Excerpt from Mice 1961

Stacey Levine

This novel, set in Miami during the Cold War, takes place at a neighborhood party in the back rooms of a bakery. There, locals joke, jostle each other, and discuss current events while drinking fruit juice.

Sherrie Gagel pushed through the throng toward the head branch librarian, declaring with a patchy pant: “May I ask you something Miss Stroke? I’ve wanted to for ages.”

Florence looked heavily at the young woman. “Can’t it wait? The party’s starting.” From the bakery’s open doorway the librarian glanced out at the crowd. I was among them.

“Oh please Miss Stroke.”

The head branch librarian hesitated, but listening neighbors, as if curious, called out.

“Come on. Let’s hear it Sherrie!” It was Eddleston.

“Yeah!” said someone.

Florence sighed at Sherrie. “What kind of question is it?”

Sherrie bent to scratch her leg with the fidgety energy of a student. “It’s just a small question in my mind.”

Florence glared, her mouth a line. I wondered: Was the librarian reverting to the earlier, more terse version of herself, the way she presented before the book mold incident?

“Is it a ‘why’ question?”

Sherrie giggled with nerves. “No.’

“I am no walking encyclopedia for you to open as you wish. Is that how you think of me Sherrie?”

“No Miss Stroke! I don’t think that!” The young woman looked ashamed, embarrassed. “Besides I think you’re knowledgeable. Remember when I was in your finals cram session at Slaughter High? You gave me plenty of answers then.”

“That was years ago,” said the fed-up librarian through her teeth.

Then Honey M. peeked out from the bakery’s doorway. “Sherrie! You look so nice today—did you make up your face?”

“Hi Honey. Yes I used eyebrow pencil but I washed it off with soap.”

Cissy the notary waved from the crowd. “Never wash off your makeup Sherrie! Your brows are lovely with it.”

“But I already scrubbed them Cissy.”

The notary continued with clear enjoyment while taking in neighbors’ faces in the crowd: “The truth is Sherrie you and your sister’re so young and pale that neither of you understands what it means to have eyebrows!”

Florence alone laughed deeply at this, the shirring around her flowered dress trembling.

Sherrie countered the notary: “Me an’ Trudie do understand what it means to have eyebrows! We color our eyebrows dark when we want to and on some days we don’t!”

This appeared to shut Cissy down; meanwhile, Florence daubed her nose with a thick cloth, saying, “All right now,” in a habitual expression she often used to link one set of circumstances to the next.

“Let Sherrie ask her question so our party can begin,” Harriet called out from the crowd practically.

Moates’ voice lifted from the sidewalk crowd. “Ask your question pretty Sherrie!”

“May I Miss Stroke?”

Yet at that moment, Sherrie seemed to realize that two dozen or more closely packed neighbors had been watching and listening to this exchange, and, ducking so her yellow hair fell across her eyes, she reddened.

“Oh Miss Stroke never mind it all,” she told the head librarian, voice quaky. “You’re right. This isn’t the time to ask. Thank you anyhow.” Sherrie tried to retreat through the crowd, but with a quick, extended foot in a dark shoe, Florence stopped her.

“Just a minute. You wanted to ask me something. Ask it.”

Shamefaced, Sherrie looked to the ground. “Never mind—I won’t bother you.”

Florence’s face showed hints of rich, cross enjoyment. “You didn’t mind bothering me a minute ago. Just ask the question Sherrie.”

“Answer the child’s question Florence!” called old Phenice from her rocking chair.

“I will answer her question when she asks a question,” the librarian shot back at the elder.

“You can do it Sherrie!” encouraged Moates from the crowd.

“Yeah!” neighbors called, their faces patient and mild, the dentist Ken Warm encouraging among them: “Ask your question Sherrie. I’m sure it’s a good one and may hold interest for us too.”

“Oh I doubt it …” exhaled Sherrie, still looking to bow out, smiling miserably at the now enormous crowd.

“Maybe she’ll faint!” whispered someone.

“Shh,” stifled another.

Red as wine, beginning to cry, Sherrie began, “I’d rather not ask the question now.”

“Ask—the—question!” the librarian steamed out forcefully, regripping her purse strap.

“All right! All right! It’s not a—it pertains to—” Sherrie emitted a series of coughs.

Meanwhile, newly arrived partygoers with potluck dishes jumbled into the back of the crowd, along with a few clerks from Keely’s Brink drugstore, who all carried sacks of long breadsticks extending over their shoulders.

But why bring bread to a bakery?

Sherrie closed her eyes against the unknown. “All right. Miss Stroke? Is it possible to freeze …” She angled her face toward the vivid orange-and-violet evening sky high over the bakery’s roof, as if longing to go there. “… cheese?”

Whispers, buzzings, and knuckled-under chuckles arose, and the clerks with breadsticks laughed high-spiritedly; it was clear these new arrivals did not understand what was happening.

The head librarian let out an unhappy laugh. “Freeze cheese? Sherrie. Are you trying to make a fool of me?”

“No Miss Stroke!” Sherrie seemed appalled at herself. Her long bangs, lashes, and eyes were a wet mess. “I wanted to know—that’s all. Was it so wrong to ask?”

Florence looked furious. “Sherrie where I come from a person does not make great scenes in public or take center stage. Did you ask that question to show off?”

“No!”

“Take it easy Florence,” urged Bianchi gently from within the bakery as the head librarian turned and glared.

“Sherrie wanted a spotlight I guess,” whispered someone as Lance remarked, “Kinda tough bird—Florence.”

“Take it easy Florence,” urged Marge quietly from within the bakery through the door, though no one could see her.

Sherrie explained further: “It happened so fast Miss Stroke and the question grew bigger than it actually is! Oh haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

“Girl’s embarrassed,” said someone in the crowd.

The librarian’s mouth tightened, and I reminded myself that Florence’s intended transformation into a carefree, easy-spirited, freely baring soul would be more difficult than she had gauged.

Nose dripping, face blazing scarlet in the bakery’s doorway, scalp glowing raw pink through her hair, Sherrie made a thick, duck-like sound in her throat. “I—goofed.”

The librarian’s sleeves blurred with the evening breeze.

Then Sherrie’s sister Trudie, newly arrived, elbowed through the crowd. “Sherrie!” she called out. Heads turned.

“Trudie!” Sherrie blubbered, chin quivering, at her sister, also yellow-haired. The two sisters appeared so alike that a third presence—their heredity itself and tired ancestors—seemed to stand behind them.

“It’s all right Sherrie,” cried out Trudie. “You just got over-excited like you get. Didn’t you?” She eyed the librarian and hollered, “You lay off Sherrie!”

Several neighbors chimed in, “Yeah!”

Then Sherrie told Florence: “You could’ve said: ‘Of course you can freeze cheese Sherrie darling! Or ‘No darling Sherrie you can never freeze cheese and don’t you ever forget it!’ But you didn’t say those things did you?”

The cross librarian’s fingers, cupped within the beige arm sling, wiggled.

“Miss Stroke why did you get angry at my question about the cheese?” Sherrie asked, still dark red as a match tip, glancing at serious-looking Trudie.

At this, a little rising grin appeared on the head librarian’s face.

“Ha! See?” Moates cried out, arms raised. “Florence isn’t mad anymore!”

“Hooray!” neighbors exulted, laughing, the drugstore clerks waving the breadsticks, and Sherrie fell against the head librarian’s shoulder, rolling her head side to side while Florence set her jaw.

“Good lord,” said Laurette among the high schoolers with distaste.

Then the bakery’s owner squeezed through the doorway with a corn broom, laughing as he raised it beneath his arm like a gun. “Now everybody get inside to the party or I’ll shoot every last one of you!”

They all laughed more at this, with general shouts of relief, Moates punching his fist three times in the air and yelling with pleasure as, all together, the crowd began ambling through the doorway.

Moments later, the baker taped a pastry doily on the door’s glass, words scribbled on it crookedly in orange grease pencil: “Open house rear patio. spring potluck & musical performance trio. Tonite!”

Only the librarians remained. The three joined hands and ran into the shop, reeling past the counter and flying down the long hallway as one.