Eyes in the Fishbowl Read Online Free Page B

that—you just can’t help laughing. I had forgotten all about being mad, until Dad brought out the doughnuts.
    When the spaghetti was all gone, my father got up and went over to this great big bread box we have and opened it up, and it was absolutely packed full of doughnuts. There must have been six or eight dozen—a lot more than we could possibly eat before they spoiled. All of a sudden I knew exactly where they came from.
    Mr. Clements, who just happens to have two kids who take piano from Dad, and who just happens to owe us more money than anybody else, just happens to work at a big doughnut factory. And Joannie Clements just happened to tell me once that her father gets to take home any doughnuts that get a little old before anyone buys them.
    Dad put about a dozen doughnuts on a plate and passed it around the table. I could tell that he was trying to keep from catching my eye, so at last I said, “How much did you knock off for this junk?”
    Dad smiled in that vague way of his. “Just a little,” he said. “But I did tell Dan that we might be able to use a few more from time to time.”
    That did it. I stood up and threw my half-eaten doughnut at Prudence, who was sitting in front of the fireplace washing her feet. I missed, but it was close enough to make her jump. She gave me a dirty look and then she sniffed at the doughnut, looked disgusted, and went back to washing her feet. Even the cat wouldn’t eat them. “Good Lord, Dad,” I said. “You don’t even like doughnuts!” And I stormed out of the kitchen and back to my room.
    That was the way it had been between my father and me for a year or two. Before that we got along pretty well. As a matter of fact, when I was a real little kid I used to think he was just about perfect. Of course, he was as easygoing with me as he is with everybody, and at that age you don’t notice much else. He almost never got mad or ordered me around, but I wasn’t so awfully spoiled, either. I think I sort of had the feeling that he expected me to act like some kind of small-sized adult and I just couldn’t bear to let him down. He seems to have that effect on the little kids he teaches, too. It’s only older people who take advantage of people like him.
    Anyway, when I was little we used to have a lot of good times. I was only four when I had polio, and after that there were three operations a year or two apart, so I never did go to elementary school very regularly. I was home in bed or in a wheel chair a lot, and having the house always full of people seemed like a great thing to me, then. There were my Dad’s students and his musician friends and his neighborhood friends and his chess friends and his political-enemy friends—not to mention the ones who showed up regularly just for a square meal or for someone to listen to their troubles. People were always drifting in for an hour or a day—or even a month or two if they happened to feel like it. Not many of them were kids, but in those days that didn’t matter very much. There was always a lot of music going on, and I was right in the middle of it all the time. Dad had started me on the violin when I was almost a baby, and I took up the guitar, too, a few years later. When I was about six, I started thinking up lyrics and tunes to go with them, and Dad would write them down. All his friends were always carrying on about what a lot of talent I had.
    That part of my life was okay in those days—school was the bad part. During the spells, in between operations, when I was well enough to go to Lincoln Elementary, I began to realize that I didn’t exactly fit in. I couldn’t play any sports, which was terribly important at Lincoln, and I didn’t know how to make the right kind of conversation. And besides that I didn’t dress right. A lot of the time Dad wouldn’t even notice my clothes, and I’d go for days in outgrown, worn-out stuff. Then he’d decide to dress me all up in some out-of-date sissy suit that