Walking Through Walls

by Philip Smith

  “I’m not touching you. See where my hands are? What you’re feeling is the healing energy cleaning out the infection. I’m just guiding the energy to where it is needed. Stay still for another moment; we’re almost done.” For Pop, curing a vaginal infection was now as routine as applying a Band-Aid to a small cut. Mrs. Bennet wore an expression of disgust as my father proceeded to slowly move his hands over her pelvic area.

  Based on what my father had told me in the past, his patients all felt a warm, tingly sensation when he performed his laying on of hands. I wondered when Mrs. Bennet would calm down and enjoy her warm, tingly moment. As far as Mrs. Bennet was concerned, my father was fine for picking carpet or wallpaper, but she certainly didn’t want him to be physically close to her, especially down there. “Really, Lew. I don’t know what you’re doing, but I must ask you to stop. Now!”

  With a sudden jerk, my father’s hands flew away from her crotch as if it were a hot stove. I knew from watching previous healings that this meant that the session was over. Mrs. Bennet wiggled a bit as if adjusting herself and asked, “What was that snap I heard?” She quickly looked around the room with some alarm, as if the hook on her bra had just popped open. I was alarmed too—alarmed that she was going to hit him and start screaming for the police.

  “Don’t worry. That was the sound to signal you that the infection is leaving your body. It is now gone. You won’t have any more problems. In case there is any residual infection, I want to give you some homeopathic tablets that will take care of it. Here…” Opening the drawer next to his desk, my father pulled out a small brown glass bottle of homeopathic medicine called Arsenicum album, which he had imported from England. He handed the bottle to Mrs. Bennet and said, “Put two of these under your tongue in the morning and before bed. This will prevent the infection from coming back. Do this for four days.”

  I noticed that Mrs. Bennet slipped the bottle into her purse. She got up to leave and said, “Call me tomorrow with your decision about the carpets. Don’t forget we have a deadline to meet.” Waving to me as she left, she called out, “Philip, nice to see you. Tell your father to keep his hands off the ladies.” She giggled and disappeared into her waiting chauffeured Rolls.

  When she was gone, I said pointedly to my father, “She didn’t seem too happy with you touching her.”

  “But I never touched her.”

  “Yeah, but she thinks you did. I don’t think she appreciated her healing. Maybe it would be better to ask someone if they want to be healed before you did it. This way they won’t get so upset.” I couldn’t believe that I was giving my father advice, much less lecturing him. But I was both concerned that he had made an enemy of his client and that he was opening the door for serious problems.

  “It really doesn’t matter what she thinks. The important thing is that I removed the infection, and she won’t have any more problems. The infection could have really spread throughout her body. I have a responsibility to heal whenever I can.”

  “Pop, I have nothing against you healing somebody. It’s just that I don’t want to see you get into trouble. You don’t know who these people are. They could call the police and get you arrested. People don’t seem to hesitate to call the cops on you.”

  “Spirit only sends people to me who are in need. I am always watched over and taken care of. Don’t worry, nothing will ever happen to me.”

  “Okay.”

  Two days after Pop removed Mrs. Bennet’s infection, a man in a bad dark suit walked into the office carrying a heavy briefcase. This was a man who went out of his way to let the world know that he had no taste and no style. I immediately thought to myself, “What’s this guy doing here? He’s not going to be buying any custom bedspreads or furniture.”

  “Can I speak to Lew Smith?” the guy said to my father. This was really unusual. Almost everybody who walked into the studio knew exactly who my father was from his pictures in the paper or his appearances at various charity functions. Even the cashier at Tang Too, the local Chinese restaurant, knew Pop from his picture in the society page of the paper.

  My father got up from his desk and introduced himself. “I’m Lew. What can I do for you?” I could tell that my father was acting cautious by the way he kept his distance from this man. Usually Pop was very effusive when he greeted people. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like this guy.

  “Ray White, FDA. A complaint has been filed against you.”

  “Complaint? For what?” My father had a look of shock on his face. He and Mr. White stared at each other like two gunfighters. Neither one of them was going to be the first to back down. They were oblivious to my presence.

  Mr. White recited from memory, “Distributing unapproved pharmaceuticals, practicing medicine without a license, endangering the health and welfare of a U.S. citizen.”

  “Doing what?” Pop acted like he hadn’t heard the man properly. His mouth dropped open in disbelief.

  Mr. White repeated the charges. “The person who filed the complaint claimed you dispensed pills that gave them stomach cramps and induced hallucinations. They said that they had to be hospitalized. It is our responsibility to investigate these claims in order to protect the health and welfare of American citizens. We understand that you distributed some medication by the name of Arsenicum album. We don’t show any such medication in our registry. Where did you get this Arsenicum album?”

  As soon as I heard this, I knew that bitch Mrs. Bennet had done this to get back at my father because he had embarrassed her. I wished my father had listened to me and asked her permission before he began to heal her or just let her suffer with her infection. Meanwhile, he had probably saved her life—or at least a trip to the doctor. God knows what her millionaire husband would have thought about her unmentionable infection.

  Not realizing that he should have an attorney present, my father began to hand the FDA just what it wanted. “I don’t quite understand your charges, because Arsenicum is a homeopathic remedy made by pulverizing, refining, and distilling various substances such as arsenic until only the healing essence of those substances remains,” he said. “It triggers the body’s own healing mechanisms to produce well-being. Because there is no traceable medication in homeopathic tablets, it is impossible that Arsenicum could have induced hallucinations or any other disease.” My father assumed the matter was now closed and extended his hand to bid Mr. White good day.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but you said you are dispensing arsenic? Are you aware that arsenic is a poison?”

  “Arsenicum album works like a charm, especially on ambitious, demanding people. It seems to reorient their disposition; rebalances the body so that all the systems align harmoniously.”

  “Arsenic is a poison.” Mr. White was very upset.

  “Well, maybe it could be used as a poison, but in a homeopathic dose there is no poison, just the healing vibration. Do you understand the basic concept of homeopathy, known as ‘like cures like’? Look, a lot of medicines originate from poisons; take digitalis, for example. So when you compound something homeopathically…” Pop was talking way too much.

  “I’d like to see the bottle of this Arsenicum.” Mr. White pushed aside some colored-pencil renderings on my father’s desk and opened his attaché case. He raised his eyebrows as he removed a Polaroid camera and a ream of official-looking documents with my father’s name on them. I sensed that Mr. White thought that he was in the presence of a major criminal and that arresting Pop was going to make his career.

  Pop opened a desk drawer filled with various bottles of homeopathic tablets, copies of esoteric prayers and anatomy charts, and strange devices made from copper wire and magnets. Rummaging around his alternative medicine cabinet, he produced a brown glass bottle, which looked the same as the one he had given to Mrs. Bennet.

  Mr. White, excited by the easy cooperation of his prey, grabbed the bottle from my father’s hand and began examining it. I couldn’t understand why he was making such a big deal over this one bott
le. Since I was a kid, my father had given me homeopathic tablets whenever I was sick. I never had any side effects because side effects from homeopathic medicines are impossible.

  “You see, Mr. White, unlike the medicine the doctor gives you, these pills have no negative effects and will never harm you.”

  “No side effects?”

  “None. As I told you, there is no medication of any kind in these tablets. Just the essence and vibration of the healing substance.”

  “No medication?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “So these are nothing more than sugar pills?”

  “Not exactly. They are sugar pills that contain a specific healing energy but no specific medication.”

  “Mr. Smith, this is more serious than I imagined. Not only are you prescribing and distributing unauthorized and poisonous medications, you are peddling fraudulent medications. This is a matter we will have to bring before the attorney general.”

  My father blinked in astonishment. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and neither could I. The gravity of the situation—a situation I felt was about to spiral out of control—was finally beginning to hit him. Pop had always talked to me about the evil FDA and how it was in the hands of the moneyed pharmaceutical profession. I vividly recalled his countless stories of doctors being jailed by the FDA for trying to cure cancer through strange methods that included magnets and laetrile, a supposedly natural anticancer agent made from the pits of apricots. A lot of those doctors fled to Mexico and set up alternative cancer clinics to avoid persecution. Suddenly all those stories about the FDA were hitting home. I could just imagine my father being hauled away in handcuffs. They were definitely out to get him. I realized there was no way for him to retract his earlier statements. For the first time I could ever remember, Pop looked very nervous. I wanted to help in some way but just didn’t know what to do.

  Mr. White closed his attaché case, laid the bottle on its surface, and began to load his Polaroid with film.

  “What are you doing?” My father’s voice had gotten smaller.

  “Evidence,” Mr. White said with a “gotcha!” smile.

  I was surprised that my father, with all his psychic powers, couldn’t make Mr. White simply disappear into thin air. Usually he would say a prayer or contact a spirit guide who could make his problems vanish as suddenly as they had appeared. Just then Pop looked startled, as if he had heard something break. He began to swat at his neck like a mosquito was buzzing him. “Mr. White, would you excuse me for a moment?” he said. “There is a matter I need to attend to in the back. I’ll return as soon as it is taken care of.” The FDA agent didn’t bother to look up from his camera. He was busy trying to get the best angle of the bottle, as if he were shooting a jewelry catalog for Christie’s.

  I quickly followed my father into the back workroom. “Pop, what are you going to do? I don’t want you to go to jail.”

  “Don’t worry, I have no intention of going to jail. The spirits won’t let me. I am here to do good, and these idiots won’t stop me.” Along with improving his psychic abilities, my father was increasingly contacting his spirit guides for advice just as one would pick up the phone to ask a question of a lawyer or a good friend. I had no idea where or how he “met” these spirits. There was no formal process of introduction that I was aware of; they just seemed to appear and be on call at all times. Most of the time, he used their supernatural expertise for assistance with his healings, but at times like these, he used them to rearrange reality when necessary.

  “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.”