Julie's House

I never climbed the hill to Julie’s house. I used to drive up there, took a right off the freeway and up, up, up. ‘Sides. I loved the car my Dad had gifted me when I got accepted for – well, one of those Ivy League places, it doesn’t matter which one. I never got there. Anyway, the car. You should know about the car. It wasn’t new or anything. It was a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, one of the last off the production line. About five years old, one careful owner, FSH, yada-yada-yada. It was beautiful. 

Like Julie. 

I didn’t kid myself. I knew Julie liked the car, the bling, the money and… Well, you know. Julie’s father wasn’t rich. Wasn’t around in fact. Yet they had this big old house right upside the bluffs, looking down over the whole canyon. Julie used to say you could see yesterday from the deck. I wish we could have seen the next day.  We used to smoke doobies and look at the stars hoping to find one we could wish on. Julie lived with her mother. 

Julie started at the High School in the sophomore year. She didn’t talk about where she’d been before. She didn’t talk much. To anybody. Nobody even knew where she lived. A pick-up dropped her off every morning and picked her up after class. It must have been a long day. She didn’t join any clubs, didn’t play in the school orchestra, never even watched any kind of game, never mind did any cheerleading on the football field or basketball courts. And yet.

She was popular at first, without ever being in any sort of gang. Even the nerdy girls wanted to be her friend, but she had no interest in poetry readings or whatever else those girls did. A year later, the first guy asked her on a date. Julie turned him down. He didn’t take it well. He was heading to UCLA on a football scholarship. He was the big man on a high-school campus. How dare she? So the graffiti started. The usual crap. I couldn’t see how anyone could possibly know some of the stuff they wrote on the white tiles. She kept everyone at a distance.  

Except, in our senior year, I got the car. I caught her looking at it. She had her hand on the bonnet. Normally I’d have complained about fingerprints, but well … I don’t really have to tell you how beautiful she was. 

‘I’d like a ride in your car.’ 

I swear I blushed, ‘Wh-when?’ 

‘After class.’ 

‘What about your ride home?’ 

‘I’ll tell Mom then. She can follow us up the hill.’ 

I wasn’t going to point out that maybe I should follow the pick-up. She could give me directions on the way. And I wouldn’t have to think too much about conversation. 

We drove up. I couldn’t admire the scenery. It was a switchback road and some of it was blacktop and some of it wasn’t. It was obvious why her mom drove a pickup. The house was pretty big. Especially for two people. It might have been the latest thing fifty years before. Some kind of Frank Lloyd Wright knock off. But there were missing shingles, loose lapboards and huge panoramic windows that hadn’t been cleaned in enough time for the weeds to grow through the deck. 

‘Home sweet home.’ 

We sort of dated through the senior year. By which I mean I drove her home every day. Mom dropped her off in time for class as before. I never stayed over. I drove that car down the switchback. Sometimes DUI, sometimes not. 

Julie spoke about the future. I talked about how rich I was going to be and that meant I wasn’t really listening. I couldn’t tell you what she imagined her future to be. I did ask her about her past. I did. At least at first. 

‘Can’t tell you. We left Connecticut. For this …’ She shrugged one shoulder. 

I asked her why she’d left. 

‘We were the wrong kind of rich.’ 

Right, I was 18 years old. Self-centred and dumb. I get that. You remember being 18, doncha?

So I told myself I was respecting her privacy … and kept talking about me. Because it was all about me. 

I took her to the prom. Picked her up in the Trans Am. Had a few too many shots at the dance. Nothing I hadn’t done before. She offered to drive. I hadn’t even known she’d gotten her driver’s permit. I said no. We got up the switchback road safe and sound. Maybe by the skin of our teeth. I had pulled a hard turn onto the parking area in front of the house. I didn’t see her mom. She landed on the bonnet and her face looked at me through the windscreen though her neck couldn’t have let her do that even had she been a Chinese acrobat. 

Julie didn’t say anything. I said we’d better call an ambulance. She stared out of the side window, not wanting to look at me or what I’d done. I got out. Made the call from the phone in the lobby of the house. I told the despatcher there’d been an accident. I said maybe the ambulance wasn’t so urgent. They told me they’d be sending one anyway. Julie had left the car. She was sitting outside on the deck. 

‘Well you did it.’

‘What?’

‘Something the Mafia couldn’t do.’

I shook my head. In shock, most likely. Or maybe I’ve always been slow on the uptake.

‘Killed my mom.’ 

‘We’re – we were in WitSec. US Marshals will be here 10 minutes after LA County’s finest.’ 

You can guess the rest. I was nobody’s idea of a Mafia hit man. I was convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Dad wouldn’t pay a red cent for a decent lawyer. I did time. Not much, but enough. 

I never saw Julie again. She wasn’t at the trial. She wasn’t at the house when I walked up that road yesterday after nearly forty years. I stood on the deck. Just like before, I could see yesterday, but I couldn’t see tomorrow. 
 

[You can hear Leo Kottke singing Julie's House here]