Page 32 of Mean Moms
“Fine, my throat hurts, whatever,” said Hildy, sitting down next to Belle. Belle noticed that Hildy had a smattering of pimples tucked away under her right eyebrow, and desperately wanted to lean over and pop them. She resisted. Hildy looked so much like Belle had at that age. Belle hadn’t blossomed till she was in her late teens, when she’d suddenly gone from awkward to beauty queen, and she was praying that Hildy would take a similar path. Become gorgeous at the same time as Belle was losing her girlish luster. Oh, the irony. At least Hildy had time.
“You know, I’m still getting teased about your stupid lice email,” said Hildy, shaking her head. “I wish people would just forget about it.” An older kid had seen the email in his mom’s inbox and had forwarded it to all his friends, and for months, boys had been itching their heads as Hildy walked by in the hallway. “I saw Donavan Klein laughing at me,” she continued. Belle had always suspected that Hildy had a crush on Donavan and felt horrible if Belle had embarrassed her daughter in front of him.
“Sweetie, I’m so sorry,” said Belle with a sigh. Belle had spoken to Dr. Broker at length about the email and had even offered to pay for a tech expert to come in to analyze Atherton’s servers months after the incident, having given the school the proper time to run its own (inconclusive) investigation. But Dr. Broker refused, saying that it wasn’t school policy.
Well, she’d done more thanspeakwith Dr. Broker. Right after Christmas break, Belle had marched into Atherton on a mission.She’d worn her favorite pink Oscar de la Renta fringe suit, which she saved for occasions when she wanted to feel powerful, and her hair loose down her back. “A real-life Rapunzel,” he’d called her at Ava and David’s party. Jeff had offered to come with her, but she’d told him that it was smarter for her to go alone, and that Dr. Broker would respond better to the pleas of a mother than the demands of a father. By then, the details of her, er, encounter with Dr. Broker had turned hazy in her mind; it had been so dark and so fast. Had it even really happened at all?
She’d gotten an appointment through Dr. Broker’s secretary, Alice, but no one was at Alice’s desk when Belle had arrived. Walking through the school in the middle of the day had given Belle the feeling of being in trouble as a kid, adding to her anxiety. Dr. Broker’s office was on the fourth floor of the building, and she’d lightly knocked on the door, nerves causing her heart to pound wildly.
“Come in!” he’d summoned.
She’d entered to see Dr. Broker sitting on a black leather chair behind his antique herringbone desk in the large, sunny room. The space was filled with built-in bookcases, framed pictures of Atherton on the wall, plus Dr. Broker’s various degrees. He’d motioned for her to sit down across from him, which Belle did, perching on the chair uncomfortably. Dr. Broker looked even more attractive than normal, his hair lightly tousled, his shirt hugging his chest.
“So, Mrs. Redness, let’s talk about the email,” he’d started off. Belle had swallowed. Was this just going to be a normal meeting?
“Yes, let’s,” Belle had said, stammering. “I’ve given the school time to figure it out, but clearly you haven’t. My concern is that it wasn’t a mistake, and that someone specifically hacked into Nurse Weiss’s email and sent it around.”
Dr. Broker had laughed softly, sending a spasm of desire through Belle.
“We pay not one, but two sixty-five-thousand-dollar tuitions to this school! I think we deserve some information,” she’d said, trying to gather herself.
“Uh, Belle, can I call you Belle?”
Belle had waited a beat.
“Yes, Dr. Broker. Or should I say Paul?” When Belle got nervous in front of a man, her voice became soft and high-pitched.
“It’s Dr. Broker to you, Belle.”
He’d gotten up and walked around his desk to the office door, clicking a lock there that Belle hadn’t noticed. Belle had raised an eyebrow. She’d bitten her front lip.
“People try to barge in when I’m in the middle of meetings, so I had Alice install this to keep everyone out.” He’d said it as if it were the most logical thing in the world.
He’d come to where Belle was sitting, standing right in front of her. She’d looked up at him coyly. What was he up to? Then he’d taken one hand and placed it on the top of her head, stroking her hair, gently squeezing the back of her neck. After a moment, he’d bent down and started to place his other hand between her legs, but Belle had jumped up, putting a stop to it, repeating to herself: Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
“Dr. Broker,” she’d cooed, wanting to adopt a more adultlike tone but finding herself unable to. “This isn’t right. I’m married and you’re the headmaster. I really do want to talk about the email!” Red-faced, Dr. Broker had sat back down at his desk, and they’d had a five-minute, stunted chat about the fact that Belle and Jeff wouldn’t be allowed to access the school servers. She’d thanked him for his time and swiftly unlocked the door and nearly toppledout, running the hallways to escape the school. As she’d left, Mary Margaret had gaped at her like her pants were on fire.
Belle came home with the story that Dr. Broker wasn’t budging, and they’d just have to suck it up and accept that it was a technical glitch. Atherton was the best school in New York City. It was their key to the Ivies, which, most annoyingly, you couldn’t buy your way into nowadays. Pulling the kids out wasn’t an option.
“I wonder if someone is out to get our family, like in a TV show or something,” said Hildy now. “Like, they want to extort you and Dad or something, and get all of Grandpa’s money, and they’re doing all this bad stuff first,” she said. Belle patted her on the back. The only silver lining was that this whole thing seemed to have caused Hildy to soften somewhat to Belle. They’d spoken more in the last few weeks than they had in months. She’d been waiting for Hildy to bring up the story that Clara Cain had shared, the one about nude pictures, but she never had. Belle had assumed, with relief, that Ozzie Cain had been mistaken.
Belle’s phone rattled on the counter—Frost’s name appeared, but Belle didn’t answer. Frost had been kind since the Pippins Cottage Home fiasco, helping Belle do damage control, using all her connections to try to keep it all out of the press. It hadn’t worked. In the days after the preview, there had been a slew of spiteful mentions of the incident in industry outlets.Puckeventually caught on, running an item in Lauren Sherman’s widely read fashion newsletter, the words of which were now committed to Belle’s memory.
AN ALLERGY TO FASHION
Fashionistas, get your Benadryl ready! All hell broke loose in Tribeca this week during the press preview of Belle Redness’s new capsule line, Pippins Cottage Home. Editors and industry VIPs were invited to the event in a pop-up on Hudson Street and asked to don an item (the only item?) from the line—The Dress. (“It looked like a cross between a straitjacket and my aunt Teri’s bathing suit coverup,” sniped one attendee.) As the night wore on, guests started to feel a strange sensation, “like ants in your pants… or, rather, Dress,” said one. The culprit? The Pippins Cottage Home fabric, which was causing editors and influencers to break out in ugly red rashes. Instead of posting on Instagram, the fashion crowd headed out the door and into the arms of their dermatologists. Downtown New York has never been so itchy.
The aptly named Redness, daughter of Joseph Connolly, former CEO of J.P. Morgan, had no comment when reached by telephone. Needless to say, Pippins Cottage Home won’t be coming to a store near you anytime soon. “This line is finished,” said a prominent fashion editor. “There’s no way for it to recover.” Another rich wife’s vanity business bites the dust…
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 ithave 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?”
