Five Minutes in Heaven

by Lisa Alther

  Returning the atlas to its shelf, Jude noticed a stack of Vogues. Grabbing one, she added it to her pile of poetry books, hoping it might give her some ideas for the new outfit she wanted to assemble in time for this next meeting with Anna.

  En route to her apartment, Jude turned in at her local liquor store and bought a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. This was the wine Anna had suggested for the chicken Marengo at their first lunch together. Jude recalled that she herself had drunk only one glass, trying to keep her wits about her for the discussion of the book contract. Anna had polished off the rest of the bottle alone. Jude admired her gusto. She ate pastries and grilled cheese sandwiches and washed them down with wine or beer or Irish coffee. Jude wondered whether she might have a thyroid condition, because she stayed so slim.

  Plopping down in the armchair before the coffee table, the manuscript lying in stacks all across the carpet, Jude opened the wine and poured herself a glass. Sipping it, she read Baudelaire out loud, despairing over her French accent, which had gone to hell in her years since Paris.

  When the bottle was half empty, Jude came to a poem entitled “Femmes Damnées.” “Have we then committed such a strange act?” Hippolyta demanded of her lover, Delphine. “Explain if you can my turmoil and my terror. I shiver with fear when you call me ‘my angel.’ But I feel my mouth drawn to yours.”

  Jude paused to finish the wine in her glass and refill it. “Far from the living, condemned wanderers, prowl through the wastelands like wolves,” suggested Baudelaire to the distressed women. “Fashion your own destiny, muddled souls. And flee the divine spark that you carry within you.”

  Drawing a deep breath, Jude let the book fall into her lap. She couldn’t detect within herself the shame she was apparently supposed to feel over her love for Molly. She personally had no problem with prowling wastelands like a wolf. She liked wastelands. After all, she’d grown up in one. She’d also grown up regarding herself as a wolf child on the fringes of the forest, longing for her wilderness home. Sometimes her thimbleful of Cherokee blood came in handy.

  Heart thudding, she grabbed the phone off the floor and dialed Anna, sitting there in terror as the phone rang time after time.

  “Hello?” said a pleasant male voice.

  “Is Anna there?”

  “Who is this?” The voice had turned gruff and suspicious.

  Jude hesitated, wondering whether she should just hang up. “Allison,” she ad-libbed.

  “Allison who?”

  “Allison Marks.”

  “I guess we haven’t met.”

  “I work with Anna at Julia Richmond.”

  “Well, she isn’t here right now. Shall I have her call you back?”

  “Never mind. It’s not urgent. I’ll see her next week at school.”

  Jude slammed down the receiver and lay back in her chair, rattled to have made first contact with the enemy, annoyed to have resorted to a pseudonym. She reached over and turned on the record player to the song from that morning. Time after time, she listened to the soppy lines, heart beginning to feel like a piece of wrung-out laundry: “You want to be loved. You want to know somebody somewhere cares.…” Reaching for the bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, she guzzled the remaining two inches, while the frenzied singer wailed about wanting to know that somebody somewhere cares.

  WHEN JUDE WOKE UP toward noon the next day, she found herself sprawled in the armchair in the living room, her manuscript scattered all around the room. She felt as though someone had buried a hatchet in her forehead, and her mouth tasted as though she’d gargled with old zinnia water. Standing up, she felt nauseous. Not having eaten anything since the grilled cheese sandwich, she went into the kitchen, picked the mold off some stale bread, and toasted the slices. After three cups of black coffee and two aspirin, she showered and changed her clothes. Then she returned to the living room and tackled the manuscript anew, struggling all afternoon to pare down the footnotes that threatened like a cancer to eclipse the text.

  As the sun sank behind the high-rises of Fort Lee, Jude took a tea break. Picking up Vogue, she carefully studied the latest fashions draped on the contorted frames of the mutant models. Then she came to the horoscopes. Hers read: “Planetary forces are conspiring right now, Arians, to shake up the stability you’ve so painstakingly constructed for yourself. The more you fight your need for transformation, the stronger it will grow, like the monster in a fairy tale. So accept the inevitable, and be grateful for the new wisdom it will bring you.

  Frowning, she read Anna’s forecast: “New seas await you, Pisces. If you plunge in, you will locate the treasures of the deep. But if you wish safety, then remain on the shore.”

  Jude let the magazine flutter to the carpet like a shot duck. Leaning her head against the chair back, she speculated on whether Anna wanted treasures or safety. And if she should decide to plunge in, would she change her mind and climb back out again as Molly had done, leaving Jude to flounder alone?

  Jude realized she was starving and there was nothing in the kitchen, so she threw on her blazer and headed out the door. When she reached Broadway, she bought a hot dog from a street vendor. Leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail of oozing mustard and catsup, she headed south. With all these planetary forces ganging up on them, maybe she’d run into Anna if she wandered around the Village.

  Stalking the four miles in record time, Jude paced the narrow, winding streets one after another, watching brave women holding hands, watching women alone as they eyed her eying them. But always she was on the lookout for Anna’s tall, slender frame and her glossy black cap of hair.

  Passing a movie theater, she noticed a placard planted on the sidewalk out front, bearing an enlarged review from the Times. She discovered that the movie inside, called Dark Desire, concerned a love affair between two women. The review was a rave, and a show was about to start.

  Sitting in the dark with her head in her hands, Jude tried to get a grip. She didn’t believe in planetary forces or hypothyroidal psychics or astrological mumbo jumbo. She didn’t even believe in love anymore, and certainly not love with a married mother. So what was happening to her?

  The plot concerned a university teacher named Deirdre who was in love with a younger student named Karen. Flattered, Karen also fell in love with her. Unfortunately, Karen was married and had three children. After about two minutes of excitement and happiness, the problems began. Karen’s children failed at school, and cried themselves to sleep at night, and were rejected by their playmates, and became pyromaniacs and shoplifters. Karen’s husband, Jason, a prince among men, who did the dishes after meals and took his own clothes to the cleaners, demanded a divorce. He remarried an adorable doormat who was a gourmet cook and who liked to fall to her knees and give him blow jobs whenever he walked through the door. They sued Karen for custody of the basket-case children. Karen, meanwhile, had had to drop out of college to support herself as a laundromat attendant. Deirdre, weary of hanging around all the time with a grumpy laundromat attendant, deserted her for a woman in silver full leathers who raced a Harley around London for an express message service. In the end, Karen hanged herself in Deirdre’s bedroom, above the bed on which they’d first so blissfully made love.

  Stumbling out into the street, Jude wandered along it searching for a taxi, profoundly demoralized to see the direction in which she and Anna were headed if they didn’t do something fast. Maybe she should ask Simon for a transfer to the London office? She could vanish without leaving a forwarding address. In the short run, they’d suffer, but they’d be spared even greater future suffering.

  Looking up, Jude saw flashing above her head like a UFO some neon palm trees and the words: THE OASIS. The sign hung above the doorway into a bar. Through the front window, she spotted a mural that featured camels and sand dunes and shapely veiled figures with clay jugs on their heads. The room was packed with women. Two were kissing on the mouth in a corner.

  What the hell, decided Jude, if the gods needed for her to be a lesbian, at le
ast let it be with a woman who wasn’t someone else’s wife. She marched through the door like John Wayne into a saloon infested with desperadoes. All across the room, heads turned to inspect her. Bellying up to the bar, she ordered a glass of white wine, feeling her stomach turn queasy in protest. After a few sips, she summoned the courage to glance around at the other women. The one standing beside her met her gaze with a smile. She had a lean face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Tiny silver Scottie dogs hung like Monopoly pieces from her earlobes.

  “I like your jacket,” she said, nodding at Jude’s blazer, a loose-weave plaid in shades of gray and blue.

  “Thanks,” said Jude. She sipped her wine, elbow propped casually on the bar. “Do you come here often?”

  “Every now and then. And you?”

  “From time to time.”

  “I think it’s really the nicest women’s club in New York. It’s cozy. More like a neighborhood pub. Less like a meat market.”

  Jude nodded as though she, too, were a jaded habituée of the lesbian meat markets of New York. They sipped their drinks. The other woman was drinking scotch. Her flannel shirt was a Macdonald plaid.

  “Would you like to sit down?” asked the woman. “I see a table over there in the corner.”

  They sat. The woman introduced herself, explaining that her nickname was Scottie because she raised Scotties in Bayonne, New Jersey. Each bought the other a drink. A couple of times, they gyrated to the throbbing disco music. The second time, they stayed on the floor for a slow dance. Scottie was as tall as Anna, and their bodies fit together well as they swayed to the languid beat, each with an upper thigh stroking the other’s pubic area.

  When they sat back down, Scottie said, “Jude, there’s something I want to ask you.” She looked off across the room. “I hope I’m not out of line.”

  “Go ahead,” said Jude, heart beating fast. This was it. It wasn’t love, but it would take her mind off Anna and safeguard Anna’s marriage.

  “No, never mind,” said Scottie, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Please. I want you to.”

  “I can’t,” mumbled Scottie.

  “But that’s why I’m here.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Okay. Here goes.” Scottie took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to make a donation to my fund for breeding my championship bitch to last year’s Best in Show at Westminster?”

  Sighing with relief, Jude handed her a twenty and headed home.

  SIMON RETURNED FROM ST. THOMAS the next afternoon with a stunning tan, a new straw hat, and a planter’s punch hangover. “You look like shit,” he informed her when he found her guzzling Pouilly-Fuissé in the living room while an hysteric on the record player shrieked about wanting to be loved. A manuscript was strewn around the floor. “What’s wrong?”

  “This damn book you assigned me,” she snarled. “It’s a fucking mess.”

  “Sorry I asked,” he said, heading down the hallway with his suitcase. “I need a nap.”

  After a few minutes, Jude trailed him to his room. He’d lowered the shades, dropped his Hawaiian shirt on the floor, and crawled under the covers. Jude stepped out of her jeans, threw off her T-shirt, and climbed in beside him. His back was turned, but she could tell by his breathing that he was only pretending to be asleep. “Pretty please, Simon?”

  “I’m sorry, Jude, but I’m hung over.”

  She reached across his back and began to touch him in ways he usually found irresistible. “I’ve got a headache,” he whimpered like a frigid wife.

  “Look, we both know you use me shamelessly whenever you don’t have the time or energy to find a man. So now it’s my turn.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes,” she said, gratified to have produced a halfhearted hard-on.

  He rolled on top of her without enthusiasm. “I’m not the one you should be fucking.”

  “Just shut up,” she snapped, a hand on each of his hips, pulling him into herself.

  When he finally collapsed in a sweaty heap, she moaned, “God, Simon, don’t stop yet.”

  “Get a goddamn dildo,” he snarled. As he rolled off her, he said, “Call the woman, Jude.”

  “Who?”

  “For God’s sake, stop acting like you’ve never been around the block!”

  “What if her husband answers?”

  “Tell him you’re in love with his wife.”

  “I’m not in love with her,” Jude insisted.

  “Tell him you want to rip off all her clothes and do unspeakable things to her body.”

  “You’re no help.”

  “God helps those who help themselves.”

  “Obviously I’m no lesbian,” she said reasonably. “Considering what I’ve just been doing with you.”

  “Give me a break. Go see a therapist. I need to sleep.”

  Jude jumped up, grabbed her clothes, and stalked back to her own room. Sitting down on her bed, shivering from the chill, she picked up the receiver and dialed the first five digits of Anna’s number, finger lingering hopefully over her lucky 4s. Then she slammed it down and returned naked to the living room to polish off the Pouilly-Fuissé.

  AS JUDE WALKED INTO her office the next morning, the phone on her desk was ringing. She lunged for it as though for the brass ring on a merry-go-round.

  “All right, I give up,” said Anna’s alto voice. “You win. When can I see you?”

  “How about right now?” asked Jude, elated, watching her resolutions for a sane and happy life fly out the window.

  “This is not a good idea,” said Jude as they strolled through Central Park, a warm breeze swirling cherry blossoms all around them like fluffy pink eiderdown.

  “I agree,” said Anna.

  “I don’t want this in my life,” said Jude, feeling happier than she had in years.

  “Nor do I. So how do we stop it?”

  They halted and turned to face each other. Jude studied Anna’s eye. The swelling had subsided and her bruise was fading to the turquoise of her irises. “Tell me about your husband,” she requested. “That might help.”

  Anna put her arm around Jude, and they resumed walking. “We have so little time,” she said, “and I don’t want to spend it talking about him. Or my children. They have nothing to do with you and me. They’re my responsibility, and I’ll deal with them. But you’re my escape from all that. I don’t need to be your lover, but I want you as my friend.”

  “You already have my friendship. You know that.”

  “And the other?” she asked without looking at Jude.

  Jude hesitated, struggling. “I love you, Anna. But not like that.” She remembered Molly’s saying these same words to her.

  Anna’s face fell. “Well, never mind,” she said. “The one who is able to set limits loves less. But I accept that. I just want to spend time with you, Jude, in whatever way is possible.”

  “Maybe the one who sets limits loves more,” said Jude. “Maybe she doesn’t want to endanger something that has become absolutely vital to her happiness.”

  Anna’s smile was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Why would developing a new facet to our relationship doom it? It could very well deepen it.”

  Jude remained silent. She had just understood that because of her losses, she had learned to equate love with longing. But what if the longing should cease and the love should bring fulfillment instead?

  JUDE PROWLED HER LIVING ROOM, which she and Simon had refurbished with ivory grass cloth on the walls, tweed sofas and armchairs, and thick plum-colored wall-to-wall carpeting. Having so carefully preserved all traces of Sandy, Simon now wanted them completely obliterated. Manic from a new love affair of his own, he had also bought a house on Cape Cod, where he was spending the weekend with a lawyer named Marvin, who was as brunette as Sandy had been blond.

  Anna was supposed to be arriving at any moment to discuss yet again why their love had to remain platon
ic. This had been going on for several weeks, to Simon’s sardonic amusement. He referred to their maneuverings as the Dyke Dramarama. But for him, sex was about as complicated as blowing his nose—and about as meaningful.

  There were, after all, many issues to consider: Anna’s husband and children. The age difference. The fact that Anna could lose her teaching job. The fact that they could both be murdered in the street, as Sandy had been, as women had been throughout history. And Jude had additional fears she hadn’t yet voiced. Anna had acknowledged being with other women. Would she be disappointed by Jude’s inexperience? Hopefully Anna could lead, but could Jude follow? Most of all, though, Jude was terrified. Her mother, Molly, and Sandy had died. What if loving Anna meant losing her as well?

  Anna walked in and kissed the air beside Jude’s cheek. Jude helped her out of her new royal-purple silk windbreaker and hung it in the closet. Both had been investing small fortunes in new clothes and personal grooming, providing each other with a kind of visual potlach.

  Sinking into Simon’s new couch in a tight skirt that rode halfway up her thighs, Anna said, “So, Jude, what compelling new reason do you have tonight for why we should keep our hands to ourselves?”

  She sounded irritated. In the beginning, Jude’s compunctions had touched her, but she seemed to be getting fed up. At their most recent session at the café on Broadway, Jude had explained that she was determined to make this startling new love of theirs last, even if preserving it required them to renounce it. Anna had studied her with disbelief before standing up and marching out the door. But she returned a few minutes later to inform Jude that she was seriously psychotic.

  Jude sank down beside her on the new couch and handed her a piece of paper listing the sales figures for Precious in His Sight.

  “Very nice,” said Anna, handing it back. “But so what?”