The End of Normal Read online

  Mark was unimpressed. He was a fly-fisherman himself. I had no idea then that there was a caste system in the fishing world and I had just revealed myself to be one of the untouchables. I prattled on, happily recounting how we used to dump canned corn over the side of the boat to lure flounder.

  “That’s cheating!” Mark needled. As if tying handcrafted fake flies on your fishing hook wasn’t. I still thought my tuna trumped his trout.

  The date flew by pleasantly, and after dinner we shared a cab uptown. Our apartments turned out to be only a few blocks apart. “Thanks, I had a great time,” Mark said as he dropped me off with a gentlemanly hug. My mom called as soon as I was in the elevator, her radar still as keen as it had been back when I was a teenager sneaking home after curfew.

  “How’d it go?” she wanted to know.

  “Mom, he is the nicest guy,” I gushed. “And he loves to fish!”

  “That’s great! He must have been impressed that you’ve caught tuna and shark.” She sounded pleased; maybe letting small children help you chum for six-foot mako sharks off the back of a boat wasn’t such a parenting faux pas after all.

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “Did he say he wanted to go out again?” Mom demanded.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous, Stephanie. If he had a great time, why not say he was going to call, or ask you out again? He doesn’t know what he’s missing!” He hadn’t even met her, but Mark had already pissed off my mother. I realized that I should probably be upset, too, but I couldn’t decide whether to be mad at Mom for deflating me post-date, at Mark for leaving me hanging, or at both, just on principle. I went to bed confused.

  The next day, our matchmaker reported back that Mark thought I was definitely worth a second date, and soon enough, Mark himself called. He wanted me to know that he would be tied up for the next three weeks between business and a spring break trip with his kids, but he wanted to get together when he returned. I was back on cloud nine. When I hit the gym as usual at six a.m. the following morning, I felt entitled to dismiss the two guys checking me out from their recumbent bikes. Oh, c’mon, I thought, are you really ogling me at this hour? I jumped on the treadmill and started my daily run, listening to music and watching the Today show on the television mounted in front of me. I was in my zone when one of the oglers sidled up to my treadmill. Annoyed, I refused to acknowledge him. He refused to take the hint.

  “Uh, Stephanie?” I heard him ask. I turned to look at him, startled that he knew my name. “We had a date two days ago and actually we made another one.”

  Mark.

  He never would confess that he’d intentionally come to check me out with his buddy, but I’d been going to that gym at six a.m. religiously for over five years, and it was deserted enough at that hour to recognize the regulars, and I knew he wasn’t one of them. I guess I passed the how-does-she-look-sweaty-and-half-asleep-with-no-makeup test, because he didn’t stand me up for our second date. That one was at a Mexican restaurant. Years later, he would remember that our dishes got mixed up and I ate his striped bass instead of my own salmon—already fish was a recurring theme for us—and I would remember only that I spent the evening thinking how much he looked like Kevin Costner. He walked me home, and when we reached my apartment building, we perched on the ledge at the bottom of the steps, not wanting to say good-bye. I prayed he wouldn’t try to kiss me while the doorman was watching, and offered my cheek when he moved in to say good night.

  Mark’s wealth wasn’t something we discussed, and he never flaunted it. My own family was comfortable, but by no means in the same league as some of my classmates at the private Nightingale-Bamford School on East 92nd Street. I wasn’t a Waldorf-Astoria debutante in a Vera Wang gown. My stepfather, Marty London, was a litigator and partner in a firm with an impressive roster of clients, though we didn’t live a lavish lifestyle. Unlike other tenth-graders I knew in high school, I couldn’t stroll into a trendy boutique and casually snap up a $1,200 handbag because it was cute, nor could I buy all the makeup and Betsey Johnson clothes I wanted on a credit card with no limit. I didn’t have a credit card. My allowance was meant to cover burgers and a movie on the weekend. We were well-off, but I never shared the Junior League aspirations of some of my wealthier peers. What was the point? The social registry didn’t list the biggest fish you ever caught.

  At Nightingale, I fell into a tight-knit clique of five girls. We called ourselves the Breakfast Club after the John Hughes movie, because our personalities matched those of the main characters. We also bought fake IDs off some Trinity guys who ran a booming business selling them to the prep-school crowd that partied in the clubs and bars along First, Second, and Third avenues on the Upper East Side. The phony IDs were so easy to pass off that no one ever even questioned why mine had an M for gender instead of an F.

  One of our favorite spots senior year was Dorrian’s, which had gained notoriety in the 1986 “preppy murder” case. At Drake’s Drum, we ordered frozen Mudslides and shots of Jägermeister, which makes me nauseated now even to recall. We thought we were terribly sophisticated. I made good grades and rarely got caught breaking my eleven thirty curfew (or sneaking back out after my parents were asleep). I even had a clever system to circumvent the rules when my folks were out of town. They would leave the doorman a list of friends—girls only—who could be allowed up when they were gone. I would just have the boys buzz a friend who lived five floors above us, and she would let them in; they would take the elevator up to twelve and walk down the back stairwell to my apartment on seven, where the party was under way.

  By the time I met Mark, my wild days were long over, and I had no desire to relive them. I’d given up smoking, taken up running, and considered a second glass of white wine a party. We both preferred quiet evenings at neighborhood restaurants or watching TV with takeout from our favorite sushi joint.

  Our third date was spontaneous. Mark called after I’d gotten out of the shower at nine o’clock one night to see if I wanted to meet for a drink in our neighborhood. I showed up with my damp hair in a ponytail and my Timex watch accessorizing jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. He told me I looked great, and later confided that he knew at that moment that he was falling in love.

  For me, the real turning point was our fourth date. “I don’t know if you’re interested,” Mark said. “It may be a pain in the neck, but I have a black-tie business event to go to.” It was the annual Security Traders Association ball. Mark was worried that I would have to get a formal dress just for his occasion. I had no such worries: Narciso to the rescue, again. When I told the guys at work about the invitation, everyone dropped what they were doing to dress me. Narciso loaned me a black sleeveless crepe de chine gown with a sexy, open back.

  “What about shoes?” I asked my coworker and de facto stylist, Simon, who has the best taste of anyone I’ve ever met. Simon instructed me to go out and buy a pair of Christian Louboutin evening sandals, which he described in precise detail. They cost me half my paycheck; I’d never dropped so much on a pair of shoes in my life. Clearly I was getting serious. Simon then gave me a tutorial on how to properly tie the satin ribbon around my ankle—one loop, to the side. I wore simple diamond stud earrings made from my grandmother’s wedding ring.

  When the big night arrived, I ended up missing the whole cocktail hour because I had to work. Mark sent a Madoff driver named Clive to pick me up in one of the firm’s black BMWs and whisk me to the Hilton Hotel on Sixth Avenue, and I arrived just as dinner was about to begin. I nearly fainted at the sight of Mark in a tux, he looked so gorgeous. Next thing I knew, Mark was called up to the microphone to make a speech. I’d had no idea he was the STANY president. Flushed with pride, he kissed me when he sat back down. It was our first kiss.

  After that night, we were just together. Fate, I was certain, had finally come through. Cupid, on the other hand, would need a li
ttle coaching: The first time Mark sent me flowers, he signed the little card “From: Mark Madoff.”

  As clueless as I was about Mark’s status in the financial world, I was vaguely aware of his father’s high profile. Bernard Madoff was King Midas, and the media lapped up the colorful story of a plumber’s son from Queens going from penny stockbroker to billionaire. Bernie had served as non-executive chairman of NASDAQ and was often sought out by the media as an expert to quote on the market. I wasn’t familiar with any of these details, but had an old friend who worked on Wall Street and who suddenly couldn’t stop bragging about the guy her friend was seeing. A few months after Mark and I became a couple, I finally met the famous Bernie Madoff in person.

  “Hey, my parents are having lunch at Craftbar. Let’s go join them,” Mark suggested one weekend morning. I instantly freaked out: He couldn’t just casually spring this on me! Meeting the parents is a big deal in a relationship. You don’t just nonchalantly saunter over to lunch. What was he thinking? There wasn’t time to argue or make excuses to back out, though, which was obviously Mark’s plan all along in an attempt to keep it low-key. He hadn’t officially met my parents yet, though he had run into my mom when I was moving into a new apartment and he dropped by with some scented candles—he loved candles—and other little housewarming gifts. There was a certain protocol to these things in my mind, and he was blithely ignoring all the rules.

  At the restaurant, my anxiety was immediately put to rest: Ruth and Bernie proved to be down-to-earth and charming. I liked them both instantly. Bernie was quiet, but not in an aloof or distracted way. There was something very sweet about him. Ruth, on the other hand, was clearly the live wire in the relationship. Petite, with a once elfin prettiness that had been artfully maintained, Mark’s mother was a born performer who commanded attention. She was quick-witted and completely unfiltered, and her one-liners and hilarious stories kept me in stitches the whole time.

  As often as not, I would come to learn, Ruth’s funniest anecdotes were at her bemused husband’s expense. One of their classics was about the time the Madoffs had been invited to spend a couple of days aboard Kisses, the magnificent yacht of billionaire friends in the Caribbean. It was so elegant, there were original Picassos hanging on the walls. When Bernie woke up on board the first morning, he was horrified to see dark streaks on his bed linens, and he shamefully assumed he had soiled himself while he slept. That night, Ruth noticed the Hershey’s Kisses left on their bed by the crew at turndown; it was melted chocolate Bernie had been rolling around in the night before. Bernie laughed, too, when she retold the story.

  I thought Mark was incredibly lucky to have such great parents, and as a child of divorce, I deeply admired their marriage of forty-plus years. Bernie and Ruth had been high school sweethearts, and still went to the movies together almost every single day after work. It was their little ritual, and they would watch anything from School of Rock to the latest indie art flick about the Holocaust. The only rule was that it had to be playing in a theater where Bernie could get a signal for his cell phone so he could stay in touch with clients and his seventeenth-floor staff at the Lipstick Building. He refused to go anywhere, either during a routine day or outside of the country on vacation, where he might not get phone service.

  Ruth seemed totally unperturbed by her husband’s overwhelming success and his celebrity; she was confident enough of her place in his life that she could remain blasé about Bernie making their Thai housekeeper give him massages on his home massage table. Both Bernie and Ruth infuriate me now, but honestly, when I looked at the two of them back then, I hoped to have the same kind of marriage someday with their son.

  Mark was always considered the more gregarious of the two Madoff boys. Andy, younger by two years, was more intense and reserved. Despite their very different personalities, the brothers had always been close to each other, and their friendship had deepened in adulthood as each went through the turmoil of a failed marriage and the challenges of being a single father. The dominant relationship in Mark’s life was beyond a doubt that with his two children. When I met Mark, I was young and naïve enough to believe that goodwill was all I would need to forge a loving relationship with Kate and Daniel. Mark’s divorce was so far behind him—years at that point—that I assumed all the emotional dust with his ex had long since settled. It wouldn’t take long to discover how very wrong I was.

  When we began dating, Mark was usually out of the office and on the road to his house in Greenwich by three o’clock on Friday afternoons. I was happy enough to reconnect with my own circle of friends on the weekend; it was refreshing not to fall into that age-old trap of ignoring your girlfriends because there’s a new man in your life. Kate and Daniel were Mark’s greatest source of pride, and being a father was so much a part of his identity that my shorthand for him when dissecting the relationship with my girlfriends was simply “the dad.”

  Naturally, I was eager to meet Mark’s kids, but he wanted to go slowly on that front. He had dated plenty of women after becoming single again, but his last serious relationship since the divorce had been pretty volatile, and he wasn’t going to thrust his kids into the middle of anything until he felt certain it was safe. His caution was understandable, but it could be maddening, especially to someone as young as I was; I had no clue yet what it was like to be a parent, much less how agonizing it is to be separated from the children you adore and how tentative that can make you. Inserting me into their cozy equation was not something Mark was in any hurry to do. I felt my resentment building over what I took to be my own unworthiness.

  The ultimate insult came the first summer of our romance, when Mark pointedly didn’t invite me to the famed Madoff company beach party in Montauk because Kate was going to be there and the kids still hadn’t met me (her brother was at sleepaway camp). I felt dismissed, but I swallowed the hurt and didn’t say anything; I was too afraid Mark might dump me if I were anything less than pleasant and agreeable, and I was falling for him hard. Mark hated confrontation, and I knew already that he would do anything to avoid it.

  While the big beach bash was getting under way, I spent that Friday by myself at the radiologist, having an MRI done on my hip. What had started out as an ache I attributed to my daily workout had turned into such searing pain I could barely walk.

  “Stephanie, you’ve got to see a doctor,” Mark had urged me. “My good friend owns the Mets. Do you mind if I call him for a recommendation?” So there I was, a treadmill casualty in the offices of one of the country’s top sports doctors. I limped home and spent the weekend nursing both my bum hip and my bruised ego. On Monday morning, the doctor rang my cell phone.

  “Where are you?” The controlled urgency in his voice sent a ripple of fear down my spine.

  “On my way to work—why?”

  “Get in a cab and come to my office right now, and don’t hit any potholes on the way,” he ordered me. The MRI had revealed a stress fracture, and my right hip was on the verge of a full-blown break. I would have to take it easy and spend the next two months on crutches.

  Mark was solicitous, but staying home was out of the question when he produced tickets to an acoustic Counting Crows concert that weekend at a small Lower East Side club. A buddy from Mark’s office and his wife joined us. They spent much of the evening reminiscing about how great the Montauk party had been the weekend before; the wife couldn’t stop gushing about how fabulous everything was. The big barbecue on the beach, the lobster bake under the stars, the Good Humor truck that had been rented, fully stocked, for all the children to enjoy. Mark seemed oblivious to how hurtful and rude the conversation was to me. I feigned interest, then went home and cried. I wanted to be a part of this man’s life, not excluded from it.

  When their mother took the kids on a Disney cruise over Christmas break that December, Mark and I slipped away for our first real vacation together, to Little Palm Island, a resort and spa in the F
lorida Keys. On our way, we stopped to spend a night with Ruth and Bernie at their home in Palm Beach. In New York, we tended to see Mark’s parents at events or in restaurants. In Florida, being with them for those twenty-four hours in their home environment would give me an ugly glimpse into a side of them I had never seen before.

  The two of them spent the entire time trash-talking the help. Ruth barked commands at the housekeeper, Marlena, and mocked her Spanish accent. Bernie was fastidiously neat to the point of being obsessive-compulsive, and, with Ruth, he complained ad nauseam about the maid’s incompetence. Even worse, Captain Dick, the man who looked after Bernie’s boats, kept coming in to use the toilet, which Bernie would then inspect. The rest of us were then treated to his crude description of what he had seen, and his almost girlish outrage over how disgusted he was, as he launched into yet another rant about how “useless” Marlena was. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  Little Palm Island, on the other hand, was pure paradise. It was as if we had stepped back in time into the scene of some epic, Hemingwayesque romance. Thatched open-air bungalows perched on stilts above crystal blue waters, and the grounds were lush with tropical flowers and vines. Our canopy bed was draped in gauzy mosquito netting that softly billowed in the breeze. It felt like a honeymoon. Excitedly exploring our suite, I discovered that the guest amenities included personalized stationery waiting on the desktop. MR. AND MRS. MADOFF, it elegantly proclaimed. I quickly threw it away so Mark wouldn’t see it. No point spooking him.

  We took a boat out deep-sea fishing, and I was excited when Mark hooked a big one. Our guide identified it as a grouper and wanted to cut the line—groupers are enormous and a pain to haul in. The big ones don’t taste all that great, and they’re endangered to boot. “No, you gotta reel it in!” I urged Mark. Machismo won out, and he fought the hundred-pound fish to the finish. I was duly impressed.

  I had already established my sportsmanship on an earlier weekend getaway to Key West, where we went out on a flats-fishing boat one day in hopes of catching a prized permit or tarpon in the shallow waters. We had barely gotten under way when a big wake came along and swamped the boat, completely soaking us both. There was a moment of shocked silence. Then I turned to Mark and we both started laughing hysterically. When I looked down, there was a little needlenose fish in the boat. It would be the only one we caught that day.