Innocent Spouse

by Carol Ross Joynt

  Copyright © 2011 by Carol Joynt Media LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Joynt, Carol Ross.

  Innocent spouse: a memoir / Carol Ross Joynt.

  p. cm.

  1. Joynt, Carol Ross. 2. Women journalists—United States—Biography. 3. Journalists—United States—Biography. 4. Businesswomen—Washington (D.C.)—Biography. 5. Nathans (Washington, D.C.). 6. Joynt, Carol Ross—Marriage. 7. Joynt, Howard, III. 8. Husbands—Death—Case studies. 9. Husband and wife—Taxation—United States—Case studies. 10. Washington (D.C.)—Biography. I. Title.

  CT275.J926A3 2011

  975.3092—dc22

  [B] 2010045602

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59212-5

  Jacket design by Erin Schell

  Jacket photography: courtesy of the author (wedding photograph);

  Broken Flower by Diane Wesson © Special Photographers Archive/Bridgeman Art Library; Bridgeman Art Library (background)

  v3.1

  For Spencer

  I thought I was your guide, but as it turned out,

  you were my guide, too.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Two

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgments

  ONE

  Chapter 1

  WE WERE STUCK in heavy Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic on M Street, the main thoroughfare in Georgetown. It was January. Everyone was headed home at the same time. I slammed the horn at the slowpoke ahead of me every time he cost me another yellow light. I wasn’t panicked, but I was frustrated. We needed to go, not sit at a light. From the backseat my husband, Howard, groaned at every stop, start, lane change, and pothole. He was on his back, gasping for breath, and braced himself with his arms.

  We did not talk except for my repeated question, “How are you?” And his faint repeated answer, “Every time you hit a pothole it’s a stabbing pain.” I listened to the all-news radio station to make sure my route was clear. The announcers’ voices droned through news updates, commercial breaks, two-minute interviews, and weather. In a way it was so utterly ordinary—the car, the traffic, the potholes, the radio. We might have been on our way to the supermarket. Except we weren’t. We were headed to the emergency room at Sibley Hospital, and I was focused like a laser on the road.

  When we pulled into the drive I stopped at the door and jumped out. “I’m gonna get a nurse. I’ll be right back.” My voice was urgent but calm. Calm enough, anyway. I ran inside, through the lobby and to the desk. “I need a nurse! My husband’s in the car. He can barely breathe.”

  The nurse opened the back door, did a quick survey of Howard, and asked, “Can you walk in or do you need a wheelchair?” He said he could walk. We both helped him out of the car. At six foot three he would have towered over us but he was hunched over in pain. His face was pale. His usually slicked-back silver hair was in disarray. His trousers and sweater were loose.

  The nurse bolstered Howard with her shoulder under his arm. Their pace was slow, careful. I left him with her. By the time I parked, gave the admissions clerk the necessary insurance information, and found Howard in the warren of examining rooms, there was an oxygen mask over his face, an IV in his arm, and a young doctor and two nurses hovering over him. His eyes locked with mine. I saw fear. My gut tightened.

  “Your husband has bad pneumonia,” the doctor said, shoving an X-ray into a wall-mounted light box. His tone was anxious, even a little frazzled. He pointed at the black-and-white picture of my husband’s lungs, one quite obviously cloudy and white. “One lung is fully compromised,” he said, pointing to the film like a teacher lecturing a class. “We can’t let it spread to the other. We’re sending him up to the ICU. We have work to do.”

  I’d brought in a time bomb, but I consoled myself that Howard could talk and his eyes were open. Heck, I thought, people survive pneumonia all the time. Pneumonia is fixable. Maybe he’ll be in the hospital a couple of days. He’ll learn his lesson about avoiding the doctor until too late.

  The medical team disappeared through the drawn white curtain. We were alone. Howard asked for water. “Evian, please.”

  How sick can he be if he’s picky about the water? I stood as close to him as possible, careful not to disturb the tubes and wires. “I’ll get some bottled water later. D.C. water will do for now,” I said. “This looks like a close call. Thank God I didn’t stay longer in New York. Not that it matters now, but I’ll never understand why you told me you’d seen Dr. Goldstein.” He didn’t respond but slowly closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hear about it. So I made upbeat small talk. Even though it was loud and crowded in the emergency room, and the curtain was regularly pulled back and closed again by busy nurses and technicians, the moment felt oddly intimate, personal, another experience in our journey together. He was scared and I was there to help take care of him, to calm his fear.

  I found a wall phone outside Howard’s treatment bay. My first call was to Howard’s sister, Martha, in New Castle, Delaware. “I’m at Sibley. Howard has bad pneumonia. That’s all I know. They’re sending him to the ICU.”

  She didn’t ask any questions. “I’m on my way. It’ll probably be three hours.”

  I called my office at CNN’s Larry King Live, and talked to the executive producer. “You’re not gonna believe this. I’m at Sibley. Howard has bad pneumonia. I found him flat on his back in bed when I got home from New York.”

  She was alarmed. “What can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  I made the same call to Nathans, Howard’s restaurant in Georgetown. “What can I do?” the manager asked.

  “I don’t know. Stand by. I’ll get back to you.”

  My last call was the toughest. Home. As we were leaving for the hospital, Howard had paused only long enough to poke his head in on our smiling five-year-old son, playing on the floor of his room with the babysitter. “I’ll be back, big guy,” he said. I gave the babysitter the update and asked to speak to Spencer.

  There was something about that little voice at the other end of the line that underscored my altered reality. Spencer seemed so far removed from the drama involving his parents, but it would soon become his drama, too. Blessedly, I suppose, he was too young to understand where I was, what had happened, and what it meant, and therefore at this point it could not scare
him. “I’m at the hospital with Daddy,” I said. “There are lots of nice doctors and nurses.”

  “Mommy, are the doctors going to fix him?” He knew Howard was not well. After all, for the four days I was away Howard had been home in bed.

  “Yes, sweetie. The doctors are going to make him all better. You should have your dinner and get ready for bed, and I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

  “Okay, Mommy. Can I talk to Daddy?”

  “Soon, but not right now. He’s taking a nap. That’s how they fix him.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  Howard was whisked up to the ICU. Bright lights flooded the room. There were two windows, one with the blinds shut, the other facing the nursing station. There was a lot of equipment, most of it hooked up to him. One of the machines beeped constantly, flashing numbers. He had an IV, possibly two. He was in a gown, under white sheets, propped up by pillows. Was I afraid? No, not then. Not yet. Howard was awake, after all. He talked to me through his oxygen mask. I wet washcloths with cold water, squeezed them out, and pressed them against his forehead. There were lots of people fussing with him. Something was being done. I said to myself, “This is bad for him but routine for them. He’ll be here a couple nights and then home.”

  What did I know?

  We had gotten to the hospital at five in the afternoon. Very quickly it was pushing nine. The nurse called in a new doctor, who arrived in shirtsleeves and tie but no jacket or white coat. He was friendly but instantly serious when he looked at Howard’s charts and machines. His one good lung was not absorbing enough oxygen. In a whisper, out of Howard’s range, I asked the nurse, “Is this serious?”

  She nodded. “We’ve got to get his blood oxygen up.” She pointed to an “85” on the monitor.

  “So he’s in serious condition?”

  Her voice went flat. “No, he’s critical.”

  I turned to the sink and splashed water on my face. It was the only way to hide the rush of tears. The fear arrived with a jolt and made me queasy, woozy, unsteady. My breath stopped somewhere near my breastbone. My mouth was dry. But I couldn’t let myself become unhinged in front of Howard. Composure was essential. I inhaled as deeply as I could, wiped my face, wet another washcloth, turned, and went to him, pressing it against his cheeks and brow. I looked him in the eyes, the beautiful brown eyes I’d known and loved for twenty years. I could see the same fear. “This is no way to spend Friday night,” he said.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “You’re in good hands and Martha is on her way. She’ll be here so I can go check on Spencer. You won’t be alone.”

  The doctor called me outside. His hands were on his hips, head tilted down toward me, expression engaged but grim. “We have to sedate him. We have to get a tube down into his good lung to get more oxygen into him. I don’t know if it will work but we’ve got to give it a try.” He didn’t call it life support, but that’s what it was. I behaved calmly, but by then I was functioning on pure adrenaline.

  Back at Howard’s bedside, the doctor explained the procedure to him while the nurses prepared to put him under. No one offered us a moment alone, nor did we ask for one. It didn’t seem necessary. This was still so simple. They would sedate him, do their work, fix him, and he’d be better. I kissed him awkwardly on the arm or shoulder—whatever part of him it was I could reach—and asked if there was anything I could bring him from home, anything he wanted me to do. His look was woeful. “I want to be back in the Caribbean.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Me, too.” I blew him another kiss, grabbed my coat, and headed out the door.

  Chapter 2

  A MONTH EARLIER WE had been sailing in the Caribbean on a sixty-three-foot sloop. Her sails were up and full. She yawed softly. The air smelled salty sweet. During a night sail the water splashed the hull and spilled away in twinkling phosphorescence. As I lay on the deck, the rich indigo of the sky mesmerized me. Howard was beside me, his hand in mine. Spencer slept in his bunk below. Stars crowded the sky, brilliant and wondrous. The breeze, a steady twelve to fifteen knots, filled the big jib. The boat was following a northerly course, away from the sandbar island of Barbuda toward the more volcanic and mountainous St. Bart’s. We could see the shadowed hulk of St. Kitts on the western horizon.

  I knew that sky and I knew those waters. I’d lived in the Caribbean for a while before I met Howard, and after we married we returned together many times. This was our first trip with our son. To our delight he took to the surf and sand and steel drums like an island native. He responded to the motion of the boat, the pitch and roll and heel, like a seasoned deckhand. I sighed and squeezed Howard’s hand. We shared so much happiness—our love for each other, our son, that night, that place, and those lovely, soothing sounds. My head found its familiar spot on his shoulder.

  Howard was the embodiment of the irresistible rogue. He wore money well—with the distinguished good looks, grace, and style of a rakish prince, underscored by just enough pirate to seem slightly dangerous. That was what had initially attracted me, but I loved him for so much more. I was drawn to his dash, of course, but there was intelligence shielded behind that glossy veneer. He had a remarkable BS detector, which was useful in the bar business and impressive to me. Over the years I watched as he unerringly called out various posers and charlatans. He had a keen business sense and the math skills of an accountant. Some would say he was too smart to own a bar, but maybe that was the point.

  Away from work, Howard knew and loved history and art and had a well-read appreciation for design. He could stand in an art gallery and zero in on the one true gem. A frustrated landscape architect—what he would have studied in college had his father not rejected the pursuit as “sissy”—he loved to research, plant, and tend gardens. He could recite virtually every variety of daffodil, his favorite flower. He was also a handyman who could get down on his hands and knees to fix the kitchen sink. He was sincerely thoughtful toward others, though he was not a schmoozer. He had a sense of duty—to his parents, his sister, and to my family—which awed me because my family was not that way. When I had a bad day he made it his project to lift my spirits. He made me feel safe and secure and adored. I was serenely happy to be his wife. I believed that without him I could not exist.

  On the other hand, he was catnip to women and he knew it; he had lived a life of so much privilege that the rules of law were a gray area; he too often confused material luxury with love, and his personal motto was “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

  Still, he was my knight in shining armor.

  “I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life,” I said to him. Right there, right then, I had everything I wanted in the world.

  HOWARD AND I had met two decades earlier at an after-hours party at Clyde’s, a Georgetown bar a block away from Nathans, its chief competitor. Nathans and Clyde’s were founded a few years apart in the 1960s. Both were legends in the Washington, D.C. bar business—just like their owners. Stuart Davidson, who owned Clyde’s, and Howard, who owned Nathans, were gentlemen saloon owners, which meant they didn’t need the work or the money. Howard’s father was a successful patent lawyer who had secured rights for windfall American staples such as the parking meter and stainless steel, and his wife was a rare-books expert and had a famed collection of eighteenth-century American furniture and art. A Washington native, Howard preferred New York, especially the bars on the Upper East Side along Second and Third avenues. He’d been a denizen of that scene after a year or so of college. When Howard returned to Washington, his father wanted him to find a job.

  “You seem to like to spend a lot of time in bars,” his father had said to Howard, “so you might as well own one.” With that, Mr. Joynt paid off two partners and bought Nathans for Howard, who made it a rumpus room for trust-fund prepster types, celebrities, the social, the powerful, and anybody else who wanted to join the party. He styled Nathans as a homage to his two favorite New York haunts, P. J. Clarke’s and the 21 Club. The logo was
a jockey on a racehorse. The cover of the matchboxes showed a bottle of Dom Pérignon beside a rubrum lily.

  The restaurant business provided the perfect stage for Howard’s larger-than-life character: tall, lean, with a natural virility, his hair slicked back and curling at the collar, his brown eyes and serious eyebrows, the strong and purposeful chin, the tailored suits, the perfectly knotted Hermès ties, the polished Gucci slip-ons. Any room picked up when he walked in. A few glasses of vintage wine or cognac only heightened his effect. He could be a lover and friend to women, but men, too, heartily enjoyed his company. He had the gift for making any conversation about the other person, not himself. He could charm anybody, and usually did.

  He smoked cigarettes, Kents, with the panache of an uptown gangster in a ’40s-era film noir. He could talk like one, too. With his deep gravel and sandpaper voice, he was fresh off the pages of Damon Runyon. If the engine on his vintage twelve-cylinder Jaguar XKE didn’t turn over, it was “deader than Kelso’s nuts.” When he wanted something fast, it had to happen “in a New York minute.” He comfortably talked the talk with Madison Avenue antiques dealers and always impressed them with his seasoned eye for what was good; handled appointments with his tailor as a necessity not an indulgence; and fit in as well with the bookies at the bar (after all, he got Nathans in part due to a bookie’s gambling debt) as he did with the café society types with whom he sometimes jetted about. He cussed a blue streak, but not in front of women or children. It was second nature for him to offer a woman a seat, pull out her chair, open her door, or send her flowers and thoughtful gifts. He combined a salty swagger with refined good manners at a time when manners like his were becoming as rare as his parents’ antiques.