The Best of Everything

by Kimberla Lawson Roby

  But that was neither here nor there and not something she should be worrying about because she had her own marital problems to deal with. Plus, it wasn’t like her mother was still dwelling on the past. She had James, a man who had treated her like a queen from day one and who unquestionably deserved some sort of an achievement award for best stepfather of the century because he’d always been wonderful to Alicia and still treated her like she was his biological daughter.

  Alicia smiled when she saw him walking over to them.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  “I’m fine, and thank you for being here.”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  James placed one of his arms around Alicia and hugged her.

  Her mother smiled at both of them and then said to James, “So, honey, are you about ready to get going?”

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  “We should probably leave, but we’ll be here in the morning, a couple of hours before it’s time to line up for the funeral procession.”

  Alicia embraced her mother. “Okay, Mom, and thanks for everything.”

  Her mother hugged Melanie and then said good-bye to Mom Katherine and a few other people and then everyone else slowly started filing out. Melanie, Brad, and Miss Thelma had been the last ones to leave, and now Alicia and Mom Katherine were in the kitchen.

  “Well, there’s really not much else for us to do because Thelma has already put all the food away and cleaned up everything. She’s such a doll, and I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through this week without her.”

  “Melanie and I were talking about her earlier. She’s such a good friend. Such a good person.”

  “And she’s always been that way, too. We met about fifteen years ago when I was forty and she was fifty, and at our age, you don’t expect to find best friends. One day, we struck up a conversation at the beauty salon, exchanged phone numbers, and we hit it off from there. Then she and her husband joined our church, and he and Phil became very close friends, too. But then her husband passed away about five years later, and that was about ten years ago.”

  “And she never thought about getting married again?”

  “No. She doesn’t even really see other men. There’s a widower from the church that she sometimes goes to lunch with and maybe to a movie, but that’s about it.”

  “Well, as long as she’s happy.”

  “It’s more about not being able to find another man you can love as much as you loved your husband. So, just a little companionship every now and then is about all you can expect. And then when you get past fifty, you’re pretty set in your ways and you’re not willing to change those ways for a new relationship.”

  “I guess not,” Alicia said and thought about how she felt the same way at twenty-two.

  “Why don’t you go on in there with your husband? Because I’m fine. Really. I’m going to have me a piece of that German chocolate cake you brought, and then I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.”

  Alicia was glad she’d thought to pick up her mother-in-law’s favorite cake for her before driving back over this afternoon.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Now go.”

  Alicia hugged Mom Katherine and then walked through the house and into the bedroom. Phillip was already in bed, with the lights out, but it looked as though he was watching David Letterman.

  “Phillip?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh. I was just checking to see if you were awake.”

  He didn’t say anything else, so Alicia turned on one of the lamps and opened her bag. She pulled out her nightgown and then started toward the guest bathroom.

  “Alicia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t do this without you. I’ve tried, but now I know that there’s no way I can continue harboring all this animosity and also deal with my father’s funeral.”

  Alicia wasn’t sure what to say, but she was glad he’d finally spoken a few pleasant words to her.

  “Is that okay with you?”

  “It’s more than okay, Phillip, because I need you, too.”

  Phillip reached out his hand and Alicia sat down and then lay next to him.

  “All I want to do is hold you, make it through tomorrow, and move on with our lives.”

  Alicia snuggled closer to him. “That’s all I want, too.”

  “But there is one thing I have to say.”

  “What?”

  “That what happened on Tuesday can never happen again. You have to make me as much of a priority as I always try to make you, and I don’t think that’s asking too much.”

  “It’s not, and I will make you my priority. I promise that I’ll consider how you feel a lot more than I have been.”

  She promised and hoped she could live up to every word she’d just said.

  Chapter 19

  It was the last Saturday in April, exactly two months since they’d buried Alicia’s father-in-law, yet here she and Phillip were, going at it like enemies. They’d done pretty well, starting with the day of the funeral, but their cease-fire, truce, compromise, or whatever a person wanted to call it, hadn’t lasted more than two weeks. For a while, Phillip had seemed content with her and their marriage, and they’d spent most of the time at his mother’s house. However, when Mom Katherine had insisted that she was fine, that she thought it was time they got back to their own lives in Mitchell and that it would be good for Phillip to get back to what he loved, which was the ministry, they’d spent a lot more time at home. But the more time they spent together and the more they resumed their day-to-day activities, the more they began arguing again. They couldn’t seem to agree on anything, and it was now to the point where Alicia wasn’t even sure she loved Phillip anymore. She guessed she did love him—no, she knew she loved him—but she couldn’t be sure if she was in love with him the way she had been months earlier.

  A person could only take so much yelling, criticizing, and complaining and Alicia was getting tired of it. Especially since she’d gone out of her way to do what she knew would make him happy. She’d started working, and even though she was earning her own money, she’d still bypassed a number of things she’d really wanted to purchase. She hadn’t even taken as many trips to the mall, in Mitchell or over in Chicago, and she hadn’t ordered nearly as much from QVC or the Home Shopping Network as she could have. In fact, she’d seen a variety of items on both channels that she’d wanted pretty badly, but because of the promise she’d made to Phillip about making him the priority in her life, she’d resisted the urge to buy them.

  However, the sad part about all of this was that the changes she’d worked very hard to make still weren’t enough for Phillip, and now her patience with him was practically nonexistent. He just couldn’t be satisfied, and Alicia was sick of trying to appease him. She was tired of trying because it wasn’t doing a bit of good, anyway.

  Phillip threw his hands into the air. “You’re never going to change, are you?”

  “Nope. And if that’s what you’re waiting on, then I’m sorry to tell you that you’re wasting your time.”

  “Why is it that no matter how much I try to reason with you or how much I try to explain it, you just don’t get it? Why is that?”

  “Because you have your philosophy in terms of how we should live our lives, and I have mine. I’ve told you that time and time again, and that’s just the way it is.”

  “But when you get married, Alicia, it can’t be about two different philosophies. The Bible says that when you marry, you become one, and to me that means we should do whatever we have to do in order to stay in agreement. I’m not saying that we should never disagree because that’s not being logical, but what I am saying is that for the most part, the majority of the time, we should be of one accord.”

  “I agree. But we’ve now been married for eight months and you still think this is just about you and that w
e should do things your way and only your way. And I’m not going for that.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “I mean exactly what I just said—that I’m not going for it—and I’m not sure how much more I can simplify that particular statement.”

  “So that’s it? You’ve basically decided that you’re going to continue doing whatever you want, regardless of how I feel about it?”

  Alicia shook her head and went over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Perrier.

  “Oh, so now you don’t have anything else to say, I guess.”

  “Phillip, the bottom line is this. Our marriage just isn’t working.”

  Phillip folded his arms and then sighed. “So, what do you want to do about it?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t see how we can keep going on like this.”

  “Are you feeling as though things are so bad that there’s no way of fixing them?”

  “I don’t know that, either. I just know I can’t keep arguing with you like this every time you see something new in my closet or something new that I’ve bought for the house. I mean, because even like today, you came in here ranting and raving like some natural-born lunatic all because I decided it was time we upgraded our family room furniture. Which is just insane to me because buying furniture is what most wives do. It’s normal, Phillip, and I would think that you’d be happy about the way I’m always trying to make sure our house looks its absolute best.”

  “But not when we can’t afford it, Alicia, and that’s why I’m so upset.”

  “But it’s not like I used any of your money.”

  “But it still affects me and ultimately I will have to pay for it in one way or another, because whether you financed it through the furniture store or used a charge card, it only means more debt for both of us.”

  “No, it doesn’t, because I’m the one who’s going to be paying for it. I have a job now, remember?”

  “You only work part-time, and I rather doubt that you’ll be able to pay for a room full of Italian leather furniture anytime soon. And that means not only do you have the principal to worry about, but you’ll be paying a ton of interest, too. You’ll be paying forever.”

  “But that’s my choice, Phillip, and I don’t have a problem with that. Plus, it’s not like I’m always going to be working part-time. Once I finish my book, which you know I’ve been working on for over a month now,” she said, even though she knew it really wasn’t the truth, “I’ll be able to pay that furniture bill in full.”

  “You just don’t see what I’m saying, do you? Because even if you do pay for it and I never have to spend one dime on it, that money could have been saved or used toward some of our household bills.”

  “My father never ever expected my mother to pay one bill around the house, and she only worked because she wanted to. His second wife didn’t work at all, and the only reason Charlotte worked at the beginning of their marriage was that she and my dad had just moved here and started a new church with only a few members. But then once he started earning a lot more money, she quit and hasn’t had to work since.”

  “Well, I don’t make the kind of money your father does, and you and I could definitely accomplish a whole lot more than what we have if we stopped all this your-money-my-money business. That’s why a lot of married couples find themselves struggling financially, and it’s all because they don’t put their money together. They keep separate accounts, they pick and choose what they’re going to pay for or not pay for, and it’s my experience that when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, the result can only be one thing. A total disaster.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Well, it’s the truth. When I was an associate minister over in Chicago, I counseled a number of married couples and hands down, the ones who were having the most serious financial problems were always the ones who kept their money separate. But the couples who deposited all their money into the same account never had those kinds of issues. They paid all their bills from one pot, regardless of who made the most money, and they were also able to save for their futures. They might have had other problems, but rarely did those kinds of couples have money trouble.”

  “Well, it’s like you said, I only work part-time, so it’s not like I make all that much.”

  Phillip laughed out loud. “So, when it’s convenient, you don’t make very much, but when you want to buy something, you make more than enough to pay for it.”

  “You know what? This really isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “No, I guess it’s not, so like I said before, what is it that you want to do? Get a divorce?”

  Alicia was shocked that he was actually suggesting this, but she couldn’t deny that it had already crossed her mind, too. More than once.

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No, because when I married you, my goal was to be married until death. But things are pretty bad between us, and to me the only chance we might have is to go to counseling.”

  Alicia really wasn’t all that interested in discussing her personal business in front of some stranger, especially with her being the daughter of a pastor, author, and speaker who was known nationwide as well as in other countries.

  “I don’t know. If we did, we’d have to be very careful of who we confided our situation to.”

  “I agree, and I’m willing to look for someone if you decide you want to go this route.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Actually, I’m sure your dad has to know someone who we can trust and someone who’s good at what they do.”

  “That’s fine, but, Phillip, I don’t want you telling my dad any details. You can tell him that we’re having problems and that we need a counselor we can trust, but that’s it.”

  “Whatever you want. But if it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask him right away.”

  “That’s fine. Because it’s like I said, I can’t keep living like this.”

  “I agree, so let me call him now.”

  Phillip went into his study and called Curtis’s home number and Charlotte answered.

  “Hey, Charlotte, how’s it going?”

  “Good. How about you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “And I would ask about your mom but I just talked to her a little while ago. Thought I’d call just to chat with her for a while.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “She’s really doing well, Phillip.”

  “She is, and I’m glad because if she wasn’t, that would really worry me.”

  “I can imagine. But let me not hold you up because I know you’re probably calling for Curtis.”

  “I am.”

  “Here he is, and you take care.”

  “Hey,” Curtis said when he got on the line.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, what’s up with you?”

  “If you have a few minutes, I need to ask a favor.”

  “Go ahead. Anything.”

  “Well, as much as I was hoping we’d never have to go this route, Alicia and I have both decided that it’s time we saw a counselor.”

  “Really? I knew you were having some problems around the time your dad died, but I thought things were a lot better and back to normal.”

  “They were for a while, but now it’s pretty bad again.”

  “Well, you know I hate hearing that, but you’re doing the right thing by getting some help.”

  “What I wondered was if you can recommend someone who is good but also someone we can trust because Alicia is worried about confidentiality.”

  “I understand, and actually I know the perfect person. Pastor John Abernathy. He’s the pastor of Abundant Life Missionary Baptist Church over in Chicago, but he also has a master’s in counseling and had a private practice when he was in his early thirties. You’ve heard me talk about him and, remember, I spoke there last summer.”

  “I think so. You just met him about a year and a half ago
, right?”

  “Yeah, but he’s the one who really helped me come to terms with that whole Tabitha scandal. He quickly became like a father figure to me, and he’s very good. He’s a great man of God, and he doesn’t play any games. He’s the real deal.”

  “Isn’t his church the one where that woman who won the lottery goes to? The one who won that huge Mega Millions jackpot?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Well, if that’s who you really think we should go with, then I’ll run it by Alicia.”

  “He’s definitely your man. Just let me know, and I’ll call him right away.”

  “Thanks, Curtis, because we really do need to talk to someone soon.”

  “No problem, and while I know you don’t feel comfortable sharing with me whatever is going on, I still want you to know that I’m always available. I also don’t want you thinking you can’t come to me just because you’re married to my daughter. It takes two when it comes to any marriage, and I know my daughter can be a little self-absorbed sometimes. You mentioned something like that the last time we spoke about this, and it’s true, so if you want me to talk to her, I will.”

  “No. But I appreciate the offer.”

  “Okay, well, let me know if you want me to contact Pastor Abernathy.”

  “I will. See you tomorrow.”

  Phillip hung up but wished he’d gone ahead and told Curtis everything. Especially now that Curtis had admitted that he knew his daughter had faults. But Phillip knew if he told Curtis anything, Alicia would be furious because she’d made it clear that she didn’t want her father knowing any details about their situation.