Love the one you're with

nine

Andy and I make our way to baggage claim, and then outside to arrivals in record time. "Like poetry in motion," he says, proud of his ability to travel efficiently, just as we spot Webb and Margot's silver Mercedes SUV.

To our amusement, Margot appears to be in a clash of wills with a husky policewoman perched on a bicycle seat that looks way too small for her mammoth hips. She is undoubtedly telling Webb and Margot that there is no curbside waiting allowed. I can see through the half-open car window that, although Margot is wearing her sugar-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth expression, she is fully entrenched, determined not to back down and lose her spot. Her charm, however, does not seem to be doing the trick on the officer. Sporting a mullet and lug-soled, black motorcycle boots, she blows her whistle and then bellows, "Loading and unloading only, lady! Move it now!"

"My good-ness," Margot says, pressing her hand to her chest, before looking up, seeing us, and announcing, "Why look here! My family has arrived. We're loading now!"

I smile, thinking that Margot has prevailed again, ever elegantly.

The officer turns and glowers at us, vigorously pedaling on to her next victim. Meanwhile, Margot bounds out of the car. She is wearing a long, belted, camel-colored cashmere sweater, dark jeans tucked into chocolate suede boots, and oversized sunglasses (a look she stuck to even in the late nineties when small frames were the rage). She looks every bit the fashion plate she was in New York, maybe more so.

"We're so glad you're here!" she squeals, gathering Andy and me in a joint, but still dainty hug. Even though I knew she couldn't yet be showing, her petite frame and sprightly movements belie pregnancy. Only her chest gives her secret away; her C cups seem to be tipping over into the D range. I smile, thinking that it's the sort of thing you'd only notice on a best friend. I gesture toward them, and mouth, "Nice."

She laughs and says back, "Yeah, they've already gotten a little bigger… But this is mostly just a quality push-up."

Andy pretends to be embarrassed by our conversation as he tosses our oversized duffel bag into the back of the car. Seconds later, after a hearty greeting from Webb, we are exiting the airport and whizzing along the highway. Margot and I are in the backseat, all of us talking excitedly about the baby and their back-wing addition where the baby's room will be.

"Our contractors are as slow as molasses," Margot says. "I told them they'd better be finished by the time this baby arrives."

"No way they'll finish by then, hon. Not with their hourly coffee breaks," Webb says, running his hand back and forth over his chiseled jaw. I notice that he is also wearing a camel-colored sweater, and I wonder if he and Margot purposely matched. It is the sort of thing they've been known to do, the most egregious example being their his-and-hers orange driving moccasins.

Webb glances over his shoulder before switching lanes to pass a slow-moving Volkswagen and says, "So did Margot tell y'all about our leather floors in the basement?"

"No," I say, looking at Margot and wondering how that one fell through the cracks in our daily chats.

She nods and gestures toward Webb as if to say, "His idea, not mine," but I can tell she's proud of her husband's lofty sense of aesthetics.

"Leather floors?" Andy whistles. "Holy smokes."

"Yeah. Those bad boys are decadent," Webb says. "Wait 'til you try 'em out."

"Won't they get all scuffed?" I say, realizing that I often sound overly practical, even pedestrian, around Webb.

"A little scuffing adds character," Webb says. "Besides, they'll mostly get barefoot traffic."

Margot explains, "We saw them at a spa in Big Sur and couldn't resist them… It's where I'll do my yoga and meditating."

Naturally, I think fondly, but say, "You're taking up yoga?"

Margot has never been very into workouts, and when she did go to the gym in New York, she was more a reclined-bike-with-People-magazine-in-hand sort of girl.

"Since the baby," she says, rubbing her nonexistent tummy. "I'm trying to become more… centered."

I nod, thinking that the shift seemed to happen even before the baby news, around the time she moved from New York. It's not surprising-even leaving the city for a weekend has a calming effect on me. And although Atlanta is a major city by any measure, it feels so open, relaxed, and downright lush in contrast to New York. Even the downtown area, which we are passing now, looks like a very manageable Fisher Price-sized town after growing accustomed to New York's skyline.

Minutes later, we arrive in the heart of Buckhead, the affluent section of North Atlanta where Andy and Margot grew up. After first hearing the odd-sounding name Buckhead (apparently derived from a long-expired tavern that displayed a large buck's head), I conjured quaint, rustic images, but the area actually has a very cosmopolitan edge. Its shopping district comprises two high-end malls where Margot gets her Gucci and Jimmy Choo fix, as well as luxury hotels, condos, art galleries, nightclubs, and even five-star restaurants, hence earning the monikers Silk Stocking District and the Beverly Hills of the South.

But the real essence of Buckhead comes in the residential areas, along the winding, tree-lined streets, dotted with graceful Georgian mansions and stately neoclassical homes like the one Margot and Andy grew up in. Others, like Webb and Margot's 1930s painted brick house, are slightly more modest, but still utterly charming.

As we pull into their cobblestone driveway lined with white camellias, I feel the urge to use the words lovely or delightful-which aren't normally in my vocabulary.

Webb opens my car door, and I thank him and announce that I'm in the mood for sweet tea already. Sweetened iced tea is one of the things I love about the South, right up there with homemade biscuits and cheese grits. Andy and I simply don't understand why the beverage, present in virtually every home and restaurant in the South, including most fast-food chains, hasn't made inroads north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Margot laughs. "Well, you're in luck," she says. "I made up a batch this morning."

Undoubtedly, she made more than just tea as Margot is a fabulous hostess, just like her mother. Sure enough, we walk into what could be a spread in Southern Living. In Margot's words, the style of their home is "transitional with a Deco twist." I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I love that it's beautiful without being at all predictable or overly traditional. The floor plan is open, her kitchen and living area spilling together with an array of seating areas. Her dominant color scheme is chocolate brown and pale sage, and silken fabrics softly drape the windows, creating a feminine, almost dreamy effect. Clearly Webb lets Margot call the shots when it comes to matters of decor because it's certainly not what you'd expect of a strapping sports agent. To this point, his framed, autographed jerseys and pennants, omnipresent in his bachelor pad in Manhattan, are now relegated to the basement and his manly, dark-wood-paneled office.

Andy points to the cream-colored couch in the living room adorned with a carefully arranged sage throw and coordinating pillows. "Is that new?"

Margot nods. "Uh-huh. Isn't it yummy?"

"Yeah," Andy deadpans, and I can tell a joke is coming. "Real yummy when the kid drops his SpaghettiOs all over it."

"Or her SpaghettiOs," Margot says as she leads us into the kitchen where she has prepared a brunch of fruit salad, spinach quiche, and cheese crepes. "I hope you're hungry."

"Starving," Andy says.

Margot suggests that we eat now as we have early dinner reservations at Bacchanalia, the Grahams' favorite restaurant in town.

"Mother and Daddy are joining us. I promised that we wouldn't monopolize you now that we live here."

"Yeah. Andy and I were wondering about that. Does she mind that we're staying with you?" I ask.

"She understands," Margot says, drizzling raspberry compote over her crepes. "But she also informed me, in no uncertain terms, that she expects that her son will continue to sleep under her roof when he's in Atlanta for the holidays." Margot finishes the sentence in her mother's regal Charleston accent.

Andy rolls his eyes, and I smile, feeling grateful that although he is a dutiful son, he shows no signs of being an outright mama's boy. I don't think I could handle that routine. I went to a wedding recently where the mother of the groom had to be peeled off her son at the end of the reception as she sobbed, "I don't want to lose you!" The whole scene bordered on unwholesome. Margot's theory on the topic is that when a woman has only sons, and no daughters, this dynamic is more likely to kick in. Perhaps because the mother hasn't had to share any of the limelight with another woman, perhaps because of that adage, "A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life." She might be right about this because although Stella adores her sons, she focuses most of her time and energy on her daughter.

As I watch Margot maneuver around her kitchen, I ask if there's anything I can do to help. She shakes her head and pours tea from a big glass pitcher into three rock-cut glasses and Perrier into her own. Then she calls us to sit down, prompting Webb to say a quick blessing, a practice that seems more cultural than religious, as the two abandoned it, along with church attendance, while in New York.

As Webb finishes his short, formal prayer, and Margot smiles and says, "Enjoy!" I have the fleeting sense that we have little in common other than our shared past. But within seconds, that feeling is gone, as Margot and I move rapid-fire from topic to topic, discussing and analyzing everything and everyone with what most, Webb and Andy included, would view as excruciating detail. More than anything, it is why Margot and I are such close friends-why we connected in the first place, despite being so different. We simply love to talk to each other.

As such, we barely let the guys get a word in, covering New York and Atlanta gossip with equal scrutiny and fervor. We discuss our single New York friends who still get wasted every night and wonder why they can't meet a nice guy, and then the girls in her neighborhood who have full-time help so that they can play tennis, shop, and lunch every day.

"Who would you rather be?" I ask. "If you had to pick."

"Hmm," Margot says. "Not sure. Both extremes are sort of sad."

"Do you ever miss working?" I ask her tentatively. Although I can't imagine giving up my career, I'm not yet a mother-to-be. That might change everything.

Margot shakes her head. "I really thought I would… but I'm just so busy."

"Playing tennis?" Andy deadpans.

Margot's mouth twitches ever so defensively. "Some," she says. "But also decorating the house… getting ready for the baby… and doing all my charity work."

"She bagged the Junior League, though," Webb says, reaching for another helping of crepes. "It was too much to take. Even for her."

"I didn't say the Junior League was too much to take," Margot says. "I simply said that the Atlanta League is young. I felt like the old mother hen around all those early-twenty-something girls, most of them fresh out of college and already married to their high school sweethearts."

Webb's face lights up, as he says, "Speaking of… Tell your brother and Ellen who you hired to do our landscaping."

Margot says her husband's name in a playful reprimand, her fair skin turning azalea pink. I smile, ever amused at how easily she and Stella embarrass, even blushing on behalf of others, so great is their empathy. In fact, Stella can't even watch award shows-she is too nervous watching the acceptance speeches.

"C'mon," Webb says, grinning. "Go on and tell 'em, honey."

Margot purses her lips as Andy clamors, "Who?"

"Portera Brothers," Webb finally says, which everyone in the room knows is the last name of Margot's high school boyfriend, Ty, the one who still drops by every Thanksgiving.

"Portera Brothers?" Andy says, smirking. "As in Loverboy Ty?… Ty 'The Right Stuff ' Portera?"

"'The Right Stuff'?" Webb says.

"Margot didn't tell you about her little boyfriend's stirring Jordan Knight air-band performance in high school?" Andy says, standing, spinning, and singing, "Oh! Oh! Girl! You know you got the right stuff!"

"Wait a sec, Margot. Your high school boyfriend lip-synced to the Backstreet Boys?" Webb says, giddy with his fresh ammunition.

"Get it straight, Webb. It was the New Kids on the Block," Andy says. "And I think the year before he did Menudo, didn't he, Margot?"

Margot slaps the table. "No! He most certainly didn't do Menudo!"

I resist the temptation to point out that the only one at the table who can recite New Kids' lyrics is Andy.

"New Kids, huh? Well, I guess that helps ease the blow a little," Webb says, chuckling. "I mean, maybe the guy's gay now. Or in a boy band. Or, God forbid, both."

I smile, although I mentally put this comment in the category of "What makes Webb different from me"-I'm quite certain he has no gay friends.

Webb continues, "Seriously. Can y'all believe Margot hired her ex?"

"No," Andy says with exaggerated somberness. "I really, really can't. Disgraceful."

I know Andy and Webb are only joking, but my stomach still jumps thinking of the message waiting on my phone. The message I should have deleted. I look down at my plate, tapping a sprig of parsley with a tine on my fork.

"C'mon, Ellen!" Margot says, resting her elbows on the table, something she would never ordinarily do. "Help me out here!"

I cast about for a second, trying to think of something helpful but noncommittal. I weakly offer, "They're just friends."

"Just friends, huh?" Webb says. "The olllllle 'just friends' routine."

"Good Lord," Margot says, standing to clear her plate and Andy's.

"The Good Lord isn't on your side any more than Ellen here," Webb says. "Neither of them approves of these sort of reindeer games."

" 'Reindeer games'? Oh, grow up, Webb!… Ty is so grandfathered in it's not funny," Margot says, returning from the kitchen. "We made the transition to friends a zillion years ago. When we were still in high school. And he's been doing Mother and Daddy's yard for over a year now!"

"And that makes it better? That he's doing their yard, too?" Webb says, shaking his head. He looks at me and says, "Watch out. They're all disloyal. The pack of them."

"Hey! Don't lump me in with my folks and sister," Andy says. "I wouldn't use the guy. Even if I had a yard."

"Sorry, man," Webb says. "They're all disloyal except you. Even James."

"James doesn't have a yard either," Andy says.

"Yeah. But he plays golf with the guy. Disloyal bastard," Webb says.

"It's not a question of loyalty to anyone," Margot says. "And besides, it's not like he'll be over here doing the planting himself. He has employees for that… His company does great landscaping at the right price. That's all there is to it, Webster Buffington, and you know it."

"Yep," Webb says. "Keep telling yourself that and maybe you'll start to believe it."

"Oh, puh-lease, you act like I just put my prom portrait on the mantel!"

"I'm sure that'll be next," Webb says. He then turns to me and says, "Ellen, you still talk to your prom date?"

I shake my head decisively.

"Does he… uh, clean your apartment or prepare your taxes or anything like that?" Webb presses.

"Nope," I say.

"You talk to any exes, period?"

The follow-up is clearly for me, but I say nothing, dazed by the coincidence, and hoping that someone will jump in and save me. No such luck. The room falls silent. I look at Andy, as if the question were directed his way.

"What?" Andy says. "Don't look at me. You know I'm not friends with any girls, let alone exes."

"Lucy sent you a Christmas card a few years ago," I say, feeling the familiar stab of faint jealousy thinking about sweet, hot, little Lucy.

"With a photo of her kid on it," Andy says. "That's hardly a come-hither invitation… Besides, I never sent her a Christmas card."

"Yes, but you never sent them at all until we got married," I say, standing to help Margot clear the table.

Andy shrugs. As a lawyer, he certainly knows an irrelevant tangent when he sees one. "The point is-I don't talk to her. Period."

"And I don't talk to my exes, period," Webb says.

Andy looks at me expectantly.

"And I don't talk to my exes," I echo shamefully.

Anymore.

"Oh, get over yourselves," Margot says, wiping crumbs from Webb's placemat into her open palm. She looks up and then around the table, adding, "And, while you're at it, how about getting over your exes, too?"

That afternoon, Leo's message is far from my mind as Margot and I shop for gender-neutral newborn clothes at a boutique called Kangaroo Pouch, cooing over the exquisite, impossibly tiny items and finally selecting a white knit gown and matching receiving blanket for the baby's homecoming, along with a half-dozen fine-cotton onesies and an array of hand-embroidered booties, hats, and socks. I feel my nesting instinct kicking in, and for the first time, really wish I were pregnant, too. Of course I know that craving a baby while you shop for a layette for your best friend's firstborn is akin to wanting to get married while you watch her slip on a Vera Wang gown and twirl before a dressing-room mirror-and that there are plenty of not-so-fun-or-cute things that come with motherhood. Still, as we go on to cruise by a few houses for sale, "just for fun," I can't help thinking how nice it would be to relocate to Atlanta, live near Margot, and watch our children-cousins and best friends-grow up together in a happy, beautiful world filled with white camellias and sweet tea.

But by the time Margot and I are changing for dinner, thoughts of Leo have returned full-force, my cell phone burning a hole in my purse. So much so that I feel dangerously close to divulging everything to Margot. I remind myself that although she is my best friend, she is also Andy's sister. And, on top of that, she hated Leo. There is no way that that conversation would end well.

Instead I very casually resurrect the "Can you be friends with an ex?" debate, trying to feel my way through my emerging moral dilemma.

"So," I say as I fasten the side zipper of my charcoal pencil skirt. "Webb doesn't really care about Ty, does he?"

Margot laughs and waves her hand in the air. "Of course not. Webb is the most secure man I know… and he's certainly not threatened by a nothing, high school crush."

"Right," I say, wondering if Andy would feel threatened by Leo-and more significantly, whether he should.

She holds up two options from her closet, a black jersey dress and a lavender crocheted jacket with a mandarin collar, and says, "Which one?"

I hesitate, then point to the jacket and say, "But let's suppose for a second that you hired Brad to do your landscaping."

"Brad Turner?" she says, as if I could be speaking of a Brad other than the handsome, bespectacled bond trader whom she dated for nearly two years before meeting Webb.

"Yeah," I say. "The one and only."

She squints and says, "Okay. I got a visual… Brad in his power suits out there with his lawn mower."

"Would Webb be pissed?"

"Maybe," she says. "But I'd never hire Brad. We don't even talk anymore."

"Why not?" I ask, because, after all, that's the real crux of the issue. Why does one keep in touch with certain exes, and not others? Why is it okay to segue into a friendship with some? Is there a multi-pronged test or is it really more simple than that?

"Oh, I don't know," Margot says, looking concerned. For one second I worry that she's on to me, but as she slips on a pair of black pants and patent, peep-toe heels, her expression becomes placid again. Leo is the last person on her mind. I only wish I could say the same. "Why? Do you miss Brad or something?"

I smile and shrug and say, "I dunno… I was just wondering what the golden rule is when it comes to exes… I just think it's an interesting topic."

Margot pauses to consider this, and then proclaims very definitively, "Okay. If you're totally over the guy, and he's totally over you, and you were never that serious to begin with, I see absolutely nothing wrong with an occasional, friendly hello. Or some innocent yard work. Assuming, of course, your current beau-slash-husband is not a complete psycho freak. Then again, if your current guy is a psycho freak, you have much bigger issues than who you should hire to do your lawn."

"Right," I say, feeling pleased with her summation and even more pleased with the loophole she unwittingly created for me. "Well said."

With that, I breezily tell Margot that I'm going to brush my teeth and put on my makeup, and seconds later, I am sequestered in the guest bathroom, the door locked and the water in the sink running full blast. I carefully avoid my own reflection in the mirror as I open my purse and pull out my cell phone.

After all, I say, repeating Margot's sound, careful reasoning, there is absolutely nothing in the world wrong with an occasional, friendly exchange when you're totally over someone.