Page 2 of Mean Moms
The First Day of School!
Belle Redness lived for the first day of Atherton drop-off.
She loved getting back into the swing of her New York City life.
She enjoyed the Hamptons, but by August she was hot and bored and sick of the pool, the garden parties, and the bugs.
Especially the bugs. This summer, they’d been dealing with a nightmarish infestation of lanternflies, inch-long monsters with spotted brown wings that laid shiny eggs all over her beautiful trees.
They’d soar around her yard, creating a horrible, biblical scene on her pristine East Hampton estate.
She’d gotten used to the sensation of squashing them, hard, crushing their shells into the grass with her strappy sandals.
For nearly the entirety of August, Belle had stopped entertaining, so distressed by the idea that her friends would notice the insect carcasses littering her lawn.
Bugs, apparently, didn’t care how much money you had.
It was the worst thing about them, worse than the bites.
So she’d been happy to get back to the city last week, away from the vermin plague, settling into their four-thousand-square-foot floor-through penthouse on Leonard Street, their “Tribeca Gem,” as Architectural Digest had put it.
Belle and her husband, Jeff, had gutted the apartment over two years, living in the Greenwich Hotel with their daughter, Hildy, and their son, Miles, while their architect and designer, a husband-husband duo who called themselves “the Davids,” went to town.
In AD , Belle had described their time at the hotel as Hildy’s “Madeline in the City moment,” which she’d thought was a charming way of putting it.
In reality, all of them, particularly Belle, had nearly gone crazy, packed into a two-room suite with no kitchen and just one and a half baths. But they’d survived.
Hildy came in, wearing sweats and a hoodie that hung on her thin frame.
Belle winced at Hildy’s outfit but said nothing.
Miles followed, in colorful Flow Society shorts and hideous blue Crocs, the pride of every fourth-grade boy.
He gave Belle a hug, twirling her long hair playfully as he did.
When Belle was young, she’d grown her thick, chestnut hair to her midback, and she’d kept it that length into adulthood.
She felt that it gave her a girlish charm and loved that it had become her signature look, topping it with ribbons and bows and the odd headband.
Hildy stayed far away. The family’s white Ragdoll cats, Duke and Sky, came slinking in together, each rubbing on one of Hildy’s legs.
“Mom, come on, let’s go,” said Hildy, bending down to pet Duke.
Hildy was in the seventh grade. Both the Redness children attended Atherton Academy, on Sixteenth Street near Stuyvesant Square Park.
Atherton was the top private school in downtown Manhattan, catering to children of tech CEOs and creative empires rather than the private-equity crowd that lived uptown.
It was eminently more fashionable to have your kid at Atherton than, say, Trinity or Dalton or St. Bernard’s, and Belle was all about being fashionable.
Belle’s only gripe about the school was that it didn’t have a uniform.
Some nonsense about the importance of self-expression.
Every morning was a war, with Hildy refusing to wear any of the overtly feminine items Belle had bought for her at LoveShackFancy.
Hildy had no interest in looking “cute,” as she put it with a grimace.
She rightly pointed out that these clothes were Belle’s style, not her own.
Instead, Hildy bought her sweats exclusively from Champion.
“Just because you and the other moms are bitchy fembots who dress and look alike doesn’t mean that I have to be like that,” Hildy explained to her matter-of-factly, after Belle had offered to take her school shopping.
Belle had nodded and kept her mouth shut.
Her therapist had told her that the more she pressured Hildy to look a certain way, the more she would resist, and so Belle had been working on holding her tongue.
If this was the worst thing about Hildy, so be it.
Hildy already had a couple “theys” in her grade at Atherton, as well as one boy who was transitioning.
Hildy had assured Belle that her fashion choices were just that; she liked boys, she didn’t want to be one.
But the dread that one day Hildy would change her mind, come home, and tell them to call her “Henry” lingered.
Was this what it felt like during the 1950s, when no one knew which child would come down with polio?
Belle wondered. She understood that questioning your gender didn’t equal possible paralysis or even death, but there was something strange about New York City lately, something mysterious and sinister, that was spiking her anxiety.
The lanternflies everywhere. Dog poop decorating the sidewalks.
Slugs after rainstorms. The uptick in subway slashings, which Belle kept hearing whispered about at cocktail parties. Everything suddenly felt like a threat.
Belle shivered as she and Hildy and Miles approached the main building of Atherton, a gorgeous rust-red structure with proud white columns.
They’d had their driver, Fred, drop them off a couple of blocks away from the school, as the area became clogged with SUVs and Ubers and even the occasional Rolls-Royce.
The September air was warm and heavy. They passed a sleeping figure on the sidewalk, covered in ratty black blankets, and the pungent, sour smell of unwashed human hit Belle’s nose.
She held her breath and grabbed her children’s hands.
Hildy shook her off as if Belle was a stranger.
Belle, stung, recovered in time to put on a big smile for the drop-off crowd gathered in front of the school entrance, the moms with fresh chops, waving goodbye, taking pictures of their little ones with signs like NOAH’S FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE!
? and CONGRATS TO FIFI ON KINDERGARTEN! OUR STAR!
All the moms went to the first day of drop-off.
It was where you reconnected with people you hadn’t seen over the summer, who’d been living on Shelter Island or Martha’s Vineyard or Fire Island instead of the Hamptons.
Everyone dressed up, showing off their tasteful tans and new wardrobes.
Belle was in a variation of her standard uniform: a silk cream minidress from Khaite with a dainty scalloped collar, with Manolo Blahnik polka-dot Mary Janes.
She’d tied her hair with a large pink bow.
There were no nannies in sight, which would surely change tomorrow, when the sidewalk would be filled with women of different sizes and ethnicities. But today was for the parents. To preen. To chat. To remind each other they existed.
“I can go by myself now, drop-off is for the lower school babies like Miles,” Hildy scoffed. “Suck it, Hildy,” said Miles, who then raced off to find his friends, leaving Hildy and Belle standing together miserably.
“Belle! Hi! Gertrude already went in!” Belle saw Morgan Chary walking toward them through the perfumed throng, her thin arms outstretched.
Morgan was the wife of Art Chary, the founder of the billion-dollar sneaker startup Welly, the one that sold trendy shoes for $100.
Morgan was in her postworkout best—Beyond Yoga everything, including some sort of Lycra turtleneck situation, her blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail, her feet clad in her favorite Loewe sneakers.
“Excuse my outfit,” said Morgan, as if she’d be wearing anything other than overpriced spandex.
Morgan was the workout queen. “I’m just coming from a class with Tracy Anderson—she’s the best.”
Belle and Morgan and their other closest friend, Frost Trevor, had known each other since the first day of pre-K at Atherton.
The women had become an inseparable troop, gravitating toward one another, as some moms inevitably did, lured by a commonality of style, money, and circumstance.
They were a powerful bunch, both the wealthiest and the prettiest moms in the lower school, which was saying something, as most of the Atherton moms were wealthy and pretty. If you weren’t, well, why not?
A minute later, Frost appeared, wearing a sleeveless pinstripe vest and swingy wide-legged pants, which Belle assumed were some prized vintage find.
“Oh, thank God you’re both here, I didn’t want to have to speak to anyone else,” Frost said conspiratorially.
She was glowing from her summer vacation abroad.
Belle noticed that the other mothers, particularly the newer ones, were looking their way, admiring their group as you would celebrities—at a distance, with reverence and not a little jealousy.
“Uh, Mom, I’m still here,” said Hildy with an eye roll. She was standing to the side, slumped a little, and Belle inwardly cringed at her disheveled appearance.
“Hildy, darling, how was your summer?” asked Frost, giving Hildy a big, warm hug. Though Morgan was the super-mom, Frost was the most maternal of the bunch, though you wouldn’t guess it from her avant-garde clothes and intimidating beauty.
“Yeah, fine, sleepaway was good, Mom and Dad didn’t drive me too crazy when I got back,” Hildy said. “Actually, maybe Mom did.” Frost laughed. Belle didn’t. “I’m going into the building now, but nice to see you both,” said Hildy.
“You too, sweetie,” said Morgan. Hildy slunk away, putting her hoodie over her head as she walked inside.