Holy hell. Pam was reaching out to him after all these years. He hardly knew what to make of it. It had been so long – his whole life had changed since he last saw her. His mind drifted back to the beginning of their separation, to his interview with David Wallace. He remembered the phone message slip with the yogurt lid medallion. Don’t forget us when you’re famous. It had really thrown him for a few minutes. He’d stumbled on David’s next question. The optimistic part of him wanted to just abort the interview, cut it off and drive directly back to Scranton, to Pam. But the wounded part of him said NO. This wasn’t enough. An I miss you and a Don’t forget us were not enough … even if the I miss you was accompanied by None of that mattered until I met you and was uttered in front of everyone they knew in common. He wanted – he needed – a clear, unequivocal declaration of love. He wanted certainty, bravery, recklessness, passion. He couldn’t base a life altering decision on tepid, halfhearted signals.
So when David said, “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” Jim assumed a self-confident pose and declared, “VP of Sales and Marketing.” And David had smiled his satisfaction and replied “I’m glad to hear it, Jim. That’s exactly what I see, too. I want to restructure this division and you have everything I’ve been looking for in this position. How much time do you need to wrap things up in Scranton?”
Jim had spent the next two weeks hoping, hoping that Pam would say Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Don’t move in with her. Take me with you. Pretty much anything along that line would’ve done. But, instead, she told him she was happy for him, that he deserved this promotion, that she always knew he was meant for bigger things than the Scranton office of Dunder-Mifflin. Every time she found a new way to congratulate him, it felt like someone pushed another needle into his heart. Looking back, he realized he was crazy to think Pam could ever be selfish enough to prevent him from accepting such a significant career advancement. But at the time, when she continually expressed her unalloyed joy for him, it filled him with anger and frustration.
Jim moved to New York with Karen and told himself that he was happy with his new life. At first he thought about Pam a lot. It was a blessing that he relished his new responsibilities and liked his new colleagues. Otherwise, he had no idea how he’d have survived the transition.
When the next Dunder-Mifflin quarterly newsletter came out, Jim discovered that his vengeful streak was deeper than he’d ever imagined. There was a spread about the annual sales conference and, as the Director of Sales, Northeast, Jim was in a number of them. The pictures from the banquet included Karen, who looked spectacular and sexy in her usual understated way. It satisfied Jim deeply to envision Pam drinking cheap white wine and mournfully poring over the newsletter, obsessing on the knowledge that she could’ve been the woman smiling out of those photos if she’d only had some balls.
At first, he felt strained every time he phoned for Michael because Pam always responded to his greeting with a false cheeriness that he knew she couldn’t be feeling. It was clear, though, that she had a firm grasp on their relative positions on the Dunder-Mifflin org chart and she never once tried to speak to him in their old familiar banter. Sometimes that made him feel smugly superior; other times, frustrated. It never made him happy.
About fifteen months after his promotion, Pam left Dunder-Mifflin. One Monday when he called for Michael, a different voice answered the phone. On Tuesday, there was another voice and on Wednesday, still a third. He finally reached Michael on Wednesday afternoon and was told that Pam had deserted them to go to art school because she thought she looked hot in a beret. Later, Jim called for Phyllis, who informed him that Pam was now a full time student in the certificate program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Phyllis said it was a four year program and pretty competitive to get in.
The news left Jim momentarily stunned and bereft, utterly shocked to realize what a comfort it had been to know that he could hear Pam’s voice whenever he wanted – as long as it was between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on a weekday. He felt aggrieved that she’d done it again – planned and executed a pivotal change in her life with nary a word to him. It was irrational, he knew, to feel this way because he had distanced himself more and more from her in the time he’d been gone. There was no reason she should feel the urge to or, for that matter, the familiarity to be able to share her plans. He certainly would never expect Rolando, the Utica receptionist, to share his plans if he left the company.
Hurt though he was, Jim felt proud of Pam, too, and a small sense of contribution to her growth because he’d been the one to believe in her talent when no one else did. He wondered if she remembered that. After she left, he’d lost all contact with Pam, although she always wandered into his mind from time to time.
Jim’s life with Karen was tumultuous. The longer they lived together, the more irritated he felt about her values. Jim didn’t appreciate Karen’s obsession with the trappings of status until they were living in New York, the epicenter of the status conscious world. Karen was constantly refashioning him, trying to burnish the veneer just a bit more, and he found that every time he bought a suit, a piece of furniture – hell, a bottle of wine – his purchase was met with dissatisfaction that he hadn’t selected the item that was one notch up. Jim had never cared at all about status symbols and it was aggravating that Karen seemed to be ever judging him, and always finding him wanting.
It annoyed the crap out of him that Karen could never just relax for the weekend. On Saturday afternoons, she insisted that Jim go shopping with her, and he had long since stopped caring about anything she bought. Every Saturday night she needed to go out and be seen. She had to know who were the likely guests at every party before she would decide which they would attend. It occurred to Jim that he was living with an upscale Kelly Kapoor, one who spoke in a normal tone of voice and speed, but a shallow Kelly nonetheless.
Jim began to work late and stopped finding reasons to avoid business trips to his regional offices. Conversations with Karen took on a clipped quality and frequently lapsed into disquieting silence. Sex was infrequent and unsatisfying. His life was empty and he had no partner but he soldiered on out of habit.
Jim was then utterly stunned on the golf course one day when David Wallace announced as they walked the green, “Jim, I was surprised to hear you’re planning a big spring wedding. I don’t expect you to let work rule your life but I certainly hope you won’t schedule the wedding for May. We can’t spare you for three weeks right after the acquisition of Tri-State Supply. We’ll need to spend a lot of time meeting with their major clients. We can’t afford to have you out of the country while the Staples sales team tries to muscle in. Those accounts will be vulnerable until we cement those relationships. I need to be able to count on you.”
“Absolutely, David. I have no plans to take any vacation from April through July. I’ve been planning on this. So – where exactly did you hear I was planning a spring wedding?”
“Rachel said Karen confided in her.”
Jim fully knew that David was going to say that. But the moment he heard the words he decided he had to get out of that relationship. He’d told Karen repeatedly that he was not ready to get married and here she was trying to force his hand. Jim had reached the end of his tether and the breakup was swift and decisive.
It was only after he was living in his own space that Jim began to fathom how unhappy he had been. Living with Karen left him feeling stifled and utterly isolated. Karen had projected onto him some kind of ideal man and she was determined to rework him until he fit into her mold. She simply ignored him when his actions or ideas didn’t match what she wanted from him. Looking back, he really couldn’t explain why he tolerated it. Yes, he could. At first, it was because the alternative was to be alone and wanting Pam. Later, it was inertia, pure and simple.
Now that he was alone again, he did find Pam creeping into his thoughts every now and then. He’d wonder what classes she was taking, what goals she was focused on, who did she hang out with on her Saturday nights, did she have someone in her life who would cheer her on the way he used to – did she even need that anymore – and, most important, did she ever think about him?
He looked down at his hands, holding the answers to all of his questions, hidden in thick layers of crisp brown paper.
