When I’d first created my city garden, everyone told me I was dreaming, that there were no butterflies in the city apart from those in the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.
But I knew there were masses of monarchs in Central Park. They settled on flowers in the Shakespeare Garden, in the Conservatory and in the Rambles. And since the Butterfield Institute was only a block and a half from the park, I thought they might come.
The first year they didn’t, but they showed up the second and have been coming ever since. Lovely red-orange monarchs, cabbage whites and pop-art zebra swallowtails find their way to my small garden and grace me with their short-lived loveliness. Winged creatures that exist to reproduce and, in the process, help flowers to do the same.
By late September the butterflies were usually gone, but this year it was still so warm that they had not yet started their migration. A monarch, as deeply orange as the leaves on the maple trees, flitted from petal to petal while Shelby struggled to figure out how to reveal her secrets.
Aristotle had named butterflies psyche, the Greek word for soul, and I understood why. Their metamorphosis reminded me of the way patients work so hard to become free of what has kept them fettered in the past.
Finally, Shelby let go of her lip and began. “Our society-we call it a society, the Scarlet Society-is a secret. Sounds so melodramatic, doesn’t it? But it is. No one outside of the membership knows about it. We don’t do anything illegal. Or dangerous. But it has lasted, in one form or another, for the past forty years without anyone finding out about it except the people we wanted to know.”
I did the math. The society had formed in the early sixties.
Shelby had stopped talking and was biting her lip again.
“Can you tell me any more than that?”
“Yes. Of course. Our membership is made up of single, married and divorced women, many of whom work for a living. Everyone is fairly well off. Our dues are high.”
She stopped. I waited. She didn’t offer anything else.
“That doesn’t really help me all that much. Is there more?”
“Yes, much more. But first we need to reach some kind of agreement, and I’m not really sure how to proceed here. We’ve been so careful. Our members don’t even know one another’s last names. You are the only one who knows mine. Can you agree to help us? Then I can tell you more of what you need to know.”
“I can’t do that until I know what you need and why.”
Shelby frowned and looked back down at her hands.
“Okay. How about this? We are a group of women who have similar interests. Nothing we do is dangerous. Or illegal.”
It was the second time she’d made those two points. So I knew one thing: what they did was in some way dangerous. And possibly illegal.
We all lie. We learn when we are small children and see an overweight woman in the pool and cry out-Mommy, look, there’s a fat lady-and our mothers tell us that isn’t nice, that we shouldn’t say things that can hurt people’s feelings. Because in some cases it’s kinder to lie, we are taught to ingest moral cyanide in the name of civility. And then one day we get to a point in our lives-perhaps the point that Shelby Rush was at that moment-when the truth is the only way we can begin to help and heal, but still we obfuscate and hide because it is what we are used to doing.
“Okay, if you can’t tell me any more about the society, tell me why you think I’m the right therapist for you.”
“Because you’re a sex therapist.”
I nodded but was frustrated and Shelby knew it. “I could explain it all if you would just agree to work with us.”
I leaned forward. “Shelby, here at the institute, we make a serious effort in matching therapists to patients. We’re professionals. I can’t just assume that I’m the right therapist for your group.”
“Almost everyone agreed that you’d be right.”
“Who didn’t agree?”
“One of our members who doesn’t think we need a therapist at all. Another who wanted us to hire her therapist, but I didn’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why me?”
“A friend of mine who isn’t in our society recommended you. She was a patient of yours four years ago. Ellen Kenneth?”
I nodded. Shelby continued. “She told me you are non-judgmental and that you will listen to us talk about sex and the things we do sexually and that you won’t tell us we should stop or warn us that we’re all screwing up our relationships. That you will understand when we tell you we aren’t, that we’re keeping our relationships alive.”
I felt the first stirrings of excitement that usually kick in at the start of a good therapy session. “What is it a therapist would be judgmental about?”
Shelby sat up straighter, smoothed her pants and flicked her hair behind her shoulders. She was preparing for battle. “What do you think normal sex is, Dr. Snow?”
“I don’t qualify sex as normal or abnormal. Each of us has boundaries. What might be acceptable for you, might not be for someone else. Not because the act itself is acceptable or unacceptable, but rather because of your own reaction to it.”
“Isn’t there anything you think is abnormal?”
“Are you asking me where I draw the line between what is healthy and unhealthy?”
She nodded.
“When your own sexual desires or actions cause serious pain or danger to either yourself or someone else.”
Shelby sat silently, nodding, it seemed, to herself. “We need a therapist who is trustworthy. I know every therapist is supposed to be, but we need to find someone who has been tested. And we know you have been. I did some research on the Magdalene Murders. You never betrayed your patient. You never told the police what you knew.”
I nodded in acknowledgment. Shelby continued.
“We need a therapist who will understand what it is like to be a successful woman making her way in a world that is still male dominated. Who won’t be shocked or disturbed by what we have to say. And we want it to be a sex therapist, not because we need help with sexual issues but because the sexual component of our society is so intrinsic to it that we don’t think anyone else would be able to understand what we have to explain.”
Shelby had told me she was a divorce lawyer, and while I found most of her conversation devoid of legalese, this last speech was too convoluted for me. I wondered if she had done that to confuse me or was really having a hard time coming out and telling me about the Scarlet Society?
“On the Today show you talked about how, as women become empowered and gain more recognition and prominence in the work force, their success becomes sexualized, and how that is creating a sexual crisis in many relationships today.”
I nodded again. This was also the basis of the paper Nina had asked me to deliver at the psychiatric conference next August. I waited to hear what connection this thesis had with the society.
“Our club is built on the idea that being sexually aggressive is not alien to women but something we’ve been taught to suppress in order to protect the male position. Male-dominated institutions, businesses, religions and philosophies have perpetuated the myth of the powerless woman. But there are women who want something else. Who don’t want to be dominated. Who don’t want to be chosen. Who don’t get off on any of that.”
I leaned forward. She smiled, knowing she had me. I knew it, too, but that was okay.
“Dr. Snow, our chapter here in New York is having a problem, and we don’t know how we should handle it. I’m afraid…a lot of us are afraid that if we don’t do exactly the right thing now it might rip us apart or threaten what we have. And that would be awful because women have a right to exercise their free will. Not just in the marketplace. Not just by being single parents. Not just reproductively. But we have a right to our own sexual free will. We have a right to be stronger women and enjoy men on our own terms if that’s what pleases us.”