Daphne’s reasons for telling me to stay with Ben will have less to do with my relationship and everything to do with her baby obsession. It is the filter through which she observes the world around her. She and her husband, Tony, have been trying to get pregnant for nearly two years. They tried for a year the old-fashioned way: drink a bottle of wine, hop in the sack, pray for a missed period. After that, they progressed to buying fertility monitors, making ovulation charts, and bickering about peak times in the month. She is now taking Clomid and researching fertility clinics.
It pains me to watch my sister’s monthly heartbreak, to see the way the struggle has changed her, how she has become increasingly bitter as her friends, one by one, all have babies. She is particularly resentful when other people have an easy time of it, and she went so far as to write off her girlfriend Kelly altogether when Kelly got knocked up on her honeymoon with boy-girl twins. When Maura told Daphne she should be happy for Kelly (which might be true but was certainly an unnecessary comment), my sisters got in a huge argument. Daphne hung up on Maura and promptly phoned me, trying to enlist me to her side. Then as Maura beeped in on my other line, eager to share her version of the spat, Daphne yelled, “Don’t you dare answer call-waiting!” and then frantically argued her point. She insisted that the fallout with Kelly had nothing to do with her blessing of twins, and everything to do with Kelly’s proclamation that she was naming her daughter Stella. “That’s my name,” Daphne must have said ten times. I resisted the urge to crack myself up with a, “No, your name is actually Daphne,” and instead assured my sister that I wasn’t a big fan of alliteration in naming anyway (Daphne’s last name is Sacco). I told her Stella Sacco sounded like a stripper and that if I received a “Stella Sacco” resume at work, I would instantly toss it aside and never even see that she was a Fulbright scholar. A long conversation about baby naming ensued, a topic I find to be ridiculous and tiresome unless you have a nine-month deadline in the works. Discussing baby names when you’re not even pregnant is almost as ridiculous as laying claim to a name. Of course, I shared these observations with Maura when I finally called her back, but told her that we should nonetheless try to support Daphne. I am very accustomed to brokering a delicate peace between my sisters, although they might say the same. Perhaps that’s just the natural dynamic of three sisters. We are all very close, but we are frequently two against one and the alliances constantly form and re-form.
So, anyway, the mere thought that my sisters might side with Ben, and try to talk me into having a baby, is just too much to bear. I need an unconditional, unwavering supporter. Someone who will put aside her own bias. That’s where my best friend, Jess, always comes in.
Jess and I met our freshman year at Princeton when we bonded in our distaste for our respective roommates, both strident theater majors named Tracy. One night right before Thanksgiving break, Jess plied the Tracys with vodka and cranberry juice and talked them into a roommate swap. She was so effective that she made the Tracys think it was their idea. My Tracy even wrote me a note of apology in calligraphy . The next day Jess schlepped her clothing, books, and comforter across the hall in plastic crates and garbage bags, and we ended up living together for the next fourteen years (nearly as long as we lived at home), throughout college and then into our first crummy Manhattan apartment on Ninety-second and York.
We upgraded several times over the years, until we nabbed our spacious, sunny loft on Park Avenue South that, due to Jess’s kitschy style, drew many comparisons to the apartment on Friends . We each had a few boyfriends along the way, but none that we considered ditching the other for.
Until Ben came along.
Jess and I were both teary the day I moved in with Ben, and then joked that our separation felt like a divorce. We continued to talk every day, sometimes several times a day, but there was a definite change in our friendship. In part, it was just that we saw each other less. We no longer had those late-night and early-morning chats that can’t really be duplicated over the phone. In part, it was an inevitable shift of loyalty. Ben became the person I talked to the most, the one I turned to first in crisis or celebration. I’ve seen married women put their girlfriends over their husbands, and although I admire this brand of female fidelity, I also believe that it can be a dangerous dynamic. Certain things should stay sacred in a marriage. Jess and I never discussed the changes in our relationship, but I could tell she understood. I think she also pulled back a little herself, out of respect for my relationship and perhaps as a point of pride. She cultivated a new circle of friends all single women in their thirties, all searching for love.