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