by Sally Quinn
Shortly after Ben had finished the book, later in the fall, we were in New York, walking past a small jewelry shop when he stopped and said he’d like to get me a present—very unlike Ben. We went in and they had a series of tiny little rings that were actually chains. Some were plain, some had diamonds, some had pearls. Ben wanted to get me a ring. We chose the plain one. “Let this be our commitment ring,” he said to me. “Every year we are together I will buy you another one.” He did. I ended up with four altogether, a diamond, a pearl, and another plain. The commitment rings were not enough. We would be together for five and a half years before we finally tied the knot—not without a showdown.
* * *
We went about our lives, both of us getting a lot of attention and a lot of publicity as the “fun couple” from the Post’s competitor, the now-defunct Evening Star. We moved out of the Watergate. It was too much of a joke. Meanwhile, I used the money I had earned at CBS to buy a house near Dupont Circle. I wanted to own the house myself to give me a sense of security. In case we broke up, I didn’t want to be the one to have to leave.
Ben continued to resist marriage, so I started seeing a therapist—one of the best things I ever did—the fabulous Sharon Alperovitz, whom we all jokingly called “shrink to the stars.” I think at one point she had half the Post newsroom as her patients.
Sharon was brilliant, and also caring, compassionate, wise, and funny. She profoundly helped me understand better the dynamics of my relationship with Ben. After a while, I got him to go with me. He was very anti-shrink, but he loved Sharon. We went around and around about marriage. He wouldn’t budge. She taught me that one person really has to change in order to get the other to change. Did I really want to marry Ben? I concluded yes. Was I willing to change? I was willing but I didn’t know how to change. What would I have to change? And why? What changes, if any, would make marriage more palatable for Ben, would make him want to marry me? Finally she said the magic words bottom line. I had to decide what my bottom line was.
Unfortunately, I didn’t put my newfound understanding into practice right away. I kept doing the same things—behaving the same way, pleading, demanding, whining, manipulating, begging. It wasn’t pretty. I disliked who I was becoming with Ben, but I also didn’t feel good about being the person to whom the man I loved and who loved me didn’t want to commit. It was Warren all over again. I resolved to decide on a bottom line. Sharon pointed out that if you have one, you have to stick to it. If I gave him an ultimatum, then I really had to mean it. That was terrifying to me. It meant that I would actually have to leave him if he continued to refuse to marry me. Or throw him out. I owned the house. That was small consolation. For a long time I just didn’t have the courage. Then I did. There was a moment when I knew I couldn’t live with myself under these circumstances.
The tipping point for me came when Ben was asked if we were going to get married. “I’ll marry her when there’s a Polish pope,” he said, which I thought was seriously ungallant. Then, guess what? Karol Józef Wojtyla from Poland became Pope John Paul II on October 16, 1978.
I told Ben that if he didn’t marry me, I was going to start having affairs—and I had a candidate in mind. I actually did. It was 1978, and I was leaving for Israel to do a series of interviews for the Post on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. I had heard of Ezer Weizman, the handsome Israeli Air Force commander and war hero, who was the minister of defense. I knew that Barbara Walters had had a brief flirtation with him.
I announced to Ben that when I went to Israel, I planned to have an affair with Ezer. He knew of him and his reputation with women. Ben went crazy. He accused me of everything in the book. I don’t think I ever saw Ben that angry or upset. He would hardly speak to me for the next week. I just went along making my plans, whistling a happy tune, packing, doing my research, telling all our friends how much I was looking forward to the trip.
I was leaving on a late plane for Israel when Ben asked me to have lunch with him at Twigs in the Hilton close to the Post. I had no idea what it was going to be about, but I had a feeling that he was going to tell me that if I had an affair, he would leave me for good. I was a nervous wreck. I don’t think I had been that agitated since I asked Ben to take me to lunch five and a half years earlier.
All I knew was that I had to stick to my guns. We were halfway through an incredibly strained lunch when Ben blurted out, “All right! I’ll marry you!”
Needless to say, it was not the most romantic “proposal” a gal could ask for, BUT it qualified as a proposal. I wasn’t going to turn it down. “When?” I demanded.
“When you get back from Israel.”
“How long after I get back?” I was negotiating.
“Right away.”
“Okay.” The lunch was over. We kissed each other good-bye. It was awkward. We said restrained I love yous, and I left.
So I didn’t stray while I was in Israel. I was sorely tempted one night when, reporting on a gathering, I slept in a tent on the beach in Gaza and the Palestinian leader, an incredible hunk wearing traditional robes, let me know he would be honored to join me in my tent.
Ezer was another story, totally as attractive as his reputation—sexy and smart, with a larger-than-life personality and enormous charisma. Still, I didn’t do anything. However, Ezer asked me when I was leaving and when I told him, he arranged to be on that El Al plane back to the States with me, since he was heading to the U.S. to follow up on the recent peace talks at Camp David. He had been a combat pilot serving with the British Royal Air Force in World War II and also a pilot during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was greeted warmly by the El Al pilots who came out to welcome him aboard. At some point in the flight, he came back to invite me to come sit with him in the cockpit while he took over the controls for a while. It was all very romantic, but I was getting married to a man who was even more romantic than Ezer, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize it for anything.
On my return, I had to confess to Ben that Ezer flew back with me, but he believed me when I told him it had been very innocent. I got back on a Sunday, and I planned the wedding for the following Friday. I didn’t want to give Ben a chance to change his mind, especially since he had really missed me for the two weeks I was gone.
We arranged to be married in the chambers of Judge David Bazelon, an old friend of Ben’s. Ben asked Washington Post humorist Art Buchwald and establishment lawyer Ed Williams to be his best men. Art had been his best man when Ben married Tony, so there was naturally a lot of joking about that. Kay Graham was my matron of honor. She stopped at a florist on her way back from New York and had a bridal bouquet made, complete with flowing ribbons. She carried the whole creation down on the shuttle with her. I had only told my parents, my brother and sister, and Ben’s kids, who were all there. That was it. I searched frantically for a knee-length white dress, but with such a short amount of time, I found nothing I liked so I ended up with a white silk skirt and top, which I feel sad about to this day. I wanted to look like a bride.
Ben was adamant that we not tell a soul except the involved parties. He didn’t want to get scooped by the competitive Washington Evening Star. He didn’t even want to go with me to the Tiny Jewel Box to pick out my wedding ring. Somebody would see us. He didn’t want to wear one. He had never worn a ring. He didn’t like his hands and felt a ring would draw attention to them. I loved his hands. They were strong and masculine, the hands of a woodsman, which Ben was. I didn’t care about the rings at that point, especially since he was making enough of a statement just by marrying me. I asked the Post art critic, Paul Richard, to go with me to pick it out. I chose a very thin gold etched band and had our initials and the date, October 20, 1978, engraved on it.
The engagement ring would come later, nine years later to be exact, when I guilted him into helping me design a ring with a matching pair of exquisite emeralds surrounding a diamond of the same size. He complained bitterly the whole time, but nobody was happier showing off the ring than Ben,
who spent the next nearly three decades making fun of his other friends for being so cheap they wouldn’t buy their wives a decent ring.
The ceremony was short. I stunned everyone, including myself, when I totally fell apart and slumped over on Ben’s shoulder, in tears. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted this, how much I needed this affirmation from Ben. I was loved. I was cherished. And I loved and I cherished.
I had planned a buffet supper that Friday night and invited about thirty of our closest friends. Many of them had made other plans. Peter and Margaret Jay, the British ambassador and his wife, who were good friends of ours, were having a dinner that night as well. I told my friends that they had to get out of it and come to ours. I said I was calling in my chits, and I couldn’t tell them why but it was very, very important. They all came.
As people arrived at the house that Friday night after the ceremony, they were surprised and thrilled to find out it was a wedding celebration. I had the house filled with white flowers, and in the center of the table was a beautiful simple wedding cake. Carl Bernstein and Richard Cohen had brought along a glass, which they put in a paper bag, and as part of the Jewish wedding ritual, Ben, for good luck, stomped on it and smashed it. There were many toasts, planned and unplanned. Mine was this: “Tomorrow you will read in the papers about our marriage: ‘her first, his third.’ What it should say is ‘her only, his last.’”
We scooped the Star. Ben was beside himself with glee.
The next day Ben and I drove up to the cabin in West Virginia for the weekend. It was a sparkling October Indian summer day. We took a picnic down to our rocks on the river to celebrate. Ben was happier than I had ever seen him. He was relieved too. He knew he had not made a mistake. He understood he was never going to be that three-time loser he had worried about. He realized that we were more in love than ever and that we would be until the day one of us died. And so it was.
This was not the wedding of my dreams to be sure—I didn’t get to be queen for a day—but I had never been so happy in my life.
I’ve tried to analyze what it was that made me stay those five and a half years before we got married. I know it sounds as though I had been a clingy, whiny, pathetic creature during all that time, someone who had gone from a confident, successful, independent person to a woman who could not function without a man and would take what little crumbs were tossed at her rather than have nothing.
What made me stay was love. A deep knowing that we were truly in love with each other in a way I understood and he didn’t at first. It was in my heart, my soul, my bones, every fiber of my being. From the first moment we were together until the moment he died, I never had a single doubt that we were meant for each other. I also knew, and would come to understand more clearly, that I was meant to take care of Ben. Taking care of people was part of my religion, though I didn’t realize it then. Taking care of him simply added another dimension to my life. I also realized that we had the two qualities in our relationship that mattered most: agape and eros. Agape is the highest form of love and charity. As Thomas Moore writes in his book A Religion of One’s Own, “agape is the spiritual side of love that asks you to transcend yourself and your needs.” Eros is passionate and romantic love.
Agape is also the love of God for man and man for God. What Ben and I had together was actually a spiritual union. And eros, boy did we have eros.
* * *
Shortly after we married, I bought a ruin in East Hampton on Long Island, called Grey Gardens. It was a well-known house, famous for being owned by Jackie Kennedy’s aunt and cousin, Big and Little Edie Beale. They lived alone in the house with thirty-six cats and God knows how many raccoons and the roof was falling down over their heads. The Maysles brothers had made a film of it and had to wear flea collars around their ankles while in the house.
Big Edie had just died and Little Edie was forced to sell. The house was in such terrible condition that the real estate agent refused to go inside to show it to me. Little Edie met me at the door. She had been unwilling to sell it to anyone else because they all wanted to tear it down. I immediately said, “This is the most beautiful house I have ever seen.” “It’s yours,” she replied, and with a little pirouette she danced around and added, “All it needs is a coat of paint.”
The next day when I showed it to Ben, who was terribly allergic to cats, he walked out choking after about five minutes and said, “You’re out of your fucking mind.”
I bought it anyway that August—all cash, with money I’d earned from a book I wrote after the experience at CBS Morning News, called We’re Going to Make You a Star. My mother and I went up to Long Island in November to close on the house. It was a wild day, overcast, with howling winds, and the old place was creaking. We were so spooked by it—the rumors were that it was haunted—that we locked the front door behind us.
We were standing in the sunroom in the midst of dead vines, broken glass, and spiderwebs when we both felt a presence. Turning around, we saw a woman standing there. “I came to give you a message from Big Edie,” she said. “She wants you to know she is very happy you have bought Grey Gardens. She knows you will restore it to its original beauty. She’s going to watch over the house and make sure everything goes well.” Then she disappeared.
Emboldened by the message from Big Edie, my mother and I ventured up to the attic where we found a treasure trove of original antiques, furniture, silver, linens, mirrors, wicker, and books. I was so excited that I actually started smoking again. Carl Bernstein bet us a hundred dollars we wouldn’t be in the house by the following summer. We were in the next summer and he had to pay up. Everything went perfectly. The house was finished before the contractors said it would be and it came in under budget. Thank you, Big Edie.
The following summer Ben and I were sitting by the pool, where there was a lovely little original thatched-roof cottage just outside the secret garden wall. It was about to be shingled for lack of a thatcher. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a young Englishman appeared in a straw hat and boots. “I say, you wouldn’t by any chance have some work for a thatcher?” he asked. We were astonished and hired him on the spot, and he started the next day. Thank you, Big Edie.
Ben wrote much of his memoir in the cottage, and I used it to read palms, tarot cards, and do the Ouija board there. Everything I said then turned out to be true. The August of the summer after our son, Quinn, was born, I used the cottage to nurse him every day. It was so peaceful and serene. Ben called it the “nursing shed.” Quinn, Ben’s grandchildren, and my nieces and nephew called the cottage the “fairy house” because every night the fairies would come and leave presents for them to discover in the morning. That cottage is a magical place.
Grey Gardens was definitely haunted. The ghosts were not only benevolent but friendly. One was Anna Gilman Hill, a celebrated gardener who had designed the stone wall. When she appeared, she was dressed in her gardening outfit, which I recognized from photos. I saw her once at our bedroom door in the middle of the night. Many of our houseguests saw her as well. One housekeeper was so terrified after a visitation that she quit.
Another ghost was a sea captain Little Edie had been having an affair with, who climbed a ladder up to her bedroom window for their trysts. One week my parents were visiting with Barry Goldwater, and I put him in Little Edie’s room where the sea captain was often heard stomping around. I didn’t say a word to Barry about ghosts. The next morning I found him asleep on the sofa in the kitchen. “What are you doing in here?” I asked. “There’s a goddamn ghost in that room,” he said, “and I’m not going back in there.” He didn’t, for the rest of his stay.
Every year I had a birthday party for Ben in late August at the house—one of the highlights of his year. And the house was always filled with friends and family.
The house, too, was magical. Thank you, Big Edie.
Did I really believe she had made everything perfect for us for so many years? Yes, I did.
* * *
I was thirty-se
ven when Ben and I got married, a real old maid. (Doesn’t that sound so antiquated now?) It was a long way from our Smith College senior year rallying cry, “A ring by spring.” I thought my father was going to expire from relief.
I had told Ben honestly I didn’t want children. For a year I was blissfully happy being Sally Quinn (Mrs. Ben Bradlee).
One day, a year or so after we were married, I was walking down Connecticut Avenue near our house at Dupont Circle when I saw a pregnant woman with a baby in a carriage, a beautiful plump, fat-cheeked gurgling baby. She and the baby both looked so content and serene. I clutched my stomach and nearly doubled over in pain. How was it possible that one minute I had absolutely zero interest in having a baby and the next I thought I would die if I didn’t? I was overwhelmed with a sense of emptiness. I could actually feel my womb, feel the hole in my body that needed to be filled. It was so visceral. I was in anguish and terrified to say anything to Ben. I knew he would feel completely betrayed. I had made a promise to him. He was so happy with me. His children were almost grown, and he was basking in our life together.
It took me weeks to get up the courage to even broach the subject. Finally, one night at dinner in our kitchen over our second bottle of wine, when Ben was in a particularly great mood, I brought it up. I asked him what he would think about having a baby. He was horrified. He couldn’t believe I would even contemplate the idea. I had promised. We had made a deal. It was out of the question. It was the last thing in the world he wanted. It was a deal breaker. He would never agree to it. He didn’t want to discuss it ever again. I had expected he would not react positively to the suggestion, but his vehemence stunned me. What was I to do? I had to have a baby. I just had to, and the proverbial clock was ticking.