Page 28 of Mean Moms

A rich wife’s vanity business! Ugh. Belle had a BA in economics!

Ugh. Ugh. She’d done her research, she’d sourced fabric with the utmost care, she’d employed talented designers to work on the line, she’d hired a marketing and PR firm to help with the rollout.

And now it was all fucked, along with her reputation, by some mysterious, possibly nefarious error.

She was so upset, so embarrassed, and so confused.

The next day, she’d sent the samples back to the factory in Italy, and they’d inspected them thoroughly.

Nothing! They’d found nothing. What could have happened?

And why did it have to happen to her? That idea that she had a giant bull’s-eye on her back had turned from a feeling into a belief.

“Mom, are you going to get that?” Hildy asked, looking at Belle’s phone. Frost was calling again.

“No, I’ll speak to her later,” Belle said. She didn’t want to talk to Frost. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t need cheering up from her friends. She needed a time machine.

“Are you still upset about Pippins Cottage Home?” Hildy looked at her kindly.

Hildy, her little baby Hildy. When Belle had gotten pregnant with Hildy, she and Jeff had been living in the East Village, on the third floor of a brownstone on East Fifth Street.

The apartment was long and thin, and the kitchen was just a tiny nook off the living area (as an adventure, they’d decided not to take money from her father for a few years; after they had Hildy, that quickly changed).

Belle had loved that shitty apartment, with its banging radiator and the windows that looked right out onto the trees.

At night, she’d lie in bed, stroking her pregnant stomach and listening to people smoking outside bars, drunkenly chatting, their voices as clear as if they were in the bedroom with her.

“I’m still upset, yes,” she said to Hildy. “I worked hard on that project, and it’s not going to go the way I was hoping. Have you ever felt that way?”

Hildy cocked her head, thinking of an answer. “Remember last year, when we went to Aspen with the Charys and the Trevors?”

Belle nodded. The families had a tradition of skiing together in different locations each season—Aspen, Telluride, Big Sky, Alta—the kids dumped in ski school while the grown-ups enjoyed alone time.

Belle didn’t ski (though she loved expensive ski outfits), and so she spent her days napping, reading novels, getting spa treatments, and grabbing cocktails with the girls.

“When we got there, I decided that I’d dedicate the entire time to the downhill obstacle course.

They had one for the ski school kids. I wanted to get really good, so I spent hours practicing that thing, going over the little jumps, around the cones.

And by the last day, I was doing pretty well,” said Hildy.

Had Belle known that was happening? She recalled that she’d worn a brand-new Fendi ski suit during the trip, multicolored in pinks and purples and yellows.

But she couldn’t remember what her daughter had been up to.

“Then on the final run, I could feel I was going to break my record. And I was so proud of how fast I was going.” Hildy paused.

“What happened?” said Belle.

“Gertrude messed me up,” Hildy said.

“Gertrude?” Belle couldn’t imagine what Hildy meant.

“Yeah, I think she actually, like, broke my ski on purpose,” said Hildy. “I saw her near my equipment when I was walking back from the bathroom, and then during the race I crashed into a cone and slid the entire rest of the way down.”

“I’m sorry, honey. That does sound disappointing. But how can you be sure Gertrude did that? Why would she?” said Belle.

“Uh, Mom, have you ever met Gertrude?” said Hildy.

She’d turned serious, and Belle didn’t know what she was getting at.

Gertrude and Hildy had never been friends, as much as Belle and Morgan had pressured them to be.

They just didn’t click; Hildy was spicy and chatty, and Gertrude was, frankly, sad and kind of quiet.

Morgan complained often that Gertrude was getting teased about her weight and that Atherton wasn’t dealing with it properly.

“Of course I know Gertrude Chary,” said Belle. “I’ve known her since she was five years old.”

“Well, then you know she’s an evil bitch,” said Hildy.

“Hildy!” said Belle, surprised.

“Mom, it’s true. She does bizarre things—steals stuff from desks, she copies people’s work when no one’s looking. But then she pretends to be innocent in front of the teachers,” said Hildy.

“But maybe that’s because she’s being teased herself about being chubby—Morgan told me about ‘Girthy Gertrude.’ So maybe she’s acting out in retaliation.”

Hildy looked at Belle like she was crazy.

“What are you even talking about? Girthy Gertrude? Firstly, no one teases each other about weight at Atherton. What do you think this is, the year 2000? It’s called the body positivity movement, Mom.

Duh. And secondly, what seventh grader would come up with the name ‘Girthy Gertrude’?

Girthy? What does that even mean?” Hildy rolled her eyes so hard Belle was worried they might get stuck up in her brain.

The buzzer rang, interrupting them. Belle wasn’t expecting anyone today.

She’d been planning on holing up alone and continuing to monitor the internet for negative mentions of her event.

Her best guess was that somehow the fabric had come in contact with an allergen during the shipping process, but how that could have happened, well, that’s what Belle wanted to get to the bottom of.

“Maybe it was one of the moms from my lice email, trying to get back at me,” Belle had posited to Jeff yesterday, both of them having coffee in the kitchen, Jeff slurping his unattractively.

Did everyone get less and less attracted to their husbands as time went on?

Or was that just Belle? Sometimes she’d look at him doing something normal, like bending over to tie his shoe, or flossing, or toweling off after a shower, and think to herself: Ew .

And then a wave of guilt would come over her for feeling that way.

It wasn’t Jeff’s fault that he was aging.

She was, too, as much as she didn’t like to think about it.

And he still loved her just the same as he always had.

“I never should have had everyone wear something from the line.”

“Babe, that was a good idea,” Jeff had said.

He’d walked over and given her a long hug, and, in his familiar embrace, Belle’s duplicity had hit her in the stomach like one of Miles’s soccer balls. She’d let Dr. Broker kiss her. Sort of. Jeff could never, ever know.

“It was Sofia’s idea, actually,” Belle had said.

“Well, whatever, it was Sofia’s good idea.

All we know is that this definitely wasn’t a random event,” said Jeff.

“We have to take it in context. Your leaked email plus this. There’s a pattern here.

I’m going to contact that private detective that Tim hired to look into Frost’s accident—maybe he can do some digging for us, too.

My thought is that both of you have been targeted. ”

“Targeted? That sounds sinister,” said Belle.

Jeff had looked at her a little patronizingly, which had annoyed Belle. “When you’re rich, people want things from you,” he’d said. “We have money. People want money. It’s as simple as that.”

Now, getting up to see who was at the entrance, she thought about their conversation.

She remembered Morgan’s phrase—“negative event clusters.” She wasn’t generally a superstitious, karma-is-real kind of person, but it had occurred to her that by reveling in Thyme & Time’s robbery she’d perhaps brought this on herself.

Does the universe punish you for being a bad friend?

She saw Frost downstairs at the door, her red hair poking out of a white bucket hat, holding two shopping bags. Frost waved at the camera and Belle buzzed her in.

“It’s freezing outside,” Frost said as she stepped out of the elevator, which opened right into the apartment’s bright blue foyer.

“I tried calling you to tell you I was on my way, but you didn’t pick up.

I figured you were negging me because you wanted to feel sorry for yourself all alone.

” Frost took off her hat and shook out her hair.

“But I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

Belle was happy to see Frost, as always. It had been that way since the first day they’d met, the kind of friend who you both love and are a little in love with.

“Look what I’ve brought over, you’re going to die for it,” said Frost. She handed her coat to Ivanna and walked past the colorful print from Rachel Perry’s Vogue series, one of Belle’s favorites, into Belle’s library, the walls warm with purple felt.

Belle was pleased with it every time she entered, a mark of a successful renovation. The Davids were worth every penny.

Frost opened the shopping bags and began laying out items of clothes—“Don’t peek until I’m done!

” she commanded. Hildy crept in behind them, having heard Frost’s voice.

She’d taken her hood down and looked brighter for it, more like the Hildy of old rather than the grumpy tween Belle was currently dealing with. Frost looked up and saw her there.

“Hildy, my darling! Give me a hug.” Frost went over and swept her up tightly, causing Hildy to blush happily. Even Hildy couldn’t resist Frost.

“I’m so sorry about your strep,” Frost said, ruffling Hildy’s hair, which was looking greasy from inactivity.

Belle would make her wash it tonight. “What a crock of shit.” Frost liked to curse around kids, and the children ate it up.

It made them feel grown-up and in on the joke.

Frost went back to arranging clothes on Belle’s sofa.