Twenty Wendys

"Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever."

–J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

One

The Lost Boys don't know a single story. That's why Peter's been coming around the Darling window, scattering sheer skeleton leaves on the sill. Mother holds storytime every night and Pan wants in. But when he cries, it's not about mothers, he insists. He cries because the soap won't marry his shadow to the soles of his feet. And besides, he isn't crying. Shadows are overrated. Shadows don't make you real. They only reveal how little you're lit from within. Mothers are overrated, too, although he concedes that, as a rule, one girl is of more use than twenty boys. Which twenty? Wendy wants to know. Her sleeping brothers, plus eighteen more? Or the boys who have been tugging at her manicotti curls on the school bus? The ones who ask her if the curtains match the carpet before she has any idea what they are talking about? Or maybe twenty men? Kind ones? Drunk ones? Twenty Lost Boys?

There are no Lost Girls. Peter says girls are too clever to fall out of their prams, abandon their parents when they hear discussion of their future. Girls don't book it when they learn it's just a matter of time until they're sewing a boy's shadow in place, pushing a pram of their own. Girls stay. Girls tend, fix. Even Tinkerbell gets her name from tinkering, mending the pots and kettles back in Neverland. But that's not a story, not one a mother would tell. That's just life.

Two

Before she became a mother, Mary Darling found herself drawing pictures of babies without faces. Were they too difficult to imagine? Or did she worry she would jinx their perfection by sketching it on the back of her list of errands? Nevertheless, she got Wendy, John, and Michael. All robust enough to be left in the care of a St. Bernard. All sufficiently nimble that they learn to fly in a single, complimentary lesson.

Wendy imagines more. A house of leaves sewn together. An orphan wolf for a pet. She makes what she will of a thimble. It's a kiss. It's a hook. She'll trade it for whatever the world offers, to a point. When the mermaids taunt her, douse her with the Neversea, she makes a weapon out of a conch, waves it above her head in a fury. Says If. You. Ever. Wendy's a drag in that prim nightgown. The mermaids sulk. They were only trying to drown her.

Three

The lesbians invite my sister and me to the movies and my parents allow us to go. Nina and Gina are our next-door sinners, but I suppose you can hate the sin and love that the sinner will get your kids out of the house for a few hours in the summertime. One of them is handy and one wears dresses and I always get it wrong. Their niece and nephew are visiting. Elevenish, like us. Before heading to the movie theater, we kids take turns stretching out on huge sheets of paper on the floor and tracing one another's bodies. I fill in the blank shape I've made. A face that's older than mine. A necklace I don't own. A twirly skirt, also made-up.

Three towns over, on the big screen, Hook. Julia Roberts is Tinkerbell. Dustin Hoffman is Captain Hook. Robin Williams is Peter—a grown-up, a father who has forgotten himself. Who has to save his own lost children. Boy, why are you crying, asks Maggie Smith, an ancient Wendy, tasked with waking Peter up to his past. He's angry with her for being the wrong kind of girl. The kind that sweeps up fairy dust after an adventure. The kind that grows old. I can't help but hate her a little bit, too. No ribbons, just wrinkles. A place I never...