But when we moved that summer, there was an unexpected situation, and the big beautiful house was not ready to occupy.
The house was not ready to occupy because one of the sellers--an embittered alcoholic middle-aged woman named Mrs. Carvahlo--wouldn't leave. The sale of the house had been a contingency of her nasty divorce from Mr. Carvahlo, and, either before or shortly after the contract was signed and the divorce was final, Mr. Carvahlo died, suddenly becoming not only her ex-husband, but an altogether ex-man.
That a few unlucky days had made the difference between being full heir to her ex-husband's estate and not didn't sit well with Mrs. Carvahlo ("He pulled a fast one on me!" she slurred to my mother one day). She also couldn't see how she was bound to an agreement with a dead man: in her mind, when he became null and void, their contract did, too. So she fought it, and while she did, she dug her heels into the only leverage she felt she had: our house. My father, every inch the stereotypical engineer, weighed his options and decided it would be best to just give her some time. So we ended up renting a rustic little ski chalet 20 miles away in Bolton Valley and we waited.
And waited.
We kids actually had a pretty idyllic summer and fall in Bolton Valley--for us, it was like being on a fun vacation. We were tripled up into two bedrooms, the chalet was nestled in forestland, surrounded by pine, birch, and maple trees, and a little mountain stream ran through the back. We played outside, we explored, there was a pool at the ski lodge up the street where we swam, and once a week or so, we'd get a drunken call from Mrs. Carvahlo that made us giggle with nervous delight. It went something like this:
John, aged 10: "Hello?"
Mrs. C: "Who's thish?"
John: "I'm John."
Mrs. C: "John?"
John: "Yes?"
Mrs. C: "You're a good boy. John?"
John: "Yes?"
Mrs. C: "You're a good kid. John?"
John: "Yes?"
Mrs. C: "You're a good boy."
One night, after one such phone call, my father bundled up and flew out the door, explaining that Mrs. Carvahlo had told him if he came right over they could work everything out. The next morning, I asked my mother if my father had worked everything out. She laughed and told me that when my father got to the house, Mrs. Carvahlo answered the door in a see-through negligee and offered him a martini, causing my father to hightail it back to Bolton Valley and settle in to wait some more.
Fall turned to winter, the owners wanted their chalet back for ski season, and so we moved again--this time into the unfinished second floor of the nearby Black Bear Lodge.
I don't remember much about life at the Black Bear--how many rooms our family was divided into, where and what we ate, what the drive to the two-room Smilie School we attended was like. But I do remember this: one early November day, when the snow was falling in droves outside and we kids were lying around inside, bickering in a room in an unfinished second floor of a lodge where we were indefinitely temporarily staying, my mother looked into the abyss. "Get in the car," she said. She drove us to a ski shop, and we four eldest were fitted with boots and skis. I have a very clear memory of holding my right hand straight up and keeping it there for a long time, as though I were asking a very urgent question and being completely ignored, while the handsome blond ski salesman in the red Nordic sweater used my extended fingertips to decide how long my new skis should be.
After our first few lessons at Bolton Valley, skiing became the mandated weekend/holiday activity, every winter that we lived in Vermont (we did finally move to the big beautiful Underhill house in early 1969). We kids didn't make it easy on our mother, either. Despite the fact that we mostly had fun once we were there, we fought and cried from the moment she pulled us from our nice warm beds to the time she dropped us off at the resort (first Bolton Valley, then Underhill Ski Bowl and Stowe) where the temperatures hovered between -10 and 25 degrees.
Thank goodness she ignored us.
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