The Scarlet Letter Society by Mary McCarthy Read Free Book Online

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—whose parents were divorced (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