The Bag Lady Papers

by Alexandra Penney

  “No,” he said, “I think I understand where you’re headed.”

  I was so grateful for his support that tears came to my eyes.

  The next day I told Glamour’s editor in chief that I was quitting to go back to school and to freelance. She sent out an afternoon memo to the staff: “AP is leaving for her own interesting reasons but I am sure she’ll be back.” Those weren’t the exact words but they’re pretty close.

  Was I crazy to leave a high-paying, prestigious editorial job for a fish market? I don’t think so. I knew that the longer I stayed at Glamour, the more unlikely it was that I would become an artist. Now that I look back and remember the big chance I took in my twenties, becoming a fishmonger in order to pursue my dreams, I think surely I can find a way out of the mess I’m in now.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Copy Shop Collapse

  MF + 4 WEEKS

  It’s been four weeks since the Madoff bomb detonated into my life. I’m back in New York. The Florida house is still for sale. The cottage on Long Island is also on the market. No takers, or even lookers, for either house.

  I’ve now written three blogs. Ed Victor, my agent, thinks he might be able to sell a book based on them. Despite childhood ambitions, I’ve never considered myself a writer or an author. I’ve written books as a working journalist, and I know that my strength is ideas, not sentences. My idea is to write about what happens when one’s worst nightmare comes true.

  On a Monday, I hear the judge has once again given the MF a get-out-of-jail-free card, and I can’t stand it. I was brought up believing in the American system of justice and that what the judge says goes. The MF gamed the system for all it was worth and the same system seems to be protecting him. Luckily, as I am visualizing him, wolfing down a gourmet dinner in his dandy penthouse, I am at the Four Seasons in New York dining on risotto laced with black truffles. My friend RP e-mailed me earlier in the day: “Last minute idea: do you want a FREE dinner that will help save the earth?” Who am I to turn down a free meal at the Four Seasons, under any circumstances?

  During the cocktail hour I notice, among the ladies, a conspicuous lack of the large stones that glittered with such delicious abandon in premeltdown days. I pay special attention because the other day I received another phone message about selling my jewels. This time it was from one of the big auction houses. A polished voice asked if I would like a “complimentary consultation on how to discreetly dispose of your jewels.”

  Excuse me, where did anyone get the idea I have such valuable gems? I wish!

  I meet RP at the venerable Grill Room, where I had countless business lunches as a high-flying magazine editor. The government of Malaysia is sponsoring a dinner for the first Earth Awards, and finalists from all over the globe talk about how they have been working for years to help the planet. In the beneficent atmosphere, I forget about the MF and news tidbits about his wife paying for his security guards and fat cigars—with whose money? Okay, maybe I don’t forget entirely.

  I arrive home from the Four Seasons feeling wiped out from the day. I take a Tylenol PM and try to fall asleep. Another Tylenol and a tranquilizer three hours later don’t do the trick and the demons do a shock and awe attack. Tonight, drugs don’t help.

  I contemplate the advice of my dinner partner that day, a doctor whose specialty is integrative medicine. I told him I was looking for someone who would help me with meditation, and asked if I would become addicted to the tranquilizers I take when I feel panicky. He said I didn’t appear to have a problem yet. (When you become a PoRC, you grab any freebie advice you can get.) He suggested a book about yogic breathing exercises. Learning how to inhale and exhale is pretty far down my to-do list, but maybe I’m fooling myself about what will really help me fight the panic. Tomorrow I will find the book. It’s been quite a while since I locked eyes with the lions in front of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street. That’s a good thing about being a PoRC, you get to have experiences that you forgot about when, for instance, it was easier just to one-click and order a book from Amazon.

  I have until March 4 to file a claim for the SIPC insurance money that may be paid to people who’ve been swindled by the MF. SIPC says it can pay up to $500,000, but my savings were in an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) so it’s not clear whether I will receive any remuneration at all. And if the government classifies me as the victim of a theft, and worthy of its largesse, how long will it be before I see the SIPC money? Six years? Eight years? By then, I figure, I won’t need to have my hair colored; it will be a perfectly elegant shade of pure-panic white.

  The morning after the Four Seasons dinner, I descend into the dark depths of the basement storage area of my apartment building to locate the MF’s statements. I need to collect reams of materials in order to file the SIPC claim. Three hours later I’m covered with filthy dust but in my hands are all the documents going back to 1999, when I first put my money into the MF’s funds.

  The IRS instructs us to keep records for seven years, and I’ve dutifully complied. I throw out as much as possible because I have very little room for storage and neat-freak is embedded into my DNA. But for some reason—and I think it’s because I’m always so worried about money—I have not thrown out one stub of the official-looking statements that the MF sent every month.

  The pile is over a foot high and the papers weigh as much as two gold bricks. I must Xerox the stuff so I can give it to Bob, who is helping me with the SIPC forms.

  Bob is a godsend. He’s the attorney who paid a house call to me in what seems like a lifetime ago, with the heartening news that I could stay in my apartment for the time being. When he offered to help with all the paperwork, I hastened to tell him to please keep track of his hours. I will pay him of course (from what, I’m not sure), but he waved me off and said, “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  I do worry. Of course I want to pay him for his advice and his hard work. I don’t want to be a charity case for anybody, but I am extremely grateful for his smarts and his time. I can offer to do portraits of his grandchildren, but that’s not nearly enough. I have to believe that my luck will change, and when it does, I will be able to pay him.

  Three hours of my day so far have been spent on Madoff. I take a long, hot shower to get rid of the grime under my fingernails, and then get ready to head to Kinko’s, where I’ll copy the hundreds of pages of paperwork. Resentment wells up in me: for the time that has been spent, for the money that will be spent, for my dirty clothes and bad mood—all to have these effing Madoff forgeries copied.

  The only way I can manage the loathsome stack of papers is to take a taxi to the shop: I use even more precious dollars than expected because we get mired in bad traffic.

  At the copy shop, I stand in line watching the clock. Eighteen minutes tick by. Finally I am facing a young clerk with fancifully decorated, false clawlike fingernails. They are true works of fine art. And, it turns out, so is she.

  I show her the pile and explain that I need two copies of each, collated, please.

  “They are legal size and regular letter size,” she tells me.

  “Yes, they are,” I agree.

  “And some are double-sided,” she says, rifling through the sheets with the fingernails carefully pointed upward so they are not sullied by touching the paper.

  “That’s true,” I say.

  “I don’t think we can do this job,” she says, and begins to turn to the next customer.

  “Can you tell me why not?” I say, trying to remain civil.

  “There’s nobody here who knows how to do this kind of job right now.”

  “Okay, I have some time on this, at least a couple of days,” I say, knowing that I simply cannot lug this pile back to my apartment. “When will somebody who knows how to do this job be here?”

  She is looking past me now, ready to help the person behind me.

  “You’ll have to speak to the manager,” she says, not looking at me. Her cell phone rings. Sh
e answers and begins to talk.

  Now I’m angry. But the copying must be done.

  The manager is on his break, and there is no assistant manager on the premises. I run down the list of all my friends in offices who could let me use a Xerox machine. Out of the question: I can’t impose on them for something like this.

  It’s now raining heavily outside. I have this big canvas bag of papers and nothing to protect them from the torrents. For a few seconds I stand there stupidly, not knowing what to do. I hail a taxi and give my home address.

  Back in my apartment, I sit on my bed and give in to a ferocious rage that I haven’t felt since it all happened. I try to cry but no tears come. I walk into the kitchen, then back to the bedroom, at least a dozen times. I open the fridge, looking for something to eat. I open and close the fridge door ten times or more. At last, I take out a yogurt, then smash it so viciously into the sink that the plastic container explodes onto every surface it can possibly cling to except the ceiling. Cleaning it up helps to calm me a bit.

  I try to cry angry tears again, but no dice. I think of making myself a drink the way they do in the movies. But I would just get a headache. Finally, I find myself in the bathroom taking the longest, hottest shower of my life.

  What do I really want to cry about? I ask myself. There are people far worse off than I am. I have my health. I have my wonderful but faraway son and my beloved niece and their amazing families. I have close friends who love and support me in every way imaginable. I am not a bag lady—yet. Okay, I’m no spring chick, but I have some talent. I have connections. I am still sitting in this beautiful apartment. So I have to sell some stuff. So I have to go out and earn money again. So what?

  I am actually talking out loud to myself. Reluctantly I leave the shower and the pelting water, which does seem to give me a measure of composure.

  The phone is ringing and it’s my friend Patty Marx. I tell her about the copy shop claw-nail clerk and how I came home and completely lost it.

  “You’re not angry at that girl, it’s obviously about Madoff,” she says, and of course I agree.

  “Sure, you can always say people are worse off but it’s not that meaningful or consoling, because it’s happening to you. Just because things could be worse doesn’t mean you have to be grateful for everything you have. What happened to you is real. It is bad,” she says. “You were robbed. Allow yourself to be angry and pissed as much as you want.”

  We make a date to meet at EJ’s for dinner the following week. I hang up and feel a huge relief. She’s absolutely correct that no matter how often I rationalize that it could have been worse or think about the people for whom it was or is worse, I still have to contend with what happened to me. My whole body feels lighter after talking to her. Words help. Love and friendship help more than anything.

  I am brushing my teeth that night when I think about what’s worse than losing all your money:

  Losing your child or your husband or someone you most deeply love

  Losing your health

  Losing your mind

  Losing your sense of humor—maybe!

  CHAPTER 9

  Change Is Good: My Fishmonger Days

  Irish fisherman sweaters are aptly named—they were part of the garb of choice at Rosedale Fish Market. The oils retained by the natural woolen yarn foil the fragrance of the merchandise. Also essential was a lightweight rubber apron wrapped around your entire body so that it covered your jeans or OshKosh overalls. A clean white cotton apron topped that for hygienic purposes. Black rubber boots with salmon-colored soles had to be tall enough to reach under the apron. Thus your entire personage was shielded from unwanted scents and you could tread safely across the floors that were splashed with fresh water hourly to keep Rosedale spotlessly clean. I considered it a rather stylish uniform.

  At Rosedale, I had plenty of time to read and study. Our major traffic was in the early-morning hours, when private cooks came in to check out the catch of the day, and around four thirty to six in the late afternoon, when people were returning home from work.

  Rosedale had always been hospitable to artists and writers and musicians, I learned. Robbie’s wife came from a well-known, wealthy family. What Mrs. Robbie was doing in a fish market—albeit a very upscale one—I haven’t the vaguest clue. But then again, I was there, too. Robbie took a shine to me and bestowed upon me the ultimate gift: I was allowed to be the first female to accompany him to the Fulton Fish Market.

  Once a week, at four thirty in the morning, he would pick me up in his truck and we would barrel downtown. After he had bought the fish for the day, we’d head to a mahogany-paneled bar with beautiful old mercury-backed mirrors on the corner of South Street, where all the out-of-town fishermen in their baseball caps and heavy red-and-black-plaid mackinaw jackets hung out and tossed down their morning beer. Robbie would order a coffee and I would be perched on a tall stool, next to him, my rubber boots just skimming the shining brass floor rod. Robbie and the truck would scoot me home in time to take my son to school, then I’d circle back to the fish market for the day’s work.

  It was easy to slip into class at the Art Students League in my Rosedale outfit, as it looked rather outré and artistic, and the other students could never smell a thing—or at least they never said anything to me about it.

  I had, as planned, applied to graduate school for further study in painting. Yale was my first choice, but Hunter was in my neighborhood and I could attend afternoon seminars with Robbie’s blessing and still have free nights to be with my family.

  When a cosmetics company I knew from my days at Glamour called and asked me to work on a project as a consultant, I knew I had to quit Rosedale—I couldn’t walk into the tony offices in the General Motors building where they were headquartered in my fishy clothes. I reluctantly left Rosedale after almost a full year. But I was thrilled about the money I was being paid for the cosmetics project and by the prospect of an untethered life as a freelance writer and fledgling artist.

  Without a day job, I wanted to move downtown to a loft where I could have a studio to paint in. Pragmatically I knew it would never work because my son was in school on West Seventy-seventh Street, and living downtown would be an enormous hassle for all of us. I came up with the idea of renting a cheap loft for weekends instead of renting a house in the country and convinced my husband it would be fun.

  I had met an artist at a cocktail party who lived in an area of town I didn’t know anything about. He told me about his loft south of Houston Street in lower Manhattan. I didn’t know exactly what a loft consisted of but I was curious, so I pulled on my well-washed Rosedale OshKosh coveralls and biked downtown one afternoon for a cup of tea.

  He had an enormous white-painted space in a redbrick five-story walk-up with high ceilings and several skylights. In other words, a loft. The glossy floors were painted a neutral gray, and a black wood-burning cast-iron stove, the only source of heat, commanded the living space. Water for shaving and bathing was warmed up in a huge pot on a two-burner stove. The area where he worked was splattered with a brightly colored bouquet of oil paints and the walls were covered with tacked-up preliminary charcoal sketches. Here was the genuine la vie Bohème. It was three miles and universes away from my Upper East Side apartment, and I was instantly seduced.

  I used any spare time I could find to hunt for a space, preferably in a cast-iron building on one of the neighborhood’s cobblestone streets. I pestered supers and tracked down landlords to see what was available. I finally found a great open loft with wooden ceilings and tall windows on LaGuardia Place, which later became part of now-famous SoHo. My husband pitched in to whitewash the floor and all the walls, and we moved some mattresses, tables, and bikes in.

  Our little family sometimes stayed at the loft on weekends and I painted as much as I could. I even threw a birthday party for my son there and all the uptown kids were wildly excited that they could roller-skate indoors. After a year the lease was up and my husband wanted to
try something else. He had found some property in Vermont and designed a lovely shingled Cape Cod house for us to live in. We began heading north on weekends.

  My husband and I very slowly drifted apart. I had loved my time downtown and wanted more of it. He preferred the New England house. I preferred the city. I hated the five hours spent driving to Vermont and the five-hour return on Sunday nights. For me, it was a huge waste of valuable time that I could use to do things with my son or study and paint.

  We began to spend long periods away from each other. When my son was at camp in Maine, I would take vacations there and paint the rocks and the ocean, while my husband stayed in Vermont. We had differing outlooks on life. I wanted adventure. I wanted to meet exciting people, to learn as much as I could, to have new experiences. He wanted the peace and tranquillity of his own home in the beautiful Vermont countryside.

  At a dinner party recently, a young man whose parents had divorced in the early eighties during the postfeminist period, as my husband and I did, said, “My parents split up, and a lot of my friends’ parents did, too; it seems as if it was the trendy thing to get a divorce in those years.”

  If you pressed me about exactly why my husband and I decided to go our separate ways, I couldn’t give you a specific answer. Several of my friends were leaving their marriages and they reported feeling liberated and relieved without their conjugal responsibilities. I wanted a different kind of life and was intent on having it. Ours was a mutual agreement and mostly an amicable one. We separated but didn’t divorce for almost six years. We remained close friends and we both wanted to make sure it was the right thing to do for us and for our son. The single most difficult, most painful moment of my life was telling my son that his father and I were separating. He was twelve at the time.

  My now ex-husband found an elegant but smaller apartment adjacent to Fifth Avenue, a block away from where we had lived on Seventy-second Street. Our son would stay with him whenever he wanted to be uptown. I shed my Park Avenue self and rented a small, inexpensive interim one-bedroom on the outskirts of Greenwich Village that I found in the Times Classified section. The loft on LaGuardia Place, although still available, was way out of my new budget.