Finding Magic

by Sally Quinn

  By that time we had both had enough to drink so that he was a bit more willing to indulge me. I got out the board and placed it on the coffee table in the living room. I began to ask the board innocent questions, and the two of us placed our hands on the plastic heart with its needle and watched it move around. He began to relax. It was fun. Finally I got up my courage. I was concentrating with all my might. “Are we going to get married?” I asked. He looked at me quizzically.

  With the fingers of both of our hands on the heart we waited for several minutes. The heart began slowly to move. I held my breath. We felt it under our hands as it headed toward the letter N and rested there for a while. He suddenly seemed alarmed. It began to move again. This time, and I swear I was not pushing it—he would have felt it—the heart went straight for the letter O and settled firmly there. He looked at me in disbelief. I was trembling. I could feel the energy flowing through my body and into my hands, and I could feel his energy too. There was an endless silence. His eyes welled up. Finally, he spoke. “May I have my Porcellian pig back?”

  After that Ouija board moment, I knew that the occult part of my life from childhood had returned and that I would probably be involved with it for a while. I was right. There was always a part of me that could not deny the psychic energy I had been brought up with and the magic I believed in.

  Part Two

  Mystery

  The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

  —Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies

  Chapter 9

  Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

  —Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?

  When I first read Einstein’s words (see the Part Two epigraph), I had a shock of recognition. Beginning with the very idea that mystery is a “beautiful thing,” I knew that my thinking and feelings were completely in sync with his observations. I’d always been drawn to mystery. Of course, by its very definition mystery is something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain, very like many aspects of religion—from the Trinity to the origins of scripture to good and evil to who we are and where we came from. But one of the realities of the mysterious is that we often keep trying to reach beyond what we know to what might yet be known. We have hope for understanding. We have faith that we can move toward answers, that there’s always more to discover, within ourselves and outside of ourselves in the larger and largely unknown world. Yes, we can bring new worlds to light both within and without (or beyond). At this point in my life I was coming to appreciate the beauty of mystery.

  Sadly, mystery is not a valued commodity in Washington, except for the kind that’s behind closed doors.

  Washington is all about power, and seeking power often makes people, even good people, do bad things. I have spent most of my adult life in Washington, watching those seeking power, getting and losing it, using and abusing it.

  It can be soul-searing, even for an observer. A power center cannot, by its very nature, be a spiritual place. That doesn’t mean that the people who live here aren’t moral, don’t have values, don’t have ethics. It does mean that the quest for power, in many cases, trumps those virtues. It’s too bad more of those in power in Washington don’t understand the value of mystery.

  * * *

  It was a different environment in which I arrived back in the United States in 1966 after living in Germany. The sixties were in full flower, and the atmosphere only reinforced my feelings about why astrology, voodoo, psychic phenomena, witchcraft, palmistry, ghosts, and other forms of magic would seem, on some level, to be a more fitting way to overcome the stresses of a power-obsessed city than any traditional religion or form of faith. Certainly at that time they were for me. This is what I believed. I still considered myself an atheist, but I was a true nontraditionalist.

  Warren, though my age, was already ensconced as a journalist when we met, already part of the Washington scene. We began dating steadily from the first moment, and I spent most of my time living in his group house on the edge of the George Washington University campus downtown, five minutes from the White House. He had just left the Evening Star, and was the new bureau chief of the New York Post. Through Warren I met his journalist friends. To me they were the most interesting, exciting people I had ever known, so different from the people I had met in the theater world, which was very insular. These people seemed to be always in the know, well aware of everything that was going on. They followed each breaking story, they were constantly on the move. Nothing was routine. Nothing was ever boring. I was hooked. Like those in the theater world, they were almost all liberals, but as objective as possible in their reporting and if any of them was religious, I certainly never knew about it. Protestant, Catholic, Jewish—they all seemed the same to me. There was one thing that mattered. The story. Get the story; get it first and get it right. That was their religion. The First Amendment was their religion. That worked for me.

  Warren and I had similar backgrounds. His father was of Scottish descent; his mother, Scottish and English. Both his parents’ families and my mother’s had emigrated from Scotland to North Carolina. My mother’s name was Sara Bette. Warren’s mother was Sarah Virginia. Warren’s family had a special closet in their apartment where they hung and cured their country hams. My mother kept a jar of bacon grease next to the stove and cooked nothing without it. We all ate a lot of grits. My father was a functioning alcoholic. He only drank when he wasn’t working, but when he started, he couldn’t stop. Warren’s father was periodically a raging alcoholic. It was often so bad that he would have to be taken to a swell drying-out clinic on the Upper East Side, and Warren was often the family member delegated to deal with his father.

  Both families had had religious upbringings. My mother was a Scottish Presbyterian as was Warren’s. My father was an Episcopalian, his family having converted somewhere along the line from Catholicism. By the time they were settled in New York, both of Warren’s parents were members of the Riverside Church in the Morningside Heights section of Upper Manhattan. It was founded in 1930 by the Rockefeller family as a Baptist church but had long before this time become interdenominational.

  It was and is a famous church—the tallest church in the United States. Its awe-inspiring nave is modeled on Chartres Cathedral in France. By the 1960s it was already known as what the New York Times later called a “stronghold of activism and political debate . . . influential on the nation’s religious and political landscapes.” To be a deacon there, as Warren’s father was, was enormously prestigious.

  Sunday was a big day at the Hoges’. The ritual would begin in the morning when Mrs. Hoge would set the table for Sunday dinner (lunch in the Southern vernacular) with her best crystal and china, her best lace tablecloth. The ham would have been taken out of the “smoke closet” the night before and put in the oven. We would all dress in our best Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes, white gloves and all.

  What nobody knew until Sunday morning was what kind of state Mr. Hoge would be in. We were all apprehensive and agitated until he appeared. Had he had too much to drink the night before? Had he been roaring drunk? Had he taken a knife to his wife’s beautiful living room damask curtains? It didn’t matter. His mood might not be the most cordial if he’d been on a binge, but his demeanor was perfect.

  He could have drunk his way to China and back and yet he would app
ear immaculately groomed, his hair combed to perfection, his face perfectly shaved, and in some cases I often suspected he had put a bit of white powder on his face. He would be dressed in full deacon’s attire, silver-gray tie, tails, striped pants, the works. We would all pile into his huge Chrysler Imperial sedan and drive slowly and ceremoniously to church. Mr. Hoge was a particularly big deal at church. He was a tall, imposing, distinguished man with a majestic carriage, a mane of wavy gray hair, dark brooding eyebrows, and a strong determined chin. People kowtowed to him, revered him, followed him. He was on an equal par with the famous minister Dr. Robert McCracken, another Scot with a rolling burr, whose sermons lasted forty-five minutes but held most everyone rapt. At least while in church Mr. Hoge was the most pious of men.

  Back at the apartment, Warren would carefully mix the Bloody Marys with no alcohol but lots of seasoning, which Mr. Hoge drank with little relish. Mrs. Hoge would place the ham before him at the table with a perfectly sharpened carving knife and he would slice the ham so finely one could almost see through it. We would pass the food, family style, and there would be polite chitchat about the service and the sermon. After Sunday dinner, Mr. Hoge would disappear to his study for a “nap.” We would not see him again for the rest of the day.

  The Sunday rituals were reminiscent of my time in Statesboro as a child. I was emotional about them. They had the feel of having an outsized importance that was mysterious and that I didn’t altogether understand. They were close to religion for me, and also for Warren, who was as terribly conflicted by what he saw at home as I was. I later learned that although we both felt something wholly spiritual on these Sundays, his reverential feelings about going to church were connected to his love of the choral music, which still draws him to services.

  Although my father didn’t drink as much as Mr. Hoge, he certainly could tie one on. He almost never went to church, though he was unabashedly religious. The contrast of the sinner and the saint brought up all the old feelings I had about organized religion and what it meant. Mr. Hoge was a decent and honorable man who loved his family and worked hard to give them a good life. There was no question that church had great meaning for him. But he was clearly so conventional in his views that he couldn’t distinguish between actual faith and belief and the posturing that accompanied the churchgoing life. For me it made no sense. Atheist though I thought I was, I always loved the services at Riverside, and I always wanted them to mean something to me as they did to Warren. I was, even then, yearning for something that I couldn’t articulate.

  * * *

  In Washington Warren and I fell in with a group of antiwar types immediately, though they were journalists. Every night, it seemed, we were out at gatherings where people sat around on living room floors, standing outside in gardens, drinking wine and occasionally smoking pot, and always, always discussing the war. Norman Mailer came to town to lead a march against the war and we went as observers, of course. As journalists Warren and his friends couldn’t participate. But our sentiments were with the marchers, the demonstrators, those speaking out against Vietnam. Warren and some of his friends were once reprimanded by an older journalist covering the White House for wearing JOURNALISTS AGAINST THE WAR buttons. As the war continued we became more and more adamant against it. The wrongness of it, the intrinsic evil of what we were doing seemed to mobilize all of us.

  It divided so many families, including mine. I never discussed it with my father but he knew. My mother was against the war. She never discussed it either. My father didn’t like Warren. He was suspicious of any young man who wasn’t fighting in the war. Warren was in the Reserves. That wasn’t good enough. When my father went to see Dr. Strangelove—though controversial, it was still one of the most popular antimilitary films of the decade—he wanted to know what Warren thought of it. Warren was reluctant to admit he liked it, knowing that my father would hate it because of the way it made fun of the military. Later, to Warren’s shock, my father clapped Warren on the back, smiling and telling him how much he had loved the movie. “Boy,” he said, “they really socked it to the air force.”

  One night in the heat of summer, Warren and I went to a party at a group house on Macomb Street in very staid Cleveland Park, an odd place for a bunch of hippie radicals to live. There was the usual Chianti, slices of pizza, and dips and chips. Seymour Hersh, a fervent antiwar activist, journalist, and radio commentator, was one of the occupants of the house, which had little or no furniture.

  Sy was a well-known figure, a leader in the movement. Everyone looked up to him. He was a radical. He was also exceptionally smart, funny, and mischievous. He asked me if I’d ever smoked pot. I told him I hadn’t. “Okay,” he said. “Now’s the time.” I was really excited and nervous, but I decided I was ready to take the plunge.

  Sy, Warren, and I went out on the front porch, looking out over the manicured lawns and beautifully kept houses in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Washington. Of course there were no chairs so we sat on the porch floor, leaning up against the wall of the house in our jeans. Sy pulled out a package and paper and rolled a joint, lit it, took a huge drag, and passed it to me. I smoked at the time so that part didn’t bother me. I tentatively held it between my thumb and forefinger the way he did. I breathed in deeply, expecting to float away into space. Nothing happened. The joint was passed around among the three of us until we finished it, me waiting for the effect. Still nothing. I began to feel a bit fuzzy, a little mellow. I giggled. However, in touch with the divine I wasn’t. Others in the house were smoking too. Some were lying on the floor in a daze; some were laughing hysterically; some, I suspect, had disappeared into other rooms to have sex. After a while, Warren and I left and went home. I slept well. I woke up the next morning feeling cheated and deeply disappointed. I had wanted a sublime experience. I hadn’t had one. It hadn’t occurred to me how much I had been hoping to get a glimpse of something up there, something unreachable, something that would make me into, or rather help me to believe in, something larger than I was. Maybe I was hoping to find what Timothy Leary had promised. I resigned myself to the fact that that something was not there. Or if it was, I hadn’t found the right path to it. I shrugged it off. My astrology, tarot, and other practices would certainly do me for the time being. In fact, I took a lot of solace from them. I would continue to for the rest of my life.

  * * *

  Warren and I broke up a lot. Whenever he felt we were getting too close, he would run away. It became a pattern. I would then date other people; he would get jealous and come back, then I would stop seeing the other people, and we would live happily ever after until the next episode. I had a number of jobs during this time, nothing I really loved and certainly nothing meaningful. I was rudderless and drifting. I wanted to get married. He didn’t, but he didn’t want me to be with anyone else, either.

  So I started going out with one of his greatest rivals—someone who had been a year ahead of him at Yale, a brilliant musician, someone he really admired. He was good-looking, sexy, and talented. I suspected he was working for the CIA, which gave him an air of mystery. I liked him a lot, but I was not in love with him. It worked. Warren called me one night at my tiny studio apartment in Georgetown. He had driven his car up to the mountains of Virginia near the Shenandoah River and had almost driven off the edge. He wanted me back. He wanted to marry me. We got engaged in February of 1969.

  The engagement announcement ran first in the Charlotte, North Carolina, newspapers, where Warren’s family was from, and then in the Washington Evening Star. We were to be married on March 29. I bought a wedding dress. I ordered a blue velvet sofa to be made for our first apartment. His parents were thrilled. My parents were thrilled—sort of. Actually, Daddy didn’t approve of my marrying a journalist, but I was getting long in the tooth so he was a little desperate to marry me off.

  Warren clearly was not thrilled. Neither was I. I thought this was what I wanted, but the fact was that I didn’t want to marry someone who basicall
y had to be roped into it. More than that, though, I wasn’t ready to be tied down. I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. I hadn’t accomplished anything on my own. I had little meaning in my life. I thought that by getting engaged, by getting married, I would find meaning, but it all seemed so shallow and empty.

  The idea of being a housewife, of sitting at home waiting for my husband to come back from work, of bringing out the pipe and slippers, of learning how to cook perfect little dinners, and, worse, of having children and spending the day with babies struck terror in my heart. Imagine my dismay when my mother gave me a book called A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband.

  I wanted a career. I wanted to be an actress. That hadn’t panned out, but I still yearned for an identity, something other than being Mrs. Anybody. I was so confused.

  The idea of going from one stupid, boring secretarial job to another was unthinkable. I didn’t see that there was any choice but to get married. At least that would give me some sort of position, some place I could be safe until I figured things out.

  As we got closer and closer to the date I felt sicker and sicker. We hadn’t chosen a church. Episcopal? Presbyterian? Baptist? Neither one of us even knew what we were. The obvious place was the army chapel at Fort Myer, Virginia, where my parents had lived and where my sister had gotten married a few years before. It was not for any religious reasons I wanted to get married in the chapel. It was just that it was, as they say, “the done thing.” Where else were we going to get married? It was definitely not going to be a spiritual experience for either one of us. Something was wrong here, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t getting married be that spiritual experience we were both thinking about? Joining our souls, possibly with God as our witness? I was getting more and more nervous. What was I doing? ’Til death do us part? I couldn’t go through with it.