The Unpolished Life of Eleanor Whitfield

Chapter 1

The teenager sitting in front of me is chewing her gum like her life depends on it.

The smell of watermelon wafts across my face.

Actually, she is not just chewing. She is masticating with the kind of aggressive enthusiasm I would assume is usually reserved for eating competitions where gluttonous humans shove ample amounts of hot dogs in their faces.

Each snap of her jaw sends a wave of the artificial watermelon scent flying across my pristine studio. I can feel my left eye beginning to twitch.

“Madison.” I keep my voice very measured and pleasant. The voice of my mother perfected over forty years of teaching Atlanta’s elite how to exist in polite society. “We discussed what appropriate behavior is in formal settings. Would you like to dispose of that gum before we continue?”

Madison, sixteen, highlighted hair and an expression suggesting she would literally like to be anywhere else on earth, rolls her eyes so hard that I am genuinely concerned about the structural integrity of her optic nerves.

“My mom said I had to come here. She did not say I had to, you know, like, participate.”

The other two girls sitting on either side of her, Kaylee and Brittany, are equally uninterested, and they snicker behind their manicured hands.

I take a deep breath, then another. This studio is beautiful, with tall windows and hardwood floors polished to a mirror-bright shine, and cream-colored walls adorned with tasteful botanical prints and antique mirrors so students can observe their posture.

It looks exactly like what it is, a museum dedicated to a dying art form.

“Very well.” I smooth my hands down the front of my navy sheath dress. “Let’s attempt the curtsy one more time, and remember, this is not about subservience. It is about grace and acknowledgement. You are not bowing to someone’s superiority. You are showing your own refinement.”

“But, like, when would I ever even curtsy?” Brittany asks, examining the split ends of her hair. “I’m not meeting the Queen or, like, whatever.”

“The Queen kicked the bucket,” Kaylee adds, trying to be helpful. “And she wasn’t our queen anyway.”

“Exactly.” Brittany nods. “So, like, what is the point?”

The point? The point?

I want to tell them that the point is heritage, tradition, and the preservation of social graces that separate us from absolute chaos.

I want to explain that my mother built this business from nothing because she truly believed that proper etiquette would open doors, build confidence, and transform awkward girls into poised young ladies ready to take on the world.

Instead, I just say, “The curtsy teaches awareness and control of your body, and these skills translate into confidence in every situation, like job interviews, formal events, or meeting your future in-laws.”

“My mom says I am not allowed to have in-laws until I’m thirty,” Madison announces, finally removing her gum and sticking it right under her chair.

Under the chair. The antique Chippendale chair that my mother purchased at an auction in 1987. The chair that has supported the derrieres of debutantes, society matrons, and one memorable visit from a minor European princess.

I close my eyes briefly and try to summon whatever patience I have in reserve. I am running dangerously low these days. I doubt it’s appropriate for the only etiquette teacher left in Atlanta to strangle one of her students.

“Okay, ladies, let’s take a different approach.” I move to the front of the room and position myself in front of the full-length mirror. “Watch me first, and then we will try together.”

I demonstrate a proper curtsy, right foot behind left, slight bend of the knees, subtle inclination of the head.

It is all muscle memory for me at this point, drilled into me before I could even read.

My mom used to say that I curtsied before I could walk, and I am fairly certain that is anatomically impossible, but it does speak to her priorities.

She was always very proud when she said it.

When I rise, I catch my reflection. Thirty-four years old. Brown hair pinned up into a French twist that is so tight it gives me a headache every single day, and yet I continue to do it. Posture that would make a ballerina weep with envy. I look exactly like my mother.

The thought brings a familiar ache, the one I have been trying to ignore for two years now.

“Oh, that was actually kind of pretty,” Kaylee admits, which might be the highest compliment I have received all year.

“Thank you. Now, everyone up. We will practice this together.”

The girls shuffle to their feet with all the enthusiasm of death row inmates heading toward the execution chamber.

We spend the next twenty minutes trying curtsies that range from “acceptable” to “did you just have a small seizure?” By the end, Madison has complained about her knees seventeen times.

Brittany has checked her phone twice despite my no phones policy, and Kaylee somehow managed to curtsy directly into a side table, knocking over a vase of silk flowers.

When their mothers finally arrive, a trio of Buckhead housewives in coordinating Lilly Pulitzer outfits, I paste on my most professional smile and assure them that their daughters are “making wonderful progress.”

“Eleanor, you are such a treasure,” Mrs. Anglin, Madison’s mother, says, doing air kisses on both of my cheeks like we’re in Europe and not next to a Starbucks in Atlanta. “Your mom would be so proud of you carrying on her legacy.”

The words hit me somewhere soft and unprotected, but I maintain my smile through sheer force of will.

“Thanks, Patricia. It means so much.”

After they leave, the studio falls silent. I lock the door, flip the sign to closed as if anyone is going to show up anyway, and finally let my shoulders drop from their permanent position somewhere near my earlobes.

The check in my hand is for three hundred dollars. Three sessions at one hundred each.

I move to my desk, a gorgeous antique secretary that my mother found at an estate sale, and put the check on a pitifully small pile waiting for deposit. Then I pull out the folder I have been avoiding all week.

Bills. So many bills.

The rent for the studio space is $4,000 a month.

It is in a prime Buckhead location because my mom thought that location was everything, that you could not teach refinement in a strip mall.

She was not wrong, but she also signed a lease before rent increases made the neighborhood financially impossible.

Utilities, insurance, the quarterly payment on the equipment loan that my mother took out when she renovated the space five years ago, and the credit card bill I have been slowly drowning under since the funeral expenses.

I do the math I have done a hundred times before, hoping that the numbers will somehow rearrange themselves into something I can manage, but they do not. They never do.

The truth is unforgiving and stark. Whitfield Etiquette is dying.

Has been dying for years, really. A slow decline that my mom refused to acknowledge, and I have been desperately trying to reverse.

But the world has changed. Nobody wants to learn how to address an envelope or which fork to use with fish.

The debutante balls still happen, but the girls who attend them would rather watch a YouTube tutorial than sit through my mother’s carefully crafted curriculum.

I had six students last month. Six. Down from a peak of forty when I was a teenager, helping my mother demonstrate proper posture while she lectured on the importance of a firm handshake.

“Don’t shake like you have a dead fish in your hand,” she would say.

I sink into my desk chair and let my head fall to my hands, not caring that I am probably ruining my hairdo. The silence of the studio presses in around me. This beautiful, expensive space is empty except for my failure.

My phone buzzes, and I grab it with embarrassing desperation. Maybe it’s a new client. Maybe it’s someone who saw my website, my Instagram posts, or my increasingly apathetic attempts at marketing. Unfortunately, it’s a text from my former fiancé.

Archie: Saw your post about the spring session. Hope business picks up. Let me know if you want to grab coffee sometime.

I stare at the message, trying to decode what it means.

Archie and I ended things over six months ago, after being engaged for two years.

There had been a growing distance between us.

He wanted a wife who would host dinner parties and charm all his clients, someone who would fit seamlessly into the world of investment banking and country-club memberships.

But I wanted, well, I am still not entirely sure what I wanted.

Just not the constant pressure of being Archie Farnsworth’s perfect fiancée.

The breakup was civilized, of course. Everything in this world was civilized.

We are both too well-bred for scenes. He got his ring back, and we moved on, or so I thought.

We agreed to “remain friends,” in a way that means we will awkwardly avoid each other at social functions for the next ten years or so.

I do not respond to his text. I do not even have the energy for whatever game he is playing.

Instead, I stand up and walk through my studio, running my fingers along the smooth surface of the practice table where students learn proper place settings.

Twelve forks, twelve knives, twelve spoons, all arranged in perfect formation.

My mother could identify every piece with her eyes closed.

She could explain the history and purpose of each one with the passion of a museum curator.

I stop at the wall of photographs.

My mother at twenty-five, opening the studio with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by the mayor’s wife. My mother at forty, receiving an award from the Junior League. My mother at sixty, teaching a class of bright-eyed girls who actually wanted to be there.