Summer Light: A Novel

by Rice, Luanne

  Ricky’s eyes widened. That had done it: the mention of police. Eight years old, and already he was afraid of the law. Serge felt sorrow for what Tino had done, left to his only boy. If only fathers could live life backward, take their sorry lessons and carry them back to the early days, when their sons were small, when there was still time to make things right.

  Scowling, Ricky started to back away.

  “Kid, keep practicing,” Serge yelled. “Don’t ever quit.”

  “Won’t make a difference,” the guard muttered under his breath.

  Ricky tilted his head, as if he’d heard, but he didn’t say anything. He just kept walking backward, one step at a time, throwing the baseball into his glove.

  “You a Yankee fan? Who’s your favorite player?” Serge asked.

  Ricky opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something. Instead, wheeling around, he revealed the name emblazoned across the back of his T-shirt: MARTINEZ. Serge was proud of him for not speaking.

  “Tino Martinez,” Serge said. “Good man.”

  Ricky nodded: Serge saw his head bob up and down. He started to walk faster, and then run.

  “Don’t come back,” Jim said.

  “Practice harder than ever,” Serge called. “And don’t talk to strangers!”

  He wondered whether the mail was in yet. Every day he checked. Writing that letter to Martin had given him something to dream about, to hope for. He had a new reason for getting up in the morning, and all it had taken was a stamp and an envelope. He started walking across the yard, to check his mail, and then he began to run.

  The Cartiers had decided to stay out in Black Hall instead of the town house, because the country air was a little cooler, fresher, more like Lac Vert, and because it was easier to leave Kylie home during the day.

  “Anything you need,” Tobin had said, now that May had filled her in. “I mean it, May. Ask me. He has to be okay. An athlete like Martin…”

  “I know,” May said, breaking down. She hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Martin. They still had hope. Teddy hadn’t told them anything definite yet. “It’s so unfair,” May sobbed. “He’s scared, Tobin. I hate to see him scared.”

  “He’s got you,” Tobin said. “You’re going through it together.”

  They had a long ride up to Boston, and this time he didn’t even try to get behind the wheel, and she knew his vision had changed dramatically since the beginning of the summer.

  Neither of them had slept the night before. May had lain awake, staring at the ceiling, knowing that Martin was awake and staring at the wall. She had watched the stars set one by one, into the western sky. By the time the neighbor’s rooster crowed at dawn, she hadn’t even been to sleep. She focused on Serge’s letter. She had brought it from Lac Vert, and she still wished Martin had read it. Thinking about anything else seemed too terrifying.

  Today had seemed endless. Neither she nor Martin had been hungry for dinner; en route to his after-hours appointment with Teddy, they had traveled northeast on 395.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him now, driving east on Route 90. The Boston skyline was visible, the Prudential and John Hancock towers twinkling above the city, and she felt her stomach flip, wondering what they were heading into.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Fine,” she said. She knew they were both lying.

  It felt strange, driving Martin. May had gotten her license at sixteen, had been driving ever since, and she loved being on the road. But when they were together, Martin always drove.

  To break the silence, she turned on the radio. She found a station playing good music, and they listened to a few songs. She felt herself relax and begin to feel as if everything just might turn out all right. Martin must have felt it, too, because he put his hand on her thigh.

  “Thanks for driving me,” he said.

  “It’s the least I can do,” she said.

  “Not just in the car,” he said. “I mean in general. You’ve really been there for me, May.”

  “Thank you, Martin,” May said, hearing Tobin’s words of strength. She glanced over, saw him covering one eye then the other, testing his vision with his hands, as if somehow during their long ride the problem had corrected itself.

  Following Teddy’s directions, they pulled straight into the hospital parking garage and walked through the skyway to the office tower. Through the glass bridge, they could see the dark waters of Boston Harbor alive with ferries and tanker traffic. Party boats passed by, and faint orchestra music penetrated the glass. Outside, people were enjoying the pleasures of a summer night, but the Cartiers were entering the medical world of air-conditioning, disinfectant, and tension.

  In stark contrast to her home office, Teddy Collins’s office at the Boston Eye Hospital was sleek and modern, all gleaming white and chrome. She called them right in, the moment they arrived, to minimize the likelihood of their being seen by other people.

  When May started to follow Martin into the exam room, Teddy stopped her at the door.

  “I’d like to examine Martin alone,” she said.

  “Of course,” May said, feeling sharply hurt. She didn’t want to take it personally, but she couldn’t help feeling a lurch in her stomach.

  “Go on in, Martin,” Teddy directed. “Just sit in that seat by the table. I want to show May something.”

  Martin nodded, moving inside. Teddy brought May into her inner sanctum and told her she could wait there. She laid a white leather album on the desk before her, placing one hand on the cover.

  “My wedding photos,” Teddy said. “With lots of pictures of you and your mother. I thought you might like to see them.”

  “Thank you,” May said. She stared at the richly embossed leather, the initials “T & W” entwined in flowing script, and she looked questioningly at Teddy. Had they been wrong in choosing Teddy as Martin’s doctor? To come to her at a time like this, when they were both nearly paralyzed with fear, and to have her show May her wedding photos?

  But at the sight of Teddy’s lined and compassionate face, the sense that she was completely present and focused, May’s own eyes filled with tears.

  “I love him so much,” May said.

  “I know.”

  May bowed her head, wiped her eyes.

  “I understand,” Teddy said. “He’s facing something very difficult.”

  “Then you know already—”

  “I suspect, but I’m not sure of the degree. We’ll know by the end of the exam.”

  “I’m so worried about Martin,” May said. “Please help him, Teddy. Please…”

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” she said. Then, embracing May, she left her alone in the big corner office. The room had a view of Logan Airport across the black water, and there were planes taking off and landing. The office walls were covered with William’s beautiful pictures of lighthouses all over the world.

  But May didn’t look at any of it. She stared down at the wedding album. It was filled with pictures of Teddy and William, Emily and Lorenzo Dunne, Aunt Enid and May herself, but most of all, Samuel and Abigail Taylor. Staring at the pictures of her father, May couldn’t take her eyes away.

  He looked just as May remembered him. Tall and strong, with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. He wore a gray suit with a blue tie—narrowing her eyes, May thought she could see tiny seagulls printed on it. She had given him a seagull tie for Father’s Day once. Grinning at the camera, he had one hand on May’s shoulder.

  Staring at the picture, May’s eyes flooded. She was six or seven, the same age as Kylie. In every shot, she was no more than two steps away from her father. She had adored him, and the feeling had been mutual.

  Love mattered so much. Family and old friends helped even when they weren’t there. Now May closed her eyes, shutting out even the pictures. She conjured up her parents’ faces. There was her father, smiling out at her. Since her visit to Serge, May had gotten her father back.

  She thanked God for Martin, that he wanted to be a father t
o Kylie. Tears rolling down her cheeks, May wished Martin had his father back. She wished that no matter what this exam would reveal, Martin would have the strength and love of his father to lean on.

  Martin had never liked doctor’s visits. As a kid, his mother had had to bribe him to go to the pediatrician. As he got older, his checkups had been restricted to team physicals and the aftercare for injuries sustained while playing hockey.

  So, sitting in this high-tech doctor’s office, he had butterflies in his stomach. He wished May had been allowed in with him. The equipment looked like instruments of torture.

  “How are you feeling, Martin?” Teddy asked.

  “I’m great,” he lied.

  “That’s good. I’m going to do a few tests today, a little more involved than we did yesterday, and I’d like you to try to relax.”

  “I’m relaxed,” he said, the muscles in his neck and shoulders tight and knotted as wet shoelaces.

  “Good, dear.” In spite of her motherly manner, the doctor’s movements were all business. She checked the dials on the instruments, made notations.

  “I’m going to do a fluorescein angiogram,” she said. “It’s going to test any changes in your retina, but to get the best reading possible, I have to inject dye. You’re not allergic, are you?”

  “No,” Martin said. Having undergone a myelogram to check his spine after a severe altercation with several New Jersey Devils five years ago, he had experienced contact dye. The mere idea of it made him feel bad, and Teddy noticed.

  “It’s not fun,” she said. “Makes some people feel nauseous.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, it will give me the truest sense of what’s going on—”

  “Do it,” Martin interrupted her. “Whatever it takes, anything you say. I’ll do anything to get this over. Finish the tests, make the diagnosis, give me my medicine. I’ll take it, all of it, just to be ready for practice next month. Exercises, surgery, anything.”

  “Martin—” she began.

  Martin didn’t like to plead or beg, but he wanted to state his case clearly, so she’d understand. She was a hockey fan; she had probably treated other players at different times. “I have to get better fast,” he said. “This might be my last year.”

  “Your last year?”

  “To play hockey.” Now that he had started talking, he felt the words coming faster and faster. “I’m getting old for the game. My joints are giving out, but that’s just what happens when you’ve played as long as I have. I didn’t tell May this, but I’d been planning to retire this year.”

  “You mean after next season?” Teddy asked, frowning.

  Martin shook his head. “I mean after last season.”

  “But you didn’t…”

  “I couldn’t. I have to win the Stanley Cup first,” he said.

  “You’re a great player, Martin. With or without—”

  He shook his head hard. Maybe he’d been wrong; perhaps she didn’t get it after all. “It’s everything,” he said. “I’ve been playing for it my whole life. My father won it three times. Yep, three times. These last two years, ever since I’ve had May, I’ve been so close. Right there, about to win…”

  “I watched you on TV,” she said.

  “If I’d won Game Seven, I would be retired by now,” he said, his heart pounding. “That was my plan, but it didn’t happen. One more year, Doctor. That’s all I need. I know I can win this time. I’m positive I can do what it takes, if I can just hang on for one more year.”

  Teddy stood there in front of him, her arms at her side. Martin’s eyes were so blurry, he could hardly see her. “It’s getting worse instead of better,” he said, the words flowing out. “I wake up in the morning, and I can hardly see.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Fix me,” he said. “Give me one more chance to win—”

  “Martin,” she said gently. “We don’t know what we’re going to find here tonight. I promise to do my best, and it’s wonderful to know what a willing patient you are. You have no idea how important that is.”

  “I’ll do anything,” he said.

  When she didn’t reply, Martin stopped talking. His face felt red, and his vocal chords hurt as if he’d been yelling. He closed his eyes, pulled himself together the way he did during the toughest games. The doctor was going to do her best. He felt her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up without blinking or smiling.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  The testing began.

  Through keratoscopy, concentric rings of light were projected onto his corneas. Teddy then did corneal topography, explaining that she was using the newest equipment to make a map of any subtle underlying structural defects. To measure the cornea’s thickness and any possible swelling, she used a pachymeter.

  Martin willed himself to sit still, not move a muscle. He focused on the exam as if he was driving for the goal. He told himself this was the most important game he’d ever played, that if he got through today, he’d make it to the Cup finals next spring and have another chance. He felt sick to his stomach, and his eyes stung and ached.

  Teddy explained that gonioscopy was the procedure by which the anterior chamber angle of the eye is evaluated, that ophthalmoscopy allowed her to view the optic nerve, retina, blood vessels, choroid, and a portion of the ciliary body—the point of attachment for the ligament of the lens as well as the cells which secrete the aqueous humor.

  “The eye is a camera,” she said. “But we actually see with the brain.”

  She explained that the clear forward part of the eye allowed light through the cornea, pupil, and lens. The retina acted as film—tissue covering the back. Containing cones and rods, the tissue transformed light into electrical impulses that carried data through the optic nerve to the brain. From the data, images were formed by the brain.

  “My right eye’s fine,” Martin said, tightly holding the chair arm. “I know my left eye’s weak, but I can see through my right—”

  Teddy told him to breathe deeply as she injected the dye, and Martin felt waves of nausea. He pictured Jorgensen out there jeering, and it steeled him to get through Teddy recording the retinal changes with a special camera. The flashes startled him, just like photographers waiting outside the locker room when he least expected them.

  The light bursts unlocked an ancient memory: Martin at four or five, walking down a long corridor with his father. It was after a game, and his father’s team had won. Martin remembered a deep sense of pride, of knowing his father was the best hockey player in Canada. Carrying his father’s skates, Martin had felt nothing would ever tear them apart. His mother had surprised them, snapping their picture.

  Martin still had the photo. Years later, when Serge had won his first Stanley Cup, Martin had come across the picture buried in his bureau drawer. Estranged from his father by that time, Martin had felt the misery of rage mixed with pride.

  Sitting there, he thought of Game 7, of how much he had wanted his father to see him win. He thought of May’s visit to Serge, of the letter he had received and not opened. Martin exhaled, to get rid of the thoughts.

  Images flashed on a computer, and Teddy printed them out. Martin had to use the rest room, and she pointed him down the hall. She asked if he needed help getting to her office. He said no, and she told him she would see him in a few minutes. He just wanted the news, to get started on a plan of action right away. To fix his eyes.

  Waiting for Martin, May had continued looking through Teddy’s old pictures. Her wedding had taken place one June morning at the Old North Church, and because she and William had had no young children in their lives, May had been the flower girl.

  “Your family was very good to me,” Teddy said, walking into the office.

  May’s stomach dropped at the greeting. Why hadn’t she mentioned Martin? If it was good news, wouldn’t she have said right away? “You mean my mother and grandmother for planning your wedding?” May asked slowly.

  “All of
them. All of you. You were such an important part of that day.”

  “Thank you. We didn’t often attend the weddings we planned. Yours is one of the only ones I remember.”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m so glad you came to me,” she said steadily. “For this. So I can help you and Martin.”

  For this. Two words. Teddy didn’t smile as she said them. She had an edge in her voice, as if she was warning May of something that had to be done. May heard the little sound escape her throat, and her mouth was dry. May questioned her with her eyes, but Teddy was settling herself at her desk, arranging a sheaf of papers and printouts, looking up as Martin came through the door.

  Dr. Theodora Collins sat at her desk. There were two Windsor chairs set in front, facing her, with May sitting in one. Martin crossed the room and took his place beside her. Squeezing her hand, he heard himself breathing as if he’d just climbed a steep hill. His mind raced with questions, all of them elaborate and confusing. Teddy put on half-glasses, ready to start.

  “I’m going to tell you straight out,” she said. “We’re facing a complicated situation.”

  Complicated, Martin thought, grabbing onto the word. It wasn’t necessarily dire, or even bad. Just complicated. Teddy held up one of the pictures she’d taken during the tests, and to Martin it looked like a big red blotch with dark spots and jagged lines running through it.

  “Your left eye,” she said, “shows severe scarring. When the hole or tear developed in the sensory retina, some liquid vitreous seeped through, severing the retina from what’s called the retinal pigment epithelium. Although I can see evidence of cryotherapy—the laser welds you mentioned—scar tissue has formed to tear it away again.”

  “So I have another detached retina?” Martin asked. Even as he asked, he was calculating the time it had taken last time: one day for surgery, a week to wear the bandage, two months before he could play again.

  “Is that serious?” May asked.

  “It wasn’t too bad,” Martin said, squeezing her hand, feeling a lightness all over.

  But Teddy wasn’t smiling. “Somehow, the macula—that’s to say, the central portion of the retina in your left eye—appears to have been detached for some time. You seem to have suffered an infection, perhaps at that same time, that caused retinal vein occlusion. Your left eye is without sight.”