THE NIGHT LIGHTS

"Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?" Nothing, precious," she said; "they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children."

There was nothing to do but watch her, hopelessly watch her. She looked nothing of the woman he had fallen in love with...the woman he'd married and bore their three children. Her beaming face was gone, like the life had simply been sucked out of her. No, this broken shell of a beauty with her hair in her face crumbled on their Persian rug was not even a shadow of his wife. She was still in her scarlet evening gown and her chestnut hair was loosely hanging out of its chignon. There was a wooden sword to her left, and she held the arm of a tattered teddy bear loosely in her hand. She rocked softly back and forth.

She had drained the contents of his brandy and put her slender fingers gently to her mouth to compose herself as if she would fall all over again. He glanced down at the shattered bottle of Hennessy, the surprising memories its contents had held. He didn't think he could watch her cry anymore. She reached across weakly to a small silver object on the floor, he couldn't make out what it was...something insignificant most likely. She balanced it delicately in her finger tips, holding it up in front of her face and rotating it in between her thumb and index finger. Tears formed in her eyes and she chewed softly on her bottom lips.

"A kiss," she barely whispered and a slight smiled appeared on her face.

It was as if the thimble and she held a secret he wasn't privy to. It angered him the way she gazed at it still rotating it around in her fingers. Was this finally their breaking point? Had they strained themselves, driven their marriage to the point of failure? It would be dishonest for him suggest they were perfect, that they had been perfect when it seemed from the beginning they were destined for a self inflicted damnation. She had always seemed so uncertain of their love, of their union from the time her parents had introduced them. As if her heart truly belonged to another, but that thought without proof could drive a man mad. The Cathedral. The thought shoved its way from the back of his subconscious into a bitter reality. She had been a vision walking through the doors that Sunday morning and he could do nothing but gaze at her in a euphoric awe, thinking in all confidence that she was his and would be his for forever.

She wore a pink sash around her slender waist however her face wore the gleam of urgency of panic almost. As he slipped a wedding band on her finger she twisted her head to the south and looked desperately back at the large mahogany doors as if waiting for someone to come bursting through them and whisk her away from him. It was a memory he had desperately tried to recess. Through the birth of their children, through the countless countries they had traveled to he couldn't seem to shake that look of desperation on her face—the let down. The tears that fell down her face she masked with a smile. Had he been clinging to a love that did not truly exist? Had there been someone else this whole time?

"A kiss," she felt her numb lips whisper.

She felt herself smile, and felt a comfort she had not felt since leaving her children that night for Edward's gala. She felt a strange hesitation upon putting her children to bed earlier that evening. All of the habitual steps of the night seemed as if she were doing them for the first and the last time. Pulling Michael's glasses gently off his face, slipping a tattered teddy bear under George's little arm, smoothing her daughter's fine copper hair as if they had been born only yesterday. Upon reaching their bedroom door she turned to look on her children.

"Mother," Michael began.

"Can anything harm us once the night lights are lit?"

She smiled meekly. It was a question she and her brother's had asked hundreds of times. And the last words they had heard their mother utter before their fateful night all those years ago. She felt her eyes grow heavy with tears.

"Nothing precious, they are the eyes a mother leaves behind to guard her children."

With that she watched relief wash over her children, she dimmed their lights, and then left them. It was as if she knew they would be taken. When Edward and she had burst through their front door and up the stairs she couldn't understand the rush, she knew she would find an empty nursery. She remembered every part of her adventure with Peter, how he drew them away from their homes and the impending shadow of her flawed destiny as an adult woman to the most exciting adventure of her life. One she longed to have again, one she wished for her own children. She looked to the nursery window. She had refused to let Edward close it.

"It must always be open for them, always!" She had exclaimed before falling to the floor in a fit of hysteria.

He had looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. He desperately asked her if she knew where they'd gone, why she was being so secretive, but she had refused to grant them to him. The answers to those questions would supply more than her beloved husband was willing to accept. The snow was falling heavily now, and though she knew it was freezing in the nursery but she couldn't feel it. Entranced by the gateway to eternal childhood she got slowly up to her knees and then to her feet and walked slowly over to the nursery window. She never thought Peter would become her first love let alone a savior. She never knew she would live the rest of her life hoping every night to see him come through her window. The day of her wedding 10 years ago was meant to be a happy day. But as she stood behind the wooden doors of St. Paul's Cathedral and walked slowly down the aisle to her waiting betrothed, she couldn't help but feel dread weighing down on her heart. She sighed and from her dry lips croaked:

"When I was young, no other girl carried your favor the way I did. I half expected you to alight on the church on my wedding day. I wore a pink sash…but you didn't come."

She felt the tears roll heavily down her cheeks as looked out to the foggy London skyline. She remembered turning and looking at the doors praying with every part of her being that he would fly through them and save her. Take her away from the life that awaited her. She had waited for him, and he had come but to take her children on the adventure she had waited to experience again since she had flown home when she was 9 years-old. This was necessary…she decided. She wanted them to fly to the second star to the right and straight on until morning until they arrived in a place one could only describe as a child's heaven. Where they could run and jump and get dirty; fight pirates and fly without having to worry about their mother and father. She looked back at her husband, who looked tired and worried…his face had aged years within one night. She pulled her mother's wooden rocking chair to the center of the room and collapsed into it.

"The window stays open." She said taking her hair out of its chignon and running her fingers through it. She looked up at her husband with hair spilling wildly around her, her face was like stone. When he went to speak, to argue with her she simply raised her hand.

"I will sleep here, until the return, and the window will stay open…the way my mother did waiting for me." She watched his face fall and him turn and leave the room—their bedroom door slamming shut. She let out a weak sigh; he would see when they returned.

"Oh the cleverness of you Peter," she said quietly before taking one lasting look at the sky through the open nursery window and drifting off to sleep.

CREDIT TO:

Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991)

J.P. Hogan's Peter Pan (2003)

J.M. Barry's Peter Pan/The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904)