One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping (3 page)

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1938

Mr. Pisk didn’t come to shave Daddy till seven-thirty this morning, just as I was leaving for school.

“Running a little late,” he said, sounding for all the world like the White Rabbit in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
. Now that I think about it, he looks just like a rabbit with that protruding pouty face of his and his eternally twitching nose.

Usually he’s come and gone by the time I’m even up because Daddy likes to be in the office no later than eight. (Daddy’s always the first one up. Mr. Pisk comes at seven, gives him his shave, and Daddy leaves right after that so I only see him for the briefest moment every morning.)

Mr. Pisk didn’t want to talk to me but I insisted. I told him he simply
had
to do something about Daddy’s hair, which looks just as disheveled after Mr. Pisk cuts it as before. He said it was Daddy’s fault and I asked him how that could be since
he
is the barber and Mr. Pisk said that if Daddy would just comb his hair, perhaps it wouldn’t look so frightful all the time. He has a point but still there’s no excuse.

I don’t know why Daddy puts up with him. Daddy

admits he doesn’t do a very good job because he concentrates more on telling stories about the old days than he does on cutting hair.

Just last week Daddy asked him if it was cold outside and Mr. Pisk told him a long story about the win-ter of ’28 when the Danube was so frozen you could drive your car over it.

Every time Mr. Pisk is late I don’t get to smell Daddy’s eau de cologne. I
adore
that smell — it’s
so
heavenly and the scent hovers over him all day like a perfumed cloud.

Mrs. Pisk stays at the Steinhof now with all the other crazy people and Daddy says Mr. Pisk drove her there.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1938

I HATE going to Mrs. Konig’s for my piano lesson. I don’t know which I hate more: Mrs. Konig, the piano lessons, or her horrible white poodle that never, ever leaves her lap (except, I would imagine, to you-know- what) and starts barking the moment I arrive and doesn’t stop until I leave while Mrs. Konig coos lamely the whole time, “There, there, Bella Luna, it’s only little

Julie come for her piano lessons.” I HATE it when she calls me “little Julie” and I HATE the dog’s ridiculous name, Bella Luna. The dog isn’t
bella
at all but it sure is
luna
. I can hardly stand looking at her. She has black gums and the hair on her face is stained this horrible orange-brown color because something’s forever drip-ping down from her eyes.

I wish I didn’t have to take piano lessons. I LOATHE playing the piano. For one thing I have no talent at all — NONE, and no matter how long I sit there pok-ing at the keys I’m never going to
make it sound anything but awful
.

And that’s not all — there’s another reason. Max.

Max is a piano-playing prodigy — he was playing Schubert’s Impromptus when he was eight. Whenever I practiced at home — which I don’t do anymore — he would make me move over and show me how to play the piece as easily as if he were tying his shoe — which drove me absolutely mad.

By the time Max was ten he could play Schubert’s Sonata in D Major. Mother wanted to send him to the conservatory but Max wouldn’t go. He wanted to be a lawyer, even back then.

Watching Max play the piano is like seeing a great magician: No matter how closely you watch you just don’t know how he does it. His hands hang suspended weightlessly in midair, then glide gracefully and effort-lessly over the keyboard — like an ice-skater alone on a frozen pond, his eyes half closed, head tilted heaven-ward as if the score were up there and not right in front of him (although, of course, he doesn’t look at the score because he’s such a show-off).

Once I heard Mother tell Max he played just like Aunt Clara, which was startling because no one
ever
,
ever
mentions Aunt Clara, especially not Mother.

Aunt Clara is Mother’s younger sister and they had some kind of huge, catastrophic argument around the time I was born and she and Uncle Martin moved to America right after and nobody’s heard from them since.

Max says there used to be a photograph of her and Uncle Martin on the table next to the couch in the liv-ing room but it’s not there anymore. He says she looks just like Mother.

I once tried to explain to Mother why I didn’t want to take piano lessons but (as I feared) it was truly a waste of time.

“A proper girl has to have a proper education and playing the piano is part of a proper education,” she said with a great air of finality.

MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 1938

Daddy says I should have more friends but I find that most of the kids my age are pretty boring, except for Sophy. She’s my best friend — she’s also my
only
friend, which is why Daddy said that.

Sophy’s
never
boring. And besides, Daddy has only one friend, Mr. Heller, so he’s not one to talk.

Sophy has to wear a brace on her left leg because she had polio when she was two. Sometimes when we’re in my room and we’re sure no one is going to come in, she takes off her brace and lets me walk around in it so I can see what it’s like but then, after a while, it gets too scary and I have to take it off. I think it makes Sophy happy to see how scared it makes me. Sophy doesn’t let her brace stop her from doing anything. She’s the fastest rope climber in the whole school and a very good volleyball player, too. She takes off her brace when she climbs but not when she plays

volleyball.

Sophy’s a lot better at sports than I am. I
hate
sports of any kind. For one thing I don’t like competition, and for another, I don’t like to rush around all over the place getting sweaty and banging into people.

There’s another thing that Sophy is better at than me — as a matter of fact she’s the best in the whole en-tire school: drawing.

Sophy’s pictures always look so real and everyone else’s look so flat and dull. Last week we worked on landscapes and of course everyone drew the same stu-pid house and the same stupid tree. Only Sophy’s looked like
something
. Her tree looked alive. You could almost see the branches swaying in the breeze.

I think she didn’t want to play because she’s still mad at me. We argue a lot of the time, even though we’ve been best friends since we were born only three days apart in the
same exact
hospital.

Last week we argued because I got a better grade on my composition.

For as long as I can remember, I have been getting better grades than Sophy and she’s been getting mad about it. She says I don’t even try and that I was born smart and it’s not fair. Frankly, it’s getting a little tiresome.

I told her either she could study harder or I could study even less than she thinks I do, which didn’t even make her smile, let alone laugh. I’m not even sure she knew I was trying to be funny.

Sophy doesn’t have a very good sense of humor.

This time we argued because Sophy finally admitted that she had a crush on Bernard Goldberg, which I found impossible to comprehend and told her so. That’s what started the fight. She got mad because I said I knew she was dumb but I didn’t know she was blind. She actually thinks Bernard Goldberg is hand-some. (She doesn’t take criticism too well. She gets touchy about the smallest things.)

She’s convinced Bernard B. Goldberg is THE ONE FOR HER.

“He’s the one I’m destined to be with, Julie.” She actually
says
things like this. She thinks there’s only one TRULY RIGHT PERSON for every individual in the world and the most important thing in life is to find
that
person.

She says I’m never going to find my TRULY RIGHT PERSON because I don’t try enough, which she is right about because the truth is I just think boys are more trouble than they’re worth.

All Sophy thinks about lately is boys, boys, boys. It’s her favorite topic. She reads one love story after another, which is where she gets most of her silly ideas.

When she’s not thinking about boys she’s worrying if she’s pretty enough, and no matter how many times I assure her that she is, she still worries.

She says she wishes she were tall and blond like I am. Sophy
is
on the small side, I’ll say that, but she has thick, wavy black hair that’s every bit as nice as mine, almost.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19, 1938

Yesterday I had to go to the basement of our school and borrow a book from the lending library for my geometry project.

I HATE borrowing books from the library. I don’t like being compelled to return them by a certain, specified time. If you can’t read a book when you want, what’s the point?

That’s precisely what I
adore
about books. They wait there, silently and patiently, until the exact mo-ment
you
decide to open them.

All last night I imagined I could hear the book loudly

ticking away as I tossed and turned, vainly trying to go to sleep.

TICK, TOCK, TICK, TOCK, READ ME NOW, OR TAKE ME BACK.

The ticking got so loud I had to go downstairs and put the book in the hall closet.

Besides, once I’ve read a book I don’t want to give it back. It’s mine and I want to keep it and place it on my bookshelf right next to the last book I read.

I LOVE to read. Sometimes, especially when I’m try-ing to stay awake so I can be up when Daddy comes home, I fall asleep right while I’m reading, and then, when Daddy wakes me up, my finger is still in the book saving my place.

Sometimes Daddy scolds at me for reading so late at night. He says there isn’t enough light and I’m going to strain my eyes.

Someday I’m going to have a library just like Daddy’s, only not with all those medical books that have those horrid pictures in them.

Daddy’s read everything there is to read, and he’s very proud of his library.

He keeps the books in his library in really, really strict order.

Daddy doesn’t mind if I take one of his books to read as long as I put it back in the right place, which I always do. I especially like looking at the books Daddy keeps in the glass bookcase — those are his favorites. Sometimes when I’m in Daddy’s library I lie down on his long leather couch, close my eyes, and imagine

I’m one of the characters in a book.

Sometimes I even do it while I’m in school, especially if it’s a particularly boring day. I walk around secretly pretending to be a character in a book I’m reading.

Lately I’ve been Alice in Wonderland. Sometimes I pretend I’m so small no one can see me and sometimes I pretend I’m so tall that I have to be careful not to step on anyone.

I don’t like to read the books we’re assigned in school. I prefer to read the books I find in Daddy’s library or in Mr. Heller’s shop.

Mr. Heller has a little bell that is attached to the top of the front door so he can hear when someone comes in. I like to open the door really, really slowly so that the bell hardly makes a sound. Then it takes a while for Mr. Heller to realize someone’s come in. Sometimes when I do that he’s nowhere to be seen, and then suddenly he pops up from under a table or in between the

aisles and starts running around excitedly, showing me all the new books that he thinks I might like (all the while making notes of things missing in this little notebook he
always
carries in his shirt pocket).

Mr. Heller
always
wears a white shirt with a black cloth sleeve protecting it from the dust and a green eyeshade shielding him from the light.

He has a sign over the cash register that says:

YOU CAN
’
T GET RICH SELLING BOOKS
,
ONLY READING BOOKS
.

All the books are downstairs and the stationery is upstairs. Mr. Heller has every book you could
ever
imagine and if he doesn’t have the book you want he gets very upset, like he’s committed some unpardon-able sin, and he promises to get it for you “momentar-ily,” as if it will just appear if you have faith and stand there long enough.

I like to look at the stationery, too. There are all different types of notebooks, some with colored papers, which are my favorites, and mile-high piles of snow-white writing paper, erasers, glues, chalks, and crayons of every color in the rainbow.

I think the reason Mr. Heller likes to see me so

much, besides that he and Daddy are such good friends, is because his daughter Irene died two years ago. She was eighteen. There was nothing Daddy could do. He went to Mr. Heller’s house
every
morning, without fail, for months and months. When Irene had to go into the hospital he was there every evening. He never missed a single day, not even Saturday or Sun-day. If he and Mother were going to the theater or a party he would insist they stop there on the way.