In Jake’s reception room, a woman who’d been waiting near me snapped her cell phone shut and said, “A plane has hit the Pentagon.” She got up and left. I didn’t know, but I assumed terrorism. Within a minute a coterie of lawyers, briefcases in hand, rushed through the lobby to the elevators. One of them said, “B’nai B’rith is one floor above us. We should all get out of here.”
I said to the receptionist, “Tell Jake I’ll call him from home,” and I joined the procession.
Back out on Connecticut Avenue, it was still that gorgeous day, and the street bustled with the vehicle and pedestrian traffic of a typical workday morning. I could tell from their faces who else knew, and who didn’t know. A group of construction workers stood laughing over a joke. A businessman anxiously flagged a cab. A woman on her cell phone demanded, “Where’s Mom?” A few blocks away the White House was being evacuated. The vice president had been squirreled away in a secret bunker. In a few minutes the broad avenue would transform as workers streamed from their offices. I got home and called Spencer’s school.
“We’re not changing the routine as yet,” the operator said. “We’ll notify all parents if there’s a change of plan.” School was sixteen miles from the White House. He was safe out there. I turned on the TV and saw black smoke pouring from the two towers. I watched and watched. When the first tower fell I ran outside to find someone, anyone, human company. When the second tower fell I picked up the dog, packed him and some food into the car, and headed to Spencer’s school. Traffic had begun to build. No panic, no rage as each car inched along, headed away from the city. On the radio they reported a hijacked plane that might be heading toward Washington. I scanned the blue sky. By the time I parked at the school the radio reported United Flight 93 had crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania.
The school called an assembly to attempt to explain the events to the students. With the dog in my arms I waited outside Spencer’s class, and as the children filed out his teacher’s eyes caught mine and for the first time I got emotional. Tears welled in my eyes. Maybe it was because I felt safe and knew my son was safe. Spencer saw me and looked alarmed. It was hard to tell how much he or his classmates knew. Their expressions were worried, confused, but not frightened. They were fourth graders. Could nine-year-old boys comprehend what was happening? Spencer was happy to see the dog. I bucked up, gave him a hug, and walked with him to the assembly.
The school’s outdoor amphitheater was filled with students and parents, who were arriving by the minute. I looked up at the tall green trees and the bright yellow sun and tried to reconcile the beauty and the horror. It was not possible. I held the dog in my lap and wrapped an arm around Spencer. The principal gave an eloquent talk about the terrible things that had happened, the lives lost, the fear and uncertainty that still gripped us, and how the students needed to know they were safe. “You are safe here and you will be safe when you go home. If your parents aren’t here yet, we will stay here with you until they arrive. We’ll have lunch, and classes will go on as long as you are here.”
I looked at the crowd and thought, With one of the doomed planes out of Washington, it’s possible some people here will be personally affected by this nightmare. We later learned that a classmate’s father was on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the Pentagon.
Driving home, Spencer and I were struck by how the lanes of Massachusetts Avenue headed out of the city were jammed with cars, and the only vehicle going in our direction was ours. The sidewalks, even as far as five miles out, were packed with pedestrians walking away from the city.
“Will we be okay?” Spencer asked, holding the dog in his lap. I assured him we would be okay. We heard the occasional fighter jet streak overhead. By evening there were tanks parked at intersections throughout our neighborhood. Smoke was still rising from the Pentagon across the river. Neighbors came over, I made pasta, and we ate and watched the television coverage together. That night, in bed, I listened into the wee hours to the jets patrolling overhead.
I did not call Jake Stein that day, nor did I think of Nathans.
Chapter 35
BEFORE I EVER fell in love with a man, I fell in love with Two for the Road, a movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. It follows the romance and complicated marriage of a smart and stylish couple who have one child. I was drawn to their nomadic, freewheeling existence and especially to Finney’s bad-boy persona. I’m one of those women who have a weakness for brains but also for mischief. I didn’t know it then, but as I look back over my life it’s fairly plain. Even before Howard, I was involved with men who were very good at what they did, but who also made their own rules, for better or worse. Good-looking, smart, successful, and just scoundrelly enough to attract and keep my interest, the kind of characters screenwriters transform into heartthrobs.
Howard was the quintessential irresistible rascal. He seduced me that way, and I succumbed willingly. It was—more often than not—a great ride. Roller coasters are thrilling, until they go off the rails. Ours went off the rails. It’s bittersweet that the best years were the last years, after therapy and Prozac helped to tame the beast within him. Once I returned to work, and began to assert myself in our relationship, he never got aggressive with me again, and the marriage was solid. Still, I had my eyes clamped shut. Looking back was like recalling the most thrilling ride and wondering if either I had been too ignorant, or too caught up in the thrill, to notice we were riding on thin air, destined for peril. It never occurred to me then, but there were so many signs of trouble: his offhand mention of an “audit,” his frequent appointments with lawyers, and his more-than-occasional fitful nights. Howard made it so easy to live in an ignorant bliss, though, because he always had a comforting answer. If something struck me as odd, and I asked, he’d tell me “Everything will be okay,” and I’d close my eyes once more.
Another movie I loved was Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore with Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson. It begins with the sudden death of her husband, upending her life and the life of her young son. They are left with not much more than each other, the proceeds of a yard sale, a station wagon, and the grit needed to survive. Like Two for the Road, there’s a lot of road-tripping as mother and son try to find a safe haven and start over. I was only twenty-four years old when I first saw it—long before a husband, widowhood, and road-tripping with my own son. The bonding moments of my relationship with Spencer have often been in the car, whether it was driving him to and from school or the many road trips we took together, up and down the East Coast and one adventurous three-week cross-country drive from Washington, D.C. to Oregon to California and back. When he was little—and not so little—if he wanted to have a serious talk with me, he would ask, “Can we go for a drive?” On the road we didn’t have to stare at each other, allowing both intimacy and space, or maybe it was because the open road is about moving on.
After Howard died I discovered a “widow” movie that I liked because it had some truths in it and a great line. The film is Bounce. Ben Affleck is talking to Gwyneth Paltrow about wanting her to be happy. She replies, “If you grade on a curve I’m happy. I may be widow happy, but I’m happy.” I’ve used that phrase dozens of times. I’m a widow. It can’t be erased or taken back or revised. It changes everything.
Often someone would pull me aside and ask, “How are you really doing?” as if they could see through my “I’m fine” mask. What I learned was that unless the questioner was also a widow or widower it was impossible to tell them how I was really doing. Details of being utterly alone, of raising a child by myself, of debt and business woes, of sharks in the water, of loneliness and grief—they were a lot more than most people could grasp. I learned to keep it simple. “I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.” When the Tom Hanks film Cast Away arrived in theaters in 2000 I went to see it as soon as I could. The story aside, I looked forward to two hours of looking at a tropical sea. But it was the story that got to me. A person otherwise enjoying the rout
ine of life crash-lands on a deserted island in the middle of the sea. He’s trapped, stuck, torn away from everything he takes for granted. All he wants is to build his life raft and get back to civilization, and when he does return to the world he discovers how much he’s changed. That was me, only minus the soccer ball named Wilson. I had a child to keep me sane as I tried to build the life raft and get us to dry land.
SIX YEARS INTO owning Nathans, and with six years still to go on the lease, my corner bar still confounded me, scared me, and caused me to feel very alone, especially in the middle of the night—worrying, tossing, thinking, worrying some more, tossing some more. I was only a little smarter. I learned to understand “tolerable” theft, that it was an expected part of the business. I learned that in a bar nothing much good happened after midnight. And I now knew the legal drinking age was twenty-one. I learned this lesson in an embarrassing way when one lunchtime I stood in the middle of the bar and joyfully asked a bartender to send a glass of champagne to a friend’s daughter who was celebrating her eighteenth birthday. The bartender froze, the room fell silent, and the birthday girl said, “But, Mrs. Joynt, I’m not twenty-one.” Yes, I learned everything on the job, and too often in public.
Then there was the daily task of staying in business. The roadwork, combined with the recession that hit all of Washington after 9/11, caused our gross to drop by as much as 30 to 40 percent, but our costs stayed the same or climbed. At one point, after churning through general managers, I hired a management company to run the place. They lasted a year. A very bumpy year. They had me take out bank loans that put me deeper in debt—“If you don’t get $75,000 right now you’ll have to close”—and when an employee filed suit against them they packed up and left, leaving behind the lawsuit and a more than $100,000 bill for their services. Fortunately for me, Vito Zappala, who had resigned, exhausted, a few years earlier, was “tan, rested, and ready,” and agreed to come back and take the reins. I warned him, “We have work to do. The mismanagers I brought in from the outside did a lot of damage. They scared away loyal customers and vendors. We have to mend fences. The debt, of course, is monstrous. And me? Well, I’m still as useless as before.”
“Actually, Carol, you shouldn’t say that. What you should realize is that, whether you like it or not, you know what you’re doing. Pat yourself on the back. You’re better for Nathans than that outside management company ever was.”
Pat myself on the back? Nice thought, but no, I didn’t think so. Maybe when I was rid of Nathans.
AT LEAST I could talk to Vito, confide my doubts to him and share my ideas, which I couldn’t do with the management company, who didn’t want to hear my thoughts about my own business. Nathans was a part of my life that was tough to ignore and tough to discuss honestly with others. I tried not to take it home, because it was impossible to discuss with a young son. I tried not to take it to cocktail parties, either, or out to dinner with men. When a man did innocently ask, “How’s Nathans?” and I answered honestly, he would soon be crawling toward the exit, or at least eager to get me home to my front door. I was happiest when the subject didn’t come up at all. Sometimes at parties where people didn’t know me I would make up a fake job or say I was still a journalist. Then, just my luck, someone would walk up and go, “Oh, do you know Carol? She owns the best bar in town.” For me, at that point, the party was over.
The cemetery where Howard was buried is on Oak Hill, Georgetown’s highest point. Spencer and I would visit occasionally and leave flowers and plant kisses on Howard’s white marble bench-shaped gravestone. When I had a really bad day, when I felt the walls and sky were falling on me, when I felt my most alone or was my most depressed, I’d go to his grave, not knowing when I got there whether I wanted to scream at it or to cry. Most often I’d cry for a while, dry my eyes, and then carry on.
SINCE THE EARLY years of owning Nathans I had used every opportunity for free publicity to help the place get its buzz back. At this I was a natural. I would talk to a reporter about anything—and I mean anything—if it meant getting the word Nathans in print or on television. In addition to my own drama, the exploding manhole covers, and routine Georgetown crime stories, I was quoted in the Washington Post on how to make the perfect cosmopolitan; the New York Times asked me to comment on the Barbara Walters interview with Monica Lewinsky; another Washington Post reporter included me in a story on mothers who sleep while waiting in the carpool line (I was an expert); local TV always liked an on-camera comment about Halloween escapades in Georgetown; a restaurant writer wanted to know what the cleanup crew finds on the bar floor after a big night (“wedding rings”); various media asked about the impact of the (good or bad) economy on a small business; and Newsweek wanted to know whether Washington was hip. I said yes, “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll do exist in Washington.” Whatever the subject, I did my best to utter the perfect sound-bite, to have a quotable opinion—for one reason and one reason only: It got my saloon’s name out there.
In October 2001, I created something that got attention for Nathans but also suited me to a T. I hosted a talk show right there in Nathans’ back dining room. I called it The Q&A Café, and it quickly became popular and, best of all, satisfying for me. Essentially it was the Charlie Rose show in Nathans at lunchtime with me as Charlie. I created it as a response to the terrorist attacks, when so many people seemed desperate for information. Week after week, my gets were experts on terrorism and Islam and Osama bin Laden. For almost an hour I interviewed one guest—the two of us sitting across from each other on barstools—while around us the patrons enjoyed lunch. From the aftermath of 9/11, the subject matter expanded to every topic under the sun. I liked the challenge of booking interesting guests, loved the research in preparation for them, and was increasingly comfortable with the onstage interviews. After all, I had trained with the masters. Each week I looked forward to my moment with the audience and guest. It was doubly exciting when a comment made by a notable guest landed in a newspaper column with the attribution, “said at The Q&A Café at Nathans.” I no longer had to give a clever quote to market my business. My interviews made news. It was gratifying to see the pile of clippings grow, and even more gratifying when the show was videotaped and began to appear on two local cable channels. If my talk show in a restaurant could be called restaurant work then this was the restaurant work I was made for.
With each show the audience of men and women filed in, paid the fee at the bar, and dashed into the back dining room to snag good seats. Some people came to every show. We served house-made potato chips before the program began and a warm meal as the interview started. Since there were no reserved seats, late arrivals were blended into other tables. Strangers met and became friends. Some ordered beer and wine, and the camaraderie was strong. I called them The Q&A Café “lunch bunch.” I welcomed each person. Those were the only times I felt comfortable greeting guests in the restaurant.
The Q&A Café made national news when Maury Povich and Connie Chung appeared only two days after a member of his staff hit him with sexual harassment charges. They wouldn’t talk about the suit, but that didn’t matter. The audience included plenty of reporters. We made news again when Deborah Jeane Palfrey, “the D.C. Madam,” in a rare interview, said Washington was a good market for her line of work. Dan Rather appeared soon after filing suit against CBS News and got a tear in his eye when talking about the suit’s stress on his family. That got me on morning network television, with a clip of Dan. When Joe Wilson, the former ambassador who publicly questioned the rationale behind the Iraq War, appeared for an interview he gladly posed for me afterward for a photo for the Nathans website. Smiling in the picture with him was his previously unphotographed wife, former CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose cover the Bush administration had blown in an attempt to discredit Wilson. The photo went viral and global.
My favorite interviews, however, were with people such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases a
nd famous for his work with the HIV/AIDS virus. He talked about bioterrorism and the vulnerability of the nation’s subway systems to a deadly attack. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, was fascinating in the plainspoken way he told his story of global business success. Another favorite was Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, who put human faces to the thousands of family members who were left behind to cope with their losses.
Nathans brought a lot of anxiety and pain to my life, but the success of The Q&A Café made up for scraping to pay the plumber. It was my success, something I created all on my own and that I understood and could do well.
Nathans gave me another pleasure, too, and it can’t be discounted. It gave me time to spend with my son that might not have come with other jobs. I was my own boss, and because of that it was easier to slip away as needed. As Spencer grew from little giggle-puss to teenage boy, I cherished and embraced the role of parent and all its rewarding and sometimes tedious parts. I liked driving him to and from school each day, to athletic practices and games, and to guitar practice; I tagged along on field trips, showed up for school assemblies, and made all the parent-teacher conferences. For a while he was a skateboard fiend, and I became versed in Washington’s best “spots,” could talk half-pipes with the best, and sat in one arena or another, biting my nails, as he thrilled to the harrowing performances of superstar Tony Hawk. When his passion turned to lacrosse, Spencer played year-round, in school and in leagues. Game after game, I arrived with my trusty folding chair. I learned the sport, knew the names of the plays and gear, and could debate the merits of the top teams in the NCAA rankings; together we traveled to many college games and tournaments. I could do these “guy” things with him because, like some of the dads, I had the time because I was fortunate to own my own business.
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