From the Corner of His Eye

Chapter 41

Monday morning, January 17, Agnes's lawyer, Vinnie Lincoln, came to the house with Joey's will and other papers requiring attention.

Round of face and round of body, Vinnie didn't walk like other men; he seemed to bounce lightly along, as if inflated with a mixture of gases that included enough helium to make him buoyant, though not so much that he was in danger of sailing up and away like a birthday balloon. His smooth cheeks and merry eyes left a boyish impression, but he was a good attorney, and shrewd.

"How's Jacob?" Vinnie asked, hesitating at the open front door.

"He's not here," Agnes said.

"That's exactly how I hoped he would be." Relieved, he followed Agnes to the living room. "Listen, Aggie, you know, I don't have anything against Jacob, but-"

"Good heavens, Vinnie, I know that," she assured him as she lifted Barty-hardly bigger than a bag of sugar-from the bassinet. She settled with the baby into a rocking chair.

"It's just… the last time I saw him, he trapped me in a corner and told this god awful story, far more than I wanted to know, about some British murderer back in the forties, this monstrous man who beat people to death with a hammer, drank their blood, then disposed of their bodies in a vat of acid in his workroom." He shuddered.

"That would be John George Haigh," Agnes said, checking Barty's diaper before nestling him tenderly in the crook of her arm.

The lawyer's eyes appeared as round as his face. "Aggie, please don't tell me you've started to share Jacob's… enthusiasms? "

"No, no. But being around him so much, inevitably I absorb some details. He's a compelling speaker when the subject interests him."

"Oh," Vinnie agreed, "I wasn't bored for a second."

"I've often thought Jacob would've made a fine schoolteacher."

"Assuming the children received therapy after every class."

"Assuming, of course, that he didn't have these obsessions."

Extracting documents from his valise, Vinnie said, "Well, I've no right to talk. Food is my obsession. Look at me, so fat you'd think I'd been raised from birth for sacrifice."

"You're not fat," Agnes objected. "You're nicely rounded."

"Yes, I'm nicely rounding myself into an early grave," he said almost cheerfully. "And I must admit to enjoying it."

"You may be eating yourself into an early grave, Vinnie, but poor Jacob has murdered his own soul, and that's infinitely worse."

"'Murdered his own soul'-an interesting turn of phrase."

"Hope is the food of faith, the staff of life. Don't you think?"

From his mother's cradled arms, Barty gazed adoringly at her.

She continued: "When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die."

With one tiny hand, Barty reached up for his mother. She gave him her forefinger, to which the sugar-bag boy clung tenaciously.

Regardless of her other successes or failures as a parent, Agnes intended to make certain that Barty never lacked hope, that meaning and purpose flowed through the boy as constantly as blood.

"I know Edom and Jacob have been a burden," said Vinnie, "you having to be responsible for them-"

"Nothing of the kind." Agnes smiled at Barty and wiggled her finger in his grip. "They've always been my salvation. I don't know what I'd do without them."

"I think you actually mean that."

"I always mean what I say."

"Well, as years pass, they're going to be a financial burden, if nothing else, so I'm glad I've got a little surprise for you."

When she looked up from Barty, she saw the attorney with his hands full of documents. "Surprise? I know what's in Joey's will."

Vinnie smiled. "But you have assets you aren't aware of."

The house was hers, free and clear of mortgages. There were two savings accounts to which Joey had diligently made deposits weekly through nine years of marriage.

"Life insurance," Vinnie said.

"I'm aware of that. A fifty-thousand-dollar policy."

She figured that she could stay home, devoting herself to Barty, for perhaps three years before she would be wise to find work.

"In addition to that policy," said Vinnie, "there's another…-he filled his lungs, hesitated, then exhaled the air and the sum with a tremor-'seven hundred fifty thousand. Three-quarters of a million dollars."

Certain disbelief insulated her against immediate surprise. She shook her head. "That's not possible."

"It was affordable term insurance, not a whole-life policy."

"I mean, Joey wouldn't have bought it without-"

"He knew how you felt about having too much life insurance. So he didn't disclose it to you."

The rocking chair stopped squeaking under her. She heard the sincerity in Vinnie's voice, and as her disbelief dissolved, she was shocked into immobility. She whispered, "My little superstition."

Under other circumstances, Agnes might have blushed, but now her apparently irrational fear of too much life insurance had been vindicated.

"Joey was, after all, an insurance broker," Vinnie reminded her. "He was going to look out for his family."

Excessive insurance, Agnes believed, was a temptation to fate. "A reasonable policy, yes, that's fine. But a big one… it's like betting on death."

"Aggie, it's just prudent planning."

"I believe in betting on life."

"With this money, you won't have to cut back on the number of pies you give away-and all of that."

By "all of that," he meant the groceries that she and Joey often sent along with the pies, the occasional mortgage payment they made for someone down on his luck, and the other quiet philanthropies.

"Look at it this way, Aggie. All the pies, all the things you do-that's betting on life. And now you've just been given the great blessing of being able to place larger bets."

The same thought had occurred to her, a consolation that might make acceptance of these riches possible. Yet she remained chilled by the thought of receiving a life-changing amount of money as the consequence of a death.

Looking down at Barty, Agnes saw the ghost of Joey in the baby's face, and although she half believed that her husband would be alive now if he had never tempted fate by putting such a high price on his fife, she couldn't find any anger in her heart for him. She must accept this final generosity with grace-if also without enthusiasm.

"All right," Agnes said, and as she voiced her acceptance, she was shivered by a sudden fear for which she couldn't at once identify a cause.

"And there's more," said Vinnie Lincoln, as round as Santa Claus and cherry-cheeked with pleasure at being able to bear these gifts. "The policy contained a double-indemnity clause in the event of death by accident. The complete tax-free payout is one and a half million."

A cause now apparent, the fear explained, Agnes held her baby more tightly. So new to the world, he seemed already to be slipping away from her, captured by the whirlpool of a demanding destiny.

The ace of diamonds. Four in a row. Ace, ace, ace, ace.

Already the fortune foretold, which she had strived to dismiss as a game with no consequences, was coming true.

According to the cards, Barty would be rich financially, but also in talent, spirit, intellect. Rich in courage and honor, Maria promised. With a wealth of common sense, good judgment, and luck.

He would need the courage and the luck.

"What's wrong, Aggie?" asked Vinnie.

She couldn't explain her anxiety to him, because he believed in the supremacy of laws, in the justice that might be delivered in this fife, in a comparatively simple reality, and he would not comprehend the glorilously, frighteningly, reassuringly, strangely, and deeply complex reality Agnes occasionally perceived-usually peripherally, sometimes intellectually, but often with her heart. This was a world in which effect could come before cause, in which what seemed to be coincidence was, in fact, merely the visible part of a far larger pattern that couldn't be seen whole.

If the ace of diamonds, in quartet, must be taken seriously, then why not the rest of the draw?

If this insurance payoff was not mere coincidence, if it was the wealth that had been foretold, then how far behind the fortune did the knave travel? Years? Months? Days?

"You look as if you've seen a ghost," said Vinnie, and Agnes wished the threat were as simple as a restless spirit, groaning and rattling its chains, like Dickens's Marley come to Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve.