.
It was the beginning of November when his parents called. She was working in the office and Jim was in there with her. She didn’t pick up. She was finally getting over Roy and Jim was the one helping her do it. She still hadn’t told Jim about Roy. It was hard to explain. She could barely explain the situation to herself.
She looked at her phone again and saw that she had a new voicemail. She looked over at Jim on the computer, who was planning his latest prank on Dwight. He glanced back at her. She loved these stolen glances.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” She smiled to reassure him. When he gave her that lopsided grin back she walked over to him. “So what are you working on over here?”
“I’m planning on placing all of these flyers by all of Dwight’s classes for an apprenticeship for a bear trainer. At first I was just going to do it to hear him brag about the possibility of training bears. Then yesterday I realized that I could find a spinning class or a yoga class at the gym and write something about how you have to take one of the classes in order to take the bear class.”
“And you think that’s going to work?” she looked at him hesitantly.
“I just need to get the wording right.”
She laughed and walked back to the desk. She looked at the phone sitting there on the desk and she thought back to the day, the day he left. He broke her heart when he left. She begged him not to sign up. He had mentioned it casually after she got her acceptance letter, but she didn’t really pay attention. She thought it was just a passing thought. Roy would mention things like this all the time.
She was supposed to be leaving for college in the fall and she promised to call him whenever she could. She would drive home every weekend. She had planned it all out. He had been out of school for a whole year already and he was still living at home with his parents. He bagged groceries at the supermarket. He wanted to do more for himself. He wanted to not feel like a failure. He didn’t really have any goals other then spending the rest of his life with Pam. When he had finally enlisted she wanted to spend all of her time with him when he got back from basic training. In the summer they found out that he would be leaving in December. So she put off school for a year. Instead she signed up for classes at the community college in Scranton.
He remembered those tears, the way her mascara ran down those red cheeks. He had never heard her voice sound like that. It broke his heart when he left. She clutched at his jacket and she thought if she could some how hold on tight enough he would stay. That he would know that she needed him.
“Don’t go.” The tears were soaking his jacket. “Please just stay.”
“I can’t Pammy. I’ll come back for you. I promise.”
He grabbed her tiny hands from his jacket and let go of them gently as he placed a kiss on her cheek. He would have kissed her on the lips, but he couldn’t bear to think that this might be the last kiss they had. He wanted her to remember last night when he kissed her goodnight as he dropped her off at her house. There were no tears then. That would be their last kiss – for now.
His parents were so upset. He was they’re baby. They had always figured that one day he would leave, but it would be to start a family with Pam. They never thought their son would be shipped off to war. Pam promised to take care of his parents. She would stop by a couple times a week and just sit with them. They would watch TV or have dinner together. During those days they forgot that Roy was gone. Pam held their lives together. She was their rock. Her family celebrated Christmas with them. She was family.
But in February of 2005 his parents could see it. She wasn’t the same Pam that their son was in love with. She didn’t paint any more. She didn’t draw. And one night when he called home his father told him. He told him that he had to let Pam go. Roy cried that day with his dad on the phone. They knew that if Roy didn’t end it she would just continue on this path and the real Pam might never show her face again. She had nothing to live for other than a handful of calls that he had made in the past 3 months.
“You can’t do this to her. It’s not fair. She’s young and talented. She has so much life ahead of her. When you come back you can try to start things back up, but I know she won’t leave if you don’t end it. She’ll feel like she’s betraying you by having fun. She didn’t enlist, that was you. You chose to stop your life for 12 months.”
“I know, but what if she leaves and she finds someone better.”
“Then you’ll get through it. Roy, mom and I love her, and want nothing more for her to be officially part of our family, but sometimes you have to sacrifice your needs and wants for the people that you love. She’s sacrificed so much for you already. If you really love her then you know that I’m right.”
She told him that she would wait for him and for 6 months she did. She put her life on hold to be with him, and then she put her life on hold to wait for him. His parents wanted to see her thrive, and if that meant that she couldn’t be with Roy they could accept that.
It was a few days later when she got the call. His parents had called earlier and told her that Roy would be calling today. She waited by the phone all day. She missed her writing class that morning.
When that unavailable number flashed across the caller ID she knew it was him.
“Roy?”
“Yeah. Hey Pam. How are you?” His voice sounded different. She didn’t know what it was.
“I’m okay. I miss you so much. I got your letter last week.”
“Good.”
“What’s wrong Roy?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“We can’t do this anymore. We can’t be together anymore.” He was now silently crying on his end.
“What?”
“You need to go live your life.” He moved the receiver away from his mouth so she wouldn’t hear the sob he had to let out.
“You’re my life.”
He waited a minute before speaking. He felt like he was suffocating. He was gasping for air. He composed himself and continued.
“Pam, you’re bigger than Scranton. You’re supposed to be at college right now making friends and making art. Instead you’re at home babysitting my parents waiting for me to call.”
“I told you I’d wait.” She protested through the tears.
“What if I told you I don’t want you to wait?”
“You can’t make me stop waiting.” She was angry now.
“This is the last call that I’m going to make to you. Go do something great. I love you.”
The phone clicked and she knew he hung up. He broke her heart again. She cried in her bed for hours until she fell asleep. The next morning she did her normal routine. She went to class and then work. After work she stopped by the Anderson’s. They didn’t mention Roy and neither did she. By the end of the week, she had forgotten about it. It was like everything was normal, but Roy would never call. She got one last letter from him and inside there was only a picture. It was of him and her standing underneath some tree at the lake. On the back he wrote that he would always love her, but that they just weren’t meant to be.
In March Roy’s parents began asking about school. Dropping little hints.
“I dunno, I was just thinking that I could stay here and do another year.”
The look on his mother’s face was pure frustration.
“Dad and I have been talking. We think it’s time for you to go back to school. We talked to your mom yesterday and she said that you can still go to school. She said that you just deferred enrollment.”
Her thoughts were other places at the moment. She knew what they were doing. They were trying to get her to stop waiting for him too.
“College can wait. It’s not going anywhere.”
“You’ve put your life on hold long enough.” She always thought it was weird when Roy’s dad was so straight forward. He was normally a quiet man, like her dad was.
“Does he ask about me?” Her eyes began to water and one tear escaped before she was able to blink them back.
His dad shook his head and she let another tear escape. “It’s easier for him if we don’t bring you up. He knows that you’re okay and that’s all that really matters.”
“I can’t leave you guys though.”
“Pam,” his mother sat next to her on the couch and held her hand, “we’ll be fine. We can take care of ourselves; go take care of yourself. This is what we want. We want you to be that girl that we first met.”
When she got home that night she talked with her mom and she was a little surprised when her mom agreed. In her bed that night though, when she really thought about it, she wasn’t that surprised. Why wouldn’t her mom want her to go to school? She remembered her mom’s face when she opened that big packet with her acceptance letter and school catalog. Then she remembered her mom’s face when she told her that she wasn’t going to school in the fall. She knew her mom was disappointed, but she always supported everything she did, and this time was no different.
That next day she began getting things ready for school. She searched through her dresser until she found those papers from school. She called the office of admission and made sure that she could in fact still go. She talked to advisors and made sure all of her credits would transfer. By mid August she had her things packed in her car and she was saying goodbye to her parents and Roy’s parents.
She looked over at Jim. He seemed pleased with himself. She looked at the phone again and that little voicemail symbol was taunting her. Daring her to listen while Jim was in the room. She opened the phone and listened to the voicemail.
“Hi Pam. Its mom, your other mom. We just wanted to call and say hi. Also,” she paused for a moment as she searched for the words that she was trying to say, “Roy called today, he asked about you. He wanted your address. We said we would ask you first. So it’s up to you. Call us back.”
She put the phone back on the desk and she saw that Jim was looking at her waiting to show her the flyer. Here she was now in Dunder Hall with her new life and her new friends and her old life was pulling her back in.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
And now we find out what happened to Roy. Enjoy.
Chapter End Notes:
So I didn't kill Roy, but you thought I did, didn't you?
