Five Minutes in Heaven (12 page)

Molly was silent, which was making Jude uneasy. She had seemed alarmingly attentive during the skin-toning demonstration. The next thing you knew, she'd be wearing false eyelashes and a piecrust of makeup, just like Miss Melrose.

“I have something to tell you,” said Molly as they passed their redbrick church, its white spire topped by a copper cross tarnished to the blue-green of bread mold. “I hope it won't hurt your feelings.”

“What, for God's sake?”

“I'm having a party in my basement Friday night.”

“A slumber party?”

“A boy-girl party. A Dirty Shag party.”

“But you don't know how to shag.”

“Yes, I do, Jude. They have sock hops at junior high during lunch break. To raise money for different charities.”

“Well, I guess you could teach me to shag by this weekend.”

“Jude,” she said in a low, guilty voice, “it's just for junior high kids.” She was staring at the sidewalk.

“Okay,” Jude finally said. “So I'll just see you Saturday morning. We'll watch ‘Fury' together. And maybe go riding. Or look for arrowheads in the afternoon with my dad.”

“Great,” said Molly. “You know you're my best friend. Nothing can ever change that.”

“Yes, I know that.”

They had reached the crack in the sidewalk between their two yards. For old times' sake, laughing, they put their hands on each other's shoulders, glanced into each other's eyes, and chanted in unison, “Best friend. Buddy of mine. Pal of pals.” Molly seemed relieved to have made her confession, and Jude vowed always to help her feel free to do what she wanted.

Following supper and homework, Jude and Molly stood side by side in their shorty pajamas before the mirror in Molly's bathroom, setting their hair on rollers as big as frozen orange-juice cans. Then they encased the rollers in stretchy silver lame hair nets that made them look like spacemen. Climbing into Molly's bed, they tried to discover a comfortable sleeping position that wouldn't result in stiff necks in the morning.

Finally settled on her side with Molly's chest against her back, Jude tried to relax, despite the fact that her ear was touching her shoulder. Molly twitched her legs irritably several times. Sighing, she sat up.

“What's wrong?” asked Jude, rolling over to look up at her in the glow coming through the window from the streetlight.

Molly reached under the covers and stroked one of Jude's calves. “Your legs. They tickle when we sleep like that. Couldn't you shave them?”

“I guess I could,” said Jude. “I never thought about it.” She ran her hand along one of Molly's calves. It was silky-smooth.

Molly rested her pumpkin head against the quilted headboard. “Jude,” she said, “you know, it's not that easy for someone in junior high school to be best friends with a sixth grader.”

Jude sat up and looked over at her. “I know it must be hard,” she said, recalling her rash vow that afternoon to help Molly do as she wanted. “Do you want to see less of me?”

Molly said nothing for a long time.

God, Molly, don't leave me, Jude screamed silently. But she gritted her teeth and revealed nothing, as though bluffing during Over the Moon.

“No,” Molly finally said. “But do please think about shaving your legs.” She scooted to the far side of the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.

Jude lay in the dark listening to the soft, steady whoosh of Molly's breathing. She could smell the floral cologne Molly had started splashing on her limbs after baths. She wanted to reach across the expanse of sheet and stroke Molly's hair. Or roll on top of her and lie nose-to-nose with their limbs aligned, giggling in unison and gazing into each other's crossed eyes. But they weren't children anymore.

Sidney yelped and snuffled in his sleep on his cushion in the corner. Baby frogs were peeping down by the river, and a coonhound was baying from some distant moonstruck cove.

Finally drifting off to sleep, Jude dreamed fitfully of losing her pocketbook, and being late for school, and having a flat tire on her bicycle, and having her teeth fall out in her hand at a party. Abruptly, she woke up. Molly's father was growling down the hall, followed by the high-pitched wail of her mother. Why couldn't they just be nice to each other and keep quiet? They were supposed to be the parents. Grabbing a tissue from the nightstand, Jude tore it up, plugged each ear with a wad, and tried to ignore their incomprehensible misery.

Toward dawn, she descended into an exhausted stupor.

She and Molly were lying on a raft in the river under a hot spring sun, floating past drooping willows that were mustard with new shoots. The raft rocked slowly in the current. Cawing crows were wheeling overhead. Sunbeams were flickering like hummingbird wings, back and forth across their flesh.

While the raft bobbed, the water began to flow faster and faster. She and Molly rolled toward each other and fitted their bodies together, interlocking their thighs and enfolding each other in their arms. As they were swept along down the river, their mouths met. They began to caress each other's lips with their tongues.

The current raced more and more swiftly, as though about to carry them over a waterfall. The rutted red banks rushed past on either side. And then a towering wall of water rolled down the river and raised the raft high up toward the sky, swirling it into the air like an autumn leaf on a whirlwind. And Jude felt a sweet, haunting pain pulsing through her body, as though she were being stung to death by a swarm of bees injecting her veins with honey.

And then the whole world burst apart like fireworks. Bits of Molly's and her flesh flew off into the churning river and roiling sky. And they were no longer Molly or Jude. They were each other and everything. The mountains and the trees and the birds singing in the swaying branches. The river and the pastures and the cows grazing on the lush grasses. They all formed a whole. They always had and they always would, but she had lacked until now the eyes to see it.

Waking up in the scarlet rays of the rising sun, Jude discovered that she and Molly were completely wrapped up in each other's arms and legs in the middle of the bed, breasts pressed together. Molly's eyes fluttered open and she stared blankly into Jude's, only inches away, as though unable to remember who she was or who Jude was. Slowly, the blankness faded and was replaced by consternation. Hurriedly, she untangled her limbs and scooted to the far side of the bed.

Glancing around bemusedly, Jude discovered that their giant curlers had been yanked out and hurled around the room and that their hairdos for that day were in ruins.

At school, Jude sat through her classes in a daze, constantly reviewing what had happened between Molly and herself. It comforted her to know that Molly was sitting in study hall at the junior high school just then, also trying to figure out what it meant.

She watched a gray squirrel on a branch of the oak tree outside her classroom window. It sat on its haunches munching an apple core retrieved from the trash basket. Its fluffy, twitching tail was draped along its spine like a Mohawk haircut. As she watched, Jude thought maybe she finally understood what her father had always tried to explain to her. Beneath their different appearances, she and that squirrel were animated by the same force. It was the force that had joined Molly and her together last night. The Cherokees called it the Great Spirit, and Clementine called it graveyard love.

J
UDE CRAWLED ACROSS THE LAWN
to Molly's house, trying to pretend that she was an orphan raised by wolves who had just emerged from the forest. She was actually nothing more than a common Peeping Tom. But Aunt Audrey and her father were at the hospital having their baby, so no one would miss her. She lay in the shrubbery, looking through a basement window. Molly was dancing with Ace to “The Twelfth of Never.” Ace had her arm twisted behind his back in a reverse hammerlock. Molly's hair was teased into dark cascades around her face. Eyes closed, she rested her cheek against his thick neck. Jude realized that Molly actually had the hips they'd been encouraged to sway at Charm Class.

Then there was a power failure and the lights went out. But the song continued: “Hold me close. Never let me go….” So apparently it wasn't a power failure.

Yet the lights stayed out until Jude heard Mrs. Elkins's voice on the steps: “…and I insist that these lights stay on, Molly. If I have to tell you one more time, there'll be no more parties in this basement, young lady.”

When the lights came back on, Jude could see Molly standing apart from Ace, who was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Molly's lips looked swollen. But how could she be kissing Ace Kilgore tonight after what had gone on between them last night on the raft?

Sidney came sniffing up to Jude's prostrate body. Whimpering, he lay down beside her, resting his chin on her shoulder. Jude draped her arm across his back. They watched Molly knead Ace's muscled shoulder with one hand while they resumed dancing, and Jude tried to figure out how to switch the lights off so that Mrs. Elkins would ban future parties. Closing her eyes, she willed the whole scene to vanish by the time she opened them.

Her mother was riding a puffy white cloud, a large picture hat clamped to her head with one hand. Smiling, she waved with the fingers of her free hand. Jude watched, worried to see her again after so many years, because her mother usually appeared whenever Jude was in for a bad time.

W
HEN
J
UDE ENTERED
M
OLLY'S
back door the next morning, Molly was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios. She had purple circles under her eyes, and so did Jude. Jude had lain awake all night trying to decide what to do about Molly's betrayal.

Plopping down in the chair beside her, Jude asked, “So how was your party?”

“Fine, thank you,” said Molly without looking up. She tilted her bowl to spoon out the remaining milk.

“Was it any fun?”

“Yes, thank you.” Still Molly wouldn't look her at her. And she seemed annoyed. Could she have seen Jude spying on her? Jude had believed that Molly should be free to do as she wanted, but that was at a time when she thought that what Molly wanted was to be with her.

Pulling herself together, Jude asked, “So do you want to go riding this morning, or what?”

“I'm afraid I can't.” Molly leaned back in her chair, balancing on the rear legs like a circus tumbler. “It's one of Those Days.”

“Which days?”

“I have cramps.”

“Did you eat too fast?”

“No, I mean I have The Curse.” Molly tossed her wavy black hair off her forehead with the back of one hand.

“The what?”

“My period. You know, like we read about in that pink book my mother gave us last year.”

“You're kidding?”

“No.”

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday.”

“So you can have babies now?”

“Yes, I guess so,” said Molly. She sounded vaguely pleased.

“Molly, for God's sake, be careful.” Jude grabbed her forearm. “Babies can kill you.”

“Your Aunt Audrey just had one, and she's still alive.”

“She was just lucky.”

“Honestly, Jude,” said Molly, irritably wrenching her arm out of Jude's grip. “Grow up.”

Jude looked at her angrily. “Fine,” she snapped. “Have a baby. Die in childbirth. Get buried in the cemetery with all the other dead mothers. That's where you'll end up anyway if you get involved with Ace Kilgore.”

Molly glanced at her guiltily. “What does Ace have to do with this?”

Jude said nothing for a long time, trying to decide whether to confess to what she'd witnessed through the basement window. “Noreen told me you have a crush on him,” she finally murmured.

“What business is it of yours?”

Jude was stunned by Molly's contemptuous tone of voice, stunned that she didn't deny the crush, and stunned that she could even ask such a question. “How could it
not
be my business?” she asked in a low voice.

“What do you mean?” asked Molly, averting her eyes.

“After the other night…You know…”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Molly returned her chair legs to the floor, stood up, and carried her bowl to the sink.

Jude watched her in disbelief, feeling desperately lonely. The most important experience of her life to date had been just a dream. And the indestructible bond it had established between Molly and herself existed only in her own imagination.

CHAPTER
7

“
S
O IF YOU KEEP
your knees together tight, girls, and smile up at your date while you swing your legs under the dashboard, you can get into any sports car, no matter how small, without displaying all your worldly treasures.” Miss Melrose was demonstrating her technique in her desk chair as she talked. The Charm Class was assiduously copying her movements, even though none of the boys they knew could drive.

As Jude secured her worldly treasures beneath her imaginary dashboard, she noticed that Molly had painted her fingernails pink. Now that Jude was in junior high, she, too, shaved her armpits as well as her legs. And she put on lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara every morning. Thanks to Miss Melrose, she knew never to wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day and not to make chicken salad with dark meat. But Molly was always one step ahead.

Except in the classroom. Despite her efforts to score poorly on the placement exams, Jude had been assigned to a special seminar, along with the nerds who played slide-rule games in the lunchroom while all the cool kids did the Dirty Shag in the gymnasium to raise money for cerebral palsy. Jude had also been elected seventh-grade representative to the student council, which was dominated by classmates who were Episcopalian and Presbyterian and who lived in the big, fancy houses of the Yankee mill executives along Poplar Bluff.