Congratulations !
You have been awarded points.
Thank you for !
- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Inspirational
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 09/11/2024
Dorothea Winthrop's Lavish Lunch
Born 1945, M, from Boston/MA, United StatesIn late August Dorothea Winthrop took her twin granddaughters, Ophelia and Camille, to lunch at a waterfront restaurant overlooking Plymouth Harbor. The temperature hovering in the seventies with dazzling sun, they dined outdoors where a collection of sailboats, schooners and fishing trawlers dotted the New England shoreline. To suggest that the trip was anything but a huge success would be a grotesque understatement. The girls ordered an assortment of clam dishes while Dorothea opted for the baked haddock topped with crabmeat stuffing. Because she didn’t really want the French fries which came with the meal, the waiter substituted a baked potato with whipped butter and a tub of sour cream at no additional cost.
The meal was scrumptious, the only downside being a tiny oil stain on her blouse. Since the top was far too expensive - an Anne Fontain, Paris original that cost upwards of three hundred dollar - to risk removing the stain at home, she would bring it to her dry cleaner. After the meal the girls wanted to explore the harbor front shops, but Dorothea’s legs weren’t up to the task. “I’ll just sit over there on that empty bench by the water and people watch while you girls enjoy your little jaunt.”
Dorothea settled in on the bench as the girls wandered off. Yes, it was a perfect end-of-summer excursion. Plymouth Massachusetts. The bulk of the population was comprised of Boston blue bloods, well-heeled Brahmans - no inner city riffraff, illegal aliens, counterculture misfits or deviants. As her lovely granddaughters meandered about the curio shops and boutiques, Dorothea continued reveling in her solitary word play. The harbor side was bucolic, tranquil, serene, unspoiled, Edenesque, Arcadian, photogenic…
“Dottie… Dottie Winthrop.”
A soft-spoken voice shattered her pristine reveries. A robust middle-aged man in his late sixties was standing close by and beaming as though they were intimate friends. Bushy brown hair was offset by a finely chiseled nosed and pale green eyes. “All the other benches are taken. Would you mind if I joined you?”
“Dorothea,” she corrected. “Dorothea Winthrop.”
“Yes, of course.” Without waiting for a reply to his original question the man sat down, crossed his legs in a leisurely fashion and cupped a pair of broad hands behind his ears. Staring wistfully out across the bay, he made no attempt to engage her in further conversation or intrude on Dorothea’s privacy. Five minutes passed before the brown haired man with the chiseled nose spoke again. “Is that a new blouse? I’ve never seen it before.”
Dorothea strategically repositioned her forearm so the wrist covered the tiny oil stain. “I bought it exclusively for my granddaughters’ excursion and haven’t worn it in public before.”
“Very stylish!”
Dorothea craned her neck and scanned the walkway. The girls were nowhere to be seen.
“Did you watch the spectacle last night?” the man inquired.
“Which spectacle?”
“The Democratic convention.”
Talking politics, especially with someone whose views were unclear was always problematic. “I had a headache so I turned the television off after only a few short minutes.”
“Camilla Harris never stops smiling,” he observed. “She reminds me of that silly cartoon character from the Mad Magazine comic books.” He tapped his jaw repetitively with a stiff index finger trying to recall the name. “He had that devil-may-care, gap-toothed smile… freckles, red hair and protruding ears.”
“Alfred E. Neuman,” Dorothea offered.
“Yes, that’s it!” “What, me worry? - that’s all he ever said while the world was collapsing all around him…What, me worry?”
The analogy was quite clever; the way he poked fun at the presidential candidate with wit rather than sarcasm, there was nothing whatsoever malicious or mean-spirited in the remark. The man began to chuckle softly and, caught up in the giddiness and good weather, Dorothea giggled along with him.
“I don’t recall where we met.” She finally broached the question that had been nagging her since the mystery man asked to share the bench.
“I’m Shawn O’Flaherty, head janitor at the building where you work. I always try to memorize employees’ names.”
“Well then, Shawn O’Flaherty, it’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance,” Dorothea returned. In the far distance she caught sight of the granddaughters making their way back along the waterfront. Having noticed that she was talking to someone, the twins pulled up short and were waiting for their grandmother to finish her conversation and join them.
Shawn dropped his eyes and stared pensively at the bristly grass. “I used to take my wife here for a quiet dinner and stroll every August on our wedding anniversary. She passed away a few years ago. Talking to you brings back fond memories.”
“The pleasure was mine.” She paused groping for the proper sentiment. “I’m sorry for your loss. My husband also died a while back so I understand what you’re going through.” Dorothea finally rose to her feet just as a foghorn sounded in the far distance and a tour boat edged out into open water.
“Your office manager, Owen Cooper, did me a favor the other day,” Shawn was not so quick to part company.
A supercilious snot with a pencil mustache and dyspeptic personality, Dorothea couldn’t imagine her boss going out of his way for anyone. “What sort of favor?”
“I was outside mowing the lawn when Owen left work for the day. He was carrying a mug of coffee in one hand and leather briefcase in the other, which he placed on the roof of his car as he fished about for the keys.” The office manager retrieved the warm coffee but inadvertently left the briefcase teetering on the roof as he pulled out of his private parking space. Abandoning the lawnmower, Shawn chased the car down the street, but at the intersection a traffic light abruptly turned green, Owen Cooper turned sharp right and disappeared in the distance.
“The leather briefcase was lost?”
“Luckily it flew off the car and into the gutter as he sped away.” “I wiped the dirt off and brought it up to the third floor and gave it to Nancy Guberman.”
“His secretary.”
Shawn’s head bobbed up and down. “She said she would call him immediately to let him know that all his precious documents and personal effects were safe and sound.”
“I don’t suppose Owen thanked you.” Shawn made a wry face. “Doesn’t sound like much of a favor,” Dorothea observed, remembering how the janitor begun the narrative.
“I used to feel self-conscious about not going to college and settling for a blue-collar job but not anymore. Owen Cooper may earn a six-figure salary and drive a Lincoln Continental but he’s got no class, no common decency.”
The two fell silent. Several hundred feet away at the water’s edge a fisherman was unloading a jumbled stack of weather-beaten wooden lobster traps from the stern of a trawler and stacking them neatly on the wharf. A solitary tern with its distinctive black-capped head and sleek orangey bill was cutting endless figure eight patterns in the cloudless, azure sky. “If you would like to pick up where we left off,” Shawn added, “I’d be happy to take you here for a nice meal and more of the same.”
The offer caught the older woman off guard. “I’m flattered by your thoughtfulness. Let me think about it.” Dorothea wandered off to join the girls.
* * * * *
Later that night Dorothea woke well before dawn, went and sat by the window, where she reminisced about her humdrum marriage. Taciturn and business-minded Harry Winthrop proved an ample provider but not nearly as congenial or talkative as the man she met on the harbor. Harry possessed no sense of humor; more pointedly, it was so dry as to be virtually non-existent. The financial analyst understood spreadsheets and returns on investments; ephemeral sensibilities were of marginal concern. He certainly would have found no humor, nothing laughable in the Alfred E. Neuman quip. In the end, his entrepreneurial zeal proved his undoing; Harry, the inveterate workaholic dropped dead of a heart attack at a late-night board meeting. To his credit, the man never cheated on his wife; he was a dutiful and devoted spouse.
Perhaps the strangest downside of Harry Winthrop’s death was that Dorothea felt no lonelier in his absence than the thirty-some-odd years of their marriage. She had always sensed a subtle rift or distancing as the marriage unfolded, and her brief meeting with the congenial Shawn O’Flaherty stood in sharp contrast to this tacit resignation. Dorothea could boast wealth and status. She could indulge her refined taste with the three-hundred-dollar, Anne Fontain Paris originals. She was still physically robust; she was inexorably lonely.
The third week in September the community social action committee where she worked was holding their annual party. A string quartet would be playing Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas in the foyer while waiters rushed about with free wine and platters of coconut breaded shrimp, turkey meatballs slathered in cranberry sauce, bourbon chicken liver pâté, and clams casino with bacon and bell pepper. Dorothea Winthrop tried to imagine bringing Shawn O’Flaherty to such a lavish extravaganza but her brain balked at the absurd notion. What would the hoity-toity gentry think?
In his laconic fashion Shawn saw through the multiple layers of hypocrisy and sophomoric certitude of contemporary culture. A janitor with gravitas – now that was a twist! The fact that he listened intently, offering his own personal insight on the human condition had to count for something.
Passing through the living room, Dorothea caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace mantle. The glass revealed a pleasant apparition, a gossamer hint of the lovely youth who previously inhabited the aging body four decades earlier. Slip-sliding ever-so-gently into her twilight years, the woman was still modestly attractive. Though the blonde hair was tarnished with considerable gray, the pale blue eyes, high cheekbones and plump lips remained relatively undefiled by the unsympathetic passage of time.
* * * * *
In late October Dorothea located Shawn O’Flaherty in the employee lounge where he was freeing up a jammed window. “How’re you doing?” he asked with a broad smile. The man had never approached or spoken to her since their meeting on the harbor.
“Good, thank you.”
“I see you’re wearing your special blouse.” He reached for a small pry bar and wedged the hand tool up against a stubborn piece of wood bordering the sill. The window shifted slightly to the right allowing him to raise the glass.
“Yes, that’s true.” Dorothea glanced at the waistband where the bothersome oil stain had previously resided. “It’s unseasonably warm today.”
“Indian summer,” he replied. “We will be blessed with a few more days of warmth before the frosty weather settles in.”
“If your offer to dinner still holds, I’d enjoy going back to one of the harbor restaurants.”
Shawn lay the tool down and wiped his hands on a rag. “How about this weekend?”
Dorothea handed him a slip of paper. “My cell phone number. Let me know the time and day. You can pick me up at my house.”
She turned to leave but abruptly turned and sauntered back to where he was standing. “No more Dorothea Winthrop. Dottie will do just fine.”
Dorothea Winthrop's Lavish Lunch(Barry)
In late August Dorothea Winthrop took her twin granddaughters, Ophelia and Camille, to lunch at a waterfront restaurant overlooking Plymouth Harbor. The temperature hovering in the seventies with dazzling sun, they dined outdoors where a collection of sailboats, schooners and fishing trawlers dotted the New England shoreline. To suggest that the trip was anything but a huge success would be a grotesque understatement. The girls ordered an assortment of clam dishes while Dorothea opted for the baked haddock topped with crabmeat stuffing. Because she didn’t really want the French fries which came with the meal, the waiter substituted a baked potato with whipped butter and a tub of sour cream at no additional cost.
The meal was scrumptious, the only downside being a tiny oil stain on her blouse. Since the top was far too expensive - an Anne Fontain, Paris original that cost upwards of three hundred dollar - to risk removing the stain at home, she would bring it to her dry cleaner. After the meal the girls wanted to explore the harbor front shops, but Dorothea’s legs weren’t up to the task. “I’ll just sit over there on that empty bench by the water and people watch while you girls enjoy your little jaunt.”
Dorothea settled in on the bench as the girls wandered off. Yes, it was a perfect end-of-summer excursion. Plymouth Massachusetts. The bulk of the population was comprised of Boston blue bloods, well-heeled Brahmans - no inner city riffraff, illegal aliens, counterculture misfits or deviants. As her lovely granddaughters meandered about the curio shops and boutiques, Dorothea continued reveling in her solitary word play. The harbor side was bucolic, tranquil, serene, unspoiled, Edenesque, Arcadian, photogenic…
“Dottie… Dottie Winthrop.”
A soft-spoken voice shattered her pristine reveries. A robust middle-aged man in his late sixties was standing close by and beaming as though they were intimate friends. Bushy brown hair was offset by a finely chiseled nosed and pale green eyes. “All the other benches are taken. Would you mind if I joined you?”
“Dorothea,” she corrected. “Dorothea Winthrop.”
“Yes, of course.” Without waiting for a reply to his original question the man sat down, crossed his legs in a leisurely fashion and cupped a pair of broad hands behind his ears. Staring wistfully out across the bay, he made no attempt to engage her in further conversation or intrude on Dorothea’s privacy. Five minutes passed before the brown haired man with the chiseled nose spoke again. “Is that a new blouse? I’ve never seen it before.”
Dorothea strategically repositioned her forearm so the wrist covered the tiny oil stain. “I bought it exclusively for my granddaughters’ excursion and haven’t worn it in public before.”
“Very stylish!”
Dorothea craned her neck and scanned the walkway. The girls were nowhere to be seen.
“Did you watch the spectacle last night?” the man inquired.
“Which spectacle?”
“The Democratic convention.”
Talking politics, especially with someone whose views were unclear was always problematic. “I had a headache so I turned the television off after only a few short minutes.”
“Camilla Harris never stops smiling,” he observed. “She reminds me of that silly cartoon character from the Mad Magazine comic books.” He tapped his jaw repetitively with a stiff index finger trying to recall the name. “He had that devil-may-care, gap-toothed smile… freckles, red hair and protruding ears.”
“Alfred E. Neuman,” Dorothea offered.
“Yes, that’s it!” “What, me worry? - that’s all he ever said while the world was collapsing all around him…What, me worry?”
The analogy was quite clever; the way he poked fun at the presidential candidate with wit rather than sarcasm, there was nothing whatsoever malicious or mean-spirited in the remark. The man began to chuckle softly and, caught up in the giddiness and good weather, Dorothea giggled along with him.
“I don’t recall where we met.” She finally broached the question that had been nagging her since the mystery man asked to share the bench.
“I’m Shawn O’Flaherty, head janitor at the building where you work. I always try to memorize employees’ names.”
“Well then, Shawn O’Flaherty, it’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance,” Dorothea returned. In the far distance she caught sight of the granddaughters making their way back along the waterfront. Having noticed that she was talking to someone, the twins pulled up short and were waiting for their grandmother to finish her conversation and join them.
Shawn dropped his eyes and stared pensively at the bristly grass. “I used to take my wife here for a quiet dinner and stroll every August on our wedding anniversary. She passed away a few years ago. Talking to you brings back fond memories.”
“The pleasure was mine.” She paused groping for the proper sentiment. “I’m sorry for your loss. My husband also died a while back so I understand what you’re going through.” Dorothea finally rose to her feet just as a foghorn sounded in the far distance and a tour boat edged out into open water.
“Your office manager, Owen Cooper, did me a favor the other day,” Shawn was not so quick to part company.
A supercilious snot with a pencil mustache and dyspeptic personality, Dorothea couldn’t imagine her boss going out of his way for anyone. “What sort of favor?”
“I was outside mowing the lawn when Owen left work for the day. He was carrying a mug of coffee in one hand and leather briefcase in the other, which he placed on the roof of his car as he fished about for the keys.” The office manager retrieved the warm coffee but inadvertently left the briefcase teetering on the roof as he pulled out of his private parking space. Abandoning the lawnmower, Shawn chased the car down the street, but at the intersection a traffic light abruptly turned green, Owen Cooper turned sharp right and disappeared in the distance.
“The leather briefcase was lost?”
“Luckily it flew off the car and into the gutter as he sped away.” “I wiped the dirt off and brought it up to the third floor and gave it to Nancy Guberman.”
“His secretary.”
Shawn’s head bobbed up and down. “She said she would call him immediately to let him know that all his precious documents and personal effects were safe and sound.”
“I don’t suppose Owen thanked you.” Shawn made a wry face. “Doesn’t sound like much of a favor,” Dorothea observed, remembering how the janitor begun the narrative.
“I used to feel self-conscious about not going to college and settling for a blue-collar job but not anymore. Owen Cooper may earn a six-figure salary and drive a Lincoln Continental but he’s got no class, no common decency.”
The two fell silent. Several hundred feet away at the water’s edge a fisherman was unloading a jumbled stack of weather-beaten wooden lobster traps from the stern of a trawler and stacking them neatly on the wharf. A solitary tern with its distinctive black-capped head and sleek orangey bill was cutting endless figure eight patterns in the cloudless, azure sky. “If you would like to pick up where we left off,” Shawn added, “I’d be happy to take you here for a nice meal and more of the same.”
The offer caught the older woman off guard. “I’m flattered by your thoughtfulness. Let me think about it.” Dorothea wandered off to join the girls.
* * * * *
Later that night Dorothea woke well before dawn, went and sat by the window, where she reminisced about her humdrum marriage. Taciturn and business-minded Harry Winthrop proved an ample provider but not nearly as congenial or talkative as the man she met on the harbor. Harry possessed no sense of humor; more pointedly, it was so dry as to be virtually non-existent. The financial analyst understood spreadsheets and returns on investments; ephemeral sensibilities were of marginal concern. He certainly would have found no humor, nothing laughable in the Alfred E. Neuman quip. In the end, his entrepreneurial zeal proved his undoing; Harry, the inveterate workaholic dropped dead of a heart attack at a late-night board meeting. To his credit, the man never cheated on his wife; he was a dutiful and devoted spouse.
Perhaps the strangest downside of Harry Winthrop’s death was that Dorothea felt no lonelier in his absence than the thirty-some-odd years of their marriage. She had always sensed a subtle rift or distancing as the marriage unfolded, and her brief meeting with the congenial Shawn O’Flaherty stood in sharp contrast to this tacit resignation. Dorothea could boast wealth and status. She could indulge her refined taste with the three-hundred-dollar, Anne Fontain Paris originals. She was still physically robust; she was inexorably lonely.
The third week in September the community social action committee where she worked was holding their annual party. A string quartet would be playing Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas in the foyer while waiters rushed about with free wine and platters of coconut breaded shrimp, turkey meatballs slathered in cranberry sauce, bourbon chicken liver pâté, and clams casino with bacon and bell pepper. Dorothea Winthrop tried to imagine bringing Shawn O’Flaherty to such a lavish extravaganza but her brain balked at the absurd notion. What would the hoity-toity gentry think?
In his laconic fashion Shawn saw through the multiple layers of hypocrisy and sophomoric certitude of contemporary culture. A janitor with gravitas – now that was a twist! The fact that he listened intently, offering his own personal insight on the human condition had to count for something.
Passing through the living room, Dorothea caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace mantle. The glass revealed a pleasant apparition, a gossamer hint of the lovely youth who previously inhabited the aging body four decades earlier. Slip-sliding ever-so-gently into her twilight years, the woman was still modestly attractive. Though the blonde hair was tarnished with considerable gray, the pale blue eyes, high cheekbones and plump lips remained relatively undefiled by the unsympathetic passage of time.
* * * * *
In late October Dorothea located Shawn O’Flaherty in the employee lounge where he was freeing up a jammed window. “How’re you doing?” he asked with a broad smile. The man had never approached or spoken to her since their meeting on the harbor.
“Good, thank you.”
“I see you’re wearing your special blouse.” He reached for a small pry bar and wedged the hand tool up against a stubborn piece of wood bordering the sill. The window shifted slightly to the right allowing him to raise the glass.
“Yes, that’s true.” Dorothea glanced at the waistband where the bothersome oil stain had previously resided. “It’s unseasonably warm today.”
“Indian summer,” he replied. “We will be blessed with a few more days of warmth before the frosty weather settles in.”
“If your offer to dinner still holds, I’d enjoy going back to one of the harbor restaurants.”
Shawn lay the tool down and wiped his hands on a rag. “How about this weekend?”
Dorothea handed him a slip of paper. “My cell phone number. Let me know the time and day. You can pick me up at my house.”
She turned to leave but abruptly turned and sauntered back to where he was standing. “No more Dorothea Winthrop. Dottie will do just fine.”
- Share this story on
- 1
Denise Arnault
09/11/2024A beautiful romance. You did a fantastic job of saying and not saying what was important. I loved it!!
ReplyHelp Us Understand What's Happening
Barry
09/11/2024Denise,
Thanks for your kind words. I always say that if one solitary reader enjoyed a story then it was worth writing. This piece is quasi-autobiographical in that I took my wife and daughter to a harbor-side restaurant on Plymouth harbor last month. After the meal (baked stuffed haddock) they wanted to visit the tourist shops, but I opted to sit on a bench and watch the ships come and go. This brief episode proved the genesis for the story you just read, and all the characters are purely fictional.
COMMENTS (1)