River (Joni Mitchell song quoted by June)

“River” is a song June Habersaat remembers as both a quotation and a means of escape. Taught to her by Frank Brennan, it gives her a language for imagining life somewhere other than where she is—and returns at the moment she chooses a final, literal departure instead of being taken away under police escort.

The Song as an Image of Escape

June recalls having quoted the song in Jernbanegade the first time the people listening to her were there. She identifies it as a Joni Mitchell song and remembers Frank as the person who taught it to her, along with the idea of dreaming herself away to another place. The phrase “I wish I had a river I could skate away on” distills that desire into an image of movement: a route out of an unwanted present. June explains that the song means no longer being happy where one is, making its recurrence a direct expression of her own condition rather than a detached musical reference.

As sirens approach and an ambulance waits under police escort, June smiles to herself while returning to the song. The remembered image of skating away contrasts with the immediate reality of her confinement and impending transport. She then rises suddenly, runs toward an opening in the wall, and leaps over it. The song does not supply a safe escape; in this closing scene, its longing for another place becomes attached to June’s fatal leap.

The Lyric’s Unfinished Escape

The remembered passage extends beyond the wish to skate away: it adds that there is no snow, only a landscape that “stays pretty green . . .” June leaves the lyric trailing off, so its imagined route remains incomplete even as she recalls exactly what it meant to her. When she asks whether Carl remembers hearing it in Jernbanegade, he and Assad answer with slow nods rather than words. The exchange makes the song a shared point of recognition, but it does not resolve the distance between the escape the lyric imagines and the choice June ultimately makes.

From Elsewhere to Eternity

The lyric’s green, snowless setting places a limit on its own escape image: the river exists as a wish, not a route June can take. At the wall, her movement becomes abrupt and physical. The narration names the destination only as “eternity,” turning the song’s imagined departure into an irreversible one. The expression thus closes not with the escape it describes, but with the stark difference between longing to be elsewhere and June’s final leap.

The Song as an Interpretive Key

June’s explanation turns the song from a private memory into a key for reading her final choice: she identifies its central feeling as unhappiness with one’s present place, while the scene makes departure literal. Carl and Assad’s slow nods acknowledge her meaning without interrupting it with speech. The song therefore connects Frank’s earlier teaching to June’s last act, but it does not prescribe that act; its imagined escape and her irreversible leap remain sharply different outcomes.