The End of Normal Read online

  We’d been together eleven months before Mark finally introduced me to his children. Kate and Daniel had come to the city on one of their weekends with their dad, and Mark decided it was time for them to meet his “friend.” I brought them cupcakes, and we all went to a paint-your-own-pottery shop, then out to see a kiddie movie called The Wild Thornberrys. Kate was seven years old, and Daniel was ten. I thought they were cute, sweet kids, and Mark happily reported back that they liked me, too. I felt as if I had passed the bar exam. Now we could be a real couple!

  That illusion was quickly shattered when Mark asked me to come along on a weekend visit with the kids in Greenwich, only to insist that I sleep in the maid’s room. “This is how the child psychologist said we should do it,” Mark insisted. When Kate’s cousins and little friends came over to play, they assumed I was the new nanny.

  Becoming a part of Mark’s time with his kids came with the unwanted bonus of a new social director in my life: Mark’s ex. Susan called incessantly during his visitation time, wanting to speak to the kids or to Mark, peppering him with unsolicited advice about what activities he might do with Kate and Daniel, what to feed them, where to take them shopping, and so on. I wondered why he put up with it. “She’s their mother,” he would say defensively. It was easier to indulge her than to cross her. I wasn’t quite as willing to be bulldozed, and her meddling soon ignited our first big fight.

  It was Labor Day weekend, and Mark and I had taken the kids with us to spend the holiday at the beach with Bernie and Ruth at their house in Montauk. As it turned out, two other families Mark and the kids knew from Greenwich had rented a place a couple of miles down the road. Susan called and instructed Mark to take the kids to spend the day with their friends. I tried to object. This was his time with Kate and Daniel, and their grandparents didn’t deserve to be treated as a mere staging ground. Besides, I would feel awkward hanging out on the beach with people who had been friends of Mark and Susan’s when they were together; on the other hand, sending Mark alone would seem rude and petty. Mark, as usual, ended up ceding to his ex’s demands, and off we went. Sure enough, the Greenwich wives spent the afternoon interrogating me. Where did I get my hair colored? What exactly did I do for Narciso Rodriguez?

  “Is that T-shirt a Narciso Rodriguez?” one of the husbands even asked.

  “Um, no, it’s from the Gap,” I replied, wondering who on earth would wear a $300 designer T-shirt on the beach. With a pair of comfy old cutoffs, no less.

  I was being sized up, and I knew a full report would be dished back to Mark’s ex-wife. Later that day, when Mark and I went into town to run errands without the kids, I vented my frustration.

  “Why did you let her do that to us?” I demanded. “This is our weekend with your children. Why does she have to have a say in whatever we do?”

  “Well,” Mark sputtered, “I thought it would be fun for the kids to be with their friends.”

  “They see each other in Greenwich all the time!” I was yelling by now. Why did he have to be such a wimp when it came to his ex-wife? Didn’t he see that this wasn’t about a playdate? It was about control, and he needed to stand up for himself and assert his right to enjoy his visitation time free from their mother’s interference, which was so constant that it felt like borderline stalking.

  We got past the tension between us by ignoring it until it dissipated. I told myself to just suck it up, which wouldn’t be the last time I made that same mistake. The feeling that I came third in Mark’s life—after his children, which was to be expected, and after his ex, which was not—would become so entrenched that it would drive us eventually to couple’s therapy. Nothing ever really changed, though. We were always trying to shoot those rapids, and we never fully succeeded. It just became a matter of how emotionally bruised and battered we’d get in the process.

  Not long after my Montauk outburst, Mark broached the subject of moving in together. We had been seeing each other for about a year and a half. I had just moved into an apartment in my dream building on a quiet stretch of East 63rd Street—a tiny alcove studio with plenty of sunshine—but I was hardly ever around to enjoy it, since I spent every night at Mark’s. When Mark casually asked if I wanted to keep some clothes at his place, the discussion segued into whether we should live together. I was thrilled that he had brought it up and that he felt committed enough to take our relationship to the next level, too.

  I sold all my college-era furniture and kitchen stuff to my doorman, and came with little more than my clothes and my Twelve Days of Christmas plates. Mark’s place, though larger, was a classic bachelor pad, and I sensed he was nervous about the impending invasion of two X chromosomes. One day, I went to the drugstore and bought tons of feminine products—tampons, douches, anything I could think of. I snuck into the bathroom and stuffed his medicine cabinet to the bursting point, so it would all come tumbling out on him when he went to shave in the morning. My wicked attempt at aversion therapy cracked him up and made me love him even more for being able to laugh at himself.

  My heart just felt light around him, buoyant. We took genuine delight in each other’s company, and, save for the Labor Day quarrel, we had never fought about anything else. I was determined to be the perfect girlfriend, a sweet, understanding, good-sport partner who needed nothing more than to love and be loved by him. Mark was a lot more experienced and battle-scarred than I was, though, and he must have seen through the act pretty easily. A few months after I’d moved in, we were out at dinner when, out of the blue, before our appetizers had even arrived, he suddenly announced, “You need to know that I’m really soured on the idea of marriage.”

  I was speechless, then furious. I swiped away the tears streaming down my face. “You’ve ruined everything,” I told him.

  A pair of older women who’d been having dinner at the next table were getting ready to go, and one of them chose that moment to lean across and say something. “You know, you two make an adorable couple!” she trilled, oblivious to the drama she had just interrupted. Mark excused himself and got up to go to the men’s room. I sat there fuming. Why had he asked me to move in, let me give up my own apartment? I was twenty-nine. I’d never been married, I didn’t have children of my own yet. What gave him the right to presume I didn’t want all that?

  “Let’s just go,” I said when he returned to the table. I yelled at him the whole way home. “Why did you bring that up?” I demanded. “I never bring up marriage with you!”

  “I just think it’s important you know my views,” Mark responded. To him, it was a matter of integrity—one of the very qualities that I admired most in him—but to me, it was a matter of timing, and his stunk.

  I spent the next few weeks in a quiet state of panic. What am I going to do? I asked myself virtually every waking moment. I was too humiliated to confide in my parents or any of my friends, or ask for advice. Finally, I decided to just go with my gut. I didn’t want to break up. I couldn’t imagine life without him, without loving him. I was going to stay. I’d be able to change his mind, I convinced myself.

  We pretended nothing had happened, and the subject didn’t come up again until nearly a year later, on my thirtieth birthday. We were planning a big party in two weeks to celebrate the milestone with seventy-five friends. Things were going really well. Mark had bought a new apartment in SoHo, and we had just moved in. Downtown was our natural habitat, and we loved our neighborhood with its eclectic mix of shopping, restaurants, artsy street vendors, and colorful people. This truly felt like our home, rather than me merely inhabiting his. We were still waiting for the furniture we’d ordered to arrive, and the only things in our living room were four beanbag chairs, a table, and a heavy desk lamp. Looking around one morning while getting ready to leave for work, I suddenly flipped out, realizing that I had given up my own little dream apartment to move in with him, but here I was, almost thirty years old, playing house with no promise.
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  “I cannot be the girlfriend anymore!” I shrieked. Mark looked up, dumbfounded, from his beanbag. “I need more!” I went on. “I just can’t take it anymore!” With that, I picked the lamp up off the table and threw it on the floor, leaving a dent in the polished wood. I stomped out the door. I spent the day distracted and going through the motions at work. This sucks, but I can’t wait anymore, I told myself. I knew Mark would break up with me, but so be it. If he couldn’t commit, I needed to move on. Reaching our door after work, I was scared to go inside.

  In the living room, Mark was back in the same beanbag he’d been in that morning. He stood up, and wordlessly walked over to hug me.

  “I don’t have a ring yet. I’d been planning on asking you at your birthday party, in front of all our friends and family,” he said. He got down on his knee anyway and asked me to be his wife.

  My birthday party turned into an engagement party. I felt like an idiot. A very happy one.

  I had always wanted a destination wedding, and St. Barths, where my parents had a vacation home, was my top pick. But once I started planning my wedding, I realized that a lot of my friends wouldn’t be able to afford to go if I tied the knot with Mark in some faraway resort. We decided on Nantucket instead. It was where we had spent our very first weekend away together, and we both loved its quaint cobblestoned streets and breathtaking shoreline. Nantucket touched someplace deep in Mark’s fisherman soul, and he even loved the overpoweringly sharp, briny smell of the beach at low tide. We reserved the weekend of October 23, 2004, at the elegant White Elephant Hotel overlooking Nantucket Harbor.

  Since she’d never had any daughters, I invited Ruth to help my mom and me plan the wedding. She added to the fun and never overstepped her boundaries. I thought she was going to make the ideal mother-in-law, if there could be such a thing. My mother liked her, too.

  My tastes run to chic but simple, and the bottom line was that everyone had to be comfortable and have a good time at the wedding. I wanted it to be laid-back, not stiff and formal. I didn’t want to be dressed like a big cupcake bride. I did have one extravagance in mind, though. “I don’t care if I have to wear a paper bag and carry a single flower,” I told the event planners at our first meeting. “I want the Harlem Boys Choir to perform.”

  Narciso was designing my gown as a wedding gift, and I didn’t have any say in what it would look like. What might have been terrifying for your average bridezilla was thrilling to me; I knew he would create something special and uniquely my own. I didn’t want a veil, and would have gone with a simple ponytail, but my hairdresser convinced me to at least let him twist it into an effortless knot. A friend who designed jewelry made me one of the island’s signature rope bracelets, intertwining thin strands of white gold. Mark chose a gray suit with a blue-checked shirt and a gold tie emblazoned with tiny fish. Kate and Daniel would escort their father down the aisle of the wedding tent on a carpet with orange rose petals, and I would make my entrance to the sweet, soaring voices of the Boys Choir of Harlem. We’d submitted a list of twenty-five songs, and the choir had chosen three. Ruth had stepped in at the last minute and nixed a gospel tune on the grounds that it had the words “Jesus Christ” in the lyrics. I was surprised by her decree, since the Madoffs weren’t observant Jews, but it was no big deal to change songs if it placated her.

  The ceremony was casual, presided over by an old friend of my family, former New York prosecutor-turned-novelist Linda Fairstein, who was warm and ebullient. At the reception afterward, the hundred or so guests sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner. Granted, it was a month early, but it had always been my favorite holiday meal, and it was an autumn wedding, so why not serve roast turkey with stuffing and all the trimmings?

  I was deliriously happy, dancing all night in an exquisite backless Narciso sheath. Mark kept drifting in and out of my reach. Daniel was acting out, competing for his father’s attention by poking him with straws, and Mark had to tend to him for much of the reception. The adults were cranked up, too. In addition to the carrot wedding cake, there was a dessert bar overflowing with Twinkies, Sno Balls, Snickers bars, and Starburst candies. Eight years later, people still tell me it was the best wedding ever. It probably took a good five years just for the sugar high to wear off.

  My new father-in-law, a teetotaler, watched much of the gaiety from his preferred seat on the sidelines. When I catch a glimpse of him on our wedding video, it’s impossible to read the half smile on his face. I took it then for happiness, but like everything else about Bernie now, I don’t know what was real. He and I had gotten into a huge fight the day after Mark had put a gorgeous engagement ring on my finger. Mark had come home from the office that night looking uncomfortable.

  “We need to discuss something you may not be happy about,” he told me. “You’re going to have to sign a prenup. It’s more to protect my dad’s business.” Bernie, he explained, was insisting on it.

  My hackles rose instantly. “What does he think I am, some kind of a gold digger? Nice.” Ruth had come over to congratulate me in person the morning after Mark proposed, while Bernie apparently was busy having his lawyers draw up a document that anticipated our divorce. He had rendered the most beautiful moment of my life so far into something cold and calculating. Feeling spiteful, I flat-out refused to sign. Did Mark and his parents really have such doubts about my character? When I told my parents what was happening, I was surprised to hear my stepdad take Bernie’s side.

  “You know what, Steph, I don’t blame him,” Marty said. “He’s worked hard to build his business, and you’re not entitled to his hundreds and hundreds of millions.”

  I was still upset. I didn’t care about diamonds or dollars. This was about trust, and simple respect, qualities that I thought needed to be obvious for any marriage to succeed, regardless of either party’s respective bank account. I felt accused and insulted. Mark left me to stew while he went on a two-day fishing trip with his brother, who had had a rough year fighting cancer and dealing with his own marital crisis. Bernie called and left me a message, and I ducked outside my office at Narciso’s to call him back from the street, ready for a showdown. I was hurt and offended, and I wanted him to know it.

  “You didn’t make Susan sign one, or Debbie,” I protested. If Mark’s and Andy’s first wives hadn’t been subjected to this particular humiliation, why was I?

  “I think you’re wonderful, and I know you love my son. But I have to protect my business,” Bernie replied.

  I was an absolute bitch for those two days. I bombarded Mark with angry phone calls and messages, ruining his trip. I called Bernie. I consulted an attorney and had him call both Mark and Bernie. Finally, I was spent. Bernie won, and I had to be satisfied that I had made my point. I signed the agreement, and hoped Bernie and I could move past the ugliness.

  As Mark and I celebrated our marriage that night in Nantucket, the wild autumn wind whipping outside, the videotape shows me spotting Bernie sitting off to the side alone, just watching. I march up to him and pull him onto the dance floor to the throbbing chorus of an old Eurythmics hit:

  Sweet dreams are made of this.

  Giddy and laughing, I dance with abandon, while Bernie shifts uncertainly from foot to foot, bewildered, looking for a way out.

  · three ·

  BECOMING A MADOFF

  I thought the Madoffs were the perfect family. Everyone was smart, everyone seemed happy, everyone seemed to get along well enough. Madoffs moved through the world at cruising speed, never needing to shift gears or second-guess their direction, confident that the surface beneath them would remain solid and smooth. Disorder was the one thing that truly unhinged Bernie, and the life he had built reflected that—everyone and everything fell neatly into place. From the moment I became a Madoff, I struggled to find mine.

  The whole concept of searching for yourself was alien to my husband. It was always a given that Bernie’s
sons would work for him someday, and presumably inherit Madoff Securities when he died. As soon as Mark graduated from the University of Michigan with his economics degree, he became his father’s employee. When he and Andy were given their own separate market-making division to run, they built a solid business that would earn them admiration on Wall Street as bright young stars in their own right. By their forties, Andy was restless, but Mark still loved working side by side with his brother after more than twenty years, and he enjoyed his work without becoming obsessive about it.

  Mark couldn’t have been any further from the ruthless Gordon Gekko stereotype of the successful young broker. When he walked through our apartment door around six each evening, he was done. He wasn’t glued to his cell phone like his father, or answering client e-mails at the dinner table. Oddly enough, given his family name and the golden reputation it had then, Mark was never a person our friends would go to for stock tips. He was the one they’d go to for personal advice. It made sense, actually; he managed a hundred employees in a competitive, volatile business, and he did it with a velvet glove rather than an iron fist.

  Keeping boundaries is part of being a successful manager, and Mark kept his work-related socializing to a minimum. He rarely entertained clients, and didn’t go out for drinks with his work buddies at the end of the day, generally preferring to enjoy his single glass of Scotch each evening in the comfort of his own living room. We could have filled every night of the week with different charity events or see-and-be-seen social functions, but for the most part we were homebodies who preferred to stay in and watch 24 together on TV, go to bed early, and read. We were such huge 24 fans that Mark actually shed a couple of tears when the final episode aired. “Why are you crying?” I asked him, laughing.