END PROSPER
By Adam Lovingood
Copyright 2001

Charlotte inspected the innocuous-looking brochure. Several color pictures of smiling women looming over place settings greeted her gaze on every page. Most of the women looked like Charlotte: blonde, blue-eyed, white. The cover announced:

THE ETIQUETTE CONSULTANTS

For assistance in planning events for your most discriminating guests, call us.

The phone rang. "Hello," Charlotte answered dispassionately. "Hello, Mrs. Grant, how are you................No, three o'clock is fine.........No, it's no inconvenience...........I'll see you then......Bye."

Charlotte had been awaiting this day with a mixture of dread and excitement for quite some time, and dread was winning. Charlotte hated ignorance, especially her own. Calling the etiquette agency was an admission of ignorance on Charlotte's part. There was no other way to characterize it.

Brian Brillet, Charlotte's husband, was among the new crop of millionaires that the technology revolution had harvested. She still could not believe their fast fortune and had a difficult time adjusting to having so much money. She tried to justify it to herself with pep talks about how hard they both had worked. Mostly, she tried to keep their lives from changing drastically.

When Brian announced that he wanted to start his own internet company, Charlotte was supportive but wary. The couple had become accustomed to two good incomes and had little savings. Charlotte felt she was still trying to break through the glass ceiling at work; she was next in line for the job of Research and Development Director for the western U.S. for her pharmaceuticals company. She would not only be the first woman to hold that position, she would also be the youngest person to ever reach that level. She had feared that financial pressures from starting a new business may effect her job performance just enough to deny her that promotion.

That didn't happen. They struggled, yet managed to keep things going. She got her promotion just a month before Brian's company issued its IPO.

It is a woman's place to offer her hand or not to a man.

Charlotte's social anxiety began when Brian started courting investors for his new company. Due to their dearth of savings, outside investment was imperative from the beginning. Brian would arrange meetings at their home or, later when he had some capital, at a hotel meeting room. He would serve cocktails and would overwhelm the crowd with graphs and charts and spread sheets. Most of the attendees were young venture capitalists no older than Charlotte and Brian. But some were old with money that was even older.

After Brian had more than proven his prowess at raising capital, he and Charlotte began to receive invitations to society functions. These events were nothing short of shocking to Charlotte. The parties and galas and events and gatherings were the most appalling display of excess she had ever witnessed.

Charlotte intuited that many of Brian's old-money investors were only involved in the high-tech game so they could maintain their social superiority over the new dot-com millionaires. "You may have lots of money, but you can't buy class and breeding," they stated with their studied gestures and droll commentary.

She couldn't help but feel alien in her new social surroundings. She just knew she was being watched and analyzed. On one occasion at a formal dinner, she picked up the wrong fork for her salad. Feeling the fiery, paternalistic judgment of a dozen pair of eyes boring into her, she glanced around the table's perimeter occupied by furtive, smirking faces. Brian had never said anything to her about the incident, but when he had announced his plans to hold an investors' thank-you dinner at their home, he had suggested she get some help with planning it. He didn't need to say anything else; she knew what he meant.

When on public transport, avoid crowding. Don't choose a spot right

next to someone already there.

Charlotte had some errands to run before Mrs. Grant arrived. She took a seat on the bus heading up Van Ness. She glanced across the aisle making eye contact with the woman sitting there and instantly regretted that she had. "Hello," the woman said through chapped lips and craggy teeth. Charlotte never knew what to do in these situations. "Hi," she replied.

"Are you from here," the woman inquired.

"Yes," Charlotte stated without elaboration.

"So am I. I love meeting people from other places though. It's like goin' somewhere else without goin'."

Charlotte smiled self-consciously.

"Someday, if I win the lottery, I want to go somewhere. To London and Liverpool and Rome and Helsinki," she reeled off the cities, it seemed, not in their order of importance but in the sequence in which they occurred to her.

"That would be nice," Charlotte thought aloud.

"You're very pretty," the woman said with a huge grin.

Charlotte blushed, "Thank you," not knowing what else to say.

The woman turned her head slightly to the right and said absent-mindedly, "I used to be pretty."

Consideration for others is the rule governing good table manners.

Charlotte initially loved science because other girls didn't seem interested, because she desired to be different. But she fell in love with her chemistry classes. Fell in love is not hyperbole or belittling of the word love. She loved, and loves, chemistry. Carbon molecules just are. The molecular world is so unselfconsciously orderly and structured and unimposing. She became enamored with the simplicity and orderliness of it.

At the age ten, Charlotte asked her parents for a chemistry set for her birthday. She could tell from her parent's shocked silence that it was unlikely she would actually get it, and she didn't. So for Christmas, she talked her younger brother, Karl, into asking for the chemistry set and she would ask for something traditionally for a girl, a toy baking oven, with the promise that they would swap gifts. Since Karl had always wanted whatever she had gotten anyway, he loved the idea.

Her parents were bemused by Karl and Charlotte's requests but complied, and the two siblings swapped gifts to their parents' chagrin. "You tricked us," she remembers her father saying with a sly smile that conveyed both surprise and respect. The next chemistry set her parents bought was for her, no dissembling required.

Fortunately, dating etiquette has changed. Women don't have to sit by

the phone hoping someone will call.

Karl liked the toy baking oven. No, to their parents horror, Karl loved the toy baking oven. Perhaps Karl's childhood baking was what distracted their parents from Charlotte's "unladylike" academic pursuits.

Charlotte had thought at times how funny it was that Karl had become in many ways the person that her parents, especially her mother, had envisioned for her. Karl was domestically inclined, was a great cook, and owned a modestly successful restaurant.

As a matter of fact, modestly successful was the best term to describe Karl's life; he was outwardly respectable. At an early age, Charlotte's mother had warned her that too much success could make her proud and arrogant and men didn't like that in a woman. It was as if this platitude had missed Charlotte and had hit Karl instead. Karl had tried for years with his modest manner to catch a man. Now, Karl's former modesty appears to have metamorphosed into good old wanton sexuality; the Madonna had become a whore. "I like sex. If I can have sex, I'm happy. All the other stuff is just extraneous."

When necessary to walk single file, the woman precedes the man.

Charlotte walked into the market in Russian Hill near their old apartment. The owner of the market, an ageless woman with a perpetual grin, called out to her, "Hey, lady. What are you doin' up here I thought you moved?"

"We did. But I just had to get some more of your spices. I can't find them where we live." The woman smiled knowingly. "Well, it's great to see ya. I hope you come back any time you need some spice."

Charlotte was going to cook for the upcoming investors dinner; she needed to cook. She hadn't done much in the kitchen for quite some time, but she remembered being a pretty good cook. Although her brother would disagree, cooking was basically putting together a bunch of substances in set proportions. She had been doing that in her lab for years.

She left the market with her tamarind, cumin and white pepper and couldn't stop smiling. She decided to walk up the street to their former one-bedroom apartment where she and Brian had lived for seven years; they had gotten married while living there. She slowly approached the granite facade of the beaux-arts building and counted the floors up to the fifth floor and then counted in two windows from the left of the building: apartment 503. Her gaze danced over the iron grating of the entryway and found the call-button for 503; their names were still there: Stanson and Brillet.

The day was so beautiful that she decided to walk home.

If you find another's opinion totally unacceptable, try to change

the subject as soon as possible.

Charlotte became accustomed to competing with boys for accolades in science. When most girls her age were obsessing about makeup, boys and clothes, she was busy titrating acids and bases. Because of her interests, she didn't have many girlfriends. More accurately, she didn't have any until college.

By the time she got to college, she was so starved for female camaraderie that she immersed herself in activities involving women. She minored in Women's Studies and became very active in feminist politics. Finally, the difference that she had felt about herself all her life began to make sense. The problem wasn't with her but with society. She, and all women, had had no say in the historical and cultural creation of the societal standards by which they were expected to abide. Charlotte's consciousness had been raised, and the experience was rapturous.

Charlotte met Anne in college. Anne was one of those women who always played by their own rules. She seemed to be way ahead of the women's rights movement; anything the leader's of NOW came up with, you knew that Anne had been discussing the same thing for months.

Anne was self-possessed to the point of rudeness. She was so uncaring about what other people thought of her that it could be perceived as callousness or arrogance. But Charlotte understood that Anne was just a person, a woman, who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted and would let no one stand in her way of achieving it.

The "it" was to become a journalist covering human rights abuses. By the mid-80's, Anne had become bored with, what she called, the whining of the women's movement. "Please give us equality. We'll promise to be good," Anne would cry mockingly. "I'm sick of this shit! If all the women in this country would just close their fucking legs and stop making the bed, then you'd see some real change." Anne felt that the militancy of the early women's rights movement had been lost years ago with the defeat of the ERA. What was left of the corpse after the ERA defeat had been interred by the Reagan era.

"Things are so much worse in so many other places," Anne would state in an urgent tone. She talked about East Timor and Burkina Faso before anyone knew what or where they were. Anne would become incensed if anyone would ask, "Where is that?" On one occasion at an alumni function held in Manhattan, a wealthy alumna asked Anne the dreaded question about East Timor. Everyone held their breath awaiting the descent of Anne's wrath. But she simply smiled and said cheerfully, "It's in the Hamptons."

While they had spoken occasionally on the phone, Charlotte and Anne hadn't seen each other for several years. Last month, Anne had called to announce a visit.

"So, how the hell are you?……..Congratulations on your promotion!……….I've got great news………. I'm coming to a journalism conference in San Francisco next month………… I can't wait to see you!"

Anne's visit was ill-timed. Brian's investors' thank-you dinner was the same week of Anne's visit. She wanted, needed, to see Anne, but Charlotte was unsure how she would make time for her. They needed to talk. She hadn't yet gathered the courage to tell Anne that she had quit her job.

She wished she could ask Anne to stay with them while she was visiting, but the timing was all wrong. They had plenty of room in their new place for guests. Was it wrong not to ask her to stay with them? They had been friends for such a long time.

Good manners are part of a job well done.

Charlotte returned home just moments before the EC was to arrive. She quickly scanned the apartment once more to make sure it was at an acceptable level of cleanliness.

The doorbell rang. Charlotte greeted a painfully thin middle-aged woman in a tailored suit. "Hello, Mrs. Brillet, I'm Mrs. Grant," the woman introduced herself to Charlotte in a sing-song voice that belied her stilted appearance.

The pair spent the next two hours discussing place settings and then made plans for two more sessions prior to the big event to cover more general topics. "I call the next session greeting and seating." Mrs. Grant said with a glint in her eye that conveyed that she found her own comment clever. "Have you decided on a chef yet?"

"Well....uhm...actually, I've decided to do the cooking myself."

Mrs. Grant's reaction was immediate and imploring, "Oh, Mrs. Brillet, you know that I advise strongly against that! It's too much for one woman to handle."

Charlotte wanted to scream at her, "I WAS THE WESTERN REGIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR FOR A MAJOR PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY, YOU STUPID BITCH," but instead she countered dispassionately, "I think I can manage."

"I do hope you change your mind while there's still time to find someone competent."

A man should rise when a woman comes into the room

for the first time.

Last night Charlotte had a dream about her mother. She didn't see the woman's face but she knew it was her mother due to that dreamer's omniscience that sleep lends to all. In her dream, Charlotte ascended the stairs in her childhood home following the sounds of a sobbing woman like a Siren's call. At the top of the stairs she peered into a room awash with light and saw a female figure crying inconsolably on an unmade bed amidst piles of laundry. All the laundry was white and the bed was white and the woman was dressed in white and the room glowed. She called to her, but the woman didn't look up. Charlotte tried to go to the bed to comfort the woman but found herself unable to move into the room. It was as if an invisible barrier prohibited her entry. Charlotte watched as the woman's cries grew more hysterical to the point of becoming inhuman, beastly. Then, she awoke.

Don't encircle your plate with your arm.

Lunch with Anne was awkward. It was so wonderful to see her but Charlotte felt incapable of moving beyond superficial conversation. She didn't want to talk about her life and analyze it, and she couldn't bear Anne's ineluctable derision. She couldn't bring herself to tell Anne about leaving her job.

So for the course of the lunch she allowed Anne to talk unfettered and limited her own conversation to vague affirmations. "Yeah, everything is fine," had become her stock phrase for all encounters however intimate.

"I'm leaving Friday morning. Can we get together Thursday night?"

"Oh, I'd love to but....Brian has some business function that we're supposed to attend." She wasn't sure why she was lying to Anne. "This is just such a busy time. I promise that next time, we'll spend more time together."

"Sweetie, are you sure everything is all right?"

"No,......Yes, really, everything is fine. It's just busy, and I guess I'm kinda tired. That's all."

"Okay. But if you need to talk, you have my number at the hotel. Promise to call me?"

"I promise."

For a formal table, everything must be geometrically spaced.

The day of the dinner arrived much too soon. Charlotte woke at 7 a.m. to start her day and noticed that Brian's side of the bed was empty. She must have been so sound asleep that she hadn't been aware of his leaving. After getting dressed, she thought of putting on some music. She perused their CD selection but couldn't decide what to play. "Music would probably just distract me," she muttered to herself.

Dinner was at eight, but guests were arriving at seven for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, and she wanted plenty of time to solve any last minute problems. She had taken copious notes during her sessions with Mrs. Grant and had tried to memorize as much as possible. "The most important thing to remember is to relax, Mrs. Brillet," Mrs. Grant had instructed in her high, rising voice and tight-lipped manner.

Charlotte went shopping for the remaining ingredients for dinner. Although she was carrying her carefully drafted list, she couldn't escape the feeling that she would forget something, that some key ingredient was missing. After marking off every item on her list, she roamed the aisles of the market trying to enter some Zen-like state of mind that would allow her to know what, if anything, she had forgotten.

"May I help you, ma'am?" A clerk inquired.

"No, thank you, I just want to make sure I don't forget anything," Charlotte replied a bit embarrassed. She glanced at her watch and realized she had been in the market for almost two hours. "Thank you, I think I have everything now."

"Okay, let me know if you need anything else," the woman responded with a quizzical expression.

Charlotte paid for her groceries and hurried home to begin cooking. She measured, sautéed, simmered, glazed, blanched, basted, and fried her way through the afternoon. As the kitchen filled with the heat and redolence of Charlotte's endeavors, she felt a twinge of happiness. But it was a forlorn happiness that startled her. It was as if she had found an old piece of jewelry that she had forgotten she owned, yet the jewelry was badly tarnished and didn't look the way she remembered.

Suddenly, Charlotte felt like crying. She steeled herself and gripped the edge of her Corion countertop. "Stop it!!" she shouted at herself, "stop it! You don't have time for this. You don't need this. Stop it." She gazed at the yellow wall paper in front of her hoping the color, or the brightness of it, would cheer or distract her. She felt the urge subside and closed her eyes for a moment. Charlotte turned around and opened the cabinet where they kept their wine. She took out a bottle of red table wine and poured herself a glass. She took a sip and a deep breath and returned to her artichoke soufflé.

She finished the cooking ahead of schedule . She had set the table and stocked the bar with almost two hours to go before guests would arrive. The only piece of the puzzle left to place was the sorbet spoons. She had never imagined before her sessions with Mrs. Grant that sorbet had been given its own spoon. She still chuckled to herself when she thought about the absurdity of it.

Charlotte opened the drawer where she kept the extra silverware; no sorbet spoons. She remembered that she must have put them in the drawer with her regular utensils. She crossed the kitchen to check the other drawer where she found both oyster forks and soup spoons but no sorbet spoons. She felt herself beginning to panic as possible locations raced through her mind. "Where are those fucking spoons?" She pulled out the drawer further trudging deeper into the silver plated thicket. One last pull on the drawer separated it from its track and sent forks, spoons and knives scurrying across Italian tile.

Charlotte stopped and stared at the utensils strewn to the four corners of her kitchen and the only thing that occurred to her was that in all that tableware what she needed was not to be found.

She thought, Can I use something else? Of course not. I can serve ice cream maybe. Mrs. Grant had cautioned against ice cream though, not special enough. I don't even know if I have ice cream spoons. We didn't go over ice cream spoons. Does ice cream have its own spoon? The internet? Not enough time. She called the service.

"Is Mrs. Grant available?...I need to speak with her....emergency?.....uhm...I just need to ask her something, and I am in a bit of a time crunch...Sure.....okay....as soon as possible, please....thank you."

What will I do. How long should I wait for her to call? Do I have to serve the sorbet? Will they really notice if I give them the wrong spoon? She knew she couldn't take that chance. I know. I'll call Karl. Just as she was reaching for the phone, the doorbell rang. "Shit, what now," she exclaimed angrily.

She flung open the door to confront the interloper; it was Anne.

A good hostess is well prepared to see to the needs

of each of her guests.

"Anne, I wasn't expecting to see you again," Charlotte stammered nervously.

"Oh, thank you. It's great to see you too. I called you at work to chat, but they said you no longer work there. I knew there was something wrong. Sweetie, are you sick?"

"Sick??? No..I uh..I told you everything's fine. I ....took some time off to help Brian with his business is all. I guess I forgot to mention it the other day. Well, I should really get....."

Anne pushed her way past Charlotte into the foyer. "I don't believe you. You look like hell! Your pale and shaking, Charlotte, WHAT is going on? And you're dressed like you're rushing a sorority."

Charlotte flushed red and clutched the front door's frame, "Look......I....I'm kind of busy. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about work, but I'm under a lot of stress right now. I'm cooking dinner for some people who'll be here in an hour and a half. Please let this go until later."

"Cooking dinner? I thought you were going to some business function of Brian's?"

"This IS the business function of Brian's."

"What the fuck, Charlotte, you don't even cook. I've never known you to cook anything that wasn't sitting on a Bunsen burner."

"Well, I guess you don't know me very well. PLEASE leave." Charlotte stood stiffly with her head down. She didn't dare meet Anne's gaze.

"You might as well shut the goddamn door because I'm not going anywhere until you explain to me what's really going on here," Anne stated in an uncharacteristically calm tone.

"FUCK! Goddamn you," Charlotte slams the door hard, "why can't you just leave things alone for once. Why do you always have to delve into everything, below the surface, beneath the skin. You never just take things as they look. You know, Anne, most people have to live by rules. People have responsibilities and obligations. Most people have to live in society." Charlotte fought back her tears but failed clutching her left hand to her forehead, "I'm just trying to live, Anne, I'm just trying to live goddamn it. I'm so tired."

Anne reached out to comfort her now sobbing friend. "Chuck, it's all right, sweetie." Anne held Charlotte stroking her hair. "It's okay. Let's sit down over here." Anne maneuvered Charlotte to a nearby love seat.

After several minutes of soothing silence, Charlotte moved away from Anne's embrace and leaned back on the love seat. "I don't know what has happened to me. How could my life have gotten so out of control. And the worst part is I don't know how to fix it. And I wonder if it's even worth it to try. Don't you ever get tired? Don't you want to give up sometimes and stop fighting?"

"Yeah, honey, I do. But you know what? That's when you have to fight even harder."

"But is it really worth it? Is it ever worth it?"

They both were silent. For the first time in the memory of either, neither had anything to say.

Brian arrived home around six to see Charlotte sitting pensively in their living room floor with her face streaked with mascara and tears. All she could manage to tell him was that dinner wasn't ready and it wasn't going to be. She had never seen Brian so nonplused. It was as if she had told him that the earth's orbit had been disrupted and they were hurtling into the Sun. The world didn't make sense so he reached for his cell phone.

Charlotte watched through mascara-smeared eyes and tufts of wayward hair as Brian displayed the most amazing act of quick thinking and composure. She could see why he was such a good business manager. He called one of his favorite restaurants for reservations. He called a car service for all the guests and then called all the guests to inform them of the change in plans due to Charlotte having broken her leg. And, no, there was no need to cancel because Charlotte's brother was here with her. Everything was completed within fifteen minutes.

Charlotte had never felt awe for her husband before now. Neither had she felt before such palpable hatred for him as he turned away from her and walked out of the room without a word.

Brian never returned home that evening. Having fallen asleep the previous night to the sounds of a howling wind vibrating window panes as the rain played a morose tapping-tune, Charlotte woke up the next morning alone. She showered and dressed slowly and silently. Feeling a desperate need for fresh air, she went for a walk. Unsure of where she was going, she just started walking in a randomly chosen direction. She started walking and couldn't stop. She thought that maybe if she walked far enough she could travel back in time; she could go back to their old life.

The rain had left everything looking fresh and clean and good. She walked past several umbrella carcasses inverted in death wondering if inanimate objects could feel pain. She hoped not and walked on.

After an incalculable amount of time, Charlotte found herself in a neighborhood that she hadn't visited in many years. She came to a street where she had gone to a party once: End Prosper. She remembered someone making a joke about the name of the street juxtaposed with its end designation in the then-run-down neighborhood, "So this is what the end of prosperity looks like."

Today, it looked lovely. All the buildings had new coats of paint. Some were fronted by scaffolding portending the cosmetic work both completed and still to be done. She glanced around at the late-model cars lining the street. And yet, the transformation only elicited in Charlotte a deep feeling of sadness and hopelessness. She didn't know what it meant, so she continued walking.