Summer Light: A Novel Read Free Page A

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