I’d rather know for sure that I’m not getting the SIPC money than dwell in this excruciating limbo. And why do I need to know the worst-case scenario? Because, says Professor Gilbert, “When we get bad news we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior, we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait.”
Thank god it’s Monday morning! The light hasn’t dawned but I’m at the studio, where I spend the day Photoshopping dozens of photographs from vivid color to mordant black and white, shredding dozens more that aren’t quite good enough.
Today I’m contacting the phone, cable, gas, electric, Internet, and paper delivery providers to renegotiate service or to stop them altogether. I lower my cable bill by thirty bucks a month, my phone bill by twenty-two (it’s still high but I cannot relinquish access to the outside world), but the rest won’t budge. I’ll maintain The New York Times home delivery for a short while but that will have to join the rest of the heap of “luxuries” that must go. The next hour and a half is spent trading endless phone calls to confer with bankers and lawyers.
When I drag myself through the front door of my apartment that evening, exhausted, a lush spray of fragrant yellow roses greets me. The elegant cellophane wrapping with long, streaming yellow ribbons is unmistakable. They are from Peggy, Zezé, Doris, and Walter, my friends and neighbors at Zezé flowers around the corner. For years, they gave me ravishing and unusual flowers to use in my photographs. Tucked beside the glass vase is a note of love from the gang. When I smell the fragrance of those saffron-colored roses, I think back to the evening of December 11, the last time I bought a bouquet for myself.
The flowers are just the beginning of wonderful gestures from friends and strangers alike. People have read the blogs. They write that they’d had a visceral response to my story. My e-mail overflows with notes of empathy and sympathy and encouragement. The United States mail delivers more letters from friends and people I have never met—from as far away as England, Germany, Sweden, Spain, and Japan. Notes and cards come to the studio from strangers who have somehow managed to track me down even though my name is misspelled in the phone book. If you’ve had a bad thing happen to you and someone takes the time out from a very busy life to set pen to paper, or to write a thoughtful e-mail, the world seems a more humane, habitable place indeed. I like to think I’ve done the right thing by friends in need over the years, but now more than ever I know the power of small kindnesses.
Many, many friends have reached out to me in immensely generous ways. Cathryn says she would like to pay the rent on the studio for a month, until I can see my way clear to what my next steps with my work might be.
Stephen, a longtime Condé Nast pal, practically has me belly-laughing the way I did in the old days when he calls and declares, “I know you, girlfriend, you’ll want to stay with your fancy colorist, Kyle. An uptown girl like you wants to look her best. And honey, I know these colorists. They are definitely not cheap. You’ve gotta let me pay! I did it for my aunt, now I want to do it for you!”
“You may be right,” I say. “Thank god I had the roots done two days before the MF thing. I am nervous about home-colored highlights. I could very easily turn out looking like a Russian hooker a century past her prime—”
“Let me do this for you!” he says. “Call me when you want highlights and a blow-dry!”
My friends Alice and Tommy call almost every day. They invite me to get some sun with them down in the Caribbean, to stay in their weekend house. Tommy asks me: “What is your strategy, AP?”
“Strategy?” I reply in a sort of dazed way. “I haven’t thought of a strategy. I’m just panicky and poor.”
“I’ll sit down with you and go over the numbers,” he says. Tommy is a serious money guy and this is an amazing offer. “Let’s see how you’re going to get through this.”
Several weeks later, he huddles with me in a corner of an Italian trattoria, pen and paper in hand. At the end of lunch, I have homework to do: fill numbers into the columns he’s made and make careful lists of how much money I spend each month, another list of rock-bottom necessities, and yet another of possible income sources. He is optimistic that we’ll find a way to pay the rent for the studio. We’ll meet again to detail a new budget. Here is a busy, important guy, a chairman of major boards, taking hours out of his day to help me with basic arithmetic! My world is still shattered into a million shards but my friends are helping me to glue it back together. Good friends, I’m beginning to think, might be the best cure for bag lady syndrome.
Since writing the blogs, I’ve done several TV and radio shows where I’ve commented on the MF. A producer at CNN called about a story on the MF and his victims, Madoff: Secrets of a Scandal. It turns out that the host of the report, Christine Romans, identifies with my fears of being a bag lady. We discussed how we both have worked and saved and feared that all our hard-earned money would disappear and we’d end up homeless and frightened and alone.
I agreed to be on the show, if they would come to the studio. I can do it only between the calls I have to make to the lawyers and accountant who are helping me with Madoff-related work, such as filing the SIPC insurance claim. All the MF’s casualties must hire professionals to decipher the arcane language of the endless forms. Another outrage that assails me almost daily.
The CNN program spawned something like two million Web site click-throughs on my “victim” story (I prefer the word “casualty” because it implies wounds that all of us have sustained). One minute after the program aired on a Saturday night I received two messages on my answering machine. The first was a lawyer from New Jersey, phoning with his wife to say how sorry they were about my recent and ongoing travails. They said that I had real courage and felt sure I’d be okay. A few days later, I called the number they left to thank them for their concern and their encouraging words.
A woman from New Canaan left a message at my studio: “I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said, “and please don’t think I’m crazy but you sound like a sincere person who is really in trouble. I’m divorced and live in New Canaan, Connecticut, and have a beautiful house here. My daughter is getting married soon and if you need a place to stay, you are always welcome here. I mean it.”
I phoned Susan—that’s her name—and thanked her for the unbelievably generous offer, and tell her I am familiar with how lovely New Canaan is: my parents had lived for more than thirty years in nearby Darien.
“You came across as a genuine person,” she said, “and I thought if there is any way I could help. And then I realized I have this big house—”
“You are beyond kind,” I said, “but I think I’ll be okay. I can stay in my apartment for a while at least, and I’ll figure out a way to make money.”
“If you ever need time off, a weekend, a month, a year, you would have a space all to yourself. I mean it,” she said. I am certain she did.
A few days after my conversation with Susan, I received an e-mail saying, “You have been selected to apply for a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts.” Astonished by the note, I immediately called to find out details but was politely told to fill out the forms and that my application would be reviewed. I did as requested, and just a few days after my call I was approved for a grant. I did my investigative best to find out who was behind this incredible generosity, but the courteous young woman at the Foundation said firmly that the donor “wished to remain anonymous.” The person who instigated the grant knows that art is my primary passion and I am indescribably grateful to you, whoever you are. You have helped me in the deepest way possible.
And despite the bad rap lawyers get in my town for being overpriced and overblown, a few of them—strangers before my MF experience—have been unstinting with their time and a
dvice. When you get in a big complicated mess like the one I’m in, you realize why they get paid the big bucks. Brad Friedman, a lawyer at Milberg, was on the MF’s case early on. I sat behind him in court the day after the MF was arrested and we waited and waited and waited in vain for him to appear. Brad came to my house for coffee one morning, and although I didn’t sign up for a class action suit, he gets back to me instantly on his BlackBerry any time I have a legal question. He really is a decent man and sympathetic to the wreckage that Madoff has wrought. Then, when a friend suggested I get in touch with the hotshot litigator Steve Molo, I e-mailed him about my plight and he called me fifteen minutes later. Lawyers from high-priced white-shoe firms to one-person operatives who just want to help and offer counsel have been in touch with the MF’s casualties across the country.
When I get home from the studio on Monday, a blue Brooks Brothers box is waiting for me at home. I haven’t ordered anything, of course. One of my favorite activities—shopping—is out of the question, maybe for the rest of my life.
I have no taste for it. Not a nano-smidgen of desire. Nada. Not only do I have no money, there is nothing in the world I need or want except peace of mind, something that no amount of money can buy. Or can it?
I’m gladly diverted from my thoughts by the Brooks Brothers box. I’m sure there’s been a mistake but after I inspect the label and see that it is addressed to me, I open it. Inside a small white envelope lies on a pristine white shirt.
“This is one of my favorite things,” writes Nan, a special friend, “and you’ll never have to iron it.” It’s a perfect fit. Who has friends such as these? How lucky can I be!
CHAPTER 11
Everyone Has a Story to Tell
On a cold Christmas morning in the late seventies, when my son was in Vermont with his father, I woke up at about seven o’clock with the sun just blinking into a pale gray-blue sky filled with a few dark clouds scudding behind the industrial buildings of what was now called SoHo. I looked from my second-story window onto my frosted cobblestoned street of West Broadway and saw four black-and-white NYPD squad cars lined up in a row. Two were facing downtown, two were facing uptown, and the cops were talking with one another through open windows. “Feliz Navidad” was blaring on their radios.
I grabbed the bottle of champagne that I kept in my fridge to celebrate good times, flew down to the street in my flannel nightgown and slippers, and handed over the bottle.
“Merry Christmas, officers!” I said. “This is to thank you for being the best cops in the world!” I ran upstairs again, listening to all four sirens punctuate the end of each stanza of “Feliz Navidad” as the cops waved good-bye to me and drove off.
This would have never happened uptown. I felt happy that I lived in this friendly neighborhood and that I had changed my life. But there were many difficult moments when my son was away on weekends or spending time with his dad. The cops; firemen; Mr. Dappolito, the baker around the corner; and Harry, the paint store owner, all were terrific neighbors to us, but when I wasn’t working and my friends were busy, I often felt lonely and down.
I had met several artists at Hunter who lived downtown or in Brooklyn and we exchanged studio visits and sometimes joined up for pizza and a glass of wine, but I saw very little of my old uptown friends, as any hours not spent with my son were taken up by painting, work-for-money, and school. I went on a few dates over those six years that I lived on West Broadway, and often wished I had more. Here and there a friend would set me up or I’d go to a party hoping to meet a smart, funny, kind guy who was involved in some way with the arts, but I never found anyone who seemed right for me.
My social life was not entirely bleak, however. On summer nights when my son was away for a month at summer camp, some girlfriends and I would shoot uptown to Studio 54, which was in its heyday.
Studio 54 was like an enveloping hallucinogenic drug that could, if you were an addictive type, become central to your existence. The blinding strobe lights razoring through the crowd, the roaring sound of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” crashing straight into you, the writhing sweaty gorgeous naked torsos of beautiful men who were smashed on sex and music and poppers, gave you an incredible contact high. The sensory experience was so extreme that your mind was neutered and your pure physical body took its place. I would sometimes smoke a joint that a friend had stashed in a pocket or purse but no one ever offered me cocaine. A night at Studio with a group of friends was wild and uninhibited fun, and who doesn’t desire that once in a while?
The roving editor job at Vogue ended after two years, and the FIT appointment was only for two semesters. I continued to churn out copy for Bloomingdale’s and to write freelance articles, but I wanted to be earning enough to put some money away for the proverbial rainy day. Back I went to The New York Times Help Wanted listings. I found an opening for a professional writer who would work with retired teachers from union DC 37. I interviewed for the vacancy and landed the job. Two mornings a week I met with a group of men and women who had been public school teachers for most of their lives. Their union provided classes to update their skills in a variety of areas, and writing was one of them. At the beginning of the course, I asked them if they would be willing to keep diaries of their present lives and also to recount how their past affected what they were thinking and doing now.
“Our lives are not very interesting. We’re just ordinary people,” they protested.
“I’m no good,” someone else blurted out. “I can’t write a word. Who would care about what I write, even if I could write?”
I worked to set them straight. Everyone has a tale to tell. These people had given so much to the community as teachers, and their stories mattered. I encouraged them to write about their children, their neighbors, their former students, anything at all, but just to write. I remember loosely quoting Hemingway: “If you don’t know what to say when you’re facing a blank piece of white paper, just put down one sentence of truth. Write ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘my desk is cluttered’ and you have a beginning.”
After more cajoling, they agreed to write a few pages for the next class.
When the class convened again, I coaxed and convinced each of them to read aloud what they had written—one woman had to do it in Spanish because she was too embarrassed reading in English. Even though most of the students didn’t understand Spanish, they all applauded heartily.
Looking back on it, the DC 37 class was one of most important experiences of my career. To watch people who, despite years of service to their community, believe they have nothing to offer the world become excited by their own creative work was a great thrill. Not only that, the enthusiasm of the group was infectious. I had been grappling with my own doubts about whether I was any good as an artist and, at night, fueled by my students’ energy, after my son was asleep, instead of passing out with fatigue, I worked furiously on my painting. I’d finally finish cleaning my brushes around two a.m., tired but satisfied that I was making progress. I’d wake up at six to escort my son to school on the subway. Those were the days when I could subsist on four to six hours of sleep a night.
A few weeks after the DC 37 class wrapped up, I was working on a Bloomingdale’s assignment when my phone rang. It was one of fashion’s fabulous women: Carrie Donovan. Carrie was so irate that she didn’t get Diana Vreeland’s job as editor in chief that she vamoosed from Vogue and set up a competitive domain at The New York Times Magazine.
“You’re such a breezy writer, Alex,” Carrie cooed into my ear. “We need you over here at this stuffy place. You’ll be a breath of fresh air.” This was Carrie-speak for “I need something from you right away.”
“Of course,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”
“You can be here at two and we’ll have a nice chat,” she said as if she were certain I didn’t have another plan in sight for the next decade. I could reach Forty-third Street by two, and still make it to school to pick up my son, so again I said “Of course.” My ass
ignment was to write an article every other week for The New York Times Magazine in the fields of art, lifestyle, fitness, and beauty, or whatever Carrie Donovan deemed might “amuse” the readers. I accepted the job.
Carrie Donovan, a midwesterner at heart and by birth, was famous for her gargantuan horn-rim glasses, which reached from the tops of her eyebrows to the bottoms of her cheeks. She never ventured out into the world during working hours—which to her encompassed all hours of the day and night—without her two strands of creamy white, fake, bosom-level Kenneth Jay Lane pearls. Almost six feet tall, square-faced and waistless, she wore low-cut clothes to accentuate the pearls or the boobs, though we could never figure out which were most important to her. Some called her a jolie laide, others said she just wanted to get laid. She was handsome in a theatrical, drag-queen kind of way and commanded total attention whenever she was in the room.
One day I walked into her office and she was wearing a foot-high paisley-printed emerald-green turban. Hanging from the folds of fabric was a huge rhinestone-encrusted pin that just scraped the horn-rims. The rest of the outfit consisted of a revealing white ruffled peasant blouse, the two strands of pearls, of course, and an orange printed peasant skirt that twinkled with sequins and swirled to her ankles. On her feet were crimson espadrilles. Each element was a bit bizarre but she put them all together in her Carrie Donovan way, carrying off the look with nonchalance and in-the-know authority.
As we were sitting there, her phone rang and it was Abe Rosenthal, who was the managing editor of the paper at the time and who scared the bejeezus out of all the staff—except Carrie. She’d tell us, “He’s such an adorable man. You just need to flirt with him a bit.”
Abe Rosenthal adorable? Someone to flirt with? Whirling skirts and espadrilles at the newspaper of record, the stately New York Times? The whole routine boggled us. But she was enthusiastic in the extreme about each of our assignments no matter how pokey or prosaic, and she inspired real excellence in a way that Miss G from my old Vogue days could never have done.
The Bag Lady Papers Page 8