Pam shook her head suddenly as she realized she’d been staring, unseeing, at the monitor for a really, really long time. She glanced down at the clock at the lower right corner of the screen. 2:27 p.m. Wow. She’d been staring for over half an hour. She had no recollection of what she was even thinking about. She was a total wreck. Seriously. How did she ever let Kelly convince her that sending Jim this picture was a good idea?
Pam exhaled a loud sigh and began to type and click again. She navigated her way through the gallery’s website until she located the pastel. She enlarged it and leaned back to ponder about what Jim might think of the picture.
When she drew it nearly nine months ago – yeah, that symbolism didn’t escape her – she’d just broken up with Greg, her latest boyfriend. She had hours and hours of empty time and found that she filled a good bit of it thinking about Jim. Well, truth be told, thinking about Jim was really the cause, not the effect, of her breakup with Greg. Since Jim had moved to New York, Pam had been in four relationships. All ended in a matter of months – not one was strong enough to survive the holidays or the anniversary of Michaels’ casino night. At those two times of year, Pam couldn’t escape Jim. Everything reminded her of his smile, his touch, his laugh, his kiss. And she’d find herself judging the man she was with – and, inevitably, finding him wanting. So every December and May, she found herself wallowing in Jim: happy memories, bitter disappointments and a litany of I could’ve … I should’ve … Why did I … How could he …
That’s where she’d been when she began to draw this picture – sitting in her living room, envisioning the life that she and Jim could be sharing at that very moment if she’d only had the courage to give him the big sign she’d known he wanted. At that point, about two and a half years had passed since her speech at the beach. She thought she’d ignited a small spark within him. Maybe if she’d talked to him instead of taping that stupid yogurt lid to a phone memo slip, they’d actually be married. Not only married but starting a family. As totally distasteful as the concept of having kids with Roy hand been, Pam felt a shiver of excitement at the idea of having a family with Jim – of having his babies. She romanticized the idea of bearing his children – and that was the way she thought of it – bearing his children – having them grow inside her belly, having him roll over in the morning and contentedly rub her growing bulge. And she thought about how she’d tell him. She’d want it to be perfect. She’d want to kick his ass, bowl him over. Because he would have loved this surprise, and it would have made her unspeakably happy to give it to him.
So she sketched and fleshed out the wonderful life she dreamed they could’ve had. She thought about how she’d want to tell him that she was carrying his child. She decided that she’d want to tell him first thing on a lazy Saturday morning. And she wouldn’t take the test until that very day; she wouldn’t be sure until right before she told him so they could experience the new emotions together, drift through the day in a fog of amazement. She didn’t think she’d say the words out loud. She’d set the breakfast table with pink and blue flowers and put some kind of DADDY mug at his place and put the pregnancy test stick on his plate. Ew. No. That would be gross. Well, it wasn’t as if his mouth would’ve never – NO! Still gross! She’d put it on a napkin – a throwaway paper napkin – beside his plate.
As she sketched, Pam happily imagined intermingling their lives, their interests. Her paintings and his issues of SI would both be in the room, because she could see him contentedly reading while she painted. She’d let him pick the music – she always loved Jim’s taste in music – or maybe he’d play guitar sometimes while she painted and they could create together. Yeah. They could create a life together. That just worked on so many levels.
When Pam finished the piece, she framed it herself at the gallery and hung it in the very room it depicted. It gave her a kind of melancholy joy to see it every day and envision the life she could’ve had. Gradually, though, it began to dawn on her that she never had this life within her grasp. At no point in her life could she have had the paintings and those wonderful long legs in the same room. She could have had one or the other. If Jim had stayed, or if they’d started a long distance relationship, that would’ve been Pam’s world – for at least a while. He would’ve encouraged her art, Pam knew that, but she also knew she’d never have chosen such a rigorous four-year program if it had meant taking so much time away from him. The burden of guilt and the intoxication of new love would have been an insurmountable combination and instead she would’ve taken a token night course here and there.
Well, there was one way that Pam could’ve had it all. Jim could have supported her decision to go to school full-time somewhere and stayed at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton so they would have less stress in their lives. He’d still be a slacker, tormenting Dwight to find an outlet for his creative energies. It was a realistic enough scenario. Jim always used to put Pam’s needs before his own.
Pam came to the conclusion that they had to have this time apart or she’d have held one of them back. And eventually resentment would develop and fester until it tore them apart. She was sure of it. Or maybe she was just trying to convince herself that it was fortunate that she’d been a coward.
So she’d look at that picture every day and hope to God that Jim wouldn’t marry Karen; that they’d break up and Pam could do her best to market Fancy New Beesly 3.0 to the hot salesman from New York.
