Innocent Spouse (30 page)

“We’re going to be okay, kiddo,” I said.

“But Mommy, why? What happened?”

“Because today the federal government let me off the hook and made me a free woman,” I said. “You don’t have to understand that, sweetie, but it’s good news. Very good news for you and me.” He made that
whatever
face kids make when a parent says something possibly important but also incomprehensible.

“Let me just say this.” I raised my glass. “I can’t believe this has happened, but I couldn’t have done it without Sheldon and Miriam. I wish they were here.” Our glasses clinked to that. “Also, Fred Thimm was right from the beginning: I had to be my own driver.” We clinked glasses again. “And to all the friends who’ve been there, like you.” I looked at Jeannie. Then I squeezed Spencer extra tight. “And you, too.”

S
HELDON AND
M
IRIAM
took me to a celebratory lunch at an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of their offices downtown. Connie joined us. Sheldon and Miriam sat on one side of the booth; Connie and I on the other. It wasn’t all celebration.

“What do you want to do about the business?” Sheldon asked.

“I think I should keep it and sell it,” I said, as if there were any doubt.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Sheldon asked.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“If you want to, right now, you can give the government the keys and walk away. Your lease is up, you’re on a month-to-month with the landlords, you have innocent spouse, a clean slate. None of Nathans’ debt attaches to you. You’re free to go,” he said. “You can leave the whole mess in the hands of the landlords and just get on with your life.” He was right. I’d never be freer of Nathans than I was at that moment. There was nothing legally binding me to it: no lease or debt in my name, and the IRS had given me a pass. Still, I believed it had value and could easily be sold. Washington was full of wide-eyed dreamers who wanted to be in business at the corner of Wisconsin and M. At that moment I, too, was a wide-eyed dreamer, woefully ignorant, ignoring Sheldon’s sound advice and blissfully believing my rusty bucket could have a shiny future.

“It’s a gamble, I know, but still I think it’s worth fighting for,” I said. “If I can get a new lease and buff it up, I can still sell it.”

Sheldon nodded but looked skeptical.

“Spencer and I need the money. If I could sell it at top price we would be in good shape. A new owner would keep the place going and people employed.”

Miriam and Connie listened. Neither interrupted my back-and-forth with Sheldon. His question cut to the chase. I thought I was making the right decision; it didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t a wise one. I would stop to eat a forkful of pasta, and then I would talk again. I should have kept my mouth shut and listened.

“It’s all I have, Sheldon. My job at
Larry King Live
is on the rocks, and even if I stayed there we couldn’t survive on my CNN income. I get a part-timer’s salary. Nathans has to be worth something. With the new lease I could sell it. That’s what I would like to do. Keep it and sell it. I can’t imagine there not being a Nathans at that corner.”

The lawyers were more realistic. They could see a world without Nathans even if I could not. But they would do what I asked them to do, even though they had serious doubts about the wisdom of my decision.

“What’s it worth right now?” Miriam asked.

“Without a lease, not much,” Connie said. “Nathans’ kitchen equipment is mostly leased and what isn’t leased is in terrible condition. Carol’s main asset is the liquor license.”

“What’s that worth?” I asked.

Connie shrugged and made a guess. “Probably $100,000.”

Sheldon looked at me with an almost grandfatherly regard and gave it one more try. “Are you sure you want to be in the restaurant business? It’s a terrible business.”

“Only for as long as it takes to pull it officially out of the jaws of the IRS. When the case is finally closed, I’ll sell it.”

I
HAD REASONS
to be optimistic. The Doug Moran era was over. His lawyer wrote demanding a bigger severance package—six months’ pay rather than one—but I held my ground. I said no.

Vito Zappala was firmly in place as Nathans’ general manager, with chef Paul Wahlberg running a good kitchen and creating interesting and delicious food. They had shaken up the place in the best possible
way, and the staff responded with enthusiasm. Vito brought with him management skills previously unheard of at Nathans. Schedules and systems and accountability were put into place. He stepped up the training program for the waitstaff. He delegated more authority to Bob Walker, the night manager, and monitored his intake of Grand Marnier shooters. Vito also showed up for work on time, stayed late, and worked weekends.

Life at Nathans began to feel like the best part of the television business: that we were all in this together and playing on the same team. I had an early season holiday party for the staff at a club nearby and raised my glass to the group. “I couldn’t do it without you,” I said.

A publicist friend in New York leaked to the
Washington Post
that Mark Wahlberg’s brother was the new chef at Nathans. I was thrilled that they wanted to do a story. Paul was thrilled, too. The story appeared the next day with a picture of Paul in the kitchen. It was Nathans’ second piece of publicity on my watch—the first was when Mayor Marion Barry had come to dinner—and the result both times was a discernible spike in business.

Nathans was in decline when Howard died. My goal was to put the place back on the map, to give it buzz, to get people to talk about it again and want to come in to drink and dine. I had had lunch with Phyllis Richman, the
Washington Post
’s restaurant critic, and was haunted by her remark: “No one ever mentions Nathans anymore.” I couldn’t live with that. I wanted everyone to talk about Nathans. My task was to give it the verve customers expected from a legendary restaurant at the best corner in the most powerful city in the world. And then sell it.

A regular stopped me at the bar one night. “Nathans feels like it’s coming to life again. It feels warmer.”

T
HERE MAY HAVE
been warmth at Nathans but there was a definite chill at CNN. Becky seemed ready to hang me and I gave her the rope. My presence at the show became more unpredictable. Preoccupied with the demands of the IRS, Nathans, and trying to raise some cash by selling everything that was superfluous to my life, I was late for meetings
or had to leave early. Wendy, my lifeline, had an erratic schedule, too, and it seemed to be the opposite of mine. We saw less and less of each other. The guests assigned to me for booking were moving down the ranks. I may have been the show’s nominal big-game hunter, but I was bagging game from the B and C list. I sat at my cubicle, watching everyone else work. Sometimes whole shows were produced without my involvement. I was beginning to feel like a visitor.

As we sailed into the choppy waters of the Christmas holiday season, I kept my focus on the year ahead. I knew Christmas would be rough for Spencer and me, but I had to get us through it.

As we did in all the years before, we went to Bob’s Trees to pick out a Christmas tree. While I got it secured in its stand in the living room, we listened to Christmas music and watched a Christmas movie. Spencer helped me hang a few ornaments but was more interested in the movie. “Does this make you sad?” I asked, referring to the tree decorating.

“Yeah. A little bit,” he said.

“Well, it’s a lovely, sweet tree. Our first tree on our own. Maybe we should get some special ornaments to mark the occasion.” He liked that idea.

“We can get an angel for the top of the tree that looks like Daddy,” he said.

I had a little laugh, doubting whether Martha, Sheldon, Miriam, or Deborah Martin at the IRS would appreciate the image of Howard as an angel.

In the car on the way to the store we talked about what Spencer wanted Santa to bring him on Christmas morning. I fished around, hoping to get clues on toys that would make his wish list. From the backseat came, “Mom, if I could have a dad for Christmas I wouldn’t want anything else. Not even a computer.”

One night I went through his backpack to look for any school newsletters that might be inside. I found some crumpled papers on which he’d practiced writing words such as “egg” and “dog” and drawings of squid, aliens, and laser blasters. There was his “magic pen,” which was really a wooden stick. At the bottom, folded and clearly much fondled, was a picture of Howard.

Spencer came with me to CNN to pose, along with the staff, for the
Larry King Live
holiday card. We all dressed like Larry, in white shirts, ties, and suspenders. Spencer, very much the mini Larry King, stood beside me as we smiled for the camera. In the picture we were a big happy family.

Holiday parties were not high on my list. We did only a very few. There was something wrenching about exposure to too much family happiness. The best event was the Christmas pageant Spencer’s school presented at the Washington Cathedral. His school made him happy. As his teachers worked with him and as he slowly adjusted to being the boy without a father, school bolstered his confidence and helped him be part of a community. I watched misty eyed as he paraded with his classmates down the center aisle of the huge cathedral and took his place at the foot of the altar.

Another holiday ritual was a visit to the national Christmas tree on the Ellipse south of the White House. I fondly remembered annual visits with my family after we moved to the Washington suburbs when I was eleven. The tree towers over the fifty smaller trees surrounding it that represent each of the states. It is the centerpiece of a spectacle called “The Pageant of Peace.” While not striking during the day, the tree is magical in the evening when its thousands of colored lights fill the darkness. I suggested an after-dinner visit. Remarkably, considering the crush of people, I found a parking space near the White House. Hand in hand, Spencer and I walked alongside the state trees. The colored lights were cheerful, the carolers sang with gusto, and Spencer was thrilled by the miniature train that chugged around the base of the big tree. It was cold and our breath made mist that caught the lights from the tree. Every now and then we heard a child shouting out “Dad!” or “Daddy!” or a mother saying, “Go ask your father,” or “Have you seen your father?”

I didn’t anticipate this reminder of our lives without a father and a husband. It came as a sudden stab of pain, but there was nothing to be done. We had to push on. Spencer held my hand tighter. I tried to direct his attention to different ornaments or to the carolers. He was such a handsome little boy in his puffy brown jacket and the dark green hat that made his blue eyes look green—he looked so cuddly. We stood
and watched, then began to sing along with the carolers on the stage. The more we sang the more our mood lightened. Spencer pulled me down to tell me, “I think our tree at home is the prettiest tree, because it has our own ornaments on it.”

When Christmas morning arrived my spirits were up. Spencer had slept in my bed in his Santa and reindeer pajamas, and at dawn he jostled me. “Mom, Mom, wake up! Santa’s been here!”

He jumped like a kangaroo as he made his way to the living room and then stopped and took it all in before making a lunge at the pile of presents. I sat on the floor beside him and tried to keep order and an eye on the dog, who kept disappearing in the discarded paper and ribbon. I noticed Spencer put a package under the tree. On the card he had written in his childhood scrawl, “Mom. Love Mom. I love you Mom. Spencer.” Inside was a plaster cast of his tiny hand, glazed in deep blue.

For a while the Christmas presents thrilled him and made him happy. After that he lost interest. He pushed the presents away, got up, and walked past me down the hall to his bedroom. I followed. He was on his bed, holding his cuddle toy Baby very close, with his thumb in his mouth. I eased him over and stretched out beside him, wrapping my arm around him. He put his head under my chin. He spoke but his thumb was in his mouth and his words came out in mumbles. I pulled out his thumb with a pop like a cork from a bottle.

“I wished Santa would bring me Daddy. That was what I wanted most for Christmas.”

At bedtime I said he could take a present to bed with him. He picked only one, a needlepoint pillow that said
I BELIEVE IN ANGELS
.

With Spencer now soundly asleep I filled the bathtub with water and submerged myself so that only my nose was above the surface. I stayed like that for maybe fifteen minutes, shutting out the world. The silence was a sweet present I could give myself.

I
TOLD MY
friend Randy Parks that there was only one thing I wanted to do on New Year’s Eve. At midnight we stood in the middle of Key Bridge watching the twinkling lights of Washington, from the Kennedy
Center to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. The cold and glistening Potomac flowed beneath us. When the clock struck twelve I screamed at the tops of my lungs. I wanted to shake the city with my howl. That was my way of saying good-bye to 1997—certain it was the worst year of my life.

I
T WAS
J
ANUARY
1998, a New Year and twelve harrowing months since I’d taken Howard to the hospital. Whoever I’d been before Howard died, I wasn’t her anymore. A little late maybe, but I was becoming self-sufficient. I didn’t want ever again to be the sheltered, pampered, and indulged woman who didn’t know what a mortgage was or what
escrow
meant or whether her husband paid taxes. That woman was gone. Now I paid the bills, I decided where and how the money would go, I did the driving, and I paid the taxes. I wanted another man in my life at some point, and he would love
this
Carol, not
that
Carol: not perfect, by any stretch, but able to stand on her own two feet.

Early on Martha had said, “You’ll make mistakes but you’ll survive them.” She was right. I did make mistakes, and I would make many more. But they were my mistakes.