2. but I always thought that I'd see you again
She adds the song to the set list at the last minute. John sees it before the show, and laughs. "Sandy Denny," is all he says, before disappearing with some 16-year-old.
She takes the lead:
there's something wrong here, there can be no denying
one of us is changing, or maybe we've just stopped trying
and it's too late, baby, now it's too late
though we really did try to make it
By sunrise, she's in her old bedroom, thirteen years old again. Only this time Jack's beside her in the bed, sleeping soundly, too old for the crib her mother set up in the corner, and she's got a pounding headache and a longing for something indefinite that consumes her. Is it a drink, the past, a pen, a husband?
She doesn't drink, doesn't eat, doesn't write, doesn't call him. During the day, Jack colors in newspaper margins, and she borrows a red crayon to circle ads for jobs and apartments. She never gets up the nerve to call any of the numbers, but it makes everyone feel better.
Three weeks pass before she figures out what's wrong with her.
She entertains the idea of never telling him, of disappearing forever with two breathing remnants of her greatest mistake. And then she thinks of Sandy Denny, dying alone at the bottom of a staircase. She looks at the date on a calendar and does the math in her head, then packs up the car.
If he ever spoke to her, she knows her father would say: you certainly have turned taking the coward's way out into an art.
Don't I know it, she'd tell him.
She tells her mother the reason why she's leaving, and when her father finds out, what he does say is: that's nice.
Her mother says, "Don't be a stranger."
She doesn't say, stranger than what?
John and Rick are playing a show out in California tonight, she remembers, and it only stings a little that they soldiered on without her, the third wheel. She'll surprise them. After the show, she'll tell him.
In California, she looks at him on stage, singing his heart out, and she thinks: maybe this will be good enough. This stage, that guitar, a new baby. Maybe a girl. Maybe that'll be enough to keep his feet on the ground. This time.
And anyway, staying really is the best thing for everyone. Like she could take care of one kid on her own, let alone two. It's the right decision.
It really is.
He sees her, out in the crowd, and a smile spreads across his face. Beside him, John starts to play a familiar song, staring her down.
there'll be good times again for me and you
but we just can't be together
don't you feel it, too?
She makes her way backstage.
("It's Too Late," Carole King, 1971)
--
Notes:
but I always thought that I'd see you again is taken from the James Taylor song "Fire and Rain."
Sandy Denny, who is referred to in this section, was a talented, insecure folk singer with alcohol and drug problems who fell down a flight of stairs and died of a cerebral hemorrhage while separated from her husband.