The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  “Yeah, but you had to go out and hire the most aggressive divorce lawyer in New York!” he said with a smile. Even he had been charmed by Nancy.

  We settled uneasily into our new routine, trying to move on. I was excited about my classes, and Mark dove into his newsletter with a sense of purpose and enthusiasm, getting up at four each morning to start gathering industry news. It was a good way to get his foot back into the working world, without having to face his paralyzing fear of searching for an actual job. Mark had once sold sneakers at FootLocker in high school, but had gone from college to working for his dad, and didn’t have any experience at job hunting. He had never had to put together a résumé, network, make humbling cold calls, or sit across from an interviewer.

  In late September, 60 Minutes ran an interview with Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of liquidating Bernie’s assets for his victims, and David Sheehan, Picard’s chief counsel. I sat in front of the TV in our living room to watch; Mark stood at the kitchen counter, nursing a Scotch, listening as correspondent Morley Safer interviewed the pair. Eighteen billion dollars, Sheehan said, was still “just missing.”

  “Of all the people that should have known, his brother and his sons who worked under the same roof with him should have known,” Safer declared.

  “One would think so,” Picard agreed.

  Sheehan said that he thought “clearly they would have to have known what was going on.” Safer didn’t ask if there was any evidence that Mark and Andy knew of, or had participated in, any wrongdoing, and Picard offered none, but indicated that this wouldn’t stop him from driving the Madoff brothers into the ground. Left out entirely was the fact that the market-making division run by Mark, deemed to be operating legally, had been successfully sold to another company for many millions of dollars.

  “Whether or not they have a criminal problem, we will pursue them as far as we can pursue them,” Picard said, “and if that leads to bankrupting them, then that’s what will happen.”

  When the segment ended, I turned to Mark, feeling ill.

  “These men scare me,” I told him. He was furiously chewing his bottom lip and didn’t even acknowledge me. Once again, this was only happening to him, not to me, not to us. I never doubted for a minute that Mark would be able to get us on solid footing again and rebuild a career that would provide a comfortable life for our family. My anxiety came from never knowing when the next bomb was going to drop. Mark, on the other hand, was convinced that each one would destroy him.

  “I’m going to give Marty a call,” he said, picking up the phone and turning to my stepdad for advice and consolation. There would be a conference call with the legal team and Andy first thing in the morning. Mark was still livid when we went to bed. He flicked on his Kindle and buried himself in one of the political thrillers he read for escape.

  Our legal team issued a statement calling the allegations “entirely baseless.”

  Mark and Andrew Madoff had no prior knowledge of Bernard Madoff’s crimes and contacted the U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC immediately after their father told them he had defrauded his investment advisory clients . . . Mark and Andrew Madoff were not officers of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. They were employees with no ownership interest in and no access to overall financial information about BLMIS. They ran an operation that executed approximately 60 million trades per year for U.S. brokers, and their compensation was tied to the legitimate proprietary trading and market-making businesses they spent 20 years building. As they have from the beginning, Mark and Andrew continue to cooperate fully with the authorities in their ongoing investigations.

  Nineteen days later, Mark tried to kill himself.

  It was a beautiful Wednesday in October, and my mom and I had gone with Audrey on a preschool class trip to pick apples in the morning. We had plans to see a matinee of The Lion King. Mark had meetings with some people about the newsletter and came home around five. We fed the kids and gave them their baths, and I went to check my e-mail. There was one from Ruth, breezily telling me that she had just had the most wonderful time with Kate and Daniel up at Susan’s. All these months, I had been there for Ruth, and I was the one who had gotten Kate and Daniel back into her life after Bernie’s arrest, arranging visits with them for her at our home in Greenwich. I was under the impression Susan wasn’t speaking to Ruth. In an instant, that old rivalry flared again, and I lost it.

  “I can’t deal with your mother anymore,” I snapped at Mark. “She plays both sides of the coin. You know what? I can’t stand it. I’m writing her a nasty e-mail back!”

  “Don’t,” Mark pleaded. I ignored him and went to my computer.

  Glad you had a nice dinner with Susan and thanks for the dagger, I wrote Ruth. I went back at it with Mark.

  “I don’t understand why that controlling bitch is always in our life,” I said of his ex. “Mark, you know how helpful I’ve been to your mother! I found a shrink for her! I helped her look for apartments. My friend offered her free PR advice. I’ve let her see the kids, and had her over for dinner.”

  The fight escalated until Mark left a little before nine.

  “I’m going out for a walk,” he said. He didn’t take Grouper. He’d done this before to avoid fighting, and always came back after five minutes. This time he didn’t. An hour passed. I called a girlfriend to vent and hung up after half an hour. Mark still wasn’t home. I tried to call him and heard his phone ring. Mark never left without his iPhone, never once forgot it. I knew he had intentionally left it behind. I found it in the kitchen, picked it up, and smashed the screen against the corner of the granite countertop. I called my friend again.

  “He’s not coming back,” I told her. This was the first time in our entire relationship that I couldn’t reach him. My frustration soon turned to panic. I called my parents, who tried to calm me down. I dialed a few of Mark’s friends, playing calm, asking each one, “Is Mark with you by any chance?” It was close to midnight. I knew if I called the police, it would be a story in the paper, but I didn’t care anymore. My instinct was screaming that something wasn’t right. Fighting hysteria, I dialed 911.

  “Hi. This is Stephanie Madoff. I’m really worried. My husband’s been missing a few hours.”

  Two officers, a male and a female, showed up within ten minutes. I called my parents, and they rushed over, too.

  “Please, please, you know who I’m married to, please don’t tell the press,” I begged the officers. “You know this name.”

  By the time my parents got downtown, half a dozen or more officers and detectives were in the apartment. I was still calling any friend of Mark’s I could think of, but nobody had heard anything. The police had Marty call Ruth and told me to check with Susan, to see if either had heard from Mark.

  “You think my husband’s at his ex-wife’s?” I asked incredulously. “I’m not calling that bitch.” Marty did instead. One of the uniformed cops pulled Marty aside to ask whether Mark was expecting to be indicted the next morning. Then one of the detectives asked that we contact the building super to get access to the roof. My stomach lurched. I knew they were going up there to look for a body. They came back down, reporting there was no sign he had been up there.

  “Was he on any medication?” a detective asked. He followed me into the bathroom, where I opened the medicine cabinet. Every pill bottle was missing. My knees buckled beneath me. “Oh, God,” I sobbed. I had never been so scared.

  Around five thirty a.m., the lead detective gently approached.

  “Listen, we’ve got ten cop cars outside your building and about twenty cops inside the apartment, and you’ve got two young kids about to wake up. We don’t want to cause a stir, so we’re going to leave now. He’ll show up.”

  I curled up in a chair, my parents waiting with me. Around eight, the babysitter let herself in.

  “Petal, he hasn’
t come home,” I cried. “I don’t know what to do.”

  My mom put on a pot of coffee, and I went to take a shower. Over the sound of the rushing water, I thought I heard Mark say, “Hey,” and saw a man walk past. I jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and ran to the bed, where Mark lay on top of the covers, my stepdad hovering nearby. I flung myself onto Mark’s chest, soaking wet.

  “You’re back, you’re back,” I wept, hugging him and kissing him again and again. I felt such relief, such happiness in that moment. I didn’t notice at first how out of it he was. Marty called the police to let them know he was back, and two officers quickly arrived. One of them came into the bedroom with Marty while another hung back in the doorway.

  “I still don’t know how I got here,” Mark said. His voice was too slow. “It was as if I walked here on autopilot. I took thirty Ambiens and did not expect to wake up. What the fuck does a guy have to do to kill himself?”

  “Where were you?” Marty asked.

  He said he had been at a nearby hotel. He had paid cash and registered under the name Mark David, dropping his last name.

  “I wrote my father a note, took the pills, went to sleep.”

  “Where is the note?” Marty wanted to know.

  “I dunno. Left it on the night table.”

  “What did it say?” Marty pressed him.

  He recited his message: Bernie: Now you know how you have destroyed the lives of your sons by your life of deceit. Fuck you.

  Marty called the hotel, intending to retrieve the note, but housekeeping told him the room had already been cleaned. He then dialed Adam, a friend Mark had been close to since childhood. An internist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Adam was stunned. He quickly arranged for an ambulance to pick up Mark. Marty called Andy to let him know, and Marty and I rode uptown with Mark, who was awake but groggy. In the emergency room, he was given apple juice and cookies and a purple paper gown to put on. He seemed terribly lost. He couldn’t keep his eyes open or sit up. “I never want to see my mother again unless she stops talking to Bernie,” he mumbled, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  Andy showed up while Mark was being examined in the psychiatric emergency unit. Marty told him his brother had just tried to kill himself.

  “Who says so?” Andy wanted to know.

  “Your brother says so,” Marty replied. Andy fell silent. He went in to see his brother and came back out, his face twisted in rage.

  “Well, I’ve been given the wonderful job of telling my mother that Mark will never speak to her again!” he said. Mark had issued an ultimatum: Ruth had to choose. She would have to sever all ties with Bernie and publicly divorce him, or be cut off completely by us, losing not only her son but her grandchildren as well.

  A psychiatrist emerged from the locked exam room where Mark was resting and recommended that I have him admitted to the hospital’s psych facility in Westchester County, “because we would never be able to handle the press and the publicity down here.” We weren’t going to be able to go in the ambulance with him, so I came back downtown to pack some bags. I had decided that it would be better to make Greenwich our base of operations while Mark was hospitalized. It was quieter, and the commute was easier.

  Marty and I dropped my mom and kids off at the house, then went together to see Mark. It was cold and rainy, and too dark too early. Winter was closing in. We walked down the empty hallways, looking for the Haven unit. It was the creepiest place I’d ever been in. The carpet was stained and dirty, and every wooden door we passed was closed tight. We finally found Mark’s unit. There was a staffer posted outside his door to just sit and watch him for the first twenty-four hours. Protocol, we were told. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

  “You know, he swallowed a lot of pills,” a nurse told me. It turned out to be many more than the thirty Ambien; he had gulped down Lorazepam as well, which he had been prescribed for anxiety. Just one could make you feel like you’d had several drinks. Thinking about him taking the pills freaked me out completely. I envisioned him swallowing them one by one, in a slow, determined assembly line, then imagined him swallowing them all at once in a desperate, horrible handful. Mark wasn’t lucid enough to even know I was there.

  The next day, he sent me a love letter from the psych ward.

  Dear Stephanie,

  Let me start by saying that you are the love of my life and always will be . . . When you look at me and smile, my world stops . . . I work so, so hard to prove to you how much you mean to me. I live my life for you. Even if it does not always feel that way, you need to know that everything I do is with you in mind. Without you, I’m empty. Not alone, empty . . . My mind is strong and I can always make it to the end if I know that you will be there waiting . . .

  The night that I left, I was running because I had felt that I lost you and would never get you back . . . I was so frightened that so many other things had gotten in our way and that I could not get you to see me as the same person that you married . . .

  Every day, I wake up and am haunted by the fact that my parents are gone. If they had died, it would have been better. If I had done something wrong, I would understand. But I did not. For my entire adult life, I have done the right thing. I have been respected by my colleagues, my family and my friends. Now, I am forced to carry the burden of the disgrace my father has caused. Nothing could be more selfish than to leave me with this legacy of shit. Somehow, I will dig my way out of this. But I need a lot of help.

  You and I can’t cure the world of bad people, so let’s not try. It’s too easy to let anger take over our lives. It’s an awful feeling and it masks all that is good. You and I have endured more pain than any two people ever should have to. We can’t let anger paralyze us.

  I went to the grocery store and bought all his favorite foods: Twizzlers and sugared orange slices, chips and salsa, some energy bars, and all the ingredients for my lasagna, which he loved. We would have a hospital picnic. He would not remember any of it.

  The doctors told us Mark should expect to be there a week to ten days. I found a notepad and pen and left bright little sticky notes in his room when he was gone for therapy. I love you! I love you, we will get through this! I signed them with hearts and smiley faces and X’s and O’s, as if I could transfer so much sunniness and optimism to him by osmosis.

  The Haven was amazing. Any trace of creepiness quickly evaporated, and I was filled with gratitude for everyone who worked there. They were so compassionate, so gentle and skilled. Mark became himself again. I could tell that he valued and enjoyed what he had in life once more—he had focused so much on what had been taken from him that he couldn’t see what he still had until now. This was our new beginning. He was deeply embarrassed by what he had done. “I know it was stupid,” he admitted.

  On the third day of his stay, Andy came to visit. I was sitting with Mark, and Andy shot me a look. Mark politely hinted that I should leave, walking me to the door. I excused myself reluctantly. It was pretty clear that Andy was there on a mission, and I had a bad feeling about it. He immediately lit into his brother.

  “Fuck you! You’re a stupid fucking asshole. How could you do this?”

  They argued for about five minutes before Mark kicked him out. He had been looking forward to Andy’s visit, and he hadn’t been prepared for such an attack. After Andy left, Mark called me, crying hysterically. I had just pulled into the driveway of our Greenwich house. “You have to come back! Please come back! My brother just yelled at me. He was so mean to me.” Marty went back to the hospital with me, and we found Mark lying in bed, still shell-shocked. I sat on the bed next to him and put my arm around him, rubbing his back.

  “He called me a stupid fuck and told me he never wants to speak to me again,” he recounted shakily. “Is that the way a guy talks to his brother who’s in a hospital for trying to kill himself?”

&n
bsp; By the time Andy heatedly confronted him in the hospital after the overdose, Mark was a scared, fragile shell of the strong, self-assured big brother Andy had always known. Their family was gone, destroyed by their father in a single blow. Despite his understandable resentment over being appointed Mark’s messenger boy, Andy had dutifully relayed his brother’s demand that their mother sever all ties with Bernie or be banished from our lives forever.

  Now I told Mark that his little brother was probably still just shaken by the suicide attempt. I told him not to listen, not to worry, that it would be okay. I’d been saying that for nearly a year, but the funny thing is, I never believed it more.

  Andy was the only one Mark had left from the family I had thought was so solid, so loving and perfect. That Mark still loved his brother was painfully evident in the words he had groggily mumbled to my stepfather while we were waiting for the ambulance to take him to the hospital.

  “I thought this would help Stephanie and my brother,” he had said. Marty understood what he meant: Maybe this sacrificial condemnation of Bernie would move the government and its appointed trustee to finally recognize and acknowledge the Madoff sons’ innocence. Maybe then, Mark’s irrational and naïve reasoning went, they would leave Andy alone, and let me be, and we could move forward with our lives. Mark had been muzzled by his lawyers for a year, unable to tell his story and defend himself against people who presumed that the name Madoff made him a crook. If he couldn’t say how persecuted he felt, he would show it.

  I do know what I did was dumb, he e-mailed my stepfather from the psych ward. But I just got overwhelmed . . . One of the things that got me that night was the constant attacks on who I am. Nothing is more important than my integrity, and for ten months, I have had to endure a public beating and I had no chance to respond. That’s a brutal position to be in. I know that I must endure and I will. But it is so hard to be a public punching bag for so long and not fight back.