"Yikes," Daphne says. "I don't care for that description."

"Well," I say, sc.r.a.ping my container of dressing onto my salad. I don't know why I ever bother getting dressing on the side when I always eat all of it. "What're you gonna do? We knew that Ben was going to date. That was the point of our breakup, right? Find a good woman with an available womb."

Daphne makes a face. I usually try to avoid words like womb around Daphne. Unlike my insensitive mother who tosses around expressions like shooting blanks and barren .

I field another few questions about Tucker's looks.

Probably a size ten.

About Ben's height.

Green eyes, I think. Maybe blue.

"So it sounds like her hair is her only decent feature?" Maura concludes.

"It's probably her best feature, yes," I say.

"So she wouldn't pa.s.s the Rosannadanna-do test?" Daphne says, smiling.

I laugh and say probably not. The Rosannadanna-do test is pretty self-explanatory, but this is how it works: give an otherwise pretty girl frizzy, brown Rosannadanna hair and ask if she's still pretty. Maura devised the litmus test when we were in high school and she insisted that the only reason Tiffany Hartong beat her out for homecoming queen was that Tiffany had this gorgeous blond hair that fooled everyone into thinking she was pretty. Of course, I would argue that that's sort of like a test that says, "Give the girl a b.u.t.ta.s.s ugly face and ask if she's still pretty." Hair is a pretty integral part of the package.

Still, I resist the urge to announce that I'm not as all-consumed with looks as some other women seem to be, and that I'd rather Tucker be a Victoria's Secret model than a concert pianist or fighter pilot or something else that Ben would really respect. Of course if I were in Maura's shoes, and my husband had cheated on me with his secretary, a Norwegian bombsh.e.l.l who refused to lick envelopes because she once heard that the gumming on the flap equals three calories, I'd probably be obsessed with body fat, too.

"Well, who gives a flying f.u.c.k about Tucker," Jess says, raising her gla.s.s of wine. "She's clearly just his rebound. In fact, I bet he'll stay in the rebound stage for years. n.o.body's going to measure up to you, Claudia."

This is more like it. I flash Jess a grateful smile and raise my gla.s.s. "I'll drink to that!"

Maura takes Jess's lead and says, "Yeah. He'll never find someone like you."

"Not in a million years," Daphne says. "Hear, hear!"

I clink my gla.s.s against theirs and say, "Thanks, guys."

This is the moment Jess chooses to begin her smitten chatter about how wonderful Trey is.

"Wait. Which one is Trey?" Maura asks.

"The married guy with the hot bod. Right?" Daphne says. Daphne lived with Jess and me for a year before she married Tony, so she and Jess occasionally e-mail and talk on the phone. In fact, Jess has told me before that Daphne will likely be one of her bridesmaids, an exercise I find just as silly as picking baby names before you're pregnant.

" 'Married guy' hardly narrows things down," Maura says.

Jess laughs and flips her off.

"Don't tell me you're dating another married man, Jess," Maura says. She pushes away her salad with disgust and crosses her arms.

I was worried about the Trey topic for this reason, and suddenly wish that I had warned Jess to tread carefully.

"This time it's different," Jess says, dabbing at her mouth with her cloth napkin. "Trey and his wife are totally wrong for each other. They married really young."

The "married too young" theme, of course, rubs Daphne the wrong way so she says, "Hey! Nothing wrong with that. If you find the right guy, you can't help it if you're young."

"That's the point," Jess says. "He's not the right guy for her. Clearly. And he's going to leave her soon. Tell them, Claudia."

"He's leaving her soon," I echo, keeping my eyes focused on an orb of hardboiled egg.

Maura sniffs. "Jesus, Jess. Is n.o.body off-limits to you?"

"Hey. It's not my fault that there are bad marriages out there," Jess says. "I didn't create that dynamic. It was preexisting."

"There are bad marriages out there in part because of women like you!" Maura says. "You don't have to be so predatory ?"

"And you don't have to be so naive ," Jess says. "Affairs happen when people aren't happy. A third party can't penetrate a happy, mutually satisfying marriage."

"I beg to differ," Maura says, looking p.i.s.sed.

I don't really blame her for being upset. The topic hits a little too close to home.

But instead of backing off, Jess goes for shock value and says, "So I guess you'd disapprove of me getting pregnant on purpose?"

"What do you mean?" Maura says, aghast.

"You know forgetting to take my pill. To sort of move the process along." She makes an investment-banker hand gesture.

Maura's eyes widen. "You have got to be s.h.i.tting me."

Jess looks pleased with herself. I can tell she is mostly kidding, but not entirely. Of course, beyond the obvious unethical nature of such a dirty trick, this whole topic strikes a chord with me as I think of how I would have felt if Ben had, say, replaced my birth control pills with placebos. The word unconscionable comes to mind. So I say, "What if Ben had pulled something like that with me? Punched tiny holes in our condoms, so to speak?"

Jess says, "That's totally different."

"Not really," I say.

"Sure it is. It's your body. You should have ultimate say."

"Well, it's his sperm," Maura says. I can tell she's imagining what she would do if Scott had an illegitimate child on the side. It's not beyond the realm of possibility, that's for sure.

Daphne, on the other hand, looks suspiciously conspiratorial. Anything for a baby. I am pretty sure that she would steal a bit of seed if she had to.

I call her on it. "You think it's okay, Daph. Don't you?"

"No," she says unconvincingly. "Well it depends I guess."

"Depends on what ?" Maura says.

"On why she's doing it," Daphne says, turning to Jess. "Would you be doing it to get Trey to leave his wife? Or would you be doing it to have a baby?"

"Look, Daph, motherhood ain't so n.o.ble that it overrides basic morality," Maura says.

Daphne kicks me under the table, as if the argument brewing at the table is subtle, something that I could somehow miss. She gives me a "do something" look.

"C'mon, guys," I say. "Enough. We gotta stick together."

"That's my point, Claudia," Maura says. " Women should stick together."

" Friends should stick together," Jess says. "I don't know Trey's wife from Adam. Eve. Whatever. I owe her nothing."

"I'll remind you of that someday," Maura says, her voice shaking a little. "When you're married to a man who once looked into your eyes and promised to forsake all others. I'll remind you of that after you've just had his baby and you have postpartum depression and feel as fat as a cow and you are pumping milk into little plastic containers in the middle of the night while he's running around with some twenty-two-year-old named Lisette. I'll remind you of that."

"Wait a second," Daphne says. "You didn't breast-feed."

I give her a look that says it's probably not the right moment to play the role of superior-earth-mother-to-be.

"I nursed Zoe for three weeks!" Maura says. "And then I had to quit because of mast.i.tis. Remember?"

Daphne shakes her head.

"Well, I did And besides , Daph, talk about missing the point."

"G.o.d. Well. Excuse me for living," Daphne says.

I give Daphne a sympathetic look, knowing that she would kill for a raging case of mast.i.tis right about now. Remarkably, I also think she'd settle for a philandering husband if it meant she could be a mother.

A few minutes later, with a lot of cajoling on my part and the ordering of another bottle of wine, the storm has pa.s.sed and we are on to safer topics. But as I listen to the three women I love most, I can't help but think how crazy it is that we all want something that we can't seem to have. Something that someone else at the table has in spades. I want my husband back, hold the baby. Daphne wants the baby, these days never mind her husband. Maura wants her husband to stop straying. Jess wants someone else's husband to stray a little more.

I consider what we did to get to this place. Whether any of us is entirely blameless for our predicament. Should Daphne have tried sooner to have a baby? If she knew that she wanted a child more than anything else, should she and Tony have tried to conceive in their twenties, rather than saving their money to buy a house? Should Jess use her head and follow her heart a little less? Should she only date available, unmarried men, for reasons of morality and practicality? Should Maura have seen the signs in Scott earlier? Should she have married a nicer guy, someone more like Niles? And what about me? Should I have just sucked it up and had a baby to keep the only man I've ever truly loved?

Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like. Even with a mother like mine, even with my untraditional wishes, even with all the books I've read about all the people with lives screwed up in one way or another, I still could have sworn things would be so much neater and easier than they're turning out to be.

eleven.

Word of Tucker clearly works its way to my mother because she decides to make a surprise appearance two days later. As I return home from work, I can hear her voice, high and animated, chatting with Jess about her "marvelous day" on Fifth Avenue. My mother still lives in Huntington, but since she married Dwight and can afford her expensive Manhattan haircuts and spa treatments, she comes into the city a lot more often.

I curse softly to myself and seriously consider creeping off to a nearby bar for a beer. But I decide that this wouldn't be fair to Jess. Besides, my mother is a night owl, keeping hours more consistent with a college girl than a sixty-three-year-old. She will only outwait me and likely even spend the night with us, lapsing into her giggling, bunny-slipper-wearing mode, as if she just watched the Sandra Dee sleepover scene in Grease .

I take a deep breath and walk through the door with a forced smile.

"Hi, Mother!" I say, noting her salon-perfect hair and long nails freshly painted in a bright plum color. She is always well groomed, but today is one of her more impressive days. She does not look her age and is one of those rare women who really does look more like our sister than our mother (as opposed to all the women who get this false compliment from cheesy men).

"h.e.l.lo, Claudia darling!" she says, standing to give me a prim hug, the kind where there is virtually no body contact other than our cheeks and shoulders.

"I didn't know you were coming into the city today?" I say, which clearly means, Good Lord, woman. How many times have I told you that I hate drop-ins ?

"I've come to photograph you, Claudia," she says, throwing the thick black camera strap over her head.

My mother fancies herself an artist. I've even heard her end the word with an e , for an affected artiste . It's pretty amusing, especially when you know the truth, that she dabbles in watercolors and ceramics. But to be fair, I will say this for her: at least she has interests and hobbies and pa.s.sions, even if those pa.s.sions often include inappropriate romances. She was never one of those idle, soap-opera-watching moms. She actually did watch soaps, but she also made sure her life was as scandalous as the most outrageous character on all her favorite shows. For a while, she had this weird obsession with Erica Kane and once phoned the All My Children set to inquire about a black clutch Erica was carrying in a funeral scene. She got the information, phoned her personal shopper at Nordstrom, and shamelessly ordered the same one for her own Mother's Day present. (My mother always picked out her own presents. Whenever my father tried, his effort would go unrewarded. "Did you get a gift receipt?" would be the first thing out of her mouth.) In any event, her latest hobby is black-and-white photography. I haven't seen her in action, but Maura a.s.sures me that she tries way too hard, comparing my mother's photos to her painful haikus. Maura also said that photography is one of her more annoying hobbies to date; in mid-conversation, my mom will whip out her Nikon, zoom in on your face and start snapping away, making comments like, "Chin down. Yeah. Just like that. Oh ! Fantastic! Work with me." Apparently she also takes roll after roll of random inanimate objects, like coffee mugs and stools and t.i.tles them "Mug Series" and "Stool Series." It's all too pretentious to bear.

"I would have phoned first, but I wanted you au naturel ."

"Well, that's what you got," I say, looking down at my work outfit, black pants, black heels, gray blouse, no accessories. Unless I'm meeting with an author or agent, I put almost no effort into my work wardrobe.

"I wanted to capture you as part of your normal workday routine. No frills. Just you."

As if I would have primped for you , I think, but instead I say, "Get outta here." I mean it literally, of course, but try to sound playful. I can't deal with her wounded routine.

"I'm serious. I need to take a roll or two. It won't take long."

I grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator, make my way over to the armchair across from her, and plop down with an exaggerated sigh. "I'm too tired for this, Mother."

Jess is standing behind my mother, sorting through a stack of mail. She stops and makes the cuckoo sign that was popular in elementary school, little swirls in the air, pointing at your own head then gesturing toward the other person. Then she crosses her eyes, which adds a nice psychotic touch.

I start to laugh, and my mother turns to see what's so amusing.

Jess sombers up quickly, taking great interest in a catalogue.

My mother faces me again and continues, "I already shot a roll of Jess while we waited for you. But that wasn't for my a.s.signment. It was just for fun. Jess is so d.a.m.ned photogenic, isn't she?"

"Uh-huh," I say. Jess does look great in just about every photo I've ever seen of her. I think it's because her face is so symmetrical, which I once read is the very thing that makes someone beautiful. The article said that even babies are drawn to faces with symmetry.

" Your portrait is for my a.s.signment," she says to me.

She couldn't be any more desperate for me to ask about her a.s.signment. So I fold and say, "What a.s.signment might that be, Mother?"

"I did tell you about my photography cla.s.s, didn't I?"

I nod, thinking, Only a dozen times .

"Well. We're working on portraits now."

"Sounds neat," I say.

She misses my sarcasm and says, "Yes. It is so much fun. But quite challenging to capture a fleeting expression on your subject's face."

"Right. I'm sure."

"Which brings me back to you. I've chosen you as my subject."

I can tell she expects me to be excited by being the chosen one, but I say, "Why not photograph Maura's kids? Or Dwight?"

"Because," she says hesitantly, as if about to unmask a dark truth.

Jess nods vigorously and makes another gesture, like, Getta load of this one .

"Our a.s.signment is to photograph pain." She frowns as she says it as if she, herself, is carrying quite the emotional load.