Jim had introduced Anne to Pam with an awkward and rushed sounding sentence.                  

Something like: “Anne this is my, uh, my girlfriend Pam and Pam this is, um…Anne.  Does anybody want a beer?”                  

Then he’d disappeared and Pam had been left to wonder why she’d never heard the name Anne fall from his lips before, and why, when he did say it, it sounded like it might have literally sliced through his vocal chords.  It sounded heavy, like he’d said it a thousand times before and like it was a part of him, but like it had shadows stitched between the letters and the word was practically painful.                  

The two women had exchanged falsely-enthusiastic pleasantries and then, thankfully, Larissa had intervened and whisked Pam away, mumbling something in her ear about Jim probably wanting to kill whoever had invited Anne, who Larissa assumed was Jim’s father since he was usually ignorant to this sort of emotional turmoil.                

“Pam, you don’t understand.  This was like…” Larissa whispered,  “…D-R-A-M-A,” she spelled out, as if she and Pam were Kindergarten teachers surrounded by students and discussing a box of cookies, “I’m not exactly clear on the details because Jim and I don’t really do the whole Family Ties, Let’s discuss our feelings thing, but, I’m telling you, somebody broke somebody’s heart and it…was…messy. In that kind of like, I‘ve known you my whole life, and I know more about  you than anybody else ever will, and now I’m using it against you, kind of a way,” she mumbled conspiratorially, and Pam had a brief but vivid flash of what Larissa would be like as an old woman, full of gossip and conjecture.  Pam really wanted to be around to see that.  “Every time I’ve brought it up to Jim he has been completely unwilling to explain or discuss it, which must mean that whatever happened was bad news, and if I had to guess…“ she sighed, and shot a glance toward the ceiling in thought, “All I‘ll say is that with Anne‘s personality, blue eyes, and blonde hair, she seems like heart-ache on legs to me, and I would not be surprised if she was the one who did the damage,” she finished, shaking her head.                 

“But he’s being nice to her.  He seemed so excited to see her…” Pam responded, genuinely confused, because in her experience Jim usually didn’t react well to having his heart broken…                

“Yeah well, he’s Jim,” Larissa reasoned, and Pam sighed because that actually kind of made sense.  “You should’ve been here like three years ago though…it was so awkward.  She just showed up at like 3 in the afternoon when Jim was at work, and nobody in the family knows the details of their breakup, so everybody was so excited to see her and…” she huffed and shook her head, “Poor Jim, when he walked in this kitchen and she was standing there?  I thought he was going to totally lose it.”  Pam chewed on her lip in thought and her gaze drifted to Anne who was sitting in the dining room with Mrs. Halpert and laughing airily…looking like she totally belonged.  Larissa sighed again and turned the water on, running a soapy washcloth over a plate sloppily.  “Anyway,” she went on,  “I think we‘re like her only family and she really just wants to be here for her own…” she shrugged, “Whatever, but my plan is usually just to ignore the situation altogether.  That would also be my advice to you.  Remember,” she prodded, gently poking an elbow into Pam’s side, “Dragons.”  Pam chuckled and nodded and went back to drying dishes.                    

And the rest of the night was full of certain kinds of moments.                  

Moments like Pam catching Anne’s eye during Jim’s turn at charades when he paused to roll up his sleeves. Anne had offered her a grimacing sort of smile that said more about her than she probably thought.                                 

Moments like Mrs. Halpert coming in to pass around desserts, and one of Jim’s cousins handing him the shoebox that Anne had brought, filled with gingerbread cookies, declaring that he knew Jim would want them because they were his favorite…had always been his favorite…  Jim had raised his eyebrows, shaking his head and saying he was all set and didn’t really want dessert.                  

Moments like Jim wrapping his arms around Pam and whispering that he loved her in this certain kind of voice that made her wonder what exactly he meant, and whether it was a declaration of loving her or more a declaration of not loving someone else.                  

Moments like Pam feeling like the tension was a little too high and noise in the room was a little too much… 

Moments like Pam feeling like maybe she didn’t fit in, like there wasn‘t room for her to fit in if Anne was there being so familiar and at home… 

Moments like Pam feeling like Jim had purposely not told her things about himself…   

Moments like Pam feeling like maybe she was just tired and all of this was nothing.                 

Whatever the case, she definitely needed to take a breath….take a break.  And Dickson City suddenly felt at least as confusing as Scranton, Pennsylvania.                                

So she just sat still and quiet and tried hard to convince herself that she wasn’t bothered, and that the lack of oxygen in the room was just her imagination.  Anne seemed nice, she told herself firmly.  She told herself that there was no reason to feel like an intruder, there was no reason to feel territorial, and the way that everyone had inside jokes with Anne was fine, and the way that Anne watched Jim when he wasn’t looking was fine, and the way that Jim avoided looking at Anne at all was…fine…and she liked the Halperts and they probably liked her and there was nothing to resent in this house, on this holiday.  And she tried hard to convince Larissa that she was having a great time and there was no need for the look of absolute sympathy on her face because Pam was fine.                

But finally, during a round of Taboo in which Jim and Adam were basically wiping the floor with every other team, Pam felt like maybe she couldn’t breathe, and maybe she didn’t have enough will power to keep her thoughts from happening to her.  She leaned over to whisper to Larissa that she was going to take her dish to the kitchen and she’d be back in a second, and then she gripped her plate with white knuckled fingers and made her way out of the den on careful and quiet feet.                  

Jim was frantically giving his brother clues for “Paul Revere” and didn’t look up when Pam stepped gingerly past him.                

As she set the dish down and ran water over it, avoiding eye contact with any of the aunts and uncles that might have been watching her pass by, who she had now convinced herself were comparing her to a 5‘2“ blonde-haired neighbor with careful and judgmental eyes, she heard the soft and easy sounds of someone playing the piano in the living room… and she realized that she hadn’t seen Jonathon since she‘d arrived and he’d told her he was on “kid duty.”                  

The front of the house was virtually empty, as if it had been sealed off with a calm and quiet kind of bubble, and the emptiness leant the piano to more grown up sounding melodies… tunes that weaved their way in and around I’ll Be Home for Christmas, and O Christmas Tree, and something else that sounded like maybe it had once been sung by Karen Carpenter…things that were gentle and careful and all of the feelings Pam wanted to have around her and none of the feelings that she‘d had in the den, perched uncomfortably between Larissa and Jim and feeling simultaneously invisible and like the white elephant in the room.  So she maneuvered her way through the kitchen and she ventured into the dimly lit hallway and toward the even more dimly lit living room.                  

The only lamp-light came from over the piano, casting a yellow kind of glow across Jon’s hunched shoulders, arms, and  fingers, drifting like foam on the ocean…weightless and long and lean and so much like Jim that it made her lean back against the door frame and just stand there, transfixed.  There was a delicately decorated Christmas tree in the corner, lit with tiny white twinkle lights that shed their light around a circle of carpet where one of the younger kids was stretched out on the floor with coloring books and crayons, quietly humming to herself in the way that only a tired out and shy eight year old can.  The girl looked up at Pam when she stepped into the room, and Pam offered her a gentle smile.                 

She felt disappointed for a moment because she was hoping Jonathon and this room and this piano would be her temporary haven…she was hoping she would sit down and listen and take the deep breath she’d been needing since Anne had arrived…but there was this child, this blonde-haired, blue-eyed, coloring, humming child, and Pam was full of a special kind of awkwardness because Pam Beesly was a lot of things, but she would be the first to admit that she wasn’t very good with kids.  She shook her head at herself and sighed, wishing she didn’t have this feeling of discontent, and as Jon began to play a haunting version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, she started to turn toward the hallway, resigning herself to the den full of games and noise and Anne. She paused, though, when the little girl held a coloring book toward her and smiled.                

“Do you want to color with me?” she asked, and Pam heard Jon chuckle softly from the piano bench, but still he didn‘t turn and the song went on, and Pam felt her smile spread wide and she nodded, accepting the book and lowering herself down to the lushness of the carpet because this was something she could do, and maybe this child was different and maybe she would like Pam because she was related to Jim…she was a Halpert, and maybe that meant something.                  

So Pam stretched herself out, lying flat on her stomach, and she started sorting through the book and searching for a picture to color.  She decided on a delicately drawn image of Santa Claus, standing on a rooftop with his sack slung heavily over his back.  She picked up the red crayon and started to fill the page with color.                

The image came to life easily, quickly, and something about the act of coloring - the simplicity of it, something about the way that the crayon felt in her hand and the way the smell of it was nostalgically mixed with cookies and evergreen, something about this girl sitting beside her, reminded Pam that it was Christmas…her very favorite holiday.  And there was snow, and there were lights, and presents and carols, and all of the things that she loved so much.                  

She closed her eyes and reminded herself that Jim wished there were dragons that he could slay for her.                

She’d thought she and Jim were unique and storybook and practically epic in the way that they had met and meshed and fallen in love…she’d thought it was the kind of thing that only happened once in a lifetime, because “Pam and Roy” hadn‘t been anything at all like “Jim and Pam.”  With Roy she’d been fumbling and careless and flighty and nothing like she was now, and she thought Jim was her once upon a time…her and they lived happily ever after…she thought this was it and she was finally Cinderella.                  

And now she’d found out that she was at least Jim’s second epically romantic girlfriend…                

And now she was afraid that maybe she was his replacement Anne the way that Karen had been his replacement Pam…and it made her feel like she was either going to throw up or cry.  Maybe both.                 

But instead she opened her eyes and she shaded in Santa’s rosy cheeks with a crayon marked “Cotton Candy” and she told herself that it was Christmas and everything would turn out ok, even if she didn‘t fit in here in the way that Anne did.  It was Christmas and this was the best that she could do.                  

“Jon, do you think we’re going to sing more carols tomorrow?” the girl murmured without picking up her head, and Jon hummed in a way that made Pam smile down at the book beneath her hands.                

“I think maybe we could arrange that,” he told her, “Do you think Santa’s going to bring you something good tonight?” he asked and the girl licked her lips and glanced at him over her shoulder with sparkling eyes.                

“Yep,” she replied simply, and Pam and Jon were unable to hold in their laughter at the sureness of her tone.  “How bout you?” she wondered, directing the question at his back as he continued to play the piano.  He sucked air in through his teeth and tipped his head to the side a little in consideration.                

“I don’t know I might get coal this year, Jess,” he admitted and Pam smiled again, thinking that maybe everything really would be ok because this space and these people made her feel warmer than she’d been before, and even if she didn‘t fit in with Taboo or charades, she definitely fit in with coloring books… Jess giggled at the mention of Jon getting coal and returned to her books with fingers full of crayons and concentration.  “What happened, Pam, playing Taboo with Anne was too much fun for you to handle?” Jon asked gently as Jess started to sing softly along with his playing…                

“God rest ye merry gentlemen…let nothing you dismay…”                

“Oh, yeah, I think I’m more of a coloring kind of girl,” she admitted, winking at Jess, who peered up at her with a childish kind of pride on her face.  Jon nodded and Pam glanced thoughtfully at his back.  “What about you? How’d you end up as the designated piano player of the evening?  I feel like I should give you a dollar or something,” she joked and he chuckled.                

“Yeah really,” he agreed, “No I’m just uh…I get too competitive.  It’s safer for everyone if I’m in here, according to my wife,” he told her, his voice warm with amusement.                

“Got it,” Pam told him with a genuine smile, returning to her picture and starting to fill in a starry night sky with the crayon marked “Midnight Blue.”  Her artistic endeavor, though, was interrupted by a small finger tapping at her forearm.                

“Pam?” Jess asked quietly and Pam looked up, her hand going still against the page.                  

“Hm?” she replied.                

“What do you think Santa’s going to bring you for Christmas?” she wondered and Pam’s brow furrowed in serious thought.                

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “But I bet it’s gonna be pretty great,” she told her conspiratorially, and the little girl looked back at her with an excited smile and Pam chuckled because…maybe she wasn’t as bad with children as she thought.                

“I like your picture,” Jess told her in a low murmur that Pam thought was startlingly like her own shy declarations had been when she was a child, and Jess bent her head down and traced her finger across Pam’s rosy-cheeked Santa.  “His cheeks look real pink, just like in the Night Before Christmas,” she whispered and Pam softly nudged Jess’s shoulder with her own.                

“Thanks,” she replied quietly, and Jess smiled and nodded and picked up the turquoise to solidly color in a piece of cartoon candy.  Pam didn’t say anything else because she sort of had tears in her eyes, and she sort of wished that Jim was here because there was something so familiar about coloring books and crayons…they felt like first snows and freshly baked cookies and family and home, and Pam wanted so badly to have that be all that there was.  She wanted so badly to forget that Jim was in the den with Anne and Anne’s sixteen-year-old ghost, and for the first time she felt genuinely empathetic toward Karen…because maybe Jim had been haunted by Pam a year ago, and maybe Karen had felt as left out as Pam did now.                

Pam was all too aware that Anne was a huge part of Jim’s life that he’d just…not mentioned.  Anne was someone that Pam knew nothing about, and all this time she’d thought she knew Jim better than anybody else.  She’d thought she knew Jim in this transcendent kind of way, when really it seemed like maybe she didn’t know him at all, and even though she knew it was irrational and silly, she was left with this feeling of disappointment…or suspicion.                  

Because suddenly she was terrified that this meant that Jim had an M.O.  Suddenly it seemed like Jim was this certain type of guy who over-romanticized and who fell in love and had his heart broken over and over again, and Pam was just another tragic romance in a long line of many.                  

And now Pam‘s Christmas was colored with this gray feeling of concern, this irrational blueness of discomfort…when all she’d really wanted was the child-like wonder of a rosy-cheeked Santa Claus and the crisp whiteness of the season’s first snow.