Page 24 of Mean Moms

We want to announce a change to front desk security, in the wake of a few concerning incidents in the surrounding area involving persons experiencing homelessness.

If you plan on coming to the school for any reason—a PA meeting, to pick your child up for a doctor’s appointment, if you’re volunteering for the food bank—you must first register on our proprietary app, Atheroo, at least 24 hours in advance.

There will be no exceptions granted. We all know that I know you, but please don’t put me in the position of not allowing you into your own child’s school.

Thank you for your cooperation. We at Atherton appreciate your support, as always.

Take care,

Mary Margaret

Mary Margaret was two years to retirement, and it couldn’t come soon enough.

She’d worked at Atherton for thirty years, in various administrative positions, and had seen the school transform from a sweet, low-key haven for downtown families into the utter insanity of today, a mecca for super-wealthy, pushy parents holed up in $10 million apartments in the West Village and Tribeca.

Yes, the Atherton community still lived in New York City, but in an enclosed bubble of money, their children shepherded from place to place in black Escalades, experiencing nothing of Manhattan beyond the walls of their fancy private school, designer homes, and restaurants that were way too expensive for ten-year-olds to be eating in.

Students coming in on Monday mornings talking about the omakase at Shuko and sitting in their dad’s box at the Knicks game and flying private to London for a long weekend.

Why live in New York, anyway? Mary suspected it had to do with status, the desire to be hipper than their contemporaries in Greenwich and Chappaqua and even on the Upper East Side.

So parents could say they lived there. In the old days, the children took the bus to school, they walked from their nearby apartments, some of them took the subway from Brooklyn.

Alone! Not anymore. Mary had overheard a recent conversation between two fifth-grade boys, one expressing shock that the other had taken the 6 train to soccer practice in Central Park (with his nanny, of course).

“My mom would never let me take the subway,” he’d said to his friend snidely. “That’s why we have our driver.”

In the last ten years, the moms had become more overprotective and more negligent, diverging traits that somehow overlapped in the Venn diagram of modern parenting.

The kids had neither freedom—they were trapped in their rooms on their devices instead of sent out to explore the world—nor true attention from their mothers, who were all glued to their phones reading about the “right” way to parent instead of doing it.

(Fathers had always been useless and continued to be.) It was certainly a toxic combination.

Mary had grown up in Garden City, Long Island, attending Catholic school.

The nuns would slap you on the face if you misbehaved.

Imagine a student getting hit now? Mary’s childhood felt as far away as the Middle Ages.

She still lived in the same town with her husband, who’d retired a few years ago from his job importing office furniture, in a small house they’d bought for $50,000 in 1979.

Mary was one of seven children and had four children of her own, plus six grandchildren.

She’d been around kids her whole life—babysitting for her siblings, raising her babies, helping care for her precious grandkids, and in her role at Atherton, which for years had been an absolute joy.

She’d loved taking the LIRR to Penn Station every morning, then the N train down to Union Square, walking to the majestic school building from there, with its red brick and impressive white columns.

She’d loved the smell as she entered for the day, the cookie aroma wafting from the kitchen, manned by Chef Nancy, a dear friend of Mary’s.

Her job at the front desk meant she saw everything.

She knew which child was depressed and which was a liar and which was going to crack if he didn’t get into Harvard.

She saw their fights, their fun, their breakdowns.

She knew who was using vapes in the bathroom and who’d written a term paper with AI.

She knew each mom clique and who was up and who was down.

She knew that Gabby Mahler and her wife, Margo, were going through a divorce; Mary helped Sue Grossman, Atherton’s psychologist, with her schedule.

Mary knew that Ava Leo and David Chung were having money problems—they’d contacted the school about potential financial aid.

She knew that Dre Finlay, the current PA president, was a total gossip.

Mary had been in the bathroom when Dre and Julie Klein had come in after a recent PA meeting.

“Like, we get it Morgan, you’re ‘amazing’ and no one else is quite as perfect as you. Ugh, it’s so annoying how superior she is,” said Dre. Julie clucked in agreement.

“I’m like a hundred percent sure she’s on Ozempic,” said Julie. “She’s thinks she’s fooling everyone, but she wasn’t that thin last year.”

“Look at Gertrude,” said Dre, whispering now. “That’s what Morgan’s body wants to be. Mia told me that Gertrude is being even weirder than normal. Morgan seems to be so in the dark about that, or maybe it’s just denial.”

“Very sad,” said Julie.

“But she’s still the worst,” said Dre. They both laughed before heading into separate stalls. Mary waited for them to finish and exit before coming out.

Mary knew that Morgan Chary, Frost Trevor, and Belle Redness, with that obscenely long hair, were, as they used to refer to it in Mary’s day, the popular girls of Atherton.

They were pretty and rich and social, and that status inspired jealousy among the other women.

The golden trio had recently expanded to include the new woman, Sofia Perez, who was an absolute mystery to Mary.

She’d never seen a new family get two nonentry spots, seemingly for no clear reason—she knew the donor list by heart and had never seen the name Perez on it.

The admissions process was closely guarded, but even Heather Lipsky, who ran that department, had been taken by surprise by the Perez situation.

Dr. Broker had pulled a headmaster trump card, and, Heather had confessed to Mary, basically gone rogue. It was all highly unusual.

Mary had adored the former headmaster, Dr. Summers, an inspiring educator: kind, patient, stern when it was needed, beloved by all.

She missed him. He’d retired two years ago, and the school had gone downhill at a fast clip since.

(To clarify, fundraising had soared, but Mary felt the school had lost its soul, and soul was more important than a state-of-the-art science lab or a professional sports-grade gym—to Mary, anyway).

Dr. Broker! Ha! He was a wolf in heartthrob’s clothing, in Mary’s opinion.

The mothers were obsessed, and Mary watched them fall over each other to get Dr. Broker’s attention, flirting with him as if they were giggly sorority girls and not forty-year-olds with husbands at home.

And he encouraged it, flashing them that smile, attending those ridiculous theme parties they were all so fond of.

But there was something off about that young man that Mary couldn’t quite put her finger on.

In other news, poor Nurse Weiss was so distraught over the lice email leak. She prided herself on confidential communication with parents, and the breach was haunting her, to the point that she’d hired an outside consultant to look into it, without telling Dr. Broker.

Well, none of it was Mary’s business now, was it?

Mary waved goodbye to Morgan Chary, breezing out, leaving the building after yet another meeting about fundraising, or Atherton Gives Back, or whatever it was she was always coming to the school for, in and out of Dr. Broker’s office.

She was here more than any other mother, hands down.

Her daughter, Gertrude, that strange little creature, was also always around.

Mary had seen Gertrude bringing Dr. Broker coffee the other day, probably on the command of her mother.

Mary chuckled to herself thinking about Dre and Julie’s little bathroom gossip session, how all these women were basically grown-up versions of their high school selves.

For all their talk of self-reflection, for all the therapy they paid for, their meditation crap, they were still just mean girls, teasing each other on the playground.

Mary would get through her two more years at Atherton and then join her husband in retirement. That was a short amount of time in the scheme of life. She was old enough to know that.