Читать книгу The Scarlet Letter Society - Mary T. McCarthy - Страница 7

“I know where you goin’ to, I knew when you came home last night

‘Cause your eyes had a mist from the smoke of a distant fire.”

—“Smoke From a Distant Fire,” Sanford Townsend Band

Monthly meeting of the Scarlet Letter Society.

Zoomdweebies Café

Friday, June 1, 2012

5:30 a.m.

“Welcome to Z’s, ladies,” said Zarina, opening the shop to the beautiful June morning and its fresh sunrise.

“Hey there, Zarina,” said Eva. “You look awfully bright and chipper this early morning.”

She smiled.

“This must have something to do with that slightly brooding but completely adorable young hipster gentleman we often see visiting your lovely shop,” added Eva.

“Well, I hadn’t thought about it that way,” replied Zarina, “but I guess that’s just a good a reason as any to put a smile on my face. And you know we hate being called hipsters.”

“We know,” said Maggie. “But what else are we supposed to call you youngins? And by the way, thanks for getting the books for us this month, hipster.”

“No problem, Mag Hag. You don’t mind if I call you that, right? Only every time you call me a hipster.” Zarina winked at Maggie, enjoying her fake horror face response, and retreated behind the counter to begin supplying the early morning caffeine.

Maggie began the meeting with her typical style. “Ok, so which of you adultresses read the book? You know, the one our entire tiny club is named after?”

Lisa cleared her throat. “I read it. It’s not an easy thing to do. That old-fashioned language made me remember why we all read Cliffs Notes back in the day. But the theme of sin and the conflict between heart and mind are timeless.”

“Well that was a thought-provoking, brief but detailed book review, Lisa. Thank you for that,” said Maggie. Eva laughed.

“What are you laughing about, missy? I bet your big-shot corporate-attorney ass didn’t even read page one,” said Maggie.

“I did so read page one!” proclaimed Eva. “Plus more than half of the Wikipedia page.” They laughed.

Lisa always found herself a little jealous of the relationship between Maggie and Eva, who’d known each other for years. Lisa hated feeling like the perpetual third wheel on the SLS bike, but the current company represented her only friends, so she did her best to swallow her insecurity.

“The whole first page of the book, huh? Wow, we’re impressed,” said Maggie. “Well, ladies, how about if I give my thoughts on the book? I actually took notes.”

“Notes? Geez!” said Eva.

“I took notes, too,” admitted Lisa, clutching her trusty notebook and flipping through it.

“Pipe down, Eva. It looks like our little book club discussion is being led by me and Lisa, since you barely cracked the cover—er, opened the app,” said Maggie. She continued, “There’s a reason all of our club invites include the one quote about the scarlet letter as ‘her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.’ I picked it because it describes that there are basically two types of women in this world. Those who cheat, and those who do not.”

Lisa looked down at her coffee, then pretended to write something down in her journal.

“Well I guess we’ve come to the right place,” said Eva. “I know I’d rather be the mistress than the wife.”

Lisa turned to Eva and said, “But you are a wife.”

Eva replied, “I didn’t say I wasn’t, but in addition to the fact that I’m a terrible one, obviously, I think being a mistress is so much more fun. There’s no laundry or kids’ sports practices or fights about spending money. It’s just fun.”

“Which brings up another key quote from the book: ‘She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom’,” said Maggie. “I think that’s what Hawthorne was trying to say there. Being in a marriage can feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. But when you’re with a lover, you’re in another world, and you’re free. Even if it means you pay the price of a sinner.”

“Exactly,” said Eva. “Sin or no sin, it’s an escape from reality. And if you’re with several lovers, you’re even more free! Right, Maggie?”

Maggie sighed. “Why do I have the feeling that we’re never going to end up actually discussing the books in our book club? Ok, well, since you seem to be asking, Eva, the professor and I are just friends.“

“Margaret Katherine Hanson, I believe you just blushed for the first time in the history of your half-century life,” said Eva.

“Fuck you, half-century!” said Maggie. “I’m nowhere near fifty yet!”

Lisa looked at the two women and laughed nervously, secretly worrying she didn’t fit in to this club. She scribbled in her journal and thought to herself: how am I going to keep coming to these meetings if I’m contributing literally only fictionalized accounts of fantasy encounters with my graphic designer? I love Maggie and Eva’s stories and their confidence, but will it be enough for me to take the leap and have a real affair of my own?

Zarina listened intently to the June meeting of the Scarlet Letter Society and wondered to herself who Maggie’s new professor friend was; whether it was a friend of her mother’s at the college. She observed the group dynamic of the women. Maggie was clearly the leader. The confidence in her boisterous New England accent alone could have made a ship full of men sail toward a hurricane if that’s what they’d been told to do.

Eva was more serious generally and seemed so conflicted. One time she’d seem happy, giddy almost, and another day she’d seem kind of moody and somber. And Lisa? Well, she just seemed to be in a world all her own. She often came into the shop and wrote quietly; alone. She was so much more reserved than the other women. Her quiet nature always made Zarina wonder how she even got the nerve to have an affair.

But when Zarina heard the women talking about another book selection, she couldn’t help but chime in. Anna Karenina? Ugh. Zarina had an immediate sneaking suspicion the women would not enjoy trudging through the 1852 Tolstoy classic. She’d read it herself in her last semester at college. At the meeting, Maggie had come in with the Anna Karenina opening quote,

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

It was true the women often talked about their own families—who had lost a parent (Lisa), whose mother was getting a bit senile (Eva), and who was orphaned as a kid (Maggie, who spent a fortune in therapy trying to get over those years that were so difficult to forget). But Zarina knew the book would end up being torture, if any of them even got through the tome. So she approached Maggie.

“I hate to interrupt,” said Zarina. “And of course I’m happy to order you ladies any book you want. But I’m not sure any of you will like reading this one.” Zarina understood their desire to find wisdom and meaning in adulterous literature. But there was no sense letting them read voluminous Tolstoy about a woman treated as a social outcast…especially since Anna committed suicide at the end by hurling herself in front of a damn train.

”What about Fear of Flying by Erica Jong?” asked Zarina. She knew Maggie’s shop was named for the 70s novel, as was her daughter Erica, who Zarina had gone to school with as a kid.

“Oh, for the love of baby Jesus,” Maggie had said, laughing. “How have we not read it already?” She told Zarina to order copies just before they left.

She was looking forward to reading it. Her mom had spoken fondly of the “feminist bible,” and she was eager to see what Jong’s take on the whole infidelity thing would be.

It was barely 7 am as Eva sat in her eighth floor office building near Union Station in Washington, D.C. She thought about her boys. After a week of being “unplugged”, she thought the boys had learned their lesson and hopefully wouldn’t get busted doing stupid shit again.

Disciplining the boys had triggered her memory of the kinds of discipline that were doled out in her home as a kid. Her dad would drink, get drunk, scream at her mother for some ridiculous housewife violation—the laundry was piled up, why was the dishwasher not emptied, why couldn’t she just vacuum this fucking room? And then, on the bad days, he would hit her. Eva would hide in her bedroom closet until it was over.

Stay out of his way, just stay out of his way. When the attacks came, whether verbal or physical, Eva’s mother would look down shamefully, never yelling back, never fighting. She just took it. To this day, living alone on the island, her abusive drunk asshole of a husband long dead, she was as vacant as an abandoned motel. It was like life had battered her down into a state of complacency that amounted to just waiting to die.

Eva found herself getting lost in her thoughts a lot. It was difficult to concentrate at work when she had so much going on in her personal life. The paperwork stacked on the desk in front of her demanded her attention for the big trial coming up. She wanted to prepare for it, but thoughts of her troubled marriage, wayward sons, New York chef lover, and her intern Ron, were constantly getting in her way.

The monthly visits to Maryland’s Eastern Shore were the only time she really had to herself to try to put her life into some kind of perspective. Her mother’s cottage on Matthew’s Island had a separate small caretaker’s cottage where Eva stayed when she visited. Her mom had become more and more forgetful as time went on, and once a month was the minimum Eva could visit in order to make sure her mother was getting along okay.

“Going to your happy place?” asked Ron as he peeked his blond head around the corner into her office door.

Ron walked in, observing Eva staring at the enormous vintage apothecary jar on the corner of her desk. It was filled with sea glass she found on the island. It was a hobby she’d picked up from her mom. Searching for the worn pieces of glass tossed onto the beach by the Chesapeake Bay was her personal form of relaxation—

therapy even. She’d check the low tide charts, then ride a bike over to the hidden spot she’d found where the best variety of colors could be found. The most typical colors: white, brown, and green were found in abundance but the jar before her held only the pale turquoise she loved best. Though she had jars filled with other colors at the cottage, her office collection represented her favorite color, each piece collected at a moment of peace not otherwise found in her life.

Eva smiled at Ron. He was gorgeous in his sleek black suit, perfect grin, huge blue eyes staring at her eagerly.

“That sounds like a fantastic idea,” she said.

Ron walked over and closed the door.

“You know, you never invite me on your New York trips,” he said, smiling at Eva. “I’d love to get out of DC once in a while.”

“Yeah, sometime we’ll have to do that,” said Eva, immediately thinking that she’d have to find a reason to stay in a different hotel, because there was no way in hell she could stay at her usual Plaza suite and have the worlds of her two very different lovers collide. “But for now, why don’t we get out of here and take a coffee break?”

“And by coffee break, I am guessing you mean at my apartment?” Ron beamed at her, acting surprised at the invitation.

She grabbed her purse and they left the office separately, walking the few blocks to his apartment building.

“What’s the matter today?” asked Ron as they walked up the steps and into his loft space apartment in an old warehouse building. “You look a world away.” Eva sat on a tan leather chair, plopping her feet on its ottoman as Ron fixed cups of coffee for both of them. She asked for Bailey’s in hers. When he returned from the small kitchen, she saw that he had unbuttoned his yellow Oxford shirt, smiling as he walked over to her with the steaming cup.

“Oh, it’s nothing, just thinking about my day,” said Eva. “Which looks like it might be getting better already.”

Ron’s black pants hung low on his hips. His blond hair was tousled, and Eva admired his perfect chest and abs as he put the coffee down on the table next to where she was seated. She took two long swallows of the coffee, not minding the heat burning down through her chest. What is that thing called, Eva wondered, as she ran her hand over that smooth area of skin just inside Ron’s hip bones, that amazing V-shaped valley thing? Whatever its name, there wasn’t a doubt it was singlehandedly responsible for the wrecking of homes and the falls of empires.

“Well, let’s start your day off right,” said Ron as he leaned down in front of her seat. Since they had texted about a “coffee break” just this morning, he knew she wouldn’t have wasted time wearing panties underneath her short gray designer skirt. Panties would be in her Coach bag, nice and clean for the office later.

Eva removed her blouse and placed it neatly over a nearby chair. She wore only a cream lace bra and the skirt. She picked up the mug of coffee and sipped it again, knowing it was about to get cold. She smiled at her young lover.

“Whenever I see you before work, I know it’s going to be a good day,” said Eva. Ron hiked up her skirt. She lifted her hips and sat on the back of the overstuffed chair. She unfastened the zipper of her skirt as he gently kissed the insides of her thighs. She mentally high-fived herself for remembering to shave the tops of her legs.

Ron’s hands were strong but gentle. He ran them up the sides of her legs, across the sides of her tiny waist, and slowly up that magical spot next to her breasts. She shivered, goosebumps rising on her thin frame, her nipples growing hard. She moaned quietly, willing his hands to graze across her breasts. As he kneeled on the chair in front of her, she deftly used her feet to acknowledge his growing erection.

He smiled and as he stood up to disrobe, Eva admired his body once again. She slid down the back of the chair so she was seated in front of his obvious arousal. They had only been lovers for a few months; she’d interviewed him for the position he’d take after he completed law school, which was just last month. But by now, she knew his body well. She took him into her hands, and using what she considered a fine skill set, she began licking and teasing him until he was both moaning and fully excited. He throbbed with desire, and she loved feeling that in her mouth. Quietly cursing her gag reflex, she used the spray she’d grabbed from her purse to spritz the back of her throat. She gently but firmly grasped him, using her lips to stimulate him. Her other hand grabbed his amazing ass. She felt his knees get weak as she continued, stopping before he got too close to orgasm.

Then suddenly he used his strong arms to cup her body and scoop her off the chair. Ron carried her into the bedroom and tossed her on the bed playfully. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the bed. He knelt, now kissing the insides of her thighs with more urgency.

Eva was never good at accepting oral sex. She felt guilty she wasn’t doing anything to stimulate the guy, had difficulty relaxing enough to enjoy it, and found it really took too long for her to come this way, adding more guilt. She cursed her inner guilty Catholic, trying to relax and enjoy.

Then she had an idea. The bed had sturdy wooden sides. She was in fantastic shape from practicing yoga three times a week, so she slid her body down toward the kneeling (and somewhat surprised-looking) Ron. Using her strong arms, she held her weight up on the wooden side rail and slid over him. The squat position gave her complete control, and she rose up and down, gliding her hips in a circular fashion that made both Ron and Eva moan with pleasure.

Finally, back in control.

Maggie and Wes sat down at their window table overlooking Fritchie Creek on the lovely early summer day in Keytown. Bento boxes at Café Tokyo were their favorite lunch.

“So how are things going with your man?” asked Maggie.

“I can’t believe I broke my own law and dated an actor,” said Wes with a sigh. “As a theatre director, I know better than anyone that they’re all whores and emotional disaster zones.”

“But he’s hot,” said Maggie.

“Alfred is so fucking hot that when he walks down the theatre aisle toward the stage, I literally get goosebumps. And I swear to God, having a hot affair inside an empty theatre is the sexiest thing ever. We’re all kinds of Gay Phantom of the Opera up in this house. H-O-T.”

Maggie laughed, “Hilarious. Could the two of you please stereotype yourselves a little bit more? You’re like gay cliché central!”

“I know, right?” said Wes. “And don’t care. He is a stunner, and I swear to God, a keeper. This is the longest I’ve dated anyone—ever. Six months! The whole thing is positively mythical.”

“I am so, so happy for you,” said Maggie. She’d never seen Wes so serious about a guy, and she didn’t want to jinx how happy he was by talking too much about it. She secretly hoped this was the one for Wes—like herself, at the end of the day, he just wanted someone to curl up and watch bad movies and drink good booze with.

The pair ordered their bento boxes and hot teas and took in the scenery of the passersby on the waterfront. They both loved people-watching.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” said Maggie.

“What shit, baby?” asked Wes.

“My hip joints were killing me for days after my little stairwell romp with Ted,” she said. “And starting another fling is making me wonder what the hell is going on with me.”

“Oooooh, yeah, what’s the latest with you and Dr. Feelgood?”

“I haven’t told anyone but you that the professor is a woman! We’ve seen each other a few times. I really like her. I positively get the whole girl thing now; it’s a totally different world sexually. I mean, I don’t think I’m a lesbian, because at the end of the day, seriously, just give me a dick.”

“Word!” said Wes.

“It’s almost like finding a new best girlfriend that you’re just more intimate with,” said Maggie. “I have generally never felt very close to other women. I hate cliques and all that, so the idea of having a single best girlfriend is something I’ve always wished I had. Kate is filling a void that I guess I’ve always had and didn’t even realize.”

“Sounds like you sure are getting your void filled, honey. And awww. How cute are you girls? Painting each other’s toenails, watching Heathers together, and sucking each other’s tits.”

Maggie sighed. “It’s not like that, exactly. Although I do have to say after a lifetime of wondering what it would be like to be with a girl, I can say it’s much easier than I imagined. Everything just happens sorta naturally. Girls are softer. Their hair is so soft! Everyone must use better conditioner than I do. And the curves…wow. It’s far different than a guy.”