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 appear 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 basically 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.
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.