iIt was somewhere in a fairytale
I used to take her home in my car
We learned about love in the back of a Dodge
The lesson hadn't gone too far/i
She smiled at me but as before the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. When I didn't smile back, she bowed her head and when she raised it again it was as though she had covered her features with a mask. Instead of the false certainty she had before I saw an image of a trapped and lost girl and looking in her eyes for the first time in 8 years broke my heart again just as it had when I left Chicago all those years ago.
iYou see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
I took off to find the sky/i
It had been my senior year, junior for her when we had met and - as impossible as it seems to me now - fallen in love. As in most high school romances she overwhelmed my thoughts and although I knew that at the end of the year we would be headed for some hard times, I let her become my world. The span of forever never even seemed long enough for us to be together but instead of discussing the future and planning for it as we should have, we denied its existence which made the realizations we were forced to come to at graduation all the more painful. Before Jessie had come into my life, all I had wanted to do after I graduated was leave Chicago behind and create a life for myself far away from my family, away from their expectations and especially away from their drunken Christmas fights that had torn my home life apart. I had this crazy notion that the ideal way for me to make a living was to learn how to be a pilot which would let me spend all of my downtime writing my novels. Being a pilot is the kind of job where there is no homework and your schedule is pretty much set. If I was going to dedicate my life to my writing, I couldn't have the type of job where I would be on call like a doctor or have to do research in the evenings like a lawyer. I figured I would just bring my laptop with me overseas if I had to. Also, I figured there was no better exhibition of my reckless nature and no better way of telling my parents just how far away from them I intended to be now that I was no longer being kept prisoner under their roof.
I loved Jessie more than I have ever loved anyone in my life, including myself. I was willing to sacrifice everything I had to in order to be with her, or so I thought. But when the time came to make a decision as to whether I would stay in Chicago for her last year of high school or head off and try to make it on my own, I realized there were in fact some things I was not willing to sacrifice after all. It killed some small part of my heart to do it, but when the offer came from the San Francisco School of Aviation to take part in their piloting program I accepted it and with a heavy heart I said good-bye to my first and only love. When I kissed Jessie for the last time, in late August the day before I was to start the long drive down to San Francisco, the look in her eye then was the same one she wore now, 8 years later and sitting in my cab.
Jessie looked me over, an appraising look "So I guess the whole pilot thing didn't work out?" she laughed then, and the bitterness and irony that leaked out with her words struck me hard.
iI've got something inside me
To drive a princess blind
She's hiding in me, illuminating my mind
I've got something inside me
Not what my life's about
Cause I've been letting my outside tide me
Over until my time runs out/i
I just shrugged, I had made peace with my failure a few years ago and no one - not even Jessie - could make me feel worse then I had when I had first dropped out of the aviation program. I had always known school wasn't my place, but I hadn't realized that with no parents around to force me to go and no faculty that could be bothered chasing their students around that I wouldn't be able to handle having full control over my education.
"And you? What are you up to now, Jess?"
"It's Jessica now, um, Jessica Kaine," she emphasized the last word and for the first time I noticed the pear cut diamond ring she was fiddling with on her left hand. My breath caught in my throat and I looked up to the road only just in time to swerve away from the car that had been coming towards us. She was quiet until I had steadied the car and then she continued but to my relief, she had stopped playing with the ring.
"Well, I tried to pursue acting for awhile and I got what you could call my 'big break' in the Los Angeles Workshop production of My Fair Lady but then I met Gregory and well, I haven't been doing as many shows the past few years. We just moved to San Francisco because Greg got the lead role in a new show that's being filmed here." She stopped then and I could do nothing but nod at her. I'd heard of her husband, Gregory Kaine was a very respected actor throughout California but was also known for his womanizing and substance abuse. I thought of mentioning that I had read about him in the tabloids but I decided against it, I mean I was still hoping for a good tip.
"Well, congratulations, Jessica."
"Do you mean that Katie?" I started at her then before responding. I had understood the conversation to be one had between any old friends, not lovers. This sudden reminder of our past together surprised me. Was I supposed to tell her how I really felt? How I still felt all these years, and all these miles later?
I mirrored her laugh then, bitter with a touch of irony, "No, no I really don't."
iThere was not much more for us to talk about
Whatever we'd had once was gone/i
We fell silent after that, everything we wanted to say seemed to be coming our harsh or judgmental. The years had changed us both, and unfortunately, it seemed that the changes had not been for the better. She sat with her beautiful blue eyes turned towards the window and for once I kept my eyes on the road. It was easier than looking at her and seeing the tangible evidence of the first of a thousand of my failures or acknowledging the silence that was speaking volumes.
Who was it that once said "You can't go home again"? That had always seemed like a silly thing to say and I had never truly understood it - though to be fair school wasn't my strongest point - but now that one sentence played through my mind and it made sense to me at last. Once everything has changed in your life and everything has changed in the lives of the people you loved, you see that you can can't ever return 'home' to the place where you were young because it's never how you left it. Over the past few years when I've briefly let myself remember Jessie, I had seen her how she was. Hopeful, vibrant and full of expectations for her life and for our life together. I had chosen to see her unchanged and on those dark nights when I was feeling so alone that I drank myself to sleep, I let her be home to me. I would imagine myself returning to Chicago a year from now or sometimes ten years from now and falling into her arms and being young and innocent and seventeen again.
iSo I turned my cab into the driveway
Past the gate and the fine trimmed lawns/i
The silence dragged on for what seemed like ages though I knew it was only minutes and then I saw the street name she had given me and with a burning pain in my heart, I turned left onto Parkside Lane. The estates on this street all had lush green lawns and individual gates meant to keep intruders, and perhaps scorned lovers, at bay.
I drove up the street slowly, scanning for number 16 and wondering which of the massive houses was the elegant cage for Jessie's tattered life.
Jessie also had been looking out the window and said quietly but with a touch of urgency, "It's the grey one up there on your left."
iAnd she said we must get together
But I knew it'd never be arranged/i
I had already spotted it up ahead and was turning through the open gates and on to the long lane at the end of which there lay a distinguished house - no, mansion - with a magnificent garden and stone statue in the front. We sat in strained silence for a moment before Jessie spoke "We should, um, get together for coffee or dinner sometime. To catch up, you know," but even as she spoke those words, I could see in her turned away face and the way she averted her eyes that she had no intention of carrying out her own request. This inkling of mine was further proven because neither of us even bothered to ask for the others phone number. Harsh reality set in and any hope I had of rekindling our past romance was extinguished. We lived in separate worlds now and I was clearly not welcome in hers, nor - and I realized this with a start - was she welcome in mine.
iAnd she handed me fifty dollars for a twenty dollar fare,
She said "Katie, keep the change"/i
She looked at the meter that indicated how much the fare would be and before I had a chance to tell her not to worry about it, she pulled a fifty dollar bill from one of her bags and pressed it into my hand. As she looked at me then, I finally saw in her eyes what I had been hoping to see all evening, I saw the true Jessie looking out at me with sincerity and pain and I knew it would be the last time I ever looked into those deep cerulean eyes.
I opened my mouth to protest just as she said "Katie, keep the change." The look on her face now was much less welcome and I felt myself begin to fume at the pity I saw in her eyes.
iWell another person might have been angry
And another person might have been hurt
But another person never would have let her go
I stashed the bill in my purse/i
'Who does she think she is, waltzing along into my new life and passing judgement? How dare she insult the way I've chosen to live my life? Who says I need anything from her, let alone her money?' All these thoughts bubbled to the surface of my mind and just as I was about to open my mouth and unleash it all upon her, another thought pushed to the front, 'And who were you to let her go in the first place? Isn't it your own fault that you're stuck in this awful existence, not to mention the awful existence she's living as well? You could have saved her from a terrible marriage and an empty life, but instead you were too selfish to wait for her for one more year. Just take the damn money and get the hell out of here.'
As she got out of the car, I stashed the fifty in my purse between two packs of cigarettes and muttered a wounded 'Thank you'.
iAnd she walked away in silence
It's strange how you never know
But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for
Such a long, long time ago
You see she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
And I took off for the sky/i
I watched her as she made her way up the walkway and took her keys from her purse to unlock the door. I could have offered to carry her bags for her, or at least driven up closer to the door but I had wanted to make things difficult for her. It was payment really, because unbeknownst to her, her just having been in the wrong place at the wrong time today would haunt my sleep for months to come. Had I not seen her today, I could have gone on pretending my life was the way I wanted it to be, and I could have gone on living the way I was but she had forced the contrast of our lives upon me and I was made to realize some things would have to change if I was going to make something of myself, ever.
iAnd here she's acting happy
Inside her handsome home/i
Suddenly, the writer part of me took over and I laughed out loud as I saw the irony in our situations. You see, all those years ago Jessie had dreamed of putting on shows, of expressing feelings, desires, and dreams of characters that were not her. And now, I watched her face as her cheating husband wrapped his arms around her on the front steps of their magnificent home and I realized that in a way she had gotten what she wanted. I realized that she spent her life acting happy when underneath that facade was the same insecure, vulnerable girl I had fallen in love with when we were too blind to see the tumultuous lives that lay ahead of us.
iAnd me I'm flying in my taxi
Taking tips and getting stoned/i
And as for me, I had dreamed of flying high above cities, soaring over oceans and escaping the life I had been born in to. I laughed then, a bitter lonely sound, as I pulled a joint from my purse and set it to my lips, my lighter poised in front of me. Well, I certainly spent a lot of time flying here in my taxi, and escape sounded pretty damn good right now.
I used to take her home in my car
We learned about love in the back of a Dodge
The lesson hadn't gone too far/i
She smiled at me but as before the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. When I didn't smile back, she bowed her head and when she raised it again it was as though she had covered her features with a mask. Instead of the false certainty she had before I saw an image of a trapped and lost girl and looking in her eyes for the first time in 8 years broke my heart again just as it had when I left Chicago all those years ago.
iYou see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
I took off to find the sky/i
It had been my senior year, junior for her when we had met and - as impossible as it seems to me now - fallen in love. As in most high school romances she overwhelmed my thoughts and although I knew that at the end of the year we would be headed for some hard times, I let her become my world. The span of forever never even seemed long enough for us to be together but instead of discussing the future and planning for it as we should have, we denied its existence which made the realizations we were forced to come to at graduation all the more painful. Before Jessie had come into my life, all I had wanted to do after I graduated was leave Chicago behind and create a life for myself far away from my family, away from their expectations and especially away from their drunken Christmas fights that had torn my home life apart. I had this crazy notion that the ideal way for me to make a living was to learn how to be a pilot which would let me spend all of my downtime writing my novels. Being a pilot is the kind of job where there is no homework and your schedule is pretty much set. If I was going to dedicate my life to my writing, I couldn't have the type of job where I would be on call like a doctor or have to do research in the evenings like a lawyer. I figured I would just bring my laptop with me overseas if I had to. Also, I figured there was no better exhibition of my reckless nature and no better way of telling my parents just how far away from them I intended to be now that I was no longer being kept prisoner under their roof.
I loved Jessie more than I have ever loved anyone in my life, including myself. I was willing to sacrifice everything I had to in order to be with her, or so I thought. But when the time came to make a decision as to whether I would stay in Chicago for her last year of high school or head off and try to make it on my own, I realized there were in fact some things I was not willing to sacrifice after all. It killed some small part of my heart to do it, but when the offer came from the San Francisco School of Aviation to take part in their piloting program I accepted it and with a heavy heart I said good-bye to my first and only love. When I kissed Jessie for the last time, in late August the day before I was to start the long drive down to San Francisco, the look in her eye then was the same one she wore now, 8 years later and sitting in my cab.
Jessie looked me over, an appraising look "So I guess the whole pilot thing didn't work out?" she laughed then, and the bitterness and irony that leaked out with her words struck me hard.
iI've got something inside me
To drive a princess blind
She's hiding in me, illuminating my mind
I've got something inside me
Not what my life's about
Cause I've been letting my outside tide me
Over until my time runs out/i
I just shrugged, I had made peace with my failure a few years ago and no one - not even Jessie - could make me feel worse then I had when I had first dropped out of the aviation program. I had always known school wasn't my place, but I hadn't realized that with no parents around to force me to go and no faculty that could be bothered chasing their students around that I wouldn't be able to handle having full control over my education.
"And you? What are you up to now, Jess?"
"It's Jessica now, um, Jessica Kaine," she emphasized the last word and for the first time I noticed the pear cut diamond ring she was fiddling with on her left hand. My breath caught in my throat and I looked up to the road only just in time to swerve away from the car that had been coming towards us. She was quiet until I had steadied the car and then she continued but to my relief, she had stopped playing with the ring.
"Well, I tried to pursue acting for awhile and I got what you could call my 'big break' in the Los Angeles Workshop production of My Fair Lady but then I met Gregory and well, I haven't been doing as many shows the past few years. We just moved to San Francisco because Greg got the lead role in a new show that's being filmed here." She stopped then and I could do nothing but nod at her. I'd heard of her husband, Gregory Kaine was a very respected actor throughout California but was also known for his womanizing and substance abuse. I thought of mentioning that I had read about him in the tabloids but I decided against it, I mean I was still hoping for a good tip.
"Well, congratulations, Jessica."
"Do you mean that Katie?" I started at her then before responding. I had understood the conversation to be one had between any old friends, not lovers. This sudden reminder of our past together surprised me. Was I supposed to tell her how I really felt? How I still felt all these years, and all these miles later?
I mirrored her laugh then, bitter with a touch of irony, "No, no I really don't."
iThere was not much more for us to talk about
Whatever we'd had once was gone/i
We fell silent after that, everything we wanted to say seemed to be coming our harsh or judgmental. The years had changed us both, and unfortunately, it seemed that the changes had not been for the better. She sat with her beautiful blue eyes turned towards the window and for once I kept my eyes on the road. It was easier than looking at her and seeing the tangible evidence of the first of a thousand of my failures or acknowledging the silence that was speaking volumes.
Who was it that once said "You can't go home again"? That had always seemed like a silly thing to say and I had never truly understood it - though to be fair school wasn't my strongest point - but now that one sentence played through my mind and it made sense to me at last. Once everything has changed in your life and everything has changed in the lives of the people you loved, you see that you can can't ever return 'home' to the place where you were young because it's never how you left it. Over the past few years when I've briefly let myself remember Jessie, I had seen her how she was. Hopeful, vibrant and full of expectations for her life and for our life together. I had chosen to see her unchanged and on those dark nights when I was feeling so alone that I drank myself to sleep, I let her be home to me. I would imagine myself returning to Chicago a year from now or sometimes ten years from now and falling into her arms and being young and innocent and seventeen again.
iSo I turned my cab into the driveway
Past the gate and the fine trimmed lawns/i
The silence dragged on for what seemed like ages though I knew it was only minutes and then I saw the street name she had given me and with a burning pain in my heart, I turned left onto Parkside Lane. The estates on this street all had lush green lawns and individual gates meant to keep intruders, and perhaps scorned lovers, at bay.
I drove up the street slowly, scanning for number 16 and wondering which of the massive houses was the elegant cage for Jessie's tattered life.
Jessie also had been looking out the window and said quietly but with a touch of urgency, "It's the grey one up there on your left."
iAnd she said we must get together
But I knew it'd never be arranged/i
I had already spotted it up ahead and was turning through the open gates and on to the long lane at the end of which there lay a distinguished house - no, mansion - with a magnificent garden and stone statue in the front. We sat in strained silence for a moment before Jessie spoke "We should, um, get together for coffee or dinner sometime. To catch up, you know," but even as she spoke those words, I could see in her turned away face and the way she averted her eyes that she had no intention of carrying out her own request. This inkling of mine was further proven because neither of us even bothered to ask for the others phone number. Harsh reality set in and any hope I had of rekindling our past romance was extinguished. We lived in separate worlds now and I was clearly not welcome in hers, nor - and I realized this with a start - was she welcome in mine.
iAnd she handed me fifty dollars for a twenty dollar fare,
She said "Katie, keep the change"/i
She looked at the meter that indicated how much the fare would be and before I had a chance to tell her not to worry about it, she pulled a fifty dollar bill from one of her bags and pressed it into my hand. As she looked at me then, I finally saw in her eyes what I had been hoping to see all evening, I saw the true Jessie looking out at me with sincerity and pain and I knew it would be the last time I ever looked into those deep cerulean eyes.
I opened my mouth to protest just as she said "Katie, keep the change." The look on her face now was much less welcome and I felt myself begin to fume at the pity I saw in her eyes.
iWell another person might have been angry
And another person might have been hurt
But another person never would have let her go
I stashed the bill in my purse/i
'Who does she think she is, waltzing along into my new life and passing judgement? How dare she insult the way I've chosen to live my life? Who says I need anything from her, let alone her money?' All these thoughts bubbled to the surface of my mind and just as I was about to open my mouth and unleash it all upon her, another thought pushed to the front, 'And who were you to let her go in the first place? Isn't it your own fault that you're stuck in this awful existence, not to mention the awful existence she's living as well? You could have saved her from a terrible marriage and an empty life, but instead you were too selfish to wait for her for one more year. Just take the damn money and get the hell out of here.'
As she got out of the car, I stashed the fifty in my purse between two packs of cigarettes and muttered a wounded 'Thank you'.
iAnd she walked away in silence
It's strange how you never know
But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for
Such a long, long time ago
You see she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
And I took off for the sky/i
I watched her as she made her way up the walkway and took her keys from her purse to unlock the door. I could have offered to carry her bags for her, or at least driven up closer to the door but I had wanted to make things difficult for her. It was payment really, because unbeknownst to her, her just having been in the wrong place at the wrong time today would haunt my sleep for months to come. Had I not seen her today, I could have gone on pretending my life was the way I wanted it to be, and I could have gone on living the way I was but she had forced the contrast of our lives upon me and I was made to realize some things would have to change if I was going to make something of myself, ever.
iAnd here she's acting happy
Inside her handsome home/i
Suddenly, the writer part of me took over and I laughed out loud as I saw the irony in our situations. You see, all those years ago Jessie had dreamed of putting on shows, of expressing feelings, desires, and dreams of characters that were not her. And now, I watched her face as her cheating husband wrapped his arms around her on the front steps of their magnificent home and I realized that in a way she had gotten what she wanted. I realized that she spent her life acting happy when underneath that facade was the same insecure, vulnerable girl I had fallen in love with when we were too blind to see the tumultuous lives that lay ahead of us.
iAnd me I'm flying in my taxi
Taking tips and getting stoned/i
And as for me, I had dreamed of flying high above cities, soaring over oceans and escaping the life I had been born in to. I laughed then, a bitter lonely sound, as I pulled a joint from my purse and set it to my lips, my lighter poised in front of me. Well, I certainly spent a lot of time flying here in my taxi, and escape sounded pretty damn good right now.