"You've been living with your snakes too long, bud. I think they bit your brain."

He was still cursing when I hung up on him and his price. I called other pet stores and got more numbers and names to contact. Finally the name w.i.l.l.y Snakespeare was mentioned and that's where I found what I was looking for.

California is full of people from the dark side of the moon. Whether it is the climate or the fact it is as far west as you can bring your madness before falling into the ocean, there are species of human cuckoos in the state like no others. w.i.l.l.y Snakespeare was a man who reputedly did nothing but talk and live with two boa constrictors named Laverne and Surly. I was told I could find him on Hollywood Boulevard every day somewhere in the vicinity of the Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie store. Where or how he lived I never found out in the two days I knew him. I simply drove to the street, parked, and went looking for a man with a beard and snakes draped over his shoulders. It didn't take long. He was at an outdoor newsstand looking at a computer magazine. Only one snake accompanied him, but the way its head hung, it looked like it was reading over his shoulder.

"Are you w.i.l.l.y?"

"I'm w.i.l.l.y. If you want to take a picture, it'll cost you two dollars.""What if I wanted to hire you and your snakes for an afternoon? How much?"

"Depends on what for. Right off the bat, I'll tell you I don't do no s.e.xy stuff. Don't let the snakes do it neither. 'Cause snakes know , you know."

"Know what?"

"Well, I'll tell you. Pigs know. Cats don't. Some dogs do. But snakes know most."

I wondered for a second if he was making some veiled biblical allusion, but there was such a crafty look in his eye that I got the feeling that, to this man, snakes "knew" something infinitely greater. I thought it best to leave that knowledge to him and his slim friends.

"No. I want to hire you to come with them to a boy's birthday party."

It's heartbreaking, the things we forget. Even experiencing them again laterthe exact same thingsoften cannot remind us of their real truth, which is what they were like when we were children.

Birthday parties are a good example. Sure, adults put on cute paper hats, scream, "Surprise!" and have a good goofy time. But that is only them being fake children. At a real kid's party, joy goes hand in tightly held hand with greed, true rage, exultation. Winning musical chairs or getting a smaller slice of cake, a dumb present from your most important guest, can lift or drop you off the edge of your small earth. And most of all what we forget as adults is the dead seriousness of these details. To a child they are neither cute nor trivial, but rather the crux of those essential days.

They had made the outside of Crowds and Power look like a big birthday cake. No wonder Lincoln wanted to have his party there! Ky stood outside wearing a Creature from the Black Lagoon costume. That shook me.

"Ky, this isn't a costume party, is it?"

"Costume? No. Just me. I am the parking monster. You go like that."

"Who did the decorating?" I gestured at the restaurant's facade.

"We all. Last night we come out and do it."

That these many different characters had gathered in the middle of the night to transform a building into a cake was the nicest thing I'd heard in a long time.

"He's one lucky boy."

"We are a family. He is our son."

A car arrived and two children jumped out before it had stopped. Watching them run into the building, I didn't notice the driver until she was standing near me. It was Kathy Jerome, the television news commentator.

"I have been hearing about this party for weeks. We couldn't go on vacation till it was over."

We introduced ourselves and walked in together. It was funny to hear this famously serious woman say, "Holy shiiiiiit!" when we saw what had happened to the place. There were giant cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, aluminumfoil lightning bolts too; what appeared to be painted flats from horror movies against the walls. Cobb the greyhound had a Superman cape tied around his shoulders. The Band sisters were dressed as Frankenstein and Dracula, the s.e.xiestlooking monsters in recent memory. It was all wonderful and much too much. But I realized the crazy mix had been done for a purposeit was like a Spook House at an amus.e.m.e.nt park, but one that small children could enter and not be frightened. The excess in every direction made it comic and tame, not nightmare country. Kids raced by, eating chocolate bats and marzipan rats. The real birthday cakea monumental haunted housestood on top of the bar and was one of several centers of attention. Games were held in one corner of the main room, run by Gus Duveen, who was dressed to look like the Wolf Man. Ibrahim dished out food and drinks wearing a high chef's hat and white outfit, his face painted the eerie tinfoil silver of the famous monster in the Midnight films.

What I liked most was that the many adults there were having as good a time as their children. The noise and joy were infectious. People danced with their kids to rockandroll music, respectablelooking fathers scuttled on all fours across the floor with little ones on their backs in races (all losers got to squirt dads in the face with seltzer bottles). A pizza large as a car tire was brought out to oohs and aahs and quickly set upon by young and old. It was a vegetarian pizza, and when cook Mabdean emerged fromthe kitchen, he was given a big round of applause.

"What do you think?"

"Oh, hi, Lily! I think it's a h.e.l.l of a party. Everyone's having a ball."

"Yes, I think so too. Where're your snakes?"

"Coming! They have to have a little fanfare. Why aren't you in costume?"

"Lincoln asked me not to. He was afraid I'd come up with something better than him. That's okay, because I'm not big on dressing up. Come on, let's walk around."

Her company was a compliment. People knew her here, which meant they looked at me with eyes wondering who was I to rate this companion. She was cordial to the guests but not effusive. They were glad to see her; you could tell they wanted her to stay around and chat. But she played the room like a consummate diplomata little bit to everyone, a laugh that sounded genuine and perhaps was, then on to the next and "Hi! You made it. That's great!"

Lincoln kept coming over to ask about this and that. He was dressed as a sorcerer in red velvet cape and turban, gold rings and bracelets, elaborately worked leather sandals that swept up at the toes and looked like little gondolas. Today his mother stopped whatever she was doing to listen and advise.

Normally she didn't do that. She believed her son should learn proper behavior, to lose some of his child's egotism and learn to wait until it was his turn. Once he made her bend over so he could whisper in her ear. She heard him out and turned to me.

"He wants to know if you got him a present."

"Ma! You didn't have to telllllll!"

"That's okay. Course I got you a present! But it'll be here in a while. I had to order it and they said it wouldn't be ready till a little later."

That satisfied him and he took off with a girl who was wearing a Tshirt with a head coming out of the stomach, a la the Alien.

"How're you going to do it with the snakes?"

"Wait and see. It's been ch.o.r.eographed to the minute."

Beware the Ide(a)s of...

What was supposed to have happened was this: Although in his fullgetup wrestling togs he looked bigger and meaner than a psychotic's nightmare, Tackhead Frank Cornish liked children very much.

Never in a million years would he have wanted to scare them. But as his wife said, Frank is dumb and I'm sure he only wanted the kids at the party to get their money's worth. What we'd planned was for Tackhead to open the door of Crowds and Power and walk nonchalantly in with w.i.l.l.y Snakespeare's roommates, holding one in each hand. w.i.l.l.y fed them two days before, thus guaranteeing they'd be in a postmeal stupor. That was all. The famous wrestler comes in brandishing real live snakes and calls out in a nice friendly voice, "Where's the Birthday Boy?" Finding Lincoln, he hands him the comatose snakes and says, "These guys wanted to come to your party." All the kids get to pet the snakes and ogle Tackhead. It was meant to be a sweet showstopper. Just enough drama to amaze and delight for a few minutes. And when the air cleared, I'd be recognized as the giver and Lincoln would see me with new and loving eyes.

Frank is six foot six and weighs close to three hundred pounds. His shaved head looks like a blacksmith's anvil. Mary says he wears a size 15 shoe. I asked him to wear his wrestling costume because I thought it would look flashy and crazy.

When the door exploded open half an hour later and an outrageous, seismic roar instantly silenced every other noise in the place, I thought for one second: Oh boy, this is better than I hoped! But then again, I knew what was happening. Besides, I was an adult. In the doorway, silhouetted by the burn of California light around his enormous form, arms extended, snakes adangle, Frank didn't look much like a man, or even a human being. He looked like a shaved bear from Jupiter. A very furious bear. When he howled, "WHERE'S THAT BIRTHDAY BOY?!" and shook the poor snakes so they looked like black lightning bolts, people were already freaking out. If memory serves me right, a woman screamed first, not a childthe cla.s.sic horrorfilm "AAAAAAUGH!"

Someone yelled, "Snakes!"Someone yelled, "He's blocking the way!"

Someone yelled, "Mama!"

Someone yelled, "No, wait! Wait, it's only" That was me, but there was no holding anything back by then.

Realizing what he'd done, Frank crumpled in the door, but when you're that big, you don't crumple far. He was in the middle of saying something when a chair flew across the room and hit him on the chest. The only effect that had was to make him drop the snakes. Which started all new yelling: "They're on the floor!" "Look out!" "Get out!" "Snaaaaaaakes!"

I didn't know whether to go for the snakes or Frank. I chose Frank. Somewhere in the uproar, w.i.l.l.y Snakespeare shouted, "Leave 'em alone! They don't bite!"

For an instant I saw Lily down on her hands and knees, snake hunting. Thank G.o.d her face was lit with laughter. In the midst of that chaos she was laughing!

Others weren't. They were panicking. The birthday party had made many of them hyper, but this shotgunblast entrance of a real roaring giant and writhing snakes helped push their gas pedals down to the floor, way past their speed limits.

So what could I, the accused, do? First, fight through the mob to the monster from Jupiter and get him the f.u.c.k out of there.

I was ten feet from him, arms already outstretched to intercept, when the pain hit. It burst up from the middle of my back and was unimaginable. I staggered, fell to my knees. It went away, returned twice as bad. I tried to wrap my arms around myself to protect from the agony inside, but no way. Part of me was trying to kill the other parts.

I didn't pa.s.s out, though there was only black crushing pain. No party, snakes, earth. Only pain and I couldn't breathe and there was no doubt I was dying. Just let me die and this pain'll stop. Let me die because nothing, nothing could be as bad as this.

If only I had been so lucky.

"What is that?"

"That is a kernel of rice, Mr. Fischer. Your stone was about half this big."

"How could something so small hurt so much?"

My question seemed to satisfy the doctor, as if I were a student who had asked the correct question in cla.s.s. "The places it has to pa.s.s through are very small. Kidney stones are the most excruciating pain a man can experience. They're the equivalent of birth pains in women."

"Women bear children, we bear rice kernels. And you said I might get them again?"

"They do tend to recur. But you can fight them by drinking water and keeping yourself flushed."

He was a boring man who made himself more of a bore by repeating things constantly in a pontifical voice only his mother or another doctor could have loved.

As a parting gesture, he very dramatically placed the guilty rice on the bedside table and left. The kernel sat next to an art book opened to a poster that stated: ADMIT NOTHING.

BLAME EVERYONE.

BE BITTER.

I had kept it on that page for two days and would probably leave it there until I left the hospital, despite the fact that almost every visitor insisted the snake debacle hadn't been my fault. Gus said it was an a.s.shole idea, but the result wasn't "really" my fault. Mary Poe split the blame between her husband, herself, and me. "I should've gone along. I knew I should have gone and kept an eye on him, but I was selfish. I admit, I wanted to finish my book."

What Lily and Lincoln thought mattered more than anything, and both of them were unanimous in their approval.

"There's this girl I hate, Brooke? I had to invite her 'cause I went to her stupid birthday party. But you know what's really cool? I know she peed in her pants when she saw the snake. Patrick Klinkoff told me.""Why are you embarra.s.sed, Max? No one was hurt and they have something to talk about. How many kids' parties can you say that about? In ten years they'll still be saying, 'Remember that crazy party where the snakes got loose?' I was scared too for a few minutes, but I loved it. I also haven't laughed so hard in ages. Snakes, wrestlers, monsters... Did you see what happened to the birthday cake? Oh G.o.d, it was fun!"

It's easy to love people who forgive us. Deep in my secret heart I also thought what had happened at the party was funny, but other parts of me that didn't like to fail and didn't like to be embarra.s.sed felt Max Fischer should go live on the bottom of the ocean with the other creeping creatures. To top it off, falling down in the middle of a disaster I had created was no help. I have been healthy most of my adult life, but have also been haunted by the idea of suddenly collapsing because my body fails or shorts out like an electrical fuse. Why had this longtime fear actually happened at that party? Were the G.o.ds creating the special effects, or had I only overdosed on trying to make a good impression?

No matter what you are there for, hospitals humble a person. Without saying a word they tell you you're older, more fragile, susceptible to things you never imagined possible. You can a.s.sume someone died in the bed you occupy. Your backless nightgown covered people who had no hope of ever leaving this final land of long corridors and the small hissing sounds of thick shoes and cart wheels. A day there is waiting for meals and test results. The only thing you can be sure of is there will be old magazines on the table at the end of the corridor. You try to remember where you were on the outside when you read that same magazine three months ago. It makes you inordinately happy to remember it was at a friend's house or the barbershop.

I had a kidney stone. It was excruciating but the doctors knew what to do with it. They shot some kind of rays into my side that broke the thing down and allowed it to pa.s.s. Afterward I couldn't get rid of the image of stones in my body . It was as if a part of me had slowly but secretly begun the process of dying and returning to primal substances. I was shown a picture on a screen and proudly told, "There it is, that's your stone." I looked because it was proof of me gone bad, defective, terminal. Some essential organ had created it, the way it might normally have cleaned my blood or processed food. How could I do this to me?

There are days or weeks in life where so much happens that it can take months, even years to sort out all that has taken place. Two weeks after I met the Aarons, b.o.o.bytrapped their birthday party, and had a first serious meeting with my own mortality, I sat at home looking out the window at a bird feeder, not much interested in doing anything else. My mind was full of sighs and flimsy thoughts. The book I'd been reading with enthusiasm only days before lay untouched by the bed. For something to do, I cleaned the apartment. Which only added to my dispiritedness because when I'd finished and was looking around, it reminded me of a picture in a magazine. One of those anonymous, wellkept "homes" you glance at uninterestedly and flip the page. No personality, no distinction. Whoever lives there does things in the approved way, owns the right objects, even develops kidney stones at the statistically correct time of life. In the hospital, a girl was pointed out who was allegedly dying of a mysterious unknown disease.

People were in awe of this tragic child. She drew doctors like suitors and made milliondollar machines work as hard as they could just to keep her alive. I knew it wasn't her but the disease that made her interesting, but still. Still.

Walking in from collecting the mail one morning, I heard the telephone ring. I wanted to ignore it because of what was in my hand, but unlike other people, I cannot disregard a ringing phone. It makes me both excited and uneasy for the same reasonwhat's coming from the other end?

I was holding a child's drawing of a smiling man. The picture included his whole head and neck. In the middle of the neck, looking as if it had been swallowed whole, was a big red rose. Written in unmistakably adult script at the bottom of the page was: "We agree we both have a rose in the throat for you." I receive a fair amount of fan mail, but my first rushing hope was this had come from Lily and Lincoln. Kid's artwork, grownup's handwriting. What did it mean, "a rose in the throat"? The phone kept ringing. One thing at a time."Max? It's Pop. I've got bad news, son. Mom had a stroke last night. She's in the hospital in a coma. You think you can come here and be with us?"

I was on an airplane heading east three hours later. By late evening I was holding my father's hand in a hospital room very similar to the one I'd so recently left. Lying still and pale in bed, my mother already looked dead. The stroke had done something to her mouth and it gaped open oddly to one side.

It was the third time my father had told me the story of what had happened. I knew it was necessary for him to talk it out as much as he could, so I said nothing.

"We were watching TV. She said, 'Do you want a little snack, honey?' You know her, always wanting to feed you. Then she makes sure you eat every bit. I said no, I'm fine. Then she stuck her hand out like this, like she was pointing at something on TV. I even looked that way, but a second later she fell forward, right off the couch.

"Oh, man. Oh, Max. What am I going to do? If Mama doesn't get better, I don't know... I don't function... I can't do things right when she's not around. You know how I am, son." He looked at me desperately, as if waiting for me to explain him to himself: explain a way out of the final dilemma that was here now in the form of his too still wife.

"I think she's resting, Pop. She's in there sorting things out and seeing what she needs to do to come back to us. Mom wouldn't leave us in the lurch like this. Hey, listen, you know heralways sets lunch out for us before she'd go anywhere. She's not going to leave now without making sure we're taken care of!"

I meant it as a gentle rea.s.suring joke, but the light in his eyes was suddenly bright and surer.

"That's right! Ida never left things undone. She is in there, resting up for the next act. That's right. She'll wake up any minute now, yelling for us to take off our shoes."

Inescapable. At some point, life orders us to our parents' seat at the head of the table and suddenly we're responsible for "feeding" them after a lifetime of vice versa. It is a moving and genuinely disconcerting moment, one you can't fully bring into focus until later.

When the doctors spoke to us about Mother's condition and treatment, my father constantly watched my brother or me, as if only we understood and could translate what was being said. In the days we spent there, he never stopped asking, "What do you think, guys?" But what did we know that he hadn't already taught us? He was the one who had gone through the Depression and war, the loss of his parents, and nine thousand more days of life. Nevertheless, when Saul or I made a decision, he accepted it instantly. We never knew if he agreed, but I got the feeling the loss of his wife had entirely sapped his strength. Like someone who stumbles and starts to fall, any steadying arm is welcome. The fact it was his sons' made it easier to grab and hold on. Plus any decision made quickly and with a degree of certainty appeared to rea.s.sure him there was still some order and balance in his now teetering world.

He told us many things, both about Mother and about their relationship I'd never heard before.

Some of these stories were intensely personal, others boring. What was disconcerting was that all three of us continually referred to her in the past tense. Even the tone of our nostalgia, or the way anecdotes were told, made it sound like the woman wasn't really there anymore; she was half ghost, or ectoplasm, rather than a living Ida Dax Fischer.

"Okay, so enough about your mother and me. What about you, Maxie? Have you got a nice girlfriend these days?"

"I think so, Pop. We only met recently, but so far I like her very much. You have to hear a story, though. She has a tenyearold son and he had a birthday party the other day..." I went on to tell him about the party/snakes/Tackhead because he likes a good story and I thought this would make him laugh.

To my disappointed surprise, he only half smiled and asked what had happened to the Aarons when I was done. I said they'd come to the hospital and appeared to have forgiven me, but who knew? Maybe I'd go home and never hear from them again.

"Do you think you'll get married one day?"

"I hope so, Pop. I like the idea of marriage but've never met a woman"

"Listen to me. I wouldn't say this if your brother was in the room, but you know how I feel aboutthe dragon he's married to. I got hitched young and was lucky. Saul got married young and Denise was the biggest mistake of his life. But now Mom's like she is and I feel like my head's cut off. So what does either get you? Know what I mean? If you're lucky, you end up feeling headless. If you're unlucky you got to get into bed for forty years with a monster from h.e.l.l. I don't know if you can win, Max. Maybe you should stay single and play the field."

"I want to have children, Pop. I'd love to know what it's like to see kids in a sandbox and know they're yours. That must be a h.e.l.l of a feeling."

"It ends up the samekids grow up and leave, and you feel like your head's been cut off."

To our amazement and delight, Mother came out of the coma four days later and immediately asked for a screwpound. When asked what a "screwpound" was, she said a vodka and orange juice.

With the exception of many of these eerie, funny "offnesses," she returned to full consciousness in decent shape. Her mouth remained crooked, as did many of the things she said, but nothing else was damaged and she was in good spirits.

"How much is the hospital costing?"

"I don't know, Ma, but don't worry about it. Saul and I will pay."

"Then get your father in here to take the other bed. It would be the first vacation we ever had."

My father walked on air. He had always treated her well and with the fullest respect and appreciation, but the return and recovery made her even more special in his eyes. He spoke of her in glowing, reverential terms. He spoke to her in almost a whisper, as if afraid any loud noise might scare her away, back to where she'd been or worse.

She chided him for his obsequiousness, but there was much love in her expression and she insisted on holding his hand whenever he was in the room.