But now. Now I feel trapped. By them. By all of it.

For a second, I consider admitting this to Suzanne, but I know that if I do, it will be game over. I'll never be able to take it back or soften it, and someday, when the storm has passed, my sister might even throw it back in my face. She's been known to do that.

So I just say, "Margot's fine. We still talk all the time… But we're just not on the same page… She's so all-consumed with the pregnancy thing-which is understandable, I guess…"

"You think you'll get on the same page soon?" she asks, obviously inquiring about our plans to start a family.

"Probably. I might as well pop out a few kids. We're already all hunkered down as if we have them. I was just thinking about that last night… How our friends in the city who have kids make parenthood seem so palatable. They seem completely unchanged-the same combination of immature yet cultured. Yuppie hipsters. The urban mainstream. Still going out to see good music and having brunch at cool restaurants."

I sigh, thinking of Sabina, and how, instead of just taking her triplets to play dates and inane music classes, she also totes them to the MoMA or the CMJ Film Festival. And instead of dressing them in smocked bubbles, she puts them in plain black, organic cotton T-shirts and denim, creating mini-Sabinas, blurring generational lines.

"But here the converse seems true," I say, getting all worked up. "Everyone is a full-fledged grown-up even before they have kids. It's like the nineteen-fifties all over again when people turned into their parents at age twenty-one… And I feel us turning into that, Andy and I… There's no mystery left, no challenge, no passion, no edge. This is just… it, you know? This is our life from here on out. Only it's Andy's life. Not mine."

"So he's glad you moved?" she asks. "No buyer's remorse at all?"

"None. He's thrilled… He whistles even more than usual… He's a regular Andy Griffith. Whistling in the house. Whistling in the yard and garage. Whistling as he goes off to work with Daddy or off to play golf with all his good ole boy friends."

"Good ole boys? I thought you said rednecks don't live in Atlanta?"

"I'm not talking about good ole boy rednecks. I'm talking frat boy yucksters."

Suzanne laughs as I rinse the few remaining Trix floating in a pool of Easter egg-pink milk down the drain, and although at one time I might have found Andy's breakfast of choice endearing, at this moment I only wonder what kind of grown, childless man eats pastel cereal with a cartoon bunny on the box.

"Have you told him how you feel?" my sister asks.

"No," I say. "There's no point."

"No point in honesty?" she gently probes.

It is the sort of thing I have always told her when she and Vince are having problems. Be open. Communicate your feelings. Talk it out. It suddenly strikes me that not only are our roles reversed but that this advice is easier said than done. It only feels easy when your problems are relatively minor. And right now, my problems feel anything but minor.

"I don't want Andy to feel guilty," I say-which is the complicated truth of the matter.

"Well, maybe he should feel guilty," Suzanne says. "He made you move."

"He didn't make me do anything," I say, feeling a pang of reassuring defensiveness for Andy. "He offered me plenty of outs. I just didn't take them… I put up no resistance at all."

"Well, that was stupid," she says.

I turn away from the sink and, feeling like I'm about ten years old, say, "You're stupid."

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.")