The Best of Everything

by Kimberla Lawson Roby

  Chapter 22

  Thankfully, on Sunday, things had gone Phillip’s way. Not only had Alicia not shown up for the early service, but she hadn’t attended the second one, either. He wasn’t sure why she’d missed both, but he was glad just the same because her absence was the reason he’d been able to enjoy his morning in peace. He’d been able to worship God, pray, and preach his sermon without any distractions and he felt good about that. Curtis had wanted to know why Alicia wasn’t there, but Phillip had talked around the subject and certainly hadn’t told Curtis that he’d spent the night at Brad’s. Having problems was one thing, but sleeping in separate households was something different, and Phillip wasn’t proud of it.

  He also wasn’t proud of the fact that, even though he’d slept at home Sunday night, Monday night, and last night, he hadn’t slept in bed with Alicia. He’d debated whether he should try to talk to her, but then he’d decided that maybe it was better for him to keep his distance. He knew it was sort of silly, but he was hoping that just maybe if he completely ignored her, she’d feel a lot differently about him. He was hoping that that old cliché, the one he’d been hearing for years, actually had some truth to it—that a person really didn’t miss their water until their well ran dry. He wasn’t sure this new approach at getting Alicia’s attention was going to work or backfire, but he didn’t see where he had a lot to lose. Of course, she had tried talking to him yesterday and again this morning, but he’d only responded with one-word answers and she’d finally left him alone. He could tell how irritated she was, and he had to admit that there were a couple of times when he’d wanted to grab her into his arms and tell her how much he loved her, but he hadn’t.

  About another hour passed and Phillip heard a knock at his door. The Kings were right on time for their appointment.

  “Please come in and have a seat.”

  Mr. King looked beaten down emotionally. “Thank you, Pastor.”

  “Yes, thank you for seeing us again,” Mrs. King added and sat down.

  “So, how have things been going over the last week?”

  “Exactly the same, and if anything, the situation is worse,” Mrs. King spoke matter-of-factly.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but is there a reason why you feel that way?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about what Harold did to me. I mean, no matter how I try to figure it, I don’t understand how he could be so low-down and stupid. How he could be so naive and ignorant.”

  Mr. King turned to his wife. “But, puddin’, I keep telling you how sorry I am, and I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “That’s just it, there’s nothing you can do. Not a thing.”

  “But if you’ll just give me a chance, I’ll do what I can to make things up to you.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m willing to do whatever you want.”

  “Hmmph. What you should have done was kept that little, ol’, shriveled-up…excuse me, Pastor. I won’t say what I want to say out of respect for you and the church, and I apologize. But anyway, Harold, you should have kept that thing of yours tucked inside your pants. That’s what you should have done.”

  Phillip didn’t move or speak.

  “I know that now, puddin’, and I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. King squinted her eyes. “Didn’t I tell you to stop calling me that? I mean, I don’t even know how you could fix your lips to call me a pet name when you’ve been sleeping with that whore niece of mine all this time.”

  “But I’m not sleeping with her now and I haven’t been for months.”

  “And what? Is that supposed to make everything okay?”

  Mr. King gave up trying to reason with her, the same as he did each of the other four times they’d met with Phillip. Actually, Phillip had tried to meet with them more times than that, at least once per week, but Mrs. King had called and canceled on several occasions.

  “Mrs. King, if you don’t mind me asking, did you think any more about what Mr. King said to you during our last session?”

  “What? About that time I had an affair on him? Please. That was thirty-some-odd years ago when I was in my late twenties.”

  “Yes, I know. But, remember Mr. King talked about how he’d never gotten over it?”

  “So, you’re saying because I made a mistake almost forty years ago that this gave him the right to sleep around on me now?”

  “No. Not at all. But what I am saying is that Mr. King was really hurt by what happened and that for all these years, he’s kept all that pain inside him.”

  Mrs. King seemed uncomfortable and ashamed, and she dismissed the whole notion. “That’s just crazy. Plus, Harold knew I was a little on the wild side when he married me. Right, Harold? You were thirty, but I was only twenty. I was young and dumb back then. Then, when I had that affair, I was still young and couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight at the most. But I didn’t go looking for it. I told you I was out partying with some friends, I had a little too much to drink, and it just happened. The man I slept with didn’t mean a thing to me and that’s why I told Harold, right after it happened.”

  Mr. King nodded in agreement.

  “You know, Pastor, these sessions really aren’t doing much for us at all.”

  “Well, we have brought out some things that neither you nor Mr. King has talked about in years, so that’s a very good start.”

  “But it’s not enough, because every day when I wake up, all I think about is him lying in bed with my niece and how they now have a baby together.”

  “It’s going to take some time to deal with all of this, but I really wish you and Mr. King would continue coming here to talk. Especially since the one thing you’ve said more than once is that you do love Mr. King, and that means a lot.”

  “I do, but that’s why I don’t think I can stay with him,” Mrs. King said and stood up. “It hurts way too much, and I’m tired of feeling this way. But I want to thank you for everything you tried to do for us.”

  “Well, would you consider maybe seeing someone else? Because there’s a chance someone else might be able to better help you.”

  “No, Pastor. I know you’ve suggested that for weeks now, but I have no interest in sharing our business with anyone else, and you’re as far as I’m willing to go. But again, I want to thank you because you really are a kind and caring man. Your wife is very blessed to have you, and I hope she knows it.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Mr. King reached his hand across Phillip’s desk. “Thank you so much, Pastor.”

  “You’re quite welcome. And Mrs. King, are you sure I can’t recommend someone else for you and Mr. King to speak to?”

  “No, I think it’s time I did what I should have done from the very beginning.”

  “I really hate to see you file for a divorce without at least trying for a little while longer.”

  “I just can’t keep fighting such a losing battle. I’ve tried, but it’s just not possible.”

  The Kings said their good-byes, and Phillip wished he could have done more to help them. Either that or he wished he could have convinced Mrs. King to see another professional who specialized in marriage counseling. But she’d been so dead set against it, and it wasn’t like he could make her do anything she didn’t want to.

  Still, he wished he’d been able to help them save their marriage because somehow divorce seemed a lot sadder when it involved a sixty-year-old woman and a seventy-year-old man, which was exactly how old the Kings were. It seemed a lot more dismal than if they’d been somewhat younger. The more he sat thinking, though, he realized that a divorce was a divorce and that it would be just as heartbreaking for a man in his thirties and a woman in her twenties—a man and woman like him and Alicia.

  If Alicia had known she’d end up reporting to some straight-by-the-book, dot-every-i-cross-every-t PR manager, there was no way she would have ever told her father that she wanted this lowly position, the one he’d practically begged her to take. Initi
ally, the elder board had decided that hiring Alicia on to work as a part-time PR specialist would be enough, at least until they moved forward with breaking ground for the new church, but as of two weeks ago, they, along with her father, had decided that what they also needed was a full-time person. Someone with a few years of marketing and public relations experience, they’d said. Alicia had known immediately, as soon as she’d met Carmen Lake, that she didn’t care for her and that it would only be a matter of time before Alicia gave her two weeks’ notice.

  If she could, she would quit right now, but the truth of the matter was, she needed the money. She needed it a lot more than she’d been counting on because pretty much every time she turned around, it seemed that there was some credit card statement stuffed inside her P.O. box, waiting to be paid—not to mention, she was already two months behind on most of them. She hadn’t thought it would be so bad, not as long as she paid the minimum amounts due, but by the time the church took out federal and state taxes on the first and fifteenth of every month, her monthly take-home pay was barely sixteen hundred dollars. Actually, it was just under that, so what this meant was that each of her checks was barely seven hundred-plus and certainly not enough to pay bills, fill up her tank, sometimes a couple of times a week, depending on how often she drove over to Chicago, and certainly not enough to take herself to lunch and dinner, pay for her weekly hair and manicure appointments, cover her biweekly pedicures, monthly hot-stone massage and deep-cleansing facial, none of which she could or should have to go without.

  So, sadly, things had definitely gotten tight. Cash was limited, and she’d had no choice but to use every dime of that credit line that Phillip still didn’t know about or tap into that newest Visa to pay for all of her necessities. She’d been thinking that she would only charge the furniture on the Visa, but now that she was sitting there looking over the bill, she saw that she already had a fifty-one-hundred-dollar balance. Although, it was all for good reason, because by using this card, it meant she hadn’t had to use her Macy’s whenever she shopped there and now she was happy to say that she only had a hundred-dollar balance and still had forty-nine hundred dollars left open to make purchases with.

  This was also the reason she’d been trying to ignore the promotional piece sitting on her desk, the one she’d received in the mail, announcing Macy’s big sale—the kind of sale where as long as you used your Macy’s card, just about everything, including top brand-name items that were rarely reduced, would be 20 percent off—starting today and through the weekend. It was the kind of deal she really didn’t want to miss. At the same time, however, she didn’t want to start racking up charges on the last department store account she had in just her name, especially since the only other credit she had besides Macy’s was the less-than-five-thousand-dollar balance left on the Visa. Of course, she did have joint accounts with Phillip at Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor, and her name was also on a couple of other major credit cards he’d gotten before they’d met but had added her name to once they were married, but she didn’t dare use those. Not when she knew how stingy Phillip was with them and how he’d probably go into cardiac arrest if she did use them—which was crazy, if you asked her, because it was a husband’s duty to make sure his wife was happy and well taken care of. But instead, all he talked about was how he had to pay a two-thousand-dollar mortgage for a house that she just had to have, pay his truck note, pay utilities and insurances, and save for old age. If she had a cookie for every time he’d said those words to her, she’d be wealthier than Mrs. Fields and every other cookie conglomerate. Complain, complain, complain was all he did and she was sick of it.

  Still, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to go to Macy’s, after all; maybe it was best to wait until another time. Maybe it was best she went straight home and tried to do some more writing. If she did, she’d be that much closer to getting a book deal and able to pay off the ton of money she now owed.

  About an hour later, Alicia pushed one of the preliminary marketing plans to the side, the one her “boss” had asked her to type in the corrections for, and started toward Phillip’s office. She’d been trying to keep her mind focused on work, but this whole silent-treatment business Phillip had been dishing for four days now was beginning to unnerve her. Partly because she didn’t think it was right for him to carry a grudge for so long, but mostly because she still felt guilty for being with Levi all the while Phillip had planned the night of a lifetime for the two of them.

  Alicia knocked three times.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a minute?” she asked, closing his office door.

  Phillip never looked up. “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s nothing to say.”

  “Phillip, why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “This. Ignoring me and acting as though I’m your worst enemy.”

  Phillip wrote a few words on a legal pad but didn’t say anything.

  “Did you call Pastor Abernathy to schedule our counseling appointment?” she asked, but wasn’t sure why because she really doubted anyone could help fix their problems. She doubted it because there were just so many of them.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Phillip finally looked up. “Why should I, Alicia? Why should I do anything else to try to save our marriage after the way you disappointed me on Saturday night? Do you know how much trouble I went to? Do you realize how bad I felt when hours started to pass and you still weren’t home yet?”

  How many more times was she going to have to say she was sorry?

  “I know, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, and I had no idea you were planning a surprise for me.”

  “Regardless. You should have come straight home after your dinner or at least called to say you were going to be late. And not only that, you wouldn’t even answer your phone?”

  “I forgot to turn it back on when I left the restaurant.”

  “Yeah, right. And by the way, who are these ladies you went to dinner with, anyway?”

  “I don’t think you even know them. They’re just a group of women my age who came up to me before service one Sunday, asking if they could take me to dinner.”

  “But even if that’s true, and you went to the mall right afterward, why was it after ten when you got home? Because the mall closes at nine.”

  “And that’s exactly what time I left. After that I stopped at the drugstore and also at Baskin-Robbins to get some ice cream.”

  Phillip stared at her but didn’t respond, so Alicia couldn’t tell whether he believed her story or not. But finally, he said, “I really need to get back to work.”

  “So, you’re kicking me out? Just like that?”

  “No, but I have things I need to do, and I’m sure you need to get back to what you do best, anyway.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Shopping. What else?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Phillip shook his head and then picked up some document and began reading it.

  “So, now you’re going to act as though I’m not even standing here?”

  Alicia stood waiting with her arms folded, but Phillip flipped his document to the next page and never looked at her again.

  So Alicia left his office. She hated that smug look on his face and wondered just how self-righteous he’d continue to be if he knew about Levi. She was sure he wouldn’t act nearly as uninterested in her as he was trying to act today. But Alicia wasn’t going to waste any more time trying to figure Phillip out, one way or the other, because all it was doing was upsetting her, which was totally unnecessary when there were clearly much more satisfying things she could be doing—things such as shopping or lying in bed with Levi. It was simply a matter of choosing one of the two, but then she thought, why choose either over the other when she could easily do both before the night was over.

  Chapter 23

  It was already four o’clock, but since Macy’s was sta
ying open an hour later until ten, Alicia still had six hours before closing time. She would have had a bit longer, but traffic had started to pick up a bit once she’d gotten on the Kennedy Expressway. She was here now, though, and glad she’d made the decision to drive downtown. She’d known she wouldn’t have been able to find the kind of brands she was interested in at the Macy’s in Mitchell, and probably not a whole lot more at the Macy’s at Woodfield, so that had left only Oakbrook Center or Water Tower. But since she’d always had great luck and had never left the Macy’s at Water Tower Place without finding something she loved, she’d settled on that location. The State Street Macy’s would have been the best of all, but with some of the designers they carried, Alicia would have easily maxed out her card with just a couple of outfits. Water Tower was certainly a better bet, at least today, anyway.

  She walked inside, looked around at all the customers scattered throughout the first floor, and felt excited. The atmosphere was noisy and flooded with loads of conversation, and Alicia loved being a part of this kind of an environment. During the entire drive down to Michigan Avenue, she’d felt downright miserable about her situation with Phillip, but now she felt wonderful. She felt happy and like she was riding on a natural high.