One of the things Pam loved about her family is that, unlike Roy’s, they could let something go (Roy was phenomenally good at this when it is his wrongdoing that is under question, but quite the opposite if it was something she did, or anyone other than his own family really). So after some properly demonstrative anger on her behalf (Penny threatened to make “Off the Oaf” t-shirts for them all if Roy didn’t apologize before the end of the holiday), they moved on to the gift-giving portion of the evening.

Now, the Beeslys had a tradition of giving silly gifts for Chanukah. Pam wasn’t sure when it had started; possibly when she and Penny were too young to fully understand that they could ask for specific things, and her parents had decided to take advantage of that by giving them what amused them. But she did know when her own particular personal brand of silly gift had begun: it was the year that she started dating Roy, as it happened.

See, Pam’s first date with Roy had been a disaster. In fact, until tonight that might have been the angriest she’d ever seen her dad be at Roy, when she’d told him the story of how Roy and Kenny (it was always Roy and Kenny, she realized) had left her at a hockey game without even noticing she hadn’t left with them. And he’d stayed annoyed at it, too, even after Roy had groveled and she’d forgiven him; he’d started calling Roy “hockey boy” when they were alone as a family. And Pam had played along with at first, but after a couple months—right around the time of Chanukah that year, since it had been an early-season hockey game that Roy had left her at—she’d gotten sick of it. She was with Roy; she was planning on staying with Roy. And so she didn’t want to hear any more shit about him.

She’d decided that if her dad was going to bring it up every time hockey got mentioned, she was going to get back at him through hockey.

Now, Bill Beesly, like any self-respecting Scrantonian hockey fan, was a Philadelphia Flyers fan. All the more so because Bill had actually gone to Temple, in Philadelphia, and gone to as many games as he could on a student’s income (which back in those days was actually quite a few). And he had a wall in his den dedicated to Flyers memorabilia.

He was also, as any good fan of the Flyers was, whatever the opposite of a fan was of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

All this resulted in an unsuspecting Bill unwrapping a signed Penguins hockey stick on Chanukah that year, and grumbling through his laughter as his beloved daughter hung it on the wall of his den among the various Flyers merch for which it had been intended.

He laid off Roy at that point, and the two of them actually became quite close over the years. But nevertheless, every Chanukah Pam brought home at least one piece of Penguins paraphernalia for him. At point it had its own cabinet, which he jokingly called the Cage of Rage, in the corner of the den.

And tonight Pam got to unveil the piece de la resistance.

Bill’s eyes went wide as she lugged over the giant wrapped present and deposited it on the floor before him. He reached out a hand and tugged on the paper, then ripped and shredded until it all came free.

Standing before him was a lifesized—no, more than lifesized, a human-sized—Pittsburgh Penguin.

Complete with jersey (Sidney Crosby, #87).

Pam wasn’t sure if it was licensed, or if anyone had ever made another one. She explained that she’d found it at a flea market in Lancaster County when she and Izzy had gone on a girl’s trip down to the chocolate factory in Lititz, and she’d been constitutionally incapable of not bringing it back.

Roy had angrily asked her when she came back how much she’d spent on that stupid thing, but right now the look on her father’s face was priceless.

She spent the night at her parents’ and borrowed a car to drive into work the next day. She still had some clothes there that she could fit into—teenage artsy Pam had loved big shirts she could disappear into, so they still fit after all these years, and her mom had always insisted that she dress “nice” so they were tasteful enough to qualify for work if she threw on a sweater over them—and there was something rejuvenating, in the literal sense, about spending the night there, alone.

She tried not to think about what that meant about how she was going to feel the next day, alone at the house she shared with Roy.

Technically, the car she borrowed was Penny’s, because she was home from college for break anyway and “the oaf’s truck is probably parked at the airport anyway, isn’t it?” She hugged her sister and promised to return it as soon as she could.

Work was strangely tolerable, probably because everyone was walking on metaphorical glass after she’d walked on literal the day before. Even Dwight never brought up the shattered hanukkiah, and Michael had apparently taken a personal day.

She chatted with Jim, trying her best not to vent about what had happened yesterday, and pretended things were normal. They noticed that Dwight had brought a nutcracker with him and developed the new and annoying habit of loudly announcing exactly which nut he was planning to crack before doing so at his desk, which on the one had impeded everyone’s workflow to a surprisingly significant degree, but on the other allowed her and Jim to exchange eyebrow raises and private giggles throughout the day without actually talking about anything, which was ideal from her perspective.

Or it seemed ideal, until it got better.

When Dwight left for a client meeting in the afternoon, Jim waved her over to the break room. There, he plugged the vending machine for all the little bags of mixed nuts that the company had decided to include as a “healthy snack” option alongside the candy bars. They spent the next twenty minutes sorting out all the cashews, peanuts, almonds—everything that was not, botanically speaking, a nut.

Then they switched those for the nuts that Dwight had brought in.

When he started up again, Jim began objecting.

“That’s not a nut! You can’t use a nutcracker on a non-regulation nut!”

“Hmph.” Dwight sneered and discarded the first peanut.

Then Jim did it again.

And again.

Eventually Dwight looked down at the nut collection and realized what had happened, whereupon he chased Jim around the desks for a while until realizing that he could just grab his original nuts off Jim’s desk without actually catching him.

When he put the first walnut between the jaws of the nutcracker, Jim did it again.

Dwight corrected him.

Jim pulled out a printout from a botanical article on nuts and nutlike substances, specifically drupes, the group that includes peaches and cherries—but also walnuts—and slapped it on the desk.

She could hear Dwight’s teeth grinding from her desk.

By the time she went home, she almost forgot that she was coming home to an empty house.

But the day had given her enough energy that she decided to fix that. She texted all her high school friends—which was, admittedly, a smaller circle than she would have liked to admit, but it wasn’t nobody—and declared that tomorrow was going to be a Chanukah party, at her place.

Then, because, well, she really did only have like three friends from high school she was in touch with, and one was her sister, who was (in a feat of ridiculousness) going to borrow her parents’ car to come because Pam had already borrowed hers, she also texted Jim.

Then she realized that she needed actual party supplies, including potatoes for the latkes and dreidels and gelt for afterwards, and the rest of the night was occupied running to and fro to get everything and then tidying the house.

It was ironic that it took Roy being out of town for her to agree to the one thing he’d always claimed to want: a party at their place.

That said, since 90% of the mess she had to clean up was his, maybe it wasn’t ironic at all; maybe he’d never really intended to share the space with anyone.