribly photoshopped image of he and Justin Timberlake, which he vehemently insisted was real.

Even her desk looked exactly the same as it had when she left – with the exception of a small gift wrapped in blue paper sitting on the top of her keyboard. She looked around for the donor, but there was no one around. As far as she could tell, she was the first person there.

She sat down at her desk and opened the box, curious to see what it was or to see if there was at the very least a note inside that would tell her who gave her the gift. As she tore off a corner of paper, she immediately knew what was inside and she grinned as she pulled off the rest of the paper. In her hands was a box of 48 Crayola crayons. Taped to the back of the box was a note that read, “For the little one, so she can become like her mom, Pamcasso. –Andy”.

“Pamcasso!” Andy’s voice rang from the doorway and her head jolted to where he stood, leaning against the door with a mug of coffee in his hands.

“Thank you, Andy,” she said, holding up the box of crayons.

“Not a problem,” he said. “I would have given you them at the baby shower, but I figured the little prodigy probably didn’t have the motor skills to use crayons yet.”

“Prodigy?” she asked, amused.

“Well,” he replied, “it may be a little presumptuous of me to say so, but I think that any offspring of yours is going to have your amazing talent. And hey, if you can nourish that talent young, there’s no telling how great she can become.”

“Wow,” she said nodding. “Thanks a lot.”

“And hey, if you want some help harnessing all of that creativity, I can always teach her how to play a musical instrument,” he said. “No harm in giving your child multiple creative outlets.”

“I think she’s still a bit too young to learn a musical instrument, Andy,” she said as she tucked the box of crayons into her bag.

“Not so,” he said, shaking his head, “A xylophone is an any-age instrument!”

“I guess,” she said.

“Anyway,” he continued, “just let me know if you ever want anything in the musical department. I owe you anyway.”

“Owe me?” Pam asked, caught slightly off-guard by the statement. She couldn’t think of anything that Andy owed to her…

“For introducing me to your friend at your baby shower,” Andy replied.

Her eyes darted back and forth at nothing in particular. Friend? What friend?

“I…I don’t quite know…” she started.

“Your friend Kelly from that restaurant you used to work at,” he said with a grin.

“Kelly?” she asked, with a wide-eyed expression of shock on her face.

“She is quite the special lady,” he replied, bobbing his head back and forth as he turned to his computer screen. “Oh! And lookie here, I just received an e-mail from her! Dear Andylion …”

“No,” Pam said, quickly holding her hand up. “I…there’s no need to read that aloud.”

“There’s nothing bad in it,” he said. “Perfectly suitable for innocent ears.”

“No, that’s still quite all right,” she said. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Andy silently read through the e-mail one more time, happily bobbing his head back and forth before Pam heard a loud, “Aaaww” come from his direction.

She opened her mouth to make a remark but before she was able to he loudly proclaimed, “Love! She said love at the end of the e-mail!" as he pointed to his computer screen. 

“Sweet,” Pam said quietly, turning on her computer, anxious to see just how many tasks her boss had assigned to her for her first day back.

Their small office was silent for a few more brief moments, and quite frankly, the silence was quite a rarity with Andy actually present. Pam braced herself for the next big outburst from the man, and nearly jumped off the seat of her chair when his loud cell phone ring sounded in the room.

It was a customized ringtone of “My Girl” and Pam immediately thought that the voice was oddly familiar.

“Andy, is that…” she began.

“Me?” he finished proudly as he picked up the phone and tilted it back and forth. “Yep. All four parts.” He opened the phone and covered the speaking end quickly. “It’s Kelly’s ring tone.”

Pam was actually speechless; not that she would have interrupted Andy on the phone anyway. She would have never put Andy and Kelly together, but the more that she thought about it, she guessed that it kind of worked. They were both kind of loud and would talk to whoever would listen…maybe it was a match made in heaven.

“…Me too, Sweetcheeks,” he said and silently waved at Phyllis as she walked in through the doorway.

“Sweetcheeks?” Pam silently mouthed and Phyllis grinned widely.

“Glad to have you back, Pam,” Phyllis said.

“When did this start?” she asked in an almost-whisper so Andy couldn’t overhear.

“Around April,” Phyllis replied in an equally hushed voice. “Andy had some rather jarring family issues that he went away to take care of during the month of March and when he came back…well, I guess he decided that he wanted to give it a go with Kelly and here we are today.”

“He’s been dating Kelly since April?” Pam asked, wide-eyed. She didn’t even remember the last time that Kelly had been in a relationship for that long.

“Mid-April or so, yes,” Phyllis replied.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked.

“I didn’t think it would last at first,” Phyllis replied. “Then when I started to realize that maybe it was a bit more serious than I first thought, I just figured it would be a fun surprise for you to come back to.”

“Well, it’s a surprise all right,” Pam said.

“Just wait a couple weeks,” Phyllis said with a smile. “Once the novelty of it wears off he’s pretty much just as annoying as he used to be. Just…in a different way.”

***

Pam was sitting on the living room floor playing with Amelia and telling her stories when Jim returned home that evening. He looked a little more ragged than usual and she couldn’t immediately tell if he had just had a rough day or if there was something else nagging at him. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to seeing him worn down from work. Being the vice president of the company did a toll on him from time to time and she realized that. The way he looked this evening though told her that maybe it wasn’t just work that was on his mind.

“Hey Jim,” she said, looking up at him and smiling. Amelia, too, looked up at Jim and pointed at him before shouting out loudly and she quickly returned her attention to the wooden blocks scattered on the floor.

“Hey,” he said, he sounded a little more glum than usual. “How was your first day back?”

“Good,” she said, smiling. “How was your day?”

“Bad,” he said, very simply. He walked to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of soda before walking into the living room and taking a seat on the sofa.

“What happened?” Pam asked. She wasn’t sure if he was in the mood to talk about his ‘bad’ day, but she could certainly try to coax it out of him.

“Karen had her baby,” Jim said.

Pam’s forehead furrowed in confusion. Yes, she knew Jim’s hostility towards the woman, but her giving birth to be the reason for his bad day…it didn’t quite piece together.

“I…I don’t quite follow,” she said.

“What’s not to follow?” he asked. “She had her baby and so now she’s demanding more money from the company for her maternity leave.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding and turning back to Amelia. Maybe this wasn’t the time or place to question him about it.

“You know, we pay mothers in the company well,” he continued. “We pay fathers in the company well if they decide to take a paternity leave. She doesn’t need more money.”

“I know,” she said. Jim was well taken care of by the company during the six months that he was on paternity leave after Amelia was born. They got along perfectly well on his paid leave salary.

“I think there’s more to it,” he said.

“And that’s why you’re in a bad mood?” she asked.

He shrugged and replied, “We heard from Kevin today that he’s filing for divorce. We were supposed to be doing a project with him but he cancelled at the last minute because he needed a week or two to sort out some issues.”

Pam thought that at least that could explain Jim’s foul mood. He never liked it when co-workers backed down on projects at the last minute.

“And David Wallace was fired from his company last week,” he said quietly.

“What?” Pam asked, wide-eyed. She now was starting to realize why a new baby could be a bad thing. Kevin filing for a divorce would mean Karen would have to hope for divorce settlement money – which in and of itself was a bad thing given her history with trying to get money from Jim. If Kevin got lucky in the divorce and Karen didn’t get what she wanted, she would most likely turn to David…who was now fired…

Jim nodded, “And that’s why Karen’s new baby is the worst thing to happen to me this month.”

Pam muttered a soft, “Oh…” and she turned her gaze back to Amelia. He nodded again, but remained silent and lost in the thoughts that had plagued him on his way home from the office. He could only think of the many ways that the impending divorce, David’s job loss and Karen’s new baby could affect not only the people who were actually involved, but everyone who surrounded them as well.

Jim knew what he had to do. He had to distance himself from the entire situation as much as possible. The last thing that he wanted was to be caught up in another one of Karen’s conniving schemes.