When you live in Dunkirk, a small town on the banks of Lake Erie, you really don’t understand much about the world and the peoples in it. That all changed on Thanksgiving this year when I drove over to Boston to stay with my older brother Andy. He had an Australian guy called Michael staying with him.
This was the first year that I was spending out of Dunkirk as I lost my Mom back in the summer. Dad had already passed two years earlier. Andy usually came to us on Thanksgiving and sometimes at Christmas.
That was two weeks ago and this morning as I was putting the coffee on it struck me for the first time, that I’m going to drink this on my own. Meeting Michael made me feel lonely for the first time in my life. Usually, my life teaching maths at Dunkirk High kept me busy and always had. That, looking after Mom in her last years and keeping her guessing about the apparent lack of a man in my life.
But now little old me has gone and fallen hook, line, and sinker in love at the age of forty-eight with a damned guy who lives in a place I know nothing about, Australia. When we met, I felt such a parochial dummy I was even surprised we spoke the same language.
That’s what living in a small town in nowheresville in New York State, does to you.
‘So, this is Andy’s little sister Mary all the way from Niagara Falls.’ Michael was a bit short for my liking in men. But his wavy dark hair and the most piercing blue eyes made up for all that lack of height.
‘Correction,’ I stammered as we shook hands. ‘I live in Dunkirk, a fair drive from Niagara.’
‘Dunkirk? Isn’t that in France?’
‘Sure, that one is but my Dunkirk’s where Andy and I were born and on the south shore of Lake Erie. That’s one of the Great Lakes in case you never heard of it.’
It wasn’t one of best starts to a relationship but the welcoming group of Andy’s family, his wife Maggie and their two boys were definitely enjoying it and mainly at my expense.
That night at the dinner table where Maggie had put me next to Mike, I got the chance to find out a little more of this foreigner. He lived in Melbourne lectured at university in geology. That was his connection with my brother, a geologist with a mining company.
The following morning, I was up before everyone else, or so I thought, when I walked into the kitchen Mike was at the table on his laptop.
‘Gee Michael, I’m sorry I expected to be first up.’
‘No worries, Mary. I’m pleased in many ways but at this moment, are you allowed to start the coffee percolator?’ That smile. Those eyes.
‘I think I might manage that, Michael. How do you take your coffee?’
‘Firstly, it’s Mike. I haven’t been called Michael since I was a boy. Just plain old black please.’
Now, taking my coffee into the veranda overlooking the lake I sat down and reviewed my time in Boston. I suppose it was inevitable that my affair with a married colleague ending when his wife discovered our affair and Michael’s recent divorce made late night room changes in my brother’s house inevitable. Leastways that was how I looked at it.
Now I’m drinking coffee on my own and thinking doesn’t anyone stay in one place anymore?
About the author
Robin'd short stories have appeared in CafeLit both on line and in print on a regular basis. He has also entered various writing competitions but has yet to get past being short listed.
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