October 28, 2008

Pam sat in their living room – her laptop on the coffee table and her drawing tablet on her legs. Of all the ways she had planned on spending their first anniversary, this was not one of them. It had been a busy day at work, she had been given two more manuscripts to look over and apparently the modern day Rapunzel she had been asked to illustrate was not up to the standards the author had wanted, so she was redrawing that.

Amazingly though, this was not the worst part of the anniversary. Yes, she had awaken alone that morning, and yes, she had discovered upon waking that it was yet another month that she had not conceived – though they weren’t really trying anymore. The worst part of the day was not the hour long meeting that she had to sit through and it wasn’t the lukewarm frozen dinner that she ate while watching re-runs of Seinfeld. The worst part of this anniversary was that he wasn’t there. The one person that one was supposed to spend their anniversary with wasn’t there – he was stuck at O’Hare, waiting for his flight home to JFK.

Jim had called her an hour earlier, telling her that he had finally found a flight that was open. Apparently Northwest Airlines was having some technical issues on top of weather issues that were plaguing the Midwest. Even if the airlines had been running smoothly, he probably would have missed dinner, and he probably would have been too tired to do anything outrageously special for the day.

She wasn’t upset. She wasn’t sure if she should be surprised by that or not. She wasn’t sad, she wasn’t angry; of course, she wasn’t happy either. She just felt kind of…blank. She hoped that wouldn’t come across in the illustrations that she had been working on all evening; she really wanted to be finished with this Rapunzel book.

***

At nine o’clock, she walked to the kitchen and she made herself some tea. Her stomach wasn’t the happiest part of her body at that moment, and she figured that the tea could quell the rumbling. She walked around to the dining room as she waited for the water to boil and she gingerly touched the petals of the arrangement of roses that sat in the middle of the dining room table. That was one nice thing that Jim had done today – he had sent her roses at work.

She had never really been one to enjoy receiving flowers in the workplace. There was someone who worked down the hall that was always receiving bouquets of flowers and Pam always found it rather irritating. She wasn’t sure if it was because she never received flowers, or if it was just a general idea that she had put in her head that said, “Flowers at work is no good!” She didn’t know who the mysterious bouquet-receiver was who worked in the building or why they received so many flowers, but she and Phyllis certainly had a lot of interesting theories.

When the delivery man showed up in the doorway of her office today with the modest bouquet of roses, she immediately directed him down the hallway – thinking that he was new and had simply stepped in the wrong office. However, when he said her name and held the flowers out towards her, she felt her heart leap inside her chest. Andy, who had been singing, “Happy Anniversary” like a broken record silenced himself for the first time all day as the man set the vase on Pam’s desk.

“Who are they from?” Andy had asked smugly, trying to mask his jealousy for the man who had the woman that he was so enamored by.

Pam had simply looked at him and rolled her eyes and she carefully withdrew the small card from the middle of the bouquet and read Jim’s simple note telling her happy anniversary and how much he missed her.

Unfortunately, the initial high from receiving the bouquet had worn off throughout the day. Now they were just pretty red roses sitting in the middle of their dining room table. Jim still wasn’t home, it was still their anniversary and it would only be their anniversary for a couple more hours.

***

Pam fell asleep on the sofa before eleven. She had put down her drawing tablet and stretched across the couch at ten thirty, thinking that she would give her eyes a break from staring at her computer for so long. Within ten minutes, she had fallen fast asleep.

Jim arrived home at quarter after eleven. He had come through the door rather ceremoniously, thinking that Pam would be working in the living room or doing something in the kitchen. Instead, he heard her soft, sleeping sighs coming from a corner of the sofa.

He quietly closed the door and set his things down then walked to the living room. He peered over the side of the couch and smiled like a little boy who had just discovered a secret surprise.

He tiptoed around to the other side and knelt down onto the floor and brought his face close to hers and kissed her on her forehead. She was immediately startled awake, and literally jumped upright as soon as she felt his lips touch her skin. She sat, frightened, as the room came back into focus and she realized the person who had just kissed her was her husband.

“Hi!” she exclaimed happily.

“I guess you’re not as tired as I thought,” he said with a smile as he rose up off of his knees and sat next to her on the couch.

“No, I am,” she said, “I’m just really happy to finally see you.” She grinned and threw her arms around his shoulders and he allowed her to bury herself against his body.

“I’m so sorry that I’m so late,” he said quietly. “I had so many great plans for today…before that whole trip was thrown in my face. I was going to take you out for this great dinner and we were going to go for a romantic, albeit probably very cold, carriage ride…”

“You don’t have to,” she said as she pressed her fingers against his lips.

“I don’t have to what?” he asked.

“Tell me all the things that we would have done,” she replied, the smile starting to fade away slightly.

“Well, there’s still…what? Thirty minutes left?” he asked, looking down at his wristwatch.

“I don’t really know what we can do in thirty minutes,” she replied. Jim raised his eyebrows suggestively and Pam swatted him on the side of his arm.

“Given the way this day has turned out, that would have to be a lot longer than thirty minutes,” she said, giggling.

“Please tell me you at least got my flowers,” he said.

“You didn’t see them on the table when you came in?” she asked, nodding back towards the dining room table. He followed her gaze and smiled at the red roses sitting in the dining room.

“Wonderful,” he said nodding. “Okay, but that’s not your only present! It’s our first anniversary and that means that I have to give you…” he started to dig through his pockets, “paper!” He pulled out a small package wrapped in pink and white paper and held it out towards Pam in the palm of his hand.

“Thank you!” she exclaimed taking it from him.

“And I know, I know,” he continued, “it’s supposed to be paper…but frankly, I think paper is kind of a crappy present to give to the woman that you’re madly in love with. And, well, I’ve already screwed up enough today, so paper is only the outer present.”

Pam smiled and nodded and opened up the small paper parcel to find a gold necklace inside.

“It’s lovely,” she said quietly as her fingers just barely touched the thin gold chain.

“I thought about getting you something really big,” he explained, “but I know that you like simple jewelry, so…I hope you like it.”

“I love it,” she said as her fingers hooked around the chain and she pulled it up out of the paper wrapping. The pendant of gold and a pink pearl dropped down towards her lap and Pam smiled.

“Oh good,” he said taking the necklace from her and undoing the clasp. “So what did you get for me?”

“What makes you think that you got anything?” Pam asked with a smile as she leaned forward as Jim wrapped the necklace around her neck.

“Ooh, sharp,” he replied with a wink.

“It’s upstairs,” she said as she gathered up her hair and pulled it over the gold chain.

“Oh? Upstairs?” he asked suggestively.

“Not what you’re thinking,” she replied. “Unlike you, I stuck with the first anniversary rules of paper.”

“I got you paper!” he insisted. “It just came with bonus gifts inside!” She giggled and stood up, holding her hand out towards him.

“I guess my present is more of something for the both of us,” she said as she walked towards the stairs.

“Oh, I see how you play things here,” he said as he followed.

The two of them rounded the stairs and stepped inside of the bedroom, and Pam pointed towards the window which faced the general direction of Central Park.

“A new painting!” Jim exclaimed as he crossed the room and walked up to the new painting hanging on the wall next to the window.

“It’s a little more abstract than my usual landscapes,” Pam said quietly as she walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I figured that if I drew it too realistic it would look too much like a hotel painting.”

“It’s where…it’s where we were married,” Jim said smiling at the watercolor painting of Cherry Hill in autumn. And Pam was right; it wasn’t like her usual landscapes. A lot of the time when she painted a landscape, she drew it as realistically as she could. One could find the branches in the trees, and she made sure to include as many little details as possible. This was more fluid. The trees were dots of orange, red, yellow and tan, the pond in the center of the painting was a large blob of blue amongst the colorful trees and the green lawns. The buildings that rose in the distance weren’t drawn in any detail at all, and were simply large, gray structures that rose above the treetops.

“It is,” she said with a nervous smile. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” he said turning his gaze back towards Pam. “It’s so…it’s different than your usual watercolors.”

“I know, I kind of took a risk with it,” she said quietly. It was no secret that abstract art had not been her forte during school, but for some reason, Jim was able to bring out that side of her. With him on her mind, she could create amazing pieces of art.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, taking a seat on the bed next to her.

“Thank you,” she said, leaning against his shoulder and closing her eyes.

“I missed you,” he said and he kissed the top of her head.

“I missed you too,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “Andy kept singing ‘Happy Anniversary’ to me today. All I could think was how badly I wanted you to come in and rescue me.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to get home,” he said.

“Well, you’re here now,” she said, “that’s what’s important.”

“Absolutely,” he said. He bent his head low and kissed her softly on the lips.

“So you’re going to be around for a while, right?” she boldly asked. He didn’t answer and instead kissed her again, a little deeper this time. She pulled away and persisted, “Jim…”

“They want me to go to Dallas next week,” he said, swooping down towards her lips, only to make contact with her cheek instead as she ducked away.

“Dallas?” she asked. “For how long?”

“A couple days,” he replied. “Can we talk about this later?” He looked over at the clock on the bedside table, there were only ten minutes left in their anniversary.

“Why can’t you just tell them no?” she asked, she looked in his eyes – hers were pleading.

“It doesn’t…I don’t…it doesn’t work like that,” he replied.

“And leaving me constantly for several days at a time does?” she asked sadly.

“I don’t leave you constantly,” he replied.

“You’re gone at least one week out of every month,” she said flatly.

“I…” he stammered and looked at her, his forehead tightly knit.

“Jim,” she said firmly, “I didn’t marry you so that you would be gone all the time. I married you so I could be with you all the time…or, maybe not all the time, but you know what I mean.” He didn’t respond so she continued, “And you took this promotion because it was a great opportunity but…but it’s not. Maybe it’s a great personal opportunity, but when you have someone else in your life it’s just…” she sighed and looked down into her lap, “horrible.”

There was a long, deafeningly silent pause before Jim finally spoke, “What do you want me to do?” It was quiet and it sounded more like a plea than a question.

Pam looked back into his eyes again and smiled weakly. There were so many things that she wanted to say. If she hadn’t been the woman she was maybe she would have told him to step down from his position because deep down, she knew that if he wasn’t the vice president he would be around more often. She didn’t feel like she could tell him that though so instead, she simply said, “I don’t know,” because she really didn’t.