“It’s a phase,” Tess said. “Boys grow out of it.”

“Do they?” Claudia countered.

“Yes,” Tess said, looking toward me, hoping I’d join in.

Claudia again: “I don’t think they do. I think it morphs. Their fascination with their own assholes evolves into their fascination with ours.”

Tess giggled as she pretended to cover her ears.

Still Claudia: “What is it with men that they all want to fuck us in the butt?”

Please understand: I am no prude. I enjoy the occasional tacky sex conversation. But it was morning, and this was bar talk. I did my best to ignore the question.

But Claudia kept on: “Lately, Dan has been begging me, whispering in my ear, pleading. He even bought a book, written by a woman, about the joys of it, the supposed pleasure. I’m not convinced!”

I glanced out the window of Muffins and More just as Frida Fabritz from Heights Realty hurried into the coffee establishment across the street.

Frida Fabritz was the Realtor who, years earlier, rented us our two-bedroom apartment. That’s a joke, considering one of the bedrooms is a small, windowless space, a glorified closet. Recently, we had one of the math teachers from Montague over for dinner. He admired how we managed in such “cramped quarters.” I asked him to do us a favor and calculate the square footage of our apartment. Frida had listed it at approximately twelve hundred square feet, but I’d always doubted the figure. He paced out the apartment and, after a grim silence, said, “Well, you’ve got close to nine hundred square feet here, if you include the boys’ room.”

“Room?” I said. “You call that a room?”

That morning, as I watched Frida Fabritz enter Starbucks, I had an urge to chase after her. No, I wouldn’t make a scene. I’d simply tell her what we’d discovered when a math teacher measured our apartment. I ached to make Frida buckle over with guilt. Luckily for her, she’d gone across the street for coffee. Luckily for her, I had both boys and was trapped in a conversation with my mother friends.

“Kate?”

I looked at Claudia. “What?”

“Where did you go?”

“I’m here, listening,” I said, turning to check on Teddy and Sam, who sat entranced, watching Maddie fold a series of swans with the colored origami paper. Debbie held a corn muffin between them, breaking off chunks for them to chew.

“You’re no help,” Claudia said.

“I know,” I said. “Sorry.”

Claudia said, “Whatever.”

“Where were we?” Tess asked.

“Assholes,” Claudia said. Then she leaned forward and bellowed, “Oh, for the record, do you know which of our neighbors likes taking it up the butt . . . ?”

I escaped before learning the answer. Outside, Teddy, the willful one, struggled with me, using his winter boots to kick at my ankles. Both boys had wanted to stay, but I had errands to run, and Sam, gentle Sam, needed a nap. We set off for Key Food but stopped at the M&O newsstand for a box of cherry Luden’s and a packet of tissues for the boys’ runny noses.