The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  The emotional blow physically changed Mark from the very first day. His athletic shoulders curled inward, hunching him like an old man, and his boyishly handsome face aged overnight, too. A fault line of anger and distrust crossed his forehead. He looked drawn and haggard. He grew a beard that came in gray and white, and he began wearing his glasses even when he didn’t need them, just to disguise himself. The smile that made me fall in love with him disappeared altogether. “Was my life real?” he would often ask. We would never know. The one person who could answer that was the biggest liar in the world.

  My parents and younger brother, Rob, were our greatest source of comfort in the aftermath of the catastrophe Bernie created. Mark had always had a great relationship with Pinks and Marty, and now my parents became his. He and Marty grew especially close, with Marty offering not only his love and support, but his wise counsel as well. They talked several times a day, and Marty responded instantly to every frantic e-mail Mark sent in between. Whenever some news development sent Mark into a tailspin, Marty would patiently interpret the legalese, separate fact from rumor, and urge Mark yet again to stay away from the computer.

  Far worse than the breathless tabloid reports and supposed news stories riddled with errors were the comments attached to them online. Vicious, unsubstantiated rumors and outright lies became part of the cyberspace archive of Mark David Madoff. I could laugh off fabricated reports about our so-called lavish lifestyle as they appeared in the press and then move on with my day, but Mark couldn’t. “Can’t you just tell your side of the story?” I wondered naïvely.

  “They won’t let me!” he cried. The lawyers and crisis managers, he meant. Our highly paid puppeteers. Optically, they advised, it was best to keep our silence, no matter how frustrating. Making a comment would only inflame the mob. As my stepfather observed, “It’s blood they want, not justice.”

  My mother wasn’t as worried about optics as she was about me. I was trying hard to focus on my pregnancy; carrying Audrey had been such pure joy, and I was determined to re-create that experience with this baby. Bernie had ruined everything else in our lives—he wasn’t getting my mother-to-be glow as well. Mark and I had been ecstatic when we found out the baby was a boy; I had been so keen to have a son that I had followed every old wives’ tale and Internet suggestion out there, even making Mark drink Diet Coke before trying to conceive. (I had heard that it made sperm swim faster, and since male sperm were known to die sooner, I wanted them to have the competitive edge in this particular race.)

  Our son was due March 1. A week after Bernie’s arrest, my mother suggested we go uptown to Lester’s, the store where she had taken me shopping for Audrey’s layette. That had been such a fun, special mother-daughter day. My mom was eager now to coax me out of the house and provide a few hours of happy distraction from all the drama. “C’mon, it’ll be fun,” she cajoled. “I want to do this for you.”

  In the Lester’s baby section, I picked out some onesies and receiving blankets, washcloths and tiny undershirts, trying to lose myself in the sweet moment, to summon the excitement I had felt the first time. It felt forced. My mother oohed and aahed over each item, trying to bring me around. She paid for everything, and I arranged to have it mailed to me. Optics.

  On the way home, Mom and I decided to grab a bite to eat, and stopped at a nearby diner to have grilled cheeses and French fries. We settled into a booth by the window. There was the usual lunch-hour background noise—plates clattering, waitresses calling orders, customers chatting, blather from a TV mounted on the wall. Suddenly the incredulous voice of a woman sitting near us carried across the tables. “Sixty-five billion dollars, shit!” I looked up and saw Bernie’s mug flash across the TV screen. He had the same lipless smirk as the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. My mom and I locked eyes and grimaced. At the same time, I caught a glimpse of Bernie’s face filling the cover of the New York Post that another diner was holding open. THE MOST HATED MAN IN NEW YORK, the headline screamed. I felt the weight of Bernie settle back over me, over my small family. He had us pinned. We couldn’t escape him no matter how hard we tried.

  One evening, Mark and I had ordered in Chinese food and were watching television in the living room when we heard the jingling of the sleigh bells I had used to decorate the inside of our front door. Someone was in the house. We’d neglected to lock the door after our take-out was delivered. Mark bolted for the elevator, with me close behind. I rounded the corner into the foyer to hear him saying, “Yes?” and then politely adding, “I have no comment. You can contact my attorney, Martin Flumenbaum.” A woman from the New York Post cowered in the elevator while Mark held back Grouper, who was going ballistic. I couldn’t believe Mark was being gracious to a tabloid reporter who had just barged into our home. “What is wrong with you? What do you want?” I yelled at her while Mark held me back, a protective hand across my hugely pregnant belly.

  Christmas that year was sad and subdued, with Mark and me putting on a show for Audrey’s sake. She had just turned two, and the thrilling idea of someone named Santa showering her with presents was just starting to take hold. Our tree had been up and decorated a few days before Bernie’s confession, and on Christmas Eve I filled the stockings dutifully, too numb to feel any of my usual delight. Mark and my stepdad had spent so many long days together going over the case that they had become cocktail-hour Scotch buddies, and I tucked miniature bottles in each of their stockings as a joke.

  That year, I had stashed away a little game called The Elf on the Shelf months before the holidays. I was charmed by the story of an elf assigned to each child by Santa himself, sent to sit in secret places throughout the house in the days leading up to Christmas to see whether the child was behaving herself. Each day, the elf would be hidden in a different spot for the child to find. The idea of starting such a cute tradition for my daughter had tickled me, but now I couldn’t even bring myself to take the elf out of his box. The anticipation I usually felt surrounding Christmastime had been replaced by a sense of growing dread. Well, next Christmas will be better, I consoled myself. Maybe the elf could make his debut then.

  Hanukkah proved to be an even worse disaster. Instead of the usual party I always hosted for my Jewish in-laws and the kids in Connecticut, Mark and I decided to have an intimate, private celebration with Kate and Daniel. I was looking forward to the relative freedom Greenwich would give us. Mark’s paranoia about the press was so bad that he wanted to keep all the blinds in the loft drawn in case there were photographers on the roof of the building across the street. I drew the line at spending my day in a big, dim cave. We packed the car up with all the gifts, plus the groceries I had bought for a special dinner, and set off, planning on a quick stop along the way to have my blood pressure checked at my obstetrician’s office uptown. We weren’t even halfway to the doctor’s before Mark got a call. He hung up and turned to me, his face white as chalk.

  “That was Andy. He’s heard from a reliable source that death threats have been made against us.”

  I burst into tears. Was Audrey in danger, too? What if someone tried to hurt my little girl, or snatch her?

  “I’m so scared. This is crazy,” I cried. “I’m so scared, Mark. What are we supposed to do?”

  Mark looked equally terrified. We pulled up to the doctor’s office. “Go to your appointment,” he urged me. “I’m going to give Marty Flumenbaum a call.”

  I wiped my eyes and went inside, too scared and embarrassed to confide in my doctor when he looked at my numbers. “It’s slightly elevated,” he said. I felt a small sense of relief; if a death threat wasn’t sending my blood pressure through the roof, it was probably safe to assume nothing would.

  “Marty is calling the authorities,” Mark reported when I got back into the car. We just sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. “Fuck it,” Mark finally said, peeling too fast out of the parking spot. “We’re going back to the ap
artment. I’m too scared to stay at the house.” The house in Greenwich was too isolated. We would be safer in SoHo, he reasoned. At least no one could break in through the windows there, and we had the added security of a doorman.

  In the elevator on the way up to our apartment, Mark was still playing out horrible scenarios. “Of course, if someone comes and puts a gun to the doorman’s head, they’d be able to get into the apartment,” he pointed out.

  “We have to get a bodyguard,” I pleaded. “We need some security.” I felt panicked. Andy had immediately applied for a license to buy a gun, and he hired muscle as well. Should we do the same? Authorities soon confirmed that there had indeed been “some chatter” out there about killing us, but Mark still hesitated to hire protection. He relayed the lawyers’ reassurances: It’s not at that point, yet.

  Yet? I wondered. This was all supposed to die down in a few weeks. When had yet come into play? I kept pushing Mark, but he didn’t want to spend the money. And there was public perception to keep in mind, too. Optically, a bodyguard wasn’t a good idea. If I was really that worried, Mark suggested, he could arrange for one of the now jobless Madoff drivers we trusted—a formidably big man named Errol—to escort Audrey and me to her day care. I backed down. Mark and I were already stressed-out enough, and I didn’t want this to become a fight between us. And on some subconscious level, I suppose, I thought that faking normalcy would somehow restore it, by sheer force of will.

  I knew our nightmare was nothing compared to Ruth’s. The drumbeat of accusations surrounding Mark and Andy—the sons must have known, the confession was staged, they’re hiding something—rained down around Ruth as well, and her blind devotion to Bernie riled everyone up even more. Bernie had been released on his own recognizance and a $10 million bond that required four cosigners willing to pledge their assets on his behalf. Ruth and his brother, Peter, had signed, but Mark and Andy had both refused. Anyone Bernie might count as a close friend had been ripped off by him, and he didn’t find anyone else to cosign; “the most hated man in New York” went back to court unable to meet the judge’s conditions for his freedom.

  A deal was worked out again, and Bernie was allowed to go back home with a curfew, and later an electronic ankle bracelet. The official restrictions were moot, anyway—the hordes of reporters and gawkers outside his building made it virtually impossible for him to leave, and even if he did slip out for a while, it wasn’t as if he could stroll the streets of New York freely. He and Ruth were instantly recognized, and universally hated. I was relatively certain that Ruth had not been complicit in Bernie’s white-collar robbery, and my heart broke for her. The media wanted a dragon lady, like one of those greedy shoe-and-diamond-hoarding wives of brutal dictators. Ruth had her shortcomings, but she wasn’t in that league, and didn’t deserve the beat-down she was getting. She was clueless, not corrupt.

  Around New Year’s, Ruth left a short, pathetic message on our voice mail: “Just checking in, wanting you guys to know we missed you and love you.” Three weeks had passed since her shattered sons had fled the penthouse that fateful morning, and only now did she wonder how they might be doing? I swallowed my resentment and sat down to write her a quick e-mail in response, with Mark’s tacit approval.

  The lawyers have given us strict instructions to have no contact with you at this time. However, I do feel it’s important for you to know that we love you very much and there is never a moment that goes by when we do not think of you. Everyone is doing okay . . . but not great. We’ll post some new pictures of Audrey and everyone on the [family] website for you to see. I can’t wait for this mess to settle and . . . we can see you again. It’s been very hard not having you in our life. Please remember that we love you.

  She wrote back the next morning, grateful to have the door opened even that little crack.

  By the end of January 2009, the press had decamped from our block, and Mark was no longer tied up all day with the attorneys. He had offered his full cooperation to the various agencies now investigating Madoff Securities, and the SEC and FBI had finished debriefing him in a single meeting. Maybe we were turning the corner and would have our lives back soon.

  For the first time since the news broke, we spent several days at a stretch without a new bomb dropping. We decided to step out one afternoon to grab some lunch in our neighborhood. When we returned home, the doorman handed us a thick manila envelope. “Oh, God, look at this.” Mark showed me. It bore Ruth’s unmistakable handwriting, with no return address. We went upstairs, where my mom was watching Audrey. Mark slipped into our glass-walled office to open the envelope privately. Watching warily from the living room, I saw him put his head in his hands and begin to sob. I ran into the room.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s all my father’s watches.” He cried uncontrollably for the first time since Bernie’s arrest. Mark held up the open envelope. “Look what you got,” he said.

  I reached in and felt paper towels wrapped around something heavy. I pulled it out and unwrapped it, revealing a massive rope of diamonds. I remembered telling Ruth how much I loved that necklace. It was stunning, and it had to be worth a fortune. She had worn it to my wedding. Knowing they were about to forfeit everything they owned, the Madoffs clearly wanted their children to have some heirlooms. Optically, though, it couldn’t look any worse. And their clumsy gesture could have put us in legal jeopardy, since their assets had been frozen since Bernie’s arrest. They were circumventing a court order and putting us smack in the middle of their deceit. Again.

  “We’ve gotta get this stuff out of here,” I told Mark. We took the envelope of tainted treasures straight to our attorney’s office and handed them over with instructions that they be turned over immediately to federal authorities. The gifts were photographed and itemized first. I was about to throw the paper towels and tissue from the envelope into the lawyer’s wastepaper basket when I felt something hard and heavy, like a rock. I unraveled another piece of tissue and found, sure enough, a rock: an enormous emerald ring. Mark picked it up off the table. “My mother always loved this ring so . . .” he murmured sadly. I secretly relished a moment of peculiar pride that Ruth had chosen to honor me with the two pieces I knew were her most prized possessions, even though I would clearly never see them again, much less wear them.

  More watches, plus a pair of hideous mink mittens for me—they resembled grizzly bear paws—were sent in a separate Hanukkah package. We found a note tucked in with the diamonds and watches.

  Dear Mark + Andy, If you can bear to keep these watches, they are given with my love. If not, give them to someone who might. Love, Dad.

  The two handwritten lines on Bernie’s embossed stationery were the first Mark had heard from his father since his confession. His only apology had come in mid-January, on an eerily dark and snowy evening, when a text message popped up on Mark’s BlackBerry:

  I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you. I love you. Love, Dad.

  Bernie never texted or e-mailed. His simple message was both sad and ominous, and we feared that it might be a suicide note. Mark immediately called his attorney, and the U.S. marshals already keeping watch outside of Bernie’s building were alerted. They rushed upstairs to find Bernie perfectly calm and lucid.

  Mark was constantly worried that we would get a four a.m. knock on the door someday and be put out on the street, all our belongings seized. Within one week of Bernie’s arrest, the government had established a monthly spending limit for our basic living expenses, and kept close tabs on our bank balances; we were to turn in regular accounts of every dime we had spent. Mark had even had to seek permission to pay his child support. Our assets were monitored continually while the investigation plodded forward and the inevitable civil suits naming Mark among the defendants were sorted out. Our bank accounts kept being frozen because of the Madoff name (bank employees would see our name in their administrative system
s and put an automatic hold on our accounts as a precaution; we would then have to have lawyers and government regulators call to confirm that our accounts weren’t under investigation). It was another unpredictable and unnecessary hassle that popped up often for the first few months after Bernie’s arrest, and with legal fees to pay and civil suits in the works, our financial situation was precarious.

  When I went to BuyBuy Baby to finish shopping for the baby’s nursery, I was humiliated when my credit card was abruptly declined. I called Mark, who hurried uptown with a couple of hundred dollars in cash to pay for the bottles, diapers, and such. “I’m so sorry,” he kept saying, which only made me more upset. He had done nothing wrong! He had exposed the Ponzi scheme. He had cut off his father forever. He was jobless and unemployable, his mere name synonymous with the most despicable financial crime ever perpetrated. Why were we being made to feel like criminals for buying diapers for a newborn?

  When I went for an ultrasound in early February, I got a bit of a mood-boost: The doctor was worried enough about my stress level to suggest inducing labor a couple of weeks early. The baby was already huge. First I would have to undergo another amnio—at thirty-eight weeks—to prove that the baby’s lungs were mature enough, but I readily agreed. The needle was long and thick as a straw, and I could feel it puncturing every single layer of tissue as it went deeper into my belly. Mark turned his head away. The pain was horrible, but the news was good: We could choose a birth date in mid-February. We chose Valentine’s Day. As the date approached, I got a call from the obstetrician: Valentine’s Day was a Saturday, and the hospital wouldn’t agree to an elective induction since they were already short-staffed on weekends. I would have to go in the twelfth and have the baby on Friday the thirteenth, or just wait for him to choose his own birthday.