T w e n t y  F a c t s  A b o u t  K a r e n  F i l i p e l l i  

ONE

Karen was almost named Henrietta.  On her birth certificate, you can just see the beginnings of a crossed-out H.  So technically, if you think about it, her official name is “[Unrecognizable blob] Karen Filipelli.”  

TWO

Up until grade four, she insisted that her name be read as such in role call.  She would answer to nothing else. 

(That is, until some of the kids with a less-than-fully-developed self preservation instinct decided to shorten it “blobby.”  And everything’s less-fun after someone gets a black eye.)  

THREE

No one really knows why Karen’s mother changed her mind at the last minute.  She’s never specifically said.  (“Life is nothing without the little mysteries,” she says when Karen asks, and places one finger alongside her nose. 

Possibly she doesn’t remember.)   

The family, of course, has their own theories.  Karen’s father says the decision was linked to the pain meds they had her on.  Karen insists that, no, it was Divine Intervention and Common Sense, Briefly, Makes An Appearance.  

FOUR

Although she is gifted with languages and has impeccable pronunciation, Karen can’t sing.  She really, really can’t.  It is so bad that, secretly, she thinks her vocal cords are broken.  She doesn’t even sing in the shower (because hello, the mirror). 

(There’s a story behind this: her elementary school had a mandatory choir.  Once, during practice, Jennifer Holston fainted.  One second she was standing next to Karen, singing “Gloria” with clasped hands and a pinched face, and the next she was falling right off the second-tier.  The room was very hot, no air conditioning, but privately Karen thinks her voice was somehow responsible.  And she has never really recovered.)     

FIVE

Karen can’t sing, but her mother can.  She used to sing Karen a lullaby to the tune of Edelweiss, the song that the Christopher Plummer sang in the Sound of Music.  She changed the words: 

Karen-love, Karen-love,

Every morning you greet me,

Happy and bright, hug me tight,

You look happy to see me. 

Baby girl, may you bloom and grow,

Bloom and grow forever. 

Karen-love, Karen-love,

May you stay happy forever.  

SIX

When she was three, Karen’s parents divorced.  Karen doesn’t remember it at all, which is probably best.  It was a divorce filled with “no, this useless and unnecessary kitchen implement was mine, you bastard” and “if you take her with you, so help me—”  

The rest of the family was shocked; they had been the perfect couple.  With her mother’s long legs and her father’s perfect hair, their nicknames in college had been Barbie and Ken.   

(Although, Karen thinks, Barbie left Ken and now Christopher Robin’s a girl.  Things change.)  

SEVEN

What actually happened was this: Karen’s mother took her bags and her long legs and left Karen’s father for another man.  Two years later, she married him. 

“And she had the sass,” Karen’s grandmother says, “to wear a white dress, what with her child from another man walking up the aisle in front of her, strewing flowers.”  

(As much as she loves her father, this Karen’s favourite image of her mother – walking down the aisle for the second time with her long legs and her white dress and her sass.)  

EIGHT

Karen’s favourite colour is white.  It has always been white.  She was very angry when her grade three teacher informed her that white was considered to be the absence of colour, and therefore didn’t count.  

NINE

For the next two weeks, whenever the class was given something to colour, Karen pulled out her white crayon.  White grass, white flowers, white sky, white house.   

The teacher eventually gave up, and added white to the colour wheel using construction paper and staples.  

TEN

Karen’s oldest friend lived two houses down until they were sixteen.  Her name was Veronique and her family was French Canadian.  In the first memory Karen has of her, they are drawing hopscotch templates on the asphalt and Karen is telling her the right word for volcano. 

All through their childhood they games played cops and robbers and tag and hide and go seek, but it was very hard with just two people.  So mostly Karen made up worlds for them to live in, complete with intrigue and deception and politics.  She let Veronique be the girl.  

ELEVEN

Karen was the dominating personality early in the relationship, and that is why while Veronique now speaks perfect, unaccented English, Karen, although officially bi-lingual, learned all her French in the school-systems.   

TWELVE

Blue Gatorade is Karen’s favourite drink in the entire world.  Nothing, not even alcohol, can touch it.  But she only drinks it when she’s home alone because it turns her teeth and tongue and lips blue. 

(She is not, however, fond of their marketing gimmick, “Is IT in you?”  What’s that supposed to mean anyways?)  

THIRTEEN

Matthew Floss was the first boy Karen that kissed.  They were fourteen and she did it because his eyelashes were so pale, almost not there, unless the light caught them the right way or you looked really close.  Karen wanted to look really close.   

She stopped him on the stairway, between the bells for fourth and fifth period, just outside of the chemistry lab.  She was on the top step and he wasn’t, so she kissed him as if she were the man, hands on his hip bones, arms at his waist.  He curved his fingers around her elbows and she smiled.    

FOURTEEN

The first boy Karen fucked was Tony Bedard.  Up against the chain link fence of the baseball diamond in November, with her mittens off and her boots on.  It was cold and her teeth were chattering too hard to kiss him properly, but she wasn’t allowed to have boyfriends and his mother… that house might as well have had surveillance.  He put his gloved hands over her ears and it made her hair go all static, and then the only thing she could hear was the crackle as he was all the way in, and then all the way back out.    

FIFTEEN

Karen’s only had one real pregnancy scare: first year university and communal bathrooms, first test positive, next six negative.  Karen’s friends were in class and her boyfriend wasn’t returning her phone calls, so Melanie the Sorority Sister had held her hand instead.  In the ten-odd minutes between the first and second tests, Karen’s grip became so hard something cracked.  Melanie didn’t say anything. 

(Ever since, Karen has refused to make, listen to, or partake in any dumb blond jokes.  Just because.)    

SIXTEEN

When playing Call of Duty– she does get off on killing Jim, actually, but is kind of ashamed about it.  

SEVENTEEN

Karen hasn’t had that many friends who were girls, other than Carolyne.  Boys are just a lot easier, she thinks.  She’s not quite sure she has the mental capacity to handle a girl fulltime.   

But when she walks into Dunder Mifflin, Scranton branch, she decides that this needs to change.  She needs a friend (other than Jim, because she followed him here, for god’s sakes, and it’s just too embarrassing).  She scans the crowd, and the receptionist wins by default, mostly.  At least she meets Karen’s eyes. 

But making friends with Pam turns out to be a lot harder than Karen had bargained for.  She’s so damn shy, hardly talks at all – Karen almost gives up three times. 

(But she doesn’t, and when Pam finally smiles at her it’s such a relief…  She actually goes to the bathroom so she can do a little victory dance.)  

EIGHTEEN

Karen had meant to fall in love with Jim Halpert, because she’s staring down thirty, and really, it’s about time.  Only, the plan doesn’t quite execute itself like that: 

“I’m in love with you.”  

“Oh,” says Pam, and her expression doesn’t change, but her eyes go very wide. 

“…And I’m also quite found of Jim.” 

“Oh.”  Then:  “Can you, like, even be that greedy?” 

Karen shrugs.  “Well, so far it’s been working for me.”    

NINETEEN

Karen’s discovery that she had unnatural sexual proclivities and was probably going to rot in hell until Judgment Day went something like this: 

They were sitting in the break room, Karen silent in the middle and Jim and Pam having a conversation across her.  (Karen had long since learned that she liked sitting between them, with their legs brushing against hers and their occasion deference to her opinion.)  But this time Pam’s thigh had pressed along hers and she’d caught a bit of Jim’s cologne and the bottom had dropped completely out of her stomach.  She hadn’t moved again for the rest of the break. 

And Karen had decided that she must be in love with them, because they were under florescent lights, for god’s sakes, and who in their right mind entertained romantic fantasies when everyone’s skin tone was looking just this side of yellow?    

TWENTY

The sex comes surprisingly naturally, actually, considering that it is taboo and Against Nature.  Jim and Karen find out pretty quickly that Pam is bad bad bad under those cardigans, and they all find out that Jim’s recovery time halves when they continue on without him.   

It stays newer for longer, because there are three of them, and - no matter how many times they've done it before, no matter how many times he's seen it before - when Pam and Karen kiss Jim always, always looks like he’s been hit by a freight train (except in a good way, with erections). It's gratifying, actually.

Karen’s favourite position is still in the middle, with their legs tangled on either side of hers, whispering about her to each other overtop her body.

(fin)