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13.

The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, I toasted a leftover waffle and knocked on Stella’s door. “Room service.” For now, I’d accept her need to eat in private, even if I didn’t like it. She was eating, that was the important thing. Stella opened the door, wearing yesterday’s dress, her hair hanging down, as if it were wet. “Thank you, Mommy.” Then she closed the door in my face.

I fretted about what to do about the FOMHS meeting, which was at five that afternoon. Charlotte Says: Flakiness is the plague of modern times. Never cancel, except in an emergency. But now I had no childcare. I couldn’t take Stella to the meeting, which was about prosecco and gossip as much as fundraising plans, and I couldn’t miss the meeting either, because I needed a regular connection with the other moms in order to organize playdates. I wished I had someone I could leave Stella with, but the only person I could ever have asked that favor of was Cherie.

The cross on the wall caught my eye. Could it be connected with Stella’s insistence on taking her meals alone? When Stella emerged from her room, I pointed to the cross and said, “That wasn’t me or Daddy. Any idea who it was? Tell me the truth.”

“People should always tell the truth,” Stella said piously.

I exhaled sharply. “What is the truth? Why won’t you eat when I’m around? Why does that thing keep appearing on the wall?”

Stella was silent, as if my questions were simply unanswerable, like so many of hers were: “Do trees care about each other?” “Where did the ocean come from?” “Is planet Earth going to get hotter and hotter until it’s four hundred and sixty-four degrees like on Venus?”

“May I go back to my room?” Stella said, and I nodded, defeated. Pete had said she had to clean it off, but I didn’t have the heart to insist if she thought she didn’t do it.

The doorbell startled me. On the doorstep was Emmy, her striped dress paired with tan ankle boots, her fringe looking as if she’d measured every strand of hair with a ruler. By her side was another school mom who always wore lurid yoga leggings. Her name escaped me.

Emmy was clearly not here to organize the playdate with Lulu that Nick had suggested yesterday. Her face was grimly self-important, and my stomach sank.

“We’ve come to tell you that you’re disinvited from the FOMHS meetings, starting with this afternoon,” Emmy said. Her breath was swampy with green smoothie. “I just heard what you did to Cherie.”

“Cherie told you?” I whispered. “But she already accepted my apology.”

“This didn’t come from her.” Emmy pulled up a video on her phone: the freeze-frame was of me, standing legs wide apart, brandishing scissors, while Cherie lay crumpled at my feet.

“Where did you get this?”

“I live right next door?” said Lurid Leggings. Emmy hit play. The video had been edited. I heard myself shouting, “Stella isn’t like Zach! She’s absolutely nothing like Zach.” Oh no. Then I shoved Cherie, or it looked that way. Cherie gave a little scream, which I didn’t remember, sat down hard on her front path.

“You physically assaulted her,” said Emmy.

“It was an accident,” I protested.

“And you denigrated her special-needs child.”

I turned to Lurid Leggings. “You’ve edited the video.”

She looked self-righteous. “People have short attention spans.”

“Emmy, please,” I said. “I did say those things about Zach, but there was a larger context.”

“So, you admit it,” Emmy said. She was so sure she was in the right. In her downstairs toilet, she had a framed copy of “Desiderata,” and I thought of the line “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” Emmy certainly seemed to think so, and it was easy to believe that if you never really had any problems.

“I saw it,” Stella announced, appearing beside me. “Zach’s mommy was being mean to my mommy.” I loved her so fiercely. But then she continued. “If someone invades your personal space, you should punch that bastard right in the face.”

I gaped. “Stella! That is not how we talk. Go to your room.”

She retreated, and I closed my eyes, feeling hot and prickly all over. “OK, OK,” I said. “I get the message.” I felt so ashamed, desperate for them to go away. As I shut the front door, I distinctly heard Emmy saying, “Cray-cray.”

I certainly looked cray-cray in the video. I thought of all those videos I’d watched of little kids freaking out. Now other people had watched this video of me. But those videos of kids were anonymous, taken by their parents to help other parents. This video was taken to warn the other moms about me, a menace who had to be disinvited from FOMHS.

I called Pete, even though it was still early in Atlanta, and did my best to make this into a funny story.

“Those moms are the crazy ones,” he said. “They’re treating you like you’re some kind of psycho.”

I tried to laugh. “I know! But they know I’m not. I’ve been out for margaritas with them.” On one occasion, we’d laughed ourselves silly at the thought of the nit-removal party we were going to invite people to: “The pleasure of your company is requested/For an evening of cocktails and nit-picking…” For some reason, the phrase BYONC (bring your own nit comb) was especially hilarious.

But now that I thought about it, the way the nit party came up was that I’d been talking about hosting a get-together at my place, musing about what type of event I could have. “A drawer-organizing party,” someone had joked. I’d laughed along. Then Emmy had suggested the nit-removal party. I thought they were laughing with me, but now I realized they were laughing at me.

I sat down on the sofa and cradled a cushion to my chest. “I don’t think they ever actually liked me. They thought I was uptight.”

“They only know one tiny part of you. In San Francisco, they would have killed to be invited to one of your parties.”

“Do you ever wonder about that time?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“Were we really friends with all those people? I’ve lost touch with pretty much all of them.”

“Long-distance friendships are tough,” Pete said.

But after I got off the phone with him, I reflected that he was always texting and calling old friends. I was the one whose friendships were so flimsy they had melted away. My time in San Francisco had been my proof that I could make friends. But now I looked back on all those parties and dinners, I realized I was always too busy to sit down and talk with anyone. I couldn’t remember a single conversation.

Maybe I didn’t know how to get along with others, and the FOMHS mothers saw the truth.

I got the rubbing alcohol from the cleaning supplies cupboard and poured it onto a clean cloth. Then I went at the cross. It didn’t work, and I tried nail polish remover, and then toothpaste. Finally, I got a paring knife and scraped off the paint. I would need to paint over the ruined spot. But for now, it felt good, so good, like scratching a mosquito bite until it bled.