The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  I gently chipped away at Mark’s reservations. He was outdoorsy, fit, and health-conscious; I’d seen him racing up and down the beach playing with the dog, and I had no fears whatsoever that he would be anything but an active, vibrant daddy. It was clear from his devotion to Kate and Daniel that Mark’s greatest sense of self came from being a father, and his patient temperament made him a natural. He was so consistent and reliable that he had set his alarm for four every morning of our honeymoon so he could call his children and find out how their days at school had been. If we had a child of our own, I promised him, we would still be us, still have our life—I didn’t want to be a shut-in mother tied to a Diaper Genie and Sesame Street videos—but our life would have a deeper purpose and meaning. I didn’t just want to experience motherhood; I wanted to experience parenthood with him. Last but not least, I longed to give my own parents the kind of joy I saw in my in-laws when they were Papa Bernie and Granny Ruth.

  When I told my ob-gyn I was interested in getting pregnant, he told me it takes the average couple a year, and that there were certain times of the month when I would be most fertile, blah blah blah. The only part of the lecture I paid attention to was the advice to “go have lots of sex.” Mark and I headed off to Nantucket for a lovely off-season weekend. Back home, when my period failed to arrive exactly on schedule, I waited all of a single day before racing out to the drugstore. I was sure I felt this funny zing in my lower abdomen.

  I bought every brand of pregnancy test on the shelf. I peed on e.p.t and got the two pink “yes” lines. Each box comes with two tests, so I repeated. “Yes” again! I tore open the Clearblue Easy box, this one was digital, and YES popped up on the tiny screen. Then I took both tests inside the First Response package—double YES again!

  I had made dinner plans with a girlfriend that night, and we were due to meet in thirty minutes. I felt bad canceling at the last minute, so I left Mark a funny note and lined up all of the pregnancy tests next to it on the table, along with a bottle of tequila and a shot glass. I figured he’d need a drink after seeing these results. On my way home from dinner, I popped into a bookstore and bought What to Expect When You’re Expecting and a baby-name book. I’d never been happier or more excited in my life. I prayed Mark was feeling the same way. When I walked through the door, he greeted me with a bear hug, a huge grin on his face. “I’m really excited,” he kept saying.

  I loved being pregnant, though the thought of childbirth itself terrified me so much that my doctor actually advised me not to take any classes for fear it would stress me out too much. I signed up instead for BabyCenter’s daily online newsletter, which told you what was going on with your body and offered helpful tips. I must have instantly deleted the ones focusing on prenatal nutrition. I basically craved anything that didn’t fight back or run away first. I was hungry all day long.

  For breakfast, I’d have an egg sandwich on a roll, a bagel with cream cheese, two or three bowls of Froot Loops or Apple Jacks, and a yogurt. I’d wash it down with a liter of pink grapefruit juice cocktail. Then I’d start thinking about lunch. Dirty dogs—hot dogs from one of New York’s street vendors—were my favorite, and luckily, there was a cart just around the block. Heaping plates of pasta hit the spot, too. All of this was being piled onto an athletic five-feet-five frame I had proudly kept trim with daily workouts for my entire adult life. Four months into my pregnancy, I had gained thirty pounds. My doctor shook his head. “You know, Stephanie, you fucked yourself. You still have five months to go.” I didn’t care.

  Our daughter was due December 4. When my brother got married that August, I looked like a giant watermelon with a blond bob, waddling down the aisle in my green bridesmaid dress. By the time I reached eight months, I weighed 186 pounds—more than Mark—and Bernie was making nasty remarks about the size of my rear end. Insensitive at best, but downright creepy when you stop to consider that your seventyish father-in-law has been eyeing your tuchus. Not that he could miss it at that point.

  With a baby on the way, my nesting instincts kicked in big-time. I didn’t just want the apartment done anymore, I wanted every detail to feel homey and “us,” from the mounted wooden fish hung in our home office to the kitchen display of rolling pins I collected on eBay. We chose a deep, butter-soft leather sofa and matching chairs for the living room, and a rustic dining table that would accommodate the big holiday dinners I envisioned hosting for our extended family. Bernie and Ruth never entertained in their 64th Street penthouse—I was only over there twice in the eight years Mark and I were together—but they seemed to appreciate the family get-togethers we threw.

  Bernie and Debbie didn’t have a great relationship; Bernie complained bitterly to me that Andy’s wife often ignored their visits, and sometimes would shut herself in another room when they came over to see the grandkids. I sympathized with him; I hadn’t found Andy and Debbie to be particularly friendly or hospitable, either. Debbie was close friends with Susan and had met Andy through her. At one of Bernie and Ruth’s parties in Montauk, she had parked herself in a lounge chair next to me while I was reading on the veranda and bluntly told me that we would never be friends because we just didn’t have anything in common. I knew there were ongoing tensions in her marriage, which had to have been made even more stressful by Andy’s battle with a rare form of lymphoma. And Debbie may well have been taking cover from Ruth to avoid her mother-in-law’s occasional barbs. Ruth could take you down like a sniper. It wasn’t necessarily malicious; she just never had a thought she didn’t instantly express, and while the result was hilarious 99 percent of the time, that remaining 1 percent could leave you reeling. I remember when she gave me a lovely platinum chain for Hanukkah. As I opened the necklace, Ruth blithely explained that she had really wanted to get me a gorgeous evil-eye bracelet made of diamonds, blue topaz, and sapphires, “but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money on you.”

  Gift-giving was often an awkward affair in the extended Madoff family. They were generous people, but graciousness sometimes eluded them. I never once saw Bernie give his wife a gift; as far as I could tell, he didn’t even get her birthday presents. “If I want something, I go out and buy it,” Ruth matter-of-factly told me not long after we met. Neither mentioned that their wedding anniversary was on November 25, even though it undoubtedly fell on Thanksgiving sometimes.

  It wasn’t a mind-set I was used to. My family always made a big deal out of holidays and birthdays—I was the type who loved to keep an eye out for perfect little stocking stuffers all year round, and I like to give people presents that are meaningful, no matter how big or small. One of my first gifts to Mark was a tackle box full of handpicked flies. Part of showing how fond I am of someone is showing what I’ve come to know and love about them—their preferred pastimes, their favorite indulgences.

  I’m also sentimental. I was touched when my mom thoughtfully included Kate in her tradition of giving a tiny Limoges box to each girl in the family for Christmas. Mom teases me about the dowry I brought to my marriage: my set of Twelve Days of Christmas plates and the silver punch bowl my grandfather had won in a golf tournament. Dumb, but they mattered to me.

  Bernie and Ruth were impulsive shoppers. Once, while visiting them in Palm Beach, we were strolling downtown when I decided to duck into a store to look at some sandals and sundresses for an upcoming Mexican vacation Mark and I had planned. Bernie walked up to the counter and slapped down his credit card.

  “Anything she touches, she gets,” he announced grandly to the beaming salesclerk, as if I were some Mafia princess. I was mortified.

  “Bernie, no, really, thank you, that’s ridiculous, I can buy my own clothes,” I protested. He insisted, then left his credit card there and wandered off. Ruth and I picked out a few things, and Bernie reappeared.

  “Where were you?” Ruth demanded.

  “I went across the street to Hermès,” he said.

 
“Bernie, that’s where you should have told Stephanie she could buy anything,” Ruth shot back. As usual, Bernie let his wife’s sarcasm roll off his back.

  While the Madoffs themselves may have sent confusing, sometimes bumbling messages with their gift-giving habits, it was obvious from both our wedding and Audrey’s baby shower that largesse was something that was expected from Bernie’s clients. One Madoff client bought my entire set of wedding china. Another sent a silver Napoleon-era baby rattle from France for Audrey. Before both events, the doorman sent up more and more boxes daily from Tiffany, Cartier, Barneys, Hermès, and other luxury stores, invariably from people we’d never met and probably never would. It was mind-boggling.

  Yet when I went to BuyBuy Baby with two girlfriends before Audrey was born, to stock up on all the baby basics in one fell swoop, Bernie took one look at all the bags in our vestibule and made some derogatory comment about my spending being out of control. It hit a nerve, because I was hardly a spendthrift. I wasn’t about to waltz into Prada and drop thousands on a few cashmere sweaters the way I’d seen him do. We weren’t talking Frette crib sheets or Belgian Lace christening gowns here; it was bottles, sterilizers, and burp cloths from a discount chain. Maybe my hormones were making me hypersensitive, but it didn’t seem Bernie’s place to begrudge me a breast pump.

  Mark’s children were excited about a new little sister on the way, and I hoped the baby would bring us closer together. Maybe if we were more clearly defined as a nuclear family, Mark’s ex would back off and stop acting as if our life was hers to arrange whenever we had Kate and Daniel. Her imperious style was hard to take. I remember that when iPods first came out, I had been all excited about getting one for Kate and Daniel as our big Hanukkah gift that year. Susan caught wind of it somehow, and when she dropped the kids off at our Greenwich house one weekend before the holidays, she pointed at Mark and me and barked a command: “You and you, in the kitchen. Now!” She slammed the door behind her before ripping into us. She did not want the kids to have iPods and we had no business getting them. She had consulted a child psychologist who knew the family, and the psychologist also opposed it. I stood there dumbfounded; Mark began chewing his nails. Once she left, I turned on him.

  “How could you let this woman scream at me in my own home?” I demanded, not stopping to ask myself the same question. Mark’s answer was the same as it always was: She was their mother, and if he pushed back, the relationship with his children might suffer. But he must have smoothed things over later, because we did end up buying the iPods. Before we could give them to Kate and Daniel, however, Susan made sure they got their Hanukkah gifts from her: all the iPod accessories. If she was going to lose the battle, she was at least going to make sure our victory was short-lived and ruin the surprise.

  When it came time for Daniel’s bar mitzvah, the behind-the-scenes drama was bad enough to send Mark and me into couples therapy in search of a healthy way to handle relations with his ex. We had to stop walking on eggshells all the time. Mark was averse to disciplining the kids, not even putting his foot down over homework when they were with us. If we were having a quiet conversation in the corner of the family room while they were watching one of their shows, we got shushed and stayed shushed. When I made some light comment once about the kids being spoiled (something I was guilty of doing to them, too), Mark totally lost it. “How dare you speak that way about my children!” he railed. I became adept at quietly storing my criticisms and resentments, until the pressure built and I exploded. It was an exhausting, destructive pattern.

  My breaking point came over the rehearsal dinner Susan insisted on having the night before the bar mitzvah. She wanted everyone there: her parents and brothers, Mark and me, Andy and his family, my brother, my parents, and Bernie and Ruth. To their credit, Bernie and Ruth could pleasantly fake their way through any forced encounter with former or estranged daughters-in-law for the sake of their beloved grandkids. Susan never saw Bernie grimacing when she threw her arms around him in a hug, and Debbie never heard his complaints about how rude or cold she was. I wanted nothing to do with these grand charades, though. I felt uncomfortable around Susan and her family, and I didn’t particularly want to subject my parents and brother to such an awkward situation, either. Why couldn’t we all just be together at the bar mitzvah? If Susan wanted a rehearsal dinner with her family, she was welcome to just do it on her own, obviously. “It’s ridiculous,” I complained to Mark. “Why doesn’t anyone accept that you’re divorced?”

  Counseling proved to be no help. I would blow up, and Mark would blow up. But I could feel better after venting, walk out, and move on with the day. Mark held on to his hurt and anger for a week at a time. He just could not let go. It was taking too great a toll on him; it wasn’t worth it. We agreed on a compromise: I would suck it up this time in exchange for Mark’s firm promise that there would be no faux-family reunion rehearsal dinner reprise at Kate’s bat mitzvah a couple of years down the road.

  I was going to be a parent myself soon enough, but when I went for my weekly checkup on November 20 and asked if I was close to delivery, my obstetrician didn’t mince words. “Stephanie, this baby is closer to your nose than your vagina.” I left the appointment and met my mom for lunch, then lumbered over to Whole Foods. I was hosting Thanksgiving in a couple of days, and I needed ingredients for my stuffing. The store was jammed. I picked up a few things and headed home, looking forward to the prenatal massage Mark had booked for me that evening. Afterward, I was ready for bed.

  “I don’t feel well. My tummy really hurts,” I remarked.

  By eleven thirty, the pain was coming and going. I woke Mark and got our copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

  “Stephanie, if you were in labor, you couldn’t even walk, trust me,” Mark said through a yawn. I figured he knew more about it than I did and let him go back to sleep. The dull pain kept coming and going, coming and going, and finally I got up to go lie on the couch to see if I could get comfortable there. Grouper roused himself from his dog bed and trailed after me. I mentally replayed my last conversation with the obstetrician.

  “If I go into labor, what do I do?” I had asked.

  “Whatever you do, Stephanie,” he had replied, “don’t call me in the middle of the night.” We both knew I was paranoid enough about going into labor that I was bound to overreact to the slightest false alarm. But after reviewing the labor symptom checklist in the book that night, and Googling “going into labor” on the computer, I was pretty sure this was no false alarm. But it wasn’t cinematic, Scarlett-O’Hara-in-labor agony, either, so I let both my husband and my doctor enjoy their night’s sleep.

  When the waves of pain still hadn’t subsided by three thirty in the morning, I thought, I want to look good when my daughter is born. I’m going to take a shower and do my hair. By now, Mark was awake, too.

  “If you’re in that much pain, I think we should call the doctor,” he suggested. I decided to wait a bit longer. At five thirty, I finally caved and dialed the number. After describing what had been going on for the past six hours, the doctor had only one question: “Where are you?”

  “Home,” I replied, surprised he would wonder.

  “Come to the hospital!”

  I burst into tears. Crying and suddenly terrified, I called my parents as we grabbed a cab and shot up to Mount Sinai Hospital, arriving around six thirty. I was whisked into Labor and Delivery.

  “Tell your parents to go home, it’s going to be a long day,” the doctor said after discovering I was only four centimeters dilated. My mom decided to listen to her own instincts and refused to budge. When it came time to push, Mark spent the entire forty-five minutes holding my hand, with his lips pressed to my forehead. His other hand was supporting my leg, which was hoisted somewhere north of my ears. I wasn’t entirely sure, because I couldn’t feel it, thanks to the epidural.

  “Here she comes, h
ere she comes!” the doctor cried. Mark went white as a sheet, dropped my leg with a thud, and bolted behind the pink maternity-ward curtain, certain he was about to faint. Audrey was born at 11:19 a.m. Mark poked his head back around the curtain, quickly declining to cut the cord. I thought it was too cute that a guy who could fillet a just-caught hundred-pound tuna on the deck of a boat was squeamish about an umbilical cord.

  “Can I do it?” I asked.

  “Forget it,” the doctor replied.

  The baby was put in a warmer and came back swaddled and beautiful. Mark greeted his daughter properly, with a huge, proud smile.

  My own happiness was indescribable in that moment. As they wheeled my gurney down the hall on the way to my room, I shouted out for anyone and everyone to hear: “I just had a baby, and I wanna do it again!”

  Bernie and Ruth were in France, but jumped on a private jet as soon as they heard the news, and were in the hospital by eight that night to meet their new granddaughter. Audrey Viola Madoff was seven pounds, ten ounces, with spiky black hair and her father’s eyes. We brought her home, fittingly enough, on Thanksgiving Day. Mark was an amazing father, so in love he would race to change a dirty diaper or pick her up at the first hint of a whimper. His hands were always on her. He wrote me tender love notes, thanking me for the wonderful gift that was our daughter.

  The grandparents were all predictably smitten, too. I remember one lunchtime when Bernie called, asking if he could come over to give Audrey a bottle. He was downtown on business and had his driver bring him by. He sat on the sofa in his custom French-tailored Charvet shirt and exquisite tailored suit, cradling the baby in his arms as Audrey guzzled her milk. It’s one of the more difficult memories I have of him, because it’s impossible to reconcile the tenderness with the cruelty, to acknowledge what he gave without remembering what he took. And what he took from my children can never be forgiven.