A Return to Neverland

It was the month before Christmas in Clifton, England.

“I’m twelve years old and I don’t do what I’m told,” Pauline Smith said to no one in particular.“How am I ever going to be a mum?”

She kicked a can at an alley cat as she trudged to her flat.The crowds and the lights only deepened her gloom.

Pauline’s parents had just divorced. She was staying with her grandmother for a month until they could sort everything out. Pauline hated school and her teachers and her classmates. She had no friends except for her grandmother.

“Is that you, Pauline?” Susan said with a cheery voice.

Pauline didn’t answer.She dropped her backpack on the couch and went to her room.Pauline closed the door.She threw herself on her bed and cried.

Susan opened the door a few minutes later.Silver strands of hair fell around her face.Susan put a plate with a cookie and a glass of milk on the table next to Pauline and then rubbed her back.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

Her grandmother’s kindness opened a floodgate of sobs.

“How about you have a cookie and I’ll check back in a little while.” Susan brushed her apron.“I’m making your favorite— beef Wellington.I know I feel better when I’ve had something to eat.Love you, darling.”

The grandfather clock in the parlor chimed five times.Susan went up to see Pauline.She was sitting on her bed.Her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet. Long, black hair framed her face.

“Hey, I’ll sit on the floor,” Susan said.“That way you can talk to me like we’re friends.”

“I absolutely love Christmas,” Pauline said at last.“No, I hate it. Such joy makes me puke. I’m always sad.I hate my life.I don’t belong here.I’m sick of the bullies.Bobby Friedman, Rachel Atkins, and Linda Carlson and her thugs torture me every day. Gym and homeroom are horrible.

“Bobby shoved me against the lockers.Rachel tripped me in the cafeteria.My tray slid across the floor scattering everything.They laughed at me.And do you know who laughed the hardest?The teachers.They’re like the kids— just older and crueler.

“Miss Edwards gave me a mark after Linda stole my homework.I worked so hard on that.“Smith, you just can’t keep up,” she said.And she’s right.I’d have a shot if I were smarter.But I’m not smart. I’m an outsider, a wall flower, the last chicken in the pen.I’m just chum for the sharks.Every day I walk past a cemetery.It’s a peaceful place.Maybe I’ll find rest there. There’s no peace anywhere else.

“Who cares about me?My parents don’t. They just spend their days fighting over who’s getting the china. They haven’t a clue. My teachers?Do you think they’re capable of pulling the low bird on the pecking order out of the dust?It’s the same for the other kids.They live to dispatch kids like me quickly and ruthlessly.There’s no mercy in the whiteboard jungle.I give up.What’s the point?”

Susan got up and gave Pauline a hug.And then she went to a bookshelf and pulled out an album.She sat on the bed next to Pauline.

“I care,” Susan said.“You matter to me.I’ll be your lifeline. I’m older.But that’s it.You so much remind me of me when I was your age.I wasn’t good at school.They sent me to a boarding school.I hated that.”

“I thought boarding schools were posh.”

“Hah.They were disgusting.The only things I learned there was abuse and grief.My days of sadness far out-numbered my days of happiness at that wretched place.I lost my ability to feel, to be weak, and to understand the weak.I was mean and punchy.”

Susan shook her head.

“And then mum and dad took me to America for a few months.I was fifteen.I was always lonely.I fell for an army boy. He was the love of my life— at least for the month before they shipped him out.Johnny later died during the war.

“We saw the States again when I was thirty.“Helen . . .”

“That’s mum, right?”

“Yes.We first called her Helene but she liked Lena for a while and then she settled on Helen so we went with that.

“Anyway, your mum was a little girl at the time.Manhattan, the Grand Canyon, and Disneyland thrilled us.But I hated America when I was a teenager. I was even more behind in school when I got back here.I had no hope of going to college.I got the boys and did well in sports.And I played those cards as best as I could.”

Susan took off her glasses and put them on the table next to the plate with a half-eaten cookie.

“I guess your parents told you what happened next.”

“They haven’t told me a thing.”

Susan opened the album.On the first page were snaps of teens on a beach.

“That’s at Somerset.” Susan dabbed her eyes. “That’s a picture of my brother and sister.Don’t they look happy?Peter and Wendy died in a car crash.It ripped from me everyone who meant anything to me.

“I felt just like you.Scared and mad and numb.I missed them terribly.My heart broke.I couldn’t even bring myself to go to their funerals or to do much of anything for months. I was only twenty-one— not a kid but not really an adult. I felt so sad and alone and abandoned.I didn’t know what to do.”

“What happened?”

“Peter was in his Triumph.Too much speed, a wet road, and it slammed into a tree.”

Susan sighed. “At least they say it was quick.I was suddenly an orphan.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Pauline said.“That happened sixty years ago.What does that have to do with me?”

“Just this.I didn’t think I would get through this.But somehow I did.And maybe the reason I wasn’t in that car was to help you a bit.Everything was taken from me.The months that followed were hard.My life was filled with shadows and sorrow.I lost faith.I became a lone wolf, a rebel whose only cause was to survive the hellfire of my tragedy.But I came through somehow.And I came through because of Neverland.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s getting late.Let’s have supper now and then a good night’s sleep.I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

“It’ll be all right.You’ll be all right.”