We’d decided ten days earlier to separate. That’s the starting point, the once-upon-a-time. Or rather—to be entirely fair, to be strictly true—Ed had decided, and I had agreed, in principle. I admit I didn’t think it would happen, not even when he summoned the broker. Could’ve fooled me.
Why, I reason, isn’t for Lizzie to concern herself with. With which it is not for Lizzie to concern herself, as Wesley might insist; he was a stickler for dangling prepositions. I assume he still is. But no: The why isn’t important, not here. The where and the when I can provide.
Vermont and last December, respectively, when we packed Olivia into the Audi and revved onto 9A, over the Henry Hudson Bridge, and out of Manhattan. Two hours later, wending through upstate New York, we’d hit what Ed liked to call the back roads—“with lots of diners and pancake places for us,” he promised Olivia.
“Mom doesn’t like pancakes,” she said.
“She can go to a crafts store.”
“Mom doesn’t like crafts,” I said.
As it turned out, the back roads of the region are remarkably fallow when it comes to pancake places and crafts stores. We found a single lonely IHOP in easternmost New York, where Olivia dredged her waffles in maple syrup (locally sourced, claimed the menu) and Ed and I arrowed glances at each other across the table. Outside, a light snow began to shake down, frail little kamikaze flakes smiting themselves against the windows. Olivia pointed with her fork and squealed.
I jousted her fork with my own. “There’ll be a lot more of that at Blue River,” I told her. This was our final destination, a ski resort in central Vermont that Olivia’s friend had visited. Classmate, not friend.
Back to the car, back on the road. The ride was quiet, on the whole. We hadn’t said anything to Olivia; no sense spoiling her vacation, I’d argued, and Ed nodded. We’d forge ahead for her.
So in silence we swept past broad fields and little streams lacquered with ice, through forgotten villages and into a feeble snowstorm near the Vermont border. At one point Olivia burst into “Over the Meadow and Through the Woods,” and I piled on, trying and failing to harmonize.
“Daddy, will you sing?” Olivia pleaded. She’s always done that: asked rather than ordered. Unusual in a child. Unusual in anyone, I sometimes think.
Ed cleared his throat and sang.
It was only as we reached the Green Mountains, bulging like shoulders from the earth, that he began to thaw. Olivia had gone breathless. “I’ve never seen such things,” she wheezed, and I wondered where she’d heard those words in that order.
“Do you like the mountains?” I asked.
“They look like a rumpled blanket.”
“They do.”
“Like a giant’s bed.”
“A giant’s bed?” Ed repeated.
“Yes—like a giant is sleeping under a blanket. That’s why it’s all lumpy.”
“You’ll be skiing on some of these mountains tomorrow,” Ed promised as we hugged a tight turn. “We’ll go up, up, up in the ski lift, and then down, down, down the mountain.”
“Up, up, up,” she repeated. The words popped from her lips.
“You got it.”
“Down, down, down.”
“You got it again.”
“That one looks like a horse. Those are his ears.” She pointed at a pair of spindly peaks in the distance. Olivia was at that age when everything reminded her of a horse.
Ed smiled. “What would you call a horse if you had one, Liv?”
“We are not getting a horse,” I added.
“I’d call him Vixen.”
“A vixen is a fox,” Ed told her. “A girl fox.”
“He would be fast like a fox.”
We considered this.
“What would you call a horse, Mom?”
“Don’t you want to call me Mommy?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, Mommy.”
“I’d call a horse Of Course, Of Course.” I looked at Ed. Nothing.
“Why?” asked Olivia.
“It’s from a song on TV.”
“What song?”
“From an old show about a talking horse.”
“A talking horse?” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s dumb.”
“I agree.”
“Daddy, what would you call a horse?”
Ed glanced in the rearview. “I like Vixen, too.”
“Whoa,” Olivia breathed. I turned.
Space had opened up beside us, beneath us, a vast chasm gutted from the land below, a huge bowl of nothing; thatched evergreens at the bottom of the void, rags of mist caught in midair. We were so close to the edge of the road that it felt like floating. We could peer into the well of the world.
“How far down is that?” she asked.
“Far,” I answered, turning to Ed. “Can we slow up a bit?”
“Slow up?”
“Slow down, whatever? Just—can we go slower?”
He decelerated slightly.
“Can we slow down more?”
“We’re fine,” he said.
“It’s scary,” said Olivia, her voice curled up at the edges, hands edging toward her eyes, and Ed eased up on the gas.
“Don’t look down, pumpkin,” I said, twisting in my seat. “Look at Mommy.”
She did so, her eyes wide. I took her hand, gathered her fingers in my own. “Everything’s fine,” I told her. “Just look at Mommy.”
We’d arranged to lodge outside Two Pines, about half an hour from the resort—“Central Vermont’s finest historic inn,” bragged the Fisher Arms on its website, a slick collage of hearths in full bloom and windows frilly with snow.
We parked in the small lot. Icicles hung like fangs from the eaves above the front door. Rustic New England decor within: steeply pitched ceiling, shabby-genteel furniture, flames playing in one of those photo-friendly fireplaces. The receptionist, a plump young blonde whose name tag read marie, invited us to sign the guest registry, primped the irises on the desk as we did so. I wondered if she was going to address us as “folks.”
“You folks here to ski?”
“We are,” I said. “Blue River.”
“Glad you made it.” Marie beamed at Olivia. “Storm’s coming in.”
“Nor’easter?” suggested Ed, trying to sound local.
She trained her laser smile on him. “A nor’easter is more of a coastal storm, sir.”
He nearly flinched. “Oh.”
“This is just a storm-storm. But it’ll be a whopper. You folks be sure to lock your windows tonight.”
I wanted to ask why the windows would be unlocked the week before Christmas, but Marie dropped the keys into my palm and wished us folks a pleasant evening.
We trundled our luggage down the hall—the Fisher Arms’ “many amenities” did not include bellhop service—and entered our suite. Paintings of pheasant flanked the fireplace; layer cakes of blankets sat on the edges of the beds. Olivia made straight for the toilet, leaving the door ajar; she was afraid of strange bathrooms.
“It’s nice,” I murmured.
“Liv,” Ed called, “what’s the bathroom like?”
“Cold.”
“Which bed do you want?” Ed asked me. On holidays, he and I always slept separately, so that Olivia wouldn’t crowd the bed when she inevitably climbed in. Some nights she ferried herself from Ed’s bed to my own and back again; he called her Pong, after that Atari game with a four-bit ball bouncing between two bars.
“You take the one by the window.” I sat on the edge of the other bed, unzipped my suitcase. “Better make sure it’s locked.”
Ed swung his bag onto the mattress. We began to unpack in silence. Beyond the window, curtains of snow shifted, gray and white in the creeping dusk.
After a moment, he rolled up one sleeve and scratched at his forearm. “You know . . .” he said. I turned to him.
The toilet flushed and Olivia burst into the room, hopping from one foot to the other. “When can we get up to ski?”
Dinner was to be prepacked PB&Js and assorted juice boxes, although I’d stowed a bottle of sauvignon blanc amid my sweaters. By now the wine was room temperature, and Ed liked his whites “really dry and really cold,” as he always notified waiters. I rang the front desk, asked for ice. “There’s a machine in the hallway just past your room,” Marie told me. “Make sure to give the lid a real hard push.”