Walking Through Walls (18 page)

“Crystal. I'm glad you contacted me,” I heard him say under his breath, “I urgently need your help.” Crystal was one of the first spirit guides to work with my father. He told me that Crystal was a small black woman who had died in a fire around 1860. Apparently Sophie Busch knew her well and was able to describe her physically to my father. Crystal was summoned for emergency cases, which were her specialty. Whenever she wanted to let my father know that she was present, she would tickle the back of his neck, which is why he had been swatting at the invisible mosquito a few minutes earlier. Clearly, she had been observing the exchange with Mr. White and signaled my father to the back room so they could strategize. Speaking to Crystal in an exaggerated whisper, Pop said, “Don't let him photograph the bottle. If he does, they'll have the evidence to put me in jail. What can I do? Tell me.”

As I watched him talk to himself, I was actually relieved. Finally, I thought to myself, the reinforcements have arrived. I wasn't sure if Crystal was up to the job. I could never hear when the spirits talked back to him, so I was unaware of what advice Crystal had given him. All I knew was that when he was done with his conversation, he calmly walked back into the front office.

By then the FDA agent had taken six Polaroids of the Arsenicum bottle, which were laid out on the desk. Mr. White was looking at his watch, waiting for the photographs to develop. He peeled the black paper backing from the first photograph and, without really looking at it, placed it back on the desk. As he peeled off the backing from the second photograph, he did a double take. His eyes squinted, his brow furrowed, and his mouth was slightly open. He turned the photograph this way and that in the light, looking at it from different angles.

Together my father and I leaned over the front of the desk to look at the photographs. The Polaroid technology was still relatively new and considered quite miraculous. Whenever my father photographed one of his interiors, I loved watching him peel off the black paper backing, wave the photograph in the air to dry it, and then take a chemical-smelling, pink fiber squeegee that came with every pack of film and wipe it across the front of the photograph to “fix it.”

Mr. White's photos were in perfect focus. I could see the attaché case and the desk clearly, but for some reason, the bottle of homeopathic tablets appeared as a white blur. It looked as if a cloud had blown across the photograph. Something had gone terribly wrong when he took the picture.

I watched Mr. White peel the backing off the remaining photographs. None of them showed the bottle in focus. “Must have moved the camera,” he said to himself. “I'm going to try it over here by the window.” Some of the bite had gone out of his bark because of this mysterious technical problem with the photographs. My father let out a deep sigh of relief. I could see the color return to his face. He started to whistle a tune and calmly went back to working on the rendering that was on his desk when Mr. White walked in. I could tell by his mood that somehow everything was going to be okay. This made me feel a little better about the situation, although I still couldn't understand how my father was going to get out of this mess.

This time Mr. White placed his attaché case on the floor and firmly put the bottle on top of the case. He had good light from the window. Kneeling down, he propped his elbow against his knee to avoid shaking the camera. He was taking every precaution possible to make sure the photographs weren't blurred again. Mr. White inhaled and held his breath as he slowly pressed the shutter button.

With each picture, he repositioned the bottle, and he took shots from various angles to cover all his bases. After he finished shooting, his cockiness returned. Once again, he picked up the pictures, laid them on my father's desk, timed the photographs, peeled away the backing paper, and set them out to dry. As before, everything was in perfect focus except the bottle. There was still a white blur where the bottle should have been. “I don't understand what's going on here,” he said. “The camera was working perfectly yesterday. Maybe the film's bad.”

My father, a former newspaper photographer, glanced at the photos and said with just a bit of condescension in his voice, “How can the film be bad when your briefcase is in perfect focus?”

“Then it must be the lens.”

Pointing with his Prismacolor pencil at the clarity of the photograph, my father said, “No, it looks like the lens is working perfectly. Look how sharp everything is.”

Mr. White was getting angry. He shook the photograph in my father's face and said, “Then how do you explain
this
?!”

“I don't know, maybe the bottle was never there to begin with and this is all in your imagination.” I couldn't believe that my father was taunting this guy. He should have left well enough alone. I didn't know whether or not FDA guys carried guns, but if they did, he was certainly going to start shooting at my father.

“
Are you crazy?
” Mr. White screamed.
“Yes, that's it, you're crazy!”
His face was now a bright crimson.
“I'm going to speak to my supervisor! Believe me, you will be hearing from us! We'll have you in jail so fast you won't know what happened to you!”
With that, Mr. White packed up his camera, ripped up the photographs, and threw them on my father's desk. Then he opened the bottle of Arsenicum and emptied the pills all over the desk and stormed out. I watched as the little sugar pills scattered everywhere and then landed on the floor.

My father started laughing at Mr. White's sudden departure. I was still shaking from the incident and didn't find it at all funny. Out loud he said, “Thank you, Crystal,” as if talking to someone sitting across from him. He turned to me and with great confidence said, “I don't think he'll be back.”

“But the guy said he would be back, and I'm sure he's going to be back,” I said. “He was really mad. Maybe you should call the police and report him.”

“Philip, he
is
the police. The police are on his side.”

“Then maybe you should call a lawyer. You could go to jail.”

“Why should I call a lawyer? Crystal was my advocate.”

“What did she do?”

“I don't know exactly what she did. All I know is that I asked her not to let him photograph the bottle, and that's exactly what happened. You saw it yourself. With spirit, you always get what you ask for. You need to be very specific. The briefcase was in perfect focus because I didn't say anything to Crystal about it. I only asked that the bottle not be photographed, and that's what she did. Those blurred photographs were her doing.”

“I thought it was the camera.”

“How could it have been the camera? Didn't you look at the pictures? Everything was in focus. It was Crystal who blurred the photographs. This is how things work when you know how to tap into a higher power. As long as you work within the light, you are protected.”

“Pop, I still wish you would take precautions and not put yourself in these dangerous situations.”

With some annoyance he said, “Philip, you continue to see things only on the material plane. If you would only make the effort to see things from a metaphysical point of view, you would understand what I'm talking about. You don't ever have to be afraid, because you can control everything that happens to you. There are a lot of forces and energies available to help you in whatever you seek to accomplish. They are there for the asking.”

As the summer progressed, I watched my father perform even more remarkable healings on a daily basis. Summers were usually slow in his business, but the healings kept the office humming. Patients now outnumbered clients three to one.

One day Zvi, the young man who ran the custom carpet design studio next door, stopped in to ask my father a question. I liked Zvi and always enjoyed talking to him. He was a kind of hip wise-cracking guy from New York's East Side whose brother was a professional flamenco dancer. As a result, Zvi understood “creative types.” On the side, when business was slow, he would create large geometric acrylic paintings à la Frank Stella in pastel tropical colors. He was selling about three a week, as they were all the rage with the decorators who had no idea what to do with those big blank walls in the new condos. I would bring in articles about New York pop artists from my underground newspapers, and we would argue about their merit. Zvi made me feel like an adult.

“Lew, tell me, did they switch the days for the garbage pickup?” Zvi asked. “I thought it was Wednesdays and Fridays, but when I put out the garbage last week, they left it, so I'm wondering if—”

Pop interrupted Zvi and asked, “What's wrong with your eyes?” At first Zvi didn't know what he was talking about and remained silent. Then it dawned on him. “Oh yeah, I've been having trouble seeing out of my right eye. Things look blurry. The doctors don't know what it is. I think they're going to give me some sort of special glasses, but if that doesn't work, there's not a lot they can do. They gave me some drops, which stung my eyes and were totally useless. Anyway, what I came by to ask was what are the new days for garbage pickup? Is it still—”

My father asked Zvi to sit down for a minute and close his eyes. Pop stood up, went behind him, and placed his right hand over Zvi's eyes and his left hand on top of his head. Within seconds Zvi mentioned that his eye felt very pleasant.

“Lew, what's going on?” he asked.

“Just give me one more minute.” When my father took his hands away, he asked Zvi to look around the room. He did.

“Wow, they're like normal again. Did you just do that?”

“Yes. You just needed a little rebalancing. You'll be fine. Garbage is picked up out back on Thursdays.”

Thirty years after this incident, I ran into Zvi at a small Portuguese restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village. I asked him if in all the years he was my father's neighbor he had ever witnessed or experienced my father's healing ability. “No, not really, just I was losing my eyesight in one eye, and your father put his hand over it, and after that I could see perfectly. Nothing really out of the ordinary for your father.” With that, Zvi gave me a hug and a huge smile. To this day, he still does not wear glasses.

In the midst of the ever-changing freak show of patients and psychic employees at the office, there was one constant: elegant Christina. For years she worked quietly, pretending to ignore the increasing paranormal activity around the office.

Christina, who must have been in her late thirties, had left behind an empire of sugar plantations, houses, and servants when she fled Castro. Every day she showed up to work with immaculately styled frosted hair and makeup so perfect that she could pass for Sophia Loren's sister. Christina's eyebrows were drawn in big mocha-colored arches, and she had long, long nails painted the color red you only see now in an Almodóvar movie. Her dresses were always formal, but in a tropical sort of way. They were all made of exquisite fabrics styled with an Oriental flair. It was the kind of dress you might imagine Madame Nhu wearing as she descended the stairs of a Pan Am flight, posing for photographers while waving to the oppressed masses. Very often, both Christina's and Madame Nhu's dresses had a long slit far enough up one side to reveal just enough knee and leg.

Christina started her day with “Good morning, Mister Smith. Good morning, Felipe.” And those were the last words she spoke until she said, “Good evening, Mister Smith. Good evening, Felipe.” The truth was that Christina had decided not to speak much English for political reasons, in order to show solidarity with her native country now under occupation. She believed it was her job to keep the mother tongue alive—not that it was in any danger of disappearing in Miami.

Before she began work every day, she performed her ritual morning meditation: a spritz of perfume behind each ear, the slow slathering of hand cream applied with scientific precision, and a gentle patting of her hair so that it was just so. With that, she let out a long but quiet sigh and went to work. I think she spent most of her day obsessing about the loss she suffered because of Fidel. Here she was in a foreign country, without her cook, her maids, her driver, or her acres of sugar, while her dashing husband, Roberto, now bagged groceries at the A&P.

Every once in a while, she would quietly ask me after lunch to drive her somewhere “very important.” We would sneak out of the office and hope to return before my father noticed. As soon as we got into my little blue Fiat, Christina insisted on the top down, no matter how hot it was. She grabbed small moments of glamour whenever and wherever she could. Before we took off, she quickly tied a scarf over her head, slipped on her oversized Jackie Kennedy sunglasses, and directed me to the nearest department store, where she would quickly drop a bundle of cash that probably exceeded her weekly salary on a few small jars of essential cosmetics. Like my father, Christina lived in her own little world—except instead of talking to the dead, she pretended she was still the mambo queen of the sugar plantation.

One day the remote, gorgeous, and ethereal Christina appeared for work with her makeup running and clutching her breast as if she were having a heart attack. Her cool, impenetrable facade had cracked.
“Ay Dios mio!”
she cried as she walked in. I was surprised to see her in such a state. Alarmed, my father immediately sprang into action. “Christina, what happened, what's wrong?”

“Ay Dios mio. Dios mio…”

My father turned to me and said, “Philip, get Christina some water and find that bottle of homeopathic Pulsatilla pills in the drawer next to my desk.” Turning back to Christina, he implored, “Christina, Christina, tell me.”

Christina's English suddenly became completely proficient. “
Mi madre
—my mother—last night she had stomach pain at dinner.” Christina grabbed her stomach and sobbed.
“Ay Dios mio
. They take her to the hospital and say she has the cancer. Today they are going to take out her stomach.” Christina collapsed into a chair, screaming and crying uncontrollably.
“Mi madre, pobrecita, ayyyyy…”

With his arm around her shoulder, my father said, “Don't worry, we'll take care of this.” Christina probably thought this meant that my father was going to pay for the operation. Instead of taking out his checkbook, he went to his desk and took out a small pendulum and a chart filled with diagrams. In his left hand, he held a paper clip that had been straightened into a kind of pointer, which he slowly moved down an anatomy chart. With his right hand, he held the pendulum, which alternately swung clockwise and counterclockwise. Using Christina as a direct conduit to her mother, he psychically examined her mother's medical condition.

After a few minutes of probing questions, the pendulum indicated to my father that Christina's mother had been misdiagnosed and did not have cancer. According to his psychic examination, an impaction in the colon was creating the shadow on the X-ray that had led the doctor to diagnose cancer. To Christina, my father's ritual was all perfectly normal. She saw him do this every single day and probably assumed this was what American decorators did as part of their job.

“Christina, your mother does not have cancer.”

“What?
Ay Dios mio!
How can this be?”

“She has an impacted colon. No cancer.”

“Oh, Mister Smith, thank you so much.” With that, Christina assumed that my father had taken care of everything and proceeded to prepare for work, starting with her perfume spritz and hand lotion application. As she opened the jar of hand lotion, Christina said to me, “Oh, Felipe, your father is so nice. Thank you very much.”

“Christina, you need to call the hospital and tell them not to operate; otherwise there will be a big problem,” said my father.

“Ohh, noooo. No, I can't do that. I can't talk to the doctor.” As she spoke, she waved her pointer finger in a tick-tock motion like a metronome. “No. He won't listen to me. No.” Pointing at my father with that finely honed milelong bright red nail, she said, “You talk to the doctor. Okay?”

“Okay. I'll do it. What is her doctor's name?”

“I don't know.”

“What hospital is she in?”

“I don't know. The ambulance just took her…” With this, Christina waved her hand with big nails in the direction of “away.” The gold bracelets she had on when she left Havana tinkled like wind chimes.

“But how did you know she had cancer?”

“Oh, yes; the doctor called.” Christina nodded, raised her mocha eyebrows toward the heavens, and with a sidelong glance, added authoritatively, “The doctor told me.” She gave her head a little side-to-side shake as if to imply that she was so important that the doctor had called her directly.

Most ordinary humans would start calling the hospitals to see if Christina's mother was registered. Instead Pop opened the yellow pages while holding his paper-clip pointer in his left hand and his pendulum in his right. With the pointer, he slowly went down the list of hospitals in the Miami area. When his pendulum began to rotate in a clockwise direction, he looked to see what it was reacting to. It was St. Francis Hospital. After a bit more investigation with his pendulum, he located Christina's mother in room 708.

Pop got on the phone and discovered that her mother's doctor was already in the operating room preparing for the surgery. He turned to me and said, “We need to get over to the hospital as quickly as possible to stop this operation before it's too late.” While I was happy to help out Christina, I wasn't looking forward to a big confrontation with the doctor. I knew that no doctor was going to listen to my father.

We all jumped into my father's car and started speeding up Biscayne Boulevard like Batman and Robin on an urgent mission, with Christina in the backseat crying uncontrollably. As soon as we arrived at the hospital, my father ran to the nurses' station. “What room is Mrs. Cortez in? We need to see her right away.” The nurse smiled at the three of us. Looking official, she paused and checked her chart. “Sir, I'm sorry, but Mrs. Cortez is scheduled for surgery and is on her way to the OR. Perhaps you'd like to have a seat and wait?”

“I need to see her right away. This is an emergency. She is not to be operated on. You must stop the operation.”

This seemed to wake up the nurse a bit. She said, “And who are you?”

“Lew Smith.”

“I see. Did I understand you correctly in saying that the surgery must be stopped? And are you her doctor? Because according to the chart, Dr. Siegel is Mrs. Cortez's doctor.” With that pronouncement, the nurse promptly returned to her duties of smiling and staring at the peach-colored wall in front of her. Case closed.

At that very moment, Mrs. Cortez was wheeled out of her room by the orderlies. We saw her as they brought the bed down the hall toward the OR. She had been prepped and anesthetized. My father grabbed the bed and said, “You are making a mistake. She does not need surgery.”

“Uh-oh,” I thought, “here we go again.” I hated it when my father confronted authority. Normally he was a shy man who avoided any type of argument. But when it came to his healing activities, he was absolutely convinced that God was on his side, and there was no stopping him. I was waiting for the “look.” Sure enough, the orderlies gave him that unmistakable look that said, “You are out of your mind, you crazy old man.” That look was usually quickly followed by a look at me that said, “Can't you do something about this?” During moments like these, I wished I could wave my magic wand, say the secret words, and presto—a door would suddenly appear that would allow me to walk right out of this situation. Why couldn't my father just be like everyone else? As far as I was concerned, I would rather have Christina's mother be operated on than watch my father being made fun of by the doctors and nurses.

The orderlies, determined not to give up their turf, started yanking on the bed to force my father to let go. At sixty-four years old, he was no match for these two young, husky guys. However, he was determined that Mrs. Cortez should not have her colon cut out unnecessarily. A tug-of-war ensued. Fortunately, the elder Mrs. Cortez was in dreamland as her hospital bed was pushed and pulled backward and forward. The orderlies screamed at the head nurse to call security.

Two even bigger guys quickly showed up, pulled my father away from the bed, and then subdued him with an arm lock. The chief of security said, “Mister, get away from that patient. This is a hospital, not a wrestling arena. If you're not gone in thirty seconds, I'm calling the police.” My father, while twisted into a pretzel by the two guys, attempted to convince security, as if they would understand, that he was there to save Mrs. Cortez's life. Little did they realize that they were talking to Merlin the Magician, Mother Teresa, and Superman all rolled into one. My father stated calmly, although slightly out of breath, “A misdiagnosis has been made. Mrs. Cortez should not be operated on. You are making a terrible mistake. Talk to her daughter; she's standing right there. She'll tell you.”