Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: The title comes from the song The Guilty Ones from the musical Spring Awakening: Window by window/ You try to look into/ this brave new you that you are. I pretty much listened to that song on repeat while writing this fic and I feel that it sets the stage fairly well. Enjoy!
When he gets home from work, I'm lying on our bed and Cecelia is asleep next to me. She woke us both up very lovingly at five in the morning today and I've spent my entire morning and a good part of my afternoon trying to calm her down. I even call my mom and ask her how to tell if she's getting sick. Mom assures me Cece is fine after I explain the situation but after we hang up, she starts to cry again and I pick her up from her crib and hold her close to me and try to shush her.
It's hard to see Jim go in the mornings. He goes to work and he has an entire day without me, without looking at me or making a joke for me or bringing me my yogurt from the fridge without me having to ask. At home, I balance the baby on my shoulder and eat my yogurt while I try to watch some adult television shows. I watch C-SPAN because I feel like this is what adults with children do, even though I would rather watch a crappy reality show while Jim makes up his own dialogue. Usually, though, this attempt at being an adult is fruitless when the sounds of C-SPAN don't smooth over Cecelia's fussiness. So I put on one of the DVDs Penny gave me, the one's for baby's that show puppets dancing across the screen to Mozart or Beethoven and I lay on the floor with my baby and pray she falls asleep.
I envy Jim for being at the office and then I laugh at myself for envying him. If he was here, I know he would laugh too. He calls me on his lunch breaks or from his desk and I try to pay attention to what he's saying to me and listen to the background noise at the same time. Jim lifts the phone away from his ear and tells everyone to say hi to me and that makes me smile. But it also makes me very aware of how our home has suddenly become this bubble, so separate from the rest of the world. I feel time passing without getting to touch it and before I know it, its night and we're putting Cecelia in her crib and I pass out on the bed next to Jim in the middle of a conversation.
From where I'm drifting in and out of sleep on the bed, I can hear the front door open and close, hear Jim go about taking his coat off and setting his bag on the kitchen chair and he pauses in the hall. Calling my name is such a risky move he doesn't even do it. Loud noises are kept to a minimum in the house now. When Cecelia sleeps, it's a blessing and anything that can undo this blessing is stifled. I don't know how long I've been dozing, I don't know if he's coming home early through some Jim-like maneuvering. My sense of time is off constantly, anyways. My sleep schedule is off its axis and the days run together. I can only shower when Jim is home and can make sure that our baby is taken care of.
Cece squirms under my arm as I hear him pad into the bedroom. He's taken off his shoes. The mattress shifts as he crawls up to where I'm lying on my side and he wraps an arm around my stomach and cups my smaller body in his much larger one. "Pam." His voice is a whisper right next to my ear. I haven't opened my eyes since he's walked into the room. I'm too sleepy to open my eyes to look at my husband that I haven't seen all day. I grunt in reply, wanting him to know I'm some sort of awake, that I don't want to sleep away the time I have with him. He kisses me on my neck, right under my ear and the mattress shifts again. Jim walks quietly and I can't hear him through my drowsiness but suddenly he is standing on the opposite side of the bed and picking up our daughter in his arms. My own arm slides off of her and drops onto the bed and my eyes open, half-lidded. "No, Jim…" "Shh…" Time slips away from me again and I don't know how long he's gone but soon he is sliding back into bed with me. I've shifted, lying on my back now and when he lays down next to me, he wraps both of his arms around my waist and pulls he as close to him as he can. When I speak, it comes out in a mumble. "Did you put her in the crib?" I open my eyes slightly to see him nod, looking back at me. Jim presses his forehead to mine and I exhale very slowly, as if trying to push the exhaustion out of me. I want so badly to focus on him, to completely give him my full attention. It's strange, not being at work and being able to simply look up to see him sitting there, the diligent worker he has become for me. Now I spend the work day wandering around our house, rocking our daughter. When she sleeps, I mostly just sit in the rocking chair in her room and stare at nothing and listen to the peaceful silence of the house.
Jim is kissing my cheek and one of his hands pulls away from my waist to turn my face towards his. He kisses me on the lips and I lift up a hand to rest it on his forearm, not to stop him but just so he knows I am here, I'm paying attention. We work quickly and quietly, removing articles of clothing. My pajama pants and his t-shirt that I'm wearing, his tie and button-down and slacks. This is the first time we've made love since Cece was born. It is slow and deliberate and muffled in an attempt to not ruin the miracle that is our daughter being asleep in the early evening.
Sometimes, I feel like a different person. I sit in the rocking chair in Cecelia's room and I think about Jim and our baby and this whole life we have constructed together. And I hold my daughter and know that it is very amazing that we have her, that we ended up here, together. We're not with Roy or Karen, we are together. I think about how, all of a sudden it seems, I am a wife and a mother and I have a husband who wants nothing more but to come home to me after work and let me sleep with my head on his lap while he holds Cecelia. I have developed a theory that Jim doesn't sleep anymore. I feel that he is just as tired as I am and yet he gets up in the morning and makes the coffee and goes off to his job as a paper salesman, a job that he never intended to become a permanent career. I reason that Jim is a different person too, which makes me feel more at ease with being a different person as well. But I wake up in the middle of the night with tears on my face. Once, I wake Jim up without meaning too and he asks me what's wrong and he holds me while I try to explain how I am a different person and will he still love me if I'm a different person? He kisses me all over my face and says "You are mine and you are everything, Pam." He tells me I am in fact not a different person, just a better version of the receptionist he fell in love with all those years ago. And he says that makes him love me even more.
Jim is patient with me as we make love. He is patient in everything that he does. When I come, my fingernails dig into the skin of his shoulders and I muffle my moan in the crook of his neck. And in this moment I am awake and I am here with him and he wraps his arms around me and I feel a faint click like everything I had wanted while I was sitting behind that receptionist desk five feet away from him has fallen into place. And I know that he is right. We are just different versions of the people we were back then. I am his wife and the mother of his child and I love him more than I ever thought was possible.
He holds me after, stretching his arm under my head. I lay on my side, both hands against his chest. We are quiet, sure we are pressing our luck with the silence we have been given. When Jim speaks, it's barely audible because he's speaking with his face pressed against the top of my head. He wants to sleep as much as I do. But we'll have to wait. "How did you finally get her to sleep?" I smile and tilt my head up so I can look at him. He looks back down at me, his hair sticking out at an odd angle from where my hands had been running through it just a few minutes before. I look up at him for a long moment because I haven't seen him all day and I do nothing but miss him and it remains me in a painfully heartbreaking way of those months he spent in Stamford. I'm about to speak when a sleepy smile creeps across his face and he beats me to it. "You sang her The Doors, didn't you?" I laugh for the first time all day and wrap my arms around him and squeeze as tight as I can. I nod and Jim starts to laugh too, his arms envelope me in the way that only his can. And when he sings to me, its tone deaf and happy and it makes me fall for him all over again.
"Her arms are wicked and her legs are long, when she moves my brain screams out this song."
unravel is the author of 0 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 3 members. Members who liked window by window also liked 1091 other stories.
