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My Best Friend
Chapter 3
Unpleasant would be the best word I could use to summarize my relationship with Karen. Overall, all things considered, I should have never asked her out. Aside from the fact that she didn’t accept me for me, if I hadn’t gone out with Karen and just come back to Scranton without a human shield and actually talked to Pam like a normal person would have – according to what I’ve seen from these snippets of my life so far, I’d have saved a ton of money on antacids and Cece would probably be a year older. Not that I’m ready for her to start kindergarten quite yet.
But, anyway, back then, in the time period I’m letting roll in front of me, things with Karen were good sometimes and not good other times. I’d say we were okay for most of the time, but there were days like this one that’s being shown – the day she got mad at me because she wanted to move like two blocks away from where I lived and I wasn’t really comfortable with it wasn’t such a great day. Her attitude - along with my hesitation at having her living that close to me - should have clued me in as to what a chore dealing with her would be over time.
And by chore, I mean it’s a lot easier to take my two and a half year old daughter to the doctor’s office for her shots, clean out the diaper genie, argue with Cece when she wants to wear sandals and her bathing suit to pre-school in December and getting the death glare from Pam when I leave the table without putting my dirty plate in the dishwasher than it was to deal with Karen when she was mad. There are a lot of things I forget about that time, but I definitely remember the cold shoulder from Karen, displayed in full glory on television for all to see, as she ignores me while she walks into the conference room for some meeting.
It’s probably wrong, and probably not the nicest thing to call our kids, but sometimes we refer to our daughters as our very own cold showers. They have just… impeccable timing. Whether it’s when Pam and I are kissing in the kitchen when we think they’re playing in the living room – then one of them walks in and starts squealing. Or when Pam and I wake up just a little early on a Sunday morning and… take advantage of the quiet house, one of them always seems to need mommy right when someone’s shirt is about to come off. It’s inevitable with two kids. Then, there are times like right now, when I’d actually give anything for one of them to come bouncing into this living room and distract me from what Pam and I are watching.
I didn’t remember this at first – Michael coming back from Jamaica with Jan was pretty much all I really kept with me in my memory bank. But I didn’t remember this right away, this fight with Karen over some apartment that she rented when she lived here. I really recall so few details about that relationship, that if I admitted it out loud it would make me sound like a bigger ass than I feel at the moment while we’re watching this.
Pam and I have been together for a long time – it’s easy to forget things that don’t matter. To be blunt, and perfectly honest, dating Karen, and even Katy, it was a really great distraction – something I admitted to Michael. I mean, okay, Katy and I had nothing in common, but she was … there, available, and she was into me. The same with Karen, though Karen was a lot more put together and less ditzy, we still had nothing in common, and being with her started to frustrate me right around the time that she rented this apartment a few blocks away.
Why I kept going with it? Because I had to move on and I couldn’t be single. I still don’t know why I dreaded being single so much. I really do think part of it was, I knew what I could have with Pam would have been (and is – it without a doubt is) so great, that part of me, the part that got beaten and bruised by her when I sprang all of my feelings on her and then left when she couldn’t say it back, that part of me wanted to prove that I could create that life with someone else and be perfectly happy with it. All while sitting in front of Pam all day long at work
It’s wrong, it’s terrible, and it’s really utterly pathetic. Like a dieter eating massive amounts of cookies and cake and then complaining they gained a pound. I did it to myself, the misery, because from the looks of it, had I waited just a little bit longer, Pam’s answer would have been, yes I can. I wonder if things had been different if I didn’t transfer to Stamford in the first place. Would Cece be a year older? Would Pam have even called off her wedding if I hung around? Was me leaving the reason she called it off or was it because of what I said? We never talked about that, and right now it shouldn’t matter, like the girls I used to date before Pam and I got together. I know that with any them, if we dated after the day I met Pam, they were a rebound even if Pam and I had never been on a true real date until five years after we actually met for the first time.
That I’m sitting here watching a part of my life, this day that isn’t crystal clear in my head play out on television, I can’t even understand how I could have thought to share a problem I was having with the girl I was dating (Karen – rebound girl number… 5, or 6) with the woman I am still to this day desperately, hopelessly, have to reach out and touch her now or my fingers will just fall off in love with. It’s all beyond comprehension.
I feel Pam shift next to me, her arms sliding across my stomach and her nose pressing into my arm. I lean over and kiss her, slow and warm and her hand touches my cheek, her fingers press my earlobe and she lets out a sigh. I grasp the sides of her face and pull her closer, kissing her slowly, smiles breaking on our faces as we sink into the couch. There’s something behind this kiss, and I can feel the pressure of her hand, holding my face from turning toward the television. She shifts again, this time her right leg moves over my left as she lays on top of me, still holding he hand to my cheek, and I’ll be honest, I don’t really care that she won’t let me look at the TV.
I’m making out with my wife on the couch in the middle of the week and the kids are in bed sound asleep. What idiot would I be if I even thought to complain? A pretty big stupid idiot.
Time goes by and the voices on the television are in the distance. I try to block out Karen’s voice thanking Pam for, “Talking sense into Halpert.” And my stomach turns because I … can’t … stand… that … I hated that she called me Halpert. I went with it, but deep in my gut, I just … gritted my teeth way in the back. I’m surprised I still have molars.
I feel Pam’s hand tighten on my cheek, her lips more urgent on mine as she presses her pelvis into mine – which any other night, I’d have flipped us around and done things a gentleman never speaks of aloud. But I hear sniffling and crying coming from the television and automatically I know its Pam. That’s her she doesn’t want anyone to hear her crying cry. I turn my eyes toward the TV because her hand is glued to my cheek until I pull on it gently, holding it in mine against my chest as I watch her sit there with Dwight’s handkerchief, just crying.
There’s a sting in my throat and my nose and all of a sudden I feel hot. I haven’t cried since Alyssa was born, and those were happy tears. I feel one escape as I rewind it and watch it again.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she whispers, her nose pressing into the skin on my neck.
I can’t speak. I’m immobilized, struck. I feel like someone smacked me in the chest with a metal plate and left it there with half dry adhesive, peeling the skin away slowly as it falls to the floor.
“I got caught up in something I shouldn’t have,” she says, still not looking at me. “I should have minded my own business. But you looked so upset, and then we were looking together on the computer for an apartment for her,” she sniffles, her voice squeaking. “We were close again, I thought, and I mean, you were talking to me again. You were my friend again. And then…,” she trails off, shrugging her shoulders. “I just … in the end I wound up having pushed you closer to her and further from me.”
I shake my head, let out some kind of sound I make when I’m completely disgusted with things – somewhere between a rush of air and a ‘cuh’ sound and just hold her. I feel her hair between my fingers – soft like it’s color – caramel, and I feel her holding onto me, the way she does when we’re in the pool on vacation and she follows me to the over five feet end, her fingertips digging into the muscles under my skin as we go.
I could assume she cried a hundred times that year, I could assume that she was upset a lot, inferring it from what I’ve seen so far. But to actually witness her sitting there in tears while I played oblivious asshole who was trying to pretend I wasn’t broken in half just like she was – yeah, that’s making me angry at myself.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to make this up to her, or if I am just supposed to hold her and let this moment fade out and move on to the next one on the list, or not watch anymore of this and remember that I want a third child with her soon. Third child – as in we already have two, we’ve already put this behind us and moved forward.
I say, “I’m sorry,” out of instinct. Like those seven letters are going to make it all okay. Like they’ll take away the tears she shed for me, because of me, seven - eight years ago. Like it’ll absolve me of any wrong doing, make me a better person, make the night Karen and I had after she rented that apartment never happen. Remembering that now … as I’m holding my wife in my arms trying not to unleash anymore tears and be a man, it makes me feel like I’m cheating on her.
That thought makes my throat turn and bile rise and burn the back of my throat, the acid eating away at whatever is in there. I can feel it, try to keep it at bay by squeezing my eyes shut and counting to ten as I breathe in and out of my nose.
We don’t say anything for a long time, for what feels like over twenty minutes. The TiVo has decided to stop it’s inquisition of whether I want to delete that latest installment or keep it and it’s moved on to turning itself off and returning us to whatever is on ‘live’ right now.
It isn’t until I hear my own voice once again coming from the speakers behind me that I focus again on the screen, my fingers mindlessly brushing through Pam’s hair. I’m watching myself sit on the floor in the stairwell with Dwight and I’m telling him how bad things were when I wasn’t with Pam.
How I couldn’t eat – it was true. I lost about twenty pounds over the five years. I couldn’t sleep – bags under my eyes most of the time – more when I was in Stamford than in Scranton. Food didn’t taste like anything – again, so true, I over salted everything so much my doctor almost put me on blood pressure meds.
I don’t know what her reaction will be to all of that as I watch myself walk with purpose toward the main office area and kiss her like I’ve never kissed anyone before. How’s she supposed to believe I felt all of those things or any of them when I’ve just seen about half a year’s worth of her upset, me treating her like she’s some rag doll that can be put aside at a moment’s notice for something that could be perceived as better (even though there’s no way anyone ever could be better than Pam.)
How did we get there? How did we go from this … this game we played for a year, Pam upset and me pretending I didn’t care about her anymore – to me admitting to a camera crew that I was in love with her, less than a year later? It was easier back then. I didn’t have visuals. We discussed what it was like for her to cancel her wedding, we talked about the moment she realized that she could do better. We talked about why she didn’t call me, why I didn’t call her.
We discussed at length just how apologetic we were about what could have been an easier year if we both didn’t jump the gun – me by leaving, her by saying she would marry Roy. We talked about the future on our second date, and on our third, we stayed in bed until Monday morning. I tried again, said I love you that Saturday night at her door, and that time she made all of the things I’d planned for us come into reachable sight just by saying she loved me too as she pulled me into her apartment and locked the door behind her.
I bought her engagement ring a week later. It sounds crazy – as crazy as the small instance that led me to do it, aside from the fact that I wanted to since the moment I met her. It was a Friday night, officially our one week mark, and when you finally get the girl, you celebrate a lot of milestones, even if it’s in your own head. I wanted to take her to a fancy restaurant, but when we got back to my apartment there was a message from my friend Mark asking me if I wanted to play some basketball that night. Pam just smiled and said we could do that instead. She actually wanted to come with me and watch me play. I questioned it for a minute, this coming from a woman who refuses to go to sporting events – or refused. I kind of won her over there (that’s too cocky, but true.)
I called Mark and told him to bring his girlfriend with him so at least Pam would have someone to sit on the sidelines with while we played for an hour. Pam and Cheryl hit it off from the get go, which I honestly always knew they would. Of course while they talked Mark and I played a few loose games, nothing major and I don’t think we kept score. It was more running between baskets, getting sweaty and just catching up with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while.
There was one moment when we were catching our breaths that Mark pulled me aside and I fully expected him to call me out on not keeping in touch more since I came back from Stamford. Instead though, he said, “She’s the one. I can tell. It’s the way she looks at you.”
We men don’t get more in touch with our emotions than that, but when I looked over to Pam as I dribbled the ball to the center of the court, the smile on her face was as wide as I’d ever seen it. I swore that I saw every single tooth she has in her mouth in that moment. I knew this was it, she was in this for the long haul.
And when Mark and I were finished playing, we walked over to our respective girlfriends, and Pam was bouncing on her toes with the same smile on her face. She told me that she invited Cheryl and Mark over to her place for dinner the following night. That was it. Seems like an innocuous thing, but no woman I’d ever dated for a week had ever engrained herself into my life and included my friends so quickly. The next morning before I went to Pam’s to help with dinner I went to the jeweler’s and bought her engagement ring. As I walked out of the store with the receipt to my future in my hand, I knew that the perfect day to propose would be on our one year anniversary.
I’m deflecting and digressing and … yeah, I do this all the time. Something really gets to me and I digress. I’m self aware to know I do it, even though that doesn’t help me in any way from stopping it from happening.
I got so far along in thought that I almost forgot why Pam and I are clinging to one another. That’s the best part of my zoning out and avoidance. It leads to almost near perfect vanishing of the act that made me that upset. The problem with doing that is that … well, obviously back then it led to Pam crying on a bench outside the warehouse. So it’s not such a good tactic. I don’t use it much anymore.
There’s nothing I want to forget right now. Except maybe changing diapers. And, oh yeah, watching Pam cry five minutes ago.
She squeezes my shoulder and sits up, her lips on my cheek quickly before she shifts to sit up.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” I say, my throat hoarse. “I really … I … I didn’t know what I was doing. And I know that’s not a good enough answer, but,” I say, unsure of how I’m finishing that sentence when she leans in and presses her finger to my lips.
“Its okay, Jim.”
I want to tell her I don’t see how it could be, I don’t see it. But I just watch her in awe as she takes the remote and selects the next one on the list and settles back against me.
There’s a lot more to go. I know that. But I don’t know if I can handle it anymore. And I’m starting to wonder why she’s been so calm about it all. I rub my head and I can’t help but wonder what the hell I’ve gotten myself into by watching this … train wreck of a year.
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Chapter End Notes:
More soon. Sorry for the delay - blame Irene! I had this half written for a week and was just able to get back to it today. Sorry if it's not the best chapter or what you were expecting. I'm feeling a little rusty at this for some reason. Hope you enjoyed. :) xx thanks to Nancy for the pep talks :)
