Lucky

Lucky shows my viewpoint on certain failed relationships in our lives. Even things that look the best to everyone else may be the worst for us.

I am sitting in the OK Diner in Buckhead working through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief, and I’m pretty sure I can wrap this up in time for the dinner rush. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. After all, I’ve already moved past the whole denial part, and I’ve always been good at cramming.

My lifelong streak of good luck shouldn’t hurt, either. They always said I was lucky. I mean, Mama and Lulu and James, they couldn’t believe how often I beat all the girls at Pretty Pretty Princess. Or there was that time I won a ride around the Lowe’s Motor Speedway with Richard Petty. James was so jealous. And one Christmas season, we had to go down to Belk’s to pick up the four-foot overstuffed polar bear I’d won because I filled out five entry forms while Mama was trying on strappy heels for a big holiday soiree.

And truly, watching the diamond solitaire sparkle on the diner’s Formica countertops, I’ve had a good run.

I look up as thick, syrupy coffee hits the remnants of cream in my half-filled cup.

My bottomless coffee server is from New York. Her left breast shouts, “Linda,” with a Papermate pen added for punctuation. She is only maybe a day older than the key lime pie under the glass dome by the register. I’m not sure Win ever noticed her--even her nice breasts were part of the servant class.

My fellow grad students, all of them too familiar with servility, said I really hit the jackpot when Win picked me out of the crowd at the Peachtree Road Race two years ago. If you’ve ever survived a July 4^th on the sea of glittering black asphalt that is an Atlanta summer, you’ll understand why the race is hotter and more cutthroat than rush hour on 285.

For whatever reason, Win saw my sweat-drenched number 621 and stepped right up to have one of those abrupt, two-syllable conversations you have with complete strangers.

We sat in this same diner, a few streets over from the race, sweat beading up into sandpaper salt crystals as the underachieving ceiling fans cast small wisps of air onto our skin.

The 1950s-style clock above the grill had cogs greased for speed, and hours vanished as Win described the stench of cancer. He had removed a tumor the size of an avocado from a man’s throat a few days earlier, and the patient’s denial of the odor had haunted Win’s dreams.

My project isolating a strand of DNA for cancer research bumped the smell right out of the picture, and we happily constructed models out of striped straw wrappers and strips of napkin. Linda! was not amused.

“Please join me in the study,” his father, Winthrop Belmont Ashton III, MD, said after a mere two weeks of dating. Books no one had ever read lined the walls—everyone knows doctors often can’t even decipher their own 1 ml 2ce dailies, much less read Chaucer in their spare time.

He gestured me to a stiff, ladder-backed chair well-removed from his own and leaned back with a sigh. The skull of a small rodent rested on the immaculate blotter next to two Mont Blanc pens. I pushed the image of a hairless squirrel pleading for mercy out of my mind. “I feel it’s my duty to tell you that Win has certain expectations about his future. Whatever your own aspirations, Win’s livelihood is not on the market.”

I hate to admit that I didn’t know what he meant right away. DNA strands are circumspect in their own special way.

When it hit me several seconds later that I was involved in an Upstairs Downstairs saga of only two-week-old proportions, a voice (mine?) reached deep into the realms of romance novels and said, “I’m not interested in marrying your son or acquiring his fortune.” And I made a graceful exit, all except for the collision with an inordinately large King James Bible.

I hadn’t yet met his mother.

About a month in, I suggested a trip to my mama’s salon out in Marietta. Lulu and James could see for themselves, and anyway, meeting a bona fide “The 4th” would restore their faith in the aristocracy. People magazine, their Bible, has a new Diana conspiracy theory on the cover every couple of weeks.

We walked into Mama’s salon, and all eight perfectly clipped heads turned our way. The clients were thoughtfully swiveled towards the door.

“Hey, everyone!” I had called out, and to his credit, Win was undaunted. His hair, after all, was impeccably spiked.

“Hey, you!” Mama said, and she stepped down from her stage in the middle.

“Tom is getting a divorce today!” Lulu yells, out of the blue.

“She never really loved him,” Win said, quietly and with a seriousness medical residents don’t usually reserve for As The World Turns.

“I like him already,” James said, spinning his be-toweled subject with a flourish.

We stayed all afternoon (at least until we had our way with As The World Turns), but the verdict was clear. A single, Ramen-noodle-eating PhD candidate like me couldn’t be luckier.

With his mother and father only ten miles away, we managed to avoid Sunday dinner invitations for an entire season of Grey’s Anatomy. We preferred pizza with jalapenos anyway (they have cancer-fighting properties), and I saw no reason to rock the ancestral boat.

One such Sunday found me outside Win’s condo. My quiet rapping on the front door went unanswered. As I waited, my eyes followed the trail of holiday lights down the road, and I shivered in air that had an angry, burning-leaf smell with a bite to it. The smiling couple who lived next to Win teased each other as they bustled to their sexy, new-model Audi.

I hovered and thought about using the key he had given me. I knew the security code—T-H-E-4-T-H.

Finally, he came to the door, brows rigid, eyes teary. “That was my mom,” he said. “Just a little misunderstanding.”

His living quarters were a big misunderstanding. I was sure his mom had her hand in the floral sofa and plaid window treatments. A glass snowflake candy bowl sat on the coffee table next to a copy of Snowboarding and a dirty plate. A middle-aged woman clear in her tastes had a go at this room; I could make out the neon name of the bar across the street through the oversized valance tassels.

“What’s going on?” I had asked.

“Oh, nothing, really,” he said, looking away. Living here, you’d think he’d already know the name of the bar outside by heart--“BAR,” it flashed--but he studied it some more. “Mom just thinks you’re after our money, which I’ve plainly told her is not the case.”

I think that’s when we both knew it was over—long before the ring and images of little “The Fifths” we might call Quentin. From then on, I had an ugly pit in my stomach, and it wasn’t only that sweet, falling-in-love pit.

“Let me go talk to her,” I’d said. Confrontation was not really Win’s strong point. Thank goodness his future would allow him to state categorically, without a doubt, that a patient had cancer.

“No, she’ll come around,” he’d said. “The Christmas party will be a good chance for you to spend a little time with her.”

As it turns out, a lot of gin sans tonic was Mrs. Ashton’s Christmas party companion. The crystal glass with which she gestured wildly could have saved several starving children in whichever third world country was most en vogue that season.

Cool blue-and-white stuffed birds hopped atop fairy lights announcing the Ashtons’ support for the Christ child. I wondered how many other small animals were going to suffer before the Ashtons of the world caved in and bought a creche.

She finally breezed up as we were collecting our coats. “Just remind me, dear, and I’d be glad to lend you one of my dresses next time,” she said, lolling a bit towards one of the stuffed birds, a Carolina blue wren, I think. “Although we may not be exactly the same size.” And she eyed my hips as she smoothed her color-coordinated blue silk.

Needless to say, we spent our two years of Christmas Days with Mama and her band of merry hairdressers. Lulu, a hopeless hypochondriac, exploited Win’s expertise with questions about rare diseases afflicting the sinus cavities. (You would think that being near death would deter clients, but the seat of Lulu’s red swivel chair never had the chance to cool down.)

“You are so lucky to have such a fine looking doctor to consult,” Lulu said in a stage whisper over squash casserole and James’ deviled eggs.

“Yes, isn’t he amazing?” I sighed, as Win discussed the misdirection of 50 Cent’s latest video with James.

By the time spring would roll around, we would be roped into Easter egg hunts orchestrated by Win’s brothers’ young wives sporting artfully wrinkled linen. I yearned to wield a stealth iron in their direction as my own personal form of charity work.

The brunch was presided over by Mrs. Ashton, tall mimosa in hand. Win and his hulking brothers were dressed like preppy Easter eggs, and their stripes and plaids were the brute strength for Mrs. Ashton’s whims, shifting tables and lifting trays.

Win’s nephews, part of a super-breed capable of weeding out the second x chromosome, streaked across the manicured lawns, their old-school smocked Easter clothes and long, ringleted hair at odds with their demon fight to the death for the golden egg. I couldn’t help imagining my mother playing Delilah and lopping off the aggressive power in those baby locks. The future Dr. Ashtons might end up as horticulturists, or good heavens, gardeners.

And now, here I sit, perched on a black leather and chrome stool, feet kicking out at the bar attached to the counter. The faithful Linda! is toting a fountain pen in her pocket today. I rub my thumb over the ridge left on my finger from the heavy ring.

Can you believe he had the nerve to call me on my cell phone and tell me it was over? Bottom line: Mommy didn’t approve. I had a good mind to call and tell her where to put her tassels.

OK. Breathe. I’m thinking I need to put the anger thing to rest. I’m not great at holding a grudge. And Kubler-Ross’s bargaining really isn’t my style.

The depression, who-gives-a-damn stage might be easier to wrap my mind around. It’s late afternoon, and the traffic outside on West Paces Ferry is picking up. I might as well sit here a while, since I don’t have anyone to go home to, and may possibly spend the rest of my life seeking out DNA strands in a cold, vacant lab.

Wallowing in depression takes longer—maybe three cups of coffee. But it’s hard to measure, since I’m the only customer here, and Linda! keeps filling my cup before I’ve finished the one before. And then, magically (I can probably chalk it up to the raging caffeine), I’m accepting it.

I spin the ring around and catch it between my thumbs. I want to shoot it into a hand “basket” like we used to do in middle school at lunchtime.

The ring gives me an extra twinkle as I stand up abruptly and almost bump into Linda!, coffeepot in hand. I think I’m shaking, but I actually feel calm.

“Check the counter,” I say. My hope is that she’ll use the ring money to get her beautician’s license, become a rocket scientist or maybe get a breast reduction.

I check the clock, and I’ve done it. Five stages of grief before dinner.

I speed-walk out into the late-afternoon sun and speed-dial Mama.

“Hey, you,” she says.

“Mama, it’s really over.”

“Thank goodness. Getting out of that marriage before it was too late—you sure are lucky.”