Attitude

Attitude

         Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
         ~Thomas Jefferson

         The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.
         ~Henri Frédéric Amiel

         Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
         ~Maori Proverb

The few regulars who remained after the breakfast rush hardly noticed as the skies darkened further and the rain poured steadily down the windows of the Slice o' Heaven diner. Grace walked down the aisle with a half-smile and a ready pot of coffee, dispensing refills of black gold and getting at best a grunt in response.

She wiped a table near the door and leaned on it while looking outside for a moment. The street was practically deserted except for a few seconds when some kids ran laughing by in t-shirts and jeans, their soggy trainers spattering the growing puddles as they sprinted to the Quick Burger outlet a few doors down.

The door opened and a man practically fell in allowing a blast of slanting rain and cold air to enter, eliciting a "shut that damn door" comment and a few growls. He was trying to free one trouser leg from a small snarling dog and finally resorted to closing the door on it with one hand while slapping it on the head with a soaking newspaper. The dog yelped and twisted its head taking a mouthful of material with it, and then the door was closed.

It continued barking outside as the man staggered in. The regulars watched as he made his way to a seat and fell into it, dropping the ruined paper on the table and hitching up his soaking trousers.

"What are you looking at?" he murmured half to himself. They turned back to their coffees or feigned interest in the menus or the pattern of wear on the tabletops.

When he had satisfied himself that they were looking elsewhere, he picked up a menu and fingered the hole in his trousers absently with his free hand. After reading it up and down for a minute he tossed it on the table and looked up to find Grace waiting.

"Can I get you a coffee sir?" she asked smiling, trying to ignore his plastered hair, sticking shirt and bedraggled trousers.

The man put his arms back on the seat behind, looked up into her open face and sneered. "I don't need the pity of a waitress, just take my order. I'd like a bowl of Cheerios with fresh milk, a cherry pie, and a hot coffee, sugar, no cream."

Grace captured the order in a quick series of hieroglyphs. "Yes sir. Good to get in out of that rain I bet?!"

He screwed up his eyes. "Do you think you're the weather lady or something? Just do your job and bring my Cheerios."

Her mouth compressed into a thin line for a moment then her smile returned and she underlined the order with a flourish. "Coming right up!"

She disappeared behind the counter for a minute. Joe the diner owner sat hidden there on a stool near the till, scratched his belly but didn't look up from his comic. She turned the light on over his head before fetching a new cartoon of milk from the fridge and the Cheerios from the shelf. As she put the jug and bowl on a tray, she had a thought and disappeared into the kitchen.

A couple of minutes later she stood in front of the bedraggled customer and began unloading the tray. He watched her lay everything out on the table and then looked up.

"It's no wonder this place is almost empty. I bet your other customers all died of starvation. Did you go to fix your make-up or something? 'Cause it still looks like it needs work."

"Sorry sir, I thought you might like a towel warmed at the oven to dry yourself off a little bit." She held out the towel that was folded on her arm.

The man looked at it as if she held out a wriggling rat. "You think I'd dry myself with that filthy thing?"

She withdrew it quickly. "It's clean sir, just put it out this morning myself."

"Don't be ridiculous!"

"No sir. Would you like your coffee now?"

"Of course I want it now! Are you trying to skimp on the refills?"

"No sir. I'll be right back."

Grace hurried behind the counter, grimacing a little. Joe glanced up briefly as he turned the page. "Tough customer?"

'Just another asshole who likes to lord it over people in the service industry,' she thought to herself. She pushed a stray hair out of her eyes and took the pot off the heater, then showed Joe a quick smile and raising her eyes to heaven. "No, no - just somebody having a rough day."

When she returned to his table, the man accepted the cup with a curt "about time" and went back to trying to fill in the clues on the crossword which was on a dry portion of the newspaper.

At the counter, Grace carefully carved as large a slice of cherry pie as she was allowed to cut and put two dollops of ice cream and fresh cream on separate side plates.

When she returned to the table. the man eyed the side plates with suspicion.
"Do you think I'm going to pay for those? I didn't order any sides."

Grace gripped her pad in both hands. "No sir. You didn't say if you wanted any cream so I just wanted to give you the option."

"I see. So you're cheating the owner out of profits to try to get a bigger tip?"

Grace shrank inwardly and backed away slightly but all she said was: "No sir. You're entitled to cream with your pie, and not everyone orders it, and I thought you might like an easy choice since you've had such an awful morning."

The man bristled. "How do you know I've had an awful morning? Am I wearing a sign? Or are all the waitresses in this town clairvoyant?"

Grace stepped back a little and touched her ponytail. 'Jesus, please stop me from killing this guy,' she thought, but what she said after a little pause was: "No sir, it just looked like you got caught in that awful rain. I'll just get you a refill."

"Yes, why don't you just do that then instead of bothering the customers?"

She walked back to the counter again, looking for a word with Joe to take away the sting, but his comic lay opened on his stool. Instead she dropped her weight on the counter, pulled a single real flower from a vase and sat back against the work surface for a moment, smelling the bloom and counting to ten.

By the time Grace got to five, she was remembering running with her little brother alongside a field of sunflowers; by ten, she was thinking of her mother Lucy's tiny herb garden in a container on the balcony of her apartment. She smiled even though her last thought was of the flowers on Lucy's coffin because she knew her mother would be proud of her, working her way through college, maybe on the way to a life like she never had. She smiled because her mother had worked so hard to keep the family going when Pop disappeared over a horizon where the weather was kind to the people who chose the numbness of booze and the freedom of homelessness over the burden of responsibility.

"Don't forget who you are Grace," she had said on her hospital bed, the day before she left this earth. Her face was tired and lined with care, but she still managed a smile and held Grace's hand as tight as she could. "The world is full of folks who think we should worship money or beauty, or that a nice dress or a fast car can make you into something better. You have to make a life for yourself, one that you choose!"

Grace managed a smile even though she had heard her give variations of this speech as Lucy went on. "Yes! Be happy. You're the only one who can do that for you. Share your happiness with as many people as you can. A little happiness can go a long way."

Grace kissed her then and started arranging her hair because Lucy was always careful about her appearance. Lucy started to drift off into sleep but continued a little longer. "Grace love, you know... sometimes the people we meet in our lives are troubled, by doubts or confusion. You have to do what you can to help them, but don't feed their weakness by letting them depend too much on you."

Somehow Lucy's words had more weight now that she was giving them perhaps for the last time. Grace mulled it over and responded, not noticing right away that her mother was sleeping. "I know mum. I'm going to try to find someone who knows who they are too, and together we'll take on the world."

She noticed then that Lucy's breathing had slowed, so she gently stroked the hair back on her head and pulled the covers up over her arm. "Like you, mum - I'll just try to make it a better place one day at a time, for how many days we have together."

And the next day she was gone, and since Grace's little brother had been a victim of a hit-and-run, Grace was finally alone.

But the scent of yesterday's flower from the counter's vase reminded her that no one could take away one single day of every day she had spent with her family. In less than a minute, Grace had reminded herself of who she was.

She picked up the coffee pot and swept around the tables, barely pausing to refill the man's cup because she had other customers, and at the end of the morning shift, she had a life outside the diner, college to finish, friends waiting and more to make, and many miles to go before she would sleep...

The man barely noticed her. His mind kept being drawn back to the noncommittal responses at the job interview that morning, and his girlfriend who had left him last week. He just took another drink of bitter liquid from the cup, scratched his itching trousers and stared fixedly at the blank line in his crossword - eight letters; self-assured presence, especially in being unconventional or outrageous; a way of thinking or behaving...