Walking Through Walls (32 page)

Not knowing where to look first—at her Rosalind Russell–inspired Auntie Mame bottle-black hairdo with a spit curl lacquered into place on her forehead, or her blue eye shadow and harsh red lips, or her cat's-eye rhinestone-encrusted waitress eyeglasses—I focused on her hand holding that long, thin cigarette. My mom smoked Camels, without filters, like a real man. This mystery woman smoked Virginia Slims, probably because she thought it made her appear ultrafeminine and au courant. Instead she looked stupid and common.

Without taking his eyes off the road, my father made a formal introduction. “Philip, this is Ruth. She is a great psychic and is going to be a powerful healer. I thought it would be nice if she joined us for dinner. I knew you'd like to meet her.”

I was a little upset. Here I had been back in the country for just a few hours, and I needed to meet a new friend of my father's? What I really wanted was some private time to catch up with him. I guess my stories about life at the equator would just have to wait.

“Oh, hi, Ruth.” That was about all the enthusiasm I could muster.

Somehow my father was not sharing my incisive observations about Ruth and instead was smiling; his face was slightly flushed. Whatever he was thinking, he was clearly ignoring the lack of reality sitting next to him. Everyone in the car, except me, assumed that I already knew this was my father's new girlfriend. The long drive down Biscayne Boulevard had been a prearranged get-to-know-you kind of thing. It was not working.

We eventually pulled up to Fox's, a lounge/liquor store that had been around since the 1940s. It was known for its martinis and prime ribs even though Miami was turning into a
mojito
and
picadillo
type of town. Fox's was now an anachronism that had not yet acquired the patina of charm or irony. The entrance was from the alleyway, giving the whole place a speakeasy kind of feel. Empty liquor boxes that probably had been gathering for weeks surrounded the door. Painted on the side of the olive green building was a big, slightly naughty fox with its tongue hanging out of its mouth, leering at incoming patrons.

In keeping with its lounge heritage, Fox's was dark inside and smelled of old beer and stale cigarettes. Ruth lit up again, adding to the sour smell. She quickly ordered a baked potato with a salad and, exhaling a lungful of smoke, informed me that she was a vegetarian. She patiently explained to me that she did not eat any red meat, any flesh, or anything that had had consciousness. I smiled and nodded.

I felt like saying, “I know what a fucking vegetarian is, you asshole. I've been one practically my entire life.” Something told me that she became a vegetarian about five minutes after meeting my father. Usually when I ate out with my father, we dined at one of the few health restaurants in Miami, ordering brown rice and steamed vegetables. Now, with Ruth in the picture, we are having dinner at a lounge? Certainly an odd choice.

“I'll have the prime rib, extra rare,” I said, knowing that I was being extremely obnoxious. My father shot me a look. Actually, I was hurting myself more than Ruth. I had not eaten meat in many, many years. I knew that the meal was going to make me feel slightly ill. My father was already calculating how many high colonics I would need to remove the decaying flesh from my colon. Ruth flashed her big fake smile at me again, as if to say, “I know what you're doing, and I'm going to be the winner of this game.” Pop ordered scrambled eggs and a salad.

Like a bad Hollywood movie, Pop asked Ruth, “How was your day?” He placed his hand on top of her nonsmoking hand in a sign of affection. She recounted details from her day as a reservation clerk for Eastern Airlines.

Ruth exhaled another cloud of smoke that I pretended made me cough. I gave her my best judgmental look that said, “How can you, the fairy princess of Eastern Airlines, smoke in front of my distinguished father?” She smiled what I can only imagine was her perfected would-you-like-a-window-or-aisle-seat? smile. Holding it for the Kodak moment that she was living in her mind, she ratcheted her head toward my father, keeping her eyes locked on mine. She turned to me for her opening play and said, “You know, you're lowering your vibrations by eating the dead carcass of that cow.”

“Yeah, I know, but my father taught me how to neutralize the toxins, send them to the sun for purification, and then return my vibrations to the divine and healing level. So, in the long run, it really doesn't matter what I eat, as I can still maintain my spiritual purity without being debased by the gross matter that I put in my body.” I surprised myself with how much of my father's thought processes I had really absorbed.

Pop had now perfected the ability to change his reality just by thought. I remember that after my parents divorced, Pop decided he no longer needed fancy clothes, and his custom-made suits and Nehru jackets gave way to off-the-rack polyester wash-and-wear. To me this was an ominous sign of spiritual bad taste as well as our dramatically altered economic conditions. As Pop's spirituality increased, his interest in the finer things offered by the material plane decreased. Personally, I stuck with pure cotton, which was more difficult to find, as polyester had become the miracle fiber of the moment. Pop repeatedly told me that “polyester is poison and puts carcinogenic chemicals in your blood. The skin can't breathe when you wear that stuff. This is why there is so much cancer around.”

Polyester? When I reminded him of the carcinogenic properties of polyester, he explained his change of fabrics this way: “I'm able to psychically neutralize the negative effects of polyester and make the body believe that I'm wearing cotton.” Thanks to his elite spiritual connections, he could enjoy the benefits of wash-and-wear without any of its potential dangers. While this appeared to be just a bit frivolous or completely psychotic, it was really an indicator that my father had moved into a realm where he believed that he could control every aspect of life on a molecular level. With his psychic powers, he could reprogram his body to repel the negative effects of the petroleum-based polyester and wear it with impunity. This was no different from the way he approached changing the body's energy systems in order to repel and dissolve metastasized tumors. Eventually he would be able to apply this ability to channel thought and alter physical reality on a much larger scale. In the meantime, I was hoping that I could make my body believe that this thirty-two-ounce prime rib was nothing more than a head of lettuce.

At the time, I rarely practiced what my father had taught me about marshaling my mental powers. If I did, maybe I wouldn't have had so many problems. According to my father, by creating the proper thought-form and surrounding our body with this invisible shield, we could theoretically repel everything from radiation to speeding bullets and life-threatening insidious germs. With the correct mental attitude, you could smoke a carton of cigarettes a day with no repercussions as long as you surrounded your lungs with the white light of protection and sent any carcinogens to the sun for purification. While I had been well schooled in the art of repelling toxic substances from my body, what I was really signaling to Ruth was, “Don't fuck with me or my father, you low-vibration fraud.”

Just then the lights blinked three times. We all noticed. Ruth perked up and announced loudly, “Ohhhhh, Arthur's here!”

I was stunned. How did she know about Arthur? Obviously my father had been sharing more than a baked potato with Ruth. Now she was privy to our top-secret relationship with Arthur. No one except my father was supposed to have access to Arthur. All of a sudden, this interloper with the blue stockings was talking to Arthur? A line had been crossed. This was treason. I felt angry and betrayed. Arthur had practically raised me, and now here he was showing up while Ruth was around. Arthur should have known better than to be talking to this horrible woman. If Arthur had a message for Ruth, I was going to get up and leave. If necessary, I'd walk home. Ruth flashed me a giggly smile that said, “Isn't this fun? A message from Arthur, wheeee!”

Pop reached for a pen and began writing on his napkin. “The white beads were sent to you for a healing purpose. They are not a mistake. In the next several days, we will instruct you on how to properly energize them with healing energies. Give them away to people. They will continue to emit healing energies that those with disease will find helpful.” I was relieved that Arthur's message had nothing to do with Ruth. If it had, I would have personally crossed over to the next dimension and strangled him. I thought to myself, “Nice work, Arthur.” This was a message that I could discuss with my father, since I was the one unpacking the beads. Thank goodness Arthur kept it general and didn't reveal anything personal in front of Ruth.

Pop leaned back in his chair and, with a smile, said, “Well, that's a surprise. Here I thought that I had made a huge mistake in buying those beads, and all along it was the work of spirit. I should have known better.” He was clearly relieved that he now had a reason for having bought several tons of white glass beads from Japan.

Just as Arthur had stated, my father soon began to psychically energize the beads with healing power. For years he gave them to his patients to hold and absorb the energy whenever needed. I still keep mine next to my bed. It was not unusual to walk into one of my father's lectures and see everyone wearing the same strand of white glass beads.

“Oh, Lew, that's wonderful. See, you need to have more confidence in yourself. Doubt is a negative emotion. You need to be positive at all times. We're going to have to work on that.” Boy, was she digging in fast. Ruth loved the fact that Arthur had shown up while she was present. Apparently my father was now willing to have someone share his friendship with the spirits. For the rest of the meal, Ruth was like a little bird, chirping “Oh, Arthur this and Arthur that.”

Ever since I'd known Arthur, I was told to keep my mouth shut because the outside world could not know that my father was talking to invisible people. Now Ruth was blabbing to the entire world about Arthur while having a baked potato at Fox's. I was having enough trouble digesting the slab of meat on my plate without having to watch her performance. I kept thinking, “Where did he find this one?”

After dinner we drove Ruth home. She lived a few blocks south of her office, in a 1950s apartment building huddled next to the bridge on the Miami River. There was a constant nerve-grating buzz as cars crossed the iron grate drawbridge. It was a place inhabited largely by forgotten souls who, for whatever reason, never managed to do better in life. While my father escorted Ruth to her apartment, I sat in the car and read the psychic predictions page by Jeane Dixon in the
National Enquirer.

On the way home, Pop told me that he had met Ruth at one of his lectures just a few weeks ago. She had been having severe back problems and asked my father for a healing through laying on of hands. In front of a room full of witnesses, she got the full treatment and was instantly healed. From then on, they were an item. Shortly after this first meeting, Ruth somehow convinced my father that she had divine powers and they should work as a tag team. Soon ads began to appear in the
Miami Herald
for lectures on healing by Lew Smith and Ruth at the Theosophical Society, and the psychic fair at the Holiday Inn on South Dixie Highway. Ruth spoke of the importance of love and forgiveness, while my father performed actual healings.

After our initial get-together at Fox's, my father began to see Ruth every day. He would bring her back to his guesthouse, often in full view of my mother as she was picking up the mail. If my parents had business to transact, it was done on the front lawn while Ruth sat in the car, glaring at my mother. In my opinion, my father was guilty of conduct unbecoming. There was something so unspiritual about the unfinished business of their marriage. Wisdom and enlightenment did not prevail.

After about two months of serious spiritual dating, my father told me that Ruth had just confided in him that she was about to undergo a very dangerous and potentially life-threatening operation. Personally, I was not concerned. If the surgeon's knife accidentally slipped and severed an artery or two, what was the harm? Ruth pleaded with my father that she would need his full cooperation to ensure a successful outcome. Based on this request, my father assumed that he and his psychic deputies would be on call twenty-four hours a day during the ordeal. However, what Ruth really meant was that she would need the full cooperation of his checkbook as she walked out of her job to prepare for the surgery.

What I did not know was that this was not the kind of operation that insurance would cover. In fact, this was not an operation that would be performed in a hospital by licensed surgeons. According to Ruth, she had been chosen by the enlightened masters to have her brain psychically rewired so she would be able to receive cosmic consciousness. With the operation, Ruth would have the deluxe-psychicability-upgrade module inserted into her brain. In addition to being able to see the past and the future and heal the sick, Ruth would also have clairaudience and clairvoyance. Messages from the spirits indicated that she would have “implanted speech” and would travel to different astral planes to give lectures and gather information. Ruth was about to become an all-knowing, all-seeing, nondancing goddess. This delicate operation was scheduled to take place immediately and would last a full two weeks. Ruth was instructed by the spirits not to eat any solid food while undergoing the surgery, as the digestion process would interfere with the rewiring of her circuits. Everything she needed in terms of nutrient support, antibacterial agents, and healing factors would be provided by the spirits in order to get her through this operation. The masters told her she would be able to survive off magnetic energy particles in the air, known in esoteric yoga as prana. According to the classic texts of yoga, these invisible particles sustain our bodies more than our physical food and water. Some schools of yoga also believe that we are born blank, without a personality, and as a baby inhales his or her first gulp of air, she also inhales her complete personality, contained in these prana particles.