Page 34 of Mean Moms

A Happy Headmaster!

Dr. Broker, call him Paul, used to love his job as headmaster at Atherton Academy.

Leading up to this appointment, he’d held various positions at prestigious private schools (he’d graduated from Harvard with a master’s in early education and also held doctoral degrees in English and comparative literature from Columbia University).

His career was in his blood. Paul’s father, Martin, now deceased, was the longtime head of school at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts.

His mother, Nancy, currently in an assisted living home, had been an American history teacher at Deerfield.

Paul, an only child whose parents had him when they were well into their forties, had grown up on the famous prep school’s campus, soaking in the idea that molding the country’s best young minds was a mission comparable to religion.

And so landing the top job at Atherton, one of New York City’s finest schools, was like ascending closer to God.

The redbrick building with white columns, tall and strong, the long history of the Quaker tradition emanating from the impressive classrooms, the teachers with their Ivy League credentials—it all brought Paul a nearly orgasmic amount of pleasure.

And, yes, Atherton leaned Progressive (no letter grades, no uniforms, a play-based curriculum until third grade), compared to other Manhattan schools like Collegiate and Trinity.

But Paul appreciated that aspect of its character.

It was one way he felt he could differentiate his career from his father’s—“the hippie-dippie one,” as Paul remembered his father referring to Atherton, years ago.

Anyway, Paul’s young age, forty-one, would have precluded him from the headmaster roles at most uptown schools.

There was always time for that. If he made his mark at Atherton, with its highly influential community, the world would be his oyster.

For the past year, he’d been doing just that.

Improving parent-teacher communication, leading a record-breaking fundraising round in order to complete the new school theater, forging partnerships with downtown Manhattan cultural institutions such as the Whitney and the revamped Ellis Island museum.

He’d recruited star teachers and specialists, and also implemented an updated Atherton code of conduct for today’s fraught political environment, with guidelines about gender tolerance and neo-antisemitism and, most popularly (among parents), a phone ban until eighth grade.

In short, he’d been killing it, and had been proud of the progress he’d achieved in so little time in his role.

Both the students and parents respected him, and he was exceptionally popular among the mothers, no doubt because of his good looks and charm.

Paul had never denied the basic advantages his face and body gave him.

Did donors appreciate that he looked like a midbudget rom-com actor instead of a dowdy principal?

They did. Did he purposefully flirt with the richest mothers to squeeze even more money out of them?

Sure. But that was part of his job, and he’d never crossed a line with any of them.

Until recently, that is. And now he’d crossed line after line after line.

Paul lived close to school, in an Atherton-owned prewar two-bedroom near Gramercy Park.

It was big and sunny and had been renovated right before he’d moved in, a demand he’d made before signing his contract of $800,000 a year, the going rate for headmasters at top private academies in the city.

He was lounging on his couch, a formal number from Restoration Hardware—his taste ran traditional, leather chairs and Moroccan rugs, from years of living amid eighteenth-century architecture at Deerfield.

He was reading the latest issue of the New Yorker , giving his brain a break from the academic journals and Atherton parent “communication.”

Paul had known of the rabidity of New York City parents by reputation and had experienced similar, if lesser, amounts of intensity at his previous administration jobs.

But nothing could have prepared him for the pure onslaught of craziness he’d encountered at Atherton: the pestering, the competitiveness, the attention-seeking, the attempts at bribery!

Parents emailed him directly, morning till midnight, sometimes, he suspected, drunk or high, asking all sorts of inappropriate questions and making ludicrous demands.

Leo handed a paper in late, and Mr. Chin docked his grade. This is preposterous. We were away, sailing in Greece with Barry Diller. How was Leo supposed to hand it in on time?

We think Charles isn’t being challenged enough in his kindergarten class. Can he take math with the fourth graders?

Alexia is having an issue with Jemina, something about not liking Jemina’s breathing patterns, so I’m asking that they be separated in science.

We’d really love for Marc to be in Mrs. Rolf’s class next year, we’ve heard such great things. We’ve also heard you’re a baseball fan. Jason has box seats to the Yankees that he’d happily give you, even a playoff game! We really can’t wait for Marc to have Mrs. Rolf. ?

These people, Paul supposed, had never heard the word “no.” At least at Groton and Phillips Academy, there had been an iota of respect for the educators’ opinions, a semblance of “teacher knows best” that Paul hadn’t found—at all—at Atherton.

He’d thought that, maybe, because Atherton was downtown, and the families didn’t all hail from financial fortunes, that the vibe would be a little more…

low-key. He’d thought wrong. Creative money, tech money, generational wealth.

It was just money all the same. And some New Yorkers had too much of it, while others, Paul knew, didn’t have any at all.

His phone rang, startling Paul from his New Yorker , his doorman calling up.

“You have a guest, Dr. Broker. A woman.”

“Yes, send her up, John. Thanks.”

Paul was surprised, but not unhappily. He straightened the pillows on the couch and cleared the coffee table of his snacks.

He went into his kitchen, which was eat-in, with a small breakfast nook and high-end appliances, including a Viking stove, which he’d never turned on.

There he opened a bottle of expensive cabernet that the Finlays, who owned a vineyard in Napa, had given him a case of as a Christmas present.

There was a knock, and he went into his entryway, feeling himself harden into an erection as he did.

He opened the door to see Morgan Chary, sheathed tightly in exercise clothing. She pushed in past him, grabbing his hand, pull ing him onto the couch, its width nearly that of a full-size bed, so that they were facing each other, prostrate, like two mummies in a tomb.

Morgan reached into Paul’s sweatpants, firmly massaging his hard penis with one hand, the other carefully putting pressure on his balls, squeezing rhythmically, as if to some unheard musical beat. They locked eyes.

“Do it now,” said Morgan commandingly. Just her words made Paul want to finish, but he resisted.

Then he reached over to Morgan’s delicate neck, warm and soft.

He could feel her tendons underneath, her pulse beating fast. He wrapped his fingers around, locking them at the base of her hair.

And then he started to squeeze. Softly at first, just a bit of pressure.

“More,” she said. And he squeezed harder, then harder still, to the point that he could feel her windpipe starting to cave, dangerously.

He finally felt her pinch the top of his thigh, their signal that it was over for now. He let go, and as he did, semen gushed into his sweatpants, seeping out, dripping onto the RH cushion, which he’d make sure to send off to the dry cleaner. Paul was nothing if not tidy.

Morgan sat up and patted the space next to her, a signal for him to join, as if he were a child.

There was a red ring around her neck where his hands had been, but other than that no indication that Morgan had been very close to dying a few moments before.

Maybe that was an exaggeration. She’d been close to passing out, not dying.

Paul comforted himself with this thought.

He scooched in next to Morgan, nuzzling his face in her tender skin, which smelled of a perfume that reminded him of his mother.

She rubbed his head, massaging his scalp. He whimpered in pleasure.

Paul had met Morgan right when he’d started at Atherton.

They’d spoken at a welcome-back cocktail reception on one of the first days of school, held in the old auditorium, which had been converted into a grand banquet hall for such occasions.

The parents were eager to get his attention; the new, impossibly handsome headmaster of Atherton Academy!

He’d succeeded the famous Dr. T. Summers, who’d been at the school for two decades, and who’d led the search that had resulted in Paul’s winning of the job.

(Terry Summers had been good friends with Paul’s father—academia was just as susceptible to nepotism as any industry, and Paul, as in many aspects of his life, leaned in to the advantages he was lucky enough to be born with.)

Paul had been standing in a corner of the room, receiving family after family, as if he were getting married, his head starting to hurt from the constant speaking, smiling, and the mental energy of trying to remember everyone’s names.

Morgan and her husband, Art, had sidled up to him, a tall, good-looking Indian man and a wife who, on first glance, looked like so many of the others: thin, polished, with blond highlighted hair and expensive jewelry.

But there was something odd about this woman that Paul hadn’t been able to place.

She kept staring at Paul in a way that was both off-putting and alluring, like she knew things about him. But how could she?