Mrs. Astor Regrets (38 page)

Had all of this angst been worth it? If the yardstick was the well-being of the 104-year-old Brooke Astor, she was doing everything within her limited power to convey her appreciation. After her near-death experience at the hospital in July, she had chosen a tangible way to convey her renewed interest in life—she was eating again. At home at Holly Hill with meals cooked by her French chef, Mrs. Astor eventually added nearly fifteen pounds to her slender frame.

For her newly hired staffers, she was a daily source of inspiration and astonishment. "When I spoke to the doctor at Lenox Hill, the prognosis was not good. I didn't think she'd last six months," says Lois Orlin, the social worker hired to coordinate Mrs. Astor's care. "But it was amazing how well she did. Going back to Holly Hill was very positive for her mentally—she blossomed. Even when people are not aware of everything that's going on, certain things still filter through." For the nurses who had been with Mrs. Astor for several years, her revival was pure validation. As Minnette Christie recalls, "I kept telling everyone, 'Just you wait, she's going to surprise you.'"

Surrounded by an army of cheerful people united in the mission of keeping up her spirits, Brooke Astor spent her days in a carefully choreographed way. Opening the curtains in Mrs. Astor's bedroom in the morning, Pearline Noble would point out the birds pecking at the feeder perched in a tree outside the window. "Come on, Mrs. A., wake up. The birds are waiting—it's time to get out of bed," recalls Noble, explaining that if the feeder was empty, the blackbirds would knock on the window. "Mrs. A., the birds are knocking, they want breakfast. We have to hurry." The nurse says, "She would smile and say okay."

Mrs. Astor liked looking at pictures of her younger self (the house was certainly full of them) and hearing her own words. Sandra Foschi discovered that the best way to motivate her client to exercise was to read aloud Brooke's poem "Discipline," a paean to the importance of keeping going:

I am old and I have had
more than my share of good and bad
I've had love and sorrow, seen sudden death
and been left alone and of love bereft.
I thought I would never love again
and I thought my life was grief and pain.
The edge between life and death was thin,
but then I discovered discipline.
I learned to smile when I felt sad,
I learned to take the good and the bad.
I learned to care a great deal more
for the world about me than before.
I began to forget the "Me" and "I
"
and joined in life as it rolled by:
this may not mean sheer ecstasy
but it is better by far than "I" and "Me.
"

"I recited it every time I treated her, three times a week, and she did respond," Foschi recalls. On sunny days Mrs. Astor was taken outdoors in a wheelchair to see the grounds, with Boysie and Girlsie frolicking along. Alec Marshall recalls that his grandmother enjoyed the change of scenery. "They'd wheel her all the way past the greenhouse, on a loop around the property to the gate," he says. "She'd wake up. She loved looking at the dogs running around."

Reunions with former staffers who had been fired by Tony Marshall were arranged. Naomi Packard-Koot, Mrs. Astor's former social secretary, and Marciano Amaral, her chauffeur, came out on separate occasions for tea. "You could see her eyes light up a bit and focus," says Packard-Koot. "It was wonderful to be there. I thought I'd never see her again after Tony and Charlene fired me—that was the most crushing thing." She brought along her husband, Michael Koot, a six-foot-six blond Dutch airline pilot. "Philip and I were laughing because Mrs. Astor was still doing her own version of flirting," Packard-Koot recalls. "She was making eye contact with Michael—she sat up straighter when he spoke."

Whether Mrs. Astor truly recognized people, or was even peripherally aware of the fight that had swirled around her, remained a source of debate in the household and among her friends. "Fortunately, I really don't think she ever knew any of these terrible things had happened," says David Rockefelier. "I don't think her life was made unhappy by them [the Marshalls], except to the degree they caused her to be less comfortable. She appreciated being at Holly Hill. She appreciated it when I came, and we had a good time." Noreen Nee, a new weekend nurse, said it was touching to see them together. "Mr. Rockefeller would hold her hand and say 'I love you, I'm here.' When he would get a response, he would be so happy, like he'd won a million dollars."

Reverend Charles Pridemore, of Trinity Church in nearby Ossining, visited every week and noticed that the rituals of religion still mattered to Mrs. Astor. "When I would give her communion, she made the sign of the cross. She knew it was me," he said, adding that she appeared to pay attention to the conversations in the room. "One day Philip and I were sitting around together, and he was talking. She raised her head and looked right over at him. I think she recognized him too."

But the relaxed environment vanished during visits by Mrs. Astor's son. Suddenly the household went to Code Red, aware that Tony Marshall was eager to spot any fault; he even brought a camera once and snapped pictures. When he gave his mother a plant and it wilted overnight, Chris Ely, fearful of being accused of being a plant murderer, tried to revive it by giving it the attention normally reserved for someone needing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "It was tense when her son came," says Noreen Nee. Most visitors sat next to Brooke, held her hand, and talked to her, but Nee recalls, "He would sit across the room and just look at her." Either unable or unwilling to express himself under the watchful eye of the staff, Tony communed with his mother in silence.

On Thanksgiving Day 2006, Tony and Charlene were guests at the annual party given by Sam Peabody and his wife, Judy, at the New York Racquet Club. Although he was a member, Tony had not been to the private club in months. As Peabody recalls, "All the staff came to him and said, 'Please come back—we miss you.'"

Philip, Nan, and their children spent the holiday with Brooke at Holly Hill. The family shared turkey with the staff and then serenaded Brooke in the sunroom. "They sang for her like a band," recalls Pearline Noble. "They had different songs that they made up. Mrs. A. was awake, and blew kisses and smiled." Winslow played his guitar; Nan and Sophie harmonized on "Amazing Grace" and "Time of Your Life" and one of Winslow's original compositions, "Opportunities." Philip massaged his grandmother's feet. Sophie, then eleven, came away with another good memory of her great-grandmother. "We didn't have to be so formal," she says. "Every so often her eyes would just stare at us—that was really nice. I feel like at that point we had a different connection with her."

The next day the family drove to Manhattan, and while Nan took the children to join the crowds of Black Friday shoppers, Philip traveled downtown to meet with the two district attorneys, Elizabeth Loewy and Peirce Moser. As he began to answer the lawyers' questions, he broke down and wept. He was emotionally ragged, recalling Brooke's fear and despair from the nurses' notes, yet also facing the reality that he was providing damaging information about his father.

Pearline Noble and Minnette Christie, whose complaints to Philip had set off the lawsuit, were also summoned to meet with the prosecutors. Annette de la Renta sent a town car to take them to the DA's office. Both women, whom I later interviewed together, say that they were flabbergasted by the turn of events. "If I knew that things were going to get to this point, I would not have opened my mouth," says Minnette Christie. "I didn't want him to get into trouble. Believe you me, I was just doing this for Mrs. Astor." She continued, "After Mrs. Astor got out of that apartment, I thought it was over, kaput. When I got the call to go down to the DA, I didn't know what the hell I was going for." Pearline Noble insists, "I had no clue there was anything criminal. We didn't go after them, never."

For Brooke Astor, the financial cost of her move to Holly Hill turned out to be exorbitant, more expensive than spending a year in Palm Beach, chartering a fleet of yachts in the Caribbean, or taking up residency at the Connaught in London. The problem was not the bills for the ambulance from Lenox Hill or for sprucing up her country house, but rather the millions of dollars in legal fees arising out of the guardianship lawsuit, all paid out of her account, in keeping with legal precedent.

On December 4, 2006, Justice Stackhouse, ruling on the legal bills, began by noting that he had fee applications from fifty-six lawyers, sixty-five legal assistants, six accountants, five bankers, six doctors, a law school professor, and two public relations firms. (The number would have been higher, but Annette la Renta paid her own legal bills.) Asked to approve $3,044,055.71, the judge knocked the sum down to $2,223,284.42. The exactitude was comic, but the lawyers wanted every penny.

The warring legal strategies were on display by virtue of their final accounting. Tony's lawyers bore such animosity toward Susan Robbins that they had launched an effort to disqualify her as Mrs. Astor's lawyer, hiring another lawyer, David A. Smith, who billed $18,512.50 for research on Robbins. Stackhouse denied that request. The judge also refused to cover the public relations firms or lawyers' conversations with the press. Ken Warner, Tony's attorney, was the big loser: he had billed $35,000 for talking to journalists, which the judge noted primarily constituted of speaking to Serge Kovaleski of the
Times.

The most newsworthy nugget was buried on page eight of this thirteen-page document—a simple sentence that dramatically changed the press coverage and public perception of the Astor case. Ruling that Tony was entitled to be reimbursed for $409,451.65 worth of legal bills, the judge announced: "I make this ruling based on the conclusion of the court evaluator that the allegations in the petition regarding Mrs. Astor's medical and dental care, and other allegations of intentional elder abuse by the Marshalls, were not substantiated."

That phrase, "not substantiated" would be repeated ad infinitum every time Tony and Charlene Marshall were mentioned in news stories. "ASTOR SON IS CLEARED," trumpeted the
New York Post.
This phrase allowed the couple to tell the world that they had been falsely accused. The
New York Times
initially tucked the story away on page B3, with a misleading headline: "In Aftermath of the Astor Case, How the Final Fees Piled Up." The next day the
Times
offered a follow-up on page one of the metro section: "Astor Son Claims Vindication Over Words in Judge's Ruling."

Justice Stackhouse had not intended his ruling to be an exoneration of Tony, according to a courthouse source, and expressed surprise at the "repercussions" from his statement. "Sure, there were things that concerned us—of course there were," says the person who spoke with the judge. "But if you're going to prove
x
and
y
in the apartment in New York, you have to have a trial. Don't forget, the house was opened, the staff was rehired."

Henry Kissinger, who carefully parsed the judge's phrasing and use of the words "not substantiated," made a similar point. "My understanding is that the judge didn't say it didn't take place," he says. Gallantly eager to defend Mrs. de la Renta, he added, "Annette did not go into this to prove anything against Tony. She went in there on the basis of facts presented to her by staff members and Brooke's grandson. She didn't throw around charges of elder abuse."

Court evaluator Sam Liebowitz's report on the Astor affair, according to those who have seen it, is a mixed bag, validating some of Philip's charges but not all of them. Liebowitz, who conducted interviews with Brooke's doctors, staff, and friends, acknowledged that her apartment was not in top-notch condition and that her dogs were not being regularly walked, with the dining room used as a dog run.

Tony Marshall was blamed for poorly supervising the household. Brooke Astor's mental decline was detailed with a series of examples depicting her as confused and unable to sustain a conversation. Tony had included in his legal papers the speech that his mother gave at the Knickerbocker Club in February 10, 2004, as proof of her acuity. But Liebowitz challenged this claim, noting that Dr. Pritchett stated that Mrs. Astor would not have had the ability to write or dictate the thoughts contained in the speech. The report concluded that Mrs. Astor was not the victim of elder abuse as far as her medical and physical care was concerned, but did not deal with the question of financial abuse.

For Tony and Charlene Marshall, the judge's ruling represented vindication, but not everyone in their social world agreed. Several days later there was a funeral for Eleanor Elliott, a former magazine editor who had attended Brooke's one hundredth birthday party and whose husband, Jock, had been the best man at Tony's first wedding. At the service, at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue, Charlene went over to commiserate with Louis Auchincloss. "She threw herself into my arms," he recalls with distaste. "It was disgusting."

At year's end, two players in the Astor drama wrote about their experiences. Fraser Seitel, the Rockefeller spokesman, had schmoozed the press corps and become a favorite. Objectivity is a journalistic ideal, but charm usually trumps. Seitel's essay ("Crisis Management Lessons from the Astor Disaster") in the December 2006 issue of
O'Dwyer's PR Report,
offered such helpful hints as "strike first," "anticipate leaking, loose-lipped lawyers," and "stick to the script."

Seeking normality, Charlene had returned to teaching a healing prayer workshop at St. James', although as Rector Husson says, "She came to it from a place that was pretty tired and weary." In the December 2006 issue of the
St. James' Epistle,
she wrote about her ordeal as a test of faith and humanity: