The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  Given the circumstances, I had decided that a very small, private memorial was best for saying our good-byes to Mark. Our dear friend Adam took on the tough task of letting friends and acquaintances know that there would be no funeral. Some were angry or disappointed that they weren’t invited to attend, but most understood. RoseMarie was the one who got the call from Ruth Madoff. Ruth had sought—but not taken—RoseMarie’s public relations advice about repairing her image in the media after Bernie’s arrest. RoseMarie was struck by how flat and unemotional Ruth sounded now.

  “I have to get into this memorial service,” she told RoseMarie. “I have to get in there.” She also wanted to speak to me directly. Like Mark, I had cut off contact after Ruth had refused his plea from the psych ward a year earlier to sever all ties with Bernie and publicly divorce him. Her decision had cut Mark to the core. She had chosen not to be in his life; showing up for his death struck me as unbelievably cold and selfish.

  “No,” I told RoseMarie. “Absolutely not. Mark would not want her there.” Andy had recently begun acting as Ruth’s conduit and, even though he was barely speaking to Mark himself, had relayed their mother’s suggestion that the three of them get together when she visited Kate and Daniel over the upcoming holidays. Three days before he died, Mark had e-mailed her.

  Mom. Unfortunately, I don’t have it in me for the visit. I have so many unresolved things in my head that I can’t begin to process them. I had hoped that my anger would subside, but it has not. In fact, all of the crap that is going on now has exacerbated the emotions. I know that you will be disappointed but I just can’t do this now.

  I assumed Ruth was calling RoseMarie from Florida, where she had been living off and on with her sister. As far as I was concerned, she could grieve with her own family; I wanted her nowhere near what remained of mine. My decision was as pragmatic as it was emotional. Ruth was constantly stalked by the press, and it would have been like unleashing the hounds of hell to have her pull into my driveway. The post-arrest estrangement between the Madoff parents and their children had been widely reported, so a shot of Ruth coming to mourn her dead son would have no doubt fetched a handsome fee for the paparazzi lurking outside, while likely tipping off the media that a service was being held inside.

  I just wanted this whole ordeal to be as quiet and private as possible, especially for the children’s sake. Kate and Daniel were hurt and dazed, and Audrey was struggling to absorb her loss, too. I would find her skipping around the house in her polka-dotted Minnie Mouse costume from Disney World, singing out, “My daddy’s dead and he’s not coming back!” like some morbid nursery rhyme. I understood the impulse; I kept having to remind myself that Mark wasn’t coming back, too. It was the mental equivalent of cutting yourself, the way angst-ridden teenaged girls sometimes do, to bleed a little over and over in hopes of slowly releasing the greater pain you know is building up inside. Saying Mark was dead, whether silently or out loud, was better than feeling it. When I looked at my own two precious babies, I couldn’t imagine ever putting my needs ahead of theirs, of hurting them the way Ruth had hurt her son. RoseMarie bravely conveyed my sentiments to Ruth Madoff.

  “Look, you were asked by Mark to stop all contact with Bernie over a year ago,” she said. “You did not do that, and Stephanie feels strongly that because of that, you chose to stick by the man who not only ruined thousands of lives, but destroyed her life and that of her children, and killed her husband.”

  Ruth wasn’t the only one I banished: The day of Mark’s death, my brother, Rob, mentioned that Andy wanted to drop by. I hadn’t eaten much that day, but had drunk a couple of glasses of wine that evening. “That’s fine,” I told Rob, full of liquid courage, “but I don’t want that fucking bitch Catherine in my home, and neither would Mark.”

  My brother obediently repeated the gist of my drunken decree to Andy. “Well then, I’m not coming,” he informed Rob. I, of course, had no memory of the whole incident come morning, and was perplexed when Mark’s brother still hadn’t paid his respects two days later. I was mortified when Rob recounted what I’d said. Marty played mediator and rang up Andy, who claimed paparazzi were swarming his apartment building in the city and he couldn’t get out. “I’ll try tomorrow,” he promised. When he still didn’t show, Marty called again, getting another excuse. Marty tried once more. “Marty, I cannot do it,” Andy finally admitted.

  “Look, Stephanie,” my stepfather admonished me, “you should call him up and apologize.” I still felt righteous, but I realized I wasn’t the only family member reeling from Mark’s suicide; I could only imagine how horrible Andy felt. The two brothers had been estranged for months after Andy erupted at Mark in the hospital following his first suicide attempt, and Mark had confided to me that their tentative steps toward reconciliation recently had felt strained and “just weird.” Andy would suggest meeting in odd places, like at a bench in Washington Square Park while he was on one of his long bike rides. Mark had killed himself before they could mend their relationship entirely. I dialed up Andy’s girlfriend.

  “I’m sorry I said that,” I tearfully apologized. “You’re welcome in my home. You know no one was happier than I was to see somebody make Andy so happy.” That much was true. The fact that Andy was still married had pretty much precluded us becoming sisters-in-law, as much as I once would have dearly loved the camaraderie of another second wife in the Madoff clan. And even though my naïve BFF fantasies had been quickly dashed, Mark and I were both genuinely glad that Andy had found love. He was a quirky introvert who struggled socially compared with his sociable older brother. Mark and I had both wanted him to experience that joy of finding your true soul mate.

  “Okay, Stephanie,” Catherine responded now to my apology. “I’m sure Andrew will be a great help to you.”

  The service was scheduled for Thursday evening, five days after Mark’s death. His ashes had come from the funeral home in a black matte metal box, and I was in no rush to decide what to do with them. During the day, I would set the box on a little end table in the living room, surrounded by our family photographs. At night, I would carry the ashes back upstairs when I went to bed, not wanting to leave him alone. I would place the box on Mark’s nightstand.

  This solitary ritual was a stark contrast to the external debate over what I should or should not do with my husband’s remains. I was taken aback by the people who felt entitled, somehow, to a say. Bernie’s younger brother, Peter, was hoping that Mark would be buried in the family vault he had bought in a Jewish cemetery following his own son’s death. Mark had expressed outrage at his uncle back when Peter had informed us of his “gift.” “You know my wife isn’t Jewish!” Mark had objected, pointing out that I therefore could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Peter broached the possibility again after Mark died.

  He wasn’t the only one who had strong feelings on the matter. Even a former Madoff employee I barely knew felt the need to meddle in this most private of affairs. I am begging you to please not cremate Mark, he e-mailed me three days after Mark’s suicide. I have a grave plot in Staten Island which I would let him be in for free. I have connections and can make a couple of calls and have him taken and buried in a proper Jewish way, and hopefully no one has to know. It would have all been so ludicrous if it hadn’t been such a terrible shame. Mark probably would have been amused.

  He had come to me again on my second night of being alone. I could feel him lying next to me in our bed, spooning me the way he always did before we drifted off to sleep together. It was wildly comforting, and for a moment, my fear and anger subsided. He’ll take care of me somehow, I thought.

  A couple of days before the memorial, I went upstairs to try to take a nap. I spent much of my time that week crying in my bedroom so Nick and Audrey wouldn’t see me breaking down. As I lay there, though, it wasn’t sorrow or exhaustion that overwhelmed me. It was rage. I shot out of bed, grabbed the phone, and tore down
stairs. Marty and my brother caught a glimpse of me storming onto the back patio. I stood shivering in the cold and punched in a familiar number.

  A leaden voice answered.

  “Hi, Ruth, it’s Stephanie.” Stupidly polite.

  “Hi, Stephanie.” No emotion.

  I lit into her with a fury so vicious and raw, I didn’t even recognize my own voice.

  “You stuck by the man who killed my husband!” I screamed. “What kind of mother are you? Why? Why couldn’t you do what he asked? You are a pathetic excuse for a mother!”

  “I did not choose Bernie,” Ruth insisted. She told me she had planned to tell her sons just that week that she was finished with their father, even though she still didn’t really see why it mattered. “Well, I guess I’m too late,” she added.

  “Ruth.” I seethed, needing to hurt her, to make her acknowledge, for once, the damage she had done. “Your son is dead, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m dead to you, too, and Audrey and Nick are, too. You will never see your grandchildren again and you will never see me again!” I stomped back inside. Marty and Rob stood in the dining room, their mouths agape at what they’d heard.

  “How’d you like that?” I said, still shaking. Yes, it was cruel to speak that way to a woman who had just lost her son, but I needed desperately to defend him. Becoming Mark’s avenger had seamlessly become part of my own personality. I wanted to lay blame, demand accountability, and keen out loud in the pain he could not endure.

  Bernie’s lawyer issued a pompous statement announcing that Bernie would not be seeking permission from his jailors to attend his son’s funeral. I was nauseated by the thought.

  RoseMarie, Christi, and I went to the grocery store to buy food for the mourners. The three of us were in a daze, wandering the aisles trying to find paper plates and figure out how many plastic forks we might need. Just a few weeks before, Mark and I had been shopping for our Saturday night dinner in the same store, trying to decide whether to roast a chicken or make some pasta. I remembered how we had taken our glasses of wine to the backyard after putting the kids down for the night. We lit a fire in the copper fire pit and sat quietly talking about our future. Now I pushed my cart aimlessly through the aisles and felt as if I were narrating a documentary about some sad woman I didn’t recognize.

  It was surreal to be doing these things. I am shopping for food for my husband’s memorial service, I told my disbelieving self. How did people go from the aisles of the A&P to a loved one’s grave? Was there some secret gear I was missing that allows you to shift smoothly from whole to shattered and then back to whole again? RoseMarie had made meatballs. I put cheese and crackers in the shopping cart. I didn’t want there to be food or drink. This wasn’t a social event. I didn’t want anyone to linger. I wanted to just get through this service and have it be over.

  On the day of the memorial, I dressed myself in a black sweater and pants. I told Audrey that a lot of people were going to come visit that evening because they missed Daddy a lot, too. I decided not to force the children to sit through the service, but to let them be there if they wandered in out of curiosity. We would say our own private good-byes to Daddy later. This wasn’t a funeral or a wake. There would be no maudlin, blown-up photos of Mark smiling back at us, no shrine, no hymns, no minister or prayers. His ashes in their black box sat discreetly on a marble end table surrounded by photos of the four children and me.

  There were twenty-five, maybe thirty of us in all. I sat in a chair off to the side, with my mother kneeling next to me and my aunt on an ottoman in front of me, my mom rubbing my back, my aunt clasping my hands in hers. I can’t bear being singled out for attention, good or bad. I hate it when people sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I felt deeply ashamed of what my husband had done, embarrassed for him. Bernie had shown him all too clearly the power a father has to crush his children, yet now he had done the same to his.

  The hurt Mark had caused me I might someday forgive. But I couldn’t imagine ever forgiving what he did to Nicholas, Audrey, Kate, and Daniel. He had gone to such extremes to be there, always, for Kate and Daniel, only to rip that security away from them in an instant. Audrey wouldn’t have him even for as long as his older children had, and Nick would know his father now only through the memories of others. In ending his own life, Mark had irrevocably altered the course of theirs. Kate was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore and competitive swimmer who had grown up hearing her father cheer from the bleachers. Daniel was an eighteen-year-old freshman at college, sampling independence for the first time. Even the occasional one-line text messages he sent from college would make Mark’s face break into a happy, loopy grin. Now Daniel and Kate huddled together, waiting their turns to eulogize their father while a cousin played with Nick and Audrey in the other room.

  I had asked Mark’s friends Joe and Adam to speak, along with Andy, my brother Rob, Kate, and Daniel. I began to sob and couldn’t stop, all their words mostly lost on me as warm tears flooded down my face. I remember Andy saying something about feeling bitter and angry before he said something loving about his brother. Catherine perched on the couch. We managed to avoid each other, but she made a point of walking up to Rob’s wife, Sloane, greeting my sister-in-law with a sarcastic joke. “Hi, Stephanie,” she sang, alluding to a tabloid photo that had misidentified Sloane, on the day of Mark’s suicide, as me.

  Kate shared the sweet memory of her dad calling out after her, “Hey, Kate! Learn a lot!” whenever he dropped her off at school. Daniel stood up to speak as the brief service drew to a close.

  “I just want to say I want everyone to get along,” was all he said.

  My wedding rings came off when I went to bed that night, and never went back on.

  That night, Mark appeared in another dream. He was sitting in the same chair I had sat in during the service, but again, I could see his face only in profile, as if he were half there, half not. A single tear was coursing down his cheek. I woke up feeling certain he regretted what he had done to all of us. I’m not a religious or mystical person, but I am utterly certain that his spirit is sometimes present still. It happens in waking hours, too. I will sense but not see him suddenly beside me, filling an empty space.

  Those of us he left behind keep trying, in our miserable, dysfunctional way, to be there for one another and live up to the challenge Daniel voiced at the memorial service, but old habits are hard to break. It took only a day for me to feel that I was being deceived yet again. “Have you ever woken up and you’re not sure whether you were dreaming or somebody really told you something?” I asked Marty as we went out for coffee the morning after the service. “I think somebody told me Ruth was at Susan’s.”

  “Why don’t you call and ask?” Marty suggested. I sent a text message to Debbie Madoff, Andy’s wife, who was a close friend of Susan’s. Mark and I had felt sorry for Debbie following Bernie’s arrest; as Andy’s legal wife and mother of his two daughters, her finances were tangled in the same legal web as ours, and her isolation from the family made the uncertainty all that much worse. We had kept her updated via occasional e-mails, and she had come by and been sweetly supportive since Mark’s death. I texted her from the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. Is it true Ruth has been staying at Susan’s?

  A reply popped up instantly. I’m not going to get involved. You should give her a call.

  Susan answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, is Ruth at your house?” I asked, trying to sound casual and hoping it had, in fact, been a troubling dream.

  Susan answered with an invective rant so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Marty couldn’t help but hear every word; he looked at me in surprise. “You’re doing what you think is right for your kids, and I’m doing what I think is right for my kids!” Susan yelled. “The kids need their grandmother. They want her here!”

  I hung up, dismayed that I was being lambasted by her
yet again. So much for openness and honesty. How could she have sat there at my dining table offering her help while playing secret hostess the entire time to the woman she knew I held partly accountable for Mark’s death? I assumed that Susan hadn’t been forthcoming because she had feared I would disinvite her from the memorial service if I knew Ruth was staying with her. But she had missed my point entirely: I just wanted everyone to be up-front for once. At the end of the day, I truly didn’t care whether she became Ruth’s biggest cheerleader or her worst enemy. Just own it. No more secrets. No more playing both sides against the middle. No more lies.

  What Susan and I did have in common was an overpowering determination to protect our children from further hurt, and to help them cope with the loss of their father as best as we could. Because of that, we tried to put the Ruth incident behind us for their sakes and lurch forward in our clumsy new alliance. I wanted us to remain in one another’s lives so Kate’s and Daniel’s little brother and sister could grow up knowing them, and knowing their father through their eyes as well. I was deeply touched when Daniel and his stepfather showed up one day with a Christmas tree for me. Even though he was Jewish and, at eighteen, far too cool to get excited over my silly stockings, Daniel knew how much the holiday had always meant to me, and he realized that someone had better start making the funereal house festive for the sake of Nick and Audrey.