The Scarlet Letter Society

by Mary McCarthy

  At that exact moment, her phone rang in her pocket. She smiled at Dave, rolling her eyes at the interruption. As she took the phone out of her jeans, which were dusty on the floor, and reached down to turn off the ringer, she heard a voice on the other end and realized she’d accidentally answered it.

  “Hello?” asked the phone, with a soft laugh.

  “Oh, hey Ted,” said Maggie. “I’m just in the middle of something. Let me give you a call back.”

  She hung up, but when she turned back to Dave she saw the look of hurt in his eyes, regardless of how hard he’d tried to hide it. He dressed quickly.

  “No, you go ahead and take your call, Maggie,” said Dave. “I really need to get back to the office.”

  Maggie looked at him. “I didn’t mean to answer the damn thing,” she said. “I’m sorry. Can’t we just pick up where we left off?”

  “I don’t know, Maggie,” said Dave. “Can we? Because your life seems to be pretty full already.”

  “Aw, Dave, come on, we’ve never let other people come between us,” said Maggie as she dressed; the wide-open nature of the floor plan and lack of heating made the building very chilly.

  He didn’t speak again, and she could sense he had shut down. He pressed the elevator button, and now the “Ding” of the bell sounded like an accusation to her.

  He frowned slightly at her as he turned to leave the building, taking out the key to lock the door behind them.

  Zarina couldn’t wait to see how this one was going to go. She turned on lights and coffeemakers at Zoomdweebies. She was hoping someone, anyone would actually discuss Fear of Flying and not blow it off like they did with every other book. It’s completely understandable, she reasoned, to get bored by Hawthorne or Tolstoy, with their old-fashioned language, but Erica Jong drops f-bombs, masturbation stories and lesbian fantasies like they’re hot. There is just no way in hell those ladies could pick up those books and put them down again unfinished. The damn book is even short!

  She warmed up the freshly-made blueberry banana bread as the Scarlet Letter Society women entered and sat at their usual table.

  “He’s cheating on me,” said Eva, defeated.

  Maggie laughed. Eva glared at her. Lisa lowered her eyes.

  “Who? Joe? So what do you care?” asked Maggie. “You haven’t been in love with your husband in a million years. Did you think he’d taken a vow of celibacy since the last time you fucked him, what, two years ago?”

  “I still think that would really hurt,” said Lisa quietly.

  “Well it does, and thank you for understanding, Lisa,” said Eva, narrowing her eyes at Maggie, who rolled hers. “It sucks. Of course I can’t think of a single reason why he wouldn’t be fucking someone else. But when you find it on a computer screen, it’s so raw and sexual and powerful, it just feels like all the wind’s been knocked out of you.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry, girl, I didn’t mean to be insensitive,” said Maggie. “Remember, the whole reason I’m in the middle of a divorce is because of cheating. And not just my cheating, but his. Matt wasn’t a bad guy, but he couldn’t keep it in his pants. The only one I ever cheated on him with was Dave, and that doesn’t count.”

  “Wait. WHAT?” said Eva. “You cheated on your second husband with your first husband?”

  “I don’t think it counts if you’re cheating with your first husband,” said Maggie. “It’s not like it was a new guy. I didn’t start seeing Ted until after Matt and I were separated.”

  “How long were you sleeping with your ex?” Lisa dared ask.

  “Oh, I never stopped fucking Dave,” said Maggie. “To this day.”

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God, Margaret,” said Eva. “Are you completely kidding me? I can’t even understand who you’re cheating on with whom around here. Didn’t you cheat on Dave in the first place during your first marriage, which you then ended with divorce? I am so glad Facebook has an “It’s Complicated” relationship status for people like you.”

  “’The bonds of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them—sometimes three’” read Lisa from the notes in her worn journal. “It’s from Fear of Well, technically it’s an Alexandre Dumas quote, but Jong uses it at the beginning of Chapter 8 in Fear of Flying.”

  “Well ain’t that the truth,” said Maggie. “Dave and I divorced because at the time our marriage couldn’t handle the loss of our child. When Brandon died, and we had been through the eighteen months of leukemia treatments, we just had been in mourning too hard and too long for the marriage to handle and we drifted apart. But we never stopped loving each other.”

  “It does make sense, Maggie. It’s not the traditional path, but it’s your path, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think it’s sweet that you and Dave still connect that way. And guess what? I read the book,” said Eva.

  “You read the book?” asked Lisa and Maggie at the same time.

  “Well don’t seem so surprised about it,” said Eva, smiling. “Although I guess it is technically my first one. Yeah, after I found out Joe was cheating, I just stayed up ‘til 3 am reading it.”

  Zarina set down the plate of warm bread and smiled at Eva.

  “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but did I overhear you just say you read the book?”

  “She read the book!” said Maggie. “It’s a miracle! And we know Lisa read the book, because she took some motherfucking notes in her little notebook here, for cryin’ out loud. This will be the actual first book discussion of the Scarlet Letter Society! Hooray for us!”

  Zarina looked around at the three women. “I’m glad those book orders are coming in handy. Enjoy your meeting.”

  Maggie looked at Zarina. “You haven’t read Fear of Flying, have you, Z?”

  “I actually have,” said Zarina, adding a small white lie. “For a college women’s literature class.”

  “You should sit down and join us,” said Lisa.

  “You don’t seem like much of a potential club member, but if you’d like to sit in and hang out with us old hags,” said Maggie, “we’d love to have a young hipster like yourself for the first time.”

  Zarina sat down, excited to join the ladies. “I cheated on my college boyfriend with a girl one time,” she said. “I mean, if that is good enough for a one-time guest pass into SLS.”

  “Is it even cheating if it’s with a girl?” said Eva, laughing.

  “It’s close enough,” said Maggie, smiling. “It barely passes as cheating because when the guy finds out, he usually just thinks it’s hot and wants to watch, that’s all.”

  The women laughed.

  “So, who wants to talk about the zipless fuck first?” said Maggie.

  “I think it’s a conundrum, almost an oxymoron,” started Lisa. “Jong defines the zipless fuck as sex with no consequences, but in order to have sex in the first place, zippers are coming down.”

  “I just love Isadora Wing so much,” said Eva. “She’s the best feminine literary character I’ve ever encountered.”

  “That is possibly because she’s the first literary character you’ve ever encountered,” joked Maggie. “Just kidding. Well obviously she’s my favorite, since I named children and businesses after her. I love her strength. And her admission of weakness. I love her humanity.”

  Lisa read from her journal.

  “’We drove to the hotel and said goodbye. How hypocritical to go upstairs with a man you don’t want to fuck, leave the one you do sitting there alone, and then, in a state of great excitement, fuck the one you don’t want to fuck while pretending he’s the one you do. That’s called fidelity. That’s called monogamy. That’s called civilization and its discontents.’”

  “That is some complicated shit,” said Zarina. “I love Jong’s honesty. She’s a pioneer. For 1973, this book is a groundbreaker. Any bullshit literary criticism it received came from the male-dominated mindset held even by some overly old-fashioned women who obviously weren’t getting laid.”

  “She definitely wasn
’t afraid to say what women were thinking in the 70s,” said Eva. “And she said it with great style.”

  “I like the tug-of-war Isadora has within herself,” Lisa said. “It’s so raw and genuine. Her perspective is so unique and interesting to experience. You genuinely care about what happens to her, even though she’s a fictional character. I felt like she was real.”

  “Well there has always been a lot of discussion about how much Erica Jong there is in Isadora Wing,” said Maggie. “That may be why the character is so real—because in some ways, she is real. You know, the whole ‘all fiction is nonfiction’ thing.”

  “What did you think about the ending?” asked Eva. “I felt like I wanted it to be more Hollywood—the big embrace.”

  “But we know that in the end, even in the end of a book that is all about sex, in the end she chooses love,” said Lisa. “Ok, one more quote, and then I promise I’ll stop: ‘Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.’”

  “We all cheat for a reason,” said Maggie. “And it’s usually because we feel like we’re missing love. Jong lays that out. Call us a whore or a slut or sew a goddamn scarlet letter on our damn t-shirt if you want, but at the end of the day, we all just want to go to bed with someone who makes us feel loved, and wake up next to that same person the next morning.”

  “Yeah,” said Eva. “It just sucks that love is a complete pain in the ass sometimes.”

  The women laughed softly, and knowingly.

  August 2012

  “There’s just this empty place inside of me that only he can fill.”

  -Torn Between Two Lovers, Mary MacGregor

  Monthly meeting of the Scarlet Letter Society.

  Zoomdweebies Café

  Friday, August 3, 2012

  5:30 a.m.

  You’re off the hook. Everyone traveling and whatnot, so this month we will take a “book club” summer vacation. Too hard to follow Erica Jong anyway.

  “The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.”--The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

  “So how’d your Ho-prah book club meeting go?” asked Wes as he sifted through the rack of vintage 1960s men’s t-shirts at Maggie’s shop.

  Maggie stood at the counter, pricing a box of women’s shoes from the 1940s. She smiled.

  “It was quite intellectual, asshole,” she said. “We actually talked about a book.”

  “Oh, I thought the whole “book club” thing was just to make you all feel like you were actually doing something productive, but that you never actually read any of the books,” Wes said,.

  “To be honest, that’s what usually happens. But I think we needed to get away from the historical shit. While it is beautifully written, it was just too long-winded for the likes of us, possibly with the exception of Lisa, who I think was probably the only one who read it.”

  “The cute piemaker! I’m so proud of her,” said Wes. “I’m going to go over there and buy a blackberry pie from her, and then give it to my mother because it’s too fattening.”

  “Yeah, God forbid you eat too many carbs, even when there’s fruit involved,” said Maggie.

  “What did you just call me?” Wes huffed in mock disgust.

  “I need advice,” said Maggie.

  “Oh, God. Well let me guess,” said Wes. “Even though I’m your gay best friend, you are once again going to seek my Yoda-like Jedi wisdom on straight men and sex and dating.”

  “Pretty much,” said Maggie. “I think it was re-reading Fear of Flying again that got me into this ‘thinking about my love life’ mode, and now I’m just kind of a mess.”

  “Oh, God, you read Fear of Flying again. Ok, Isadora, well, what the hell exactly is your problem?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like such a relationship failure. I fucked up my first marriage, then I fucked up my second marriage. Now I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend…and Dave and I just fucked.”

  “I’m sorry. I clearly did not hear you. Whaaat did you just say?” asked Wes, surprised.

  “We had lunch plans to talk about Lilith’s graduation party,” said Maggie. “I don’t even know how it ended up happening. He wanted to show me this historic building in town that he’d just saved from the wrecking ball and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. So we walked the few blocks over there after lunch. I said I’d love to see the inside, and he of course knew which door to go in, and we ended up fucking on this huge windowsill on the 13th floor. Half the town could probably see us.”

  “You. Have. Got. To. Be. Fucking. Kidding. Me,” said Wes. “Exhibitionism is a new one for you. And who fucks on the 13th floor? Have you and Dave ever hooked up since your divorce? I know you would’ve told me.”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” said Maggie. “I didn’t tell anyone, I was so embarrassed! Just told the girls at A-club group therapy. I totally cheated on my second husband with Dave, who was cheating on his second wife with me before they divorced. We’ve gotten together on and off over the years since our divorce.”

  “Well I do declare, Margaret,” said Wes, “this is an entirely different shade of scarlet!”

  “I know,” said Maggie. “I guess I never felt like it was cheating if it was Dave. We have kids together. We have history. Our marriage fell apart because we lost our son, and we just didn’t know how to console each other or even ourselves. But I never stopped loving him.”

  “Oh my Holy God,” said Wes. He put two bowling shirts on the counter and took out his wallet. “Alfred and I will look fab in these at 50s night at the theatre. Girl, you’re a hot mess as usual. I’m not even sure what advice to give you, and you know I’m never speechless. I guess to me it sounds like eventually you and Dave are going to have to sit down, in a chair, not on each other’s faces, and talk about what the hell is going on.”

  “You’re right,” said Maggie. “At some point I’m going to have to learn to stop putting band aids on the gaping wound from my first marriage ending. It’s not fair to the band aid people. But I don’t know how Dave feels. I always figured maybe it’s just a sex thing for him—he’s a guy!”

  “Well, I’m a guy, and I’m as much of a fan of random sex as the next guy, but I don’t think that is what is going here,” said Wes. “Remember what you said before about having these other people be “fillers” and now you’re calling them “band aids” or whatever. I know that feeling from my past relationships, and it’s what’s different about the one I’m in now. Maybe the only thing that can heal that wound is going to come right from the source of it.”

  “I don’t know,” said Maggie. “I guess time will tell.”

  “It always does, honey,” said Wes, giving Maggie a big hug.

  Lisa nervously sprayed glass cleaner on the front window of the bakery. The tiny café set in the shop’s bay window was a perfect place for a mom to sit with her three-year-old and a scone, but while she texted on her phone, the three-year-old had pawed the front windows with chocolate milk fingers, watching the cars and people go by.

  Ben would be there shortly. She had offered to make lunch, but he had insisted on bringing it, noting that she cooked for people all day and deserved the break. He was picking up tapas from the great Thai restaurant up the road.

  The bakery was open, so she wasn’t nervous about getting into an awkwardly sexual interaction that she confusingly both wanted and didn’t want to happen. She slumped into the café chair. What exactly is it that you do want, Lisa? The voice in her head asked her. Do you want him to take you in the back and throw you over the sofa, like you told the Scarlet Letter Society he already has? Or do you just want friendly conversation and flirtation and another round with your vibrator later on, thinking of him while Jim is at work?

  She’d written one thoug
ht in her journal that morning that seemed to be one of the only truths she knew at this point: “He takes away the loneliness.” It was a powerful thing. Even in a marriage, it was shocking how lonely you could actually feel sometimes.

  She finished cleaning the fingerprints on the window. She had felt sorry for the little girl whose mother had been so distracted by her iPhone. Was texting or checking your email really more important that the adorable, curly-headed little blonde girl sitting across from you? Lisa knew she wasn’t someone who should judge a mother, not being one herself, but the jealousy over wanting to be a mother sometimes made her critical of women who seemed to take for granted the gift of a beautiful child.

  And then she saw Ben walking up the street. He hadn’t seen her yet. He wore faded jeans, worn loafers, and a slightly wrinkled dark green polo shirt, the neck of a white t-shirt showing beneath it. His brown crew cut hair was neat as always. In addition to a large brown paper bag containing their lunch, he carried a folder of logo illustrations.

  She scurried back behind the counter and busily put freshly baked muffins into the shop’s front case. The bell above the Victorian building’s old original double front doors jingled as he entered, smiling at her. She returned the smile, feeling color rise to her cheeks and willing it to fade back down.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Swain,” said Ben.

  “Well good afternoon, Mr. Nidale,” said Lisa, trying not to grin like a middle school girl with a crush on the boy in her algebra class.

  Lisa realized that since most of their communications had taken place on electronic devices (in addition to the fantasy sequences scrawled in her journal) this was one of the few times they’d actually met in person, and she was nervous. She knew more about him from stalking him on Facebook (status says single, photos with girl say “maybe girlfriend?”) than she did about actually sitting across from him at a table and having a conversation. And as he placed the lunch bag on the table, she realized how small it was. The tiny round iron table had been picked because it fit in the small window space with two matching chairs; an adorable vintage set from one of many nearby antique shops. Now they’d be eating messy food with chopsticks practically on top of each other