From the Corner of His Eye

"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