The End of Normal

by Stephanie Madoff Mack

  The tree he had chosen was a weird lollipop shape that made me laugh, and I decided that he had struck the perfect note: Whimsy was the only way to get through this holiday. If I tried to replicate the Hallmark-worthy Christmas I usually put on, the horror of what Mark had done and the loss of him would only be underscored. I wanted the exact opposite of what I would have had with Mark. During one of their runs back and forth to the city, my brother and sister-in-law drove up with the gifts I had already bought, but I asked them not to bring up my collection of ornaments or our stockings. Mark had always gotten a kick out of decorating the tree with me, and we had both loved watching Audrey’s delight the year before as she discovered the beautiful baubles and special treasures like the pom-pom ice-cream cone ornament my aunt had made. Now Rob and I headed to the mall to buy cheesy colored lights, tinsel, and cheap ornaments for our lollipop tree. I wanted to be able to throw away everything when it was over, to have no reminders of the Christmas Mark took his life. I didn’t want a sad tree.

  I picked out a miniature plastic bottle of Pinot Grigio with tiny plastic grapes, and another ornament shaped like a wedge of Brie—every night, people had been coming over to visit, and we’d fallen into the habit of an hors d’oeuvres hour. I got Dora the Explorer, Disney princesses, and other cartoon characters for the kids, and briefly contemplated a huge inflatable snowman or Santa for the yard. Browsing the Christmas store with Rob, I would go from laughing at a blue-cheese ornament one minute to numb again the next. I would feel Mark there laughing next to me, and then I would find myself alone again in an empty moment while waiting for the machine to process my credit card, or for the clerk to hand me my bags. To this day, I still can’t lie down and take a nap, because it’s an empty moment. Those are the hardest. It doesn’t matter whether it’s two hours or two minutes. It’s those moments when my imagination takes cruel flight and I visualize the last two hours, the last two minutes, of my husband’s life.

  I had the same feeling on Christmas that I’d had the day of Mark’s memorial: I just wanted it to be done. Over. I felt forced into putting on the show for everyone else; just canceling it altogether had crossed my mind, but there was no way I could do that to my kids. I would have to fake my way through it for them. As soon as everyone got their stockings on Christmas morning—I had bought cheap red felt ones at the mall and inscribed each name with glitter glue—I tossed them out. (Audrey, it turned out, loved hers, and had a major meltdown when she couldn’t find it—we had to go dig it out of the trash can.) I also got rid of every gift I received that day, even the bracelet my parents gave me, because I didn’t want to remember that time. Mark had shopped for Kate and Daniel online, and I had wrapped the clothes and other gifts he ordered back when they arrived. We all went through the rote motions of opening gifts and exclaiming over them. No one was happy that day.

  In the afternoon, I put out a spread of appetizers, including Daniel’s favorite mini hot dogs, which he left untouched. Once I’d put everything away, the kids announced they were hungry and started making frozen pizzas. I knew they were hurting as much as I was, and I hated myself for silently feeling resentful. Later, my mother heated up the two huge lasagnas we had brought from a nearby Italian restaurant. Carrying one of the pans to the table, she dropped the whole thing over the back of a wicker chair and burst into tears. “Just throw the chair out!” I snapped rudely. “How am I going to get that out?” My sister-in-law, Sloane, quickly removed the slipcover and washed it, and we picked at the salvaged lasagna.

  “Steph, do you mind if I go out tonight to meet my friends?” Daniel ventured to ask as we sat later in the living room.

  “No, of course not, go ahead, have fun,” I told him. “Just wake me when you get home so I know you’re safe,” I added, stunned to hear Mark’s words suddenly coming out of my mouth.

  “I don’t want to take my car,” Daniel announced. “I want to take the Denali.” Mark had gotten us the black extended SUV just before Nick was born. “In fact,” Daniel went on, “I want that car for school.”

  My parents and I were startled. Mark had bought his son a brand-new car less than a year ago. Now I handed him my keys and stammered out a weak reply, knowing how hard the day must have been for him, too. I couldn’t blame him for acting out over such a minor issue.

  “I can’t guarantee anything,” I said. “Just be safe tonight.”

  When our sad little Christmas was over and I was tossing out the crumpled wrapping paper, I discovered the store-generated gift cards Daniel had found tucked in with his new shirts and had quietly left behind: To Daniel, Merry Christmas, love Dad and Steph. I felt awful that he had seen that, and blamed myself for being such an idiot and not thinking to look for any cards. Betrayed first by his grandfather and now abandoned by his own father, poor Daniel was growing too accustomed to life dealing him painful surprises. I hated being any part of that.

  I had no real plan for what we would do after the holidays. I had vowed never to return to Mercer Street. My brother and stepfather would get whatever I needed out of the apartment, and I could easily shift our lives to Greenwich until I figured out what to do next. But after a few weeks in Connecticut, I began to have second thoughts. The outpouring of love and support from our little neighborhood community back in SoHo had been tremendous. Citibabes, where Nick and Audrey took art and music classes, sent a favorite teacher up to spend some time playing her guitar and singing with them. Ella and Scarlett came up with their mothers to play with Audrey one day and brought thoughtful gifts for me and the kids.

  Classmates from grad school had reached out, too. I had never used my married name with these new friends, and had pretty carefully hidden my connection to the infamous Bernard Madoff, even flipping the mail on our hall table facedown before answering the door when they stopped by to visit. School had been the one place I could escape to where my life didn’t revolve around the Ponzi scheme, and I treasured those four hours of anonymity a week. It turned out that I had fooled most, but not everyone. Anyone Googling my maiden name could quickly connect the dots, but not even the people who had met Mark and socialized with us ever said a word. Discovering how kindly they had respected my privacy made me treasure those fledgling friendships even more. It dawned on me that I would be making a big mistake to cut myself off now from a network of support that made me feel so safe and loved. My kids needed to regain their sense of normalcy and stability, too. And I wasn’t going to obsess over the media the way my husband had.

  Dodging the press was the least of my concerns now. I had gotten that out of my system with a therapeutic exercise one cold and foggy night in Greenwich after everyone else was asleep. Designed for pediatric patients at the hospital, it involves drawing a target of whatever a patient fears most—a doctor, maybe, or a big needle—and then pelting it with wads of wet toilet paper. That night in Greenwich, I made myself a stockpile of “soggies” and crept into the woods shielding our house from the street. Hiding behind the trees, I began lobbing my missiles at the few media cars still parked on the road. I could hear the surprised cries of “Hey! What was that?” before engines started and they drove away. I laughed like a lunatic in the frozen woods. I had always wanted to do something like that. The childish impulse first rose when we sought refuge in Connecticut after Bernie’s arrest. I told Mark we should pull some prank on the press stakeout. We had life-sized cutouts of Ruth and Bernie up in the attic, left over from some family celebration or birthday party. I desperately wanted to prop them up at the end of the driveway. “Don’t,” Mark had admonished. He should have let me do it, and he should have done it with me. It felt so good to have even a fleeting sense of control.

  On New Year’s Eve, I decided I could face going back to SoHo. The kids were homesick. They missed their scooters and their toys. They wanted to see their friends and go to the Jamba Juice on the corner again, and watch Night at the Museum over and over and over.

  S
tepping into my apartment building’s small lobby with my parents, kids, and Grouper, I dreaded facing the doorman and his pity. What do you say to me, I thought, how do you act around me? In the elevator, I thought of my husband being carried out in a body bag, the stretcher trundling out onto the sidewalk and up to the coroner’s van. The elevator’s discreet ding announced that we had arrived on our floor. The door opened directly into our loft, and I walked into the foyer and looked up at the fresh plaster and paint used to camouflage the steel beam where Mark had hanged himself. I bolted to the bathroom and threw up.

  I went into our bedroom and stared at the bed. My side was perfectly made, but Mark’s had been pulled back. I could tell that he had lain but not slept there; the sheets and pillow were unwrinkled. No suicide notes had been found, but I still couldn’t believe that the few one-line e-mails we got at Disney World were all there was. I rooted through the nightstand and searched the closet. I opened the door of the medicine cabinet, thinking maybe he had hidden an explanation there. There was none. There were no pills missing, no evidence Mark had even had a drink that night. I found a pair of his socks in the hamper and held them to my face, trying to find the scent of him and crying when it wasn’t there. On the day he went back to college, Daniel had taken some of his father’s clothes and shoes from our closet in Connecticut while I was out, and the shirt I had been sleeping in was gone when I went to put it on that night. I didn’t want to ask for it back, and the intimacy of it would no longer be there, anyway. But now I had lost the smell of Mark.

  The black box containing his ashes was in a Whole Foods tote in the hallway with our luggage, alongside the new vacuum cleaner my mother had bought to replace the one with the gruesomely snapped cord. Other things would have to be replaced as well. I ordered a new mattress. I needed new sheets, too. Mark and I had always had snowy white ones. Now I got an Indian print in bright pink and orange and lime green, the brightest, happiest colors I could find. I threw out all the coffee and switched to tea. I got a stepladder and climbed up to inspect the repaired beam. I found faint scuff marks on the ceiling, with matching ones on the wood floor directly below. This is where, I told myself. It was the same spot where he had hung Audrey’s birthday piñata barely a month before.

  In bed alone at night, I began waking up drenched in sweat, my heart racing. I stared at the clock, waiting for 4:14 to come. The time stamp on Mark’s final e-mails. I knew he had to have done it right after. Watching the minutes tick by, my mind conjured every horrific detail. How high up was he, what was he wearing, was it quick, did it hurt, was he crying? I put my hands around my own throat and squeezed, trying to imagine what it felt like to strangle the last breath of air from your lungs.

  I can’t be here, I told myself. I don’t know how I’m going to live here. I can’t stay. I can’t be here.

  · nine ·

  OUR OWN GOOD-BYE

  I never did find any note or explanation from Mark beyond that last e-mail he sent the morning he hanged himself, nothing but the words I Love You. I have my own theories about why he took his life and what he hoped it would accomplish. They’re only guesses, of course, and intellectually, I know better than to try to apply reason to such an irrational act. Emotionally is a different story. But I am sure of this one small, comforting truth: He never did this thinking for a moment that his torment would become mine.

  Everyone who was suing Bernie Madoff’s son when he was alive kept suing him when he was dead. What Mark and I had been facing together I now face alone, with no job, no income of my own, and two young children to raise. Resolving Mark’s estate has added new complications to a financial minefield, and it’s anyone’s guess as to when there will be closure there. I had decided to go back to school right away, enrolling in just one class, but emotionally I felt paralyzed, unable to make even simple decisions some days, like whether to meet a friend for coffee.

  Our babysitter, Petal, and Mark’s friend Joe had been the last ones to see my husband alive, other than the doorman who exchanged pleasantries with Mark when he took Grouper out for his usual evening stroll. Mark and Joe had met for lunch earlier that Friday, and Joe would remember Mark laughing and enjoying himself. He told me that Mark was excited that Audrey and I would be coming home from Disney World the following day. How had he spiraled downward so soon, so fast, after such a pleasant, innocuous afternoon? Mark’s oldest friend, Adam, had also seen him that day, and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. I can only pinpoint the Wall Street Journal article and the new lawsuit against the children as the forces that pushed him over the edge that particular day. With his death, I believe he wanted to make a statement to his father. I also think he had convinced himself we would be better off without him. Nothing makes me angrier, or sadder.

  Since Mark’s death, I’ve browsed books and articles about suicide, skimming the surface, afraid to absorb too much information for fear I will use it to condemn myself. People assume that the loved ones left behind after a suicide yearn to know why, but that’s not my main obsession. What if? That’s the question I ask myself again and again, trying on and discarding every possibility. What if I hadn’t gone to Disney World, what if I had pretended not to be annoyed by his rant about the Wall Street Journal, what if I had woken up and checked my e-mail at 4:14, what if I had never met him, never loved him, never lost him? There are people who never knew Mark Madoff, yet who gleefully point to his suicide as proof that he must have known of or participated in his father’s epic crime. Nothing could be further from the truth. His death was proof only of his pain.

  I’ve since learned that approximately half the people who kill themselves in this country each year have tried it before, and are most likely to try it again during the first year following the failed attempt. No one who treated Mark after he swallowed the pills told me that, and I ask myself constantly whether I missed something, whether my vigilance might have countered his vulnerability. Then I have to remind myself that what I saw that winter was a man who seemed hopeful and happy for the first time since his world had caved in on December 11, 2008. Mark had stopped taking antidepressants several months after leaving the psych ward in 2009, saying he no longer needed them, but he was still seeing a therapist. So was I. To be sure, the stress factors were still there—Mark’s nervous habit of scratching his palm would sometimes leave the tender patch of flesh between his thumb and forefinger raw and bleeding—but our marriage was getting stronger, to the point that we were even talking about having a third child.

  Mark’s greatest fear, beyond being unjustly accused and destroyed both professionally and financially, was that I would leave rather than weather the storm with him. He had never known anything but privilege, and he lacked the basic tools to cope with any adversity, much less this monumental one. Even his divorce had caused only minimal disruption to his comfortable life. When Bernie confessed, Mark’s world collapsed in a heap on top of him. He couldn’t manage to free himself, much less begin building anew. His father, his mother, and his brother had all turned their backs on him in some way or another, and when his paranoia got the better of him, Mark assumed I was going to abandon him, too, despite my reassurances that I wouldn’t. Once, as he was standing at the island in our kitchen ruminating over some lawsuit or press report attacking his integrity again, he suddenly blurted out that the kids and I would probably be better off without him. I remember running across the room and flinging myself at him, sobbing like a crazy woman as I hugged him tight.

  “Please don’t say that! It’s not true! Please, please, don’t ever say that!” I begged him.

  There was a tacit understanding between us that I would never bring up his overdose. I knew Mark was deeply embarrassed by it, and he had apologized in the love letter he had written me from his hospital bed. He had promised me he would never do anything like that again, and I believed him. I never opened the medicine cabinet to count pills. I never looked through his belongings, his pockets, hi
s correspondence, for evidence of his despair. Nick and Audrey were proof enough of their father’s will to live, I thought, because even in his darkest moments, Mark had never ceased to be an attentive, adoring father. He could be sucked into the Internet whirlpool, wallowing in self-pity and anger, then calmly get up when it was time to bathe the kids, put a towel over his head, and lose himself in their giggles as he roared, “The Towel Monster is going to get you!”

  Driving along the Henry Hudson Parkway one gorgeous fall afternoon on our way home from Greenwich, Mark and I had talked about the day when optics would no longer rule our life and we would finally be free to tell our own story. It was going to be about love, betrayal, and survival. About righting your ship, finding the horizon, and setting the course to sail back to safe harbor. Mark had started fiddling with an opening chapter two weeks before he died. He never got past these first few paragraphs.

  * * *

  After forty-four years of life, I found out that my father was not the person that I knew. On December 10, the man who had taught me the importance of integrity had just told me that he was a thief. It’s unclear exactly when it started, but it appears as if I was a young boy when his lies began. The business, the man, the person that I so looked up to, was not who or what he claimed to be. Yet somehow, my father was able to leave the fraudulent side of his life on the seventeenth floor of his office and come home to his children and be a good father. That is the person that I knew. That is the person his family knew. That is the person that his friends knew. My childhood was normal. I was taught right from wrong. Both of my parents were always there for me and both helped make me into the person that I am today. I was raised to be, and still am, a good and honest person.