Chapter 15: A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You

he sun was poised on the western horizon, casting long shadows eastward from Monument Valley across the desert plateau as the Monkeeheads spoke at length with Eva the Recycle Babe, and prepared for what loomed as a long, expository Chapter.

"We're hoping you can help us," said Ria. Ria had quickly emerged as the de facto leader of the group, by virtue not only of her bravery and her intelligence, but perhaps most importantly that she mailed the author of this story a lot of really good chocolate. "I don't know if you need to hear all the sordid details, but -- we were brought here by a tornado. We were on our way to Chuchen, on a pilgrimage, and -- well, you see, the next thing we knew ---"

"You have come here to enter the House of Rock Monster Eagle," declared Eva. "Your arrival is known. The House remains sealed until you have defeated him in battle."

"Defeat him?" asked Heywally. "Battle? hat are you going on about? Look, Recycle Babe, I'm not sure you've been listening. The wind basically blew us here, and..."

"He's been watching you," Eva interrupted. "He's coming. He comes from the Sun."

From the left side of the pyramid came the sounds of something scrabbling on the rocks beyond the edge of the Moenkopi formation. The Monkeeheads watched in horror as an orange flash of reflected sunlight burst up from the edge of the butte as the creature clawed its way to level ground.

It stood nearly six feet high. Its skin was shimmering white -- orange now in the light of the sunset -- with blinding rhinestone-like spots of red, green and blue. The white batlike wings hung loosely at its side, appearing almost cape-like; its face was bloated, with long sideburns reaching nearly down to the scarf that was wrapped around its neck. Its eyes were invisible behind the dark sunglasses.

"Y'all ready to rock?" challenged the Rock Monster Eagle, in a deep southern accent.

"Defeat him," said Eva, "and you may enter the House."

In Cleveland, the eastern Monkeeheads had joyously reunited after Susan, who had been furiously skating around the stadium area in search of Mel and Heath, discovered them running full tilt away from a small yellow-awninged storefront. She led them to the agreed-upon meeting spot -- the small circular garden that stood in the front plaza of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

With the return of the prodigal Monkeeheads, the mood brightened immensely. The crowd had increased, too, as new arrivals were joining with them at an unprecedented rate; David and Kymberlee were attempting to introduce everybody, but their task was becoming impossible by sheer force of the size of the crowd. The Monkeeheads now numbered in the hundreds, with more arriving by the minute.

Tami and Hoo were at the spearhead of the group, leading them all toward the glass pyramid entrance to the Museum.

"This is what you need to fight, Nick. This is your battle."

I stood at the foot of my son's bed, watching him as he shuddered with fever. There was a roaring in my ears. I felt helpless.

Now, I was no stranger to the feeling of helplessness; I seemed to spend my entire life there, at least as far back as I can remember. In the pandemonium of adolescence, I found comfort in the belief that I was not in control of my own destiny, and by the time I recognized it as a character flaw it was far too ingrained in me to change. Nez's song The Other Room, with that line about feeling "like a cork upon the ocean," struck me hard the first time I heard it. The song described my life and offered a way out, and I spent some time attempting to follow its path, inwardly embarassed at the fact that I was attempting to model my life after a pop song. And, needless to say, I failed. I couldn't convince myself that losing "self" is a viable option in the real world of shopping malls, paychecks, and traffic jams. Experience had shown me that.

I ached to be able to start over again.

Back in the summers of '64 and '65, my cousin Raymond and I would spend every Wednesday at the New York World's Fair during 25-cent admission days, my father riding me there on the back of his motorcycle. Raymond and I were best friends forever for two years, and got into an amazing amount of trouble together all over the fair. Raymond was always a little jealous of my relationship with my father; his own father, my uncle Ray, would never show any love for his sons, at least not outwardly. In 1977, my cousin Evan -- Raymond's little brother -- died of an extremely rare inherited form of reverse leukemia that was later named after him, Evan's Disease. The experience of the tragedy seemed to sap even more of my uncle's love, and although his sons would say "I love you, dad" every day, he would never respond in kind. Yet, my cousin Raymond cried, inconsolable, at his father's funeral.

Things were so much easier thirty years ago, before I knew these things.

"Do you remember how wonderful life was when you were a child?" Zan seemed to be reading my thoughts. "You miss that now, don't you? Every time you look at your son, the utter happiness that you should feel is tainted, poisoned, by this vague memory you have of yourself at that age. You see your son and remember being as full of wonder as he is, and you're dispirited because you've changed. You don't know why. You just say you've gotten older, but that's not the real reason, Nick, it's not. It's like you can't enjoy the beginning of the movie because you know how it ends. Everything you've become, you've done to yourself. Do you know why you're here?"

I shook my head, almost as if to shoo away the roaring that was getting louder. "Let me guess. To learn from my memories?"

"No. To learn how to ignore them."

I turned toward her. This comment was completely unexpected.

"Nick, do you know what the opposite of 'experience' is?"

"Yeah, inexperience," I declared confidently.

"No, Nick. That answer is part of your problem. You see 'experience' as something good, and so you wallow in it. Half of your conversations start with "When I...," and you've got shelves full of reference books at home in case you forget anything. Nick, you went to Hawaii on vacation not too long ago, hoping to recapture that great sense of wonder you had when you were there ten years ago. You failed, didn't you? You went to all the places you and your wife had gone ten years ago, but it wasn't the same. And the one time you tried something new, going over to the Tedeschi winery on Maui, you said how it reminded you of another winery along the Hudson. You blamed your disappointment, of course, on external factors. You said that Hawaii had changed. You said that you were glad you had gone back in the early '80s, before Hawaii had gotten ruined.

"When you were a child, you didn't have a large base of experience. Everything was new to you. Everything was full of surprise. Each new experience was exciting because you didn't know what would happen next. Each moment was like a new life. But as your experience grew, everything new reminded you of something old. Soon, nothing was new anymore. Your sense of wonder atrophied. And so did your sense of happiness."

Little Nicholas, sweat beading on his forehead, turned in the bed and then caught sight of me. He stiffened, fingers clawing deeply into the sheet, and then after what seemed like minutes took a shuddering breath. I was suddenly overwhelmed by deja vu; had I seen this before, or was I just imagining it?

"That's right, Nick. That's your answer."

"What's the answer?" I demanded. The roaring in my head was becoming deafening.

"The opposite of experience. Imagination."

Nicholas was raising himself up in bed, reaching out to me. The sense of deja vu resolved itself, and I knew that at one time it had been me in that bed.

"As your experience grows, your imagination shrinks," Zan continued, teaching. "It's hard work to get them to coexist. But you must, Nick. You must develop your imagination again, before it disappears altogether. If not for yourself, for your son. He takes after you, you know."

It was the memory of that mute fever-dream figure, years ago, that had kept me immobile. I couldn't approach my son because the figure at the end of my bed would never approach me; well, the hell with that, I thought. I walked around to the side of the bed, and knelt down, wiping the sweat from his temple, and kissed him on his forehead. The roaring in my head quieted, and it became peaceful once again. Life becoming life, becoming love...

"You'll be okay now, Nick. I love you. Close your eyes. You'll be okay."

I couldn't tell if I had said that, or the Recycle Babe, or Nicholas. We closed our eyes.