Could I spoil him too much? I didn’t think so. I was going with my gut on parenting a fatherless child. The idea that a woman alone couldn’t raise a son got my attention but I didn’t let it consume me. I believed if I gave him time, love, guidance, and confidence I could fill up the empty spaces caused by the painful loss. What I didn’t know, and couldn’t know for a while, was whether he would develop a personality more like mine—comfortable, even eager to share feelings with friends—or more like his father’s, with the hurting parts hidden deep inside, gnawing away, coming out in random fits of rage. I would understand if it was somewhere in the middle.
But we had New York. It was a joy we shared, and in the sharing we formed a strong bond.
“Can we live here?” he asked.
If only.
ONE NIGHT WHEN Spencer was asleep in the bedroom, Paolo came by the hotel after his dinner service. He brought a very cold bottle of champagne and some of my favorite cookies made fresh that evening by his incredible pastry chef. We kissed at the door. I put Harry Connick, Jr., on the CD player and turned it down low. The lights were low, too. We sat in the living room on the stuffed silk sofa, facing each other, our feet up and legs entwined, sipping champagne. We were both in jeans. We just looked at each other, not saying much, listening to the music. He was so handsome with his dark, tousled hair, sexy stubble, brown eyes, and soft lips. How did this wonderful man come into my life? I asked myself. It was November and we’d been flirting, kissing, holding hands, and talking, talking, talking since June, but I knew this was the end of the road. He did, too. Our crazy love affair had nowhere to go except, if we were lucky, back to friendship. He was married and would stay married, and I didn’t want him to change that. Sometimes he would say to me, “If you were still married, making us both married, this would be different.” Well, I felt like I was still married and it didn’t make it any different. Married or not married, it couldn’t go on.
I had to focus on Washington, home, the reality that the IRS would be issuing their verdict soon. But not tonight, not this sweet and sentimental night. Champagne glasses in hand, we danced a slow dance. Our kisses reminded me of our first kiss. Our stolen hours had been lovely—this evening, too—but when Paolo walked out of my room that night it ended my charged and wild ride of romance and pretend. I got up the next morning, packed our bags, boarded the train with my darling boy, and returned home to the life I needed to be living. I had scattered myself all over the place, hoping to find an emotional rescue that was not going to come, at least not from New York or Paolo. Any rescue had to come from me.
The closer my IRS case moved toward a decision, the further I moved away from fantasy. It was as if gravity was pulling me back to earth, to reality, to a place where I could settle in, get grounded, and begin to build some kind of future. As much as I loved being the New York Carol, I knew I was actually the Widow Joynt, who had to finish cleaning up the tangled mess my husband had left behind. Running away to New York felt good, and the person I was in New York was exciting and glamorous, but in truth it was as unreal as the life I had lived with Howard. My job was to make peace with the real world, where I had to be a mother, a homemaker, and a breadwinner while I waited for the IRS to come to a decision.
MY PSYCHIATRIST LET me off the hook a bit when he said, “So much got in the way of your being able to simply be a widow. You’ve never really been able to be just that.” He was right. With the IRS and everything else, it had been a nightmare on top of a nightmare. Double horror. Huge chunks of my life as I’d known it simply vanished. All my support was kicked out from under me. To fill the void, to get strong again, I danced with my girlfriends and escaped to New York. Finally I got strong enough to face the facts.
I talked to the psychiatrist about Paolo and what I considered to be the end of our love affair. We didn’t have a physical affair, but we did have love. The doctor reminded me that the relationship never had a future, anyway. “You needed to feel some control in your life and you could go to New York and control him,” he said. “It was the one part of your life where you had some power. Now that you’re beginning to feel more control—firing Doug, for example—you need Paolo less.”
It made sense to me, sort of. “The thing is,” I said, “when he kissed me under that streetlight on Central Park West and brought passion back into my life—I couldn’t just walk away. That kiss relit my pilot light. That was real. To give that moment its true value he had to be part of my life. I’m not sorry. It may have been a folly, but I’d do it again.” I looked at the doctor. “Maybe everybody needs a dose of unreality in their lives. It was pretty good medicine for me.”
———
SPENCER WAS WAITING excitedly for an after-school visit from his grief therapist, Ellen Sanford. He always said her visits were his favorite day of the week. He wanted to show her some video of himself as a baby. “Can I do that, Mommy?” He helped me look through the tapes and we found one labeled “1995.” While he was in the kitchen having his snack, I slipped it in the player to have it ready to go before the therapist arrived. I had no recollection of what was on it. I pushed the “play” button. Suddenly, there was Howard, all of him, filling the screen and very much alive. He was on the sofa with Spencer, who was crawling over him, squealing. They were laughing, obviously having fun together. Spencer drooled on him and got a giant kick out of Howard’s goofy reactions.
I stood in the den alone, transfixed by the sheer normality of what I was seeing, something that once was such an ordinary part of our family’s life and that I had simply taken for granted would always be there. I stared at Howard and saw not the liar or tax cheat but the man I loved and who—regardless of dismaying revelations and genuine anger—I missed. The yearning was tangible, a pressure in my chest. I quickly pushed “stop” and left the machine as it was. When Ellen arrived I told her about the tape. “It is cued up. You know what to do.” Then I looked at Spencer and said, “Watch as much as you want, but when you don’t want to watch anymore you can just turn it off.” I kissed the top of his head, left the apartment, and walked to the elevators. Waiting for the lift to come, I burst into tears.
Chapter 30
LAWYERS HAD BECOME routine in my life. In less than a year I went from never having had a lawyer to having enough to fill a small bus. I also went from not knowing how to handle lawyers, behave around them, or maximize the costly time with them, to being able to teach a course on dealing with lawyers. There were many lawyers in my normal week but the two I talked to most often were Sheldon Cohen and Miriam Fisher. Miriam and I talked as often as close sisters.
There were long conversations and short ones, simple conversations and others that were painfully complex. We talked when I was in the middle of a child’s birthday party or a kindergarten field trip to the zoo, and when we were both feeding our children or trying to get them to bed. More often I was in Nathans or my cubicle at Larry King Live. The lawyers’ calls took priority over everything but Spencer. There were no two adults whose words meant more to me than Sheldon’s and Miriam’s. What they said would affect my day, my week, and ultimately my life. Their calls left me encouraged, discouraged, anxious, or occasionally in tears.
One December morning, at my basement desk at Nathans, I got a call from Miriam. “I’ve heard from Deborah Martin.” The world collapsed and became only the receiver in my hand. No nation, no city, no building, no office, no people. Only Miriam’s voice, the phone, my ear. I tried to inhale but it was tough. I braced myself. “Deborah said that if we accept certain of her judgments on other aspects of the case, and we settle, she will accept the innocent spouse defense because she believes you have a reasonable case.” Just like that. Miriam talked on with a lot of complicated legal terms, but I knew what they meant: not guilty. We won. I was free.
For a moment I was speechless. My eyes moistened, my breath caught, my emotions were in gridlock.
“Carol, this is huge,” Miriam said. “And it is the right decision. The IR
S did the right thing.”
Finally I mumbled something utterly prosaic: “I can’t believe it. It actually happened.” Inside, though, it was the Fourth of July. My mind flashed back to almost a year earlier, in the dour gray offices of Caplin and Drysdale, the law firm I inherited, and the moment when the lawyers there told me I didn’t stand a chance of winning innocent spouse. And here it was. We’d won. I was the innocent spouse. The federal government said so. Deborah Martin had granted me a new beginning. She wanted us to settle on a dollar amount and not appeal the verdict. Miriam reminded me that with innocent spouse I could keep anything that was in my name or our names jointly—my income, my savings, our homes and furniture—but the estate, which was anything that was in Howard’s name alone—chiefly stocks, bonds, and bank accounts, and possibly Nathans—became the property of the federal government. While Howard left me Nathans in his will, if the IRS wasn’t satisfied with the estate alone, they could take the business from me and sell it. To my advantage, Miriam said, was Nathans’ low value because it did not have a lease, and the fact that the IRS prefers not to be in the real estate business. The government prefers cash.
“Look at it this way,” Miriam said. “Without this verdict you would have had nothing, possibly not even your income. You would have been cleaned out, down to zero, or making payments for a lifetime. This way you are protected; you get something. You will be able to afford your new house, and the government can’t take it away from you.” It also meant that if I kept Nathans, got a new lease, and then sold it, the money would be Spencer’s and mine alone—after taxes, of course.
I wanted to jump through the phone line and hug her and Sheldon. I was relieved, happy, excited, and, for the first time in ages, optimistic. I knew we still had to deal with the IRS on some other issues, and the future of Nathans, but at that moment, on that day in the early winter, I had sunlight and possibility and permission to dream again. Spencer and I would have a roof over our heads in the neighborhood we called home. He could continue in his beloved school. I could pay my bills. I could sell Nathans and jump back into my career. All this because Miriam and Sheldon had believed in me and my case.
As a lawyer, Miriam was now focused on what next and how to proceed. There needed to be approval at several higher levels of the IRS, and whoever was making the call at those levels had to agree with Deborah’s verdict. We still had battles to fight, but we had won the first and most important of them.
When I got off the phone with Miriam, I looked around the office. Vito was upstairs on the floor. Paul Wahlberg was busy in the kitchen. The busboys had done their daily cleanup and moved on to another task. I was alone. I pulled on my winter coat, shut and locked the office door, walked up the metal stairs, and headed out through the kitchen door into the cold air. I always thought if this moment happened I would cry, but I didn’t. I walked down the hill toward the waterfront. When I reached the Potomac I kept walking. I walked and walked and walked beside the cold river to absorb the news alone.
THAT NIGHT I reached out to a dear friend. Jeannie Perin came to the apartment for dinner. She was Spencer’s godmother and the kind of friend we all need at least one of. You call her, she appears. The first night I was alone in the apartment after Howard died and having a hard time of it, Jeannie had phoned from her home in Virginia.
“I’ll be right there,” she said. Jeannie lived fifty miles away, many of those miles on two-lane roads. Still, she got in her car at nine in the evening, drove to Georgetown, sat with me in the apartment for the hour it took me to calm down, and then drove fifty miles back home. It seemed fitting that on this night of good news we should share it with her.
Jeannie, Spencer, and I sat in the kitchen, where we made toasts with California sparkling wine while digging into a random smorgasbord of cold cuts, salad and soup, goat cheese, fruit, bread, potato chips, and big, chewy chocolate chip cookies from the deli. Spencer tried to figure out what all the fuss was about, but he could see that I was happy and that made him happy. I hugged him a lot.
“We’re going to be okay, kiddo,” I said.
“But Mommy, why? What happened?”
“Because today the federal government let me off the hook and made me a free woman,” I said. “You don’t have to understand that, sweetie, but it’s good news. Very good news for you and me.” He made that whatever face kids make when a parent says something possibly important but also incomprehensible.
“Let me just say this.” I raised my glass. “I can’t believe this has happened, but I couldn’t have done it without Sheldon and Miriam. I wish they were here.” Our glasses clinked to that. “Also, Fred Thimm was right from the beginning: I had to be my own driver.” We clinked glasses again. “And to all the friends who’ve been there, like you.” I looked at Jeannie. Then I squeezed Spencer extra tight. “And you, too.”
SHELDON AND MIRIAM took me to a celebratory lunch at an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of their offices downtown. Connie joined us. Sheldon and Miriam sat on one side of the booth; Connie and I on the other. It wasn’t all celebration.
“What do you want to do about the business?” Sheldon asked.
“I think I should keep it and sell it,” I said, as if there were any doubt.
“Do you want to know what I think?” Sheldon asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“If you want to, right now, you can give the government the keys and walk away. Your lease is up, you’re on a month-to-month with the landlords, you have innocent spouse, a clean slate. None of Nathans’ debt attaches to you. You’re free to go,” he said. “You can leave the whole mess in the hands of the landlords and just get on with your life.” He was right. I’d never be freer of Nathans than I was at that moment. There was nothing legally binding me to it: no lease or debt in my name, and the IRS had given me a pass. Still, I believed it had value and could easily be sold. Washington was full of wide-eyed dreamers who wanted to be in business at the corner of Wisconsin and M. At that moment I, too, was a wide-eyed dreamer, woefully ignorant, ignoring Sheldon’s sound advice and blissfully believing my rusty bucket could have a shiny future.
“It’s a gamble, I know, but still I think it’s worth fighting for,” I said. “If I can get a new lease and buff it up, I can still sell it.”
Sheldon nodded but looked skeptical.
“Spencer and I need the money. If I could sell it at top price we would be in good shape. A new owner would keep the place going and people employed.”
Miriam and Connie listened. Neither interrupted my back-and-forth with Sheldon. His question cut to the chase. I thought I was making the right decision; it didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t a wise one. I would stop to eat a forkful of pasta, and then I would talk again. I should have kept my mouth shut and listened.
“It’s all I have, Sheldon. My job at Larry King Live is on the rocks, and even if I stayed there we couldn’t survive on my CNN income. I get a part-timer’s salary. Nathans has to be worth something. With the new lease I could sell it. That’s what I would like to do. Keep it and sell it. I can’t imagine there not being a Nathans at that corner.”
The lawyers were more realistic. They could see a world without Nathans even if I could not. But they would do what I asked them to do, even though they had serious doubts about the wisdom of my decision.
“What’s it worth right now?” Miriam asked.
“Without a lease, not much,” Connie said. “Nathans’ kitchen equipment is mostly leased and what isn’t leased is in terrible condition. Carol’s main asset is the liquor license.”
“What’s that worth?” I asked.
Connie shrugged and made a guess. “Probably $100,000.”
Sheldon looked at me with an almost grandfatherly regard and gave it one more try. “Are you sure you want to be in the restaurant business? It’s a terrible business.”
“Only for as long as it takes to pull it officially out of the jaws of the IRS. When the case is finally closed,
I’ll sell it.”
I HAD REASONS to be optimistic. The Doug Moran era was over. His lawyer wrote demanding a bigger severance package—six months’ pay rather than one—but I held my ground. I said no.
Vito Zappala was firmly in place as Nathans’ general manager, with chef Paul Wahlberg running a good kitchen and creating interesting and delicious food. They had shaken up the place in the best possible way, and the staff responded with enthusiasm. Vito brought with him management skills previously unheard of at Nathans. Schedules and systems and accountability were put into place. He stepped up the training program for the waitstaff. He delegated more authority to Bob Walker, the night manager, and monitored his intake of Grand Marnier shooters. Vito also showed up for work on time, stayed late, and worked weekends.
Life at Nathans began to feel like the best part of the television business: that we were all in this together and playing on the same team. I had an early season holiday party for the staff at a club nearby and raised my glass to the group. “I couldn’t do it without you,” I said.
A publicist friend in New York leaked to the Washington Post that Mark Wahlberg’s brother was the new chef at Nathans. I was thrilled that they wanted to do a story. Paul was thrilled, too. The story appeared the next day with a picture of Paul in the kitchen. It was Nathans’ second piece of publicity on my watch—the first was when Mayor Marion Barry had come to dinner—and the result both times was a discernible spike in business.
Nathans was in decline when Howard died. My goal was to put the place back on the map, to give it buzz, to get people to talk about it again and want to come in to drink and dine. I had had lunch with Phyllis Richman, the Washington Post’s restaurant critic, and was haunted by her remark: “No one ever mentions Nathans anymore.” I couldn’t live with that. I wanted everyone to talk about Nathans. My task was to give it the verve customers expected from a legendary restaurant at the best corner in the most powerful city in the world. And then sell it.
Innocent Spouse Page 23
