by Sally Quinn
Unable to stand it any longer, one afternoon I gathered all our stuffed animals that we had given each other, put them in a bag, got on the Georgetown bus to downtown Washington, and went to the National Press Building where Warren worked. I marched into his office and dumped all the animals on the torn leather sofa, crying “I can’t do this.” He began to cry as well, out of relief and desperation. We just looked at each other in anguish. I turned and fled, down the elevator, and back on the bus to Georgetown. I got off at the movie theater on M Street, went in, and bought a ticket to The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. It was almost empty at that time of day. I think I sat through it at least four times crying the whole time, until it was late at night. I was the last one out of the theater. I barely made it back to my apartment. I honestly didn’t think I would survive.
My mother came and picked me up the next morning and took me home. I lay on my bed for days in a depression. My father came in one night, three sheets to the wind, and lay down beside me, cradling me in his arms and sobbing as well. Lynda Byrd Johnson got married that week. I watched her wedding on TV, feeling a terrible despair. I would never get married. I would never love again. My life was over.
Finally my parents couldn’t bear my suffering, so they put me on a plane for California to stay with my sister, Donna, who was married with two children at the time, two-year-old Christopher and baby Schuyler. They were my salvation, from the moment I woke up until the moment they went to bed. I was sleepwalking through the days.
One night after the children had gone to bed, I took a walk up into the hills in Donna’s neighborhood, across the bay in Piedmont. It was a cool California night and the sky was so clear I felt I could reach out and scoop up the stars. I stopped at a point at the top, where a slight breeze was blowing, encircled by a grove of very tall evergreen trees. It seemed a mystical place. I almost expected Druids to come prancing out from behind the rocks, and I could swear I heard chanting. Suddenly I felt a terrible pain in my chest, and I began gasping for air. What was happening to me? I lay down on a bed of pine needles and simply stared into space. Before I knew it I was caught up in a swiftly moving vortex. The stars and the moon began swirling around and, though I was lying down, I had to steady myself from the dizziness.
My body seemed to be lifted up in some kind of embrace. I was being held and coddled and stroked. I felt loved and cherished. I also felt tiny as I gazed up at the universe. There was such power there. I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to be swallowed up in it. I had a real longing for it. I wanted to understand it. Then I realized that I was, I did, I had. I understood that there was something bigger than me. That I would be taken care of. That I was loved. That I would be all right. Some people might say that I had seen God, or at least felt a presence. I wouldn’t exactly put it that way. I would say, rather, that I had witnessed true mystery. Not for the last time.
* * *
It was Halloween of the next year, and Warren and I had reconciled again. Back in “just dating” mode, we were going to a costume party. We came up with a fabulous idea. I would wear red leotards and paint squares on them and go as a brick and Warren would wear overalls and carry a trowel and go as a bricklayer. Get it? We thought it was screamingly funny.
We got to the party and our costumes were a big hit. We were the talk of the evening, even though I didn’t really feel very glamorous or sexy. Actually, Warren didn’t either. The more I thought about it, the more I thought we looked really dumb. As the evening wore on, the lights were dimmed; we all had had a lot to drink and the dancing began. Suddenly the door opened, and the most beautiful girl I had ever seen walked in. I knew her vaguely and had always thought she was pretty, but this night she looked spectacular. She had masses of lustrous long dark curly hair, almond eyes, eyelashes to die for, high cheekbones, and lips that were like pillows.
She was dressed as a Spanish dancer with a full swirling skirt down to her well-turned ankles, an off-the-shoulder white blouse, exposing her alabaster skin, and a wide sash encircling her tiny waist. I felt threatened instantly. I disliked her because I saw the look on Warren’s face. There was a pain in my gut as my stomach twisted itself in knots. Somehow I knew what was going to happen. Warren was going to fall for her and leave me and I couldn’t go through another breakup again. I just couldn’t.
Of course she had castanets on her long slim fingers and she knew how to use them. Which she did. Her date, a tall nice-looking but very stiff guy, simply stood behind her in the shadows. He was the prop. She began to dance, slowly at first, then faster, twirling around, clicking her castanets, tossing back her hair, rotating her hips, almost as though she were in a trance. Everyone was mesmerized. When she finished, Warren went over to her and offered to get her a drink. The line formed behind him. He spent the rest of the evening by her side, obviously besotted. She led him on, laughing and flirting and batting those eyelashes. She knew we were together but barely gave me a glance, acting as though I didn’t exist.
I tried to make conversation, tried to dance, tried to smile. What I really felt like doing was throwing up. I tried several times to suggest that we leave but he was having none of it. He was completely hypnotized by her seduction. Finally the party broke up. She left with her date, and we followed quickly behind. I watched carefully to see if there had been any exchange of phone numbers but couldn’t tell. We drove back to his place in silence, got ready for bed in silence, turned our backs to each other in silence. The next day we both went to work.
The following days were fraught with tension. Neither one of us spoke of her. I didn’t know whether he was talking to her or not, seeing her or not. I did know that he was thinking of her because he seemed totally distracted. I couldn’t stand it another minute. I had to do something. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her—I just wanted her to go away.
My understanding of hexes had come from the staff in Statesboro, but I had never actually seen their voodoo ceremonies. It was important to have a representative or a likeness of the person you wanted to put a hex on. One is supposed to have a lock of hair or something that belonged to that person. It had to be done at night, preferably on a full moon. Writing something on paper about the person and burning it helps. Fire is crucial. Chanting was essential, over and over the same words to cajole the spirits into action.
As a double Cancerian—with a sun sign and rising sign both in Cancer—I am told that I am at the height of powers on the full moon, so that would make a hex doubly effective. I had seen my mother put a hex on our veterinarian, and she had already told me about putting a hex on my doctor from Tokyo. All she had done was tell them to their faces to drop dead. I didn’t know whether I believed or not that she had caused their deaths.
I had also known it to work in Statesboro. I think some of the staff put a hex on Uncle Roy Beaver. He didn’t last long after Aunt Ruth died. I won’t say exactly what I did—even now I think that would be bad luck for me—but I practiced what I learned and observed. I worked on the hex for several days until I felt that it would have some effect. Don’t ask me how I knew when it was enough. I just did. I commanded her to disappear.
The worst happened. A few days later I learned that she had committed suicide. The details were vague. I almost died myself. I was stricken with guilt, horrified and sick. Had I actually done this? Was I responsible for what happened? I really couldn’t possibly have had that kind of power.
My rational mind told me it was all nonsense. But hadn’t I seen and heard my mother doing it? What was I to believe? Belief in the powers of magic was something I wrestled with the way the religious wrestle with their belief in God.
Warren was visibly upset. He also looked at me accusingly. It wasn’t that he actually thought I was at fault, but he suspected I was not sad, so he was confused about why I seemed so distraught.
The day after she died, her father called me. I was stunned when he said, “Sally, I want you to know how much our daughter admired
you and considered you a friend. Her mother and I will be forever grateful for your kindness to her. It means a lot to us. Thank you so much.”
I was at a loss and couldn’t understand what he was saying about my relationship with this girl I felt I barely knew. I won’t ever get over that call. I never told a soul about what I had done except my brother. He was alarmed and warned me not to do it again.
I vowed never to put another hex on anybody—a vow I was not to keep.
The strange thing was, I actually prayed over it. I prayed to God. Yes, God, whoever that might be. “Dear God,” I beseeched, “please don’t let me have been responsible for this.”
I didn’t hear back.
Chapter 10
The word religion points to that area of human experience where one way or another we come upon Mystery as a summons to pilgrimage, where we sense beyond and beneath the realities of every day a Reality no less real because it can only be hinted at in myths and rituals; where we glimpse a destination that we can never fully know until we reach it.
—Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
The casting call was for early June of 1969. I had decided to go back to acting. My life, at just one month shy of age twenty-eight, was decidedly unsuccessful and professionally dismal. While Warren was scaling the heights at the New York Post and soon to be called back to New York to be groomed as editor, I had gone from one unfulfilling job to another. Never mind the horrible Kelly Girl days in New York where I was constantly getting fired after a few days because my secretarial skills (I still can’t file), not to mention my attitude, were decidedly unsatisfactory.
A brief stint as the PR girl for “Murray Zarat’s Pet Festival and Animal Husbandry Exhibition” at Coney Island had ended in disaster. I persuaded Murray to put on a Noah’s Ark event and trot his animals out on the beach in the spring two by two. The animals ran wild, the cops were called, one of the sheep gave birth to twins, and Murray fired me. I couldn’t understand why since I had alerted Channel 4 News in New York and they had covered the catastrophe, complete with my naming the twins after the cops, Al Olson and Bob Mahoney, all of which made the local news.
A short-lived tryout as a go-go dancer (clothed) in a cage in a nightclub in Manhattan was also discouraging. After an audition for the role of the father’s girlfriend in the movie Flipper, someone in casting offered me the job if I would sleep with him. I said I would have to ask my father. I never got a call back. An interview with the editor of Newsweek to be a secretary didn’t go well when he told me my job would be to get coffee.
I came back to Washington hoping to fare somewhat better and had a series of jobs. I worked for the secretary of the Smithsonian, Dillon Ripley. That office turned out to be a legendary snake pit.
During this time, I was very social and attended a lot of charity balls and embassy parties, hoping to make more connections. At one point in September of 1970, I was a guest at the Hope Ball in Washington. My parents were there as well, though not at the same table. When the main course arrived, fish, I had a sudden horrible vision of my mother, who had a ticklish throat, choking. I turned to my dinner partner and told him what I had just foreseen. I got up immediately and went across the room to where my parents were sitting. I explained my vision to my mother and begged her, “Please don’t eat the fish.” Being a good “Scots” woman, psychic herself, and having been the subject of my prognostications before, she agreed not to touch her meal. I left the dance before my parents. Shortly afterward, Mother, who was talking to Mayor Walter Washington, took a sip of wine and started to choke. She turned blue. Evidence of the whole situation was written up in a column in the Washington Daily News. A very real psychic episode . . .
Because of the many people I met, I finally landed a great job as the social secretary for the dashing Algerian ambassador and former revolutionary Cherif Guellal. Cherif was extraordinarily good-looking, charming, and madly in love with the former Miss America Yolande Fox, an Alabama beauty queen turned left-wing political activist and widow of movie executive Matty Fox.
Cherif had no clue about embassy social life, and Yolande couldn’t have cared less, so I ran the show. It was a pretty big show. Cherif lived in Lyndon Johnson’s former estate, “The Elms,” and we entertained constantly. He loved parties; Yolande would come when she felt like it. We tried to invite the most interesting people in Washington and beyond. I did the guest lists, the tables, the flowers, the menus, and the seating.
Warren and I became very close to Yolande and Cherif. When we weren’t having fancy embassy parties, we were at her Georgetown house with a bunch of hippies, sitting on the floor eating dinner (cooked by the chef) in our tie-dyed tops and bell bottoms, listening to groovy music and talking about the right-wing “pigs” as the smell of pot wafted through the air.
Warren and I were not unaware of the irony of the situation. It was the epitome of radical chic. But it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, after the 1967 war against Israel, many Arab countries, including Algeria, broke relations with the United States, and Cherif was recalled. That left me alone in the embassy with a bunch of hostile employees until my paychecks finally stopped coming. Those glory days were over.
In the meantime, through my jobs, as well as through my parents and Warren, I had met many people around town. One of them was Phil Geyelin, the editor of the Washington Post editorial page. Phil was attractive, debonair, and very bright. We hit it off immediately.
One night at a party Phil was asking me about my plans now that the embassy was closed. I told him I was looking for a job. What a coincidence, he said, he was looking for a secretary. Why didn’t I come into his office the following Monday for an interview? Naturally I did. We had a wonderful interview, and he hired me on the spot. I was to start the very next week.
He introduced me to Ward Just, the brilliant war correspondent turned editorial writer, who asked me to go see the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with him that Friday night. Phil also took me into the office of the editor of the Post and introduced me to Ben Bradlee.
I was dazzled from the first moment—stricken almost. I had never been so immediately affected by anyone like that before. Ben exuded energy. Dashing, charming, clever, witty, irreverent, challenging, cocky, swashbuckling, he was a life-giving force—and more—yes, he was all those things. His jacket was off, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his tie loosened, and when we walked in, he had his feet on his desk. He rose to greet me, then stood there leaning casually on the edge of the desk with his arms crossed, taking my measure, sizing me up. We only spent about ten minutes in his office, and he and I were already sparring with each other. I don’t even remember how I managed to walk out of there, I felt so wobbly.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I had landed a great job with Phil Geyelin, gotten a date with a fabulous guy, Ward Just, and had met the Sun King, Ben Bradlee. What more could a girl ask for?
Alas, it was not to be. Phil called the next day to say I was fired. On second thought he had realized that I was overqualified and that we would both end up hating each other. He was not wrong. I already knew that. He couldn’t have been nicer or more flattering. Later Ben told me he had advised Phil not to hire me because he was afraid that it would ruin his marriage. (I later accused Ben of projecting.)
The following day Ward called to break our date. He was flying to Spain on Friday to get married. The woman he had broken up with had called to say she wanted him back. I was crushed.
I went back to my mind-numbing job hunt. It was then that I decided I should return to my first love, theater. After all, that was my college major; I was good at it, and I loved acting.
A play—Joseph Heller’s We Bombed in New Haven—was about to be produced at the West End Theatre in Foggy Bottom, close to the State Department. Wanting the lead, I went to the tryouts. I had no idea how I did. I went home feeling very down. I had given up my apartment and was dividing my time between Warren’s and my parents’. I was overcome
with the realization that I was too old to be living with my parents, not to have a job, not to be married. I was turning twenty-eight, for God’s sake. Whatever would become of me?
A few days later I got two phone calls back to back. The first one was from the director of the play. “Congratulations,” he said, “you got the part.” I was euphoric. We agreed to meet for the first reading.
The second call was from a voice I recognized the instant I heard it. “This is Ben Bradlee,” he said. “I’m the editor of the Washington Post.” I certainly remembered who he was. “I’d like to talk to you about being a party reporter for the new Style section.” Ben had invented the Style section a few months earlier, which was later copied by newspapers throughout the world. I was nervous but excited. We agreed to meet for an interview.
I went to see Ben first, before I met with the director, but not before I had done my homework. I found out he was a Virgo. That made all the difference. If I hadn’t known that, I likely would have approached the interview entirely differently. In an interview in the Washingtonian several years later I was asked if knowing people’s birth signs helped. “Oh, absolutely,” I was quoted by the reporter. “I’m not an astrology freak—far from it—but it’s certainly more fun than religion. So I laid my Virgo number on them.” Actually it was him I laid the number on, and I can’t believe I said that to a reporter.
Virgos are dutiful, modest, noble, humble, powerful, achievers, and good communicators. They can see into people and detect their motives. They can sometimes be judgmental. They are decent and cannot stand dishonesty. They are not overly emotional and are not overtly flirtatious.
Armed with this information, my “Virgo number” was in fact not a “number.” I was totally honest and straightforward. I didn’t brag or exaggerate my background or achievements. Of the latter, I made it clear that I really didn’t have any to speak of. I didn’t flirt, and I dressed in a very ladylike manner. I wore a pale-aqua silk jersey shirtwaist dress, pale stockings, cream-colored lizard shoes with matching bag, real pearls and pearl earrings, and the pièce de résistance, white gloves. Ladies still wore white gloves in 1969, at least this one did.