Walking Through Walls by Philip Smith Read Free Book Online

so let’s just save you the effort and throw them in the trash right now. After all, that’s all those chairs are anyway, nothing but trash . Now, I want those chairs out of here immediately …’”
    â€œOh, I don’t believe he said that; he didn’t really, did he? So what did Mrs. Worthington say?”
    â€œWell, that’s just the beginning. So then Mrs. Worthington said to Mary—I mean Marty…”
    And on it went. As the gabfest continued, my father would sketch out new designs for furniture or talk on the phone with clients. My mother was all ears while Pop ignored the gossiping magpies and focused on serious issues, such as whether the piping on a sofa should be magenta or mustard. Occasionally when he went out to meet with a new client, my mother, left alone in the studio, not only held court but would often attract new clients. She had a way, which she never really appreciated, of convincing people with just a few simple phrases that there was a better, chicer, more glamorous way of designing the dining room than what they currently had. And while they were at it, a new sunroom, cabana, and draperies for all twelve rooms wouldn’t be such a bad idea, would it?
    If it hadn’t been for my mother, my father would have been just a plain old heterosexual decorator dressed in dreary suits. Instead she convinced him to wear custom suits and artisan-made jewelry, and drive jazzy cars. She set the tone for all of us. Her style was accepted and admired by my father and his circle, but the outside world was another story.
    Those southern hicks had no idea what had just whooshed by them as she glided through the A&P with her black patent leather heels, oversized sunglasses the shade of midnight, her black patent leather pocketbook the size of a small footlocker, massive gold and jade earrings, rings on practically every finger, a small pillbox hat wrapped in black iridescent feathers that looked like crows’ wings, and, of course, her gold cigarette holder with an unlit Camel projecting from it. Believe me, at just four-feet-nine, she did not go unnoticed.
    From the moment she woke up until she turned off the switch of the Venetian chandelier above their bed, my mother lived as if she were constantly walking into a movie premiere—hers. Any movie was a glamour event, even at the downscale Tropicaire Drive-in Theatre, where an entire car packed with eight people watched a movie for fifty cents, or for free, if you had ten RC Cola bottle caps. At the Tropicaire, we would put down the convertible top, hook the speaker to the window, and watch the movie under the stars. Paradise.
    Mom, wearing her darkest sunglasses, always sat straight up in rapt attention, completely absorbed in the film, while Pop and I would swat mosquitoes. Mom was too engrossed in the movie to be bitten. The bugs knew enough to leave her alone. She explained her natural immunity simply as, “I’m too sour for them.” Eventually I would fall asleep in that little concave area where the top went down while my parents sat through double features such as Gypsy and Hatari! Though Mom pulled off her starlet pose with great panache, occasionally it was a bit too much even for my father. At times, for what he felt was her own good, he would admonish her in an attempt to bring her back to earth. “How can you see a thing with those damn glasses on?” he would say. His practicality only encouraged her to buy another dozen pair. This, in essence, was the yin and yang of my parents’ relationship. Mom was always ready for her close-up, while my father was ready for his blast-off to other dimensions.
    When Mom got dressed in the morning, it required more effort, concentration, and theatricality than any Broadway star preparing for opening night. Pop had already risen with the birds, had his breakfast, and left for the office. For my mother, her first two waking hours were spent slowly