The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  Audrey was nineteen months old when the little pink lines on another pregnancy test confirmed that a sibling was on the way. It was the summer of 2008, and Mark and I had been enjoying warm, lazy weekends whenever we could at the gray-shingled house we’d bought on the water at Tom Nevers Beach in Nantucket. It was a place I envisioned being in our lives forever. Our daughter would get married there someday, and Mark and I would become the sweet old couple locals would see out fishing every day. I dreamt of having friends and family members streaming through all summer long, having barbecues on the beach and big Sunday breakfasts. News of another baby on the way had brought shouts of joy from my parents, and I couldn’t wait to tell Bernie and Ruth, too. I decided that Audrey would be the perfect messenger.

  We waited until the annual Madoff Montauk party. When we arrived at the house the day before for a family dinner, Audrey and I found Ruth puttering in the kitchen and Bernie getting ready to barbecue. I had put my art skills to work and made a card for Audrey to give them, announcing that she was going to be a big sister. When it was time for the big moment, Ruth took the card from Audrey’s tiny hands, opened it, read it, and hollered to her husband in her thick Queens accent: “Hey, Berrrrrrnie. Stephanie’s pregnant. Bet you never saw that coming, huh?” Audrey stood there confused, then toddled away. Ruth and Bernie hugged us, but there were no tears of joy this time or champagne corks flying.

  My mother had mentioned that Ruth didn’t seem her vivacious self that summer. My parents had a home not far from the Madoffs’ beach house in Montauk, and the two couples had gotten together for lunch or dinner five or six times at the Chowder House, a local favorite. Ruth had confided to my mom she was very concerned about Bernie. He didn’t seem well. I thought something was strained about both of them that day we announced my second pregnancy. The deadened reaction was completely out of character for two people who loved being grandparents as much as they did. Something was definitely off-kilter.

  My own bearings, though, were strong as could be. I finally had the perfect word to fill in that nagging personal blank: I am, I told myself, a mother. Nothing could possibly have felt more right.

  My children had opened my eyes to a career path that also felt right. My lost dream of medical school had prompted me to apply to be a volunteer in a renowned hospital’s pediatric oncology ward. The vetting process had taken six months, with interviews, background checks, blood tests, and two orientations before I was approved to help in the Child Life department. Child Life Specialists are part of a hospital’s psychosocial care team, working closely with patients and families to cope with the serious illness of a child. They help their young patients adjust to the hospital environment and prepare them for the tests and procedures they will face, using techniques such as play and art therapy. My job was basically to provide support in the outpatient playroom, overseeing the arts and crafts table and helping the kids with individual or bigger group projects. I would also go sit by a child’s bedside if a parent needed to duck out for a few minutes, or to offer whatever companionship might make a sick child feel better. A little girl in pain after surgery once asked me to just rub her feet for her, so I sat at the end of her bed and massaged them until she was soothed.

  Privacy laws prevented me from knowing the details of what every small patient was going through, but I could see the fear and fatigue in the parents’ faces. The child life experts warn volunteers from the beginning that the burnout rate is high, because the work is so emotionally draining. But I had the opposite reaction. Contrary to warnings, I found the atmosphere on the pediatric floor charged with hope and optimism. It wasn’t about dying, it was about fiercely being alive. Here were families caught in the worst crisis imaginable, yet they were still laughing, still living, still holding on to one another with a strength that was almost defiant.

  Life, they showed me, could go on no matter how unpredictable, no matter how unfair.

  · four ·

  OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

  Mark never saw his father in person again after storming out of his parents’ apartment the day Bernie confessed to his monstrous lies. The day after blowing the whistle on Bernie’s Ponzi scheme, Mark and Andy spent hours meeting with Martin Flumenbaum, a top New York trial lawyer who had been a longtime friend and former partner of Marty’s. Together they met with SEC officials and investigators from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, answering whatever questions they could about Bernie and his business.

  I spent the bleak day at home, going through the motions of my normal routine by rote, watching a cold rain fall from a gray sky and waiting to see what would happen next. Feeling the flutter-kicks that morning of the baby due in seven weeks, I began to wonder what kind of life we would be able to salvage for him and his two-year-old sister. Would we be stripped of everything we owned? Would my husband be called to testify against his own father at trial? Had Ruth known anything at all?

  The amount of money Bernie had meticulously and mercilessly stolen over the course of a decade or more was nothing short of staggering—a reported $65 billion taken from thousands of trusting friends, relatives, investors, organizations, and charitable foundations. Beyond the fortune lost, though, no investigator, auditor, or attorney would ever be able to tally the true damage Bernie did, the hurt and despair he caused his victims, the lives he destroyed. He swindled my own parents out of a part of their retirement savings, and heartlessly did the same to members of his own family. Hundreds of innocent employees who had nothing to do with the elite and imaginary private fund Bernie managed nonetheless lost their livelihoods and their professional reputations, their résumés rendered toxic because they had worked for the biggest con man in history.

  On December 11, the day of his father’s arrest, Mark returned home before the five-o’clock news looking spent.

  “Where do you think your dad is?” I had to ask. “Is he in jail yet?”

  We would later learn that two FBI agents had appeared at Bernie’s door around seven thirty that Thursday morning. Bernie was about to get dressed for work. I imagined him standing there in his vast walk-in closet, surrounded by the shirts he had tailor-made in Paris, by the tidy rows of Hermès suits and Prada coats and hundreds of fussy Belgian loafers, everything compulsively arranged by color, not a hanger out of place. Bernie’s outward disdain for any hint of messiness also carried over to his office, where he insisted that every desk be kept pristine; to his yacht, where only clean, bare feet were allowed to touch the gleaming floors; to the impeccably formal penthouse, where visitors, including his own children and grandchildren, were rarely welcomed, lest they track in dirt or spill a drink. Padding upstairs in his robe and slippers to greet the agents, Bernie had calmly confirmed what Mark and Andy had told authorities. “There is no innocent explanation,” he reportedly said before changing into a well-cut suit and being taken into custody. Even his downfall was precise and orderly. The rest of us were left to be consumed by the chaos he unleashed.

  Our lives stopped belonging to us from the moment Mark turned his father in. Suddenly we weren’t Mark and Steph anymore. We weren’t individuals, or a couple, or a young family. We were a crisis to manage. From that day forward, virtually every decision would be made for us, every action or inaction dictated to us by our lawyers or the media consultants they insisted we hire. We would become mired in litigation for crimes we did not commit. Overnight, a new word would come to dominate our everyday existence: optically.

  Optically, we were told, we should not be seen shopping. Optically, it wasn’t a good idea to eat out. Optically, going to the theater or a concert was out of the question. How we might be perceived took precedence over who we actually were. We weren’t in any mood to go out, anyway, but the mandate added to the shame we already felt carrying the Madoff name. My good friend RoseMarie, a public relations consultant who had worked with me at George magazine, sounded the first warning: “Stephanie, I don’t care if you have a bag from
Kmart, I don’t want you to be seen with it.”

  I saw what she meant within a few days, when the tabloids ran photos of Andy and his girlfriend (misidentified as his wife in the caption) shopping in SoHo, their arms full of bags from trendy stores. No matter that Andy and Mark had exposed their father’s fraud and were not accused of any wrongdoing themselves, the implied message was clear: Madoffs still prosper while destitute victims suffer. In a matter of weeks, I began buying even basic household necessities like toothpaste online, to be delivered discreetly to our door, past the clutch of reporters and photographers now keeping vigil on the sidewalk outside.

  The protective doormen in the lobby became our loyal lookout team, calling us with updates: “Three reporters on Mercer and a photographer sleeping in his car.” Mark easily eluded the scrum by slipping out a back door that opened onto the street behind our building, leaving before seven each morning to meet with lawyers. At first, the media presence made me nervous, but I soon realized no one knew who I was unless I was with Mark, anyway. Our low-key social life and disinterest in being part of the rich young jet-setter scene turned out to have its own rewards. I could take Grouper out for his walks and even stop and smile as the bored reporters scratched his ears; they had no clue the pregnant woman with the huge dog and a pooper-scooper was their quarry’s wife.

  It would all die down once Bernie was locked up, our legal team promised; we just needed to keep our heads down and move forward. We were in the middle of a tornado, they said, but it would pass quickly. When Mark got home each day, he would scour the Internet for news and read personal e-mails, which he shared with me only if they were words of support and encouragement. I was getting bombarded myself with voice mails, texts, and e-mails from concerned friends and curious acquaintances, too, but both Mark and I were under strict orders to say nothing to them beyond the carefully scripted statement the lawyers had prepared: Thank you for your concern. We are in shock and victims of Bernie’s crimes as well.

  Mark never went back to the Lipstick Building. His staff was still working—it takes time to close down a brokerage firm—while investigators aggressively searched all three floors. A coworker phoned to say that she had packed up a couple of boxes of photos, knickknacks, and other personal belongings from Mark’s office if he wanted to pick them up. “I can’t go back there,” Mark decided. His belongings were sent via messenger to his attorney’s office instead.

  Our apartment turned into a sort of bunker. Mark and I cooked or ordered in and spent idle hours debating whether “the old guys”—Bernie’s four top lieutenants—had known all along about the Ponzi scheme. We kept waiting for more arrests to happen. We tried to figure out when Bernie’s double life as a con man had likely begun, the riddle that bothered Mark most. Had the charade gone on for five years, ten years, his whole life? What had triggered it?

  By the end of the first emotionally exhausting week after Bernie’s arrest, Mark ached to see Kate and Daniel. The change of scenery would do us both good. We packed up Audrey and the dog and headed to Greenwich for a weekend escape from the bad-news epicenter. As soon as we got to Connecticut, though, Mark’s phone began to ring. His eyes widened when he saw the number flash across the screen. His face tightened.

  “Oh my God. It’s my mother,” he said. Neither of us had heard from Ruth since Mark and his brother had confronted Bernie. Remembering later how Ruth had sat through the ugly scene as blank-faced as a zombie, Mark had had the distinct impression that she wasn’t hearing Bernie’s confession for the first time. Our lawyers had advised us not to have any contact with either Bernie or Ruth as the investigation unfolded; her role in the whole affair was still unclear. Mark answered his mother’s call anyway, not knowing what to expect.

  She wanted to know if Mark would post bail for his father. The judge was demanding a $10 million bond.

  There were no angry accusations, no bitter recriminations, no apologies. Ruth made the request as if she were asking a maître d’ to validate a parking ticket. She was obviously in a state of deepest denial. Unwilling or unable to confront his mother, Mark mumbled something vague about talking to his attorneys and quickly ended the conversation. He hung up, dumbfounded and furious. What on earth was she thinking? Did she not realize what Bernie had done, how thoroughly he had betrayed his family, how cavalierly he had put us all in harm’s way? Bernie was seventy years old. It was clear from the moment he surrendered that he would die behind bars. Ruth wasn’t standing by her man. She was standing by a monster.

  I hated Bernie thoroughly and deeply from the instant Mark told me what he had done. There was no gradual coming to terms with it, no feeling conflicted or torn. The emotion hit me instantly, a full-force missile. I’d had genuine affection for my father-in-law. Now I cringed to think how endearing I had found it that a supposedly self-made billionaire—reputedly one of the wealthiest men in the world—favored hamburgers over caviar and went to the movies every evening with a woman he had begun dating half a century ago. I had been proud that he was such a revered figure in the business world, and so delighted that I knew the “real” Bernie. Now, nothing about him was real. Every fond memory felt suspect. That whole wonderful, fairy-tale family life I had so eagerly embraced seemed like it had never been anything but one big masquerade ball, planned and choreographed by Bernie Madoff. He had played us all.

  That my husband might somehow have been involved in Bernie’s criminal operation never once crossed my mind. He and Andy ran a completely separate business, and I have vivid memories of the two or three times in all our years together that Mark ever came home late at the end of a working day. Each time, he recounted having had the same blowup with his father—a rare event to begin with, but in hindsight, these arguments were telling. The last one had been the summer before Bernie’s arrest, when family members had had their first inklings that something wasn’t right with Bernie and had been concerned about his health.

  “I had a huge fight with my dad,” Mark announced one evening a few months before Bernie’s arrest.

  “About what?”

  Mark launched into a litany I had heard before. “Stephanie, my dad is getting older. He doesn’t eat right, he doesn’t exercise, he doesn’t take care of himself, and he won’t even go to the doctor for checkups. His own father dropped dead of a heart attack at fifty-five. I’m worried, because I don’t have any clue what he does and how he does it, what his end of the business is. If he drops dead, I just want to know what I should do.” Whenever he asked his father to explain his private fund and how the golden egg of Wall Street was managed, though, Bernie balked.

  “You do your job and I’ll do mine,” he would snap. Mark didn’t understand. Bernie seemed pleased by the separate business his sons had built. Why wouldn’t he want them to learn more?

  Andy was losing interest in the family business, anyway, and wanted to pursue other passions, like fund-raising for his favorite lymphoma research foundation or running the little fishing-reel business in which he and Mark had become partners. The prospect of Andy’s leaving made Mark feel all the more responsible as heir apparent to their father’s multibillion-dollar business. He felt insulted that Bernie was so dismissive, as if he didn’t consider him smart enough or competent enough to fill his shoes.

  “Let him cool down a bit, then see if you can approach it again,” I’d suggested. I always found Bernie to be so sweet and soft-spoken. It was hard to imagine him confronting anyone and raising his voice, let alone saying anything demeaning to his son. I could see why Mark was hurt and baffled.

  Bernie would always imply in later interviews and interrogations that he had been protecting his sons by erecting an impenetrable firewall between his legitimate business, which the boys ran, and his criminal operation, which he alone oversaw. But that explanation, like everything else Bernie has had to say, boils down to self-serving spin control.

  When he confessed to Mark and Andy,
Bernie told them he had hundreds of millions of dollars still at hand, which he intended to use for checks made payable to select family members, friends, and employees. He was planning to distribute that money before he turned himself in, but his sons unwittingly forced his hand when they challenged their father about his inexplicable decision to pay out the firm’s annual bonuses that December instead of the usual February. Bernie had to have seen the same danger that Mark and Andy instantly did with his proposed game plan of waiting a week to turn himself in: It would have made his sons unwilling co-conspirators. Telling them about the Ponzi scheme and then expecting them to sit idly by while he proceeded to steal and disperse another couple of hundred million dollars only showed how cold and arrogant Bernie truly was. Aiding and abetting him would make his children criminals, too, and whether he truly intended to turn himself in or perhaps intended to suck funds for his criminal venture from Mark and Andy’s legitimate one is anyone’s guess. Investigators found approximately $140 million in signed “bonus” checks in a desk drawer when they raided Bernie’s office. That was a $140 million holdup-in-progress that my husband and his brother stopped.

  I felt enormously proud that I was with the man who did the right thing. Bernie was the unimpeachable financial genius, the sage patriarch who was admired by his peers and worshipped by his son. Mark put him on a pedestal and had always counted on Bernie for advice, approval, and unconditional love. To have an entire lifetime of trust destroyed in a single moment was devastating, and for Mark to have found the strength in that moment to set his own betrayal aside and fight back on behalf of all Bernie’s victims took a kind of courage not everyone has. I never doubted Mark’s innocence for a single second. He was a hero.

  But Mark was too engulfed in his own pain to feel any of that pride himself. The press never bothered to put two and two together and draw the obvious conclusion about Mark. Sensationalism ruled the day. If your name was Madoff, you were a crook; it was as simple, and as unjust, as that. I watched my decent, gentle husband be consumed by the same soul-searing rage I felt for Bernie, along with a sorrow that was a hundred times worse.