Finding Magic

by Sally Quinn

  * * *

  When Quinn was born, I never even considered having a christening—that is, not until he had his heart surgery and survived.

  When I first approached Ben with the possibility, he was stunned that I was even thinking about it. In many ways, I was too. Yet I felt overwhelmed with gratitude and the need to celebrate my child’s life. What I didn’t know then was how meaningful it would ultimately be for Quinn.

  We asked four friends to be godparents. Ben chose his friends Edward Bennett Williams and Art Buchwald, and I chose my friends Nora Ephron and Ann Pincus. We decided to have the christening at a small chapel at the National Cathedral and Ben asked his close childhood friend Paul Moore, bishop of New York, to do the honors. He was one of the most liberal Episcopalians in the country, a man who had lived in the ghetto in New Jersey with his family for years, ministering to the poor, and he had been the first person to ordain openly gay priests. He refused because Art and Nora were Jewish and Ed was Catholic. I have rarely seen Ben that angry. He quickly regrouped and invited Father James Wendt, a liberal priest from St. Stephen and the Incarnation, an inner-city church for which Ben had volunteered for years. We also changed the venue. We would have the christening at our favorite hangout, Restaurant Nora, around the corner from our house near Dupont Circle.

  The day came, a week from our wedding anniversary, October 20, and less than a week away from Quinn turning six months old. We set up a makeshift altar on a table with a white cloth. Happily, Quinn was in great health and, though he looked a little scrawny for his age, he looked like a miracle to me in his little white jumper and round collared shirt.

  We had champagne in the bar area (somehow I always manage to have champagne at my rituals; no wonder I’ve come to love them so much) and then moved into the main dining room for the ceremony. A harp was playing. Father Wendt, resplendent in a white robe and long flowered embroidered shawl, read a passage from the Bible about Isaac and Sarah, who bore a child in their old age. He had just returned from the Holy Land and had brought water from the River Jordan “old water.” Carefully holding Quinn, he placed salt on his lips and put wine on his hands. He said a blessing and then bent him over the crystal bowl to sprinkle the water on his head. Deeply moved, I—this person who had always been suspicious of organized religious ritual—had turned into a convert in one afternoon.

  The four godparents made speeches, then Ben and I spoke.

  The pièce de résistance was an armored case brought by Art Buchwald, a time capsule. I had provided pencil and paper for each guest and they were to write a note to Quinn. The case would be sealed, hidden, and opened on his eighteenth birthday. It was a lovely moment as each person, fortified with champagne, took the time to thoughtfully pen their messages to Quinn. People began to leave as he slept in my mother’s arms. I was overcome with happiness. If I hadn’t been convinced about rituals before, that one convinced me that life without them would be very bleak. I had found meaning in a very powerful way.

  When the time came for Quinn’s eighteenth birthday, naturally I planned a party to celebrate the opening of the capsule and the reading of the messages and invited all the earlier guests plus newer friends we had made. I had a little booklet printed up with all the notes and a picture on the front of Father Wendt christening Quinn.

  I read them aloud at the party, and there wasn’t a one that wasn’t touching. Ben wrote:

  My first hope for you 18 years from today would be that you are as alive and as well and as loved as you are today. If I have made it, what a lucky man I will be. You have already enriched my life beyond—way beyond—expectations. If I didn’t make it, no grief please. Remember me as you remember and value your friends, and go hard for a life that honors you, me and them. You have already shown me, and your wonderful mother, that you can triumph and that you want to triumph. That’s a big edge. Somewhere along the way I have learned to treasure this saying from the Jewish fathers: Love work, hate domination, and don’t get too close to the ruling class. It’s yours. And so is my love and my admiration. Dad.

  I couldn’t live up to that but I had written:

  You are truly a love child—my happiness. My joy. You are everything I ever wanted in my life. You fulfilled me in a way I never knew possible. I love you more than my life. Your mother, Sally.

  Quinn’s birth and his christening marked a major turning point in my spiritual life.

  Chapter 16

  I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

  —Jane Goodall, in conversation with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal, PBS

  Nothing reveals to us more clearly that we are dependent on grace and love than becoming a parent—and this is doubly true for parents of children with special needs.

  How can I possibly describe Quinn? Magical is the first word that comes to mind. He’s like a woodland creature, a nymph who appears from behind the trees in the forest or out of a gurgling brook or perched on a rock sparkling in the sun. I told him when he was first born he had “the magic,” and I’ve told him that all his life.

  Although my mother had “the magic,” as did Ben, Quinn has it in excess. He is a joyous, kind, funny, smart, loving human being, without an ounce of malice in him. He is trusting, too trusting at times. He’s friendly and loves to be held, even now in his thirties.

  A few years after Quinn was born, I consulted a psychic who was in town giving readings to some of my friends. She told me that Quinn had been abandoned in a forest in his past life and had virtually raised himself. He had chosen Ben and me to be his parents in this life because he knew he would be most cherished by us. He was certainly right about that.

  I’m unsure of my views on past lives, but what I do know is that what she said struck a chord with me. I had the sense that this tiny being had come from a place where he had not been loved, that he craved the love he had never had, that he knew he could not survive without it, and that he would now get all the love he needed.

  * * *

  Svetlana Godillo was a Washington astrologer whom I had gotten to know. She was Polish by birth but had been married to a Russian, then an American. She spoke with a thick accent. She had masses of unruly dark hair, wore scarves and bandanas, large hoop earrings, chains and crosses, many layers of silks and paisleys, and colorful draped clothing. Her apartment seemed decorated to resemble her. She was the queen of fringe. There were always candles and soft lighting. She created an atmosphere of mystery. To her, everyone was “my dahlink.” She was dramatic and very opinionated.

  I actually started seeing Svetlana before Caroline Casey, and I thought she was pretty good (although once I went to Caroline, nobody could compare to her). Early on, I sent everyone to Svetlana. My mother went. I sent Barry Goldwater. By 1979, she had gained such a reputation that I convinced the Style editor that he ought to ask Svetlana to write a column about Washington political figures. He did and she did and it was an instant hit. She wrote the way she talked, and she did the charts of everybody who was anybody in Washington, laying their lives bare on the page for all to see.

  Things were going swimmingly for a while, at least until Svetlana began to believe her own press, bought into her own power, and turned into a kind of monster. She started fudging her astrological findings to conform to her personal and political opinions. I caught on before most people did because I knew what her positions on the issues were. It was malpractice, I thought, and certainly spiritually unethical. I warned her this was not acceptable. Readers began to complain. The editors caught on. Svetlana had to go. They fired her. She went ballistic and blamed me.

  In the meantime, I had begun seeing Caroline and had not had a reading with Svetlana for a while. Then Quinn was born and we went through the days and weeks of agony. When I came back from Long Island after that summer, Svetlana called me. She was s
o sugary I could barely recognize her. “Dahlink,” she said, “all is forgiven.” She said she wanted to give me a reading for Quinn as a baby present. So I gave her Quinn’s information and showed up at her den a week or so later.

  What she did was hateful, and I knew halfway through what was going on. She gave me a devastatingly brutal assessment of Quinn and his life. He would never be able to go to school, would never have friends, would be partly “retarded,” would never have a job or a relationship, and furthermore, she purred, narrowing her eyes with a feline grin on her face, he was gay. As I got up to leave, she gave me a big hug and a kiss. “So sorry, dahlink, but I must tell you the truth as I see it. It’s all in the stars.”

  Even though I had had Caroline’s wonderful reading of Quinn’s chart (and by the way everything she ever said about him has been true), I was still undone. What if . . . what if Caroline had misinterpreted Quinn’s chart and Svetlana was right? She had managed to create enough doubt in me that I lost my confidence and couldn’t stop holding Quinn.

  I didn’t believe her. She was wrong. She had done this to get revenge on me for getting fired. She was the devil incarnate and misusing her talent and her powers. I went into a slow burn, getting madder and madder. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, which made me want my own revenge. I decided to put a hex on her. I felt I had no choice. What she had done was heinous. Consequences be damned—and contrary to my vows and against my brother’s warnings—I would put a hex on her.

  Again I told Ben what I planned to do. During that time, Barry Goldwater was living with my parents a few blocks away from Ben and me, and we would often have dinner with the three of them. Occasionally the subject would come up about the women in our family being psychic. Daddy was used to it, having spent vacations in Statesboro. Barry didn’t disbelieve. He was an honorary Native American, a member of the Navajo nation, and understood mysticism. Daddy and Barry indoctrinated Ben. They used to joke about not wanting to “cross the Quinn girls.”

  On December 31, 1982, someone found Svetlana’s body. She had dropped dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was only in her mid-to-late fifties.

  I was consumed with dread. All I could think of was the last two hexes before Svetlana. Had that been the cause of Quinn’s illness? Had I brought that on him myself? Was I responsible for all his and Ben’s and my suffering? I couldn’t discount it.

  I vowed once again never to put another hex on anyone. Believe me, I haven’t, though I have to admit to being sorely tempted on occasion.

  Ben found the whole idea of these hexes completely ridiculous, as do most people. However, when he got mad at someone, he’d look at me with a mischievous grin and say, “Go get ’em, Sal.”

  I still don’t know whether I believe in hexes or not. All I can say is that there always seemed to be some cause and effect. If ever there was the slightest chance I had been the cause of someone’s demise, I didn’t see how I could live with the guilt.

  Never have I regretted anything more. I wanted to apologize, to ask for forgiveness of the victims or their families, but I was too ashamed, and I also knew that they would think I was completely nuts. Everything about them still haunted me.

  I told my brother, Bill, who read me the riot act. “You have got to stop doing this,” he said. He pointed out that on some psychic or spiritual level I probably did have something to do with what happened to these three people. He said one way I could make amends was by some form of reparations, which would be more than simple financial or material reparations. He strongly felt that what was needed was a catharsis, a change of heart and mind, in my psyche if not my soul, so that any and all temptation to repeat these actions would never again occur.

  I thought for a long time about what I could do and came up with the idea of donating money to a suicide prevention watch, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association. I know there will never be a way to fully expiate my actions. However, it did help me to better understand the psychological power religion holds over sinners. I finally understood the incredible relief of confession. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” I can’t explain how much lighter I feel having told these stories. I have had a catharsis, a change of heart, mind, and soul.

  It’s still all so mysterious to me.

  * * *

  The early years with Quinn are almost a blur to me. It felt like we practically lived at Children’s Hospital. It was the only place I really felt safe and secure. At home I was always dreading the next thing that could go wrong with him, the next ambulance ride, the next grim look on a doctor’s face.

  Every time I took Quinn to Children’s Hospital, I would feel sorry for myself. Then I would see a child, hooked up to an IV, completely bald and withered like an old person, being wheeled into the elevator by a parent. How dare I feel sorry for myself? I should feel lucky. I was like the man who felt sorry for himself because he had no shoes until he saw the man with no feet. I didn’t want to feel lucky, goddamnit! I felt cheated out of my own misery. I wanted to feel sorry for myself. I’ve since learned that that doesn’t work.

  Quinn had a terrible speech impediment early on. He was born without a pharyngeal flap, which is the flap that regulates the air between the nose and the mouth. Because of that he spoke very nasally and was hard to understand. I once took him to the drugstore and he told the druggist he wanted some candy. The druggist realized there was a problem and asked him to repeat himself. Quinn did and the guy still didn’t understand him. Deeply apologetic and embarrassed, the druggist asked him a third time. Quinn looked at me with dismay. “Mom,” he said, “what is his problem?” Regardless of his many problems, Quinn had (and has) enormous self-confidence.

  One day more recently, after Quinn had had another disaster at an airport, going to the wrong gate and missing his plane, he seemed his usual unfazed self. “Mom,” he said to me rather philosophically, “I think I have too much confidence. It’s a good thing I was born with learning disabilities, otherwise I would be a real asshole.”

  Quinn had constant ear infections with quickly spiking temperatures, eventually leading to ear surgery. He had grand mal, petit mal, and atonal seizures starting at age two and was diagnosed with epilepsy. He had a partially collapsed lung and a compromised immune system, so he had pneumonia and bronchitis constantly, resulting in a tonsillectomy. At one point the doctors thought he had cancer and later cystic fibrosis. Luckily he had neither. His chest was concave due to his heart surgery and he also developed scoliosis of the spine, which caused him to appear bent over. Although he outgrew his epilepsy after four years, he would later develop severe migraines, which caused debilitating pain, vomiting, seizures, and loss of consciousness. His feet were malformed and were eventually operated on when he was in college. He would have four throat surgeries to correct his pharyngeal flap.

  Despite all his physical challenges, Quinn was a natural athlete like Ben. Ben was a fabulous tennis player, and Quinn had all his moves. Quinn’s coach said he had huge promise and one of the best natural serves he had ever seen. However, Quinn didn’t like to play tennis. He admitted that he didn’t like to lose, but he didn’t like the other person to lose either because it made him feel bad. Not like his father! Early on Ben told Quinn that he would give him a thousand dollars if he could beat him at tennis. Years later, when Ben could barely get out on the court, Quinn would not beat him. He couldn’t bear to best his father.

  We were told to apply to the Lab School, a school for children with learning disabilities. I drove over to the school and parked across the street to have a look at it. There was a big shuttered and abandoned castlelike edifice with a small, ugly, institutional-looking building behind it that had once been a home for unwed mothers. The director’s office was a stone shed. I sat in the car for nearly an hour, in despair, thinking about how this was not what I had in mind for my child. I was dealing with grief from a loss of expectations. Nonetheless, we enrolled him the next week.

  At four he was the y
oungest child to ever attend. He wasn’t the best student, but he managed to survive there, with lots of tutoring, until he went off to a special boarding school his freshman year.

  Quinn’s learning challenges were apparent as early as nursery school, but they were not obviously diagnosable. He was bright, good at chess, and savvy. When he was six, he decided that Ben and I used too many swear words—a hazard of being journalists for both of us and of having been in the navy for Ben. We really did try to tamp it down, but not all that successfully. Quinn told us he wanted us to pay him for each swear word and set the price for penalties himself. We agreed. One night shortly after this pact, a rather conservative couple we barely knew came by for drinks. Quinn came in to say good night. He had a wad of cash in his hands, which he proudly showed off.

  “And where did you get all that money?” asked the woman in a singsong voice one uses for children.

  “My parents give it to me when they say bad words,” Quinn replied. The woman looked a bit askance.

  “How much?” asked the husband.

  Quinn beamed. “Well, motherfucker is two dollars.” He had read the room perfectly.

  * * *

  The year Quinn was eight, he started seeing a new psychologist. I didn’t like her from the beginning. I thought she didn’t know what she was doing, but she had been highly recommended and I hoped that Quinn might get something out of it. I was willing to try anything. She insisted on testing Quinn. A week later she called to say she had the test results and asked us for a meeting. With no expression she said she was sorry to inform us that Quinn had tested very poorly, terribly, in fact. The sad news was that he would never go to high school, never have a job, never have a relationship—essentially, never have a life. She had taken the liberty of holding a place for him in an institution for the mentally challenged, she told us.