The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  I missed the e-mail and, oblivious, replied an hour later to the text he had sent me about the Christmas tree: I am psyched to get our tree, too. We are sitting with a view of Cinderella’s castle. Audrey is freaking. Soft lights gave the illusion that the castle was frosted with snow. The whole theme park was decorated to the hilt, making me nostalgic for the cozy holiday rituals we so loved, like the annual Christmas Stroll down Nantucket’s main street, culminating with the arrival of Santa Claus on a Coast Guard cutter.

  My reverie was broken fifteen minutes later, when I scrolled back through my e-mails and found Mark’s rant about the Wall Street Journal piece. My heart felt like a stone in my chest. It wasn’t the report itself that unhinged me—Marty was right, it was a thin rehash of old news—but Mark’s response to it. It was like watching him disappear down the dark rabbit hole again. It scared me, and infuriated me. I was absolutely boiling with resentment: Couldn’t Mark have waited for a day and let me enjoy this special time with Audrey and my mom without this toxic cloud reappearing over our heads? I sent him a frustrated reply.

  Just saw the article and I CANNOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!! U and ur legal team and ur PR team MUST do something!! I am so fucking pissed, so beyond mad. It’s been 2 f’g years!! Enuf!

  In an instant, we were right back in hell, where Bernie Madoff, sheltered and fawned over in his bucolic prison, rightfully belonged.

  I’m doing my best to hold it together, Mark now texted me. I need your help. I’ve called and shrieked at everyone, including Marty. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve tried.

  My stepfather would later remember how enraged Mark was when he called that evening just as Marty was leaving his office. He had sat down on a sofa in the reception area near the elevators and spent twenty minutes listening to his son-in-law rant.

  “Marty, how am I ever going to get a job after this?” he had demanded. The gig with his friend Joe was supposed to be a foot back in the business, not a long-term career. “Look at that headline! These people are destroying my reputation. I am ruined. Ruined. My reputation has been my lifeblood. I have spent my professional life building that reputation. Now they have destroyed it. How can they do that?”

  Marty tried again to show Mark he was overreacting. The article was bullshit. There was not a hint of evidence that Mark had done anything wrong. “We know from experience that these pieces have a half-life of about twenty-four hours,” he reminded Mark, “and this being a Saturday paper, even less than that. Three days from now, nobody will remember it.” He knew that trying to totally resolve Mark’s concerns was an exercise in futility when he got in this mode; his fear of being unjustly accused was, as Marty saw it, “baked in” by now. Fear, frustration, anger, and humiliation had formed a rock-hard core inside Mark that no amount of reason could penetrate. Marty knew he couldn’t convince Mark, but he could calm him. That evening, hanging up the phone, he thought he had succeeded at that. They had ended their conversation the way they always did. They had become more like father and son than in-laws over the past two years.

  “Thanks, Marty, what would I do without you? I love you,” Mark said.

  “I love you, too, darling,” Marty replied. “Kiss the baby for me, and I’ll see you soon.”

  I was too sick, tired, and angry to chip away at the rock anymore that evening. I am turning my phone off, I told Mark. He could reach me through the hotel switchboard if needed. Enjoy Trevor’s. Good night.

  Sent Petal home, he replied at 8:04 p.m. He was skipping the party. Not up for it.

  At 4:14 on Saturday morning, December 11, 2010—the second anniversary of his father’s arrest—Mark sent three short e-mails. I found two of them when I woke up and turned on my phone around 6:45. The first one said Help in the subject line.

  Please send someone to take care of Nick

  The next one, sent three seconds later, was blank, with these words in bold in the subject line.

  I Love You.

  Audrey was still asleep. My mom was up, making coffee. “Mom, I got these weird e-mails from Mark,” I told her shakily as I dialed Mark’s number. It went instantly to voice mail. I tried the house line. No answer.

  “Mom, something’s wrong.” I fought the rising panic, willing myself to stay calm. Audrey was going to wake up any minute, and I couldn’t let her sense my fear.

  Mom looked at her e-mail and saw that she, Marty, and my brother, Rob, had been copied on the one asking for someone to come take care of Nick. She called Marty to send him to Mercer Street while I kept trying to reach Mark. I dialed the night doorman at our apartment building.

  “Listen, I’m in Florida, and I just got two very upsetting e-mails from my husband. My son is in the apartment. Can you please check and see if everyone’s okay?”

  “Yes,” he promised. “I’ll go check.”

  I hung up and waited. Ten minutes passed. Audrey woke up. “Do you want another Mickey waffle?” I asked her, forcing a bright smile across my face, ordering myself not to cry. Fifteen minutes had passed. Why wasn’t the doorman calling? I rang him again.

  “Steve, did you go upstairs?” I asked.

  “I needed to call the super,” he said. “Mr. Madoff may not want me in the apartment that early.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Please,” I begged him. “Please. I’m scared. I am scared for my son.”

  He agreed, again, to go up to check.

  Marty arrived just moments later, though, and went up himself. My mother’s cell phone rang, and I heard her gasp. “Oh my God, oh my God.” She turned to me, stricken. “He’s dead, Stephanie. He’s dead!”

  “What?” I responded. “What? What do you mean?”

  “Stephanie, he’s dead.” She tried to hug me. I pushed her away. I didn’t even ask how he had done it. I wasn’t ready to know that yet. My first vision was a bloody one of him on our couch with a knife, his throat slit open. There was blood everywhere.

  In fact, my stepfather had found Mark’s body hanging from an exposed steel beam that ran through the living room. He had fashioned a noose out of Grouper’s leash. A snapped cord from the vacuum cleaner was on a table nearby; apparently it had taken two tries. Nick was sleeping in his nursery just a few steps away. Grouper had been shut in the room with him.

  Marty rushed in to check on the baby while calling 911. A policewoman ended up giving my son his morning bottle. Rob arrived soon after the police and fell into Marty’s arms as both men wept. Rob managed to get Nick dressed and put a baby blanket over his small head so he wouldn’t see his father’s body on the way out. Marty stayed behind to answer police questions, and watched his son-in-law’s body taken away. Some fifty to one hundred reporters and photographers, alerted by the police scanners they monitor, were waiting outside when Marty finally came out with the dog and pushed his way through the throng, across our cordoned-off street, to the garage where his car was waiting. The photographers followed. Confused and frightened, Grouper struggled to back away from them and refused to jump in the car. “Can you please stop with the flashes until I get him into the car?” Marty implored. Even our dog was at their mercy now.

  In Florida, I was dry-eyed and strangely efficient. I had to hold the shock at bay; there was no way I was going to tell Audrey such horrific news in a place that had been so magical to her. I called Bridget, our family babysitter in Greenwich, and told her what had happened. I asked her to pick up Nick at my brother’s apartment and bring him to our Greenwich house, where I would meet them that afternoon. Bridget was close to Susan and had sat for Kate and Daniel when they were little, too. She would tell Mark’s ex-wife what had happened. Marty told Andy, who in turn would tell Ruth. The prison warden could tell Bernie. Mark had not sent farewell messages to any of them.

  My mother changed our flight. The next one was leaving for New York around twelve thirty. I had to get out of there
immediately. All I wanted was to get home to my son. I packed our bags, tucking the Santa hat with Goofy ears that we’d bought for Mark in with the other cheap souvenirs he would never see. I called my therapist and asked what I should tell Audrey, sitting there happily in her Minnie Mouse costume, unaware that the father she worshipped had decided that she would somehow be better off without him. I will never forgive you, Mark Madoff, I silently swore. The hotel staff lined up to wave good-bye to us.

  “Have a magical day!” they chirped.

  We were in the airport security line when I looked back at my mom behind us and mouthed the words: How did he do it?

  She pantomimed a rope around her neck.

  In the departure lounge, a text message popped up on my phone from a grad school classmate, telling me how sorry she was to hear the news. I was surprised—I used only my maiden name at school and had kept my personal travails of the past two years very private. News of my husband’s suicide was on the TV mounted in front of us. I turned Audrey around on my lap and distracted her with a computer game on my iPad.

  On the plane, I broke down completely, hiding my tears behind sunglasses, staring out the window. The sun was shining, the sky impossibly blue. How the fuck am I going to get through this? I wondered. What am I going to do? I was so very angry. I still am. If you let go of the rage, I knew even then, the sorrow moves in. As the plane descended into New York, clouds obliterated the last of the sun. The wintry landscape below was rendered in shades of black, white, and gray. The bleakness felt right to me. I still had to tell Audrey that she would never see her daddy again. I was filled with fear. I couldn’t bear to face the press, face my friends, face living life alone.

  I hate you, Mark Madoff.

  When I turned my phone on, it was overflowing with messages and texts from friends who had heard the news. Andy called. “What do you want to do here?” he asked. We agreed that a funeral was out of the question. It would turn into a three-ring media circus.

  “I’m so angry. I’m so angry right now, I just can’t believe it,” I told him. Andy was understanding and supportive. He was hurt and angry, too. For once, my brother-in-law and I were on the same page.

  Audrey fell asleep on the drive to Greenwich. Pulling into our driveway, I was surprised that Bridget’s car wasn’t already there. I needed to see Nick the minute I got home. I called the babysitter’s cell phone.

  “Where are you?” I asked anxiously.

  “Oh, we’re about ten or fifteen minutes away,” she told me. “He’s sleeping in the car. He’s fine.” Only later would I discover she had taken him first to Susan’s.

  With Audrey still sleeping in the car, I went to open our front door and forgot to turn off the security system. The alarm started blaring; I was too flustered to get it to turn off. The Greenwich police arrived, and later sent me a bill for the false alarm. Audrey woke up, excited about seeing her daddy and brother again. She bolted for the house. I brought her upstairs to the master bedroom and sat down in an armchair. I had scripted the conversation in my head on the drive from the airport while she slept, remembering bits and pieces from the class I had just taken, called Loss in Children’s Lives. I knew I had to be clear.

  “I have to tell you something, and it’s really sad. Daddy died.”

  “What? Am I ever going to see my daddy again?” Her huge brown eyes widened in hurt surprise.

  “No. I’m so sorry, honey. You’re never going to see your daddy again.”

  Audrey looked at me in disbelief.

  “I want to see my daddy!” She began to cry. “I have to tell my friends. I have to tell Ella and Scarlett.”

  At that point, Bridget fortuitously arrived with Nick, and Audrey was distracted by the prospect of seeing her baby brother. I raced into the driveway, hugging him and hugging him as he slept in his car seat.

  The afternoon passed in a blur of tears and phone calls. My two closest girlfriends, RoseMarie and Christi, came to stay with me. Marty handled everything with the coroner and the funeral home. People came by with food and flowers. Mark’s lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum, arrived to offer his condolences. I learned that the third e-mail Mark had sent at 4:14 that morning was to him. The subject line read: Stephanie. Inside, two lines: Nobody wants to believe the truth. Please take care of my family.

  “Enough! Enough! You get me out of this mess,” I ordered Flumenbaum. “I can’t take this anymore! This has to end! This has to end!” I would not let myself be swallowed by the same quicksand that had pulled and pulled at Mark until he no longer had the strength to fight it.

  The lawyer told me the same thing he had told my husband countless times.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  He released a statement to the media: Mark Madoff took his own life today. This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.

  Night fell and I was a thirty-six-year-old widow with two small children and a question mark where a life should have been. It was after midnight when I went into the living room and grabbed every vase, bowl, and porcelain knickknack I could hold. I went out the front door and stood on the frozen lawn, hurling each and every fragile useless treasure to the ground until everything lay smashed and shattered at my feet. I went back inside and found a favorite flannel shirt of Mark’s in the closet. I put it on and fell asleep in the scent of him.

  · eight ·

  NO MORE LIES

  Mark came to me in a dream that night of the eleventh, flickering in black and white like an old movie reel. He was in a T-shirt and gym shorts, just like he usually wore to bed, and he was holding a baby in his arms. He stood there in profile, and I couldn’t see his face. Then, wordlessly, he was gone again. Wait, I wanted to call after him, did you cradle your son in your arms before you decided to kill yourself outside his bedroom door? Did you kiss him good-bye? My husband’s visitation, like his death, left me sad and yearning for answers.

  I woke up in Greenwich on December 12 wondering for a few seconds whether this was real, if it had really happened. I felt deserted in a combat zone. I couldn’t believe he had done this to us. Audrey was still asleep in my bed, but I could hear Nick up and stirring. I didn’t know how I was going to summon the energy to pretend for them that everything was going to be okay when I had no idea myself whether I would ever be whole again.

  My stepfather was on the phone, making the necessary arrangements, and I felt a flood of love and gratitude. Marty was hurting, too, but he pushed his own pain aside to tend to mine. I couldn’t imagine having a conversation with the medical examiner about my husband’s autopsy or cremation. When he had arrived at the house with Grouper the evening of Mark’s death, Marty had come into the kitchen and found me holding Audrey. “Hi, Grampa,” she greeted him. “You know my daddy is dead and is never coming back again. He got sick in his brain, and when people get sick in their brain, they just die and don’t come back. But he is in the sky, and I can talk to him all I want.”

  Cars full of reporters and photographers were already lining the narrow lane leading to our house, zoom lenses ready to catch an image of the grieving young widow. “Stay here, we’ll go,” Marty and RoseMarie insisted when I wanted to make my usual morning drive to Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee. The two of them helped me craft a statement to the press, expressing my devastation and begging for the privacy to mourn. My husband Mark took his own life and regardless of what you feel about my father-in-law and his monstrous crimes, Mark’s children are innocent victims and this is tragic for them. I will miss him and love him forever.

  Over the next few days, friends trickled in to pay their condolences, and the house began to fill with food I couldn’t eat and flowers I couldn’t smell. The mail brought a jarring mix of sympathy cards and Christmas greetings. It was snowy and cold,
and I remember looking out at the backyard and spotting the big gray crane we called Charlie. He was a summer bird and had never appeared in winter before. I wondered if he had missed his flock’s migration south. I watched him swoop down from a bare tree branch, then circle the pond purposefully, as if in winged tribute. Some bewildered instinct was driving Grouper to brave the cold, too, and he sat expectantly in the driveway for hours that first week, waiting patiently for his master to come home.

  Susan arrived that morning-after with Kate and Daniel, her husband, Rich, and their five-year-old daughter, Annabelle, as well as Andy’s two daughters. Andy was conspicuously absent. “You saved him. You know you saved him,” Susan said cryptically, enveloping me in a hug. I couldn’t begin to fathom what she meant. How had I saved him? He was gone. I wrote the comment off to shock; she had been hysterical when told of her ex-husband’s death. I steered her into the dining room for a private conversation. There was something I needed to say. Whatever distrust and ill will there had been between us all these years seemed pointless now.

  “Susan, I need your help,” I began. “Please, let’s be on the same page. I don’t want any more secrets. I don’t want anything done behind my back. I can’t take any more lies. No more lies.” For two years, my life had been ripped apart by betrayal and dishonesty, and I was tired of being manipulated. I just wanted people to be straight with me, even if I wasn’t going to like what they had to say. Susan seemed instantly receptive to my request.

  “Of course, Stephanie,” she assured me. “Rich and I are here for you, whatever you need.” Her compassion gave me a surge of hope. If only we could have formed the same bond when Mark was alive! In that moment, I was deeply grateful for Susan’s unexpected solidarity.

  It didn’t take long before I put my newfound friendship with her to the test. Feeling claustrophobic, I went with my mother to the village of Old Greenwich a couple of days later. A teenaged driver accidentally backed into my car, crumpling a rear door. My pent-up stress and anger exploded like a burst steam pipe, and I flew out of the passenger seat screaming at the poor terrified girl and her father. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I shrieked in the father’s face. He called the police, and an officer showed up to take an incident report. My mother ordered me back into the car, where I sat fuming and cursing under my breath. I was suddenly desperate to just be home. My mom, who had been driving, was shaking, and I was too worked up to get behind the wheel myself. I called Susan to see if Daniel could come pick me up. “We’ll be right there,” she promised. She and Rich arrived within minutes. Seeing how rattled both my mother and I were, Rich chivalrously slid behind the wheel of the damaged SUV to take us home. “Oh my God,” Susan said sympathetically, “this is the last thing you need.”