The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  “Where? Let me see.” Jude reached out and undid her top button.

  “Jude.” Blushing, Molly turned away to rebutton her shirt.

  “Sorry,” said Jude, watching Molly uneasily.

  The next afternoon while Molly was at the dentist, Jude walked through the revolving doors into Fine’s Department Store on the main street of town. Glancing all around to make sure no one was watching; she sneaked into the lingerie department. All around her loomed beige plastic female torsos, severed at the waists, some headless or armless, others contorted into grotesque postures with their severed stumps of arms extended as though for a bloody embrace. Each sported a different type of brassiere or slip.

  Clenching her molars for courage, Jude walked into their midst as though into an enchanted forest in which interlopers were chopped up and turned into bra-bearing statues. Reaching out to the nearest rack, she grabbed the first box she came to. After counting out her savings on the glass countertop, she shoved it at the gum-chewing salesgirl and fled.

  Back in her bedroom, Jude threw off her flannel shirt and poked at the pale flesh surrounding her small pink nipples. It seemed no different from usual. But Molly always knew the right thing to do before Jude did. Inspecting the cardboard box, Jude read that the bra was size 36C. Removing the white cotton contraption from the cardboard box, she tried to figure out which strap went where. It was as confusing as when she was first learning to bridle Flame. Finally, she got the thing fastened and went over to look in the mirror on her closet door. The stitched fabric cups billowed atop her chest like luffing sails. Smiling proudly, she put her shirt back on and buttoned it. Then she turned sideways to the mirror to observe her new womanly contour.

  AFTER EVERY FOOTBALL GAME, there was a celebratory session of Spin the Bottle in Molly’s basement. Eventually, Jude had kissed each reformed Commie Killer at least once. These former marauders were so courteous and pleasant, even Ace Kilgore himself, that she was forced to admit that people could change. But try as she did to position her hands and mouth correctly, she felt very little except impatience as the boys pressed their lips against hers and ran their hands over the elastic that hung loosely between her shoulder blades. So she pretended that she was an orphan raised by wolves, participating in the rites of these strange creatures on the edge of the forest only to be polite.

  One afternoon in early winter, Noreen announced that Spin the Bottle had become boring. Everyone nodded in agreement except Sandy, Molly, and Jude, who were wary of what she might propose instead. Her new game was called Five Minutes in Heaven. Each girl’s name would be written on a slip of paper. Each boy would draw a folded slip. Then he and the girl he’d picked would be locked in the closet together for five minutes to “let nature take its course.” Since there were nine couples that day, Noreen calculated that a complete cycle would require forty-five minutes. But several participants had to be home for supper before that, so she suggested locking up three couples at a time, one in the closet, one behind the furnace, and one in the outside stairwell, thus trimming game time to fifteen minutes. Those who ate supper late could play a second round if they wanted.

  Jude watched with mounting dread as Noreen wrote out the girls’ names, tore the paper into strips, and folded them. She noticed that Noreen marked her own slip with a tiny X when she thought no one was looking, catching Jerry Crawford’s eye as she did so. Then she mixed up the slips in the basket that had held the chocolate chip cookies. The first three boys selected one. Jerry unfolded his and gave Jude a look full of meaning. Noreen, meanwhile, looked at him with dismay. Then she glared evilly at Jude through her pointy new white cat-eye glasses.

  Walking over to Jude, Jerry seized her hand and led her to the closet to which he’d been assigned. Within was an athlete’s paradise—a croquet set, a kickball, fishing gear, a couple of rifles, a bicycle pump, a saddle and bridle, golf clubs and cleats, some deflated plastic beach toys. A badminton net was hanging off the upper shelf. Jerry closed the door, and he and Jude stood there in the dark, Jude wondering what they could possibly find to do with each other for the five minutes that stretched before them like the sands of the Sahara.

  As Jerry leaned over to kiss her, his head became tangled in the badminton net. Struggling to free himself, he pulled the net off the shelf, along with several rackets and birdies. Jude also became entangled, and they spent their first two minutes in heaven trying to extract themselves. Finally, Jerry got them out by ripping the net to pieces.

  Free at last, he put his arms around her and fitted his lips to hers. She could feel a fine stubble on his upper lip as he rubbed it against her own. Then he pushed his slimy tongue between her lips and into her mouth. She tried to push it back out again with her own tongue. This seemed to encourage him. Breathing faster, he started moving his tongue in and out like a striking snake. Jude turned her head aside, worried that she might throw up. Jerry put his hands on her waist, pulled her hips against his own, buried his stubbly face in the angle between her throat and shoulder, and began sucking her neck like a crazed vampire. She could feel some strange bulge in his football pants. It pressed against her belly like a concealed handgun.

  The door flew open. Noreen was standing there looking deeply annoyed. “Time’s up!” she announced like a teacher monitoring an IQ test. “Next!”

  “So what did you think of Five Minutes in Heaven?” asked Molly after everyone had left. She grabbed the broom and began to sweep up the cookie crumbs on the linoleum.

  “Not much.” Jude was fitting the Coke bottles into the cardboard six-pack carriers, inspecting the bottom of each for its town of origin. So far, St. Louis was the farthest away.

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “Did you?”

  “It was okay.”

  Jude reflected that Molly’s partner had been Sandy. No wonder she hadn’t minded. Sandy always performed the minimum that he could get away with in these dumb games. “Jerry kept sticking his tongue into my mouth. It was disgusting.”

  Molly stopped sweeping to look at her. “You don’t like Frenching?”

  “What?”

  “French kissing, it’s called.”

  “You mean there’s a name for it? I thought he’d made it up.”

  “You just need some practice. Here, let me show you.”

  Dropping the broom, she walked across the linoleum toward Jude. Jude watched her approach in her red football jersey, feeling strange. Was Molly really going to do that to her? With Molly, it might not be quite so revolting.

  Extending the fingers of one hand, Molly placed her thumb beneath her index finger to form an opening. Wetting her lips with her tongue, she held this opening to her mouth. As Jude watched, she licked and caressed the aperture with her lips and tongue.

  “Try it,” she said.

  Jude obeyed, looking at Molly as she did so, fascinated by the unexpected talents of this friend she thought she knew so well.

  “I bet you’ll like it better next time,” said Molly, squeezing her upper arm.

  Jude studied Molly, who was bending over to pick up the broom. With a stab of alarm, she wondered where Molly had learned to French kiss.

  WHEN MRS. ELKINS ARRIVED in Molly’s bedroom to say good night one evening, she was clutching a pink book called New Life Abounding: A Guide to Christian Marriage. Perching on the bedside beneath the dotted swiss canopy, she gazed at Sidney, who was panting amiably, filling the room with his sour dog-food breath.

  “Girls, there’s something we need to talk about,” she said anxiously.

  Jude and Molly, who were lying under the covers in their pajamas, looked at her with alarm.

  “I suppose y‘all have been wondering about babies and all like that?”

  The girls glanced at each other.

  “All right, so here’s what happens,” she gasped. “The daddy puts his pee-pee in the mommy’s wee-wee, and a baby grows in her stomach. Oh, here, read it for yourselves.” She thrust the pink book at them. Hyperventilati
ng, she raced from the room.

  Astonished by the concept that Mr. Elkins’s tiny, pale pee-pee could somehow enter Mrs. Elkins’s never-seen wee-wee, Molly and Jude spent several hours giggling nervously over the diagrams of this unlikely procedure. Molly pointed out haltingly that French kissing was merely this unappetizing act performed with the tongue. They gazed at each other with horror as they realized that each had done this with various boys. Did this mean that they weren’t “virgins,” which the book said it was very important still to be when you gave yourself to your new husband on your wedding night?

  As she slipped into an exhausted sleep toward midnight, Jude finally understood that her father had killed her mother with one of those strange lumps that lurked like hand grenades in the pants of the new, improved Commie Killers.

  CHAPTER

  6

  JUDE’S GRANDMOTHER looked up from soaking her baking-powder biscuit in redeye gravy to say, “Daniel, you’re raising this child like a boy. Football, and horses without saddles, and jeeps in the pasture. And all this arrowhead nonsense. You may have gone to school in New York City, but you’re every bit as much of a savage as your father was. I declare, I’m shocked to my core!”

  “Yes, Momma. I’m sure you’re right.”

  Jude realized that her father couldn’t have cared less. He was beaming at his wife, whose belly was swelling with new life. Aunt Audrey’s carrot-colored bouffant framed a foxlike face with small, pointed features. She was upset that Jude couldn’t call her Mother. But each time Jude had tried, her throat had closed up, leaving her gasping like an asthmatic. Calling her Aunt Audrey was their compromise. Jude was trying to like her, but they had nothing in common except Jude’s father. So Jude was polite to Aunt Audrey for his sake, and Aunt Audrey was polite to her for the same reason. Her father maintained she’d gained a mother, but she felt she’d lost a father instead.

  “At least I wear shirts now,” mumbled Jude.

  “I beg your pardon?” barked her blue-haired grandmother. “Speak up, young lady.”

  “Nothing, ma‘am.”

  “At the rate you’re going, my dear, you’ll never qualify for the Virginia Club Colonial Cotillion. And I refuse to ask them to lower their standards for you simply because I’m president.” She returned the ladle to the silver gravy boat with finality.

  Jude managed not to say that the only thing she wanted right now was to get this gruesome meal over with so she could go riding with Molly. Now that Molly was in junior high and Jude still in grade school, they saw each other only after school and on weekends. The Wildwoods were suddenly abloom and the alfalfa in the valley was greening up. The air had turned soft and steamy, and the soil would squelch under the horses’ hooves when Pal and Flame loped along the riverbank in shafts of sunlight through the chartreuse willows.

  Aunt Audrey said, “Yes, Jude, and you’ve got to think about how you’re going to catch yourself a man when you get older.” She plucked complacently at her bulging smock of rose linen.

  Jude looked at her. If she wanted a man, she could always steal someone’s father. Aunt Audrey was always making little jokes no one else thought were funny. It was pathetic.

  That evening as Jude lay on her bed reading her assignment for Bible study class on the meaning of the lions in the story of Daniel, her grandmother phoned to say that Jude and Molly were enrolled in Miss Melrose’s Charm Class at Fine’s Department Store.

  Jude held the phone receiver away from her ear and stared at it.

  “They’ll teach y‘all how to dress and walk and sit,” her grandmother promised.

  “But I can already do that, Grandma.”

  “Not properly. Not like a young Virginia belle.”

  THE PROPER WAY TO WALK required placing one foot directly in front of the other as though crossing a tightrope, hips swaying side to side as ballast. Math texts balanced on their heads, Molly, Jude, Noreen, and several other apprentice charmers swayed along behind Miss Melrose (whose shiny false eyelashes and switchblade fingernails were all about an inch long) through the shoe department, down the escalator, past the waxworks of writhing plastic amputees in the lingerie department, and into the makeup department, which reeked of competing colognes.

  “Now, girls,” said Miss Melrose from behind the glass counter as she picked up a cotton ball and a bottle of caramel-colored liquid that looked like a urine sample, “at this particular moment in time, y‘all’s lovely little ingenue faces aren’t anything but nasty old cell cemeteries.”

  Using the moistened cotton, she demonstrated on Noreen’s oily forehead how to defoliate and moisturize these cemeteries. Then she promised to unveil the mysteries of eyeliner at the next session. Their homework assignment was to memorize the first ten silverware patterns in their Learning to Be a Lady handbook. She warned that they would be tested on this.

  “Now y‘all don’t forget to bring you some high-heeled shoes next time,” she called as they exited through the revolving door to the street, “and we’ll practice our walk some more.”

  “Oh, please,” muttered Jude as she and Molly headed home in the soft spring twilight, up the main street past the display windows at the five-and-dime. Jude felt acutely conscious of the incorrectness of her everyday gait, an ambling shuffle, faintly pigeon-toed. But Ace maintained that the fastest sprinters were always pigeon-toed, and it was true that Jude could outrun everyone else on the football team.

  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.