A brush stroke here, a brush stroke there. A dab of lighter coloring to even out the tone on the arm. Pam began to slow down as her painting took on a look of finality. Not bad, she thought.
The class was drawing to a close, and her fellow students were also finishing up their work. She added extra touches to the canvas in between glances at the model laying on a table in the center of the art room, dabbing her brush occasionally on the color palette set up beside her. She was excited to be using oil paints with an actual palette and drawing on a canvas; somehow it seemed like the stamp of a real artist. Like she was in the big leagues. But maybe she was just buying into certain stereotypes.
Pam took a long look at the model laying a few yards away from her on a table covered in white tablecloth in the middle of the room. Something about the tablecloth amused her. It made him look almost like a piece of meat, waiting to be served. The model was nude, and Pam knew it was a perfectly normal part of learning to draw the human figure in an art class, but it had taken her a little while to get used to looking at a naked man and drawing on a canvas. This was the first time her class had been painting with a nude model as their reference, although they had a clothed one once in a previous class. She wondered if her classmates found the experience a little unusual, too. Hopefully she wasn't a prude; Pam wanted to think that she was just a little unused to the experience. She hadn't taken an art class since high school, after all.
It was a Saturday – the first weekend after Jim had announced his intention to quit – and Pam was enjoying a leisurely weekend class. She and her fellow students sat on stools in front of their easels, which were arranged in a rough semicircle around their model. The table on which the model was laying sat close to the wall, not far from the art room's door; it was a small room to use for doing drawings from live models. Pam's art teacher walked from easel to easel and inspected her students' works, which were almost finished. “Very good,” she said occasionally. Sometimes she would point something out on the easel and hold a brief whispered conversation with the artist. It wasn't long before she reached Pam's painting.
“Nice job, Pam. You're definitely improving. Great work on the facial features.”
“Thanks!”
The compliment was brief, but Pam felt a beaming smile cross her face after hearing it. She definitely loved hearing praise from her art teacher, particularly because she had been feeling self-conscious about her work lately. Gil's comments at the art show had stung, and they were hard to shake. Motel art. That was what he had called her drawings. Pam thought it was a rude thing to say, but even worse than that, she had spent a lot of time wondering if it was true. The art show had happened the Thursday before last, but it still hung on her memory, especially considering what she was doing. She hadn't drawn anything for a few days after the show, but then she had forced herself to do a little bit every day, especially the human figure, in anticipation of today's class.
It wasn't just Oscar's boyfriend, either - the whole art show that had shaken her confidence. She had seen some work by her fellow students before, but the art show was held to display their work to the public, and Pam saw much of their best work at the show. Some of it was intimidating. So intimidating that she wondered if she could ever develop the kind of talent they had. She was not the oldest student in the class, but she wasn't the youngest, either, and even some of the younger ones put her skills to shame. Pam knew it wasn't a good idea to measure herself against others, but she found it hard to avoid.
“Alright,” said the art teacher, “I think you guys have worked hard enough today, and it looks like Will is about to go crazy holding that pose, so how about everybody wraps up and we call it a day?”
The art students murmured in agreement. Some continued to add touches to their paintings, while others began to put their supplies away, moving easels to the back of the room and cleaning brushes. Will laughed at the art teacher's comment about his pose and sat up on the table, shaking out his arm, which had been propping up his head. Pam couldn't help giving him a glance as he got off the table and grabbed his clothing in a corner cubby hole. She laughed a little when she imagined Roy posing like that. He probably wouldn't agree to it in a million years, and even if he did, Pam doubted he would take it seriously. Making stupid faces or lewd comments, or complaining about wanting to get up and stretch, probably.
Like a dog straining against its leash, Pam was caught off guard as her mind jerked from Roy to Jim Halpert, as if out of her control. Now, Jim, she thought - Jim would probably be a very good model, if-
Pam coughed, dispelling the image and returning her attention to her cleanup. It did not take long, and she spent another few moments looking at her painting before putting it away, wondering how she could improve it. Just when she had finished storing it, she turned around and jumped in fright, running smack into her mother.
“Mom!”
“Surprise!”
Pam laughed and slapped her mother on the arm. “I can't believe you just did that!”
“Sorry, your teacher let me in and I thought I'd surprise you a little early. Ready to go to lunch?”
“Definitely.”
Pam finished putting her things away and followed her mother out of the room. She noticed her mother giving the model a glance, who hadn't bothered putting a shirt on yet. Helene turned back to her daughter with a suggestively raised eyebrow. Pam rolled her eyes as the two of them left the community center where she took her classes and walked out into the parking lot. “Care to explain what that was?” asked Helene.
“That was our model for today. Will.”
“You even know his name, Pam. Scandalous. Was he naked?”
“Yes, but that's what models do in art classes, mom. Grow up!”
Pam knew Helene was joking, and her retort wasn't serious. She had been looking forward all week to seeing her mom on the weekend. The two of them were planning to go out for lunch, catch up a little as they took a walk around Scranton – it was an unusually warm day – and maybe even catch a movie later. Helene was about to lead her daughter in the direction of her car when Pam shook her head.
“We're taking my car.”
“Oh, mine can't compare to your new car, is that it?”
“That's right.”
Pam led her mother to her car, which was parked on the far end of the lot, adjacent to a curb and a small divider decorated with a pine tree and a few small bushes. Parking still made Pam nervous, even though she had owned the car for months already; anytime she had to go out and leave the car unattended, she imagined someone running into it or dinging it with their door, so she always parked in less busy parts of the lot.
“I still can't believe you bought this thing without asking me for advice.”
“You weren't angry, were you?”
“Of course not,” laughed Helene. “I was just surprised.”
“I guess I sort of wanted to do the research and figure it all out myself, you know? Make the decision all on my own.”
Helene nodded as her daughter started the car and left the parking lot, taking them on their way to lunch. She understood her daughter's thinking; Pam wanted to be more independent after the engagement ended and she got her own apartment. Buying a car on her own was one way of spreading her wings a little. The art classes were another. Helene was glad that her daughter seemed to be gaining in confidence; Pam had always been an indecisive, introverted girl. The sudden changes in her life popping up after her breakup with Roy were unusual. Of course, based on a few things Pam had been telling her, Helene reminded herself that maybe her daughter's breakup with Roy was not as permanent as she had first expected.
The two of them chatted about nothing in particular as they drove through downtown Scranton: weather, books, movies, how Pam had been settling into her new apartment. They pulled into the small parking lot outside of Alfredo's Pizza Cafe and got a seat inside near a window.
“How are things going with dad?” asked Pam.
Helene smiled, hoping it didn't look forced. She knew that Pam was aware of some of the friction that had been going on in her marriage, but she didn't really feel like getting into it. She was in too good a mood, as she hadn't gotten to visit her daughter in a little while. “It's going fine,” she said. “But I'm more interested in how things are going with Roy.”
“Very good,” said Pam. “I think we're starting to patch things up, and I've been spending more time with him lately. It's still a little weird I guess, after everything that happened. He did go to my art show, though!”
“That's good. How did that go?”
Pam shrugged halfheartedly.
“It was a little nerve-wracking, I guess.”
“Well, putting out your work in public for the first time must be a little intimidating. And it's not like you're a social butterfly, Pam,” she said with a smile.
“I guess not. You know what was worse – I invited a lot of people from the office, and nobody came except Michael.”
Pam wondered if she came off like she was complaining. She supposed she was, but complaining to one's mother seemed more acceptable than complaining to other people. She reminded herself that Oscar had come to the art show, but she decided not to share that with her mom, not wanting to get into what she had overheard.
“Jim didn't come?” asked Helene.
“No. I guess he was busy that night. I did ask him.”
“That's too bad.”
As the waiter arrived and took their orders, Helene thought about how tumultuous her daughter's romantic life had gotten recently. Pam had been going out with Roy ever since high school, and while Helene never thought Roy seemed like the most interesting person – or the best match for her daughter, really – he had always been friendly and polite, at least. It seemed like Pam really liked him for a while, but Helene had gotten the impression for a year or two that things between them had been stagnating.
Which was why she was surprised to hear that her daughter was now trying to make things work with Roy again. After that one phone call she had gotten from Pam, she had been expecting her to get together with that coworker of hers, Jim, but Helen couldn't tell what was going through her daughter's mind lately. Pam was just as friendly as she had always been with her mother, but compared with the past, she seemed to be more closely guarded with some of her feelings.
“Actually, Jim's quitting in about a week,” said Pam.
Helene took a sip of her water as she looked her daughter. Although they had been talking about Jim, the comment seemed kind of abrupt. Almost like Pam was passing it off as an afterthought.
“Really?” she asked. “He's leaving Dunder Mifflin?”
“Yep. Michael did something that really pissed him off.”
Helene was not surprised. She had met Michael for maybe a few minutes in total, but it was enough to confirm that Pam's stories were not exaggerations.
“How do you feel about Jim quitting?”
“Well, I'm going to miss him, of course.”
“Is he still with Karen?”
Pam gave her mother a questioning, almost suspicious look that only lasted an instant – Helene would have missed if it she had glanced away.
“Yes, he is.”
The conversation slowed, and before long, their food arrived. Helene watched her daughter thoughtfully as she poked at her chicken salad. She sometimes wondered if she was in a position to tell her daughter much about love. Her own marriage was not what she had imagined it would turn out to be when she first met her husband. She knew she had been naïve. She had jumped into things. Pam normally was the opposite. Not the type to jump into things, considering how long her engagement to Roy had lasted. And yet Helene wondered if her daughter was jumping back into things after her separation from Roy.
She didn't want to tell her daughter what to do, and she wanted to trust that her daughter's decisions would make her happy in the long run, but it was hard to hold back when Pam was so quiet about parts of her life lately. Helene had talked to Pam about her confused feelings towards Jim during that phone call she made after Jim told her how he felt, but that had been the last time in a while that her daughter seemed so open, other than brief comments about making things work again with Roy. Helene wasn't sure this was really what Pam wanted, but she didn't want to cross a line by saying so. She had made a few criticisms of Roy in the past – nothing major – and her daughter had always gotten defensive about it.
“So he's gone in a week?” she asked Pam.
“Yeah. Unless he changes his mind, but I don't think he will. I didn't talk to him much this last week but he acted like he was pretty sure about it.”
Helene nodded as she ate her own chicken salad, which she had ordered with her daughter.
“Well,” she said, “just in case you don't see him much after that, I guess you'll have to make next week count. Figure out what's important to you and make sure he knows how important he is to you. Tell me whatever you need to tell him. You don't want to have any regrets when he's gone, after all.”
Pam put her fork down and stared blankly at her mother for a few moments. Helene wondered if she had been too obvious. But then, maybe she wasn't being obvious enough. It seemed clear to her that Pam liked Jim. Even more than she liked Roy. As Pam's blank look subsided and she returned to her meal, Helene got the feeling she had given her daughter something to think about, at least.
.....
“And here is where Mose likes to dig through the dirt and bury his whittling pieces when he makes too many.”
Angela stared at the spot where Dwight was pointing. They stood at the edge of his fields, near a wooden fence that separated Dwight's property from a road. Angela thought she could make out some scratch marks in the soil, although it was hard to tell; Dwight was probably an expert, but most soil looked the same to her.
“Why does he bury them here?”
Dwight chuckled and wrapped his arm around Angela. “There's an old Schrute family tradition, passed down from generation to generation, that says burying dolls and talismans will satisfy the spirits of the earth and give you a good harvest. It's like a little sacrifice to show the earth how much you depend on it and respect it. Although Mose just buries them because he likes to dig things up, I suppose,” added Dwight as he stared thoughtfully at the ground. “I don't know when that tradition started. Probably one of the family's old pagan traditions.”
Angela frowned. Sometimes Dwight talked about things that made her feel nervous. Things that clashed with her good Christian upbringing. But she couldn't help liking him anyway. She tried to interpret Dwight's story in a more positive way; maybe his family had just been mistaken. “It could be Jesus that's making your crops grow better,” she suggested, “and burying those dolls was your family's way of praying to him. Don't you think that's a possibility, Dwight?”
“No, that's ridic-”
Dwight noticed Angela looking up at him with a concerned droop in the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, Angela. I think that's exactly how it works.”
The two of them stared at the ground for a few more moments before Dwight led Angela slowly over the beet fields, pointing here and there as he talked about his beloved crop. Angela felt herself shiver a little as they walked together; it was a nice day for February, but the temperature was dropping as the evening deepened. The sun was almost down, and soon they would have to return to the farmhouse, but Angela didn't mind listening to Dwight's rambling about beets. She didn't care much about beets herself, at least she didn't when she first began to date Dwight, but she found her interest in them increasingly piqued thanks to the way Dwight talked about them. More than the beets themselves, though, Angela just liked the way Dwight talked about them. He was so passionate, so authoritative. Master of his beet domain.
“Come April or May, depending on the weather, you'll see rows and rows of delicious beet leaves starting to poke up from these furrows,” said Dwight. “Let me tell you - it's hard to beet a sight like that, Angela!”
Dwight raised an eyebrow at his girlfriend, who stared blankly at him.
“Angela, did you catch that? Hard to beet?”
Angela scrunched her face together in confusion before realizing what he was getting at.
“Oh. That was very amusing, Dwight.”
“Maybe a good military parade is more impressive,” continued Dwight, nearly talking over Angela's acknowledgment of his pun. “Or a good sword fight, depending on the type of sword. Asian swords are best. But seeing that beet harvest come in definitely has to be in the top five sights to see.”
“Dwight, it's getting a little bit chilly and I don't have a jacket – could we go in?”
“Of course, my little sugar beet.”
Angela wasn't sure if she approved of the nickname, but she supposed it was endearing in its own way. She followed Dwight into the farmhouse and through the kitchen. They had already eaten dinner, but Mose was still sitting at the table and gnawing at a chicken bone; he nodded to Angela, who nodded back curtly as Dwight led the two of them upstairs. They were about to go to Dwight's room when Mose suddenly bounded up the stairs behind them and ran up, almost wedging himself between Dwight and Angela in his excitement to reach them. Angela recoiled, thinking Mose was attacking her for a brief moment.
“Dwight, I want to go to sleep. Could you tuck me in and read me a story?”
“We have a guest tonight, Mose. I can't read you a story, but I'll tuck you in.”
Dwight led Mose to his room while Angela waited patiently by the door to Dwight's bedroom. She heard the two of them talking inside the room for a few moments, and thought she overheard Mose asking for a glass of milk, which Dwight turned down since Mose had just eaten dinner. Angela had mixed feelings towards Dwight's cousin. At his best, he could be sort of cute; but at his worst, which was quite often, he seriously unsettled her. But she knew Dwight was fond of his cousin, and so she made an effort to tolerate him and engage him in conversation. Which wasn't hard with Mose. If he was in the mood to talk to her at all, usually he just wanted to show her something or have her watch while he ran around outside.
After a few minutes, Dwight quietly shut the door to Mose's room and returned to his own while Angela waited. Opening the door, Dwight stepped aside and let Angela go in first before closing the door and locking it. Sometimes Mose would barge in if it wasn't locked. Especially if he was in the throes of a night terror.
“How is, uh – that cat of yours, how is she doing?”
Angela smiled at Dwight's considerate question. “Sprinkles,” she said as she changed into a nightgown kept in Dwight's closet for when she visited. “And she's doing very well, thank you for asking.”
Angela finished changing and slipped into Dwight's bed. Going to Dwight's beet farm and sleeping over on Saturdays was one of the most pleasant ways she could think of spending the weekend. And tonight, she was feeling a little bit rambunctious. Maybe it was the way Dwight was talking so intensely about beet harvesting earlier. Dwight joined her in bed, and she scooted a little closer towards him under the covers. The farmhouse was silent, save for the occasional shuffling echoing from down the hall – Mose was probably circling in his room, still too excited to sleep. Sometimes the silence could be a little eerie, but tonight, Angela thought it was romantic. She snaked a hand around Dwight's stomach, but he did not react. He seemed to be staring up at the ceiling.
“What is it, Dwight?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about Jim Halpert. What a quitter.”
Angela felt a little frustrated that her advances were being completely ignored, apparently because her boyfriend was thinking about another man. It wasn't exactly what she was hoping to hear. She withdrew her arm and propped herself up on her side as she looked at Dwight.
“I think his devil-may-care attitude has finally caught up to him and got him in trouble,” she remarked. “Apparently the devil did care.” She smirked at her cleverness.
“Wait,” said Dwight, “you're saying that Michael and I were doing the devil's work when we blamed him for making all of us late to that client meeting?”
Angela struggle for a response as her attempt at judgment turned around on her.
“No – no, that's not it. You two did the right thing.”
Dwight turned to face Angela.
“Really?”
His question seemed unusually hopeful. Angela wanted to reassure him he did do the right thing, but as she thought about it, her thoughts became increasingly muddled. She loved Dwight's masculine authority, his respect for power, and she thought he would do well as manager of the office, which was why she had encouraged him to take Michael's position in the past. Of course, that had backfired. Jim was a threat to Dwight, the way he didn't respect him, the way he was always playing pranks, and she understood Dwight's dislike towards him.
But from the way Dwight had just sounded, Angela wondered if he was having second thoughts. As little regard as she held for Jim, it was true that Jim hadn't done anything wrong. Michael was at fault, as usual. Dwight needed to be strong and do whatever it took to gain power. But on the other hand, the Bible did say 'thou shalt not lie.'
“Even if you didn't do the right thing,” Angela finally said as Dwight waited for her to go on, “you did what Michael told you to do. He needed an excuse and you had to back him up as Assistant Regional Manager. That's how authority works. So, in that sense, you did the right thing.”
Dwight nodded and sat back again, returning his vacant gaze to the ceiling. Angela wasn't sure if he seemed satisfied with her response, but she was no longer sure what she thought about it herself. Either way, she didn't really want to think about it at all. It was Saturday. She was at Schrute Farms. This was not the time for moral quandaries. It was the time for self-indulgence. Self-indulgence within the limits of morality and restraint, of course.
Angela snaked her arm over Dwight again. And this time, she grabbed his full attention.
.....
Cigarette smoke lingered in the air, mixed with the raucous laughter of Roy, Kenny, and Darryl. Playing cards lay scattered across the foldout kitchen table where they were playing, and Pam sat, a little bored, as she accepted another hand of cards from Darryl, who was dealing them out after shuffling them. Roy had invited her to come over, although Pam hadn't realized that his plans for the night consisted of drinking and playing card games with guests.
“So I told her, you know what Denise, I always thought you were a pain in the ass anyway!”
Kenny laughed and let out a belch before grabbing another handful of party mix from a bowl in the center of the table. Roy and Darryl both laughed with him, although Pam thought she caught Darryl giving her a quick shrug of sympathy. Pam was not very fond of Roy's brother. Maybe Darryl shared her opinion.
“She never treated you right,” said Roy. “I always told you that.”
“You never said that.”
“Well, I was thinking it. For real!”
“I'm not gonna let her get me down anyway,” said Kenny. “If she doesn't want to get back together with me, she's not worth it. There's a lot of other fish in the sea willing to take a nibble on Kenny, let me tell you!”
Pam barely restrained herself from letting out a loud whoop of laughter. She wondered who these fish were, and why Kenny was spending his time hanging out at his brother's house on a Saturday night instead of going after them. Roy gave his brother a supportive pat on the back, and Pam couldn't help but wonder what Jim would have done after hearing Kenny's comment. She knew he'd have something funny to say. Maybe not to Kenny himself, but he definitely would have said something funny to her about it later.
Pam sometimes worried that she was being too judgmental when she picked up on some of the ridiculous things other people said, but Jim had a way of noticing those same moments, reassuring her that it wasn't just in her head. Then again, working with Michael and Dwight, it was fairly easy to share a laugh at other people's stupid comments.
“So Pam, how's your mom doing?” asked Darryl.
“Oh right,” said Roy, “you were hanging out with her all afternoon, right? How is she?”
“She's doing alright. We ate lunch and watched a movie, shopped a little.”
“What movie?”
“The Lives of Others.”
Darryl nodded. “I dug that one,” he said. “That little German dude brought a tear to my eye.”
Roy shook his head. “I dunno man, I saw a preview for that and it looked really boring.”
“I was at my art class today too.”
“Oh yeah? How was that?”
Pam thought about just how much detail she would give Roy. She got the feeling that he might get a little childish about the nude male model, or at least say something embarrassing since he had been drinking a little, so she decided to leave that detail out. “We were painting with oil paint,” she said. “It was a lot of fun since I haven't had a lot of practice with oil painting – I do watercolors more often. It's a very different experience. It's like, with the oil painting, since it takes so long to dry, you can sort of blend it with the other colors in different ways and move the paint around on a canvas in a way you can't do with the watercolors.”
Roy nodded as he listened to her. As Pam stopped talking, he didn't seem to have anything to say in reply, and turned to Darryl instead. “Hey,” he said, “you remember what Lonnie said when we were packing on Friday?”
Darryl paused for a moment, on the verge of placing a card on the table, before remembering what Roy was talking about. “Oh yeah!” he said. “Man, that was great. Hah!”
“It ain't if it's paint!” they said in unison before bursting into laughter.
Pam did not understand their inside joke. Obviously her paint talk had set it off, but she didn't get the impression it had anything to do with what she had been talking about.
“Speakin' of work,” said Darryl, “you know what I heard on Friday?”
“What's that?”
“I heard Jim Halpert's quitting his job. Did you know about that, Pam?”
“Yup.”
“Michael did something bad, I figure?”
Pam nodded, amused that it was Darryl's first guess.
“That's too bad. I heard it from Kelly, that girl never shuts up about anything. I figure I'll have to go up there and say bye to him before he leaves in a week or so. Maybe get him a drink or somethin'.”
“Yeah, that's too bad,” said Roy. “Halpert's a good guy.”
Pam nodded quietly. For some reason, she found herself hoping that conversation would shift to a different subject, which it did. The four of them continued playing cards as Roy, Darryl, and Kenny talked about women, vacation plans, and work troubles. Pam found herself getting bored even though she hadn't been there for more than about half an hour. It still felt strange to come to Roy's apartment in order to see him when it had been their apartment until recently. This was no longer really her home, and yet her new apartment didn't feel like home either. She supposed her parent's house still felt like home, even though she didn't get to visit them as often as she'd like.
As Pam thought about her parents, the lunch she had shared with her mother earlier that day came to mind. One of her mom's comments during lunch had stuck with her. Tell Jim whatever you need to tell him. Something like that. The comment seemed like a poorly hidden message. It had given Pam the impression that her mother thought she wanted to be with Jim, not Roy. Pam chided herself for not being more clear about her feelings. She should made it more obvious to her mother that she was trying to make things work with Roy again. Even as she said that, however, Pam wondered if she was making anything clear, even to herself. She couldn't deny that she had certain feelings for Jim. But it just wasn't that simple. She had been with Roy for years, and Jim was with Karen-
“Hey guys,” she said abruptly, “I think I'm going to go back to my apartment and get some sleep.”
Roy looked up from their game. “Really?” he said. “It's still kind of early.”
“Yeah, but you know how energetic my mom can be.”
Roy laughed. “Yeah, it's weird how you can be so quiet when she's so bubbly all the time.”
“Right. Well, anyway, I think she wore me out a little today, and I just feel like getting some sleep.”
“Alright,” said Roy. “Thanks for coming over, anyway. Tell your mom I said hi next time you see her.”
“Sure.”
Pam made her goodbyes to Darryl, Roy, and his brother. The three of them went back to their card game as Pam left the apartment and returned to her car. Maybe she had just been talking too much that day, with the art class and the lunch out with her mother. Even though she would be alone in her new apartment, she found herself looking forward to the quiet living room, followed by an early night's sleep.
.....
