From the Corner of His Eye

'You look like a chili pepper.'

'The cheese man is a rotten liar,' she announced.

Handing the satchel to Wally, Celestina said, 'Dolls, crayons, and her toothbrush.'

To Angel, the taxi driver said, 'Why, you sure are a lovely young lady, aren't you?'

'God didn't want me to be a dog,' Angel told him.

'Is that so?'

'He didn't make me furry.'

'Gimme a kiss, sugarpie,' Celestina said, and her daughter planted a wet smooch on her cheek. 'What're you gonna dream about?'

'You,' said Angel, who occasionally had nightmares.

'What kind of dreams are they gonna be?'

'Only good ones.'

'What happens if the stupid boogeyman dares to show up in your dream?'

'You'll kick his hairy butt,' Angel said.

'That's right.'

'Better hurry,' Wally advised, gracing Celestina's other cheek with a dryer kiss.

The reception was from six o'clock to eight-thirty. If she were to arrive on time, guardian angels would have to be perched on all the traffic lights along the way.

In the cab, pulling into traffic, the driver said, 'The mister tells me you're the star of the show tonight.'

Celestina turned in her seat to look back at Wally and Angel, who were waving. 'I guess I am.'

'Do they say 'break a leg' in the art world?'

'I don't see why not.'

'Then break a leg.'

'Thank you.'

The cab turned the comer. Wally and Angel were lost to sight.

Facing forward again, Celestina suddenly laughed with delight.

Glancing at her in the rearview mirror, the driver said, 'Pretty exhilarating, huh? Your first big show?'

'I guess so, but it's not that. I was thinking of something my little girl said.'

Celestina succumbed to a fit of giggles. Before she could control them, she used up two Kleenex to blow her nose and to blot the laughter from her eyes.

'She seems like a pretty special kid,' the driver said.

'I sure think so. I think she's everything. I tell her she's the moon and stars. I'm probably spoiling her rotten.'

'Nah. Lovin' them isn't the same as spoilin' them.'

Dear Lord, how she loved her sugarpie, her little M&M. Three years had passed in what seemed like a month, and although there had been stress and struggle, too few hours in every day, less time for her art than she would have liked, and little or no time for herself, she wouldn't have traded being blindsided by motherhood for any amount of wealth, not for anything in the world? except to have Phimie back. Angel was the moon, the sun, the stars, and all the comets streaking through infinite galaxies: an ever-shining light.

Wally's help, not just with the apartment, but with his time and love, had made an incalculable difference.

Celestina often thought of his wife and twin boys-Rowena, Danny, and Harry-dead in that airliner crash six years ago, and sometimes she was pierced by a sense of loss so poignant that they might have been members of her own family. She grieved as much over their loss of Wally as over his loss of them, and as blasphemous as the thought might be, she wondered why God had been so cruel as to sunder such a family. Rowena, Danny, and Harry had crossed all waters of suffering and lived now eternally in the kingdom. One day they would all be rejoined with the special husband and father they had lost; but even the reward of Heaven seemed inadequate compensation for being denied so many years here on earth with a man as good and kind and big of heart as Walter Lipscomb.

He'd wanted to give Celestina more help than she would accept. She continued working nights as a waitress for two years, while she completed classes at the Academy of Art College, and she quit her job only when she began to sell her paintings for enough to equal her wages and gratuities.

Initially, Helen Greenbaum, at Greenbaum Gallery, had taken on three canvases, and had sold them within a month. She took four more, then another three when two of the four moved quickly. By the time that she'd placed ten pieces with collectors, Helen decided to include Celestina in a show of six new artists. And now, already, she had a show of her own.

Her first year at college, she had hoped only to be able one day to earn a living as an illustrator for magazines or on the staff of an advertising agency. A career in the fine arts, of course, was every painter's fantasy, the full freedom to explore her talent; but she would have been grateful for the realization of a much humbler dream. Now, she was just twenty-three, and the world hung before her like a ripe plum, and she seemed able to reach high enough to pluck it off the branch.

Sometimes Celestina marveled at how intimately and inextricably the tendrils of tragedy and joy were intertwined in the vine of life. Sorrow was often the root of future joy, and joy could be the seed of sorrow yet to come. The layered patterns in the vine were so complex, so enrapturing in their lush detail and so fearsome in their wild inevitability, that she could fill uncountable canvases, through many lifetimes as an artist, striving to capture the enigmatic nature of existence, in all its beauty dark and bright, and in the end merely suggest the palest shadow of its mystery.

And the irony of ironies: With her talent deepening to a degree that she had never dared hope it would, with collectors responding to her vision to an extent she had never imagined possible, with her goals already exceeded, and with great vistas of possibility opening before her, she would throw it all away with some regret but with no bitterness if required to choose between art and Angel, for the child had proved to be the greater blessing. Phimie was gone, but Phimie's spirit fed and watered her sister's life, bringing forth a great abundance.

'Here we are,' said the driver, braking to a stop at the curb in front of the gallery.

Her hands shook as she counted out the fare and the tip from her wallet. 'I'm scared sick. Maybe you should just take me right back home.'

Turning around in his seat, watching with amusement as Celestina fumbled nervously with the currency, the cabbie said, 'You're not scared, not you. Sitting back there so silent most all the way, you weren't thinking about being famous. You were thinking about that girl of yours.'

'Pretty much.'

'I know you, kid. You can handle anything from here on, whether it's a sold-out show or it's not, whether you're going to be famous or just another nobody.'

'You must be thinking of someone else,' she said, pushing a wad of bills into his hand. 'Me, I'm a jellyfish in high heels.'

The driver shook his head. 'I knew everything anyone would need to know about you when I heard you ask your kid what would happen if the stupid boogeyman showed up in her dream.'

'She's had this nightmare lately.'

'And even in her dreams, you're determined to be there for her. There was a boogeyman, I have no doubt you would kick his hairy ass, and he wouldn't come around again, ever. So you just go in this gallery, impress the hell out of the hoity-toity types, take their money, and get famous.'

Perhaps because Celestina was her father's daughter, with his faith in humanity, she was always deeply moved by the kindnesses of strangers and saw in them the shape of a greater grace. 'Does your wife know what a lucky woman she is?'

'If I had a wife, she wouldn't feel too lucky. I'm not of the persuasion that wants a wife, dear.'

'So is there a man in your life?'

'Same one for eighteen years.'

'Eighteen years. Then he must know how lucky he is.'

'I make sure to tell him at least twice a day.'

She got out of the cab and stood on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, her legs as shaky as those of a newborn colt.

The announcement poster seemed enormous, huge, far bigger than she remembered it, crazily-recklessly