*
*
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. ~William James
“She was just a small bean here,” Roy said and slowly pressed his chapped lips to Cece’s fuzzy head.
As if it was something he did all the time.
As if he wanted to make Jim’s blood boil.
As if he was her father.
Jim felt like his heart was being wrenched from his chest, as though Roy had reached inside with his hands and was pulling it out, tearing it loose like wet paper from a destroyed book. Every word Roy uttered scorched like kindling wood, burning, burning...inside his chest, burning.
He had to talk to Pam, and when he found the chance he didn’t waste it. He pulled her to a small study just down the hall, but when he opened his mouth to speak, he couldn’t. Words couldn’t capture what he really wanted to tell her. His tongue felt like a lump of wood lying idly in his mouth. So he placed his hands it on either side of Pam’s face and kissed her, long and lovely and slow, hoping she would understand him.
The expression on her face after their lips parted made him feel the way he does when, after months of winter, the first warm breeze of summer touches his face.
She understood him.
Dinner proceeded as well as Roy’s insistent jabs. Roy words had ceased to bother him, but when the Anderson’s were about to leave and Jim could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, Roy went for the kill shot by taking Cece and saying, “Let’s go home.”
It was a simple statement that was full of meaning. Home. Pam and Cece’s current home was not with him. Roy was taking his girls home and that hurt Jim more than anything else. Roy was going to be the one putting Cece to bed, giving her a goodnight kiss. Roy would be there and not him. The oppressive state of Jim’s mind seemed to push him into a long, narrow black void, shoving him deeper and deeper.
Wanting to just get away, Jim retreated to the one place he went to when he was a boy. There was a hidden bench just beyond the pool, where the almost frozen water seemed clear, mirror-like. It was far enough away from the house that the lights couldn’t dim the effect of the moon. It was secluded, and if you weren’t looking for it, you would miss it. The air was cold and it soothed the burning ache within him, but it didn’t lull away a few pesky tears.
Jim was not sure how long had slipped by before he heard the slightest sounds of leaves crackling under careful footsteps. He could barely make out the outline of the figure approaching him, but there was only one person who knew him enough to look for him there.
“Jim?” He heard his mother call.
He quickly wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Here,” he said and cowered down, not daring to look up. His face was sure to betray him.
“I knew I would find you here,” Betsy said, pulling her coat tighter. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Just needed some air.” He pulled in a long, slow breath, feeling the cold numbing him.
“I need some air too,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”
“Sure,” Jim said, making room for his mom on the bench.
Silence reigned. The only sounds came from the rustling of the bare tree branches and the howling winds in the distance. The chilly night air penetrated Betsy’s thinly-lined coat, making her shiver slightly. She pulled on her coat and said, “It’s getting chilly out here.”
“It is,” Jim agreed. Betsy smiled, but only halfway. Her eyes were focused on him, and they had their own thoughts. “Mom, why’d you really come out here?” Jim asked.
“Well,” Betsy hesitated a moment, gazing into the penumbral depths of the nightfall. “Jimmy, tell me why you’re here. I know it’s not spring break in Australia. I checked.”
“Umm…” Jim began. “I have some unfinished business here,” he said cautiously.
“Unfinished business?” Betsy frowned.
“I just…” Jim paused. “I need to take care of some things.”
A bitterly cold wind cut through the leafless branches, ruffling the graying locks on his mother’s head. “Call it a mother’s intuition,” she began, “But does this have anything to do with the Andersons?”
Jim was taken aback by her all too accurate assessment. “Why do you say that?”
“Jimmy, I could cut the tension between you and Roy with my steak knife. Do you know each other?”
“Not exactly,” Jim said.
“Did he do something to you?”
“He um….” Jim thought about the way Roy boasted about all he’d missed, all the little moments that he could never get back. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, heaving a deep breath. He felt his heart throbbing with unimaginable pain; the type of pain no one could see from the outside. “He just wants something that is mine, that’s all.”
“Can’t you guys just come to an agreement? You know…meet half way?”
“No,” Jim shook his head. “There’s no compromising here. He wants to take something that is irrevocably mine.”
Betsy knew there was more, and she waited. When Jim didn’t elaborate, she pursued. “Is this about a girl?”
His silence gave him away, but he was quick to recover. “It can’t be about a girl,” he said. “Because a girl can never be irrevocably mine, can she?”
Betsy twisted her hands in her lap, her lips tightened, and she suddenly looked on the verge of tears (or was it just the cold air making her eyes water?). “Unless she’s your daughter,” she warily offered.
Betsy’s unexpected declaration made Jim’s heart suddenly hammer in his chest, but he forced himself to remain unmoved. “What are you talking about?”
“You are irrevocably my son,” she said. “If you were to have a d-daughter, Jimmy, she w-would be irrevocably yours.”
Jim pressed his lips together, focusing on the moon’s reflection stripping across the pool water like a silver path. The phrase, I have a daughter, was tingling along his tongue. “Mom,” Jim began. “I um…”
Betsy waited expectantly, watching Jim having difficulties saying the words she knew were exploding like fireworks inside him. “You can tell me, Jimmy.”
Jim opened his mouth a couple of times, said nothing, and closed it again. Then as if gathering courage, he said. “I-I don’t have a daughter.”
Jim’s words felt like a stone in Betsy’s heart. She didn’t say anything at first, she nodded, and kept on nodding, but the stone was feeling larger and heavier. She drew a long breath and said, “Your dad thinks you do.”
Jim felt a thickness in his throat at the thought of his mother overhearing conversations his father must have had about Cece. “W-Why would he think that?” Jim said as evenly as possible.
“I don’t know.” A wistful smile flickered across her face, and then faded. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Maybe you should ask dad about it,” Jim said, standing up. There was no way he could continue the conversation without telling his mother what she desperately wanted to hear. Jim looked down the slope of the hill towards the house. Smoke billowed from the center chimney. “It’s getting really cold out here. I think you should go back inside.”
Jim began walking towards the driveway.
“Where are you going?” Betsy asked.
“Talk to dad and you’ll understand.”
Jim quickened his steps, wanting to leave as quickly as possible. He couldn’t stand the look his mother was giving him. But Jim slowed his pace when his mother called after him and said, “She’s beautiful, Jimmy.”
He didn’t turn around. Instead, he kept on walking, disappearing into the night.
***
Pam sat in a car on the way to a house that no longer felt like home. In her mind, the image of the Anderson’s house felt more like something out of a magazine – one-dimensional, distant, and untouchable.
When they arrived, Pam seamlessly slipped into her room and shut the door behind her. She shrugged the diaper bag from her shoulder and it fell with a thud, tumbling on its side, causing a few items, including her cell phone, to slide from an opened pouch. She was about to ignore it when she noticed the red LCD light on her phone blinking.
She eased Cece inside her crib and bent down to pick up the phone. When she opened it, she saw she had four missed calls. She scrolled through them, each one was from Jim. She quickly called him, waiting anxiously as the dial tone echoed in her ear.
“Pam?” Jim answered anxiously.
“Hey, I just saw your missed calls.”
“I need to see you,” Jim blurted out, sounding out of breath.
“Is everything okay?”
“It’s just… Can I see you tonight?”
“Jim… I don’t know if that would be a good idea,” she whispered and heard Jim sighing on the other side. “Listen, I know—”
“Pam, I can’t pretend she’s not mine.”
“Jim—”
“I thought I could wait, but…. I can’t.” Jim’s voice broke. “I want to be the one putting Cece to bed and I want to be the first person she sees each morning…..”
“Jim, it’s just complicated right now and—”
“My mom knows, Pam. She knows.”
“What?”
“She knows Cece’s mine.”
Hearing footsteps outside her room, panic seized her. “Jim, I can’t talk right now. Can we meet tomorrow?”
His chest inflated around a deep breath that he then expelled in a gust. “I just… I just need to—”
“There’s a park a couple of blocks down from here. I can meet you there first thing tomorrow morning.”
Jim heaved a heavy sigh - relenting. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Bye Jim.”
“Bye Pam.”
The following morning, Pam strapped Cece to her chest and ventured outside. The early air was crisp. Spring was just around the corner. Little green buds could already be seen at the end of the tree branches. It was a time for hope and new beginnings. When Pam rounded the corner towards the park, she saw Jim standing, leaning against a large oak tree with his arms folded over his chest.
“Couldn’t wait?”
“Well,” Jim began, slowly strolling towards her. “No,” he admitted.
Jim circled his arm around Pam and planted a feather-light kiss on her hair. “She looks cozy in there,” he said, running a finger over Cece’s rosy cheeks. Her big blue eyes immediately found him.
“She seems to like it,” Pam said, stroking Cece’s back through the carrier. “I thought she might be too small, except she fits just fine.” Pam smiled. “But this is going to put a lot of pressure on my back. I can already feel it.”
“Want me to take her?”
“Sure,” Pam said, carefully sliding the straps from her shoulders, while keeping a firm grip on Cece. “Just put the straps over your shoulders and I will adjust it,” Pam loosened the straps and tightened again once Jim placed it over his shoulders. “Feels secure?”
“Yeah,” he said, bent over, and placed a small peck on Cece’s head. “Shall we?” He asked.
“Let’s go.”
They walked a couple of blocks down to the park and began strolling about. In the early morning light Pam looked beautiful. She took Jim’s breath away. Her cheeks blushed with a soft pink color, her eyes sparkled, and waves of strawberry-blond hair, curled around her face. Jim looked at her and said, “I used to come here a lot when I was a kid,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. My brothers would bribe our driver to bring us here after school.”
“You had a driver?”
“Yeah… But I always wondered how it was like to take the bus with all the kids.” Jim mused. “We had lots of things, you know? But that was it. They were just things.” Jim looked down at Cece and said. “I want her to have what I didn’t have. When she’s scared at night, I want to be there, or when she needs help with her home work, I want to be her go-to person. I want to be there at her basketball games—”
“Or ballet recitals,” Pam added.
“Ballet, spelling bees… whatever she’s wants to do. I wanna be there.”
Pam smiled and said, “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
Jim smiled down at her and whispered against her hair, “Not your fault.”
“It was,” she said firmly. “If I hadn’t told him anything, he wouldn’t have said any of those things.”
"Pam, he would’ve have said those things regardless.”
“But um...” Pam began hesitantly. “I made up my mind and I want to tell Adele everything today.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was going to talk to Joe, but I know he would only discourage me from telling her. So, as soon as Adele returns from her doctor’s appointment this afternoon and before Roy and Joe comes home, I’m finally going to telling her.”
“Do you want me to be there?”
“I think I have to do this on my own.”
“Okay, but don’t ever feel like you’re alone in this.”
Pam smiled and said, “I know I’m not.”
Jim and Pam continued their stroll around the park before he walked her back to the Anderson’s house. Jim entered the house, lingering, not quite ready to surrender Cece.
“You can put her down on the bouncy seat over there,” Pam said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You know you can’t stay here too long.”
Jim’s eyes skittered around the foyer, stopping at random points before connecting with hers. “I’m not staying long,” he said. “It’s just…”Jim walked up to Pam and stared down at her for a several second, then reached up and linked his fingers through her hair. He slowly lowered his lips to hers, kissing her softly. However, the kiss lasted for no more than a few seconds before it ended abruptly.
“Halpert!”
Jim saw Pam’s eyes widen and before he could do anything, he felt a hand grab him by his shoulder. He turned around and Roy’s right fist was cocked, ready to punch him. Tiny nodules of sweat stood out on Roy’s forehead, his eyes were burning, and anger trembled though him like the vibrations of a plucked wire. Jim instinctively pushed Pam out of the way and folded his arms protectively over Cece. Roy’s fist was millimeters from Jim’s face when he froze, noticing Cece strapped to his chest.
“What is going on?” A voice sounded in the background.
“Roy, what are you doing?” Another voice called.
When the punch didn’t connect, Jim opened his eyes, noticing his mother and Adele standing before him.
“Roy, what were you doing?” Adele asked.
“He um…He is g-going to t-take her…a-and the baby…” Roy stumbled, gesturing between Jim and Pam.
“Who’s going to take who?” Adele asked.
“Jim, he going to take Pam.”
Adele shook her head confused. “Pam, what’s going on here?”
Pam, shocked with silence, looked between Jim and Adele. Fear gripped her and she was stunned by its intensity, like a hot knife plunged into her innards.
“You wanted to tell her,” Roy said, his voice becoming unpleasantly aggressive. “Here’s your chance. Go on…Tell her how you lied and used us, Pam...”
“I-I…I didn’t…” Pam began.
“Don’t chicken out now. Tell her,” he demanded.
“Roy, stop,” Jim said. His voice was determined, his eyes were flashing, and the lines of his face had grown harsh.
“Stay out of this,” Roy barked.
“You made her do this. Do not put this on her,” Jim said, gripping the straps of the carrier so tightly that his fingers were hurting.
“Everybody stop!” Adele exclaimed. The open, warm quality she had always conveyed was gone, as if erased. “Now, can someone please tell me what is going on?”
*tbc*
Author's Chapter Notes:
This chapter is dedicated to ftmill16 as a very belated birthday present!
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading. Sorry for the wait time between the chapters. But I'm counting on Hannah_Halpert to bring me pizza and madmen fanatic to pay for my coffee when I quit my job and leave all behind to write this fic! =)
