Summer Light: A Novel (2 page)

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.

“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.