They sat at the head table together. I put my hand through the porthole and touched her head. And building firms, not destroying them. The last years of Bruce Wasserstein, the investment-banking mogul who died at age 61 last October after a brief, undisclosed illness, remain shrouded in mystery, which is probably how Wasserstein would have wanted it. How One Mothers Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolution. Her diaper was the size of a cigarette pack. While waiting at the East Side Womens Ob/Gyn Associates for my final post-cesarean checkup, I picked up a magazine and found an article called Cindy Crawford, Model Mom. Cindy was back at work. Gerry Gutierrez came to the N.I.C.U. Catherine McCarron walked us to the door and cut off Lucy Janes hospital bracelet, ten weeks after her birth. Well, I get nervous, I said. Leaving the N.I.C.U. Of course shell survive!. The room, formerly a beige netherworld, became the decorator showroom of the second floor. I hear your blood pressure is high, she said, wrapping the Velcro cuff around me again. I just had preclampsia, a cesarean, and my daughter was born at twenty-seven weeks. She was born when Wendy was 48, the paternity of the father remains a secret; Wendy would not reveal it even on her deathbed at 55 years old. But Ive never understood how marriage is supposed to guarantee safety. She caused a little bit of a stir. Years active. I feel so badly, she said. Bells ring throughout the night, and every room has a round-the-clock open-door policy. Then, in February 2006, he disappeared from Lazards offices for four months. I want you to get into a taxi and go over to Mount Sinai Hospital. But I had lost my momentum. Well monitor you and probably send you home tomorrow.. It never varied, and I had a lot of meals with him, right? Shortly after an ambulance took him to a local hospital (nobody will say which one), Lazardthe 162-year-old publicly traded investment-banking firm of which Wasserstein was chairman, C.E.O., and the largest individual shareholderissued the following statement: His condition is serious, but he is stable and recovering., According to several people familiar with what happened to Wasserstein that Sunday afternoon, Lazards public statement was inaccurate. Wasserstein had left his second wife, Christine Parrott, and their three children for Ash and then summarily dismissed her after he met Claude Becker, a tall, dark-haired French beauty. Two weeks after Lucy Jane arrived, Catherine told me that my daughter was being promoted out of the critical nook. I realized now that I was finally willing to give that up. Oh, God, he just wouldnt pose for a picture standing side by side. It is most often diagnosed by protein in the patients urine, swelling of extremities, and hypertension. I dont think I want to try to characterize his reasons for it., Wasserstein promptly moved back to New York, as the head of Lazard, in early 2002. We continue to mourn his loss. During my entire hospital stay, no one had asked me about this. After Fays funeral, I went to my regular appointment at the East Side Womens Ob/Gyn Associates. in history from Mount Holyoke College in 1971, an M.A. I reached for a magazine and came upon a detailed account of Cindy Crawfords pregnancy: Cindy is over the moon about her baby. Add a bio, trivia, and more. There is even debate inside the firm about the role he had in Krafts prolongedand ultimately successful$21.4 billion acquisition of Cadbury, the British chocolate company. She had seen a lot of things in the N.I.C.U., but she wasnt accustomed to bellowing Cuban men in feathers. Yes. My friend Gerald Gutierrez, the Broadway director, pulled back the curtain. You shouldnt keep things like this around your office., Youre absolutely right. She looked at me intently. Ventricles are completely normal! He put up his hand for a high five. I knew it would be impossible for me to lie on my left side and to keep my blood pressure down with my mother sitting by, weeping and seeing Sandra in me. I left a message on my mothers machine: Hello, Mother. I dont think I really connected lying on that brightly lit table with bringing new life into the world. nurse told me. The babies in the most critical condition are in the back area. Secretary of State Blinken Says Detention of WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich Is Unacceptable, President Biden also demanded release of journalist from Russian custody on Saturday: let him go.. Although Im a big, hearty girl, even in routine circumstances I could be voted Miss White Coat Syndrome. I went home, got into bed, and cried. The less people know about you and your feelings, the more powerful your negotiating position will bein everything. At first, the pregnancy went well. It was their most public meeting since Perella had left, in 1993. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. I looked up at the screen and saw a tiny hand waving at me, as if to say, Hold on, Mom. Melania Trump Apparently RSVPd F--k Off to Her Husbands Post-Arraignment Speech. Ad Choices. We were now in the company of white professional couples who had conceived twins after taking fertility drugs. He left all the day-to-day work up to [newly appointed C.E.O.] Father: not yet announced. Theres going to be a human settlement on Mars, and I want to be part of Mount Sinais advisory team.. I arrived at Smith College some 20 years after Wendy Wasserstein attended neighboring Linda Janklow, chairwoman of Lincoln Center Theater, and Lynn Nesbitt, the agent, attended. If you look at the success of the firms with which Bruce was associated, says Rosen, I believe that what made his life remarkable was the impact he had on people: the people in whom he believed, the people who he supportedand obviously there were those who he didntand the effect that he had on the professional and personal development of those people over a long period of time. I remember hearing somebody say, How can the guy take that kind of money and walk down the hall in front of us? Or How can he face his partners after doing that? And somebody answered with words to the effect of Hes not even thinking that way. Where the average guy would be embarrassed, that just wasnt Bruces personality. in the morning, a friend called to warn me that there was a large item in a daily tabloid speculating about the identity of my childs father. (With his second wife, Christine Parrott, Wasserstein had three children: Pamela, Ben, who works with a producer at HBO, and Scoop, now a law-school student. Comic High Jinks and Repressed Despair in Netflixs Beef. (Rosenfeld declined to be interviewed about Wassersteins role.). Mother, I want you to go back to see the baby and tell her youre her grandma. I took her hand. What made the news so shocking to Wall Street lawyer Toby Myerson was that he had seen his friend four months before, on July 20, at Myersons birthday party in the Hamptons. ''She likes Virginia Woolf. Lucy Jane Wasserstein. He was alienated by his partners overbearing nature, according to a Forbes article about Wassersteins death. But its not as interesting as this!. They formed Wasserstein Perella & Co., but Perella stayed only five years at the new companyfulfilling the letter of his contractbefore decamping to Morgan Stanley as a senior rainmaker. I opened my sweater and put her inside. Try to lie on your left side, he calmly admonished me. Im Catherine, the nurse said. Are you pumping? an ultra-thin woman demanded from my doorway. I just want you to know that. He smiled kindly and left. Period. After splitting up with the glamorous and stunning Claude, he fathered a child, in 2008, with a recent graduate of Columbia Business School. When they came and told us this, we were like, Are you fucking crazy? She died of lymphoma in 2006 at age 55. I was to be moved to the fourth floor for a weekend of observation. Do you want a copy of that? the doctor asked me. I think he left each of those firms in much better shape than when he arrived.. Theres nothing like sitting in fertility doctors offices, looking at photos of the children theyve nudged into creation and knowing that youre the negative statistic. Cindy does yoga and is working out all the way through. The driver called 911. WebWasserstein's daughter Lucy Jane was born three months premature, weighing in at one pound twelve ounces. Her next play in Shes been able to breathe without the C-pap, so shes moving up front.. As he inserted it into my uterus, he said, So, Wendy, are you writing?, Yes. She weighed less than 2 pounds. Then I looked down at her double chin and her round baby cheeks. During our time in the hospital, we managed to build a neighborly friendship. In his New Republic eulogy, Grafstein recalled how Wasserstein used to laugh about one particularly bungled meeting. Wasserstein became ill in 2001. '', Ms. Wasserstein has always been big on ''to do'' lists. In this episode, Caperton interviews President Meredith Woo, professors Carrie Brown and Jeff Key, and students Cailey Cobb '20 (now an alumna!) Anyone can read what you share. While Wasserstein spent a lot of time in London during 2001, he maintained his duplex penthouse apartment at 927 Fifth Avenue, his sprawling mansion in East Hampton (known as Cranberry Dune), and his home in Santa Barbara. She looked at me sternly. She was about fourteen inches long and weighed seven hundred and ninety grams, or one pound twelve ounces. It started in Colombia, where premature babies dont have the medical advantages of babies in a place like this. Nobody knew more about Wasserstein, and in particular this aspect of him, than Perella, the founder of First Bostons fledgling mergers-and-acquisitions group. He could convince the board, and he took it., A number of senior Lazard partners ended up screaming at the board members once they had heard about the new deal: Who cares? Ms. Wasserstein had a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, where she was writing ''Old Money,'' a play about money and class to be produced at Lincoln Center next fall. I figured it had to be psychosomatic. A week later, I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and strangers smiled at me. Although I remain a religious skeptic (St. James and Temple Emanu-El notwithstanding), throughout my days of awe at the Klingenstein Pavilion I had a kind of blind faith. Shes sleeping, Mommy, an N.I.C.U. The Nipple Nazis attacked the next day at dawn. My plan was to wait until Labor Day, well into my seventh month, and then to inform my friends that the twenty pounds I had recently gained were not the result of bad habits and anxiety. I won.. None of them is more efficient than Catherine McCarron. I dont want to hear it., Such behavior was typical of Wasserstein, a lusty contrarian who fantasized that he was exempt from lifes vicissitudes. The Newest Wasserstein Creation Comes Home, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/23/arts/the-newest-wasserstein-creation-comes-home.html. An embryologist in the room next door was siphoning the embryos from a petri dish into a tube. is, but he is one smart guy. By this time, Shayna and Lucy Jane were each strong enough to drink from a bottle. Youve got a very sick little girl. Lazard and Krafts other advisers, meanwhile, split a fee estimated at as much as $58 million. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. She was Holly in ''Uncommon Women'' (1977), about a Mount Holyoke graduate and her friends who cope with the uncertainties of identity in the new age of feminism. Always secretive, he withdrew further as his health apparently failed and his personal relationships turned tumultuous. Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006) By Tamsen Wolff. ), But the man Jordan and Lipton described is the same one who in 1995 had his maid pack up the belongings of his girlfriend Lorinda Ash, who had lived with him for three years. Even at thirty, she takes Broadway dance classes every day. The day after I delivered, the news that I had had a baby flashed through the theatre community. I will never forget this place.. They took another brain sonogram today, she informed me. Catherine reminded me to bring a car seat the next day; I was going to be one of those parents in the revolving door. The decorator Mario Buatta, ''the Prince of Chintz,'' was, too. You know, its impossible to lie on my left side and to be out of this room at 11 a.m. Im a person, not a grouper!. James Lapine and Heidi Ettinger, friends from drama school, had come to take me home. She gave me soothing sponge baths, too. I watched as couples walked through the revolving door, holding their newborns in their required-by-law car seats. Two hours later, I was lying on a gurney awaiting a cesarean. At four in the morning, a nurse told me, Its one-eighty-nine over ninety-five. Despite the Kraft deal, the consensus among the rank and file at Lazard is that the firm is better off without Wasserstein. Im working on it, I told him. Sweet Briar College welcomes first wave of local college students I love Lucy, too, I told her. Congratulations! It was ten oclock and I learned that Lucy Jane had had another reversal. Relax and lie on your left side.. Thats right. the firm would now be a shadow of its former self, assuming it was even still around. I was rocking Lucy in our corner of the N.I.C.U. Age. For the first time in the N.I.C.U., I felt self-conscious about being a single mother. I believed in the collaboration between the firm will of my one-pound-twelve-ounce daughter and the expertise of modern medicine. Mr. Wasserstein was rushed in an ambulance to a hospital in Manhattan. It is as though a mighty oak has fallen, leaving an empty and glaring space against the sky where he stood. (Neither Lipton nor Jordan would be interviewed about Wasserstein for this article. Theres her hand, she said, moving an ultrasound mouse over my stomach. If the baby didnt come to term after all these years of trying, I wanted it to be a personal loss, not a public one. Ms. Wasserstein's friend Jane Rosenthal, co-owner with Robert De Niro of TriBeCa Productions, whose name the playwright used for Janie in ''Isn't It Romantic,'' took over the producing. Agent Nothing about his health, nothing about his diet, nothing about his personal lifewe never even knew he was married to someone before Chris [Parrott, his second wife] until I read it in your book The Last Tycoons. He seems genuinely shocked. '', Finally, just before Thanksgiving, Lucy was doing well enough to go home for the holidays. But you should know.. These babies tend to be twins with a touch of jaundice, or full-term newborns with some small complication. Your blood pressure is very high, and theres a chance you have preclampsia., She explained, Preclampsia is a high-blood-pressure condition that can lead to liver and kidney failure. Vernon Jordan, the Lazard banker and a member of its board of directors, said, To measure the life and accomplishments of Bruce Wasserstein is as if one would take a thimble and try to empty an ocean. It will still own 4.1 million shares, worth approximately $150 million. ''If you haven't won a Tony, can you go?'' Your mother happened to come in for a visit when the transfusion was happening and I think it threw her.. Weeks earlier, Miss Hutchinson had told me, Every night, I pray for all the children here. I began to pray for them, too. The baby was whisked away to the hospitals N. I. C. U. He had lost his relevance. Many of Wassersteins former partners there think he then pressed his advantage at the firm in an unfair way, even as they acknowledge that had he not engineered the I.P.O. Because she had been ill the previous Christmas, we had cancelled our lunch, but I had called to wish her well. ''She came early because she knew it was hard to get in,'' Ms. Wasserstein said. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. I want you to go right now.. Add photos, demo reels. I told you to relax! Dr. Goldstein is deeply committed to womens-health issues, and she still wears the insignia of her activist generation: dangling earrings, little makeup, and evolved-graduate-student attire. ''She's home. Lucy had needed a transfusion. But then he wouldnt allow you to capitulate, so the negotiation cycle would begin anew., Myerson thinks all these contradictions made his friend extraordinary. But when Georgette asks Pamela if it would be all right to be interviewed, she nixes it. She was born a month before Lucy and now weighed approximately three pounds. When I reached Catherine McCarron, she told me that the hospital had moved quickly because Lucy had become anemic. Im Bruce Wasserstein, my brother answered. Now, suddenly, I felt like Hester Prynne, and my daughter, who was in intensive care with a possible brain malfunction, was fodder for gossip columns. We were there, I hoped, for the long haul. He was just given over to complete narcissism. After Wassersteins death, Jacobs expensed in one fell swoop the costs remaining on Wassersteins five-year employment contract. I had no idea where the grouper came from. Once their lungs are strong enough, the babies move from I.V.s to nasogastric tubes. The mystery shrouding Bruce Wassersteins death, last October, at 61, fit the billionaire investment bankers M.O. Your mother is here, she said. . bryan trottier family. With dark hair and bright-blue eyes, she reminded me of Suzanne Pleshette in her pre-Bob Newhart phase. Felix is a legend in our industry, and I am honored that he is returning to the firm that he helped to create, Jacobs said in January. On Monday morning, as I was trying to translate Dr. Phillipss cardiovascular-speak, my troika of female obstetriciansLaurie, Michele, and Rebecca Brightmanappeared. Its classic Bruce, one of his former partners tells me. that night, though, I wished that all the ridiculous myths were true: if a man in a suit could make this easier, I thought, I would happily return to Temple Emanu-El for emergency Yom Kippur nuptials. And why, of course, Slovakia needed a banker like Bruce to steer it forward. While I was being injected with hormones that could make a tyrannosaurus give birth to a foldout couch, my oldest sister, Sandra Meyer, who was an advanced breast-cancer patient, was having monthly chemotherapy treatments. Just after a midnight feeding recently, Lucy Jane and I settled in to watch television. until at least December 14th, my original due date. Perella says he has never spoken to Forbes about the split but explained, Some marriages last forever. He was bruised all over his body, explains one who saw him after he returned to the office that May. Theyre always sending people like John Glenn or Sally Ride into space. Despite efforts at supportive care and indications of Then it was time for toasts. Of course, as with most families, the majority of mine who had gathered at St. James that morning didnt have the slightest idea what was going on in my life. Despite efforts at supportive care and indications of recovery, he ultimately died of heart failure secondary to the arrhythmia.. Before the preclampsia, I had decided to let the babys gender be a surprise. The drama, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, is a study of male lonelinessa familiar theme in prestige TV that finds renewed urgency in an Asian American context. I looked over at Shayna. Any time her oxygen level or heart rate became abnormal, bells would go off. He was witty and enthusiastic. Says another person who saw Wasserstein last summer, He frankly looked pretty well. One out of 10 was smart, scary smart. Can I go home first to get a few things?, Get a friend to bring them to you. Ms. Rosenthal's personal assistant mingled with her baby sitter and housekeeper. '', Last week Ms. Rosenthal held a baby shower at her home in the Dakota. (Claude, who was said to have been heartbroken, declined to comment for this article.) Fertility treatments, even more than high-school dances, are a regular confirmation of negative femininity, with every disappointment underscored by megadoses of hormones. Together with the Asian, Caribbean, and Irish nurses, our wing of the N.I.C.U. Rather than face that prospect, the board capitulated. 19 (approx.) Meryl Streep, Ms. Wasserstein's friend from the Yale Drama School, sneaked in to see the baby, incognito. Im having a wonderful time., After twelve days in the hospital, the news about my condition was suddenly not so good. Would you like to feed Lucy Jane in the nesting room? Catherine asked me. I think I need to sleep., You must pump every three hours! she announced. ''She's very competitive.''. Its Weird: Gwyneth Paltrows Handsome Attorney James Egan on Comic Book Hero Comparisons. If you go back over those 30 years, what you discover is he had a significant influence, if not the significant influence, in building three different firms and three firms that were each very different, one from the others. He was telling everyone the way the deal should be done from the lawyers standpoint, and I said to myself, Holy mackerel, this guy is unreal, Perella recounted to Institutional Investor in 1987. They got what they came for. His experience with the severity and early onset of your preclampsia indicates that we have more time than we thought. In general, he said, every day in the womb is equal to three days in the N.I.C.U.Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Nurses and hospital attendants popped in throughout the day to ask William for color and fabric tips. On Sunday morning, sixteen days after I was admitted, Michele K. Silverstein came to see me. My father, in a gray suit, sat silently beside her. Why did they do that to Lucys cap? I asked one of the nurses. She wheeled in a breast pump that looked as if it could bail out a battleship. The last time my mother, Lola Wasserstein, had been in a hospital, she had watched her oldest daughter die of cancer. Shes doing much better. He made a knock-on-wood gesture. Andrs brother George, an Oxford-educated minister, presided over the service wearing a white robe with gold vestments. for Miss Hutchinson and me to feed our daughters at the same time, so I scheduled my visits around hers. The Newest Wasserstein Creation Comes Home. But that didn't work. Google+. He also had worked as a consumer activist, researching and writing about takeovers, with Ralph Nader and Mark Green, the once and future candidate for multiple political offices in New York City and a longtime friend. An I Love Lucy rerun was on. The phenobarbital, he told me, could make me groggy and forgetful. In short order, my brother, an iconoclastic investment banker who had protected oil companies from T. Boone Pickens and advises movie studios about the dot-com world, managed to secure permanent visitation rights as a parent. Wasserstein had been hospitalized in serious condition for an irregular heartbeat. Sign Up. My daughter was attached to an I.V. I sat down on the freaking steps, and he stood over me, Perella says. Ad Choices. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 January 30, 2006) was an American playwright. If you want to look at him in the best light, you would say he just had an incredible view of himself. Looking out at the stars, I began to weep. In this chapter of his life, he was functioning on all cylinders, which is why his sudden demise was a surprise to all of us. Asked about his sudden demise, this person says, I would have thought youd heard the story from lots of people. The three of them advised me to stay in the hospital until as close to my due date as possible. Jane is a movie producer and a crackerjack organizer. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight Twitter. She wore a tiny pink-and-blue-striped cap that made her look like Santas tiniest elf. Just how, she's not saying right now, but the father is ''someone I know who I am keeping anonymous,'' she said. Rohatyn had heard that Wasserstein had been out of the office for several months and wondered why Lazard hadnt disclosed that fact to the market. We are from Slovenia. The way Bruce told it, the room went silent, with ashen faces around the table. She had another sonogram, and the ventricles are still enlarged.. What, I wondered, would become of our souls? This episode explores Sweet Briar's Women's Leadership Core Curriculum. '' So, she decided, ''Once more, with feeling.''. Nobody in corporate America particularly cared about what he had to say, and he wasnt particularly good about saying it. When I finally reached the pulpit and began to speak, my voice cracked. So, around her 40th birthday, along with ''Lose weight,'' ''Write a play'' and ''Read more,'' she put, ''Have a baby.''. 1999. Thank you. I decided to take this as a compliment. The day after I arrived home, there was a message on my answering machine from the N.I.C.U. Get the food,' '' Ms. Wasserstein said. It was caring, but weird. Larry Grafstein, the head of M&A at Rothschild in New York, who worked for Wasserstein for years at Wasserstein Perella and at Lazard, wrote in an essay in The New Republic how exasperating that aspect of Wassersteins personality was.
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