Summer Light: A Novel

by Rice, Luanne

  Not just because of his size, which was considerable, but because of his energy. His mother always used to say he had a blizzard inside him, and Martin thought that might be true. He felt as if he’d swallowed a killer wind, with enough power to flatten cities and bury towns, that if he used it on the ice, he could destroy the other team. Martin’s energy flew out his elbows and hips, slamming his opponents into the boards, bloodying the ice and sending people to the hospital.

  Right now, the energy made him squirm in his seat. He felt prickles on his scalp, and once again he looked around. The flight attendant had closed the curtain, but peering through a crack, he saw the little girl staring at him, her pretty mother bending over to whisper something in her ear.

  He played defense for the Boston Bruins, and they called him “the Gold Sledgehammer.” “Gold,” because of the name Cartier, and “Sledgehammer” because of the obvious: He always won his fights. He’d been named an All-Star ten times, won the NHL MVP twice, led the league in scoring twice. He was a tough and stalwart defenseman, winning the Norris Trophy two years running as the league’s best blue-liner.

  He wasn’t mean, but if he drew aggression, he packed heat in his stick and fists. Fearless to his bones, he attacked back fast. He was known for drawing the opposing team’s leading scorer into the fray, bloodying him, and getting him sent to the penalty box. Wherever Cartier played, fans came in droves.

  “Um, excuse me…” a female voice said.

  Martin looked up. An attractive passenger was standing over him. She wore an elegant black wool suit with black lace showing under her jacket, and she had perfect legs in sheer stockings. High heels. White-blond hair curved over her long-lashed green eyes, and her lipstick looked red and wet.

  “You’re Martin Cartier,” she said.

  “Oui,” he said. “That is true.” It was only April, and already she had a tan. She wore large diamond stud earrings; the heavy gold chain around her neck had smaller diamonds in every link. She was talking about last night’s game, which she had watched in her Toronto hotel room. Martin pretended to listen politely, but instead he found his attention drawn back to the woman and daughter several rows behind him.

  The tan blonde was saying how unfair it was they had lost in overtime. She had watched him fight. Her fingers brushed his shoulder as she said how much she loved the physicality of hockey. Smelling her perfume, Martin thought of his elbow flying into the eye of Jeff Green, swelling it shut. The woman talked on, but Martin hardly heard her. Women with expensive blond hair and April tans came up to him all the time. For some reason, the sound of her voice made him feel as if he had the Arctic inside him: vast, frigid, and barren.

  As the woman scribbled her home phone on the back of her business card, she was saying she loved hockey, never missed a Bruins game when she was in town, loved watching Martin skate, score, and nail his enemies. Martin had trained himself to keep his face neutral when people paid him compliments, and aware of his teammates watching, he accepted her card and tucked it into his pocket.

  Touching Martin’s hand, the woman told him to call. Thanking her, Martin settled back into his seat. He folded his arms across his chest, feeling the bruised rib where he’d caught a puck last night. He thought of his father, wondered whether he had watched the game on TV. Whether he’d seen Martin miss that easy pass….

  Feeling his scalp tingle, Martin turned around. The flight attendant was talking to Bruno Piochelle, leaning against his seat back, but Martin looked past her, through the crack in the curtain. The little girl was still watching him. Sitting in the window seat, she seemed to be ignoring her mother, who was leaning over her to point at something on the ground. When the mother glanced up and saw Martin staring at them, she scowled.

  For some reason, that made Martin smile. The mother looked ticked off at the very sight of Martin Cartier. The fact he was a big famous hockey player obviously made no difference to her. She looked slight and frazzled, no makeup and messy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail; she had one arm around her daughter, and it was clear from her expression that she just plain didn’t like him on sight. Martin smiled at her, and when she frowned harder, he felt himself start to grin. He couldn’t help it.

  The fields looked like green blankets, and the rivers were blue scarves. New leaves sprinkled bare branches. Tiny towns looked like playthings: dollhouses, building-block factories, toy churches. Brick cities looked like pictures in books. Mommy wanted her to look out the window. They were up in the air, soaring and gliding like a bird, where it made no real sense for human beings to be at all.

  Kylie only wanted to look at the man. He was a giant, no matter what Mommy said. His back was as big as a bull’s; his hands were the size of bread loaves. When he talked, his voice carried back through the plane like the principal talking on the loudspeaker. Kylie was in first grade, and she didn’t like school, but this big man’s voice didn’t scare her.

  Because if he was bad or scary, what was the little girl doing so close to him? She was white and filmy, like all the angels Kylie saw. Her wings shimmered, like silk in the sky. She hovered around the man’s head, the way hummingbirds circle flowers full of nectar. Her lips were puckered, and her arms were reaching out. Every chance she got, she turned toward Kylie, beckoning her to come and tell her father to hold still so she could kiss him.

  “I can’t. My mother won’t let me.” Kylie’s lips were moving but her voice was silent.

  “I need you,” the little angel said. “You know how it is. When you want to kiss your father and you can’t.”

  “Mine doesn’t love me,” Kylie told her. “Yours does, but you’re dead. You and I aren’t alike at all.”

  “We are, we are,” the angel pleaded.

  “My father doesn’t love me,” Kylie said again. She didn’t remember her father. Mommy said he had gone away before Kylie was born. But Kylie was sure they had played together, that he had fed her bites of chocolate ice cream. She dreamed he was big and strong, that he sang with a deep voice and could fix anything. Kylie wanted him to come home. She couldn’t imagine how her father could have stopped loving her, could just go away, and it made her stomach hurt so much, she had to hold her breath.

  Kylie stared at the giant-father. Although he was so large, he was very handsome. He had bristly brownish-gray hair with blue eyes that looked so sad to Kylie she wondered why people seemed to be laughing every time he opened his mouth. The stewardess laughed, the other hockey players laughed, the pretty blond lady in the shiny black stockings laughed.

  “If you don’t help,” the angel warned, “I’ll disappear. I won’t talk to you anymore.”

  “There are other angels,” Kylie said.

  “But I have something really, really good to tell you…help me or I’ll go. I really will….”

  “I don’t even know what you want me to do,” Kylie pleaded.

  “Stop talking,” Kylie’s mother begged. “Kylie, honey, there’s no one there.”

  “Mommy, there is,” Kylie whispered.

  But when she looked back, the little angel was gone. The man was staring instead, peering through the crack in the curtain. Kylie almost jumped—his eyes were so big, and they looked exactly like the angel’s. Looking up, Kylie saw Mommy frowning at the man. For some crazy reason, the man started to smile.

  Kylie glanced out the window. Bits of fog were covering the ground, so she knew they were getting near the sea, closer to home. Just then, she heard a snap. It sounded like boys at school sticking their fingers in their mouths and making their cheeks pop. Conversations paused for a second, but nothing happened and people resumed talking. The plane’s lights flickered once, but no one seemed to notice. The plane just kept flying, the engines buzzing.

  “People are going to get hurt, aren’t they?” Kylie asked her mother.

  Mommy blinked. She stared at Kylie for a long time, her head tilted a little. Her eyebrows grew closer together, forming a small valley of worry between them.

&n
bsp; “Plane crash,” Kylie said.

  “Kylie,” her mother said. “Stop.”

  Kylie had seen crashes on TV—fire and smoke and people screaming. Closing her eyes, she could see it now: All the people on this flight would be grabbing each other, crying for their mommies and daddies, trying to wish the plane back into the sky.

  “I wish my daddy—” Kylie started to say. She would have finished with “was here,” but her mother interrupted her with a firm hand on Kylie’s upper arm.

  “I mean it,” Mommy whispered, her eyes bright and her voice scratchy. Tears puddled over her mother’s lashes and spilled down her cheeks. Kylie watched the drops, wanting to kneel up and kiss them off. Her seat belt strained across her lap, and she couldn’t get there. “I can’t stand it,” her mother said, wiping the tears herself. “I’m tired. I don’t want to hear another word about angels, plane crashes, or your father. Do you hear me?”

  Kylie watched Mommy’s throat moving, as if a rock was caught there and she was trying to swallow it down. The more her mother wiped her tears, the faster they came. Kylie craned her neck for the girl angel up front, but she couldn’t see her anymore.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Kylie announced.

  Her mother exhaled. Very patiently, she undid her own seat belt, then Kylie’s.

  “I can go myself,” Kylie told her.

  “I’ll take you,” Mommy said.

  “I’m big,” Kylie insisted. Maybe if she did what that little angel had asked, helped her kiss her father, maybe she would save the whole plane. “I can do it.”

  “Okay,” Mommy said.

  May watched Kylie look back, then forward. Assessing the length of the line to use the bathroom at the rear of the plane, she—smart girl!—brushed through the curtain to use one up front in business class. Tilting her head, May kept her eye on her. She watched until Kylie had asked the flight attendant to open the door, and then she relaxed. She needed this moment to compose herself.

  She talks to angels, May thought. She’s only six, she’s crazy, she’s not clairvoyant at all, she’s schizophrenic, she talks to dead people, she thinks the plane’s going to crash. The reports and study documents felt heavy on her lap, and she knew if she could open the plane windows she would throw them right out. Let them flutter like propaganda down onto Boston’s north shore. Forget taking them to the doctor’s office; May would abandon that plan entirely, drive Kylie straight home to Black Hall. She heard her own sudden sob, and she thought her chest would crack open.

  Through her tears, May tried to see out the window. Below thin fog, the ground was getting closer. They had started their descent. May watched a flight attendant hurry past. Over the loudspeaker, the pilot was thanking everyone for choosing his airline, telling them the weather in Boston was cool and drizzly.

  She remembered one time she and Kylie had flown here from Canada; her grandmother had surprised them by driving to Boston, to accompany them to Kylie’s doctor. May had struggled to the gate with two carry-on bags, Kylie’s stroller, and Kylie, to find her grandmother waiting there. Prescient herself, Emily had always sensed when her granddaughter needed her most. She had bumped people out of the way, helping May carry everything. May closed her eyes, trying to imagine her grandmother waiting for them today. She tried and tried, but she couldn’t fool herself into thinking it would happen. She wasn’t Kylie; she didn’t see angels where there were none.

  Craning her neck, she saw Boston Harbor and the coastline blanketed in thick New England fog. As the plane circled down, they were swallowed by it and May could see nothing more below. A sudden tremor shook the plane. The lights went off and on. Voices fell, stopped, then rose.

  “Return to your seats,” the flight attendant called, hurrying down the aisle. The plane seemed to wobble on its axis, gaining speed as it pulled to the left. Was it May’s imagination, or did she smell smoke? Her heart began to pound, just before she spotted Kylie coming out of the bathroom. May saw her heading back up the aisle, heard the flight attendant tell her to hurry back to her seat. Kylie nodded, but then she immediately disobeyed.

  She stopped in front of the hockey player. He was the biggest one, the man Kylie had told May was a giant, the one with the bright gray-blue eyes. Kylie stood in the aisle beside him, her lips and hands moving as she spoke rapidly, pointing at the sky. May leaned forward in her seat, trying to hear what Kylie was saying.

  A sense of panic had swept the plane, the cold wash of fear showing on people’s faces. But May noticed the hockey player smiling at Kylie, seeming to listen to every word she said. Glancing back, he caught May’s eye. He smiled at her, raising his hand in greeting. May waved back, without knowing what she was doing. A flight attendant hustled Kylie back to her seat, and May buckled her up.

  The plane lurched. This wasn’t turbulence. May knew suddenly that they were going down. The lights flashed off, then back on. The flight attendant came running down the aisle, shouting for everyone to assume crash position. May put her hand on the back of Kylie’s neck and pushed her head down. Tucking her own head between her knees, May held Kylie’s hand.

  People screamed and cried. May’s heart was beating so hard, she couldn’t breathe. Smoke swirled through the cabin, acrid and dark. The descent was steep at first, suddenly leveling off as the rushing air stopped whistling.

  The impact was hard, but not much worse than a rough landing. The plane rolled to a stop. When she tried to unhook Kylie’s seat belt, the buckle stuck. She tore at it in pure panic. It wouldn’t give.

  “Mommy,” Kylie said.

  May pulled harder, and the clasp jammed. With all her strength, she began to tug the belt itself. She felt as if she was losing it. Suddenly someone burst through the black smoke to crouch beside them. It was the big hockey player.

  “I can’t undo her seat belt,” May wailed.

  “Let me,” he said.

  His hands were steady as he unhitched the metal clasp. Kylie threw her arms around his neck. He grabbed May’s hand and lifted Kylie into his arms. Shouldering down the aisle, he pulled them to the open door. People massed behind them, screaming and shoving.

  Eyes stinging, May peered outside. The slide had deployed, and the flight attendant was directing people to kick off their shoes and jump.

  “You two go.” The hockey player tried to hand Kylie to May.

  “No, don’t put me down!” Kylie screeched in terror, clinging tighter and refusing to let go.

  The man didn’t hesitate again. Clutching Kylie, he wrapped his other arm around May. The three of them jumped onto the inflated yellow slide. The ride down took one second, and May felt her breath knocked out of her as she landed on the tarmac.

  The man pulled her to her feet and away from the slide. Face to face, they stared into each other’s eyes. They were far from the terminal building. Sirens rang out as emergency vehicles careened across the runways. Passengers poured down the slide, frantically searching for friends and family members as they hit the ground.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say.

  “Oh,” he said, and she saw his gray-blue eyes take on the same sweet and funny glint she’d noticed through the curtain in the plane. “Please don’t thank me for anything. I had to—”

  “Let’s get away from the plane,” May said.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked.

  “May Taylor,” May answered. “This is my daughter, Kylie.”

  “How did you know, Kylie?” he asked in a French Canadian accent.

  “Know what?” May asked.

  “That something was going to happen to the plane,” the man said, holding Kylie’s hand. “She stopped by my seat, asked me to help you when the time came—”

  “The time?” May asked, staring at Kylie, who was gazing into the man’s eyes.

  “She told me,” Kylie said.

  “She?” the man asked.

  “Your little girl,” Kylie said.

  The man dropped to his knees, looking deepe
r into her eyes. “My little girl’s dead,” he said.

  The police cars and fire trucks had arrived, and emergency personnel came running to pull people away from the plane. A young police officer rushed up to herd everyone back. “Martin Cartier!” he exclaimed, stepping forward to grin and shake the man’s hand. In a five-second burst he gushed about the Stanley Cup playoffs, Martin’s game-winning goal, the likelihood of beating the Maple Leafs.

  “You play hockey,” she said.

  “On the Boston Bruins,” he said. “Are you from Boston?”

  “Black Hall, Connecticut.”

  “And you fly into Logan instead of Providence or Hartford? That makes for a long drive, eh?”

  “Well, Providence is closer,” May said. “But the drive to Boston isn’t too bad. We have an appointment in town….”

  Feeling suddenly exhausted, she knew that she was going to cancel it. Dr. Henry would have to wait to see Kylie’s evaluations. May was going to drive straight home, put her daughter to bed, and take a hot bath.

  But first, she reached into her pocket. Her fingers closed around a tiny glass bottle with a crumbling cork. A talisman, it was filled with white rose petals. May wondered how she could ever have doubted Kylie’s gift. She had inherited a wedding planning business from her mother and, understanding that magic comes from the most unexpected places, she had prepared the bottle and carried it for luck throughout Kylie’s ordeal in Toronto.

  “Thank you for what you did.” She handed the bottle to Martin. “I hope this brings you luck in the playoffs.”

  He nodded, gazing at the small bottle in his hand. Hockey players just off the plane surrounded him, along with police and firemen and several women passengers. Martin Cartier looked up and held her gaze, even as she was being pushed away. His eyes were so bright and clear, ridiculously handsome across the tarmac. A woman had run over to be near him. She was svelte and expensive, dressed in jewelry and designer clothes.