O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• By Stephanie Madoff Mack • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Moms

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There’s a great line in a great movie called The Anniversary Party.  (you need to see it if you haven’t—Alan Cummings, Jennifer Jason Leigh)  But Phoebe Cates has this quote—in the scene, she’s really drunk and on ecstasy for the first time and having probably the first honest conversation with a friend that she’s had for a very long time and she’s very, very upset and sobbing uncontrollably and then says this about being a mother:  “Once you have kids you totally lose the right to ever just swallow a big handful of pills.”

Suicide is basically just a choice some people make—a brutal, selfish, scary choice that seems almost impossible for some to understand, and for others—maybe close enough to their way of thinking that it becomes somewhat more fathomable and understandable. 

Stephanie Madoff Mack’s book is a book about suicide—her husband’s suicide, but it is also a love story—a romance set within the vaunted halls of high finance and eventually brought down by one of the most corrupt men in history—one of the most evil men, some say, Bernie Madoff, Stephanie Madoff Mack’s father-in-law. 

Quite honestly, I had to go back and review and try to educate myself.  Things I googled: Bernie Madoff, Ponzi Schemes, Madoff sons, Other suicides brought on by Madoff (5).  The gigantic mound of shit and lies that Bernie Madoff built his life on is beyond comprehension.    He is truly one of those people that make you wonder how he looked at himself in the mirror every day to shave.  How did he sleep?  How did he hold his grandchildren and kiss his wife knowing that at any moment the whole house of cards could come crashing down? 

Apparently there is this level of narcissism that is difficult for most regular people to understand.  Herman Cain is up there in that fun echelon of “hey, I’m so amazing and smart and brilliant and BETTER than everyone else, that the rules of society actually don’t apply to me!”  “So I’m going to enter the world’s most public race for office and then act surprised when all my skeletons get yanked out of the closet for all the world to see”….really?

And in the same way, did Bernie really think this was all going to work out okay?  That he could actually pull this off?  That he could take his friends’ money, all his family’s money, all the friends of friends’ money and just keep lying and lying and lying and it would all sort-of resolve itself and go away? 

It is mind boggling to even fathom that sort-of delusion.  This book is heartbreaking and one of those books that is tough to read because you know how it’s going to end, in the same way that Titanic is a great but not great movie because you pretty much know the boat is going to sink and a lot of people are going to die no matter how hot Leonardo and Kate Winslet are.

I applaud Stephanie Madoff Mack for having the balls to write this book.  She is obviously one hell of a woman and Mark was lucky to have found her for his second wife.  When Bernie came to his sons and confessed, Stephanie was pregnant with Mark’s and her second child.  Mark had two children with his first wife.  Both of Bernie’s sons immediately turned him over to the authorities.  They are in NO WAY  implicated for the crimes of their father, but because they carried the Madoff name, they were shunned and vilified.  Stephanie could not even go to the corner store for toothpaste once word got out that Bernie had done what he had done.

She was in Disney World in Florida with her and Mark’s daughter and her own mother when Mark hung himself from the beam in their apartment with their infant son in the next room.  Her recollection of the events of that night and morning are scary, to the minute, and so painful to read.  He had tried desperately to overcome his overwhelming despair and sadness and shock that nothing was as he had ever thought it was—that his father was a liar, that his whole life had been a sham, and that everyone in the world believed that he and his brother, Andy, were in on the big lie.  Because of the legal complications, he was advised to NOT tell his side of the story.  He tried but he just could not  deal with both the shock of discovering that not only was his Dad not a hero of a father—he was in fact the opposite—a villain of the worst kind, but also: the public at large believed the worst about Mark as well—his reputation was destroyed—his finances depleted—his ability to ever work in New York or anywhere again was completely ruined, unless he changed his name…his identity---his whole world.

Stephanie Madoff Mack seems like an amazing girl—strong, smart, beautiful and still in love with her husband.  Her first reactions to his suicide were pure and utter hatred and anger which I could completely relate to as I’ve always thought that taking one’s own life is the ultimate selfish act, the ultimate “fuck you” especially for someone with an adoring wife and small children—a family who was willing to “start over” with him. 

But somehow in the mix of her own strength and her real love for her late husband, she found the ability to tell his story because she knew it was important and right to do so—that the Madoff family needed to hear it, that the people that lost all their savings needed to hear it, and that most importantly, hers and Mark’s children needed to know what really happened.

The tragedy is almost Shakespearean in its grandeur and generational sweep.  Bernie Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years in prison.  His family is left on the outside to pick up the pieces.  This is his son’s wife’s story and it is an amazing inside look at the whole scandal and at the dynamics of the Madoff family.  I couldn’t put it down.