“Hello? There you are, Pam!” Helene breezed into the room like a small hurricane, carrying all their attention in her wake. “I told the nurse I was here to see Jim Halpert and they showed me right in here. Isn’t that nice?” She sat down between Larissa and Pam, and placed the small bag and purse she was carrying between her feet. “Now, honey, the last time I visited you I didn’t get to meet him, but I’m assuming this young man simply must be Jim.”
Pam was beginning to wonder where all the blood came from to produce all the blushing she was doing. Larissa had made her do it; Jim had made her do it; now her own mother was making her do it too. She had fantasies of sinking down into the floor and exiting the room without anyone noticing, or, since that would leave her mother here to say anything she liked, of grabbing her mom and running out the door so that she couldn’t embarrass her in front of Jim. How was it that a mother always knew how best to make her child squirm?
Unbeknownst to her, Jim was experiencing some of the same symptoms. It was all very well to talk a big game about meeting Helene, and to tell Pam, Larissa, and himself that he was looking forward to it. He didn’t even need to lie; he had been looking forward to it. But the actual fact of the matter was that he was terrified, and also a bit embarrassed. He was embarrassed because he had a good sense that Pam and her mother had the kind of relationship where they…talked. About things. Important things. Possibly things that included moments like “Jim said he loved me” or “Jim kissed me” or “Jim ran away after I didn’t immediately give him the answer he wanted.” Possibly even “Jim broke my heart,” which he was beginning to retrospectively worry might have been the case if Pam really felt the way she was telling him she did. So he was embarrassed to be here, patently caught in the act of running away—even if that accident that had caught him here was now receiving hourly blessing in his heart for reuniting him with Pam—and under the scrutiny of a woman who probably knew Pam’s side of all of this.
He was terrified for much the same reason, if one added in complete inexperience and the humongous stakes of his love for Pam. The last parent of a girlfriend that he’d met (and Pam had insisted she was his girlfriend, right? This wasn’t another dream? No more monuments were going to loom up on the horizon, or indoor waterfalls?) had been Sally Jenkins’s parents, Ronald and Marla, when he took her to senior prom. And since Mr. Jenkins had been his basketball coach, he hadn’t really had to meet him, or Mrs. Jenkins for the first time. And Sally and he hadn’t even been seriously dating—it was more a matter of neither of them having time to date anyone who wasn’t on the same sports team (or close enough—Sally was the center on the women’s team, which her mom coached, and which traveled to the same tournaments so they actually got to see each other. He had a sneaking suspicion her interest in him had less to do with him and more to do with wanting to date someone who was actually of a similar height). So he was completely out of his depth. He’d had a couple girlfriends in college, neither of whom had lasted long enough for any parent-meeting to occur, and his relationships with the girls like Katy and (god help him) Brenda whom he’d dated in the past few years had felt…unsubstantial, for some reason. Some curly-haired, Pam-shaped reason currently blushing in the chair next to him, to be precise. Which brought him from his relative inexperience with this situation to the real reason he was terrified: he could not afford to screw this up. Pamela Morgan Beesly was it for him. He had realized that when his monument valley of failures had turned out to be more than half Pam. She was more central to him than any organ: they could all be replaced, but Pam Beesly could not. So meeting her mother, while a necessary, welcome step that indicated that he belonged in Pam’s life, was completely and utterly unnerving because he dreaded making some kind of wrong move, especially given the possibility—the probability, the near-certainty—that she knew so much about him already that she’d have Expectations. Ones that he could Fail to Meet. He wondered briefly if the “no running, no walking without crutches, stay put unless we tell you to” rule that Dr. Pedersen had prescribed had an exemption for fleeing in terror. Until he glanced over at Pam and recognized her unease, which paradoxically put him in a more comfortable position. This was about protecting Pam, about doing for her what she needed him to do. That was a situation he could handle. He began to breathe again.
The one person who was in no way discomfited by Mrs. Beesly’s arrival (besides, of course, Mrs. Beesly herself) was Larissa, who smiled hugely and sat back, catching Pam’s eye and miming eating popcorn. She couldn’t tell if Pam noticed, because she would have expected her to blush in response, and the enormous blush already coating her face and neck would have been difficult to add to. She looked over to Jim and gave an encouraging thumbs up, to which he smiled (wanly, she thought) and took a deep breath.
She decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. “Bravo. You got that right! Tell me, was it that he’s the one in the hospital bed, or that he’s the only man in the room that tipped you off?” She grinned and stuck out her hand. “Sorry, don’t mind me, I’m just delirious with joy that my big brother finally managed to get a girlfriend and meet her parents, both on the same day. Larissa Halpert. I’m assuming you must be Helene.”
Helene took the offered hand, having noticed that both her daughter and Jim seemed oddly tongue-tied. Or perhaps not oddly, given that she’d barged in half an hour before she’d said she’d come—she’d simply found herself puttering around the house with nothing to do and decided it was high time she set eyes on the man she was pretty sure her daughter was head over heels in love with. Fortunately, their mirroring reactions to her sudden presence seemed to confirm that they were well-matched, and the look Jim was giving her daughter was very satisfactory indeed. She decided that she liked this Larissa Halpert—at least someone here had their wits about them. She thought the two lovebirds would need that, since clearly neither of them did.
“You’re correct. What gave it away? The fact that I called Pam honey, or the family resemblance?”
Larissa grinned. “I think it was the way you just walked in and took charge, like you did on the phone.”
Helene laughed. Yes, she definitely approved of this one. Hopefully once he decided to open his mouth she’d find that Jim had something in common with his sister, because she could see where Pam would benefit from someone with a sharp sense of the ridiculous in her life. Larissa took advantage of the moment of laughter to shake Jim’s foot, which in turn made him break out of his semi-stupor and respond.
“Well, as my graceless little sister has said, I’m Jim. Hello, Mrs. Beesly, it’s nice to actually meet you instead of watching Pam hide you behind a reception desk.” He threw a soft smile over to Pam as he said this before reaching a hand out and meeting Helene’s smiling eyes. “I have ever so many questions for you.”
