Love the one you're with

twenty-three

A few days later, Oprah is providing background noise while I succumb to my OCD, making slick white labels for our kitchen drawers. As I print out the word spatulas, I hear a knock at the side door and look up to see Margot through the paned glass.

Before I can so much as wave her in, Margot opens the door and says, "Hey, hon. Only me!"

As I mute the TV and look up from my label maker, I am two parts grateful for the company, and one part annoyed by her come-right-in presumptuousness. And maybe just a bit sheepish for getting busted watching daytime television-something I never did in New York.

"Hey," she says, giving me a weary smile. Wearing a fitted tank, black leggings, and flip-flops, she looks, for the first time, uncomfortably pregnant, almost unwieldy-at least by Margot's standards. Even her feet and ankles are beginning to swell. "We still on for dinner tonight at my place?"

"Sure. I just tried to call you to confirm… Where have you been?" I say, recognizing that it's very unusual for me not to know Margot's exact whereabouts.

"Prenatal yoga," she says, lowering herself to the couch with a groan. "What have you been up to?"

I print a slotted spoons label and hold it up. "Getting organized," I say.

She distractedly nods her approval and then says, "What about Josephine?"

I give her a puzzled look until I realize she's talking about baby names. Again. Lately, it seems to be all we discuss. Generally, I enjoy the name game, and certainly understand the importance of naming a child-sometimes it seems as if the name shapes the person-but I'm growing a bit weary of the topic. If Margot had at least found out the sex of her baby, it would cut our task in half.

"Josephine," I say aloud. "I like it… It's charming… offbeat… very cute."

"Hazel?" she says.

"Hmm," I say. "A bit poserville. Besides… isn't it Julia Roberts's daughter's name? You don't want to be perceived as copying the stars, do you?"

"I guess not," she says. "How about Tiffany?"

I don't especially like the name, and it seems like a bit of an outlier on Margot's otherwise classic list, but I still tread carefully. Saying you dislike a friend's potential baby name is a dangerous proposition (like announcing you don't like her boyfriend-a sure guarantee that they'll marry).

"I'm not sure," I say. "It's pretty but seems a bit frou-frou… I thought you were going for a traditional, family name?"

"I am. Tiffany is Webb's cousin's name-the one who died of breast cancer… But Mom thinks it's sort of eighties, tacky… especially now that the brand has become so mass-marketed…"

"Well, I do know a few Tiffanys from Pittsburgh," I say pointedly. "So maybe she's right about it being down-market…"

Margot misses my subtle jab and merrily continues. "It makes me think of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey Hepburn… Hey! What about Audrey?"

"I like Audrey more than Tiffany… although it does rhyme with tawdry," I say.

Margot laughs-she's a big fan of my playground-teasing litmus test. "What little kid knows the word tawdry?"

"You never know," I say. "And if you stick with the family middle name Sims, her monogram will be ABS… and then she sure better have a flat stomach. Otherwise you set your daughter up for a lifetime of eating disorders…"

Margot laughs again, shaking her head. "You're nuts."

"What happened to Louisa?" I say.

For weeks, Louisa-another family name-was the front-runner for the girl's name. Margot even bought a swimsuit at a children's clothing trunk show and had it monogrammed with an L-just in case she has a girl. Which, by the way, is so clearly what Margot wants that I've begun to worry about the boy result. Just the night before, I told Andy that Margot was going to be like an actress nominated for an Oscar, waiting for the card to be read. Total suspense followed by elation if she wins-and having to pretend that she's just as thrilled if she doesn't.

Margot says, "I love Louisa. I'm just not quite sold on it."

"Well, you better hurry and get sold on something," I say. "You only have four weeks."

"I know," she says. "Which reminds me-we need to get cracking on that pregnant photo shoot… I'm getting my hair highlighted on Monday, and Webb says he can make it home early any night next week. So whenever you're free…"

"Right," I say, remembering a conversation we had months ago in which she asked-and I agreed-to take, in her words, "those artsy, black-and-white belly shots." It seemed like a fine idea at the time but given my recent frame of mind, I'm just not that juiced to do it, particularly now that I know Webb is going to be in on the action. I picture him gazing at her lovingly, caressing her bare belly, and maybe even planting a kiss on her protruding navel. Ugh. How far I've fallen. If I'm not careful, I'll have gone from shooting for Platform magazine to wiping baby drool or jangling rattles in front of a cranky toddler.

So, with all this in mind, I say, "Don't you think that's a bit… I don't know… fromage?"

Somehow calling her cheesy in French seems to dampen the mean-spiritedness of the question.

For an instant Margot looks hurt, but quickly regroups and says, quite emphatically, "No. I like them… I mean, not to display in the foyer-but for our bedroom or to put in an album… Ginny and Craig had some taken like that, and they're really amazing."

I refrain from telling her that I'd hardly aspire to be like Ginny and Craig, who top my list of Atlanta irritants.

Ginny is Margot's oldest, and until I dethroned her, best friend. I've heard the story of how they met at least a dozen times, most often from Ginny herself. In short, their mothers bonded in a neighborhood playgroup when their daughters were babies, but then dropped out of the group two weeks later, deciding none of the other mothers shared their sensibilities. (Specifically, one of the other moms served dried Cheerios for a morning snack, which might have been overlooked but for the fact that she also offered up some of the toasted treats to the fellow adults. In a plastic bowl, no less. At which point, Ginny inserts that always annoying and very insincere Southern expression, "Bless her heart." Translation: "The poor slob.")

So naturally, their mothers seceded from the group to form their own, and the rest is history. From the looks of Margot's photo albums, the girls were virtually inseparable during their teenage years, whether cheerleading (Ginny, incidentally, always holding Margot's left heel in their pyramid, which I see as symbolic of their friendship), or lounging about their country club in matching yellow bikinis, or attending teas and cotillions and debutante balls. Always smiling broadly, always with sun-kissed tans, always surrounded by a posse of admiring, lesser beauties. A far cry from the few snapshots I have of me and Kimmy, my best friend from home, hanging out at the Ches-A-Rena roller rink, sporting feathered hair, fluorescent tank tops, and rows of nappy, frayed yarn bracelets.

In any event, just as Kimmy and I went our separate ways after graduation (she went to beauty school and is now snipping the same overlayered do in her salon in Pittsburgh), so did Ginny and Margot. Granted their experiences were more similar, as Ginny attended the University of Georgia and also joined a sorority, but they were still different experiences with different people during an intense time of life-which will take the B out of BFF almost every time. To this point, Ginny stayed immersed with the same crowd from Atlanta (at least half of their high school went to UGA), and Margot branched out, doing her own thing at Wake Forest. And part of doing her own thing was bonding with me, a Yankee who didn't fit into (if not downright defied) the social order of Atlanta. In fact, looking back, I sometimes think that Margot's befriending me was a way of redefining herself, sort of like following a new, offbeat band. Not that I was alternative or anything, but a Catholic, brown-eyed brunette with a Pittsburgh dialect was definitely a change of pace given Margot's Southern, society upbringing. Frankly, I also think Margot liked that I was as smart, if not smarter than she, in contrast to Ginny who had passable book smarts, but no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. In fact, from overhearing snippets of their college-era phone conversations, it seemed clear to me that Ginny had no interest in anything other than partying, clothing, and boys, and although Margot shared those interests, she had much more substance under the surface.

So it was pretty predictable that Ginny would become jealous and competitive with me, particularly during those first few years of the gradual power shift. It was never anything overt, just a frostiness coupled with her pointed way of rehashing inside stories and private jokes in my presence. I might have been paranoid, but she seemed to go out of her way to discuss things that I couldn't relate to-such as their respective silver patterns (both girls' grandmothers selected their patterns at Buckhead's Beverly Bremer Silver Shop, upon their birth) or the latest gossip at the Piedmont Driving Club, or the ideal carat size for diamond-stud earrings (apparently anything less than one carat is too "sweet sixteen" and anything more than two-and-a-half is "so new money").

Over time, as their friendship became more rooted in the past and mine and Margot's became all about the present, first in college and then in New York, Ginny saw the writing on the wall. Then, when Andy and I got serious, and she realized that no matter how long she and Margot had known each other, I was going to be family, it became an absolute given that I would usurp her title and be named Margot's maid of honor-the unambiguous, grown-up equivalent of wearing best friend necklaces. And although Ginny played the gracious runner-up at all of Margot's engagement parties and bridesmaid luncheons, I had the distinct feeling that she thought Margot, and Andy for that matter, could have done better.

Yet all of this underlying girly drama wasn't anything I gave much thought to until after Margot moved back to Atlanta. At first, even she seemed reluctant to entrench herself in the old scene. She was always loyal enough to Ginny-one of Margot's best traits-but would occasionally drop a casual remark about Ginny's narrow-mindedness, how she had no desire to vacation any place other than Sea Island, or that she never reads the newspaper, or how "funny" it was that Ginny has never held a single job in her life. (And when I say never, I mean never. Not a lifeguarding job in high school nor a brief office job before getting married and instantly having-what else?-a boy, and then, two years later, a girl. She has never collected a single paycheck. And incidentally, to me, someone who has worked consistently since I was fifteen, this fact was beyond funny. It was more akin to knowing conjoined twins or a circus acrobat. Bizarre in the extreme and a bit sad, too.)

But since our arrival in Atlanta, Margot seems to no longer notice these things about Ginny and instead just embraces her as a trusty hometown sidekick making a best friend comeback. And although well-adjusted adults (as I like to consider myself) don't really do the straight-rank best friend thing, I still can't help feeling agitated by my blond former nemesis now that I'm catapulted into her stylized, homogenized Buckhead world.

So, when Margot's next words are, "Oh, by the way, I invited Ginny and Craig over tonight, too. Hope that's okay?" I smile a big, fake smile and say, "Sounds peachy."

A fitting adjective for my new Georgian life.

That night, I manage to run late getting ready for dinner, a curious phenomenon of having nothing pressing to do all day. As I wring out my wet hair and slather moisturizer onto my cheeks, I hear Andy run up the steps and call my name in an all's-right-in-the-world tone, and then add, "Honey! I'm home!"

I think of that purported excerpt from a 1950s home economics textbook that routinely makes its way around the Internet, giving women dos and don'ts on being a good wife and specifically how we should greet our husbands after a hard day at the office. Make the evening his… Put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking… Offer to take off his shoes… Talk in a soothing voice.

I give Andy a kiss on the lips and then say primly, sarcastically, "Good news, dear. Ginny and Craig will be joining us this evening."

"Oh, come on," he says, smiling. "Be nice. They're not so bad."

"Are too," I say.

"Be nice," he says again, as I try to recall if that was in the article. Always be nice at the expense of the truth.

"Okay," I say. "I'll be nice until the fifth time she calls something 'super cute.' After that, I get to be myself. Deal?"

Andy laughs as I continue, mimicking Ginny, "This dress is super cute. That crib is super cute. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey were soo super cute together. I know it's a shame about the Middle East turmoil and all, but that breakup is still, like, the saddest thing ever."

Andy laughs again as I turn back toward my huge, walk-in closet, only about a third filled, and select a pair of jeans, leather flip-flops, and a vintage Orange Crush T-shirt.

"You think this is okay for dinner?" I say, slipping the shirt over my head and almost hoping that Andy will criticize my choice.

Instead, he kisses my nose and says, "Sure. You look super cute."

True to form, Ginny is dressed smartly in a crisp shift dress, strappy sandals, and pearls, and Margot is wearing an adorable pale blue maternity frock, also with pearls. (Granted Margot's are the whimsical, oversized costume variety tied in the back with a white grosgrain ribbon rather than the good strand her grandmother bequeathed her, but pearls they are.)

I shoot Andy a look that he misses as he bends down to pat Ginny's hairless Chinese crested puppy named Delores without whom she never leaves home (and, even worse, to whom she habitually applies sunscreen). I swear she prefers Delores to her children-or at least her son, who has such a raging case of ADD that Ginny brags about strategically giving him Benadryl before long car trips or dinners out.

"I feel so underdressed," I say, handing Margot a bottle of wine that I grabbed from our wine cellar on our way out the door. I run my hands over my denim-clad hips and add, "I thought you said casual?"

Ginny looks somewhat jubilant, oblivious to the fact that I secretly feel appropriate, even smug, in my jeans and T-shirt-and that I think she's the one who is overdressed. As she leans in to give me a demure collar bone-to-collar bone hug, Margot thanks me for the wine and says, "I did. You look great." Then, as she pours margaritas into oversized hand-blown glasses, she adds, "God, I wish I had your height… Especially these days. Ginny, wouldn't you just kill for those legs?"

Ginny, who never made a postpartum comeback despite a personal trainer and a tummy tuck she doesn't know that I know she had, glances wistfully at my legs before murmuring noncommittally. Clearly, she prefers that her compliments to me be of the backhanded variety-such as the recent gem she doled out while we were selecting invitations for Margot's baby shower (an event I'm shamefully dreading) at Paces Papers. After laboring over our wording and the selection of pale pink, deckle-edged paper, charcoal ink, and an old-fashioned pram motif, I thought our task was finished. I picked up my purse, relieved to go, when Ginny touched my wrist, smiled condescendingly, and said, "Font, hon. We have to choose a font."

"Oh, right," I said, thinking of my old workroom in New York and how much I learned about typefaces from Oscar. Way more than Ginny could have picked up from planning her wedding and a few showers and charity balls. But I still amused myself by throwing out, "So I guess Times New Roman won't do this time?"

At which point Ginny did her best to convey horror to the cute redheaded girl helping us and then declared, "Oh, Ellen. I so admire how laidback you are about these details… I try to be more that way, but just can't."

Bless my heart.

So anyway, here I sit in Margot's family room in my Orange Crush T-shirt, the only bright color in a sea of preppy chic, summery pastels. And the only one who hasn't heard the summer's breaking news-that Cass Phillips discovered her husband, Morley, had purchased a three-thousand-dollar harp for his twenty-one-year-old lover who happens to be her best friend's goddaughter. Which, as you can imagine, has caused quite the stir at Cherokee, the country club to which all pertinent parties belong.

"A harp?" I say. "Whatever happened to your standard negligee?"

Ginny shoots me a look as if I've totally missed the point of the story, and says, "Oh, Ellen. She's a harpist."

"Right," I say, mumbling that I figured as much, but who the heck decides to pick up the harp, anyway?

Andy winks at me and says, "Elizabeth Smart."

As I recall the "missing" posters of Elizabeth playing the harp, I smile at my husband's ability to conjure examples for just about anything, while Ginny ignores our exchange and informs me that she and Craig had a harpist at their rehearsal dinner, along with a string quartet.

"Elizabeth who?" Craig says, turning to Andy, as if trying to place the name in his tight little Buckhead context.

"You know," I say. "The Mormon girl who was kidnapped and then found a year later walking around Salt Lake City in a robe with her bearded captor."

"Oh yeah. Her," Craig says dismissively. As I watch him slice a big wedge of Brie and sandwich it between two crackers, it occurs to me that while he is like Webb in some ways-they are both ruddy, joke-telling, sports guys-he has none of Webb's affability or ability to put others at ease. Come to think of it, he never really acknowledges me much at all or even looks my way. He brushes a few crumbs from his seersucker shorts and says, "I did hear the harpist was smokin' hot…"

"Craig!" Ginny whines her husband's name and looks aghast, as if she just caught him jerking off to a Penthouse magazine.

"Sorry, babe," Craig says, kissing her in such a way that would suggest they've only just begun to date, when in fact, they've been together since virtually the first day of college.

Webb looks amused as he asks how Morley was busted.

Ginny explains that Cass found the charge on Morley's corporate Amex. "She thought it looked suspicious and called the store… Then she put it together with his sudden interest in the symphony," she says, her eyes bright with the scandalous details.

"Did he not think that, given his womanizing reputation, she was going to check his corporate Amex, too?" Margot says.

Craig winks and says, "It's usually a safe harbor."

Ginny whines her husband's name again, then gives him a playful shove. "I'd leave you so fast," she says.

Right, I think. She is exactly the sort of kept woman who'd put up with serial shenanigans. Anything to keep up their perfect appearances.

As the group continues to untangle the sordid harp saga, my mind drifts to Leo, and I consider for at least the hundredth time whether, in a technical, poll-one-hundred-people-in-Times-Square sort of way, I cheated on Andy that night on the plane. Always before, I wanted the answer to be no-both for Andy's sake and for mine. But on this night, I realize that a small part of me almost wants to fall in that dark category. Wants to have a secret that distances me from Ginny and this whole desperate-housewife world I have found myself in. I can just hear her gossiping with her Buck-head-Betty friends-"I don't know what Margot sees in that tacky-font-selecting, T-shirt-wearing, unhighlighted Yankee."

The rest of the night is uneventful-just lots of golf and business talk among the men and baby talk among the girls-until about halfway through dinner when Ginny sips from her wineglass, winces, and says, "Margot, darling. What is this that we're drinking?"

"It's a merlot," Margot says quickly, something in her voice tipping me off to trouble. I glance at the bottle and realize that it's the one I brought tonight-and upon further inspection, the very same one that my father and Sharon gave Andy and me after we moved into our New York apartment.

"Well, it tastes like arse," Ginny says, as if she's British, a pet peeve of mine. (Just earlier tonight, she mentioned that she and Craig were planning a trip to Meh-hee-co.)

Margot flashes Ginny an insider's look of warning-a look that you'd think they would have perfected in high school-but Ginny either misses it or intentionally ignores it, continuing her banter. "Where did you find it? Wal-Mart?"

Before Margot can offer a preemptive strike, Craig grabs the bottle from the table, scans the label, and scoffs, "Pennsylvania. It's from Pennsylvania. Right. Everyone knows how world-renowned the vineyards are in Philadelphia." He laughs, proud of his joke, proud to be showcasing his sophistication, his appreciation of all the finer things in life. "You shouldn't have, really," he adds, anticipating all of us to burst into fits of laughter.

Andy gives me a look that says, Let it ride. Like his sister and mother, he is one to avoid conflict of any kind, and deep down, I know that is exactly what I should do now. I am also fairly certain that no one meant to offend me-that Craig and Ginny likely didn't piece together that I brought the wine-and that it was only a good-natured ribbing between close friends. The sort of foot-in-the-mouth remarks that anyone can make.

But because they come from Ginny and Craig, and because I do not like Ginny and Craig and they do not like me, and because at this moment I want to be anywhere in the world but sitting at a table in my new town of Atlanta having dinner with Ginny and Craig, I pipe up with, "Pittsburgh, actually."

Craig looks at me, confused. "Pittsburgh?" he says.

"Right. Pittsburgh… not Philadelphia," I say, my face burning with indignation. "It's Pittsburgh's finest merlot."

Craig, who clearly has no clue where I'm from, and certainly has never bothered to ask, continues to look puzzled while I catch Webb and Margot exchange an uncomfortable glance.

"I'm from Pittsburgh," I say, drolly, apologetically. "I brought the bottle tonight." I shift my gaze to Ginny and swirl my wine. "Sorry that it's not up to snuff."

Then, as Craig looks sheepish and Ginny stammers an awkward retraction and Margot laughs nervously and Webb changes the subject and Andy does absolutely nothing, I silently raise my glass and take a big gulp of cheap red wine.