WHEN I FOUND time to mourn, I mourned, fitting it in between all the moments when I had to be alert, in charge, responsible, and dedicated. Mourning is an emotional roller coaster. The lowest low always came after the highest high. Hairpin turns came suddenly, and then everything was upside down, the whole world on top of me, my feet in the air, speeding. Then, nothing. Full stop. A day or two or three later, the ride would begin again.
I was no longer surprised by how good I could feel one minute and how miserable the next. I understood that the mood swings were unpredictable. I learned to roll with them and move on. Spencer swung between being a happy-go-lucky, perfectly normal five-year-old boy and Damien, the Antichrist. I rolled with that, too. Only rarely now did Spencer ask me to kill him so he could be with his father “in heaven.” But he told me repeatedly that he didn’t feel like he fit in with his friends. That disturbed me, but his therapist assured me it was normal. He was a little boy trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again and set him back on the wall, intact and whole.
“I’m the only boy who doesn’t have a father,” he said, which was true in the technical sense of a living father in our particular circle of friends.
I told him, “It won’t always be like that. As life goes on you’ll meet other boys and girls who don’t have a father, and you will be a step ahead and able to help them.”
We didn’t talk about the loss of Howard as much as we talked about the life of Howard. I wanted Howard to be part of our daily dialogue, as a reminder to Spencer that he did have a father and that his father was an important part of his existence. Many times I told him about the day I told Howard I was pregnant. “I came into the den in the afternoon with the little plastic stick that shows if a mommy is going to have a baby, and it showed that I was going to have you. He was reading a book and I waved the little wand in front of him.”
“What did Daddy do?”
“Oh, he jumped for joy. We both did.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I just did. You were exactly who we both wanted.”
Spencer could be incredibly loving and sweet. But he had his dark moods, too, and sometimes those moods were very dark. One day he said, looking very sad, “I don’t have a daddy.”
A therapist might have suggested I say, “Let’s talk about it,” or something in the therapeutic ballpark. But there was no therapist around at that moment. “Yes, you do,” I said. “You’ll always have a daddy. It’s just that your daddy is dead, in heaven, and watching out for you from there.”
In a fit of frustration he yelled, “I hate you. I wish you weren’t my mommy.” A little later he told me, “I loved Daddy. Not you. I still love Daddy. I love Daddy more than you. I wish you were the one who died.” I let it roll off me, but there was a painful familiarity. Oddly, even though he was a five-year-old child, he sounded just like his father when his father was Mr. Hyde. Already he looked a lot like his father. That was fine, I thought; look like him, just don’t be like him.
I did my best to handle Spencer’s outbursts, but there was no guidebook. Typically I went with one part ignoring to one part reprimanding to one part “Let’s talk about these feelings you’re having.” Later I could always think of other responses that might have been better, but maybe not. We were both grieving. He was five years old and had lost his father. It was hard. I was forty-seven and had lost my husband and simultaneously acquired his status as defendant in a tax fraud case and his debt to the government. That was hard, too. If the IRS didn’t decide I was the innocent spouse, we might lose everything, including a place to sleep at night. I tried not to think about that. It was too terrifying.
I learned to be tolerant with myself as well as with Spencer. Children never realize how much they can hurt their parents until they’re parents themselves. Often parents don’t realize the depth and intensity of their children’s feelings. But I was the grown-up. I had to keep remembering that. Sometimes I wanted to blow back at him, but, instead, I went into the bathroom and cried. I tried to ignore the pop psychology that paints a challenging picture for solo mothers, but still I worried whether I had the mettle to raise a son alone. Could I forecast the damage Howard’s death would cost, head it off, and wrap him in enough love to protect him from the empty and lonely feelings? I would look at my darling little boy and wonder, Who will you grow up to be? I was not sure how much of his father I wanted in or out of the mix, or whether it was already genetically predetermined.
Our weekends at the Bay could be tough for Spencer. On the one hand he had me all to himself, but there was a big “on the other hand.” From the moment we arrived I was busy with essential household tasks, which ranged from throwing out dead mice to dealing with the bad news in the mail to checking the phone messages and dealing with the bad news there. I had a phone stuck to my ear while I put away groceries, opened windows, swept, straightened, and organized. There were calls from Nathans, Larry King Live, and the lawyers.
When I got outside to play with him at last, I was whipped, spent, wasted, and brain-dead. “Come on, Mommy, let’s play ‘divers,’ ” Spencer would beg. “Let’s dive for treasure.” I was collapsed beside the pool, but I managed to toss a few toys into the water for him to go after. That wasn’t good enough. “Mommy, Mommy, you have to be in the water, too. You have to be a diver, too.” Eventually I’d kick myself into gear and fall into the pool where we played till he was running on fumes. I was already on empty.
In the house, Spencer and the dog followed me around as close as pilot fish, with Spencer saying, “Will you play with me?” “Will you read to me?” “Can I go swimming?” “Can we walk in the woods?” The dog, a small white bichon frise named Teddy, whined because he wanted me to go outside and throw his ball. When I went to the bathroom they both stood outside the door, Spencer knocking and the dog scratching. Sitting on the toilet, tired as I was, I had to laugh.
I TRIED TO be at Nathans during dinner at least three nights a week. Alone, I didn’t know what to do with myself and tended to simply lurk in a back corner, staring at the customers. Staff would say “Excuse me,” as they tried to maneuver around me. I was in the way. With Martha or a girlfriend—and sometimes Spencer—I could be in the place and feel like I belonged. Spencer enjoyed Nathans. He’d gobble down a plate of pasta while the waitstaff doted on him. When we could we’d include his friends and their parents, which he loved, because a whole group of us would sit around a big table with lots of food, chatter, and laughter. I liked it, too.
My favorite place to hang out was not in the bar but in the back room, and always in the red leather comfort of booth 26, which was well-centered, enabling me to keep an eye on the door where patrons waited to be seated by the maître d’. If people waited too long, I hopped up and tried to help. If someone I knew came in the door, I walked over to say hello. If someone got to the dining room, looked around, and then turned and walked back out the door, I wanted to know why. What had turned them off? What could we have done differently to make them stay? I wanted to chase after them and ask questions, which would likely have spooked them away forever, remembering me as the stalker restaurateur.
I adhered to my code of survival: Get out of bed every morning, exercise, go forward, laugh, and try to get a dose of friends whenever possible. Friends made the difference between a horrible day and a wonderful one. Something as simple as an unexpected phone call to find out how I was doing, or an invitation to a dinner party, would lift my spirits considerably. Or, another moms’ dance party. Late-night phone calls from Paolo helped, too. He put such a big smile on my face. I loved the secret we shared, our clandestine teenage flirtation. My shrink said, “You’re like a virgin again,” to which I replied, “and in no hurry to lose her virginity.”
Nobody knows what to do with a widow, and it’s especially a challenge for married couples. My girlfriends were married and they might be able to come dancing on weeknights but weekends were husband and family time. In the first several months after Howard died, I was included as the third person or fifth or seventh at dinner, but in time there were fewer invitations, fewer phone calls. The calls always stopped altogether after six o’clock on Friday, not to resume until Monday morning at ten. Initially I thought this might be because I lived in Washington, a socially conservative community with old-school standards, more Eisenhower era than many would believe. But when I talked to other widows—different ages from far and wide—I’d hear the same complaint. Some felt they’d become invisible after their husbands died.
Friends would bring up the question of dating, as in when I was planning to start, but I wasn’t the least bit interested. For one thing, I still felt quite married—only my husband was dead. With my harrowing schedule, it would have been nearly impossible to start a relationship from scratch. I couldn’t very well tell people about my flirtation with Paolo. For me, it was just enough real and just enough fantasy. It was like we were both married, but flirting. I didn’t have room for more. It would be something else entirely to come home to the same man every night with a rundown of my day. That would be the biggest downer—for him; it might have been a relief for me.
One Friday evening, I forgot myself and called a married friend to see if she wanted to talk or walk or go out for a drink. “Oh, Carol, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m doing something with Harry.” She didn’t mean to be unkind, but it felt like a door slammed in my face. She hadn’t done anything wrong. In a couple-oriented society, her life was normal. It was mine that was not. I thought, “I used to be like that. I used to have that. I was a member of that club.” Honestly, I got angry. I told the psychiatrist about the episode. He asked me how I handled it.
“I politely said ‘Good-bye’ and then slammed down the phone and muttered, ‘Bitch.’ ”
“Good,” he said. “That’s a healthy sign.”
IT WAS CRITICAL that Nathans get a new lease from the five landlords, all of them members of the Halkias family and in their mid- to late seventies. They’d come to the funeral home for Howard’s visitation. A few weeks after that, Melina Halkias, who had the biggest share in the property, and her son joined me for coffee and cakes at Nathans. She wore black from head to toe, had a tissue tucked in her sleeve, and spoke halting English. Her son did most of the talking. It was clear they had deep concerns. Fear of my inexperience was now compounded by the tax fraud.
It was essential to keep them in the loop but also keep them pacified. “Call them every now and then, okay?” I asked Doug. “If you could do that I’d be grateful. Just check in with them. I want them to know that everything is okay here.” Doug had a good relationship with the Halkias family, and I needed to keep them happy. For the moment, I needed them more than they needed me.
Attorney Jake Stein was negotiating the actual terms of the lease with the Halkias family’s lawyer, Dimitri Mallios. Howard first retained Jake in the 1980s when he learned that some busboys and a manager were dealing cocaine in the restaurant. The manager was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. Jake looked out for the interests of both Howard and Nathans then, and afterward Howard kept him involved in dealings with the landlords. These talks had been going on for some while, getting stalled periodically by my IRS issues and their own unrelated legal problems.
Meanwhile, I was faithfully paying the full rent each month. At one of several meetings in his office with Jake and me, Dimitri matter-of-factly said, “The family couldn’t care less about what kind of scrape Carol is in as long as she pays the rent. That’s all they care about.”
Howard loved to tell me how each time the lease was up he simply sent one of his cronies—a bookie who called himself “Nathan Detroit,” the very same bookie from whom Howard’s father bought the first share of Nathans—to meet with the oldest Halkias male, Theo. “I gave Nathan some feta cheese, a bottle or two of retsina, and a bag of money. By the end of the day I had a new lease.”
Was it true? I don’t know. I was learning that for Howard a good story often mattered more than the facts. Neither Howard nor his emissary was around to verify it in any case. But no matter the truth of Howard’s story—or the lack of it—I knew I had to play with a different and less colorful set of rules. There would be no retsina, no bags of money, not even a pound of feta from me. But I desperately needed the lease, because if the IRS did not grant me innocent spouse status, we might be able to negotiate a deal in which I paid the IRS not with my house but with the profit from selling Nathans. In order to sell Nathans, I needed a lease.