"Keep busy, fights the dementia, fights the arthritis, if you're always moving the devil can't get ya'."
After sitting the tray on the bedside table she knocked softly on the glass door, just enough so her mother smiled at her return and gently sat her pencil and unfinished portrait onto the empty table; steadying herself on the back of the chair, she slowly made her way to the bed.
The daughter fixed the curtains and went to close the doors when her mother protested, "Just shut the screen, it's such a nice day out." She stopped for a second, "Your dad would've loved it."
"Is that what you were drawing?"
"We have a million pictures, I know, it just helps.” Replied the woman, now sitting in bed, while adjusting her glasses and picking up the small stack of letters.
She went through most of them quickly, tossing her once loved junk mail aside, everyday until 6 months ago they would sit in bed and read the papers and having a laugh at the exaggerations in garbage mail and the 'you may be a winner's. But now she just threw them away, she found no happiness in reading junk mail alone.
"Oh my god," She forced open the last letter with her butter knife and dug inside, finding a neat hand written note that smelled of lilacs and three pictures.
Welcome Janice Noelle Schrute into your hearts and your prayers. Not a week old and she's already dressing her in...green.
Angela
"What is it?" Her daughter came and sat beside her and smiled at the wrinkled, balled up fist in the mouth of Janice in her pink dress and cap.
"The newest Schrute grandbaby and the 5th full family photo this year."
"How many does that make now, 12?"
"16," Pam corrected her, "The beady eyes and disapproving glare run in the family."
Pam sat in her own thoughts for a minute; somehow her and Angela had become friends but in a small sense of the word, she'd get a letter when a baby was born or someone died, she even joked once, drawing her own version of the family portrait with all 8 kids, then 5 grandchildren, and Mose at the end. Angela sent a note back saying that she had never in her life looked that sternly at someone.
"She's gotten softer though," She added out of nowhere, taking a sip of her juice," It surprises me sometimes, I'll joke on the phone and she'll actually chuckle. Dwight won't get to see this one, though."
Dwight died 10 years earlier of pneumonia. He refused to miss work and died at his desk, scarring for life the new salesman he had just started training. After that, Angela would only show her not so stern face to Pam, when they saw each other anyway. Philadelphia was a long way from Scranton and the Schrute farm.
She saw herself now, sitting on that dream terrace with her shoulder length curls moving in the warm night breeze, staring at the far off highway and city lights, her sketch pad resting on her swollen belly with pencil in hand fiercely working over the page. There he stood, blocking her view from the bed, as tall as ever, as young as ever, as tired as ever. He leaned against the frame with any worry he'd ever had melting to a puddle below his feet as he watched his wife fill a sleepless night with meaning. His job, his dream job, the one Pam gave him the courage to pursue, took him away from home every so often and by the time he arrived home they were both restless and weary.
He stepped closer and moved his arms to hug her shoulders and overlap his forearms on her chest. His breath on her ear soothed every muscle in her body and her own hands clasped around the arms she had yearned for all of the previous week.
"How was New York?"
"Lonely," He stated softly into the night.
The two stayed that way for a minute, silent, letting the time apart fade away and the body heat comfort.
"Flowers are coming in nice."
"Jim," Pam let out a gust of air with his name and smiled, "You can't see them; they haven't even been in the dirt a whole week."
She knew by the weight on the top of her head he was shrugging," Fine, I can see into the future. I didn't want to tell you in fear of government interference with my real job, predicting the outcome of major sporting events and selling the numbers to the Russian mafia."
"So, did you see this?"
"I did, that first day, when I told you your yogurt was expired, I was actually reading it to see if you would be letting me get some any time in the near future."
Pam moved her hands and pushed out her stomach, "Holy shit, you did!"
Jim laid his hands on her stomach, beaming from ear to ear. The sheer happiness that filled his body when he found out could have spawned a Forrest Gump, cross country type of run, all along screaming, “She’s Pregnant!”
“Are you still feeling sick?”
“Not so much anymore, it’s more of the constant peeing and heartburn that’s killing me. It’s going to be such a chore for you when I’m twice this big and it's doing cartwheels in there. Maybe there is an upside to this whole pregnancy thing…Ya’ know minus the cooing, smiling, laughing, big nosed, face making, adorable, oh Jim I want it now!” Pam took a deep breath in and let it out slowly,” Ohhh Pam, you are so not ready.”
“Oh, baby, she is so not ready, don’t ever come out.” Jim mocked.
It was quite in the suburban neighborhood as the young couple laced their fingers on her growing stomach and for a second they were one
“You are going to be an amazing mom. You’re not the person you were 7 years ago, she’s dead, back in Scranton saying ‘Dunder Mifflin this is Pam.’ forever.”
“Jim, I…I’m just scared. I didn’t know it was possible to be head over heals, scared shitless, and insanely happy at the same time.”
He kissed the top of her head lightly before saying, "I'm in love with you."
Almost on instinct the sitting woman turned her torso and looked at him, "What?"
"I sai-Oh Halpert, oh, oh that is low."
Their lips caught before he had time to let out an embarrassed laugh. She caught his mouth the way she always did, swift and small, her tongue always tasting of sweet nectar, pulling him in so the rest of the world fell into oblivion and his last hope on earth was that this woman be there until he was unable to love with every part of his soul, until forever.
Pam opened her eyes to find the food still warm on her plate, the baby photo that Angela had sent still on her lap, she knew now that she'd again been dreaming of days 50 years passed, dead and gone that somehow sent a shiver from inside her bones to the skin on her toes.
"Tera called me yesterday, said the kids are great but that Tom is on business again. One of James' books is in talks for a TV show and...Mom?"
"What? Oh, I'm sorry, hon, I..."
The auburn haired woman walked over to her mother from the window and took the handles of the tray with the picked at food, "Maybe you should get some rest, momma, we can talk later."
Pam set her hands down firm on her daughter's and let a pathetic smile break through, "Morgan, I'm fine, an old lady day dreams a little and you automatically think she's having a stroke. I'm fine, I promise."
The woman titled her head and pulled her lips towards her teeth before setting the food back down on the bed.
"And stop giving me your father's looks! From the time you all were babies; I think maybe it's ingrained into the DNA." Said Pam, half jokingly, though she had always enjoyed being the only one at the dinner table not throwing a quirky look in some direction.
"So which book is James getting a deal for?"
"I don't know, he was ecstatic on the phone though, so it's either really popular or really special." Morgan rushed then sighed and sat down.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
Pam swallowed her eggs, nodding at her daughter, "I told you, my mind just does what it wants from time to time," She stiffened her neck and lifted her hand daintily, "It's the way of an artist."
As Morgan talked on about her daughter and her own grandkids Pam found herself in and out. She knew days like these, soon they would all be days like these, but it wasn't her memory going, it was her heart. You can't cure sadness of death. He'd been sweet in his death, slow and ready and loving, there wasn't a day that went by she wasn't by his side talking, about anything and nothing. When he finally kissed her and slowly ran out of breath she felt him leave, only his face filled with wrinkles from a life time of emotion and love there to keep her company at last. She'd told Jim in a whisper that she loved him, that she would live out her days happy and love-weary free...but Pam was stubborn.
The more she tried the more he floated back to her in memories, in every room of the house, in the bed they had slept in, made love in, made their children in, even the bed their oldest daughter was born in, a night she remembered frequently as she drifted off to sleep with the smell of him still deeply rooted in the empty pillow beside her.
