Pam wasn’t sure exactly how she got through the rest of the day. It wasn’t that Jim’s absence was distressing quite; certainly it wasn’t that she missed him like she missed, oh, let’s say, Roy, just to pick someone at random. It wasn’t an ache like the year she was at summer camp and wanted oh so desperately to come home—or like the year, four years later, when her parents told her they couldn’t afford to send her back to the same camp. It wasn’t sudden and surprising like the disappointment she’d felt when Roy had forgotten her at the hockey game, or jagged and sharp like the frustration when he’d put off their wedding for the first time. It was more subtle. Like when you walk into your childhood bedroom and your parents have clearly been using it while you were away, and only just now hastily rearranged it to be a bedroom for you again, so the dresser’s a few inches off from where it used to be and the bed isn’t against the right wall and there’s someone else’s coats in the closet next to your old things. Nothing felt wrong exactly; it was just the absence of things being right in a way that set her teeth on edge and distracted her from everything else.
She told herself it was stress, but actually it was one of the easier days she’d had that week. Michael’s fixation on the Ugly Sweater Competition meant he didn’t have the time to make her do anything more difficult than stand there in her sweater and clap when Michael awarded himself first prize. Usually she’d have complained but…talking Macaulay Culkin sweaters really did take the cake (an expression she avoided, since there was no cake and Michael might have gotten confused) so she couldn’t be too annoyed even though he was obviously favoring himself.
By four-thirty everyone else had cleared out, leaving Pam to clean up the mess that the party and the tree had made. She made herself a pot of tea, squeezing around the tree to access the cupboard, sink, and microwave, and set to work. There was something soothing about the act of filing: this paper back in the supply closet, that paper in the recycling bin, this ream on Jim’s desk, this one on Dwight’s (plus three additional sheets: after Dwight had bragged on Monday that he could tell whether a ream of paper was correctly filled just by sight—“it’s what real salesmen do, Jim”—Jim had shown her how to surreptitiously open the package and reseal it so no one could tell, and they’d been arbitrarily inserting or removing a few sheets from every ream he looked at all week).
The job done, she sat back and drank the last of her tea in peace, pondering the idea of returning to an empty apartment with only more cleaning to do.
The thought did not appeal to her.
On impulse, she turned her computer back on and Googled “things to do in Scranton today.” Most of the events were family- or couple-oriented: not a surprise for the Christmas season, but she hardly needed a reminder that Roy wasn’t there and her parents lived hours away. Some were singles-themed—even worse—or just excuses for people to down large amounts of alcohol—worst yet, since, she had to admit, she’d probably have been dragged to one if Roy were in town (part of the reason she’d wanted to go to the Poconos was to avoid this sort of thing. And great, now she was thinking about that again). Frustrated with herself, she scrolled down to the bottom of the first page of results and was about to close the browser in disgust—nothing good ever comes of the second page of Google results, after all—when her eye caught on the last result on the page.
Ice-skating: open skate for all ages and all skill levels. Perfect. She didn’t really remember how to ice-skate, but she loved watching other people do it, and it was definitively the sort of thing Roy would on no account have let her out…have accompanied her to go do. She didn’t even need to buy skates or put them on. She could just go, sit in the bleachers, watch the children and maybe even some adults have fun, and soak in the Christmas spirit. It would be fun. It would be unique. Maybe it would even come with hot cocoa—she looked down at her empty mug of tea, wondering when she’d found time to drain it and wishing for another hot drink—or some Christmas cookies for sale or something.
She puttered the last few things away, carefully cleaning the teapot and replacing it in its visible location in the cabinet before whisking herself away in Roy’s monster of a truck—and thank God Kenny had volunteered his truck for the trip to the Poconos so that she hadn’t had to rely on someone else to get her to work—and heading out. It felt like a load had lifted off her shoulders when she turned left towards the skating instead of right towards home, and she almost skipped up to the door of the rink when she pulled into the last available parking space.
Then her cell phone in her purse began to ring.
Roy.
She picked up on the fourth ring. “Hi Roy.”
“Hiya Pammy. You still at work? Old Man Scott got you guys workin’ hard?”
“No, Roy, I’m…” But the question wasn’t a real question apparently, because Roy was still talking.
“You’re missing a hell of a trip out here, Pammy, the slopes have been great! Kenny and I raced this couple of guys from Pittsburgh, and they’ve invited us out for a week in the summer. They say there’s real great fishing out in some of the lakes out west.”
“That sounds great, Roy, I…”
“So Kenny’s real pumped about that, he’s always loved the rolling hills out there. Anyway, he and I are just heading out to the mountain-view lodge out here for dinner. Thanks for making the reservations! It’s steak night tonight, got a special and everything. They asked if I wanted to change it for some reason—can you imagine?—but Kenny and I are going to have a blast.”
She’d made that reservation for the two of them, a romantic evening, she’d hoped, that would help them reconnect, rekindle…re-everything. And they’d called to ask if he wanted to reschedule because she’d asked him to reschedule: if she was actually going to go up next week, she’d wanted to have that mountain-view, candlelit dinner with him when she was actually there. But apparently he’d forgotten, so the call about rescheduling had come as a surprise, and he’d turned it down. Great.
“Oh, Pammy, Kenny wants to know if you’re coming down next week, or if he can stay up here with me.”
Apparently that was finally a real question, because Roy actually paused and let her say something. Of course, right then and there she didn’t have much nice to say, so she let the silence stretch out for a moment. Too long apparently, because Roy started talking again.
“Anyway, you don’t have to let me know right away, but it would be nice to know by the end of the weekend so that Kenny can clear his schedule for next week too. Oh, he’s found us seats by the bar—they’re showing the Eagles game from last week on replay tonight. Gotta go. Love ya, Pammy.”
“Love you too.” And Roy was gone.
Pam automatically put her phone back in her purse and walked up the steps to the ice rink. She was suddenly a lot less excited for the skating, but she was already here, wasn’t she? Better to just go in. Better to keep on going.
That was what she was best at, anyway. Going on.
