Another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, followed instantly by a loud crack of thunder which made Pam jump in her seat and sent Molly scurrying from her lap and across the room.
”Molly!” Pam called after her. She stood up from the couch, setting her sketchbook and art pencils aside, and followed the racing gray ball of fur as Molly dashed down a darkened hallway and disappeared into the master bedroom.
“Molly.”
Another roar of thunder shook the house as Pam stepped into the bedroom and flicked on the lights. She came to a stop just inside the doorway, confused when the dog was nowhere to be found.
“Molly?”
A high-pitched whimper sounded from under the bed in reply. Pam sighed and kneeled on the carpet, reaching out to raise the bed skirt. There was Molly, cowering between a pair of Jim’s old sneakers and a pile of discarded sketchbooks.
“Molly, get out from there,” Pam said. She stretched a hand under the bed in an attempt to pull the dog to safety just as another loud series of rumbles resonated through the air. Molly scurried back further, putting herself out of Pam’s reach.
“Molly,” Pam said. She called Molly’s name a few more times in an effort to coax the frightened dog out of her hiding place to no avail. Pam sighed and planted her hands into the carpet, raising herself back up to her feet. She glanced at the alarm clock on Jim’s night stand, the digital green numbers on the display glowing beneath a generous stack of paperbacks. The Great Gatsby. A Clockwork Orange. Catcher in the Rye. Required reading for the high school English class Jim was teaching over the summer. It would be at least another half an hour before he would get home. Perhaps he would have better luck in coxing Molly out from underneath the bed.
Pam walked back down the darkened hallway and entered the kitchen, figuring now was as good a time as any to get started on dinner. It had been such a lazy afternoon, mostly spent lying around the house in her comfy clothes, hanging with Molly, a steaming cup of herbal tea and the sound of a steady, summer rain on the windows. It felt like a grilled cheese kind of night, she thought, and she set about the kitchen, gathering the necessary supplies for grilled cheese sandwiches, and maybe a simple green salad, too.
She grabbed an apron and set the mood, switching on a set of ipod speakers and setting the music player on an impromptu play list she had created earlier in the day entitled, “Rain”. A song by Garbage immediately picked up, filling up the house with sound. Gratefully, it helped in drowning out some of the noises from the storm.
It had been raining pretty hard all day, a rare drenched day in mid-July when the residents of Wisconsin would usually find themselves in the middle of a drought. Pam usually hated thunderstorms, but she was thankful for the rain. The yellowed grass and the withered potted plants that lined the steps leading up to the front porch were in desperate need of the precipitation. Plus, the weather made the air feel all summery, humid and hot and she loved it. Her frizzed hair, on the other hand, did not.
She swayed along to the quiet, ambient music while chopping a block of sharp Irish cheddar cheese and staring out the window over the sink. The rain was splattered across the window screen, making the back yard landscape appear sort of as Monet painting, a smattering of blues, grays and greens. The small garden that she had planted underneath their sycamore tree was growing like a wildfire from all of the summer showers, which meant that once the rain had stopped, they would be obligated to make yet another trip to Home Depot and work on cleaning up the backyard.
Some people could walk into a bar where everybody knows their name. For her and Jim, they had Home Depot.
Setting the slices of cheese and four pieces of rye bread aside, Pam quickly got to work on the salad, complete with heirloom tomatoes, red onions and a balsamic/mustard/olive oil vinaigrette. Just because it was supposed to be a simple salad didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try and step her game up.
The voice of Sophie B. Hawkins suddenly filled the house and Pam started to sing along while she chopped the lettuce, tapping her foot to the beat of the music.
“That old dog has chained you up alright,” she sang along. “Give you everything you need to live inside a twisted cage, sleep beside an empty rage. I had a dream I was your hero.
“Damn. I wish I was your lover,” she continued, busting out an impromptu dance move that sent her into a 180 degree spin, the skirt of her dress picking up and twirling in the air. She immediately came to a stop and froze in place, knife in one hand and raised above her head, when she found herself facing Jim. Apparently, he had arrived home early, and he was leaned up against the doorway of their kitchen with an amused, closed-mouth grin on his face, standing where he had probably been watching her for some time now, like a creepy voyeur or something. Pam blushed.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked. She instinctively pointed the knife towards him, as if he were an intruder in his own house.
“Since ‘dogs and chains’,” he said. His eyes drifted down and he gave a wary glance toward the knife in her hand. “It would greatly ease my mind if you lowered your weapon, by the way.”
Pam lowered the knife back down and sat it on the counter behind her while Jim turned the music down. “What are you doing home so early?”
”I was about to ask you the same thing.” He walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, planting a kiss on her forehead.
“I just needed to clear my head of some stuff so I took a half vacation day from work,” Pam said. “We’ll call it a mental health day.”
Jim kissed the tip of her nose. “Yeah? What do you have in that head of yours that needs to be purged?”
Pam smiled to herself when he bent down and kissed her on the lips, laughing into his mouth at his peculiar use of the word ‘purged’ while she struggled to decide whether she should tell him what really sent her home early from work that day.
"Oh, it was nothing", she thought. "Except I confused food poisoning for morning sickness when I realized I was four days late in getting my period, so I went out and bought five pregnancy tests on my lunch break, all which came back negative, only to actually get my period just seconds after the last test turned up yet another minus sign, so I found myself suffering from both food poisoning and P.M.S. for a good half of the day. Oh, and ironically the last song I listened to on the radio on my way to work was Ice Cube’s, “Today Was a Good Day,” which was funny because if I had an AK, I probably would have used it on myself."
“Just… stuff,” she feebly admitted instead. Jim frowned slightly as he pulled himself away. “Anyway, what are you doing here so early?”
She returned to chopping lettuce while Jim leaned against the counter and started to loosen the knot of his necktie. ”I figured I’d let the kids go early since I looked outside and saw there was a rainstorm of biblical proportions. I was seriously waiting for Noah to come by on an ark on my way home.”
“Speaking of which, Molly’s stuck under the bed again.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “Again?” He pulled his tie over his head and let out an exasperated sigh, pulling himself off the counter. “I’ll see if I can get her out,” he said. “What are we having for dinner?”
”Grilled cheese, cooked medium rare,” Pam replied.
“Nice.” Jim nodded in approval before stepping out of the kitchen and disappearing down the hall.
She was putting the grilled cheese sandwiches on the George Foreman grill when the loudest clap of thunder she had ever heard in her life made her let out a little scream, and she jumped nearly ten feet in the air, the thunder actually shaking the entire house.
Another flash of lightening filled the sky and she shrieked when the lights went out and all of the electronics in the house let out a collective drone as they cut off, leaving her in complete darkness.
Another clap of thunder rumbled through the house and she rolled her eyes when she heard Jim let out a maniacal laugh from where he had been trapped, in the bedroom.
“Muah-ha-ha,” his laughter rang out down the hall.
“Jim, you are not funny!”
“Sorry,” she heard him mumble. She warily made her way out of the kitchen, keeping her arms straight in front of her to avoid running into any walls as she headed towards the bedroom.
She called out for him as she moved down the hallway. “Jim?” Silence. “Jim?”
“Boo!”
She jumped back when he suddenly appeared in front of her, his face illuminated by a small flashlight he was holding underneath his chin. She reached out to swing at him and he yelped in pain when her fist made contact with his bicep.
“Ow!”
“Why do you have to scare me, you jerk?” Jim just laughed, and she scowled at him before realizing that he was holding a trembling Molly securely in his arms. She reached out to take Molly from him and pushed her way past him. “You should think about why you have a need to hurt others,” she said. Jim followed her into their bedroom, holding the flashlight out so she could safely see her way over to the bed.
“You should just think of it as payback, really,” Jim said. Pam frowned as he sat beside her on the bed, reaching out to pat Molly’s head, who was curled up in Pam’s lap.
“Payback for what, exactly?”
“Gee, I don’t know, the time you made me fall out of a tree for one.”
Pam smiled to herself, vividly remembering that sunny afternoon, only a couple of Saturdays ago. It had been another long afternoon that originated in the garden center at Home Depot, and they had spent the day outside in the excruciating 90-degree heat, pulling weeds and planting flowers in the back yard.
Pam was in the kitchen, pouring glasses of iced tea while Jim affixed a ladder to their sycamore tree where he planned to hang a bird feeder off one of the branches. Pam had just gotten off the phone with Kelly, who had called to officially congratulate her on being pregnant.
She wasn’t. But apparently, after viewing the last couple of photos that Pam had posted on her Facebook page from a spontaneous beach trip to New Buffalo, Michigan, Kelly was led to believe that Pam was, in fact, pregnant. This didn’t make Pam feel any more confident in wearing a two-piece on any future trips to the beach, and she had to explain to Kelly that the only thing she could possibly be pregnant with was perhaps a food baby from the burrito she had for lunch at Chipotle.
Jim was high on the ladder when she stepped back outside, a glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon in each hand, and she suddenly felt a prank coming on. So, for whatever reason, Pam felt herself inspired to call up to Jim, “So guess what?”
Jim quickly glanced over his shoulder as he continued to struggle with the bird feeder. “What?” he asked.
”Kelly just called.”
”Yeah. What did she want?”
”Or nothing. She just wanted to congratulate me after finding out that I was pregnant." This was followed by a long pause, until she casually mentioned, "With a food baby.”
But by the time Pam had got to the actual punch line, the ladder was on the ground and Jim was sprawled out by her feet, frozen in pain, having had the wind knocked out of him.
Pam laughed out loud at the memory, her smile vanishing when she looked up and realized that Jim was frowning and shaking his head at her.
“Common sense should tell you, when your husband is on a ladder, standing ten feet off the ground, it may not be the best time to jokingly tell him that you’re pregnant.” He pointed the flashlight directly into her eyes, blinding her momentarily as she laughed and pushed his hand away, sending the beam of light up toward the ceiling.
”Okay, you have to admit that it was kind of funny.”
Jim angled the flashlight back under his chin, his mouth set in a straight line as he looked at her with the most serious expression he could muster. “I fell. And I literally could not get up.”
“Oh, but was it funny when the paramedics arrived, and you chose to tell them that I kicked the ladder out from under you?” Pam asked.
Jim smiled as he remembered and the flashlight tumbled down to the mattress. “I said that as a joke. How was I supposed to know they were going to take me seriously?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it should have been clear after the police arrived. But no, then you decided to ‘jokingly’ tell them that you were going to press charges.”
”Well, come on. I figured that a policeman who goes by Officer Funk had a sense of humor…”
”Oh yeah, that worked out real well. Up until the police apprehended me and decided to keep me in the kitchen for an hour to question my motives.”
Jim let out a chuckle. “Okay, now you have to admit you kind of deserved that.”
“I did not,” Pam said, giving him a playful jab on the arm. “But you sure deserved your subsequent arrest for lying to a police officer.”
“I didn’t deserve to sit in the back of his squad car for over half an hour,” Jim said.
“Yeah, you did. Especially since after your arrest, our next door neighbor has it in her head that were caught running a meth lab out of our house.”
“She doesn’t think that,” Jim insisted.
“Mrs. Pfister has already made seven calls to the police department, claiming that there’s a suspicious ammonia smell coming from our back yard.”
“Now that’s suspicious. How does Mrs. Pfister know what meth is supposed to smell like?” Jim asked, narrowing his eyes and putting a finger to his lips.
“I don’t know, maybe she happens to enjoy the occasional CSI episode and has done her research.”
“Or maybe she enjoys smoking the occasional crystal meth cigarette.”
Pam looked at him quizzically. ”That’s not what crystal meth is.”
”Anyway, the point is none of this would have happened if you hadn’t joked about being pregnant,” Jim concluded.
Pam pouted her bottom lip in thoughtfulness, nodding at his realization. “Interesting,” she said. “Alright, fine. I’ll agree to put an end to the pregnancy jokes, if you’ll agree to stop putting lotion in my empty shampoo bottles.”
“I’ll agree to stop putting lotion in your empty shampoo bottles if you agree to stop leaving your empty shampoo bottles in the shower.”
”Agreed.”
“Okay.” They shook hands as the lights suddenly flickered on and all of the electronics hummed back to life.
“Well, that was inspired,” Pam said.
Jim frowned. “What?”
”We just had a total profound moment,” Pam said as Molly leaped from her lap and scurried out of the bedroom.
“And what did we learn?” Jim asked.
Pam looked up at the ceiling, biting her bottom lip in thought. “Um, I think it was, don’t yell at someone for doing something you have already done or are likely to do, because it will come back to bite you in the ass.”
Jim nodded and tapped a finger against his lips. “Or, no more pranks.”
“I like my reflection better. It seems brainier and more intellectual somehow.”
“Whatever.”
”And anyway, how was I supposed to know that jokingly telling you I was pregnant would send you jumping from the tree in a fit of joy?”
“I didn’t jump from the tree in a fit of joy, I fell,” Jim insisted.
“Why? Because you were scared? You were scared that you had knocked me up, you big, tall person who knocks up people.”
Jim looked at her, baffled by whatever she had just said. ”I’m sorry, what?”
“First of all, there is no way that I will be getting pregnant until we plan for it. And second, I thought you wanted to have my babies.”
”I do want to have your babies,” Jim said. “Or, I want to impregnate you with my sperm in order to allow you to have my babies.”
”Ah, true romance.”
”Which is why I don’t understand why you’re so intent on killing me before that happens,” he said. She giggled as he leaned down and kissed her forehead. They were startled by a loud bark and a faint smell of smoke coming from the kitchen. Pam jumped up from the bed and made a mad dash for the kitchen.
“Crap.” She sighed when she opened the grill to find two blackened sandwiches, grilled Cajun style. She looked over at Jim who was peering over her shoulder.
“I think our grilled cheese has officially been upgraded to well-done,” he announced.
*
Pam patted her face dry with a towel, having just brushed her teeth and mouth washed the taste of burned grilled cheese and ice cream from her mouth.
”That’s the deal. You cook dinner, I make dessert,” Jim had said when he brought an entire gallon of ice cream and two spoons over to the couch, where they watched Wet Hot American Summer for the 8347594th time before actually retreating off to bed at a decent hour.
Pam smiled into the mirror when Jim entered the bedroom, dressed in a t-shirt and checkered pajama bottoms.
”Ooh, new mouthwash,” he said, noticing the brand new bottle of Listerine on the bathroom sink. He leaned down, giving Pam a kiss on the lips. “Mmm, peppermint. My favorite,” he observed with a smile. Pam laughed as he reached beside her for his toothbrush.
“I hope our children have your smile,” she said. Jim stood behind her and placed his chin on top of her head, giving her a goofy smile in the mirror. He wrapped one arm around her midsection, his other hand going to work as he began to brush his teeth. She leaned the back of her head against his chest as they stood in the subdued yellow light of their bathroom. “And I hope they have your eyes,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “Hopefully, they’ll have my nose.”
Jim stopped brushing and stared at her reflection. “What’s wrong with my nose?” he asked around the toothpaste in his mouth.
“Nothing,” Pam said with a giggle. “I happen to like your nose very much.”
“But apparently yours trumps mine in the nose versus nose debate,” he said, his voice muffled as he started to brush again.
”Well, it’s not like it matters anyway. All children seem to have a universal nose when their younger. Every time I see a baby, they always have that cute, perfect little nose.”
Jim frowned at her before lightly pushing her to the side to spit into the sink. “You sure have babies on the brain a lot these days,” he said casually as he flipped on the faucet. Pam leaned in the doorway, watching him when he leaned down to rinse his mouth.
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Not really.”
Jim finished rinsing and sat his toothbrush back in the holder, standing upright and reaching over for the bottle of mouth wash. He looked over at her in the mirror while she continued to watch him. “You have been talking about it quite a bit,” he said.
“Well,” her voice carried off and she let out a deep sigh, glancing down at the tiled floor sheepishly while she listened to Jim gargle and spit. Lovely. “I don’t know, I just think… A baby would be nice. Maybe two. But for now, one.” Jim stood back up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he turned to look at her. “I mean, I think that’s all we would be able to handle for now. I’m not looking to be the next octomom or anything.”
Jim nodded slowly. “So what are you saying?” he asked carefully. “Are you saying you want to start… trying?”
Pam shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, shyly sweeping her eyes back to the floor. “Maybe.” She raised her eyes back up to meet his. “Yes.”
Jim slowly nodded again. “Like, right now?” he asked.
“Well, I can’t right now because I’m sort of out of commission at the moment,” Pam explained, and Jim nodded knowingly. “But I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been thinking it’s kind of the next step that needs to happen, you know?”
Jim scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “Well, it doesn’t need to happen. There are other things, other steps along the way to... that. I mean, what about your career, have you thought about that?”
Pam sighed. “I think I’m happy where I am,” she said. “I like working for Phyllis. It’s easy, and I get to draw and work on my art. It’s not too stressful.”
Jim nodded quietly.
“Again, I don’t know,” she stammered, staring past him, off into the distance until she refocused and met his eyes again. “I mean, I think we could or we should,” she said. “Unless… unless, you don’t want to-“
“Oh no, I very much want to.”
Pam gasped quietly, somewhat taken aback by how quickly and determinedly he had expressed his similar desire to start this whole process, this whole having babies thing. She slowly smiled, still a bit uncertain if he was truly confident about their decision.
“Really?” she asked warily. “Like, this isn’t just some impulsive thing that we’re just going to throw ourselves into without actually being prepared for it? I mean, not that that I think that’s what we’re doing, just…” She tapped her bare foot against the tile and bit her bottom lip as he smiled back at her. “Are you sure you’re sure?”
“Yeah,” he said, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?”
Pam’s smile was beginning to hurt her cheekbones as she rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, well, when you put it that way,” she said. He just laughed and stretched out his arms to embrace her, planting a kiss at the top of her head.
"I love you," he murmured into her hair. She smiled into the front of his t-shirt.
"I love you," she whispered.
*
Story Notes:
Company Picnic has jumpstarted the fever. Baby fever. And I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Sue me.
A quick recap here for anyone who is just joining the series: Jim and Pam live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jim works as a high school English teacher, and Pam works at a greeting card shop in Waukegan, Illinois, which is owned and operated by the lovely Mrs. Phyllis Vance. Jim and Pam met at Columbia College in Chicago, where Jim was a journalism major and Pam studied art. That's about it, except a few characters are bound to pop up every now and then- including Pam's best friends, Kelly, Angela and Karen, her sister Hannah, and Jim's former co-worker, Michael. Yeah, that's about it in a nutshell. :)
*
A quick recap here for anyone who is just joining the series: Jim and Pam live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jim works as a high school English teacher, and Pam works at a greeting card shop in Waukegan, Illinois, which is owned and operated by the lovely Mrs. Phyllis Vance. Jim and Pam met at Columbia College in Chicago, where Jim was a journalism major and Pam studied art. That's about it, except a few characters are bound to pop up every now and then- including Pam's best friends, Kelly, Angela and Karen, her sister Hannah, and Jim's former co-worker, Michael. Yeah, that's about it in a nutshell. :)
*
Author's Chapter Notes:
The playlists are back people! :)
I should warn you that this first chapter is pure fluff, and happy and lovey-dovey and all of that gross stuff, so if that's not your thing...
;)
*
I should warn you that this first chapter is pure fluff, and happy and lovey-dovey and all of that gross stuff, so if that's not your thing...
;)
*
Chapter End Notes:
Thank you so much for reading. I hope that you will enjoy this final installment. Oh, and fun fact- I'm currently typing with a broken finger! No, I did not fall out of a tree. Although, that would make for a much more exciting, and less embarrassing story.
