Page 38 of Mean Moms
A Coffee Catch-Up!
The week after Frost’s disastrous art show, Belle, Morgan, and Frost sat in Frost’s colorful living room, on that funny pink couch of hers, sipping tea.
Sofia had been so fully integrated into their daily lives that it felt strange to be without her.
Like they were plotting something, which maybe they were.
Frost kicked it all off.
“So, guys…” She trailed off, adjusting her thoughts. Morgan picked up a cracker from a cheese board that Frost had set out and then put it back down again without taking a bite.
“I’ve had a very stressful, upsetting few days.
” Frost was on the verge of tears, her lips pursed and her eyelids red.
“You, too, Belle, I know.” Belle mournfully ran her hand through her new bob, which she’d had fixed up at by Jennifer Matos at Rita Hazan (Ask Morgan!).
She felt naked without her hair, and still couldn’t believe what had happened.
After the lights had gone out, Belle had felt someone tug her braid.
She’d tried to whirl around, confused, but the person who did it was quick: snip, snip, snip, and her hair—her identity— was gone, fallen to the dirty floor.
Negative event cluster? No way. This was war.
“Tim is, um, well, we’re just taking a little time apart,” Frost said, her voice straining on “apart.”
“We were doing so well before, but as you can imagine, the, er, picture of me was too much for him.”
“Frost, I’m so sorry,” said Morgan. “If you want to share anything with us about who the picture was taken by, we are all ears. No one is here to judge you.”
Frost shook her head.
“There are no leads yet about who might have postered the walls and butchered Belle’s lovely hair,” Frost continued, her eyes starting to water.
Ethel said Frost would recover, and that the collages could still eventually sell, but Ethel was putting her efforts on pause until the hoopla died down.
It broke Frost’s heart. “The security cameras weren’t functioning properly,” Frost said.
“The property manager thinks they were tampered with.”
“I saw him,” said Morgan. She was in a high-necked green sweater, the color bringing out her blue eyes.
“Who?” said Belle, leaning in. Belle was in a lacy long-sleeved dress, not of her own design. She’d shut down the Pippins Cottage Home website the other day. Her hair had been the last straw. She was defeated.
“Rodrick. Sofia’s driver. I saw him putting up the posters. I was waiting to tell you both until this meeting. It’s Sofia. It’s been Sofia all along. Maybe when Rodrick was working on the posters, Sofia cut off Belle’s hair. Did either of you see her afterward?” Both women shook their heads.
Frost wasn’t sure what to believe. She wanted to think that Sofia was incapable of hurting them in this way, but everything was pointing toward her being the one.
Sofia hadn’t explained why she’d been following Morgan, and while Frost wasn’t about to share that little tidbit with the group, it cast so much doubt in Frost’s mind.
Frost was still in shock about what had happened at her opening, all those months of toiling, of creating, only to be met with that humiliating end.
Art’s picture of her for all to see. She’d thought about reaching back out to Sofia, answering her cryptic text, but she’d just wanted to have a clear head. She needed some distance.
“This is the perfect opportunity to discuss our plan going forward,” said Morgan.
“What would we do ?” said Belle. Over this past year, Belle, particularly, had suffered.
Behind her back, “pulling a Belle” had become the current Atherton shorthand for failing.
Your kid blew it at a tennis match? He “pulled a Belle.” You were the slowest in your spinning class that day?
You “pulled a Belle.” Other parents were delighting in the fact that “perfect” moms like Belle and Frost had been met with such blows.
So much for “the bonds of Atherton’s chosen community.
” The various WhatsApp channels were lighting up with schadenfreude.
Moms snickering to each other about Belle’s unwanted haircut.
About Frost’s sexy (adulterous!) pose. No Lingua Franca sweatshirt was going to get her out of that one.
“So it was Sofia behind those horrible bugs?” said Frost, in her own world, not really following.
“Lanternflies,” Belle clarified, frowning. “Greg Summerly, the detective, mentioned that Sofia was the common denominator among, well, everything!”
“And the Hildy deepfakes? Sofia sent them to my son? And had someone hit me with a scooter? And rob us at Morgan’s spa? No way,” said Frost, an eyebrow raised. “I don’t believe it.”
“Yes!” said Belle. “Or, I don’t know, maybe the scooter was just New York being New York. Those things are crazy dangerous.”
“Sofia is a mother. She wouldn’t do that to Hildy,” said Frost. She was having a hard time wrapping her mind around these accusations.
If Belle and Morgan were so sure, let them retaliate.
Frost just wanted to mourn in peace and try to fix her marriage.
Maybe she deserved this. She’d cheated, after all.
She was guilty of that. Tim had been furious, livid, betrayed.
He’d demanded a name and she’d refused. He said unless she told him who she’d slept with, he’d leave.
And now he was gone. Staying in the Chelsea Hotel to get his thoughts in order, as he’d put it.
And Frost was all alone and totally miserable.
The incident had sparked numerous newspaper articles, from the Times ( FORMER IT GIRL’S EXHIBIT VANDALIZED ) to the Post ( FROST TREVOR’S ART SHOW DEFACED BY MIGRANT.
SEE THE NUDIE PICTURES INSIDE! ). The already on-edge Atherton crowd was flipping out.
Frost had received a few texts from moms saying they were considering moving to Connecticut or Westchester.
The city was “dangerous.” Criminals were “everywhere.” “No one is safe!”
Just then, Alfred and King came bounding in, bringing with them a buzzy twelve-year-old-boy energy.
“Mom, Mom, can we play Fortnite now, please? Flora’s saying we can’t,” said King. He was tall and reedy, like Tim.
“Could you please say hi to my friends?” said Frost, smiling at them.
“Hi, Belle, hi, Morgan,” said Alfred sweetly. He looked just like Frost, with a shock of red hair and sparkly brown eyes.
“No Fortnite. Sorry, guys. You know the rules. Now go down to the basement and play chess or practice piano. You have football uptown at three.” The twins stuck out their tongues in protest but obediently left the room, lightly pushing each other and laughing on their way.
Frost and Tim had told them that Tim was going on an extended set visit and would be back in a couple of weeks.
The boys didn’t know that their parents’ marriage was in trouble, and Frost wanted to keep it that way.
“What if Sofia drugged you?” said Belle to Morgan. “And that’s why you fainted after the accident?”
Morgan took a deep, thoughtful breath before answering.
“Oh my god. That’s horrifying,” she said. “But it could be.”
Belle and Morgan went back and forth this way, riling each other up, more and more convinced that Sofia, their kind new friend, was a villain.
Frost wasn’t having it, but she played along. She was too tired to fight, and some of what they were saying was convincing. Why was Sofia’s driver following them around? Had he somehow found Art’s picture of Frost? Leaked photos of Frost to the Post ? None of it added up.
“We have to get her back,” said Morgan, with a finality that Frost and Belle recognized, the same voice she used when she declared any goal—“We have to raise one hundred thousand dollars for the new auditorium”; “I have to run the marathon in under four hours.”
“We want her gone, right?” continued Morgan. Belle nodded, though she looked a little unsure.
“But how would we do that?” said Belle.
“We’re going to ruin her party,” said Morgan. “Give her a taste of her own medicine. She’ll be humiliated enough to slink back to Miami.” Frost was suddenly scared for all of them. “I think,” said Morgan, a gleam in her eye, “she might be crazy.”
They disbanded with a plan, a plan that Frost thought was silly and juvenile and horrible all at the same time.
“If you guys want to do this, I won’t stop you,” said Frost as she held open her door for them to leave. “But I’m not going to actively participate.”
“Oh, come on, Frost. It’ll be fun,” said Belle.
Was Belle totally confident that Sofia had bad intentions?
No. But Belle was also sick of being the butt of the joke at Atherton.
She’d had enough of this year, enough of being thought of in the same breath as Clara Cain, a loser, an asshole; lice-y, bitchy Belle Redness.
She hated her new hair. It was someone else’s turn to go down.
“Remember, just avoid Sofia. It’ll be easy—everyone’s leaving for Memorial Day weekend, and she’s probably going back to Miami,” said Morgan.
The elevator opened for them to leave, and Tim walked out of it.
He looked a wreck, tired and weepy, and mumbled hello to Belle and Morgan, the doors closing on their embarrassed faces.
Frost glanced at her husband, whose mouth was twisted in pain.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I’m such a jerk.”
“You are the worst,” he said. He returned her hug, and she knew it was going to be fine. For now.
“Bad, bad people. I’m telling you,” said Tim as he dug his thumbs into her tender neck. “Your friends are bad . I think they’re rubbing off on you. Sofia is a good egg.” Frost sank into the embrace of her husband. She didn’t know who to trust.