Later, after Suzy and David had gone to sleep, Frank and I were watching the news on TV in the den. I felt a cool breeze behind me, and turned. Nancy stood in the foyer, That Look in her eyes.
“Nancy!” I cried. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” she replied quietly.
Frank got up, closed the front door behind her. “But honey,” he said, “you’re not supposed to be here.”
“I wanted to come home.”
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“Hitched.”
“This time of night?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to me,” she said.
“It’s dangerous,” I protested.
“What would you care? You don’t love me. Either one of you.”
“Of course we love you,” Frank insisted.
She glowered at us, went into the den, and sat down on the couch with her coat still on. She stared defiantly at the TV set.
We were not pleased. Nancy didn’t live with us for a very good reason—we couldn’t handle her. That was why we had relinquished our supervisory role. That was why we had gone to the great expense of placing her in the Darlington system, reputed to be one of the finest in the country. They were supposed to be able to handle her. Clearly, they weren’t living up to their end of the bargain.
Frankly, Nancy’s arrival was also an intrusion. I was not proud to admit this, but the truth was that our life was better when our first child was not there.
I went to the kitchen and phoned Brooke to tell her Nancy was safe and that we’d return her the next morning. She had no idea what I was talking about.
“Nancy’s gone,” I said, confused. “She must have been gone for hours. She ran away. Didn’t you know that?”
“No, I thought she was in her room. I can’t watch her all the time. I’m sorry.”
“But don’t you have help?”
“Not right now.”
“You mean you’re keeping track of forty girls all by yourself?”
“I do the best I can, Mrs. Spungen. But you have to remember this isn’t a locked campus. If a girl wants to leave, there isn’t much I can do—even if I had a dozen assistants.”
Barton hadn’t been a locked campus, either. But Barton had been isolated. Lakeside Campus wasn’t. It was within easy walking distance from Winfield, a commuter town with a train station and access to the major turnpikes.
Nancy still sat in her coat, staring at the TV. I made her a sandwich and a glass of milk. She ate, but said nothing else. She seemed very depressed. Frank and I sat quietly with her until she abruptly got up, went up to her room, and went to sleep in her clothes. I dropped her off at Lakeside Campus the next day.
She phoned constantly. She accused the other girls of hating her, conspiring against her, threatening to hit her, stealing her clothes, her records, her spending money. I checked with Brooke. Most but not all of Nancy’s accusations were products of her imagination.
“We have had rip-offs,” she admitted. “We can’t watch them all the time.”
Nancy was not in therapy. This bothered us and I called Brooke after a few weeks to find out why Nancy wasn’t seeing anyone.
“It’s taking time,” she said. “You see, most of the girls already have a therapist from last year. But don’t worry. She’ll get one soon.”
She didn’t. Weeks passed and Nancy still hadn’t been assigned a therapist. So I phoned Mr. Sylvester, Brooke’s boss at the Lakeside Campus unit, and demanded one.
“We’re working on it, Mrs. Spungen,” he said.
“That’s simply not good enough,” I said. “Your brochure promises therapy. We’re paying you a thousand dollars a month. Nancy’s supposed to be in therapy and I want her in it—now!”
She got her therapist assignment, though the sessions didn’t actually begin for another two months.
She came home for Thanksgiving. She arrived after school on the Wednesday before, looking like many of the girls we’d seen that first day. Her jeans were frayed and filthy, her hair and complexion untended.
She went straight for the kitchen, which I had, of course, stocked with her favorite brands of pretzels, cheese, and pickles. She gathered the goodies in her arms, sat down at the kitchen table with them, and dove in. I joined her in the kitchen and began to make dinner.
Almost immediately I smelled smoke.
I turned to find Nancy smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table. A pack of Marlboros and a book of matches sat there. She glared at me, daring me to say something about it. I went back to my cooking.
After a moment I quietly said, “I see you’re smoking cigarettes now.”
“So what?” Nancy demanded.
“So, they’re bad for you. So, when Daddy smoked you made him stop because you said they would kill him.”
She laughed derisively. “Like, I mean, who wants to live. Ya know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
Frank pulled his car into the garage and came inside through the side door. He exploded the instant he saw Nancy smoking.
“Put out that goddamned cigarette!”
“Fuck you!”
“I said put it out!”
“And I said fuck you!”
I heard two doors slam upstairs. Suzy and David were now hiding in their bedrooms. This had become their standard response when the yelling started.
Frank stopped, made an effort to control himself. He lowered his voice. “Nancy, you’re not going to smoke in this house.”
“I’ll do what I want!”
“No you won’t!”
“Yes I will!”
Frank crossed the room, yanked the cigarette from her mouth, and threw it in the sink. She immediately lit another.
He turned to me. “I can’t deal with this.” He stormed out, stomped up the stairs.
Nancy laughed.
“Nancy, I wanted to tell you before Daddy got home … he’s, uh, he’s pretty down right now.”
Frank was, in fact, very down. Both of his parents had just suffered crippling strokes. Neither of them was able to talk or function, and he had had to place them in a nursing home. On top of the emotional burden, he now had to face closing down their jewelry store and selling their house. The strain had given him stomach ulcers. And a short fuse.
“He’s got a lot on his mind,” I pointed out, “and he’s not feeling that well.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Go easy on him.”
“I mean, I liked Grandma and Grandpa, too.”
“I know, sweetheart. But try to go easy on him, okay?”
She shrugged, popped a pickle into her mouth. “He’s still an asshole.”
She simply didn’t care about Frank’s problems, didn’t care about anyone but herself. I wished she hadn’t come home. As soon as she walked in, the house revolved around her. She ruled us. She also created an immediate rift between Frank and me. I deeply resented it.
He resented it, too. His reponse had been to blow up at her. On the one hand, I was glad he had. I wanted to myself, but I couldn’t. Why? Because I was afraid that once I started, once I let the lid off, I’d not be able to stop. I’d shake that meanness out of her; I’d slam her against the wall; I’d beat at her with my fists. I couldn’t let that lid off, not only because I was afraid of myself but for myself. She had attacked me once with a hammer. Who knew what she was capable of doing if provoked?
It was vital to me to try to keep the emotional level turned down and to urge Frank to do the same. I went upstairs to talk to him. I tapped lightly on the kids’ doors to let them know the storm had blown over, then went into our bedroom.
Frank was washing his face, his shirt off. He looked up. “How the hell can you let her just sit there, smoking in your face like that?” he demanded angrily.
“I was dealing with it, Frank!” I protested. “I was trying to reason with her about the health hazards and … and …”
“Reason with her
? What good is that going to do?”
“What good did your way do?”
“No damned good at all,” he admitted.
“Do me a favor?” I asked Frank quietly.
“What?”
“Try to be more patient with her. She’s going to be here for four days. At least things will be quieter.”
He nodded with weary resignation. “Whatever you say.”
There was very little dinner conversation. When Nancy finished eating, she lit a cigarette. Frank and I kept quiet.
“Ugh,” said Suzy, who was still eating. “Why are you smoking?”
“Mind your own fucking business.”
Suzy fastened her eyes on her plate and kept them there. David’s were already on his plate.
After dinner Nancy wanted to watch a particular show on TV in the den and sit in the easy chair. Suzy was already sitting in the chair, watching something else. Nancy changed the station.
“Hey!” Suzy protested.
“I don’t wanna watch that,” Nancy snapped. “Get up!”
“What for?”
“I wanna sit there!”
“No!”
“Why don’t you sit somewhere else, Nancy?” I offered.
She ignored me. “Get the fuck up, you little shithead!”
“No!”
“Get out of that fucking chair you fucking goddamned shithead!”
Frank spoke up. “Don’t talk to your sister that way, Nancy.”
“Or what, asshole?”
“Or … or …”
Nancy crossed her arms, glared at him. “Go ahead, hit me, why don’t ya?”
The color rose in Frank’s face.
“Frank, don’t start with her,” I cautioned.
“She can’t talk to her sister that way!”
“You’re rising to her bait! I asked you not to! Let it be!”
“You’re rising to her bait by letting her get away with her crap!”
“Stop yelling,” begged David. “I’m trying to watch TV.”
“Don’t you start opening your big fat mouth!” ordered Frank.
“Don’t take it out on David!” I cried.
David stormed out, ran upstairs, and slammed his door.
Nancy still stood over Suzy. “I wanna sit in that chair!”
“Suzy, let her sit there,” Frank commanded.
“No,” Suzy said. “I’m sick of doing things just because she wants to.”
“Please, Suzy,” I begged. “It’ll be easier if you do.”
“But it isn’t fair, Mommy!” She sniffled.
“Suzy, I order you to get out of that chair at once!” yelled Frank.
She got up, fighting back tears, and angrily left the room. Her door slammed.
Nancy triumphantly sat down.
“You happy now?” Frank demanded of her.
“Shut the fuck up,” she said. “I’m trying to watch the show.”
Nancy still ran the household, just as she had when she was seven. Only now her impact was more pervasive, more insidious. She set us against each other, made us say and do things to each other we later regretted. She was the catalyst. Because of this relatively tiny incident—who gets to sit in a chair—I was angry at Frank, Frank was angry at me, David was angry at Frank, Frank at David, Suzy at both of us. This anger wouldn’t just disappear when Nancy left. It would take us weeks to forgive and forget, weeks to erase Nancy’s presence in the household. By then she’d be back home for another holiday.
Meanwhile, just as when she was younger, Nancy still delighted in manipulating, bullying, and dividing Suzy and David. She was still older and smarter. They, in turn, looked up to her, feared her, loved her. They played right into her hands.
Suzy was still her favorite victim. Whereas before she’d exclude Suzy from coloring or a game, now she’d deny her admittance to her inner sanctum, her room. Suzy had long ago stopped sleeping there.
When she first came back for Thanksgiving, for example, she flatly refused to let Suzy in her room. “You’re fat and ugly,” she said. “I don’t want you in here. Only my adorable, sweet baby brother.” Then she invited David in and closed the door on Suzy. David came gladly. It was a treat to hear Nancy’s newest records and Lakeside Campus stories.
Just before Nancy went back to school after Thanksgiving weekend, she finally admitted Suzy to her room. Suzy joined her, thrilled. Nancy closed the door, put on a record.
“If I tell you something, you promise you won’t tell Mommy?” Nancy asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“You better not, because if she finds out, I’ll know where she heard it.”
“I won’t,” Suzy insisted. “Tell me.”
“I get stoned all the time and I’ve taken acid seven times,” she announced triumphantly.
Suzy told me about it that night, wide-eyed with fear. “Don’t tell her you know, Mommy, please. Please don’t tell her. But I had to tell you. I don’t want her to get in trouble.”
I assured Suzy I’d keep quiet. Then I sank into a chair, devastated.
I believed it this time.
I had seen and heard the other girls at Lakeside Campus. These were girls who either already used drugs or were prime candidates to be drug users. They were angry and rebellious. They were hurting. They were lonely—most of their parents lived out of state. And, as Brooke had told me, she couldn’t watch them all of the time.
For Nancy, drugs were a natural outgrowth of her life. Drugs were a badge of rebellion and, for a thirteen-year-old, of maturity. They offered her a passport to a different, “better” reality. Drugs could take her somewhere else, take her where her beloved hard rock music was. She had continually been on prescription drugs since her infancy—to mask discomfort, restlessness, anger. It was only natural for her to move on to the illegal means to the same end.
I phoned Brooke. She denied that there was a drug problem at Lakeside Campus. Still, I believed it. Frank was ambivalent.
“She might experiment with grass,” he said when we were getting into bed that night. “But no way she’s a user. She’s exaggerating, Deb. To impress her kid sister.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she doesn’t act any different. Don’t you think we’d notice a change in her behavior if she’d taken LSD seven times? Even one time?”
“How would we be able to detect it? She’d start acting weird? She was weird before.”
“Good point.” He mulled it over. “Well, how about money? All she gets is twenty bucks a month, doled out by Brooke. And judging by the way she’s going through cigarettes, that’ll just about cover her in smokes. She hasn’t got any money for drugs. Somebody might turn her on once, but nobody gives grass and pills away for free.”
Now Frank had a point. Maybe she had only experimented once or twice and had stretched the truth to impress Suzy. We both wanted to believe that. Desperately.
Frank and I had a dinner party to go to a few nights after Nancy had gone back to Lakeside Campus. While I dressed I noticed that Frank was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear, staring at his knees. He was totally down. It hit both of us periodically: we worked hard, tried to be good people, tried to do the right thing, yet life just seemed to be an unending stream of misery. Nothing went right. When you looked around for causes, it was impossible to always blame Nancy. It was impossible not to say to yourself, “Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I should go away, let the others flourish.”
I sat down on the bed next to him. “I think about it, too. Leaving.”
He seemed relieved that I knew what was going through his mind. “For somebody else?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“You know what stops me?” I said. “I ask myself how I could leave you to handle Nancy by yourself.”
He nodded. “I know. I couldn’t leave you with her.”
“And if I did meet someone else and remarry, could I expect that someone else to understand he
r? Nobody else could. Just you and me. So even if we did split up, we’d still be together because of her. We’d have to deal with the phone calls, the traumas, the decisions. Nobody else would take that on. Could take it on.”
Frank said, “I was thinking the other day, when she was here, that she’s like a wedge driving us apart. But you know, sitting here, talking like this, makes me realize that she also holds us together.”
“She sure does,” I agreed. “Like glue.”
“Do you think she knows it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not so sure I’ve thought of it myself quite that way before.”
He smiled sadly, put his arm around me. “So what do we do?”
“Survive.”
He kissed me, got up, and went into the bathroom to shave. I finished dressing, then opened my jewelry box to discover that the one piece of jewelry I was most attached to was missing. I searched carefully through the box. It wasn’t there.
“My diamond wedding band is gone,” I cried out, distraught.
“How do you know?” Frank asked, emerging from our bathroom with lather on his face.
“Because it’s not here.”
“So maybe you misplaced it somewhere.”
“I didn’t,” I insisted. “I keep very careful track of my jewelry. And I always put my wedding band back in the same spot. It’s not there.”
“You saying somebody took it?”
“Somebody must have.”
“That’s crazy. We haven’t had a break-in. Is anything else missing?”
“No.”
“So who would have come in here and taken that one piece? And why? I didn’t do it. Suzy wouldn’t do it. Nancy wouldn’t …” He trailed off.
We looked at each other sadly. Nancy would. And had. She had stolen my wedding band to buy drugs. She’d found a source of money. There was no doubt.
“I’ll get you another one, Deb,” Frank said quietly.
Then he held me. He got lather all over my face and hair. I didn’t care. I needed to be held. I felt so helpless.
Nancy came home a few weeks later for Christmas break. This time, Suzy reported to me, Nancy showed her a piece of paper with a man’s name and address on it and said, “This guy deals right near campus. Everybody buys from him. I’m gonna buy an ounce of weed and some Ludes from him as soon as I get back.”
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) Page 17
