Susy, at the time a top official at the Commerce Department, was away on a trip. Spencer was tucked in. It poured heavy rain outside as Terry and I ate dinner, drank wine, and talked. I let it all out about the tax fraud, the illicit write-offs, and the money Howard had taken from Nathans. “It’s hard to accept how this happened,” I said. Then I brought up another matter, one I’d discussed with nobody but Martha. “There are rumors going around that Howard committed suicide.”
Terry was taken aback. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No, I don’t, but Martha wonders. She wonders about it a lot. She thinks he might have considered it his only way out. She can’t understand why he didn’t go to the doctor.… He didn’t have to die. Maybe if I’d been here instead of New York …”
“Carol, he was a grown-up. You did all you could do. He was very ill, possibly—obviously—not in his right mind. He might have been too sick to recognize how sick he was.”
“He might have gone to jail, Terry. He couldn’t face that.”
Terry was silent.
“If Howard had gone to trial and then to jail on top of the IRS taking every single thing we owned … well, I can’t imagine. I simply can’t imagine. Can you?”
“No,” Terry said.
“Even if he didn’t go to jail, the IRS would have taken everything they could get their hands on. He would have been mortified. No, that’s too weak a word.…” I was beginning to think Martha had a point—not that Howard had actively killed himself but that he just let himself die because he saw no alternative. On the other hand, Terry knew Howard was smart enough that he could have figured it out. “He wouldn’t have rolled over,” Terry said. “There’s no way he would have abandoned Spencer. None.”
I believed Terry was right, but how well can we ever know another person, I thought. How well do we know ourselves?
SPENCER’S FIRST WEEKS of school went well. He loved kindergarten. He loved his backpack with the multiple key chains hanging down. He wore it proudly as he marched out the door to wait on the street for the school bus, with me and Teddy the dog in tow. He came home with elaborate stories about teachers and friends and antics on the playground. He regularly brought home artwork, including a family portrait of stick figures with names below them: “Mommy,” “Daddy” (with a halo and wings), “Teddy,” and “Cecilia.”
Cecilia? “Who’s Cecilia?” I asked. “Does she live in your room with you? Is she invisible to me?”
He didn’t reply.
Later, at a parent-teacher conference, his teacher said to me, “You didn’t tell us about your daughter. That was a surprise.”
We were seated across from each other on pint-size chairs at a pint-size table. “My daughter? I don’t have a daughter.”
“Cecilia?” Instantly I understood Spencer’s “family” drawing.
“Spencer told the class about his sister, Cecilia, and that she’s away at boarding school.”
“There is no sister. Cecilia’s the product of his very active imagination.” I laughed, but I was concerned.
When I mentioned Cecilia to his grief therapist, Ellen Sanford, she said not to worry. “He’s just trying to make your family like the families of other kids in his class. Don’t be surprised by that. Again, he just wants to fit in. He wants desperately to be like the other children.”
She asked if Spencer was aware of the death of Princess Diana, if he’d seen any of the funeral coverage on television.
“Yes, we talked about it. I asked him what he would say to William and Harry. He said, ‘I would tell them I miss my daddy a lot and that it’s okay to cry.’ ”
As much as I tried to be there for him during his at-home hours, my record wasn’t perfect. I almost always got home in time to meet the afternoon school bus, but one day in the first months of school (the babysitter was off-duty) I was late. I was walking down the street toward the waiting bus just as it pulled away. The driver wouldn’t leave children at the bus stop unless someone was waiting for them.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!” I yelled to pedestrians closer to the bus, “Don’t let that bus go!” I was running as fast as I could in a straight skirt and heels. I cut through some office buildings to try to catch the bus one street over, but it picked up speed and I could not keep up. All I could think about was my little boy on that bus wondering what had happened to his mother. At almost six years old he certainly wasn’t thinking that I had been delayed and was likely chasing the bus in four-inch heels.
I ran home, grabbed the car keys, and bolted for the car. I called the school to tell them I was on my way. My heart pounded. My poor boy. What must he be thinking? How sad must he be? I beat the bus to school by one minute. When it pulled up the driver opened the doors and Spencer stepped down, head hung low, eyes moist, dragging his backpack and holding a piece of artwork in his hand. He wore the saddest expression. “It’s going to be okay now,” the driver assured him in his lilting Jamaican accent. “Here’s your mum.”
Spencer didn’t say a word. He fell into my arms, pressed his face into my side, and stayed like that. I rubbed the back of his head and kissed him. “Mommy’s here. I’m so sorry, angel. I love you so much and never meant for that to happen. I ran after the bus as fast as I could but you guys were too quick for me.”
I stepped back and knelt down so I could see his face. He didn’t smile.
“Is it going to be okay?” I asked, holding his arms in my hands. Spencer nodded. “Why don’t you take me into school and show me around? I bet there are all kinds of new things to see.”
“Okay,” he said, taking my hand. “I’ll show you the science department where the animals live. We have lots of animals.”
“Can I tell you something for the future?” I said. “If this ever happens again, if the bus stops and I’m not there to meet you—and I hope that will never happen again—but if it does, please remember to do this: Look out the back window to see if I’m running after you!”
“Okay, Mom, but you better stay in shape so you can catch it next time.”
Chapter 27
EVEN THOUGH I didn’t know when I would fire Doug Moran, I knew I would do it. The place needed a strong manager and unity at the top. Doug was not a good manager, and the top was more fractured than unified. But how to fill the job? And how to teach the new guy how we do business at Nathans? Maybe better to say how we’d like to do business at Nathans. That’s when it occurred to me to bring in a future manager first as an efficiency consultant to look the place over thoroughly, stick his nose into everything, and learn how everything works and who does what. He would give me a report on what’s done right, what’s done wrong, and how it could be fixed. I patted myself on the back for that one. I patted Connie the bookkeeper on the back when she said, “I know just the man. Vito Zappala.”
He’d owned a restaurant that had failed, which concerned me, but Connie said, “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t his fault.” Hmmm. Nothing about the restaurant business made sense to me, so why should I treat this bit of news as unusual? “It didn’t work out but he’s good and you’ll like him. He’s a grown-up.” Where is he now? I wondered. “Works in the golf business, but he’s tired of that. Wants to get back to restaurants.”
Vito and I met not at Nathans but at another restaurant. Connie was right—I liked him. Not only did he have the lyrical name of Vito Zappala, but he looked like a Vito Zappala. He sounded New York and looked as Italian as a bowl of spaghetti carbonara. He was in his fifties, not tall, not short, not thin, not fat, dark haired, bearded, walked with a slight limp, wore a nice suit. He was in the midst of a divorce and had a daughter the same age as Spencer. He was extremely forthcoming about the ways he felt he could help me run Nathans. He understood that when the day arrived to fire Doug he would have to step in quickly and keep the business from crashing—and with no guarantee going forward that the IRS would even let the place stay open.
Vito showed up toward the end of October. He rolled up his
sleeves and immediately involved himself in every part of the workings of the restaurant. The staff perked up and worked like professionals. Even Doug answered questions, opened files, showed up on time, and was agreeable and helpful. For a moment I felt guilty. Was I wrong about Doug? But then I realized Doug was behaving toward Vito the way he should have behaved toward me. I mentioned it to Vito. “Oh, it’s simple,” he said. “For one thing, I’m a man. For another, I’m not you.”
I got out of the way and busied myself with the pursuit of a chef. We’d been using line cooks. They did an adequate job, but I thought a real chef would send a message to the community that Nathans, which had been foundering even before Howard died, was back in the game. The bar seemed to take care of itself. It wasn’t broken, so there was nothing to fix. But the restaurant was another story, and food was an area where I could make a difference. I could put my stamp on the place with the food. During one of our midnight calls, I told Paolo that I was going to hire a chef. Paolo thought I was nuts. He believed I could run the kitchen just fine with a strong team of line cooks, strong being the important word. I heard the same thing a few evenings later over dinner with my dear friends Patrick O’Connell and Rinehardt Lynch, who had created The Inn at Little Washington in rural northern Virginia. My idea of hiring a chef drew guffaws. “They’re all nuts,” Rinehardt said.
Patrick, a renowned chef himself, agreed. “We are.” The three of us broke into laughter.
What Paolo, Patrick, and Rinehardt couldn’t grasp is why I wanted a chef: If I had to be in this business, I wanted a creative collaborator, someone to help make the ordeal more interesting, possibly even fun for me, even though I could hear Fred Thimm saying I was a long way from the “fun” stage.
THE PROCESS OF interviewing chefs was an eye-opener. A well-dressed middle-aged man came in with a thick book of clippings—all from high-end French restaurants. “You understand this is mostly a saloon?” I said.
“Oh, maybe it won’t work, then.” He closed his book and departed.
A young navy cook showed up, brimming with ambition and enthusiasm. “What are your specialties?” I asked.
“I can cook spaghetti,” he said.
“And, what else?”
“Well, I can cook all kinds of spaghetti.”
There was another young man I liked a lot. He had notable credentials in New American cuisine and listed some hot restaurants on his résumé. But there were so many of them. He was like a frog—hop, hop, hop. I called a restaurant owner friend who was—remarkably—on his list of references. I say remarkably because the owner had three words: “He’s a drunk.”
At the eleventh hour Paul Wahlberg called. He came with an outstanding reference, Nora Pouillon of Restaurant Nora, an acclaimed Washington restaurant and one of my personal favorites. Paul said the place where he worked had just closed and he was ready, willing, and able to be Nathans’ head chef. Moreover, he had the qualifications.
Paul and I hit it off right away. He loved food and had grown up in a big family, where I got the impression he may have been the short-order cook. He was from the Dorchester section of Boston, complete with the accent. His manner was unassuming, almost shy. I can say he looked like the older brother of the movie star Mark Wahlberg because he was the older brother of Mark Wahlberg, a fact he revealed to me later, after he was hired. He had substantial experience as a chef and as a kitchen manager. He’d worked hotels and restaurants in the Boston area before moving to Washington. His wife had been relocated here by Crate & Barrel, where she was a manager. He was in his midthirties, he didn’t drink, and he really loved to cook. His exuberant enthusiasm was infectious. We both thought an audition was a good idea. I was eager to see his game.
He showed up on time, dressed in a clean white chef’s jacket, got along well with the line cooks, and prepared several delicious American dishes. “What do you think?” he asked, standing beside me at the table in the bar where I was sampling his food.
“I love everything,” I said, sincerely. He made a spring roll of potatoes and crispy duck that was inventive. He made a salad of julienned prosciutto, goat cheese, roasted red peppers, and pine nuts on romaine that was delicious. He made salmon in a broth of fennel and truffles that I wanted to eat every day.
He sat down. “I wanted to make you some fried clam bellies but the clams weren’t right. But I think I do fried clams better than anyone.”
“I can’t wait,” I said, already imagining the salty sweetness of the clams. The next day I offered him the job and he accepted. Vito Zappala thought hiring Paul was a good move.
If Doug Moran wondered about all this activity and what it meant for him, it didn’t show. He welcomed Paul. He did not interfere with Paul’s plan for a complete redo of the menu, moving it toward American food. I liked Paul’s ideas. Paul, Vito, and I felt like a team, with Doug on the sidelines not paying much attention.
The scenario the lawyers provided at this point was that if the IRS let me keep the business I would probably be making payments to them for years to come. It was essential that Nathans become as profitable as possible, so that I could sell it for top dollar. Every choice and decision I made was based on that goal. How would the customers respond to a new menu? Well, I had made changes to the old menu and though there were grumblings at first, they stopped eventually. I expected the same reaction when we switched from northern Italian to American. If we did a good job and put great food on the table, who really was going to bitch? This was an all-American saloon. It should have American food. Paul’s was such a winning personality. He gave me courage. He was also a real captain of his kitchen. We gave him a budget and left him alone.
Things were looking up at the restaurant, but across town at Larry King Live my career was going from bad to worse. Three important bookings slipped away, and I’d worked hard on all of them. I’d been pursuing Ralph Lauren for months, wooing him with flowers and letters. I met with him in his surprisingly small New York office. We hit it off, and I thought he seemed favorable to an interview. Hamilton South of his staff told me Ralph had never done a big network interview. All the major talk shows seemed to be after him at once, but in the end his communications chief called with the news. “He’s decided to go with Diane Sawyer and Primetime Live. He feels more comfortable with the taped format. He’s afraid he won’t do well on live television and that he’d make a fool of himself.”
Then the possibility of Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford began to fade. They were a hot get at that moment because Frank had been caught in a tabloid sex scandal involving another woman and some hotel trysts. Kathie Lee was Regis Philbin’s cohost on the highly rated Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. An appearance on LKL would be a sure ratings winner. In the summer, their public relations man, Howard Rubenstein, assured me that if they gave an interview, “Larry would be the one.” Now in the fall he told me, “They’re leaning toward Barbara Walters. Frank feels she’s been good to him.”
I said, “If he talks to Barbara she’ll want him to cry.” Howard said nothing. I kept pedaling. “Okay, let’s say Frank goes on Barbara. Let’s say that’s a done deal. Here’s my idea: Have Frank go on Barbara and cry and apologize and then have Frank and Kathie Lee appear together on Larry to make up. And do it just before her Christmas special. It will be more in the spirit of things and America can believe Kathie Lee is happy again.” Howard said he’d find out. No promises. The couple planned to do only one interview. The sum of our conversation was that Larry King would not be the chosen one for Frank and Kathie Lee. That’s what mattered to Wendy.
The biggest loss was Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, the infamous Fergie, who, shortly after the Paris crash, said she would do one interview on the subject of Princess Diana’s death. Her New York publicist, Jeffrey Schneider, told me Fergie had decided Larry King would get that interview. Wendy was elated. Suddenly, in October, when I met with Jeffrey, the deal had changed. He said, “It’s now between you and Oprah.” I sat across from him in his Si
xth Avenue office while he called London and negotiated with her office on Larry’s behalf. I heard him tell Fergie’s people, “Larry King Live should be first.” But then she, too, decided to go with Diane Sawyer. It happens. Sometimes you’re on a roll and sometimes you’re not. Right now I couldn’t afford the not.
All I had in the pipeline was Marv Albert, the sportscaster who was in the middle of his own sex scandal, which made big headlines due to his alleged fondness for biting his lover and wearing women’s underwear. That came out in a trial prompted by a former lover who had accused him of biting her. As always with talk TV, sex was a ratings winner and made Marv a white-hot get. Howard Rubenstein was his representative, too. Rubenstein pointed out that every major interviewer wanted Marv. When I was in the middle of my spiel about the relative merits of Larry versus Barbara, Diane, Katie, or Oprah, he interrupted. “Well, let me tell you who else has asked for the first interview. You won’t believe it: RuPaul!”
“RuPaul!” I exclaimed. “That’s who I would go with. Hands down.” He chose Barbara instead. We would be second, but that was okay because we announced before she did, using a clever promotional tactic, touting the show as Marv’s first “live” interview. We always found an angle.
While I was enjoying booking Marv Albert, Wendy understandably was focused on the ones that got away. Losing Fergie and the Giffords did not go over well with the boss, and she was disappointed about Ralph Lauren. Wendy didn’t expect Lauren to pull big ratings, but he would have been a prestigious interview.
“I need to talk to you,” Wendy said, inviting me into her office. I sat in the chair across from her desk. Becky was sitting on the sofa behind me. I could feel her chill on my back. “The McKinsey people have done a study of CNN and they have looked hard at our show,” Wendy said in a tone that expressed more frustration than anger. McKinsey & Company is a global management-consulting firm that CNN hired to assess ways the company could trim budget fat. “Atlanta isn’t going to tolerate anymore the way I have you in a staff position but only working part-time. I’m going to have to make you a freelancer.” In the past she would have fought for me, but those days were over. Now, my career, which had been teetering on the edge for some months, was falling over the cliff.
Innocent Spouse Page 20
