Author's Chapter Notes:
My husband hated the end of "Business Trip," proclaiming Pam threw in the towel and said eff it, and that all the growth we'd seen in the past few seasons was thrown out the window. This is my attempt to explain why I disagree. I know "writers" aren't supposed to tell you when something's personal, but screw it - this one is. :)
“Tell me something I’m not good at.”
The line is silent for a long moment, and Pam takes an opportunity to glance up from her seat on the floor and look at the clock. It’s 2:04 am, technically Tuesday. It is a time that has become all too familiar to her in the past three weeks at Pratt. She feels guilty, again, because she knows it is not a time that salesman at struggling paper companies tend to see much. She had not said hello, just sprung that request on him.
“What?” he asks hoarsely, and she imagines Jim running his hand over his face and through his hair the way he does when he’s not quite awake.
“Tell me something I’m not good at,” she repeats, awkwardly juggling a conte crayon to avoid getting a smudge on the half-finished drawing in front of her.
“You’re good at everything,” he says evenly, and Pam is glad she is on the phone because she can’t keep herself from rolling her eyes.
“No I’m not. I’m bad at a lot of stuff.”
“I don’t think so.”
She stays quiet. He sighs.
“Okay. You’re bad at…I don’t know, not tripping over the laundry basket?” he tries.
“That isn’t a real answer.”
“I think it’s kind of a loaded question, Beesly,” he says through a yawn, and she knows he’s right. She isn’t usually the type to play mind games, especially in a relationship. For so long she was quiet, keeping her needs and wants, hopes and dreams to herself. With him she is more open and honest, but she still keeps things inside. She is not one to act passive-aggressively, and this is passive aggression at its finest.
“I just…I need to know.”
“Need to know what?”
“If I’m bad at art. If I’m wasting my time,” she spills.
“You’re amazing.” His response is automatic. He doesn’t stop to think about it, to consider that Pam being anything less than perfect is an option. He is her constant cheerleader and biggest fan. The answer makes her smile, even though he has no idea what he’s talking about.
“Thank you,” is all she says back. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep.”
“’S okay,” he says through another yawn. “Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Definitely. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
She closes her phone and leans back against her bed. She hopes he won’t remember that conversation in the morning, but hoping that Jim forgets anything to do with her is wasted energy. She stares at the conte crayon, leaving residue all over her fingertips as she toys with it. She isn’t sure what the point of that call was; she knows Jim feels the same.
She has been dealing with a frightening revelation since starting here, one that she has feared for a long time. It isn’t being alone – that certainly isn’t fun, but she’s dealing with it as best she can. It isn’t that she isn’t cut out for the city – she knows she is a suburbanite at heart, but has been surprised by how much fun New York has been.
It is that being here, doing this, has made it very clear that she isn’t as talented as everyone thought.
When she was one of those “artsy fartsy” kids in high school, she was one of only a few. There was little competition. She was the one who was sought out to design murals for the Homecoming dance, or posters for the drama club’s productions. There were few pretty things that adorned the brick walls of the hallways that didn’t bear a tiny PB in their lower right corners. In the few art classes she had taken in her two years at community college, she was still a shining star. They were small classes and usually populated by middle-aged women and grandfathers who looked at their classes as a hobby, a pastime. Of course there was a freaky teen or two, obsessed with anime or dragons. Pam had outshone them all, and had gained more confidence in the hours spent in those small studios than she had anywhere else.
But now, she is surrounded by the best, from all over the country. Her classmates have been entering art in shows and competitions since they’d been in middle school. They have portfolios full of amazing work, pieces that Pam could never conceive of creating. They speak in a cryptic language of state-of-the-art computer programs, underground artists and hole-in-the-wall galleries. Furthermore, they are young – sure, there are a few close to her age, but more often than not she finds herself in classrooms and studios packed with people years younger than her. They hadn’t wasted time in their hometowns at dead end jobs in dead end relationships. The world of possibility that had opened to her just two years ago was one in which they have always lived. They are more confident, more talented, more sophisticated, more daring, more…everything.
Pam knows she is better than average. She also knows, especially in the wee hours of the morning, that try as she might, she is not on the level of her peers. She is almost thirty, and her biggest artistic accomplishments are winning a contest judged by elementary school students, displaying some watercolors at a mandatory art show at the Scranton Community Center and four seconds of animation in a commercial no one aside from her coworkers ever saw. Funny doodles that Jim praises to high heaven and a framed portrait of the Scranton Business Park on the wall of her office do not count for anything here. No one would be impressed by her many posters for South Pacific and Anything Goes. While her fellow students create masterpieces with ease she still keeps the instruction manual for Flash close at hand. The most she has gotten from her professors is a slow nod and a chin rub as they study her projects. She is clawing her way to the middle, and every day it is a struggle to not simply let her arms – and her heart – give out.
But she does not have that luxury, because now she lives her dreams for two.
Jim does not know art. He is in awe of what she creates because she creates it. His support is neverending, always positive and offered without hesitation. He is an endless font of encouraging clichés, but he says them so earnestly that she drinks them in without a smirk or a laugh. She is doing this not just because of him, but for him, because he truly wants nothing more than for her to pursue her dream. He holds her to no standard; he is never disappointed. On days when she is feeling off this can frustrate her, but most times it simply fortifies her knowing that no matter what the rest of the world thinks of her and her talent, or lack thereof, in his world she is everything she only dares imagine herself to be.
With a long swallow of her (now cold) coffee and renewed resolve, she wipes her hands on her sweats and leans back over her drawing. She will do this as best she can. She will put everything she has into this experience. She will push herself past her comfort level and she hopes she will surprise herself, if not dazzle her professors and peers.
Maybe she will succeed. Maybe she won’t. But she is doing this, no matter what, for both of them.
