Page 5 of Mean Moms
Though a summer abroad had sounded glamorous, and all her friends had proclaimed jealousy from the comfort of their Hamptons mansions, the trip hadn’t been a success. Theideaof it—as a cozy family escape, and a marriage kick-in-the-butt for Tim and Frost—had been better than the reality. Tim, a movie producer, had been working the whole time, trying to get a project out of development hell, a midbudget drama about a dysfunctional family of circus performers calledLadies and Gentlemen, The Flying Wallendars!Whowould ever pay to see something with that stupid title? But when Frost had said that to Tim, he’d totally snapped, accusing her of being dismissive of his work. So Frost, bored and restless and pissed, drank too much while King and Alfred fought constantly.
She gently shook Art’s arm. He always fell asleep after sex, no matter the time of day. Frost found it endearing. It reminded her of her sons, who could nap anywhere—at the dinner table, on a cold, hard floor, their beautiful eyes with that telltale hooded look, and then… bam. Art fluttered awake. He looked up at her and smiled.
“Well, that was nice,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it. Frost nodded.
“I have to go get the boys and you have to get out of here,” she said, playfully dragging him across the bed, made up in Frost’s favorite white silk sheets. They were in her apartment, her own private space. She and Tim had bought it last year, after she’d said she wanted somewhere to make her art, somewhere that was just hers. Tim had thought it was unnecessary—“Frost, come on, we have an entire house at your disposal, can’t you just designate a room to be your studio? Can’t you fit these”—he’d pointed at the mixed-media collages Frost had been working on, lying vulnerably on their Vern + Vera dining table—“in the basement?”
Frost shook her head. She couldn’t work in her home. There were too many distractions. She needed somewhere empty, somewhere spare and clean. She’d kept at it, bothering Tim until he’d begrudgingly agreed to purchase this one-bedroom condo for $2,200,000 in cash in a new building on Twenty-Second near Park, a few blocks from their home in Gramercy. She’d converted the living space to a studio, filling it with easels and materials, ranging from colored paper to wax to small objects she’d found on the street: coins, receipts, a solo leather glove.
The apartment was now her favorite place on earth. She’d come here after drop-off and spend the morning hours tinkering with her current project—a photo collage portfolio of It Girls through the years, from Ali MacGraw to Chloë Sevigny to a picture of herself, Frost Trevor, at sixteen, staring blankly at the camera, alone in a banquette at a nameless club. She’d layer materials over each photograph, obscuring the location, altering each girl’s face with paper. One she gave a large blue eye, cut out from a magazine, on another she glued a picture of a pit bull over naked breasts. It was meant as a commentary on the worth of a certain type of woman, their sad disposability after a period of intense societal worship.
Frost didn’t really consider herself an artist, though she was desperate to be one, a desire she’d only newly admitted to herself. She’d grown up in the world. Her mother was a trailblazing female art dealer, and she owned an imposing seven-story, Norman Foster–designed gallery on the Lower East Side. Her father was an uber-successful literary agent, working with the likes of David Foster Wallace and Philip Roth, among other male luminaries. Frost had been the only child in a stunning apartment on Fifth Avenue and Seventy-Sixth Street; her bedroom had one of Andy Warhol’sJackieprints hanging on the wall.
Frost had also been lucky enough to have been born beautiful, with copper-red hair and sparkly brown eyes. She was a bright, aimless kid, attending Chapin, one of the best girls’ schools in Manhattan, but never putting her heart into it. By the time she was twelve, she was sneaking into clubs with her older friends, drinking vodka sodas, smoking Marlboros, and staying out till all hours. She’d given her first blow job when she was thirteen, to an NYU student she’d met at a party at Bowlmor Lanes on University. She gave many more after that. Page Six would frequently publish pictures of her and hersemi-famous friends, photographers trailing them on nights out. Her parents, though kind, were absentee, always at events, traveling the world for their jobs. Frost had wanted their attention, but it had never appeared.
Frost toweled off after her shower, glancing in the mirror and pinching her cheeks before going back into the bedroom. Art was sitting on her desk chair and checking his phone. They never spoke of Morgan or Tim, never even mentioned their names. They’d been seeing each other sporadically for over a year, since last July, the night of the “Zoo-ly Fourth” theme party at Trina and Bud Cunningham’s East Hampton house, right on the ocean. The outdoor space had been transformed into a fantastical zoo, including a bird barn and a polar area with penguins (an industrial-grade meat locker company came to facilitate). The pièce de résistance was a trio of live zebras that the Cunninghams had shipped from an exotic animal farm in Texas.
The gossip that night had revolved around: A. if a group of zebras was called a “zeal” or a “dazzle”; B. the legality of converting a Hamptons estate into a zoo; and C. the fact that Caroline Morehouse’s husband, Dave, had brought what looked to be a nasal spray for allergies, but in fact contained ketamine, which partygoers were spraying into their noses and getting high, high, high. Frost had done K before, back when it was a club drug referred to as Special K, but not for a while—she was now strictly a booze-and-gummy kind of gal, having given up the hard stuff after the twins were born.
By that point, more than ten years in, she and Tim had been in a precarious place in their union. Their wedding had been a buzzy affair, the joining of an It Girl and her indie-movie prince, a New York City fairy tale. Tim had just produced his one (and only) bighit,Daylight, about a young Latino man in Spanish Harlem exploring his sexuality, which had been nominated for two Oscars. Frost had been working as a photographer’s assistant, trying to figure out what she wanted to do while her parents paid for her lifestyle. She and Tim had met at a book party for a mutual writer friend. “You’re Frost Trevor, right?” he’d said to her as an opener. “You’re even more beautiful in person than in thePost!” It had delighted her. Tim was kinder than the men Frost usually went for. He was also driven, wanting to make a career of his own though he didn’t need to; he was the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. They both liked what the other did for their social standing. They just kind of fit, and that was enough. A gorgeous couple who had a gorgeous wedding at the top of the gorgeous Gramercy Park Hotel, worthy of an entire spread in the Styles section.
Afterward, it had been more of the same—parties, luxurious vacations, followed by Frost’s pregnancy, which started out perfectly but soon turned harrowing. She’d nearly lost both twins at five months; she’d been at brunch at Balthazar, eating a burger, and felt something cold on her leg. She’d looked down to see blood everywhere, smeared all over the red leather booth, pouring onto the floor, the fairy tale turned nightmare. The bleeding eventually stopped, but she’d been on bed rest for the duration, spending months alone in their Chelsea loft while Tim flew off to be on the set of his next film, a flop about a drug-addicted dolphin trainer.
Frost had been worried that motherhood would wreck her. Everything in her life before that had been in pursuit of being “cool,” and turning into a mom of screaming babies certainly wasn’t it. But then the opposite had happened. She’d adored it. She’d loved them so much, her precious boys, with their tiny fists and their wailing cries and their deep, insatiable need for her. She’dvowed to be the opposite of her own mother—warm and coddling instead of imperious and distant. And she’d done it. King and Alfred were wonderful.
Her marriage, however, was not. Tim’s career stalled, and he’d spent years spinning his wheels with nothing to show for it. Frost felt for him, but she’d been focused on the kids at the expense of her own creativity as well. Tim had started to take his frustrations out on her, criticizing her and criticizing her, like she could never do anything right. Why was she spending so much time on her artwork? Why was she throwing so many parties? She shouldn’t let the boys watch TV, he’d said, she shouldn’t feed them sweets, he’d said, she shouldn’t let them sleep with her, he’d said, she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t.
So at Zoo-ly Fourth, when Dave Morehouse handed her the ketamine nasal spray with a wink, she’d placed it up her nose and inhaled strongly. For about fifteen minutes, she hadn’t felt anything and thought perhaps Dave had been duping them all. She’d lost Tim ages ago, and so she’d gone over to chat with some moms. Ava Leo had been talking shit about someone Frost didn’t know—“and sheneverbrings birthday gifts to parties, it’s the weirdest thing. Like, we all pay for Atherton, you can afford to buy a gift for a seven-year-old.”
“Maybe it’s an environmental thing,” Trina had offered up with a shrug.
And then suddenly Frost was floating outside of her body, watching herself from above, admiring her sharp shoulders, the curve of her butt in the formfitting leopard-print dress. She’d felt happy in a way she hadn’t in years, relaxation flowing through her limbs. She’d walked into the bird barn. Tropical parrots clucked and sang, the sounds overwhelmingly vivid. And then Art had arrived, looking ather with interest. She’d seen him with the nasal spray earlier, so she knew he felt as wonderful as Frost, beyond description, just warmth and joy and light. He was dressed as a wolf, a furry snout covering his nose, in a sleek gray suit, his eyes shining black.
They’d snuck off to the beach, made love, high on illegal substances and on each other, as their spouses mingled, unaware. Had she always been attracted to Art? Or had the drugs made her see him anew?
“I’ve got to go,” she said now to Art, shaking off her memories and guilt and motioning for him to follow her. They took the elevator down together—no one in the building knew her, and so she and Art used the place as if they were a couple. They nodded to the doorman at the entrance (doormen were paid to be vaults; no worry there), and Art gave her a brief kiss on the lips at the door before exiting first.
Frost stepped out not a second later, the searing heat hitting her like a wall. Autumn in the city could be hot, but this felt different, like it was a permanent shift into another dimension. The sidewalks, the buildings, the cars of New York weren’t built for this; they absorbed and absorbed and absorbed until swollen with warmth. Frost, eyes closed against the bright sun, smashed into a woman standing directly in front of her, causing them both to drop their bags, sending lipsticks, mints, phones, and pens scattering to the pavement.
“Ay!” the woman yelled as Frost reeled backward from the impact.
“I’m so sorry,” Frost said, picking up her things, clumsily bumping heads with the woman, who was doing the same thing. “Ouch!” they both said at the same time. Frost stood up to face her and was struck by the woman’s beauty, her perfect body under a pink skirt,which hit well above the knee. Was she an actress? Frost thought, before her brain clicked and she realized she actually knew this person.
“Oh, hello, you!” said Frost to Sofia. “Nice to run into you, though I apologize aboutliterallyrunning into you,” she continued.
“No problem at all! I’d know you anywhere, with those gorgeous eyes and hair,” said Sofia.
Frost, who retained a lifelong pride in her looks, blushed. “I’m going to get King and Alfred now. Are you headed to pickup? If so, let’s walk together.”
Sofia nodded, and they started down the street, walking toward Irving Place. Frost noticed that Sofia was wobbling and saw that her towering stilettos kept getting stuck in the sidewalk crags. “Do you live around here?” Sofia said, walking slower than Frost, a lifelong New Yorker, who was used to running everywhere.
“I have a place in the building I was coming out of,” said Frost. “I use it as my office. Well, actually, that’s where I make my art.” Frost’s therapist had been encouraging her to openly embrace this part of her life, but it was proving tough to do so. Frost’s mother had never taken her seriously as an artist, and so Frost hadn’t taken herself seriously, either.
“You’re an artist? How wonderful,” said Sofia.
“Just for pleasure,” said Frost automatically. Then remembered herself. “Though I do hope one day to turn it into more than a hobby.”
“How cool. I’m not an artist myself, but I love going to museums,” said Sofia. There was something guileless about her that Frost liked, a kind of childlike enthusiasm that was missing from the “over it” attitudes of most of the moms Frost knew. “I was in this neighborhood getting a facial. My skin in this city! Horrible! The dirt is seeping into my pores,” Sofia said.
