Summer Light: A Novel (17 page)

Chapter 9

G
ENNY CALLED TO ASK WHERE
they were, and May said that Kylie had had a bad dream, that May didn’t want to let her spend the night away from home. Her chest hurt, thinking of how extremely quiet Martin had been ever since Kylie had asked him about Natalie. But she just told Genny she’d talk to her tomorrow, and that they’d plan another time for Charlotte to baby-sit.

That night, Martin’s silence seemed deeper than ever. He barely said a word. When May looked into his eyes, she hardly recognized him. His face was a mask, blank and expressionless. May cooked steak with baked potatoes, but he said he wasn’t hungry. She and Kylie sat at the kitchen table alone, and May forced herself to eat so Kylie would.

“Can we talk?” May asked when she’d done the dishes and put Kylie to bed. Martin sat in the living room, a magazine on his lap, staring straight ahead. Waves of energy were pouring out of him, so strong May thought he could probably move furniture with it.

“Nothing to talk about,” he said.

“Kylie talks to angels. Remember on the plane? When she knew we were going down?”

“That’s just in her mind,” Martin argued. “You told me she saw the picture in my wallet, that it planted an idea.”

May nodded. “Natalie’s picture, yes. I believe that real events are springboards for Kylie’s dreams and fantasies. You know that diary I keep? It’s about Kylie. I write down everything she tells me.”

“I know,” Martin said. “I’ve seen you.”

“Some of it’s about Natalie.”

“She doesn’t even know her.”

“That doesn’t matter,” May said steadily. “She’s very real to Kylie. Kylie considers Natalie to be her sister.”

“May, stop,” Martin said. “She hears the fish crying, too. She’s creative, that’s all.”

“It all has to do with families,” May explained. “It always has. ‘The fish have families too.’ Remember she said that?”

“I’m not ready for this,” Martin told her. “I want to bury the past, eh? Just dig a big hole and shove it all inside. I know you worry about Kylie: I see you writing in that notebook. But, please, May—leave me out of it. Me and Natalie. I don’t talk about her or the past. The past is separate.”

May stared at him. “I think you’ve got it wrong,” she said, suddenly furious. “It’s connected now, not separate at all.”

He banged through the screen door, and May watched him start running down to the lake and disappear around a bend. Her heart was pounding. She needed someone to talk to. She knew marriage was private, that a couple should solve their own problems, but suddenly she grabbed the phone and dialed Tobin’s number.

“It’s me,” she said when Tobin answered.

“How’s the honeymoon?”

“Over before it began,” May said. “I’m so mad, I swear I feel like—”

“Whoa, tell me what happened.”

“Martin just ran out of here.” She took a huge breath.

“What happened?”

May told her about Kylie asking about Natalie and Martin’s reaction. “He told me he’d like to bury the past. He doesn’t want to talk about his daughter, and Kylie keeps dreaming about her.”

“That sounds like Kylie,” Tobin said. “Her imagination has been piqued, and her dreams take shape.”

“You know her so well,” May said, feeling grateful to Tobin, outraged at Martin. “I should have married you, goddamn it.”

“We’ve known that all along. But, listen—Martin will know her soon. You’re going to hate to hear this, but give him time. That’s the best marriage advice I know. You have to get used to each other.”

“He took off at a dead run, just to get away from me.”

“So run in the opposite direction. Remember when John and I were first married? How much overtime I put in at the Barn?”

“I thought you were saving for a down payment.”

“That, too. But we needed space so we wouldn’t fight all the time.”

“You were each other’s first real loves,” May said, wishing that was true for her and Martin. “Neither of you had ever been married before, you didn’t have kids with other people. You were right about the book being half written.”

“What do you mean?”

“We both have so much baggage,” May told her. “Even though I wasn’t married to Gordon—”

“You have the scars to show for it.”

“It drives me crazy that he won’t talk to his father,” May said, thinking of real scars.

“Because you wish you could talk to yours.”

“And that he won’t tell me about Natalie.”

“Give him time,” Tobin repeated, lowering her voice to sound old and wise.

May laughed.

“I’m glad you called me. I’ve been afraid you’re bonding too much with Genny Gardner. She’s nice, isn’t she?”

“Very,” May said.

“Is she becoming your best friend?”

“I already have one of those,” May said.

“Try to talk to him alone,” Tobin advised. “When running in the opposite direction fails, try coming together. One way or the other, I know he loves you and deep down wants to talk.”

“How do you know?” May asked.

“It’s John’s best-kept secret,” Tobin said. “But he wants me to know everything.”

That night, Martin slept on the couch. By dawn, when he hadn’t come to bed, May felt hollow inside. She went about her day, trying to concentrate on the jobs in front of her. After Martin stayed up late again, watching TV and falling asleep, May knew they were in trouble. Calling Genny, she asked if Charlotte could watch Kylie so she could have some time alone with Martin.

When she got back from taking Kylie to Genny’s, she found him sitting out in the backyard, hands gripping the arms of the old birchwood chair, staring at the lake. He didn’t look up at her approach, even though her shadow fell right across his face. May stared down at him, her heart pounding. She saw the veins pulsing in his temples. He was scowling, and she hadn’t even spoken yet.

He had been running: He wore shorts and a T-shirt, and he was soaked with sweat. His arms and legs gleamed with it, and his hair was pushed back from his eyes. Ever since the fight, all Martin had done was run and row and pummel the punching bag hanging in the barn. She had heard him last night, pounding the bag as if he wanted to kill it. The sound had filled May with fear, and she had lain awake until he had stopped.

“You’re leaving me,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and it brought May up short.

“Are you kidding?” she asked.

“I’m acting like an animal, I know it,” he said.

“If you know it, then I don’t have to tell you,” she replied.

“Leave me alone, eh?” he asked.

She didn’t say a word, but she looked down at his face. Martin stared out over her head; his jaw and eyes had grown hard over the last two days. Crickets hummed in the tall grass behind the barn. The sky was purple over the lake and blue-gold above the mountains. Swallows dipped in and out of the shadows, catching bugs. Fish rose to the surface of the lake, snapping at low-cruising flies.

May’s gaze fell on Martin’s hands. They were grasping the chair arms, each finger tense and digging in. The veins on his hands and wrists were blue, raised and surrounded by golden hair. His knuckles were bruised from punching the bag. Leaning forward, she kissed the purple knuckle of the index finger of Martin’s right hand. Then the middle finger, then the ring finger.

“May,” he growled. “Stop.”

She didn’t. She kissed the knuckle of the little finger of his right hand and then the thumb. Shifting around Martin’s sweaty knees, she started on his left hand. She sensed the tension draining out of his fingers, out of his arms.

“Leave me alone,” he repeated.

“I can’t,” May said, because now she had gotten to the ring finger of his left hand, to his wedding ring. Kissing his knuckle, she licked the gold band. She thought she heard him groan, and then she felt his right hand on the back of her head.

“What are you doing?”

“We have baggage,” she said. “That’s the whole problem.”

“Baggage?”

“Don’t you hate the word? It sounds like something you’d hear on a talk show. Like two big suitcases filled with the past. You have one and I have one.”

“I’d like to kick mine off a cliff,” he said, staring across the lake.

“The thing is,” she said, “I don’t think that would work. It would find you. You can’t ditch it just because you want to.”

“So what do I do?”

Purple shadows had spread all the way up the mountains, into the sky. This far north the summer sky stayed light long into the night, clear and radiant with particles of gold dust. The evening star appeared in the luminous sky, and up the lake a loon screamed.

“I want to help you,” May told him.

“When it comes to this, to her, no one can,” Martin murmured into her neck.

“Natalie,” May said, because Martin hadn’t said her name.

May pushed back slightly, leaving just enough space between them so she could look clearly into his eyes. They were bruised and troubled, almost to the point of panic. But they weren’t angry anymore.

“I’m sorry for how I’ve acted,” he said. “It’s been bad, and I know it. But I’ve never gotten this close to anyone before, at least not since she died. When I think about her, when her name comes up, I go crazy. When it’s during the season, I just take it out on the other team. On the ice, that’s easy.”

“But it’s summer,” May said. “And there’s no ice.”

“No, there’s not. And there’s you and Kylie.”

“Yep.”

“In summer, usually I do what I did today, yesterday, the day before. Work out till it’s time to sleep. I’m tired, May. Can we—” He sounded better, as if his old spirit was coming back, and May knew he was going to suggest going inside, eating dinner, heading upstairs.

“Let’s stay out here,” she said.

The sky was bright and dark at the same time, and May could feel Martin shaking. Dragging the other chair closer, she sat.

“We were divorced, her mother and I,” Martin began. “Trisha lived—lives—in California, Santa Monica, and Natalie came up to spend the summer with me. Trisha was glad. She never gave me any trouble about having Nat. She liked the freedom, but it wasn’t only that. She knew Nat and I weren’t about to do without each other just because she had another thing going.”

May listened, staring up into the endless sky.

“It was seven years ago, July, hot and muggy. Natalie was six then. I’d screwed up my knee that season, really bad, and I’d had surgery in Detroit before coming up here. One day I was riding bikes with Natalie, stupid the doctor told me, and I don’t know—my knee just went out. So I was back in the hospital, the so-called one right down the lake in LaSalle.”

“Natalie was with you?” May asked, knowing how scared the little girl must have been, remembering how upset Kylie had felt the time May had cut herself on a broken glass and had to get stitches at the Coastline Clinic.

“Wouldn’t leave my side.” Martin grinned.

“Loyal daughter.”

“To the point of stubbornness. They took me to Toronto, to a better hospital and a top knee guy.”

“At Twigg University?” May asked, picturing the familiar brick buildings.

“Near there,” Martin said. “Hockey players are his specialty. Trisha wanted Nat to come right home, but we said forget it. I’d be laid up for a week at the most, and she’d be reading to me when I got bored just sitting still.”

A fish jumped in the lake, and the rings spread out collecting starlight and the strange golden shine spreading down from the darkening sky. May listened to the splash recede and waited for Martin to go on.

“My father lived in Toronto,” Martin continued. “Pretty near the hospital. We weren’t on great terms back then, but it was better than when I was a kid. Took me a long time to forgive him enough to let him come watch me play, when that’s all I ever wanted anyway. He was a bastard to my mother, and what the hell—I took myself seriously as man of the family. But he never stopped trying. Kept sending those cards and letters, and when he found out he had a granddaughter, he was relentless. Doted on Natalie like mad. Went to visit her every chance he got.”