Etiquette for Lovers and Killers

PROLOGUE – PRIVATE PURSUITS

“Whispering is rude. Whispering and giggling at the same time have no place in polite society.”


The fire has burned down to a single flame, flitting across a bed of ash. Shadows dance across the ceiling. They twine around each other and then dart away, like lovers with commitment issues. “Will you tell me something?” he asks. His voice is deep and conspiratorial as he traces the lines of her ribs with his fingertip. Her long red hair pools across the pillow.
“Anything,” she whispers. “But I can’t promise to tell the truth.”
“Gertrude, just put me out of my misery. Tell me who else you’re sleeping with.”
“Everyone.” She giggles. Her laughter seeps into the velvet drapes and the brocade cushions, dampened by the room’s oppressive elegance. That’s the thing about old money—it hides things. It takes each ugly truth, salacious lie, brutal kiss, and tepid embrace, then swallows them whole. “Now my turn. A guilty secret, please. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, or ever wanted to do?” she asks as she studies the naked jealousy on her companion’s face.
“Kill you,” he says, then grabs her wrists and presses them back against the headboard.
“I love it when you talk dirty to me. But why?”
“Because it sounds like fun,” he replies, running his lips across her neck.
“Darling, I don’t think you know what that word means.” Her laughter rings out again—and this time, not even the woven tapestries, the high ceilings, or the crown molding can stifle it.


CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTIONS

“When a man is introduced to a lady, he does not offer his hand unless she makes the move first. A casual, ‘How do you do?’ is sufficient. A spontaneous, ‘It’s so nice to meet you,’ is fine—but never obligatory.”


I make a left onto Sea Street, walking past the library, the drug store, and my grandfather’s dilapidated boat repair shop. The dry cleaner waves to me as she walks door to door with a basket of freshly pressed linens, each tablecloth with the owner’s initials embroidered into the corner. She opens the door to Muriel Grant’s house and leaves her laundry in the front hallway. We don’t lock doors here.
We don’t have crime in Eastport, Maine. Well, not really.
And we don’t have secrets, either. At least, none that we can keep.
The milk truck from Long Lost Farms rolls up beside me, Leo Mills chewing a piece of straw at the helm. I see him note the stop sign, grin, and then barrel forward unchecked.
Oh, and traffic laws here are less of a rule and more of a casual suggestion.
I continue down Water Street, past the row of crumbling red-brick buildings and the bronze mermaid sculpture with her corroded seashell brassiere. Eastport is the most easterly town in the United States, one last outpost of New England kitsch, gazing longingly across the water at Canada. In the 1700’s it was the Wild East, a frontier town of traders and explorers. In the 1800’s it was the smuggling epicenter of New England. In 1900 it was a commercial hub for canned fish, and in 1964 it is (essentially) purgatory. The sardine factories have all closed and our dwindling human population is outnumbered by seagulls ten to one.
The bell chimes as I breeze into Primp and Ribbon Alterations. Mrs. Pridmore watches from behind the cash register, the ruffles on her blouse fluttering in silent indignation. In a shocking turn of events, I’m five minutes late.
“I’m so sorry,” I wince, but it’s hardly an award-winning performance. Then I hang up my purse and set to work. I watch the hours tangle up together from my perch behind the pink Singer Featherweight. Nine-thirty is the faded indigo of Ben Jordan’s torn overalls. Ten o’clock is the pearly-white of Lydia Peyton’s First Communion dress. Ten thirty is the unfortunate green lace on Annie Porter’s sweet sixteen dress (I don’t have the heart to tell her that it makes her look like an overstuffed peacock). And at eleven Florence Pelletier swings by to make my life a living hell. This is the third fitting for her black cocktail dress this week. As she swishes sixteen layers of crinoline in my face, I imagine how I would murder her.
“Should the skirt be bigger?” she purses her lips together as she sways her hips from side to side, analyzing the orbit and trajectory of her petticoats. Eastport is a decade behind the fashion world, so the slim lines and dropped waists of the 60’s haven’t hit us yet; our silhouettes are still trapped in 1950. “I want to make a splash this weekend at Webster Cottage.”
“The summer people are having a party?” I ask as I pin up her hem, my voice unnaturally bright as my lips twist into a poor imitation of a smile. “Florence, you’ll knock them dead.”
Mrs. Pridmore evaluates my acting skills from behind the cash register. As Florence struts outside, she turns to me. “Couldn’t you just pretend to care?”
“I’m trying,” I reply honestly. Nothing is harder for me than small talk.
“Try harder. Service with a smile, Billie!” she says with an eerie, vacant grin.
At noon Mrs. Pridmore retreats to the stockroom for her daily sandwich/soap opera ritual, and I make my rounds. My first stop is the library. I look both ways as I slip a mangled copy of A Spy in the House of Love through the book drop, then retreat before anyone can charge me for it. My second stop is Fernald’s Pharmacy, where I beeline for the hair aisle.
“Has it already been six weeks?” Bobby Fernald asks as he rings me up for the box of ‘blushing violet’ hair dye that my grandmother requests like clockwork.
“Already?” I laugh, because it feels like an eternity.
Next up is the post office. My saddle shoes squeak across the linoleum floor as I open up my P.O. Box to find two envelopes lurking inside.
As a little girl, I dreamt about working in a museum. I fantasized about long marble hallways filled with dusty rays of light, and flirting with archeologists while they assembled dinosaur skeletons. I imagined sweater vests falling to the floor while stone tablets were pushed aside in the antiquities archives, and heavy petting in the decorative arts gallery. With these scholarly pursuits in mind, I enrolled in a course on cultural linguistics. I planned to land a position translating archaic texts, marry the dreamy archeologist, and live out my days in nerdy splendor. But it turns out that dead languages aren’t exactly a hot commodity. And now they’re just killing me, as I’m slowly but surely rejected from every museum in the country.
I frown at the first envelope from the Triton Classics Archives, addressed to Miss Wilhelmina McCadie. Anything bearing my legal name is trouble, because whoever sent it knows nothing about me. I skim through a passive-aggressive rejection letter, then crumple it up, and toss it in the trash. Then I direct my glare to the second envelope.
It’s thin. Rejection-letter-thin. And it doesn’t even have my name on the front, just my P.O. Box. The two stamps on the front are unusual, but don’t spare the envelope from my ire. There is no reason to open it if I already know what’s inside. My hand hovers over the bin.
“Billie!” Mr. Townsend pokes his head out of the mail room, as I hastily stash the rejection letter in my purse. I’d hate to offend the postman by throwing out unopened mail in front of him (is that a federal offense?). “A guava for you,” he beams, his white hair glinting in the fluorescent lights. Mr. Townsend regularly gifts me exotic produce. I think it’s because he sees how sad I am whenever I check my mail, so the guava is a sticky consolation prize. I thank him, then continue on my way.
The flower market is bursting with peonies, and Mingo’s Bakery is overflowing with students coated in cookie crumbs. I hurry past the row of cannons from the War of 1812 then squeeze past Leo Mills as he clutches a milk crate against his starched white chest. An army of housewives watches my progression from the big bay windows in the Salon by the Sea as they sharpen their talons and coif their beehives, in preparation for their nightly battle with a pot-roast. The briny sea air sweeps in around me as I approach the pier, but I hardly notice, because to me, it just smells like home. A desultory catcall from the navy ship that has pulled in to refuel, as I climb down to the breakwater and totter across the large granite boulders.
I eat my guava, gazing out at Passamaquoddy Bay. Lobster boats haul up traps, seals bask in the shallows, and I dangle my feet off the edge of a sun-warmed rock. The fruit is tangy on my lips and sticky on my fingers as I reach into my purse.
The envelope is egg-shell white, made of fine cotton paper. No return address, just my P.O. Box scrawled neatly across the front. On the back is a wax seal that crinkles as I break it.

My dearest Gertrude,

What is it about human nature that compels us to destroy perfection? Perfect: your lips. Perfect: your delicate hands. Perfect: your red hair gleaming in the sun. All my life, I’ve dreamed of meeting someone just like you—elegant to a fault, steadfast in demeanor, and devastatingly sexy.
Our weekend in Bermuda is the closest I’ll ever come to heaven. Do you remember when the power went out, and you lit our suite with candles? The line of your body in the flickering lights will be engraved in my memory for as long as I live. We walked down to the beach and made love in the sea. The water glowed in the moonlight, but it paled in comparison to you.
By this point, you probably know that I had you followed. I must apologize—hiring a private eye was rather childish of me. When he called to tell me that you were meeting with your ex, I became incensed. I thought the world had shattered around me. Then I drowned my sorrows in gin and ruined everything. You saw the lipstick on my lapel. You know that I strayed.
What despair to learn that you were only meeting him to return his ring! I’ve lost the only thing person in my life who matters. Darling, my world is empty without you. I would do anything to make it right. If you could find it in your heart to forgive me, you would make me the happiest man alive. But if you can’t, I’m not sure if the world is big enough for both of us. I might do something wretched.

Passionately yours,
Edgar

My jaw drops as I study the precise cursive handwriting. What is the word for confused delight? Is there such a word? Because I’ve never felt more enthralled or bewildered than I do at this moment. Who is Gertrude? And who is Edgar? And how did this wind up in my P.O. Box? Thank God, I didn’t throw it out!
Waves sweep in against the breakwater as questions swirl around me. And, it’s an odd response, but tears prickle up at the corners of my eyelids. Because part of me has always hoped that something strange like this would happen. This letter is steamy, tasteless, and I’m hooked. The couple is straight out of the novels I devour every night. As I slide the pages back inside the envelope, something small falls into my lap. I peer down at it. Nestled in the folds of my pleated skirt is a rose gold engagement ring. The princess-cut diamond sends prisms of light across my sweater set. I squint. Could this be a boredom-induced hallucination?
“Well, hello there,” calls a pleasant voice.
My smile falters as I take in the young man perched on a boulder a few feet away. “Oh no,” I murmur as I stash the letter and ring in my purse. He’s one of the summer people, who I try to avoid at all costs. They’re awful snobs with more money than manners, who sweep in with the June lilacs, then wilt away in the August heat. He’s one of those golden figures I glimpse on the periphery—speeding down the road in a flashy car, dashing into the supermarket to buy a watermelon and a bottle of vermouth, or at the helm of a sailboat, causing traffic jams in the harbor.
“Can I help you?” I ask curtly, hoping he’ll go away.
He is Brooks Brothers handsome with ironic arched eyebrows and a lazy smile. His sandy hair is flecked with the barest hint of silver that glints in the sun. It’s lightly tousled, which gives an impression of carelessness to his otherwise faultless appearance. A small mole beneath his left eye hints at an artistic temperament. He’s tall-ish (although, to be fair, everyone is tall compared to me) with high, almost architectural cheekbones. His mottled grey eyes regard me with amusement.
“Why haven’t we ever spoken before?” he asks with an accent like trust funds and rowing teams. And it’s true, we’ve locked eyes before on multiple occasions, but neither of us bothered to bridge the gap of social hierarchy to speak. That’s not a skill they teach in row club.
“Because life is too short to talk to attractive strangers?” I reply with a shrug. “What if you turned out to be an awful bore? It’s much better to live with the fantasy of what might have been.”
“So, I’m already boring you? That escalated quickly.”
“You were wittier in my imagination,” I offer briskly, surprised by how easily the words slip off of my tongue. By how not stuttering, and not shy they are. Some of the boldness from that letter must be rubbing off on me.
“My apologies, Miss …” the intruder looks at me expectantly.
“Wilhelmina. I mean, Billie,” I correct myself. I start to offer my hand, but then realize it’s sticky with fruit juice, and hastily wipe it against my skirt.
“And I’m Avery,” he replies with a wry grin. He doesn’t add his last name, because he doesn’t have to. The gleaming copper W on the gate to Webster Cottage might as well be printed across his tan slacks, or engraved on the face of his brown leather watch.
“Oh no.” My eyes widen as they take in his watch. “What time is it?”
“Five past,” he replies with a slight smirk, as if he knows what’s coming next.
“Perfect. I’m late for work.”
“How scandalous of you.” His eyes glint with amusement. “What if I walk you back?”
“Oh, please don’t. I would absolutely abhor it,” I parry, then pause to see if I’ve offended him. Sarcasm isn’t Eastport’s native language, so it’s best to tread lightly.
But he just plays along. “I’m glad that I’ve made an ideal first impression.”
As we climb back to the pier, I consider my own first impressions. They say to watch out for the quiet ones, with good reason. Because my shyness hides a sense of humor a little too caustic for my cheery hometown. So I keep my mouth shut, and my cynicism to myself. But I’ve spent years dreaming about meeting other people who have nothing nice to say either.
We receive nods, smiles, and several raised eyebrows as we walk back to town. But everyone is looking at Avery, not at me. I’m old news, while Avery is a walking gossip column, shrouded in the glitz and high-utility bills of the upper class. Leo Mills strolls past as we turn onto Water Street. His empty milk crate dangles from his left hand as he tips his starched white cap to us. Marsha Crimp pauses outside of the bank, pushing down her sunglasses to lock eyes with me, then mouthing, “Jealous.”
“Where do you work?” Avery pretends not to notice her.
“Hell. I mean, the dress shop,” I murmur as Primp and Ribbon Alterations rears its frilly head in the distance. As we approach the dreaded pink awning, I drag my feet. A part of me hopes that we never reach the end of the block.
The smell of wet paint drifts out of the hardware store, as Avery pauses on the sidewalk. “So on a scale of one to watching-paint-dry, how dull would you rate our conversation?” he asks.
I regard him with wide eyes. “Am I not watching paint dry?”
“What a pity. Perhaps you could tutor me in some of the finer points of conversation?”
“I doubt you could afford me. I went to school for linguistics, so I’m terribly overpriced,” I say then motion to the shop, as Mrs. Pridmore taps her watch through the window. “This is me.”
“Well, today has been an unexpected pleasure, Billie. Perhaps I’ll bore you again sometime,” Avery replies. He nods then walks away, leaving me to slip into the cool recesses of the dress shop. I sit down behind my Singer Featherweight, with such a curious, fluttery feeling in my chest. My palms are dewy, but it must just be from the summer heat. As I begin sewing, my heart skips a beat, but it must just be vibrations from the sewing machine.

At 6 p.m., I switch off my sewing machine and tie off my seams. I weave through the tide of activity, skirting a throng of housewives congregating by the butcher’s shop, a crowd of fishermen drinking outside of the Thirsty Whale, and a group of slow-moving tourists. It’s June, and the vacation season has just started with all its buttery, lobster-obsessed aplomb.
I swing by Swann’s Market, where Iris Swann raises one over-plucked eyebrow as she rings me up for a bottle of Blue Nun wine. I open my mouth, perhaps to explain my wine consumption or to lie and say that it’s for my grandmother, then close it again. As Iris checks me out, I try to imagine what she must see. A pale girl, maybe a little too skinny, with mousey hair, and a naïve yellow cardigan. A button nose, underwhelming cheekbones, and lips that have never been properly kissed. I bite those lips as I shrug off my feelings of inadequacy.
But there’s one thing about me that Iris Swann doesn’t see, and that’s the letter in my purse. So I hold my head high, ask her to add the wine to our charge account, and walk out with the barest hint of a strut. For the first time in my life, I have a secret.

The sunset is the color of the apple blossoms drifting down Key Street, carpeting the red brick sidewalk, and lining the steps to my grandparents’ house. The rhododendrons rustle as I hurry through the side-door, into a kitchen like a giant can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. It’s wholesome, nostalgic, and the same murky yellow.
A baseball game plays on the black and white television, and the smell of mayonnaise and fish pervades the room. “There’s a tuna casserole on the hot plate for you,” my grandfather informs me, but I’m already pattering upstairs. The house sighs and groans around me, a dusty family heirloom a century past its prime. Home[1] is a funny word, don’t you think? It’s meant to describe a space that you own, but so often, it is the place that owns you.
“Billie, come in here,” calls my grandmother.
“After my studies,” I reply. I don’t have any studies. It’s June, and I graduated from college four years ago, but Grace doesn’t argue. She might not know what year it is.
I shut the door to my bedroom and turn on my record player. Simon and Garfunkel keep time with my thoughts, churning and skipping. I frown at the peeling floral wallpaper, bleached to a dull beige. It’s the same color as my rumpled linen sheets, white-washed bookcase, and the paperbacks inside of it, that have all faded in the sun. Just about the only thing in my room that isn’t inoffensive and off-white are the words inside of them. Words bursting with color and passion. Words that add a dash of intrigue to my pink rotary phone. A blush of lust to the crocheted doily underneath it. A stain of espionage to my ivory Smith Corona typewriter.
The heroines in these books are my friends, conspirators, and perennial bad influence—offering invaluable lessons in romance and bad behavior. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like them. But as the years pass, my social calendar remains empty and my skin untouched—and I’m starting to realize that some dreams don’t come true. That I’m not going to just wake up some morning as an ingenue in a Brontë romance, because Eastport is as far from Wuthering Heights as you can get.
But tonight everything is different.
“Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” spins on my record player as I reach for the corkscrew in my sock drawer. The soothing glug of cheap wine into the hobnail glass from my night carafe. The acoustic guitar trills as I sip wine and study the letter. I trace Edgar’s signature in my diary, then slip on Gertrude’s ring. It fits!
I lay back in bed and hold my hand up to the light. The diamond is gaudy and rose gold is dated, but … it kind of suits me. It’s just as silly and indulgent as the novels in my bookshelf. Another sip as I make doe-eyes at the ring, watching how it catches the light as the sound of silence slips in beside me.

Rain seeps down the windowpane to drip across the rotten floorboard. I wake up to a light drizzle and a wet pillow, shaking off yet another dream about my parents. Charles and Laura McCadie died in a car accident two years ago, and I’ve been having Dali-esque nightmares about them ever since. Blurry images of loss that linger with me long after I’ve brushed my teeth, washed my face, and chided my subconscious for not having better taste.
I open the window and blink away the dreamscape. These tacky nightmares are a problem. They’re probably why I still live with my grandparents and certainly why I can’t get a real job. Because my parents’ death halted my development in some essential way, and now I’m stuck. Unwilling to move forward but unable to step back. I breathe in the musky spring rain as I try to calm myself, then cough on the slightly less ethereal scent of bacon.
I poke my head into Grace’s bedroom, where Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are sparring off on the television screen. Ball is dressed as a fruit basket, Arnaz is wearing a suit, and my grandmother appears to be disguised as a rose bush, draped in a floral dressing gown on a peony bedspread. Her skin is as pale as tissue paper, and her hair is done. Strangely, it’s always done, although she never leaves the house. In her heyday, Grace McCadie was the ‘celebutante’ of Eastport, Maine: a small-town beauty so revered that she flirted with celebrity. But as her skin began to wrinkle and her hair to grey, she started devoting more and more time to ‘putting on her face.’ When her son died, Grace retired to her bedroom and never left, hiding her sadness under layers of face powder. “Did you get my—”
“Special delivery,” I toss the ‘blushing violet’ hair dye on her bed then follow the greasy aroma into the kitchen. Victor is seated in a vinyl captain’s chair. His hair is as white as Cream of Wheat and an absent smile rests perpetually on his lips. A police scanner chirps blithely beside him. My grandfather isn’t a cop, he just loves to pry.
“How was work yesterday?” he asks. “Todd Kinney said he saw you talkin’ with—”
“Far out.” I steal a piece of bacon, then leave before he can give me the third degree.
My bag is heavy with books and a beach towel, and I’m wearing a swimsuit under my dress. I have today off, and I’d like to spend it pretending that I don’t live in a Betty Crocker commercial. So I stash my things in my wicker bike basket and make my escape. Tall stems of sea grass rustle across the sand dunes as the drizzle begins to clear off. I bike past the train station, the mustard mill, and the boat yard. I slow down to gawk at Webster Cottage, where a traffic-jam is underway. The florist and dry-cleaner exchange heated words from their trucks, while gardeners trim hedges as though their lives depend on it.
The New York Times recently profiled Eastport as “an island playground off the coast of Maine.” In the summertime, this “gem in the never-crowded little world of Passamaquoddy Bay” plays host to tourists in RVs and the international elite. Downeast Maine represents one of the broadest wealth disparities in the nation, with fishermen squatting in trailers and Vanderbilts languishing in mansions. On Moose Island, we have the Websters (the owners of a shipping empire, although I’ve always liked to imagine them as dictionary tycoons). On nearby Campobello, the Roosevelts’ compound gleams in the setting sun, then a stone’s throw into the water is the Ashcrofts’ private island. Further down the coast, the Rockefellers, Pulitzers, and Fords all have estates in Bar Harbor, where Evalyn McLean notoriously walked her poodle down Main Street with the Hope Diamond dangling from its collar. Maine is a veritable who’s who of American dynasties, with people whose names are followed by Roman numerals, who have probably never operated a broom and dustpan before. The haves and the have-yachts.
Webster Cottage has better ratings than the top radio drama, and we all tune in, year after year. Watching with bated breath as the baker loads up his van with layer cakes for their garden parties, and knitting our brows in consternation at articles like: Shut Down: Websters Say ‘No’ to White Shutters, in the local paper (the Quoddy Tides brings the phrase ‘investigative reporting’ to new lows). After years of spying on them, actually meeting one of the Websters yesterday was like running into James Dean. But a sort of sad, unassuming James Dean—a gentleman without a cause.
As I cruise over the bridge to the mainland, the clouds burn off. The sun makes its blushing debut as I turn down the road to Boyden Lake. The lake is surrounded by log cabins—in Maine we call them “camps.” My parents had one out when I was growing up. Now they’re gone, but I continue to come here in their memory. And trespass.
I pass several occupied cabins before I find a likely suspect, with a rowboat collecting dead leaves in the driveway, and a tangle of weeds in the yard. Juniper berries burst beneath my feet and Queen Anne’s lace brushes against my shins as I sneak across the lawn to sunbathe on the dock.
I spread out my striped towel across the sun-bleached planks and lay out, as dapples of light filter through the white spruce tree overhead. Komorebi is the Japanese word for that. The silence is punctuated by the drumbeat of a woodpecker and the aria of a chickadee. As I leaf through my battered copy of Northanger Abbey, I look up some Regency-Era slang in my etymology book. Words like tittupy, “bouncing all around,” and coxcomb, “a dandy who is in love with himself.” I envy the main character, with her endless whirlwind of parties, beaus, and emotional roller-coasters. Then I set down the gothic romance and double my jealousy.
My dearest Gertrude,
I blink at the love letter. I wish that someone would do that to me. Memorize the lines of my body in the steam. Make love to me in the glittering water. But that would require actually going out and meeting someone, which sounds like an awful lot of effort.
Darling, my world is empty without you.
Who is Gertrude? Clearly someone adept at flirting. Someone who drives men so wild with desire that they lose their ability to properly operate a stamp and an address. I imagine her little black book of lovers and indiscretions, then walk over to the cool dark water and dive in.

Friday is the longest day of the year, made even more interminable by an endless stack of alterations. Mrs. Pridmore plays a single Nat King Cole record on repeat in a jazzy kind of torture. Florence swings by to pick up her new frock. She has an air of Cinderella, with a breathless smile and blonde hair rolled up in curlers, meanwhile, I’ve gone full scullery maid. Safety pins are stuck in my hem, a seamstress tape is looped around my neck, and my hair is tossed up in a bird’s nest.
“Bunny, I heard that you threw yourself at one of the Websters,” she purrs as she sits down on my desk, smooshing the pleated skirt I’m taking in. “Watch yourself. Those boys are the big leagues, and you failed out of Little League.”
“Florence, I don’t think that Little League is something you can fail out of—”
“Shush.” She holds up one pale pink finger as Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer builds to a crescendo. “I know what I’m talking about.” Then she turns and squeaks out of the shop in her Keds, a garment bag swishing from her shoulder.
Mrs. Pridmore leaves to run errands, and I turn off the record player. Northanger Abbey joins me in my silent revolt. When the front door jingles open, I look up from my book to discover Avery standing in the entrance.
“Got you.” He grins.
“Can I interest you in a cocktail dress?” I ask.
“I’m not interested in dresses, but I am interested in cocktails. I was rather hoping to offer you one this evening.” Avery strides across the hardwood floor to place a card beside my pincushion. The invitation is pearly white, embossed with lobsters and champagne flutes. The background holds a faint watermark with the Webster family seal.
You are cordially invited to a summer solstice party at Webster Cottage on June 21st, 1964.
Join us for surf and turf, where the land meets the sea.
“What a pity, I’m supposed to have drinks at a different mansion this evening.”
“Whose mansion?” Avery demands. “Tell me their address; I’ll burn it down.”
“Please don’t,” I reply, eyes wide. “Arson is a very serious crime.”
But he just smiles. “Until tonight,” he nods, then strides away.
Should I go? I walk over to the clothing rack to browse through our array of last-decade cocktail gowns. I’ve always dreamt about attending an exclusive affair. My grande soiree fantasy is a personal favorite, involving a poofy ballgown, minuscule hors d’oeuvres, and a steamy make-out session with a prince in the powder room.
When I was little, my mother served me etiquette[2] lessons with dinner each night, giving me unrealistic expectations of cummerbunds and 12-piece place settings. “Politeness opens doors, Billie. And I want your world wide open.” But so far, knowing the difference between a fruit fork and an oyster fork hasn’t opened quite as many doors as I’d hoped. My mother would tell me to go to the party tonight. And to buy the shimmery blue dress I can’t afford. And to charm the pants off everyone.
But I’m not her and I never will be. And imagining a swanky party and attending one are entirely different activities. I’m a faux pas waiting to happen. I should spend the evening curled up with my Merriam-Webster Dictionary, not making small talk at Avery Webster’s estate. And impressive as I’m sure the Webster’s guest list is, I doubt there’s any royalty on it. What’s the point of attending a soiree if there aren’t any princes to canoodle with in the bathroom?

[1] Home (n.): 1. one’s place of residence. 2. the social unit formed by a family. Derived from the Old English ham and the Proto-Germanic haimaz, home can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *tkei, “to settle, relax, to dwell.” (Proto-Indo-European is a language spoken some 6,000 years ago. It straddled Europe and Asia, drawing upon common roots in Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian. I studied PIE in school. It’s my own personal love language.)
[2] Etiquette (n.): This rather daunting word describes a system of rules that regulate social behavior. The word literally means ’ticket’ or ‘card,’ and refers to the ancient custom of a monarch setting ceremonial rules and regulations to be observed by members of his court. This antiquated term stems from the Old French, estiquette, “a little note.” So you could say that etiquette is a love letter to civilized behavior.