Page 40 of Mean Moms
All our best,
The Cains
Not one person had replied to Clara Cain’s thank-you email yet. Did everyone hate her? She knew she was an unpopular mom, justlike she’d been an unpopular kid. Were some people destined to go through life that way? Clara had been the smartest girl in her grade, in her whole town, really, a small suburb outside of Cleveland called Bay Village. She’d gone from there to Harvard and then to Harvard Law, brainy, hardworking, always the first to raise her hand in class.
She’d met Neil when they were both associates at Cravath. He was still there, a litigation partner, and Clara had gone out on her own, smartly seeing the hole in the market for a female lawyer to represent the Harvey Weinstein types. A woman by their side helped make the man palatable, though she knew that what she did turned the other Atherton mothers off. But she was alawyer. She wasn’t endorsing her clients’ behavior. Didn’t people get that?
Clara was a beast at work. She felt no moral ambiguity. Everyone had the right to an attorney, and she’d defend her clients to the best of her ability. She didn’t care if they’d sexually harassed someone; that wasn’t her problem. She felt no insecurity in front a judge or jury, and always had confidence that what she was saying was the right thing at the right time. It was the opposite of how she felt around the moms at school, like she was constantly putting her foot in her mouth, saying the dumb thing, the embarrassing thing. Talking too much about how she was constantly working. Revealing things when she shouldn’t and withholding information at the wrong time. It painfully transported her back to her childhood, when she was teased for being a know-it-all, a kiss ass, a try-hard loser. “Clara the cunt,” the popular girls used to chant as Clara crept through the halls of high school.
Well, she may be a cunt, but she knew a lot of shit about a lot of bad men, shit that could hurt people if it ever came out. She’d been confidentially approached by more than a handful of Atherton dads seeking legal advice. Bud Cunningham called her someyears ago to discuss how his name was part of the Ashley Madison leak. Did he have legal recourse? (No, he didn’t, but he was lucky enough to avoid getting caught; Trina had been so blissed-out on psychedelics that she completely missed that news cycle.) Dre Finlay’s husband, Peter, had needed Clara’s help after a young woman at work claimed he’d been sending her unwanted dick pics. (They’d reached a settlement without Dre finding out.) And now there was Art Chary, who’d recently given her a retainer. It turned out he was a cheater; Morgan didn’t know. Or Art said she didn’t know. But from Clara’s experience, the wives often just looked the other way, not wanting to rock the boat of their privileged lives.
Art had been fucking Tilly, the sound bath specialist from Thyme & Time (in which Welly was the main investor), and he’d heard rumblings from inside the company that people knew about it. Welly depended on Art’s reputation as a do-gooder CEO, and he couldn’t have that kind of situation on his hands—his shareholders would crucify him. Clara didn’t judge, though the employer-employee power dynamic of it all did give her creeps. Her job made her grateful to be married to Neil, a lovable doofus who thought Clara was the best.
Art claimed that his dalliances were out of desperation. That Morgan was a sociopath, and that he was “scared” of her. When Clara asked him why they hadn’t gotten a divorce, Art had said that he thought she might murder him if he asked, so instead had resorted to sex outside the marriage. He even said he’d fallen in love with another mom! Clara didn’t believe him for a second. She knew Morgan was sweet and helpful and cheerful. She was nicer to Clara than almost any of the other moms.
Clara was sitting with Neil in their living room, which the party planners had reassembled perfectly this morning, hauling out allevidence of Central Perk. Neil was reading theTimesand sniffling; he had a near constant postnasal drip. Ozzie was out at soccer. Clara cringed, remembering how she’d burst into tears last night in front of the queen bees, the result of her sucking down too many martinis on an empty stomach. And she’d also spilled the beans about King and Alfred and those deepfake nude photos of Hildy. Clara was the holder of so much confidential information at work; you could torture her, and she wouldn’t reveal any seamy details about her clients. But when it came to mom-gossip, she just couldn’t keep it inside. Those two things were likely related, but Clara didn’t have time to go to therapy, unlike all the stay-at-home moms. (What did they talk to their therapists about? Clara often wondered. Their feelings of inadequacy at SoulCycle? Their filler-regret?)
Clara’s phone buzzed. It was a message from Art. Shoot. She’d just wanted to have a relaxing Saturday morning. But work called.
Clara opened up the text and Neil blew his nose loudly. “Sorry, honey, it’s just these goddamn allergies,” he said. She smiled at him and then got up to go to her office. She needed to call Art Chary back.
PART IIISpring
Chapter 11A 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 orgasmicamount 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 theNew 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 hisNew 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, pulling 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.
