Stacey Levine
From MICE 1961: A Novel
Premonitions are made to be crushed, aren’t they?
Jody ran toward a neighborhood policeman, grabbing his blue-jacketed shoulder. “Denny. My sister is lost. She’s simply nowhere.”
The policeman’s face squeezed with humor. “Oh Jody! She’s not nowhere.”
“This time it’s true.”
“Baloney now Jody.”
“I didn’t think it would happen and not like this!” she specified, gazing at the officer, eyes brimming.
Denny’s grin persisted.
“Your job is to do something,” she said, pulling at the policeman as if to make him run with her, but he did not.
“My God you two.” The officer shook his head.
“She is determined to ruin my life!”
“Doubtful.” The officer inched a paper tablet from his back pocket. “How is the little girl these days by the way?”
Jody smirked, perhaps realizing that words could not alarm the officer into action. “You know how she is Denny. That’s the point.”
“Look. Why don’t I read you the notes from your previous calls to us regarding Mice? In that way we might see patterns.”
“No!”
“You and your sister have tussled and tugged all year. Prob’ly all your lives,” the policeman jollied, his oil-or-dirt-filmed fingers pinching the pages’ delicate vellum.
“I’m trying to—”
“Shhh. On October fifteenth at noon you called us up,” he read with interest, lightly performing with his voice. “You said she’d run off without a trace. But later that day she turned up at Milam’s dairy—gobbling down milk and asking Russ question after question about the cottage cheese. And in November—”
“Stop it!” Jody plugged her ears with her fingertips, eyes rolling upward, as if dry halves of peeled eggs.
Neither sister really had ever been trained into ladyishness.
The officer pocketed the notebook. “Jody do you know I like you?”
“Can’t you listen to what I’m saying?” The older sister’s raucous-looking eyebrows and her wild eyes may have prompted neighbors to believe she was just as obstructive as her sister.
“Well what happened today? How did the little girl get lost?”
“Well not lost—not exactly. When I came home from work you see she was gone.”
The officer laughed hard. “Lands! After all this you’re telling me she’s been gone forty-five minutes?”
“The fact is Denny Mice could run away for good. It could happen any time. God it seems so real!”
“Gee. Lotsa things could happen. Couldn’t my brother Derf disappear into the sea?”
“Has he tried?”
“Not yet. I keep Derf close. My point Jody is people don’t let fears of that magnitude come alive…y’know…on their sleeve. Besides. What’s so awful about Mice running around town for a little while?”
Jody’s horror was clear. “Don’t you understand what it’s like to lose something difficult but precious?”
“I do. I lost Daryl.”
She looked away from him, her hair lifting in the wind. “Oh. Your other brother?”
“My goat.”
Jody straightened minutely. “The odd thing is that early this morning Mice ran out of the apartment. She’s never done that before. Later she came back and talked about stupid and awful ideas. Now it’s a few hours later and she’s disappeared. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Actually no.”
“Denny do you think that her leave-taking this morning was either a test or a harbinger of a more permanent disappearance?”
The man shook his head slowly, staring at her.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to cope with Mice every day. Hoping her situation improves. Not knowing what to do for her. Another thing Denny. When I came home after work today the range was on. Why?”
The man squeezed his hips. “Was it on high?”
“Low.”
“Hmm. Look Jody. What’s the worst could happen? Say the little girl leaves home. She’s nineteen after all.”
“Can’t you keep anything straight? She’s barely eighteen!”
“And say in the way of today’s new-minded youth she takes herself an apartment. Gets a little job. Couldn’t she experience life’s roses?”
“You’ll be sorry you said that Denny!”
The two stared at each other, fast, arid breaths between them. What was at stake?
“You’ll see th’ little girl again,” the officer said, finishing the conversation, retreating. “She’ll be at the party tonight. And you know me on this Jody.”
“Oh Denny do you think so?” Jody burst into a series of dry sobs that the man ignored.
“I vote to let Mice fend for herself. Who knows?” he shrugged. “She could have a nose for what to do.” He gestured to hummingbirds. “Miami is a paradise that starts with the sun.”
“That’s what you think,” she near-spat.
Half-turned, the policeman studied her while Jody stared at a black-eyed Susan growing from a sidewalk crack. Tall, yellow, and showy, the flower waved, its elongated nose at its symmetrical center, a steady certainty. Across the street, in Pinkus Park, other daisies grew, thin and practically wild.
It’s difficult to imagine putting an end to the comparisons of girls to flowers.
“Why would she want to run away and leave her sister behind—her only sister?” asked Denny.
“Could she believe I’d crush her somehow?”
“Ah—go to the party. Enjoy yourself,” he said, turning his tone, businesslike. “Call me up tomorrow. The three of us’ll go to Dressel’s. As you know it’ll be onion ring day.”
“Yech,” she smirked, then suddenly dodged across Reef Way.
“Hey. You like me any Jody?” he called after her weakly.
She bounded into the park, between the slanting sunrays.
Neither Jody nor the policeman noticed a lone shadow moving along the base of a sidewalk planter, gliding onto the pavement where neighbors passed, chatting, heading for the spring party. Then the shadow retreated behind the planter’s glittering stone. The shadow was me.