Authors Note: I don't know if the show ever mentioned anything about Pam's family. I hope it didn't, because I made one up for this story.
"Yeah, I will," she squeaked.
The phone clattered into the base unit.
I waited to hear the dull buzz of the dial tone before hanging up. Scrunching my eyes closed tightly, I tried to imagine exactly what was happening to my youngest somewhere back in Scranton. All I could see was black.
If only a mother could shadow her adult children the same way she could when their heads barely reached her waist. If only I could hold Pam's hand in mine right now, if only I could cover her eyes and ears and shield her from the heartbreaking sound of her life falling to pieces.
The last daughter is different than those that come before her. She is the one who stays close by you when the eldest two go off to school. She is the one that still enjoys your silly songs and clapping games after the other two have outgrown them. She is the one that you spoil unabashedly. She is the one who will cover you in tiny kisses and hug you so tightly she must be pried off. She's your baby.
Pam wasn't like her older sisters, Susan and Claire in any way. While they grew up beautiful, bold, and confidant, Pam was pushed into their shadows. She was so shy, so delicate and emotional. Her siblings were both athletic and popular, always surrounded by crowds of people. They excelled in sports and always knew exactly how to dress.
My youngest daughter, on the other hand, possessed few of those traits. She was smart, pretty, funny, and artistic, but she never saw any of those things. She saw curly, frizzy, wild hair instead of sleek shiny waves. She saw turtlenecks instead of short skirts and trendy tops. She saw framed report cards instead of trophies and ribbons. As she learned to compare herself to her sisters, she crawled farther and farther into the background, her self confidence shriveling up inside of her.
As my two eldest daughters grew older, it became clear that they would be successful romantically as well. They began to bring home tall, beautiful, blond, athletic boys were completely infatuated with them. Their father, who at first was upset by this change, soon became enthusiastic when he realized how much he had in common with these young men. They were the sons that he never had.
I wasn't as thrilled with the boys my daughters found. All my life I had prayed for them to find someone who could care for them properly, someone who could provide for them later in life. These men weren't exactly what I had imagined. What they had in strength and good looks they lacked in intelligence, scraping by with grades just good enough to keep them on the high school football team.
Pam had boyfriends before Roy, but not very many. The few boys that she brought home for us to meet were nice but also geeky. They were not extraordinarily athletic or attractive. Personally, I was thrilled that she chose this sort of boy. It made me proud that she could see past a person's exterior and find inner beauty.
My husband and daughters felt differently.
Although they never said anything that was outright mean to Pam (I wouldn't have allowed such behavior in my home), Susan and Claire made it perfectly clear that they looked down on Pam for liking such boys. They insulted her boyfriends frequently behind Pam's back. Although their father hushed them, it was clear he also agreed with them.
None of Pam's first relationships lasted very long under such pressure.
Then in her junior year, Pam met Roy. He was the polar opposite of the boys she usually liked. Roy played on many of the school's sports teams, and was extremely popular. And he liked her. That was obvious the moment we met him. Something about her quiet personality and her smarts captivated him.
She brought him home to meet us soon after they started dating. I watched her with him, and it was clear that she was proud of her catch. He was a boy that either of her sisters would have dated in a second. Finally, she had outdone them at something, and she was thrilled by that. She enjoyed the attention that her dad lavished upon Roy almost as much as she enjoyed the jealousy of her siblings. But she acted differently around him then she had acted around her other boys.
How can I explain it?
It wasn't that she didn't like him as much. She cared for him just as much or even more than her other relationships. But she seemed… uncomfortable. Like she was trying to be someone that she wasn't. Later she confessed to me that she had no idea why he had even asked her out in the first place. His previous girlfriends had been clones of Susan and Claire, not like her. When she was with him she tried to wear the shoes of that kind of girl, and she looked as if she had been dropped onto the wrong planet.
He wasn't who I had pictured her with. However, she seemed to be happy with him, and I was used to interacting with boys like him because of my elder two. And so I had no objections to their relationship. I was happy for her.
Pretty soon my baby was graduating, and so was Roy. They look so old in the graduation picture that sits on the mantle in our house, right next to her baby picture. I can remember that day like it was yesterday.
Although Pam went to college after high school, Roy didn't choose to follow that path. He got a job at Dunder-Mifflin, working a blue collar job in the warehouse. Outwardly, Pam was fine with his decision, but I could tell that inwardly she was disappointed with his choice. She had pushed him to be more, but it had come to nothing.
Again Pam was graduating, and she was moving from her college dorm into a house with Roy.
On the night of her graduation she called me, practically giddy with excitement. Roy had proposed to her, and she had said yes. My youngest daughter, my smallest, my baby, was engaged.
And I couldn't help but wonder if she would be happy spending the rest of her life with a warehouse worker.
It wasn't who I had pictured her with. Not at all.
Every time that they came over after that for almost six months, I felt guilty for secretly being so unsupportive. It was surprisingly hard to give up dreams that weren't even for yourself in the first place. But I just couldn't banish the picture of the husband I had imagined her with since she was a little girl.
As soon as she started to plan the wedding, Pam realized just how expensive it would be. And after just buying a house, she and Roy were stretched to their financial limit. It became necessary for her to have some sort of an income. To become a graphic designer like she had always wanted to would require more schooling which they didn't have the money for. Roy discovered an opening for a receptionist at his company, and Pam took it at his request. It was supposed to be a temporary job, one that she could keep just long enough to pay for the wedding and school fees before finishing her education and moving on to better things.
Like I had asked her to, Pam called me after her first day. I was expecting to hear lots of stories about Roy at work, but the only person that she talked about was a man named Jim. Apparently he was hilarious, and he sat just across from her desk in the office. When I asked her about Roy at the end of our conversation, all she said was:
"Oh, well, he works in a different part of the building than me, so I don't see him very much."
That's when I started to wonder.
Every time that I talked to her after that she always had another story about Jim. She told me about the jokes that he made, or the pranks that he pulled on some other unfortunate coworker named Dwight. She barely ever mentioned Roy or the wedding any more. It sounded like she had started to like this Jim instead.
Once I made the mistake of confronting her about it. I asked her if she had any feelings for Jim, and reminded her that if she had any doubts about the wedding she shouldn't go through with it. Her reaction was terrible.
"He's my best friend Mom! That's it! What are you doing, telling me to cancel my wedding?"
She didn't call for over a week after that.
The one time that I visited her office I got to meet him. We only had a brief conversation, but when I saw the two of them standing next to each other, my daughter dwarfed by his tall frame, I swear I recognized him.
He was the man that I had pictured Pam marrying when she grew up. The man who made her laugh and who could take care of her until the day she died.
I never said a word to her about that.
But now they were standing together over a hundred and fifty miles away from me. And I would give anything to know what was happening between them right at that moment.