“I wish I had a river I could skate away on”

The expression “I wish I had a river I could skate away on” is a fragment of song that surfaces in a conversation with Carl and Assad. Almost sung rather than simply spoken, it briefly gives the woman’s private reverie a voice before she gathers herself and resumes the tense exchange around her.

The lyric and its moment

Carl has just begun to see the woman differently: not merely as a scorned woman over sixty, but as someone who feels she has missed a large part of life while her body deteriorates. She points toward Assad, collects herself, and almost sings, “I wish I had a river I could skate away on,” followed by, “But it don’t snow here, it stays pretty green . . .” The lyric’s image of skating away gives shape to an impulse toward escape, but the scene does not let that reverie settle into a full performance. She seems ready to continue along her own train of thought, then gives it up.

From reverie back to confrontation

The change in her expression marks her return to the conversation and to her aversion toward Assad, whom the narration identifies as the dark curly-haired man standing before her. She tells him to keep quiet about her dreams, then recalls that he asked why she had not gone to her son to tell him about his father instead of merely calling. Her question about whether he really wants to know turns the lyric’s momentary inwardness into a guarded invitation to hear what lies behind her choice. Assad nods; the expression thus sits at the threshold between what she has allowed herself to sing and what she may be about to disclose.