by Laurie Fox
No, Berry wasn’t lost; we were here for her whenever she was ready to show up. It was the Lost Boys who didn’t have a soul waiting for them at the end of the day. And so they were the saddest creatures I’ve ever met. Of course they would have you believe otherwise—they would boast that they were free. But what good is being free if you are never found by love?
ON her ninth day in the hospital, I found Berry rocking in her newly minted position of knees drawn to chest; this time, however, she was talking a blue streak. No one else was in the room, so I surmised this was a one-way conversation, one that could be deemed delusional. Still, I was encouraged: even when healthy, Berry harbored too many opinions to keep them to herself—the more that leaked out the better. In the past I’d wondered if this was her way of fending off implosions, a canny survival ploy. More likely, she was following in the very large footsteps of Great-Nana and Mummy, two people never short on commentary.
“Berry,” I called out, approaching her bedside.
“So he comes into my bedroom. My bedroom. Of course, that’s the way it is with boys—they go straight to the bedroom these days. So here he is and I am so totally casual. Like I couldn’t care less when I care more than anything in the world. And I let him know that I am not your typical ingenue. That I am more prepared than some dorky Girl Scout. And he looks at me with the biggest eyes, like I’m an angel or a virgin, which I’m not.”
“Berry,” I gasped, but she continued.
“And I show him my luggage, but he doesn’t move. I’m all packed to go and he’s just staring at me ‘cause I’m not like the other girls. I have my stuff ready and I’m not into small talk. He’s never seen a girl so completely primed to leave home. The weather sucks, but I don’t care. I don’t care! That’s what I’m trying to tell him: I don’t care about myself.”
“Berry,” I said again, reaching out to stroke her forehead.
“So I step outside and I’m all psyched to leave, but he hesitates—he won’t give me the fucking dust! He tries to tell me the dust is, like, extinct. He tells me I can do it, I can fly by myself, which is bullshit and I know it, but without the dust I’ve got to try it his way. So I do the thing, the happy thoughts thing. I focus so hard it hurts. For a moment I see the dots everybody sees when they squint—those grainy, flickering things? Just when they’re making me sick, I remember Little Dot, the girl in the comic book. And I laugh. Well, I think I’m laughing but who really knows? I laugh because, when I was a kid, I used to do Dot’s voice—you know, when I read her comics out loud to Daddy?”
I nodded solemnly, patted her damp forehead with a tissue.
“Then I open my eyes and whammo! The world looks the same as when my eyes were closed. Except the darkness is now wetness and I see the twinkle-toe dots for real. They’re stars, Mother. Stars in a wet blanket. The sky, the stars, it’s all too amazing. I start crying ‘cause this beauty shit makes me sad. Because I always believed there wasn’t anything beautiful enough to make me stick around. I needed a reason and here it is, right above me, turning my whole argument upside down.
“I get so pissed about this, I wouldn’t know a happy thought if it bit me in the brain. I call out for Peter—it turns out he’s still there. And he’s nice. I’m not used to nice and it hurts to feel his kindness seeping into my head. So I try again, the whole flying business. I’ve got his kindness in my head butting up against my stupid feelings. And now I burn in every muscle like I’m an old creature, dying off. I can’t move my feet, let alone travel a thousand miles to some Coney Island.
“Somehow I manage to block out the basic hideosity of life—long enough to see the stars again. And then I’m—hovering. Like one inch over the deck. I get my bearings and rise like steam until I’m about twelve feet off the ground. Un-fucking-believable. But the rain. The weather’s gotten extra gnarly and I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, the timing’s off. This is when I get a picture in my head: I’m a fighter jet and I’ve got bombs on board. I see little explosions in people’s backyards and realize they’re coming from me—bombs are dropping from my fists. Then everything goes dark, like right before a play. I can’t see a thing. No Peter, no city, no stars. The absence of stars confirms that I’ve lost it, I’ve finally lost it. I’m the first Darling in a zillion years to screw up. I mean, everyone else made it.”
Berry was trying to sit up now, tensed like a pit bull. “Then I reach for my head—I know it’s there but I can’t see my body. So I fall. For miles, which is weird ‘cause I was only a few feet up in the air. The math, you see, is totally off. I hit the mud. I sink. I start to become part of everything. And I feel what I could never feel before. I feel, well, okay. Oh God, can I say this? I feel sort of loved. I touch my mouth, it’s stretching at the corners. I’m smiling. I’m a goddamn happy face. Everything’s so beautiful I decide to stay this way forever.
“Then the screams wake me up, my own dumb-ass screams. I can’t stop them. I grab my throat to choke them off but something forces my hand away. I’m wrapped like a mummy in something soft and dry. I still can’t see a thing, but I know it’s the light that’s doing this, annihilating me. And so I think, what if this is Neverland, the final destination for girls like me?”
Berry had her back to me now. Her voice was muffled by the pillow, but I caught its note of self-dismissal, that terminal quality that comes so easily to teenagers. Then, abruptly, she twisted her head around to make sure our eyes made contact. She threw off her bedclothes and began to sob. “The End, by Shiva Darling,” she said.
“No, my sweet,” I whispered in her hot ear. “It’s not the end.”
BERRY’S absence in our house only reinforced Freeman’s obsession with work. He was now pulling twelve-hour days at Skywalker, doing a lot of sound engineering for Pixar animation, and then moonlighting during the late-evening hours at Fantasy Studios in Emeryville. Having returned to his passion for composing for cartoons, he threw himself into making sounds for all kinds of cool stuff: animated dolls, toy soldiers, stuffed animals. When we did talk the subject was: if a Slinky could speak, what would it sound like? Do you think Barbie is a soprano or an alto? Would a yellow rubber ducky stutter or lisp? With so much on his mind he couldn’t seem to remember the visiting hours at Alta Bates. Still, he pointed out, the money was good and it kept us afloat.
I didn’t care about the money—I would choose attention over money any day. For me, Freeman’s absence could only mean one thing: I was losing him, however slowly, but in his head he was already out the door.
Mother proved to be of no help, either. Having left town for a ten-city promotional tour on behalf of her latest polemic, Rapunzel’s Rules: Let Your Hair Down & Other Random Acts of Liberation, she freely offered her two cents over a cell phone: “Screaming is always the best medicine, Wends. Let Berry scream her guts out. Let her do whatever she needs to in order to feel emancipated. Composure stinks. Having a fit is natural. Allow the animal out of its cage!”
Unfortunately, Mummy’s advice didn’t deviate from the sound bites she offered on her radio interviews. Her book was the only thing on which she could focus; even Milton Pease was on the sidelines until the tour was over.
As before, I tried taking refuge in my fables. When I wasn’t at the hospital pacing like an expectant father, I distracted myself by making notes for a new collection. A series on serpents. A story cycle on birds. But my angst refused to be buried in allegory. I needed to attempt something new, something light and tasteless. And then it hit me—a Jacqueline Susann-ish novel would be just the thing! My first order of business, then, was to put away my animals and trot out some Beautiful People.
One morning before visiting hours at Herrick, when the fog blanketed our hillside like the great unconscious, I hunkered down at the kitchen table and, with the aplomb of a writer who hasn’t a clue where she’s headed, filled my yellow notepad with sentences: He didn’t want another Porsche; he wanted to strip her gears. She wouldn’t get together with him tonight or any night: he s
melled of old money and she preferred new. They kissed so hard a flood of juices made its way down her legs.
Okay, this was really bad. Writing about the horrors of Hollywood wasn’t much of a diversion. Berry’s psychosis, it seems, had generated enough drama. Abandoning the trash novel was for the best, I knew. The only characters I had come up with in two hours’ time were a diet doctor with gonorrhea and a plastic surgeon with an incurable rash. Imagine what I could accomplish in another hour! I’d failed to write one true sentence. There was no island of the mind that offered asylum; I would be forced to stay put with my grief.
Drifting across the living room like some spacey Stepford wife, I set my rocking chair before the expanse of window-glass and endeavored to get comfortable. The room felt crowded with Great-Nana’s antiques, and I chose to look outward instead. Though Fall was hardly upon us, the deck was blanketed with wine-colored drifts. The gray morning mist now cleared abruptly to reveal a slate-gray sky, and the dullness of it all persuaded me to nod off.
WHEN next I looked up I saw the horrid man again—that reject from the Renaissance Fair. How the hell had he gotten inside the house? Was he a musician friend of Freeman’s? I would have gone faint with fear if he didn’t look so shabby, so warmed-over.
The man extended his right hand to my lips as if I would deign to kiss the bony thing. It was then I perceived a cologne so vulgarly floral, I might have passed out if the left hand—really, a claw—hadn’t grabbed my wrist and wrung it bloodless. Now his right hand covered my mouth in case I cared to scream.
“So fah-bulous to see you again,” he drawled, crouching down on Great-Nana’s Persian rug. “And in such a good mood.” Yawning, he exposed the clay-pink cave of his mouth: I spotted a single gold cap before his jaws clamped shut. With a pressed handkerchief he wiped a shower of spit off his lips, exactly as I’d seen him do at the pier. “Now, where did we leave off? Oh yes, the part where I shanghai you.”
Again the cavernous mouth flared open, this time emitting a high-pitched titter that could have repelled fleas.
I sank back in the rocking chair. “Shanghai?”
“Oh, you modern girls like everything spelled out. Perhaps you prefer the term abduct? Does that have more meaning for you?”
Still on his knees, he crept within an inch of my left cheek. I could smell his fetid breath cutting through the stinky cologne, the bottom note of sweat wafting out from under his coat. I got up from the chair and took a step backward. Slowly he rose to his full height, towering over me like a bogeyman’s shadow. As I retreated he continued to advance, making assumptions about my lack of courage. Each of my shaky steps backward resulted in a mannered vault of his own. I noticed he was wearing crocodile shoes with droopy trouser socks; furry leg hair stuck out from his ankles, wolflike.
Eventually he cornered me, his cadaverous body bearing down on my breastbone. Flush against the cut-velvet wallpaper in our dining room, I sweated like a thief. He’s the blackguard, I reminded myself. I wasn’t about to let him take something from me. Then, shutting my eyes to the world, I made an effort to listen.
There it was, Great-Nana’s entreaty, roaring in my head: Wendy, save yourself first.
“What’s that?” the man questioned. “You have nothing to say? No sparkling rejoinder? No witty quip? Gee, I’m crushed. I honestly expect more from a Darling.” He didn’t twirl his pomaded mustache so much as jerk on it. “Do I have to skip your generation and move on to your daughter?”
“No!” I screamed weakly, my arms batting his chest as if I were a hand puppet. What a waste I was—I could only fight back in my stories, relying on cheeky animals to make my points.
“Stay away from her,” I managed to get out.
He stroked my neck with two skull-ringed fingers. “That’s better,” he encouraged. “Perhaps you are Margaret’s daughter. And Jane’s granddaughter.”
“Jane? What do you know about Jane?”
“Don’t you mean, what don’t I know about Jane?”
“Is s-she alive?” I asked.
“That depends on your definition of alive,” he said.
I stopped struggling to get free and gave his answer a moment’s thought. “Where is she?” I demanded, slipping through his arms to the floor. “Give me something!”
“Here’s a little something.” The man stooped down and planted a brotherly kiss on my nose. “You look surprised,” he said. “Perhaps you expected something more like this.” This time he zeroed in on my lips, leaving a sloppy, moist imprint. I wiped my lips with my forearm, which I then dried on the pleats of my skirt.
When the awful man finished laughing—he’d sniggered so hard, a button burst off his coat—he picked me up off the floor and flattened me against the wall again. “You are mistaken if you think I’m interested in you.”
“Then why all the allusions to, you know, having your way with me?”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s expected of us Hooks. We have a tradition of intimidation and bullshit. Please, let’s sit down.” He guided me over to the white wicker love seat that faced the fireplace, and we seated ourselves as if we’d been having tea together all our lives.
“I don’t get it. You’re not here to . . . hurt me?”
“Well, yes, if you mean damage your self-regard. I believe I’ve already succeeded, no?” I didn’t give him the pleasure of a nod. “Care for a lemon drop?” he asked, selecting a sweet from Great-Nana’s beveled dish on the coffee table.
I coughed on the hand with the candy.
“My word, tiger’s punchy.” He set the lemon drop on his thick slab of a tongue and bit down on it. “Let me introduce my-thelf,” he said, crunching the candy. “Jason G. Hook, grandson of James Hook, at your thur-vith.” The candy gave him the slight lisp.
“Jason G. Hook,” I repeated skeptically. “What’s the G for?”
“Why, Grappling,” he said, surprised by my interest.
“What makes you think I won’t call the police?” I said, changing the subject.
“What makes you think I won’t call the police?” he mimicked in a strong soprano. “Well, just maybe because I have your daughter . . . in my grip.”
I steadied myself from the shock. “You’re mistaken,” I said. “She’s nowhere near your grip. She’s a good girl, she’d never cross over to your side.”
As soon as I said this, I knew the truth resided elsewhere. After all, Berry was a card-carrying member of the Other Side. But she would never stand for clichés like Jason Hook—would she?
“Listen,” he said in a more charitable tone, “I need your voice, that’s all. I’m abducting your voice.” I stiffened my spine in the love seat. “It’s patently perfect for my needs—supple, feminine. I must have it or the ship will sink!”
“You sound as hysterical as your grandfather,” I told him.
“Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut the hell up.”
“I thought you loved my voice,” I said.
“Not another word till we get to the ship.” He held a pungent rag over my nose and mouth. I was gone in thirty seconds.
WHEN my gag was removed (by a little fellow wearing the kind of pirate costume one rents for Halloween: bee-striped stockings, red satin sash, lace-up shirt that showcases chest hair), I realized that we were, indeed, aboard a ship. It was some sort of derelict freighter that was badly in need of paint. Looking up I saw a pennant flapping laggardly atop the pilot house. It read KRAP.
“Krap!” I shouted. “This ship is the Krap?”
The little guy brandished a rubber sword from his sash and pointed it at my nose. “It says K-Rap. We play rap music.”
“This is ... a radio station?”
“Yes, ma’am. Pirate radio.” I almost fell over. The Hooks never met a pun they didn’t like.
“Actually, we’re changing our programming to heavy metal: ‘All hair bands, all the time.’ We’re hoping to get new call letters this week: K-A-Z-Z. Kick ass. You like?”
“Where is he?” I deman
ded.
“Who, he?” the phony pirate asked.
“C’mon,” I urged. “The boss.”
“Bruce Springsteen? Oh, you mean our station manager, Mr. Hook.”
“Did you really say ‘hair bands’?” I laughed. “Yes, Jason Hook, your capitan.”
“It’s Mister Hook and he’s waiting for you in the mess. As you is our guest, he thought you might like a square meal.”
I propped my hip against the ship’s railing and filled my lungs with salty air. Judging from the stench of oil, we were in the San Francisco Bay, most likely near Point Richmond—the local refinery just up the shore. I whirled around and sized up my situation. In spite of the stink, I couldn’t have been held captive in more pleasant environs—picturesque cove, streaming sunlight, a stooge wearing puffy sleeves.
“Are you suggesting that Mr. Hook cooks?” I asked.
“Hook cooks?” The little man giggled, then scratched his crotch with the tip of his sword. “You gotta be kidding. As you is our guest, he got you take-out from Chez Panisse.”
“Krap has quite the budget,” I remarked.
“It’s K-Rap, and no, we don’t actually buy stuff.”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re pirates,” I said.
“It ain’t called take-out for nothing,” he said, and pulled at his sagging tights.
XII
HOOK’S GUEST! Well I never. As much as I wanted to jump overboard, I decided to stay put. I’ve been a guest before and I know what’s expected. But perhaps I’ve been too closemouthed. Perhaps you’re wondering how intimately I associated with the locals on the island—if I entertained other guests?
Until now my covert excursion to The Neverland has always remained just that. I never felt the need to share my experience with any number of interested parties, including schoolmates and publishers. Why? Because in many respects the experience was so normal. Heightened, yet normal as far as human behavior goes. The natural beauty was quite literally out of this world, the plant life prodigious. But the humans were as perplexed and perplexing as they were back home. I recall the Lost Boys liked to poke me in the side, to finger the peach fuzz on my arms and occasionally pinch it. But so what? That’s to be expected. Their lack of finesse elicited nary a squeal or scold from me. Like most girls my age, when it came to guys I tolerated a lot of bull.
