Being Martha

A week after Martha was indicted on nine criminal counts from the Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2003, she had a phone chat with her friend and former assistant Lisa Wagner. Both women tried desperately to keep the conversation light, and in an effort to divert Martha’s attention from her legal woes, Lisa directed her to a familiar and easy topic: party planning.

Martha needed some cheering up, and it wasn’t just because of the indictment. All year, throughout the stress of the investigation, she also had to endure the pain of watching her dear friend and colleague Carolyn Kelly-Wallach die from cancer. Carolyn was one of the assistants who was closest to Martha and she was considered a family member. She had worked with Martha from the beginning of Martha’s television show and was in charge of Martha’s wardrobe. A few weeks earlier, Martha had won an Emmy for her television show, and in her acceptance speech onstage she dedicated the award to Carolyn. The next day, Martha flew back to New York and went to Carolyn’s bedside to hand her her producer’s Emmy. It was an emotional visit for both of them.

At the party several weeks later, Martha gave a warm and loving speech about Lisa’s son, whom she had known since he was four years old. “After she spoke, people at the party came up to me and said, ‘God, my impression of her has so changed!’” Lisa recalls. “She was so nice and so sincere. She spoke to everyone at the party, and she was really moved at the whole thing. She couldn’t have done a nicer thing.”

Martha tried to keep relaxed throughout the summer, working on her garden and socializing. In August, Renny Reynolds bumped into her in a restaurant on Cranberry Island, a remote island off the coast of Maine. “Cranberry isn’t more than a few square miles and is in the reeds off the beaten path,” says Renny. “I never thought for a moment I would run into anyone I might know on this island at this particular restaurant.”

Renny introduced his guests to Martha and they chatted for a few moments, then went to their table to begin their meal. After they finished their meals, Renny went over to say good-bye to Martha. She asked if he’d like to come over and see the house. The “house” was the Ford Mansion, a local historic site that Martha owned. She had located the original garden plans for the house that were created by the famous designer Jen Jenson, but which never had been implemented by the house’s original inhabitants.

“Martha somehow got these plans and carried out every detail in them. I was dying to see Martha’s gardens. I was beside myself. You can just imagine my guests’ delight.” The next day, Renny and his guests dropped over for what they thought would be a brief visit:

We toured the house and the grounds and we were entertained with a light lunch. Martha showed us every room. She reveled in the historical implications of the architecture and landscaping. Right down to the linens that came with the estate—it was all big history to her. To implement the gardens, she brought over a well-known gardener from England.

As we were about to leave, I noticed that even the gravel on the driveway was impeccably groomed. I complimented her. “Why Martha, even the gravel is in perfect condition.”

“Oh, yes, Renny, we take the gravel up in the fall and put it back in the spring,” she told me.

Meanwhile, Martha’s family was going through an emotional wringer. “When my sister was indicted it was hard,” says Laura. “There were a lot of raw feelings. People were being so mean. At the time, I was very concerned about image and what people might say to my son in school and even people’s reactions to me. Now I don’t care nearly as much. What’s done is done and Martha is obviously Martha and she is going to stand on her feet no matter what happens. I’m proud of Martha’s accomplishments, but I can’t say I’m proud of what happened. I think that Martha gets herself into trouble sometimes by her actions or what she says.”

That winter, during the trial, the code word among Martha’s family and closest friends was “canary.” This was Martha’s new, top-secret e-mail moniker that only a handful of people knew. My first thought was that she picked it to symbolize a canary in a coal mine, based on the tradition of taking canaries into mines to detect hazardous, possibly deadly, conditions ahead. Then, maybe she meant canary diamonds, rare fancy yellow diamonds. Actually, she was making a reference to the canaries she keeps as pets in her aviary at Turkey Hill.

It was freezing cold that February morning. I picked up Laura at seven A.M. so we could take the train to Manhattan together. During the ride, we sipped coffees and tried to read the New York Times but it was no use; we couldn’t focus. Our minds were on Martha. We couldn’t talk about it, though, for fear that people on the train would overhear us. So we sat, silently, wondering what to expect from the day’s testimony.

As we climbed the steps to the federal courthouse, Laura’s college-age daughter, Sophie Herbert, ran up to us from her spot behind the rope in the photographer’s pit outside. A talented young artist, Sophie was on a secret mission to document her aunt’s ordeal for the family archives. Hauling her heavy, classic, twin-reflex camera around her neck, she had somehow managed to embed herself in the photo pool with the rest of the paparazzi, who had no idea she was the niece of Martha Stewart. If any of the photographers made any remarks about her beloved aunt, young Sophie defended her. Sophie says:

Martha has always, always been there for my family and me, from the time I was born to the time my father passed away. When I was growing up, she paid for my music lessons and she always encouraged me. Although, when she found out I was applying to art school, she did say, “Don’t apply to art school. You won’t be able to speak a single sentence when you get out!”

When we were young, she took my brother and me on all these trips with her—Ecuador, the Galapagos, Egypt, Peru, Brazil, the Amazon--the idea of traveling and exposing a child at a very young age to the Third World to see poverty and suffering was an incredible thing to do. She expanded my horizons. Those trips helped shape my perspective of the world.

Sophie went to art school in Paris in the summer of 2004 and went on a spiritual sojourn through India from 2004 to 2005. “Aunt Martha encouraged it. I worked and made most of my money, but she helped out and I am grateful. The fact that she shares her wealth for people’s education is so wonderful.”

Laura and I gave Sophie a kiss good-bye and made our way through the metal detectors at the building’s entrance. After we passed the inspection, we handed over our cell phones, which the desk clerks put into identical little cubbyholes side by side and then gave us each a ticket stub so we could pick them up at the end of the day.

All eyes were on Martha. The courtroom was so hushed, I felt as if we were in a church awaiting a sermon. The judge arrived and within a few minutes, star witness and Peter Bacanovic’s former assistant, Douglas Faneuil, whose nickname was Baby, took the stand, picking up where testimony left off the day before:

Robert Morvillo: Can you recall how many customers you talked to on that day [December 27, 2001]?

Faneuil: No.

Morvillo: And you can’t recall the conversations of any customers that day, is that correct?

Faneuil: Yes.

Morvillo: And you can’t recall even the words of one customer, right?

Faneuil: Yes.

Morvillo: But you did talk to Martha Stewart—that you recall, right?

Faneuil: Yes.

And that was how it proceeded: question and answer, question and answer, with the occasional objection until we broke for lunch two hours later. After saying good-bye to Martha out in the hall, Laura and I found Sophie and we walked to Chinatown for dim sum at a restaurant called the Big Wong. We were relieved to be in a room where no one seemed to know English or to be talking about Martha.

It was funny and kind of surreal talking to her like this standing in the courtroom. Her words and our surroundings made me feel as if it were twenty years earlier, when both of us would have our little chats on those wooden benches at Westport City Hall when we were both in hot water for breaking the local bylaws.

As the prosecution began to take her through the events of one specific day, a day on which Martha had telephoned from Texas, Annie got more and more distressed as she tried to describe the small talk she and Martha exchanged. She told the court that Martha had telephoned her from an airport tarmac on her way to spend a holiday in Mexico. The two had chatted about each other’s Christmas holidays.

“I thanked her for the homemade plum pudding she had sent me—” Annie paused on the witness stand, almost wincing, covered her eyes, and began sobbing. As we waited for her to regain composure, someone handed her a tissue. Then she tried again to answer the question, but she burst into tears again, this time louder. Finally, after repeated attempts to continue, the judge dismissed the jury and called it a day, at least two hours earlier than usual. The scene had been dramatic and exhausting.

Laura and I went out to the hallway to hang out with Martha a bit before leaving. Sophie came running up to show her aunt some of the stark black-and-white 11-by-14-inch photos she had taken of her entering the courthouse. Martha studied each one carefully and commended Sophie on her fine technique. She said, “Keep up the good work!”

Martha’s close friends were less humorous about what was going on. “It’s a tragedy,” says Eva. “For anyone to be a victim of this is definitely tragic, but of all the people in the world.... It kills me that the world has let her down like this. She has been betrayed by different people because of so much jealousy. And the fact that someone could betray her now—it breaks my heart.”

“There was sadness at the company,” says Judy Morris. “Carolyn was getting sicker and Martha might be going to jail and the television show would be no more. All of these amazing memories after the past ten years were just finished. It was a lot to digest and to handle. I don’t think people fully understand how the company is like a family. Everyone at the company was being affected by all this.”

Making a reference to the juror who had lied in his background check and said publicly that he believed Martha’s guilty verdict was a “victory for the little guy,” Eva says, “It was disgusting to me because all she does is help the little guy. She has created things so that the little guy can have beauty.”

Lisa adds, “During the last several months of shooting the television show, we wanted to try to make the show stronger for the stations that still had us on. We had to call people to come on the show. We ended up calling the true friends of the show who were big Martha supporters, and they came just to support her. It was an awkward time to be there—you weren’t sure if something might happen and the show might get canceled. But there were a lot of people out there who would do anything for Martha. These were people whose businesses changed because of the exposure they got.”

During the trial, Martha endured scrutiny from the media on everything from her clothes to her handbags. Eva tells a story:

Martha is very particular about never having her clothes drag on the floor or hang too long outside of a dry cleaning bag, for example. She’s very particular about not putting her purse on the floor of the salon, because who knows what’s on the floor. We have an alley cat, Ricky, that lives next door at the deli, and he roams in and out of the neighborhood. Ricky has no tail, he’s dirty, and he acts like a dog. He’s smart and hilarious.

One morning during the trial Martha was in the salon wearing a three-thousand-dollar Jil Sander suit. She was sitting on one of the chairs in the back. Ricky came in and jumped on top of her and was all over her, licking her neck and putting paw marks all over her. Martha said, “Oh my God, this cat is so dirty, this is such a dirty little cat!” But she let him crawl all over her. She just dusted the hair and dirt off. She really has a lot of kindness in her.

They had been in meetings all month about what to do with the show. Indeed, two days after the verdict, Viacom pulled Martha Stewart Living completely from its CBS and UPN affiliates. During Martha’s trial they had moved the show from its prime daily slot to a less desirable time slot on less desirable stations.

“Stew Leonard stole millions from the government, went to jail, and never once did anyone think to take his name off his stores—and now he’s got five more of them.” Leonard is a local food retail giant who pled guilty to $17 million in tax fraud in 1993; he repaid the fine while serving a fifty-two-month jail term.

Lexi voiced similar thoughts at a board meeting days later. “You should be supporting my mother at this time, not getting scared.” But the board was scared and had little faith. They didn’t see that all this was just a pause in Martha’s career—not the end. Not long after, the board issued a statement that the show was on official hiatus.

“Basically, she was voted off the island,” says Lisa. “They were trying to push ahead. The writing was on the wall and it said, it’s not about her anymore, we need to keep the company going. People would come up to me and say, ‘Ultimately, this is in Martha’s best interest. Don’t you see? We are trying to save the company!’”

Three weeks later I saw Martha again, but this time, there was no talk of business or sad things. She had invited me over for coffee and dessert after Easter dinner. She greeted me at the door wearing the usual at-home Martha garb—a blue work shirt and white jeans. I gave her a big hug and an extra-tight squeeze of encouragement, then she led me down the diamond-stenciled hallway into the kitchen.

She had laid out a table full of desserts—three different kinds of pie, fruit salad, cookies, and a lemon bundt cake. Everyone was helping himself or herself: her sister Laura and her son Charlie; Martha’s niece Sophie and her boyfriend; Sharon Patrick, the president of Martha’s company, who would soon become CEO; Suzanne Soble, Martha’s marketing director; and, of course, there was Lexi, helping her mother with the plates and coffee cups. Lily, Martha’s longtime housekeeper, helped with cleanup.

Notably missing was Martha Senior. There had been a bit of a family tiff that month after Martha’s brother Frank announced he was going to auction off sixty of his sister’s personal items on eBay, including her first catering car, the black Singer sewing machine she used to make her wedding dress, and the family’s double boiler that Martha wrote about in her magazine, describing how the family used to melt chocolate in that pot. Frank was calling the items, which had been in storage since the late eighties, the “Martha Stewart Heritage Authentic Childhood Collection.”

It caused a bit of family turmoil, says Martha Kostyra, who takes the blame for the misunderstanding. “I made a big mistake, “ she says. “I heard that Frank was selling things that were in the house. I had let him have that stuff because I didn’t need it and I was moving. I didn’t need the sewing machine anymore because I had another one.”

When a reporter called to ask about the auction, “I thought I was doing Martha a big favor, and I said, ‘You know, this has nothing to do with Martha. This was just stuff that was mine and I didn’t have any use for it. I was moving and I let my son have it because he was finishing his own home in Alabama.’ Boy, I never heard the end of it. We call Frank the loose cannon because he did a little too much talking and Martha got mad at him. Family tensions.”

The kitchen was different from what I remembered—Martha had enclosed the porch in glass walls—but you could still see a view of the black swimming pool and hear her aviary of songbirds, perched on miniature branches, singing loudly in their cages. Her Himalayan cats were roaming about, and her two chows, as usual, lay on the floor by the back door.

Everyone was avoiding the heavy, somber question on their minds: what was going to happen to Martha? Sentencing was not for another two months and she could face up to five years in jail. Nobody talked about this. We sat and ate forkfuls of delicious dessert, smiling and keeping the conversation light.

After eating, I went along with Martha and some others to take the dogs out for a long walk. As we strolled through her gardens to get to the road, Martha stopped to point out one of her favorite trees. She patted the tree’s solid bark. “This tree grows so fast,” she said, “no matter what you do to it. It thrives. It’s a survivor.”