Walking Through Walls (16 page)

I sat in the dark just thinking, my mind going round and round, wondering if I could have done anything different, was there anyone I could call. Finally I decided there was nothing I could do to help my father. Cynically, I figured, “This is the guy with the magic powers. Let him bend the jail bars with his psychic energy, make himself invisible, and fly out of jail. Let's see him get out of this one.” After about an hour, I drifted off to sleep.

At some point in the middle of the night, I woke up hearing a car pull up in the driveway. The headlights were shining into my room. Though half awake, I heard my father's voice say, “Thanks for the ride.” I thought I was dreaming. Then I heard a car door slam, and the car pulled out of the driveway. Briefly, I considered the possibility of getting out of bed to find out how he got out of this one. But I was so tired and not in the mood to hear how some spirit suddenly made the police sergeant tear up the police report and release my father. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

My father had just ruined my summer plans. I had rigorously scheduled every day of the week to sit mindlessly in Bayfront Park on my homemade tie-dyed blanket with incense posted at each of the four corners. Three fabulous months of watching girls in bikinis playing Frisbee with their dogs, filthy middle-aged men copping drug deals, runaways panhandling, and impromptu lectures by Buckminster Fuller and other cultural icons. It was a front-row seat to the most drugged-out scene in town.

Pop had other ideas as to how I should be spending my time. He asked me to come work for him at his design studio, where he could keep an eye on me. A summer job—just what I didn't want. Frankly, I would have much rather been out surfing and destroying my mind with drugs like every other sixteen-year-old white-trash teenager from my high school. But with my mother no longer showing up at the office, he needed a little extra help when he was busy with patients or clients. I was hired to move boxes, straighten up, and water the plants.

Pop's chic studio, located in the heart of the Miami Design District, was the former processing plant of what was once a large pineapple plantation. In the old days, the area was known as Lemon City because of its citrus crop. Downstairs, his showroom and conference area were decorated in early-sixties high modernism with a touch of classic Japanese minimalism. While the faux-Chinese look, with lots of red and black lacquer, was popular in the new condos springing up along Collins Avenue on Miami Beach, Pop favored the more serene Japanese Zen aesthetic. White angular desks that served as his sketching areas jutted out from the walls. The ceiling lights were filtered through gauzy fabric that looked a bit like rice paper, giving the entire office a modernist Eastern sensibility. Upstairs in the workrooms, a team of seamstresses fueled by thick black pots of Cuban espresso managed roaring industrial sewing machines to produce the bedspreads and draperies destined for Lew Smith–designed residences throughout the Caribbean.

Whatever project my father was working on usually gained a fair amount of attention.
Home Furnishings Daily, Florida Architecture,
and
House Beautiful
would give my father write-ups about his interiors and furniture designs. Or a small item would appear in the evening
Miami News
such as, “Those way-out colorful earrings that the girls on the
Gleason Show
are wearing were designed by Miami's bead-drapery king, Lew Smith.”

Pop's impeccable attention to detail and original designs had caught the attention of such stellar local architects as Morris Lapidus and Alfred Browning Parker, who often collaborated with him on interiors for their residential commissions. Pop's office was ground zero for the rich and famous seeking whatever morsels of design that could be found in style-starved Miami. His roster of clients continued to grow and included
The Jackie Gleason Show,
Dean Martin needing beaded designs for his new restaurant, Walt Disney wanting some sparkling beaded draperies for one of the animation studios, beaded curtains for the Houston Astrodome, General Motors commissioning beaded curtains for its pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Jack Dempsey needing new furniture designs, the Cowles family wanting some beautiful draperies for Indian Creek, or some rich French folks desperate for a quick redo à la tropicale on a couple of Jamaican villas before Ian Fleming dropped by for lunch. It was not unusual to see a conga line of Rolls-Royces and their uniformed chauffeurs parked outside the office while their owners reviewed designs for their latest renovation with my father.

I was not exactly a brilliant addition to his design studio, as I slouched around all day in knee-high moccasin boots ringed with fringe and American flag shirts, acting aggressively bored. To fill the time, I ran a few errands and talked on the phone with Maya while my father met with clients in between psychic healings.

Despite this steady flow of glittering clientele, his office was slowly beginning to take on the look and feel of a free-needle clinic. Instead of a few chic ladies sauntering in with an armful of fabric swatches, lines of indigent-looking people formed in front of his office first thing in the morning, waiting to see my father for his magic touch. Word had spread that here was a man who could cure anyone of anything—for free. Pop never charged for these healings. He considered his ability a gift from God that money could not buy.

“Pardon
ME
!!!” the rich ladies would squawk, announcing their presence and demanding that the line of the dirty and infirm respectfully part to grant them entrance to my father's studio.

“I mean,
reaaally,
Lew, those people in front of your office are just
too
much. Wouldn't it be better to have some
attractive
-looking people sitting on your sidewalk? Can't you just give them some money, so they'll go somewhere else?”

“They're not here for money.”

“Oh,
reaaally
! I suppose they are here to have their living rooms redone, or perhaps they are just dying for some of that
faaabulous
French silk you showed me last week to reupholster their sofas, ha, ha, ha.”

“Actually, you're right, they
are
dying,” my father would reply softly.

This remark was met with an alert silence.

“Those people out front are my patients.”

“How
charming
! I didn't realize you were a doctor
and
a decorator. My, isn't that wonderful. Dr. Kildare and Sister Parish all rolled into one. Lew Smith, you certainly
are
remarkable. And where did you earn your medical degree?
Haaarvard?
That must be it. I would peg you as a Harvard man.”

Pop would let them go on and on until they ran out of steam.

“I heal these people.”

“Oh, you
dooo
? So you're like some sort of witch doctor? Ha, ha, ha.”

“Not really. I use a power given to me by God to help whomever I can.”

“Oh my, a religious man. You're not one of those nutty Christian Scientists who don't allow their children to get vaccinated, are you? Oh, I certainly hope not. Those people are just dreadful. They have one of those reading rooms in Palm Beach. How the Worth Avenue Association ever let those people rent office space is just beyond me. What were they ever thinking? These people should just give up and get themselves to a real doctor; we'd all be better off. I mean, it's all just too, too much. A good shot of penicillin never hurt anyone.”

With the conversation headed toward a nonproductive showdown, my father would usually proceed to the business at hand. “Now, for the living room entranceway, what I suggest is that we move the wall and…” It was obvious, even to me, that the bluebloods of Palm Beach and the illicit rich of the Caribbean did not enjoy waiting while my father healed someone's cataracts or heart condition. These people were used to getting their way whenever and however they wanted it. They did not find my father's newfound abilities terribly amusing.

Not only were the ladies disturbed by the sick and dying who competed for my father's attention, but they began to take umbrage at his changing staff. Mom had been the social butterfly who made all the matrons and decorators feel as if they were at a cocktail party as they went through the trauma of redecorating. Her departure dramatically altered the tenor of the office.

Long before it became federal law, Pop was always an equal opportunity employer. Back in the sixties, he hired blacks, homosexuals, Cubans, and the handicapped when no one else would. His multicultural staff adored him and enjoyed being part of the glamorous decorating business. But increasingly he was hiring newly acquired friends who were “on the spiritual path.” His ever-changing staff from his personal Psychic Friends Network didn't even bother to pretend to have a sense of design or color. Instead they were hired on the basis of their questionable claims of being able to see auras and contact the dead on demand. Pop just liked being surrounded by people with whom he could share his newfound enthusiasm for anything metaphysical. As a result of this change in staffing, his studio became much less productive. The new employees may have known about psychic phenomena, but answering the phone or taking a simple message was far beyond their capabilities. While some of his clients were charmed by my father's eccentric staff, most were not. They tolerated pop's supernatural interests only because he was so well known, and they wanted his impeccable taste to grace their houses.

Eventually, even the
Miami Herald
had to alter its reporting on my father's innovative design work. “Decorator Enjoys Bonus Career as Spiritual Healer” was the headline of an article on my father's newfound talents. The reporter stated, “He says he's a spiritual healer—one who serves as a channel for the spirit to travel through and heal the sick. Sometimes his colleagues on Decorators' Row stop in during lunch hour for a quick healing of a headache or other problem.” Toward the end of the article, my father mentioned his son, “who also shows signs of exceptional healing talent.” Not the kind of publicity I was looking for.

One afternoon Mrs. Elizabeth Bennet from Palm Beach, a longtime client, blew into the office wearing her signature Lilly Pulitzer pink dress ensemble and a head of expensively done hair. Perky and ultrarich, Mrs. Bennet was typical of Pop's socialite clients who did nothing but spend money all day long. As a result, she expected the world to stop the moment she walked into a room. Over the years, I had seen Mrs. Bennet request a new dining room, a new living room, a new maid's room, or anything else to give her a new project. When I was younger, Pop would take me as his assistant up to her enormous villa on Ocean Boulevard. My job was to hold the measuring tape as Mrs. Bennet found yet another part of the house that needed my father's attention.

Seeing my long hair and hippie beads, Mrs. Bennet shot me a look of imperial disdain. I'm sure that in her eyes I was a design error in my father's otherwise tastefully appointed office. She was the kind of shallow, materialistic consumer who was the target of my current hippie, anticapitalist hostility—even though she was providing the money that helped keep me in incense and bell-bottoms. So much for logic.

“Lew,
dahling,
we have a crisis going on.” She emphasized the urgency of the matter by slamming her pink-gloved hands on her too-trim hips at the exact moment she uttered the word
crisis.
She stood with rigid posture in front of my father's desk. I could only imagine what the emergency was this time. In the past, I had seen her so distraught that she was begging to be institutionalized simply because someone's charity ball for the cancer league was scheduled on the same night as her charity function for the opera guild. Without missing a beat, she queried in an insistent tone, “Pink or gray?” After her pronouncement, she seemed to elongate her neck and peer down at my father, waiting for his inspired design decision. I had no idea what she was talking about. Mrs. Bennet and her other rich friends had this way of talking in a code that only they seemed to understand.

“Tell me, Lew, which is it? I must know immediately. Pink or gray?” She rapidly tapped her gloved hand on my father's desk as if demanding counter service at a luncheonette. “Mr. Maxwell wants to write up the house for
Palm Beach Illustrated,
so it has to be right. I don't know which will photograph better. The pink might be too bright, and the gray too dull. We can't afford any mistakes, because he has promised me the cover. We need to get this matter settled instantly.” Like a general announcing the start of a military campaign, she banged her gloved fist on his desk for emphasis.

My father did not immediately respond to her emergency but instead tilted his head to the side like a dog hearing a distant whistle. He was distracted by something he had heard, and he looked back at her as she stood there ready for her marching orders. “Elizabeth, I hate to tell you this, but…” A pained expression came over her face, as if her name had been misspelled in the Social Register.

“Oh, for God's sake, Lew, don't tell me you can't get this done in time. I just can't impress upon you the urgency of this matter. Everything is riding on this—”

“You have a vaginal infection.”

I don't know if it was the word
vaginal
or the word
infection,
but I watched Mrs. Bennet's military bearing melt, as if she had just received a shotgun blast to her pelvis. I waited for her to utter “pink or gray?” just one last time as she was going down. Instead, through clenched teeth and a tight smile, she said, “
Leeeew,
whatever are you talking about? I am in perfect health. Besides, this is not a doctor's office. I am here to talk about my carpet. Now, can we please get back to this pressing business? Robert is waiting in the car, and I have to get back to Palm Beach by two so that Mr. John can do my hair.”

“Elizabeth, are your discharges painful?”

“Don't be silly.” Turning her head to look away, Mrs. Bennett let out one of those polite little teatime laughs. “I have no idea what you're talking about.” She waved her hand as if shooing a fly. “Now, if we use the pink carpet for…”