It's 1933 and Lily, now in her early 20s is attending a formal dinner at the Goldblooms'. Nurse Cici Goldbloom is their daughter who's been nursing at the tuberculosis sanitarium where Lily also works. The stated purpose of this dinner is to honor Lily, but actually, it's to introduce Cici and Mr. Blauschild, marriage and profitable business alliances to follow. We join them mid-meal.
...That first course had been soup, not much of a challenge, but the second course was a severe test of Lily's study of etiquette. It seemed to be some variety of fish, chopped, formed into balls, heavily coated, and deep-fried, too big to be eaten at one bite, and too spherical to be easily dissected. "Only watch your hostess and do as she does," Mrs. Engelmann had said. But how to watch the hostess to your left if you were supposed to be conversing with the gentleman to your right?
Mr. Blauschild took a long slow drink of water and set his goblet back on the table. "Beautiful weather we've been having, don't you think?"
He must be waiting for their hostess to demonstrate the correct way to manage tricky fish balls. Lily agreed that this year's autumn did hold promise, and let her eye travel across the table to Phyllis Finkelstein who, from where she'd been seated, would have a good view of their hostess.
Phyllis took up the tiny fork and knife situated horizontally above her charger plate where etiquette books said a dessert spoon should lie. Would that be Mrs. Goldbloom's endearing little habit of inventing her own rules, or was Phyllis in error?
Nurse Cici, though further down the table, might be a better model. Lily let her eye wander in that direction, and as she did, Cici lifted her napkin to cover a cough. It wasn't a loud or particularly harsh cough, but a small and growing speck of red blossomed through her napkin in sharp contrast to its pristine whiteness.
Then, probably because Lily was looking, Mr. Blauschild looked, and because Mr. Blauschild was looking, both Mr. and Mrs. Goldbloom looked. And because so many others were looking, the rest of the guests looked too. Cici froze, staring out over her red-stained napkin, and a silence settled over the table.
Lily could only imagine what her fellow diners were thinking. Before their eyes, Cici Goldbloom would be transforming from the still-eligible daughter of a successful businessman into an overdressed specter of mortality. Her slinky sleeveless dinner gown would no longer speak of sophisticated elegance as its arm holes, cut fashionably low, exposed, they'd be noticing now, washboard ribs. And her hair, fashionably bobbed, would be revealing the elongated gauntness of her neck.
Mrs. Goldbloom, in her role of example-setting hostess, would--and she did--resolutely ring her little silver bell for the next course.
But Mr. Goldbloom rose from his chair and all but ran from the room, and the guests, white-faced, every one, followed--not their hostess's example, but the host's.