Take You Anywhere

Kristine Langley Mahler

A sociable boy, the one magnificent reason to force the person you have been since you were bib-age to face your fear: a meal with a napkin on your lap.

(You tuck it under your chin, a spaghetti feast at home)

You’re given a napkin ring, you sit up straight, the chair pulled in.

(You look bad, the food-dribble on your clothes, elbows on the table)

You fidget, a petite flit of patterns on the tablecloth with a fork, fiddling with the silver, a finger round the rim of your glass. You’re not sure which fork to use—that old trope—you have to take your chance with your absent date in the loo. Pick both.

Kristine Langley Mahler

You don’t reach anyone’s hopes; you don’t pick up at all. You won’t avoid unaesthetic smudges. The long trial, the spoon in the glass you forget, jab your eye, soup slurped, teeth clicked with spoons. Only puppies are cute smacking their food.

Some people do. Some people don’t answer a question. Your mouth is full, unmanageable: a look at a toddler, not a teen. Nerves, your nerves. You need to corral stray breaths on the blade of a knife, removing the uneatable from your mouth; prune the pits, bones, slivers of doubt with your fingers. You can’t retire behind your napkin for any of these maneuvers.

Choking? Leave the table till a platter doesn’t splatter the fraction of elegance you’ve shown him, enticing trust in your fitness by his side. Convince him, soup to spoon, you fit the bill—a girl who can transcend her lack of opportunities and model the decorum he wants.

So you eat steamed clams, pop the whole thing in your mouth, fake-swallow, vomiting in your napkin when he looks the other way. You aren’t as skillful as you suppose. You don’t get flustered, a slippery peasant, when corn on the cob is on the table. You glide it between your teeth, scraped cobs at your fingertips. Preferring mozzarella sticks to kale kills your cred.

It won’t happen; you’ve narrowed his vision to your soured cream. You reach, a gesture as sloppy as half-price nachos at Applebee’s.

Source: Haupt, Enid A. “Chapter 17: Table Manners That Take You Anywhere.” The seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining, David McKay Company, 1963.