Innocent Spouse

by Carol Ross Joynt

  “It’s really busted,” he said.

  The minor calamity with the telephones reminded me why I wanted to get out from under Nathans and as soon as possible. In the meantime, I would focus on the business side and get a handle on Nathans’ relative health, free now of the IRS, the D.C. tax office, and lawyers’ fees. Connie crunched numbers. Vito assessed volume, staffing, payroll, maintenance, and managing the five upstairs tenants. Paul Wahlberg evaluated food costs. When that was done, Vito came to me with one message: Nathans could not afford itself.

  “You’re behind from the starting gun,” Vito said, “unless you don’t want to pay yourself.”

  Chapter 33

  SPENCER AND I celebrated the turn of the millennium next to a raging bonfire in the middle of a vast wintry field at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A few dozen of us—all good friends—were gathered at our host’s farm to watch the last seconds of 1999 tick down and the new century begin. It was a gorgeous night—not too cold. Eight-year-old Spencer ran with the other children around the crackling fire, elves silhouetted against the golden flames, while their parents danced to the greatest hits of the last century. I danced for hours. I was in seventh heaven.

  I felt free, and I needed that feeling. I’d learned, in three years of widowhood, bar and restaurant ownership, and solo parenting, that opportunities for joy and laughter didn’t come around every day. It was important to welcome them when they did. In the real world, the fulfillment of my goals always seemed to be out there on the far horizon, just out of reach. I’d march toward them but it was as if I were marching toward a shimmering mirage that dissolved as I drew closer. I felt I’d fulfilled my commitment to the community by keeping Nathans open after the liquor license drama, but now my community spirit had expired.

  I was propping up the business with my own limited nest egg, just as Howard’s father had done for him. The difference was, Mr. Joynt had millions. I had only thousands, and they were going fast. Eventually the nest egg was gone—poof! Just like that. Whatever other savings I had evaporated, too. I got paid, but Spencer and I were living paycheck to paycheck. I’d sell what I could to make ends meet. We could live with a blank spot on the wall or one fewer table if it meant we could keep our heads above water. Inevitably, though, some of the money would get sucked up by Nathans as a “loan.” Vito regularly assured me, “We’ll get you paid back next month,” but it never happened. I could pay myself back or pay the rent. The rent always won.

  I went back to work, this time as a producer for Chris Matthews on Hardball at MSNBC. Chris’s executive producer took me to dinner and made it simple: “I’d like you to do for Chris what you did for Larry King. Go after the big game.” He upped the pay considerably and said I could do it part-time, which allowed me to return to my old routine of driving from Georgetown to work on the other side of town and then back to Nathans and finally home. Spencer was in elementary school and his day pretty much matched my work day. Extra pay also meant money to take holidays. Holidays were important. I wanted Spencer to have time with me away from Washington, work, drama, and one calamity or another at Nathans. He needed to see a side of me that was not stressed out but happy and relaxed, and the best way to achieve relaxation was to be far away from Georgetown. Too often, meaning maybe once a month, he would see me at home in tears. Whenever I finished a phone call with Vito he’d say, “You’re going to be in a bad mood now, aren’t you? You’re going to cry.”

  The school Spencer had been in since kindergarten ended at third grade, and then typically the boys went on to an adjacent boys’ private school and the girls went to the adjacent girls’ private school, where they would stay through twelfth grade. The progression from one school to the next was assumed, but still the children had to endure an application process that included a family interview with an admissions officer. The day of Spencer’s interview I could tell he was tense. He would have to pass muster with a grown-up who was a stranger, and how many eight-year-olds are prepared for that? Even I was nervous as we met the man, “Mr. Smith,” who happened to also be the lower school head, a dour individual in pinstripes, crew cut, and polished Weejuns, with all the charm of an undertaker. His reputation preceded him. He was known to call parents at home if he didn’t approve of a television show a student reported being permitted to watch. Some parents adored him, some didn’t, but most feared him. This much I could tell: He didn’t warm to us.

  The tour included a visit to a classroom that was empty except for a math teacher, who asked Spencer to answer some questions on the blackboard. As with his mother, math was his worst subject. He spoke up clearly and got it right, but he struggled a little. The interview in Mr. Smith’s austere office didn’t go a whole lot better. For one thing, the man didn’t smile once! While I answered his questions about our family background and my line of work—“Ah, I own a bar”—Spencer sat at the round wooden table with us, swinging his feet and chewing on a Styrofoam cup. I gently kicked him under the table, but that only prompted, “Mom! Why are you kicking me?”

  Spencer didn’t get admitted to the school, one of only two boys in his class of forty who were rejected. Since he had the grades and the skills, I was alarmed that a child, a third grader, would be rejected on the basis of an office interview. Later a friend who had three sons at the school gave me a more enlightened explanation. “Mr. Smith prefers intact families,” she said. “He doesn’t like it when there’s not a father in the picture.” I wanted to punch him, but I had a more immediate problem: a heartbroken boy who sobbed for three days after he learned he would not be moving on to the same school with all his friends. Still, he was intent on attending a boys’ school, and we applied to another, just as well regarded. For this family interview, the lower school head took us to the handsome library, where the librarian asked Spencer if he was a fan of Harry Potter. Yes, of course. She asked a follow-up that had to do with a certain detail of the elaborate story. “It depends which version you read,” Spencer said. “It’s one way in the American version and another in the British.” The lower school head and the librarian looked at him more closely. “You’ve read both?” she asked. Spencer nodded. I beamed. He got accepted.

  I BELIEVE WITH near certainty that Howard would have opposed the boys’ school idea from the get-go, both the first one that rejected Spencer and the second one that accepted him. Howard had attended single-sex prep schools and was unhappy, and often got in trouble, and who knows what role the restrictive culture may have played in his general alienation and dysfunction. There’s no question they aren’t for everyone. But Howard was gone. Having not attended a boys’ school—or a private school, for that matter—I assumed the general macho environment would be the ideal counterbalance to life with Mom. The private school part was appealing, again, because the D.C. public schools, at the time, had such dismal reviews and ratings. Too many people warned me away from them and, for a variety of reasons, I acquiesced to my son’s wishes to attend a boys’ school because it seemed like the right thing to do. After the rejection from the school he had his heart set upon, the letter of acceptance from the other made him smile, and I wanted him to smile.

  OWNING A BUSINESS that was open 365 days of the year, from morning to late night, was something only a masochist could love. I was not a masochist. Every minute I was afraid of something going wrong, because something usually did go wrong. The building was old; the electrical system and plumbing were from the 1950s, if not earlier. Some of the pipes were held in place with ropes and rags. The rats had an assumption of residency. I imagined they thought we were the pests. The roof was in questionable shape. When it rained outdoors it rained indoors, too, usually onto the teak floors in the dining room and the toilets in the ladies’ room. I never figured out how the rain made it from the roof to the ground floor of a three-story building, but it did. The basement flooded regularly. The kitchen floor sagged. At one point we had to close (the kitchen, not the bar; we never closed the bar) for a full week to bolster th
e floor to keep it from falling into the basement.

  These were my problems, not the landlords’. Under the lease, the entire building was my problem, leaky roof and all. The means to do repairs came out of the bar, not the dining room. All the money was made in the bar. In a good year we grossed about $1.7 million. Approximately $300,000 of that went to rent, another $50,000 to insurance, and about the same amount to property tax, before the inevitable penalties and interest. Then payroll, repairs, utilities, goods, equipment rental, and so on. The tenants upstairs were a tailor, a tuxedo rental operation, and an expanding family of fortune-tellers, and their rent helped defray some costs, but they didn’t pay utilities, and any time they needed a new air conditioner, a new toilet, or a door repaired, those obligations belonged to Nathans. I understood why Howard had kept two large toolboxes under his desk.

  The upstairs tenants weren’t without value. From time to time, usually after a few cocktails in the bar, friends and I would climb the two flights up to visit one of the fortune-tellers. The apartment was bloodred—rugs, chairs, walls, lamp shades. The gypsy would take my palm, scrutinize it, and always give me the same reading: “You’ve suffered a big loss, had unexpected burdens, but good things are just around the corner.” My friends would be impressed. “Guys, she knows I’m the landlord. She’ll tell me anything that softens me up for a late rent check.”

  I WISH SHE could have predicted the coming staff changes. Nathans’ front doors should have been changed from swinging to revolving. Connie, the bookkeeper who got me through so much, moved on to other, better-paying jobs. Vito Zappala got burned out and resigned. It was tough to replace him. Vito not only understood the front of the house; he knew how to fix the sinks and patch up the rat holes. I relied on him. Managers like him weren’t falling off the trees. The first person I tried disappeared on weekends and didn’t answer his phone. It wasn’t a whole lot better when he was there. The other managers and staff complained, and I was relieved when he resigned. A succession of general managers followed. Paul Wahlberg left when his wife was transferred back to Boston. I promoted Paul’s sous-chef, Jamie Blankenship, but when Jamie moved on I pulled from the past and gave the chef’s job to Loredonna Luhrs, the daughter of Nathans’ original and longtime chef, Giuseppina. Lore had basically grown up there, working as a line cook, and made delicious food.

  Then the management at Hardball changed and my job ended. I was back to the saloon full-time and one paycheck.

  IT WAS A beautiful March morning in 2001. Sunny and pleasant, almost like spring. Spencer was at the table eating breakfast; I was at my computer reading the news. For a moment the lights dimmed, then bounced back. A second later they dimmed again. We heard a loud noise outside, sudden and short. The lights dimmed again. I went outside to check, saw nothing, and walked a few doors up to the corner. Up the street, flames were shooting ten feet into the air—a monster blowtorch. It was impossible to know what had happened, but whatever it was, it had happened between two parked cars. Had either car been parked four feet farther either way it would have been a much bigger explosion. Neighbors were running from their homes, some in bed clothing or bathrobes. One man ran down the street screaming, “Evacuate!” In minutes the area was swarming with police, fire trucks, and, soon enough, media satellite trucks. Traffic was backed up for blocks.

  When I returned, a neighbor said, “It was a manhole cover. An exploding manhole cover!” Our intersection made the news that night. I did, too, with reporters asking me for an eyewitness account. All I asked is that under my name they put “Owner, Nathans Restaurant.” To me it was free advertising.

  Georgetowners assumed it was a one-time event, but a week later the same thing happened a block down the street. This time at night. Again, flames shot up like a blowtorch, lighting up the sky. The fire trucks and police appeared, as well as the media satellite truck. Our power went out and didn’t come back on for a few hours. Fortunately no one was hurt; no cars blew up. Again, I gave an eyewitness report on local TV. Again, I asked they identify me as the owner of Nathans.

  Days later, while driving toward downtown in the early afternoon, I got a panicked call from a member of Nathans’ staff. “Carol, you’ve got to get here! Manhole covers are exploding up and down M Street! They’ve shut us down. There are fire engines and cops everywhere.”

  I made an abrupt U-turn and sped back to Georgetown, parked, and started running toward Nathans. Wisconsin Avenue looked like a war zone. Police cars, cops, and yellow tape blocked the streets. I could see Nathans in the distance, surrounded by fire engines. Breathless, I said to one of the officers, “That’s my business down there at the corner. I’ve got to get there.” He let me through. As I neared Nathans, smoke poured from the holes in the sidewalks where heavy manhole covers used to rest. One storefront had its window smashed by one of the flying metal disks. Elsewhere, the sidewalk had buckled.

  A group of police officers stood in the middle of the intersection outside Nathans’ front doors. Their shirts and hats carried a lot of gold braid. They had to be the brass, and I headed their way. The man in charge was a tall, handsome, dark-haired officer named Peter Newsham, the commander for the Second District, a region that included the White House, Georgetown, and parts of upper northwest D.C. “You can’t be here,” he said. “We’re closing down the whole block. Your staff has been evacuated. You’ve got to go.”

  I sputtered, “But, but, I need …”

  He’d have none of it. “You’ve got to go. You cannot be here. It’s not safe.” He pointed to a restaurant a few hundred yards away. “You’ll find your staff there.”

  I started stammering again, “But, but …”

  He pointed and said, “Go!”

  Later that day the police let us back into the building, but it didn’t do us much good. Power was out up and down M Street, and the area was cordoned off. The electricity was off in chunks of the adjacent residential area, too, including our home, where Spencer and I resorted to camping lights and candlelight and an ice chest for refrigeration. This was not the last manhole-cover incident in Georgetown, only the most sensational. It became a chronic problem, due to old power lines, which was bad news for Nathans. Again I was interviewed on local news, but it wasn’t the kind of advertising we needed. No one wanted to come to Georgetown and risk getting blown into the air by a manhole cover.

  Desperate to get some attention and therefore customers, I created a drink called “The Exploding Manhole Cover.” Actually, I created the name before I created the drink. When I mentioned it to my friend Lloyd Grove, who wrote the Washington Post’s popular “Reliable Source” column, he wanted to do an item with a photo for the next day’s paper.

  “Oh my God,” I groaned to one of the bartenders. “We’ve got to come up with a drink and the Post wants a photo of it!” Together we concocted a root beer float in a champagne glass with half an Oreo cookie as the manhole cover. I hoped it wouldn’t be as revolting as it sounded. What alcoholic beverage could possibly work in a root beer float with a cookie on top? The bartender and I tried several recipes—most of them undrinkable—before we settled on Old Dominion Root Beer, a splash of vodka, a touch of chocolate liqueur, a puff of whipped cream, half an Oreo and—for special effect—a few sparklers. At least it was photogenic.

  The photo appeared in the Post the next day. Business picked up a little, a few people actually ordered them, and when former Clinton adviser Paul Begala came to Nathans to celebrate his birthday, I sent his group a tray of our joke drink, sparklers sparkling. CNN’s Bill Schneider asked to interview me about the drink for a story about the explosions scaring away customers. Between Lloyd’s item and CNN’s piece, Nathans scored a share of media buzz and a few more customers.

  The manhole explosions exposed a critical problem under Georgetown’s quaint streets: The infrastructure was rotted. That’s why the power lines ruptured into flames. Some of the utilities, like water lines, were a hundred years old. The mayor announced a major public-works pr
ogram—“The Georgetown Project”—a three-year repair job that required pulling up the sidewalks and most of the major streets, but when it was finished everything would be up to code.

  I looked at the plans for the “big dig” and slumped. It was broken into quadrants, and each of the quadrants met at the intersection outside Nathans’ front door. There was no day of the entire project when Nathans wouldn’t be compromised, either with torn-up sidewalks and streets or heavy equipment out front making a horrid racket—not exactly the background music diners want with their steaks and wine. The work would be at night and they would tow all parked cars at nine p.m. It would start in October 2001.

  Chapter 34

  SPENCER STARTED FOURTH grade at his new, all-boys’ school in the fall of 2001. I thought this school would be good for him, particularly because it had seventy-two acres of sprawling green lawns. He was growing fast. He needed room to move around. The school was a half hour from home, which gave us precious time together in the car. We talked, we joked, we listened to the radio. Howard Stern was a family favorite, though sometimes when the guests were strippers I changed to another station. “Mom,” Spencer would admonish me, “do you think I’m a baby?”

  It was a routine Tuesday morning. I dropped Spencer off at school and then headed back to town for an appointment with Jake Stein at his office on Connecticut Avenue, only three blocks from the White House. It was an especially beautiful September day—dry, seventy degrees, an incredible cerulean sky—and I drove with the windows open and Diana Krall on the CD player. When I arrived a few minutes early and got parked, I switched over to the all-news station for the headlines on the hour. “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.…” I got out of the car and headed to the meeting, concerned but not frightened.