The days around my birthday in late March also marked the end of my first trimester and for this I was grateful.  My morning sickness had subsided to just a niggling feeling of nausea that would hit, oddly enough, right when I would sit down for dinner.  That overwhelming exhaustion that I seemed to carry around constantly also faded, and I began to think about planting flowers and a vegetable garden when the weather turned.  Best of all, the hormone hurricane had been downgraded to a tropical disturbance and Jim wasn’t peering around the door with a scared-shitless look on his face before he came in the house.  We actually laughed about it, him telling me that the first trimester had been like a box of chocolates…he never knew what he was going to get. 

     My father-in-law had had a mild heart attack after shoveling snow in late February and Jim was spending a lot of time at his parents’ house helping out with chores and errands.  I made casseroles and lasagnas and homemade soups for him to take to give Melinda a break in the kitchen.  I knew that cooking class was a good idea! 

     Work rolled on in the same travelling circus sort of way it always had, although we’d hired a new sales person who turned out to be a rather normal, rather sarcastically funny woman in her forties, named Kellie.  The day I realized I was really going to like Kellie was the day she was first introduced to Todd Packer on one of his rare but momentous visits.  When he very predictably made an extremely crude (even for Packer) pass at Kellie in front of the entire office, she just stared at him for the longest time, managing a look that was a little amused, but mostly disgusted and slightly threatening.  She never said a word, but her stare continued to darken until Packer sputtered, turned on his heel, and retreated into Michael’s office.  Jim told her she should have that stare licensed as a lethal weapon and she cracked up.  I clapped my hands and laughed my head off.    We became pretty good friends.

~~

     On a Saturday after Jim takes off to his parents’ house, Kellie comes over to help me paint the baby’s room.  It’s the first time she’s coming to our house and I’m excited to have her.  I'd insisted that she didn’t have to help me paint, but she said she misses doing home projects since she sold her house and moved into an apartment and would love to help.  I have coffee ready for her and we sit at the kitchen table, after the house tour, and chat for a little while. 

“The house is great, Pam.  They don’t build them like this anymore.”

“Oh, thanks!  We love it and we both grew up in older homes like this, so we’re used to the little quirks, like rattling windows and banging pipes.”

“Small price to pay for crown molding like this.  The floors are just beautiful, and the little terrace off the bedroom is to die for.”

     I smile and think about the very first time we walked into that bedroom and I spied the French doors and what lay beyond.  “It’s silly, but I cried the first time I saw the terrace!  I always wanted that and I swear, the rest of the house could have been falling apart and it wouldn’t have mattered.  That’s what sold us on the house.”

“Is Jim handy with stuff around the house?”

“You know, you wouldn’t think so, right? But he is!  His dad has spent a lot of time over here, giving advice and helping out and Jim’s brother, Jon, has too.”

“So, we've never really talked about this stuff, but, how long have you and Jim known each other?”

     I laugh.  “That’s a story that’s probably best told over a few margaritas, but I guess we’ll have to settle for coffee and a gallon of paint, huh?”

     A couple hours later, less than half of the baby’s room remains a drab yellow, and it’s quickly yielding to a wave of Tangerine Dream – a warm orangey-yellowy cantaloupe-ish color that I fell in love with and has received Kellie’s stamp of approval.  We’re moving pretty quickly around the room with Kellie’s steady hand cutting in and me moving behind her with the roller. 

“I’m so glad you offered to help, Kel.  I can’t believe how much faster this goes with two and I can’t believe you don’t tape!”

“I gave up the tape a long time ago, Pam.  It’s a pain in the ass, half the time it doesn’t really work and I’ve ruined a few paint jobs tearing it off.  Hey, I think if we grab some lunch after the first coat is done, we might be able to get a second coat up before the end of the day.”

“Really?  That would be so great.”

“Yeah, I think we can do it and then you’ll be done.  Jim mentioned that you were going to paint a mural on one of the walls in here…what are you planning?”

     I feel my stomach do a flip and my cheeks grow hot.  Damn his memory for the littlest things! 

“Oh…uh…that was really Jim’s idea and I’m not sold on it, myself.  I’ve never painted on such a big area before and I don’t want it to look hokey and amateurish and I couldn’t make up my mind about a design. Plus, I just love this color and I was thinking it might be better to wait until the baby is older and then maybe we could tape off an area and paint it together, you know, like maybe with finger paints…or…”

“Finger paints?  If you’re trying to avoid ‘amateurish’, Pam, I don’t think finger paints are the way to go. What if the kid doesn’t inherit your arty flair? Pam, think of all those kid drawings you’ve seen on people’s refrigerators!  Yeesh!  Half the time you can’t even tell what the hell the picture is and the other half of the time, you think you should warn the parents about their child’s future life of crime.  Those things are like Rorschach blots and the parents are so proud and you don’t know quite what to say and it’s just…uncomfortable.  Kid art sucks, Pam.”

“You crack me up, Kellie.  Yeah, maybe it’s not such a good idea.  Junior might take after Jim and be doomed to stick figures all his life.”  I laugh, but it’s a nervous laugh, because I really want to move on from this topic.  She’s probably on to my lame excuses and I really don’t want to have a discussion about why Pam isn’t painting anymore.  Thank God she changes the subject herself.

“It’s probably a blessing I never had kids.  They’d all probably end up on Dr. Phil, whining about how their crazy mother ruined their self-esteem and trying to stage an intervention.”

“Ha!  I’d love to see you use the Kellie Death Stare on Dr. Phil!”

“Speaking of the Death Stare, I had to use it on Creed yesterday.  I caught that loony bastard standing in front of the open refrigerator, eating my lunch!”

“Oh, no!  Creed has a few…issues.”

“Yeah, well, just staring into those crazy eyes gave me a flashback.”

     I think this is a perfect time to bring up my favorite Kellie topic, just to hear what new twist she’d put on the rant that would inevitably ensue.

“You really need a boyfriend.”

“Oh, Pam, for the love of God.   I need a lot of things…a new winter coat, a better retirement plan, the clutch in my car repaired, a good sushi place to open in Scranton, better foundation garments…just to name a few.  I most certainly do not need a boyfriend.”

“Don’t you ever get lonely for someone?”

“Not really…well, occasionally.  But it’s so occasional that it doesn’t even amount to real loneliness.  It’s really just horniness.”

“Wow.”

“What?  Pam, I’m 46 years old…”

“A very young 46, Kel.”

“Obviously!  But I’ve been married and divorced.  A couple times.  I’m not good at it, and frankly, I just don’t care about it that much anymore.  I don’t ever want to contemplate homicide over someone’s dirty underwear on my bedroom floor ever again.  I don’t want someone asking me where I go and what time I’m coming home or bitching at me for buying another new pair of shoes.”

“You do have a lot of shoes.”

“Shut up!”  She’s laughing and I tell her Jim doesn’t leave his underwear on the floor or bug me about what I do or where I go. 

“You got the last good man on the face of the earth.  There are no more left.  Jim’s a prince, Pam.  Truly.  Does he have a younger brother?”

“Younger?!”

“I don’t need a boyfriend,Pam.  But a boy toy might be just the ticket.”

“What about Andy?”

“Andy…from work?”

“Yeah.  He’s single.”

“Oh, Pam.  You’re kidding, right?  First, I’d have to burn all his clothes and then rip out his vocal chords.  After that, I might consider it.”

     We break for lunch after the first coat and I serve up Cuban pork sandwiches I made the night before and a chopped salad I threw together that morning.

“Pam, is there anything you can’t do?  This sandwich is out of this world and the salad is so good.  Is that…?”

“Lime juice and cilantro, yeah.  Oh, this was nothing!  I took a cooking class a month or so ago, and I made some really fancy schmancy stuff.  It was fun.”

“Okay, I knew about the knitting and the yoga, but…”

“Oh, I took a woodworking class, too!  Remind me to show you the box I made when we go back upstairs.  It’s really cool.”

“Okay, you’re unbelievable.  Here I was thinking I was hot shit because I can trim out a room without tape in under two hours, but you’re something else.  Jim’s told me so much about your drawings.  I want to see those, too.”

     God!  He talks too much.  This art thing is turning into a thing.  Nobody else realizes that yet, but I’m all too aware of it.  I’m not painting.  I’m not drawing.  I have no urge to draw; I have no inspiration to paint.  My sketchbooks taunt me from their place on my work table.  I page through them and taunt back:  You’re a little too obvious, aren’t you?  And what about you, thinking you’re abstract?  And you might think you look like Jim reclining in a beach chair, but you look more like a really tall version of Frodo after a night of binge-drinking.  I can barely remember drawing them. 

     Just the other day, I held a pencil and traced my hand over the lines and shadings just to get the memory back, to see if maybe just my hand will remember the motion, but it’s lost.  It’s been three months since I actually finished something.  I’ve sat in that room, trying to get myself into that mindset again, trying to will some inspiration into my fingers, but that only makes it worse and I closed the door to the art room just over a month ago and it hasn’t been opened since.

“Oh, Kellie, he’s crazy!  You know what you were saying about parents and their kids’ drawings?  That’s how Jim is with me.  No eye for art, blinded by love.”

“I seriously doubt that, Pam.  My very first day, when he and Michael took me to lunch, he stopped on the way out to show me your drawing of the building that’s hanging there.  He was gushing like a schoolgirl, yes, but it’s really, really good.  I mean, I could tell it was a building right off, Pam.  Never once did I think it was a dinosaur driving a bulldozer.”

“Or that I’d eventually turn to a life of crime?  You’re too kind, Kel.”

     She eventually wears me down and when we head back up to start the second coat, I open the door to the art room.

~~

     I’d heard all these things before.  You really captured a mood here.  These colors are just gorgeous.  Pam, you’re so talented.  But for the first time, they didn’t thrill me.  They didn’t send that tingle down my spine, they didn’t swell my chest up with pride.  Kellie sounded sincere when she said them, but I didn’t believe the words.  She was just being a friend, just being nice.  The rational bit of my brain told me Kellie wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t say things just to be nice.  She’d be honest with me, like she always was.  But that rational thought didn’t have a chance and it drowned in the sea of thoughts that told me they knew better.  I didn’t feel encouraged or thrilled or proud or inspired.  I just felt like an imposter. 

     I asked Kellie not to tell Jim she was in the art room.  I told her that I was working on a surprise for him for our anniversary in April and I didn’t want him to get curious and start snooping.  She agreed, and I added guilt to the growing, ragged heap of emotions trapped in that room.  I closed the door behind us and quickly asked her about her upcoming vacation to Mexico before she had a chance to say any more words about art.