From the Corner of His Eye

'Yes,' she assured him, though her gaze had dropped from his mouth to his hand, so small, which she held in hers.

'Mom, do I look sad?'

By habit, she shifted her attention to his eyes, because though the scientific types insist that the eyes themselves are incapable of expression, Agnes knew what every poet knows: To see the condition of the hidden heart, you must look first where scientists will not admit to looking at all.

The white padded eye patches rebuffed her, and she realized how profoundly the boy's double enucleation would affect how easily she could read his moods and know his mind. Here was a littler loss until now shadowed by the greater destruction. Denied the evidence of his eyes, she would need to be better at noting and interpreting nuances of his body language-also changed by blindness-and his voice, for there would be no soul revealed by hand-painted, plastic implants.

'Do I look sad?' Barty repeated.

Even the Shantung-softened lamplight blazed too bright and did not serve her well, so she switched it off and said, 'Scoot over.'

The boy made room for her.

She kicked off her shoes and sat beside him in bed, with her back against the headboard, still holding his hand. Even though this darkness wasn't as deep as Barty's, Agnes found that she was better able to control her emotions when she couldn't see him. 'I think you must be sad, kiddo. You hide it well, but you must be.'

'I'm not, though.'

'Bullpoop, as they say.'

'That's not what they say,' the boy replied with a giggle, for his extensive reading had introduced him to words that he and she agreed were not his to use.

'Bullpoop might not be what they say, but it's the worst that we say. And in fact, in this house, bulldoody is preferred.'

'Bulldoody doesn't have a lot of punch.'

'Punch is overrated.'

'I'm really not sad, Mom. I'm not. I don't like it this way, being blind. It's? hard.' His small voice, musical as are the voices of most children, touching in its innocence, spun a fragile thread of melody in the dark, and seemed too sweet to be speaking of these bitter things. 'Real hard. But being sad won't help. Being sad won't make me see again.'

'No, it won't,' she agreed.

'Besides, I'm blind here, but I'm not blind in all the places where I am.'

This again.

Enigmatic as ever on this subject, he continued: 'I'm probably not blind more places than I am. Yeah, sure, I'd rather be me in one of the other places where my eyes are good, but this is the me I am. And you know what?'

'What?'

'There's a reason why I'm blind in this place but not blind everywhere I am.'

'What reason?'

'There must be something important I'm supposed to do here that I don't need to do everywhere I am, something I'll do better if I'm blind.'

'Like what?'

'I don't know.' He was silent a moment. 'That's what's going to be interesting.'

She traded silence for silence. Then: 'Kiddo, I'm still totally confused by this stuff.'

'I know, Mom. Someday I'll understand it better and explain it all to you.

'I'll look forward to that. I guess.'

'And that's not bulldoody.'

'I didn't think it was. And you know what?'

'What?'

'I believe you.'

'About the sad?' he asked.

'About the sad. You really aren't, and that? just stuns me, kiddo.'

'I get frustrated,' he admitted. 'Trying to learn how to do things in the dark? I get peed off, as they say.'

'That's not what they say,' she teased.

'That's what we say.'

'Actually, if we have to say it at all, I'd rather we said tinkled off.'

He groaned. 'That just doesn't cut it, Mom. If I gotta be blind, I think I should get to say peed off.'

'You're probably right,' she conceded.

'I get peed off, and I miss some things terrible. But I'm not sad. And you've got to not be sad, either, 'cause it spoils everything.'

'I promise to try. And you know what?'

'What?'

'Maybe I won't have to try as hard as I think, because you make it so easy, Barty.'

For more than two weeks, Agnes's heart had been a clangorous place, filled with the rattle and bang of hard emotions, but now a sort of quiet had come upon it, a peace that, if it held, might one day allow joy again.

'Can I touch your face?' Barty asked.

'Your old mom's face?'

'You're not old.'

'You've read about the pyramids. I was here first.'

'Bulldoody.'

Unerringly, in the darkness, he found her face with both hands. Smoothed her brow. Traced her eyes with fingertips. Her nose, her lips. Her cheeks.

'There were tears,' he said.

'There were,' she admitted.

'But not now. All dried up. You feel as pretty as you look, Mom.'

She took his small hands in hers and kissed them.

'I'll always know your face,' he promised. 'Even if you have to go away and you're gone a hundred years, I'll remember what you looked like, how you felt.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' she pledged. She had realized that his voice was growing heavy with sleep. 'But it's time for you to go to dreamland.'

Agnes got out of bed, switched on the lamp, and tucked Barty in once more. 'Say your silent prayers.'

'Doin' it now,' he said thickly.

She slipped into her shoes and stood for a moment watching his lips move as he gave thanks for his blessings and as he asked that blessings be given to others who needed them.

She found the switch and clicked off the lamp again. 'Good-night, young prince.'

'Good-night, queen mother.'

She started toward the door, stopped, and turned to him in the dark. 'Kid of mine?'

'Hmmmm?'

'Did I ever tell you what your name means?'

'My name? Bartholomew?' he asked sleepily.

'No. Lampion. Somewhere in your father's French background, there must have been lamp makers. A lampion is a small lamp, an oil lamp with a tinted-glass chimney. Among other things, in those long ago days, they used them on carriages.'

Smiling in the fearless dark, she listened to the rhythmic breathing of a sleeping boy.

She whispered then: 'You are my little lampion, Barty. You light the way for me.'

That night her sleep was deeper than it had been in a long time, deep as she had expected sleep would never be again, and she was not plagued by any dreams at all, not a dream of children suffering, nor of tumbling in a car along a rain-washed street, nor of thousands of windblown dead leaves rattling-hissing along a deserted street and every leaf in fact a jack of spades.