Baby proof

'I told you,' I say with a shrug. 'She was attractive. She had good hair and skin. And a decent body.'

'Decent?' Maura asks. 'Define decent, please.'

'It was pretty good,' I say, and then amend my statement as I consider my audience. 'Actually, you probably wouldn't think so.'

Maura's standards are ridiculous-for herself and everyone else. She is extremely thin-and with frequent workouts with a trainer, she is also toned and fit. You would never guess that she had three children. Some might even call her too thin. Daphne thinks so, but that might be because Daphne and she look so much alike except that Daphne is perpetually trying to lose fifteen to twenty pounds. In fact, one of my sisters' biggest arguments of the last five years came when Daphne was complaining about some bizarre diet not working and Maura said to her, 'I don't get it. Just don't eat, Daph. Just don't put the food in your mouth. What's so hard about that?' To Maura, it's not hard. I've never seen someone with so much self-discipline. To Daphne-and millions of other Americans-it's just not that easy. If it were, nobody would be fat.

So Maura continues now, 'So she was chunky? I can't see Ben with a chunky girl.'

'No. She wasn't chunky. Big-boned maybe,' I say. 'Lush.'

Jess laughs. 'Lush?'

'Young… curvy… strong,' I say matter-of-factly.

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

'Well,' I say, scraping 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 pass 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 buttass 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 bombshell 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 fuck about Tucker,' Jess says, raising her glass of wine. 'She's clearly just his rebound. In fact, I bet he'll stay in the rebound stage for years. Nobody's going to measure up to you, Claudia.'

This is more like it. I flash Jess a grateful smile and raise my glass. '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 glass 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 nobody 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 pissed.

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 shitting 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.