“Why won’t you talk to Daddy?” I asked her.
“He’s an evil scumbag.”
“No, he’s not. He loves you.”
She said nothing.
“Can’t you at least talk to him?”
“Never.”
“You can go to school somewhere else, you know. There are other schools besides Colorado.”
“There’s no point,” she said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m gonna die before I’m twenty-one. I’m gonna go out in a blaze of glory. Like … like, headlines.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I just am. It’s something I know. For sure.”
It was no surprise to me that she wanted to die, but her reference to headlines baffled me. I couldn’t imagine what she could possibly do to make someone want to put her death in the newspaper.
Nancy’s return from Colorado was the turning point of her life. Never again did I see the slightest ray of light. She had genuinely believed she was well enough to function in the real world with regular people—without us, without Darlington. Now she knew she couldn’t. Her failure in Colorado meant she had to admit to herself that she wasn’t like other people, that she really was a sickie. For her, this was the last straw. No more dreams. No more will to live. The episode left her purposeless. It left her with nothing to do or be or believe in. Her only commitment now was to death. She took the fast lane so she could get it over with as soon as possible. It took her four years to fulfill her prophecy.
For us, Nancy’s failure in Colorado meant she was back home again, ours. The burden was back on us. I was petrified. How were we going to be able to handle her? She was as bad or worse than before. But what could we do? We couldn’t close our home to her, could we? We didn’t know what we were going to do, how we were going to cope. All we knew for certain was that she would take control of the house again—at a time when Suzy and David were coming of age, in need of room to grow, to be free of her influence, to have friends, to have a life. Was there any hope? Any alternative? The only thought that occurred to us was to try hospitalizing her with Dr. Cott, now that she was free of Darlington. But she would never stand for it. The mere mention of his name sent her into a rage. We would have to physically drag her there, incarcerate her.
We didn’t know what we were going to do.
She sat on her bed all afternoon that first day she came home. She wouldn’t unpack. It was as if unpacking were an admission that she was really home. She didn’t come down for dinner. That evening she unpacked her stereo and put a record on. Then she dressed up in one of her ski outfits and came down the stairs to model it. She wore red, iridescent skin-tight ski pants with a matching sweater, yellow ski boots, and yellow mirrored sunglasses. She seemed very proud of the outfit. She posed and smiled so David could take her picture. Then she went back in her room, piled all of her ski clothes and boots together and dropped them over the bannister to the floor of the entry hall. They landed with a thud.
“Nancy!” I called up the stairs. “What do you want me to do with all of this?”
“Get rid of it!” She slammed her bedroom door.
She never mentioned skiing again. It was as if she had never skied. She never mentioned Colorado, either. As far as she was concerned, it didn’t exist.
She didn’t do any more unpacking the next morning, just sat there on her bed, head down. I stayed home from work to be with her.
“Do you want me to help you unpack, sweetheart?” I asked her.
“I wanna die.”
I noticed that her right hand was closed, as if she were clutching something.
“I’m gonna do it now,” she said.
She opened her hand. She had some Valium my doctor had given me, about eight of them.
“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “Those won’t kill you. You can’t OD on Valium.”
“I can’t?”
“No.” I held my hand out. “Give them to me.”
She did. I flushed them down the toilet. She stretched out and stared at the ceiling, morose. I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Nancy, have you thought about what you want to do now that you’re home?”
“Yeah, I wanna—”
“Besides die.”
“No.”
“You don’t want to go back to school?”
“No.”
“How about working? What would you think about getting a job?”
“Okay.” She shrugged.
“Okay?” I asked, surprised.
“May as well make some money.” She sighed. “I don’t care.”
That afternoon I loaned her my car, a four-year-old Volvo, and she made the rounds of the nearby malls. She found a part-time job at a clothing store, starting the next day, which we thought was a step in the right direction. That night Linda and a couple of the boys from the neighborhood came over and sat in her room with her with the door closed. We thought that wasn’t a step in the right direction, but we had to allow her some freedom.
She had to use my car to get to her job. I wasn’t too crazy about that idea, but I wasn’t using it during the day—I took the train to work. So we let her have it. She worked on Friday and Saturday afternoons. On Saturday night she asked us if she could use the car to go out for a pizza with Linda and two boys. One of the boys was named Stephen. He was a musician. I don’t remember the other’s name.
We had some qualms, but we said okay. After all, we couldn’t lock her in her room. We reminded her that she had to be home by midnight as a condition of her Pennsylvania junior driver’s license. In the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, sixteen-to-eighteen-year-olds are not allowed to drive past midnight. She promised to be home by twelve.
The phone woke me at two a.m. It was a Philadelphia policeman. Nancy had wrecked the car on her way home from a downtown rock club. She had never gone to the local pizza parlor. She’d driven off the side of an expressway ramp, rolled three times down a twenty-foot embankment, and landed upright on the road below. Miraculously, no one had been seriously hurt.
Nancy was being held at a police station in Philadelphia. She was apparently under arrest, though the policeman was vague as to what the charges were—beyond driving after midnight. She had been tested for drunk driving; she was not drunk. The test revealed a .03 alcohol level in her blood, equal to about half a glass of beer and well below the level that constitutes drunk driving, which is .10. No drugs were found in her system.
She got on the phone.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Of course I’m okay,” she replied angrily. “The cop’s a liar. I just bent the fender is all. A fucking bent fender. Get me out of this hellhole, will ya?”
The policeman got back on. He said that because Nancy was a minor, she would have to be processed by the Philadelphia Juvenile Aid Division. Since we were not residents of Philadelphia County, she could not be released into our custody without the presence of a juvenile aid officer. It was a Saturday night. The officers were swamped with arrests. None were available.
As a result, Nancy was held in a cell until six a.m., when she was transferred by paddy wagon to the Youth Study Center, Philadelphia’s juvenile detention center.
We waited there in the parking lot with our lawyer for the paddy wagon, not having slept a wink since getting the phone call. It had been some week: Nancy had been arrested twice and had destroyed our car. I wondered if I had a breaking point, or if I would just keep bending. At that moment I didn’t think I could take too much more. There was no more emotion left in either of us. We were burned out, defeated
“What’s going to be next?” I asked Frank.
“I really don’t know,” he replied. “You imagine the worst … the worst … and it happens. Sure enough, it happens.”
The paddy wagon pulled into the driveway. A policeman hopped out and opened the back doors to reveal Nancy handcuffed to a bench. She wore a rabbit fur jacket, satin skirt, and pl
atform heels. As the policeman unlocked her cuffs, she blinked at the sunlight. She looked pale and frightened; she was shivering and she had a bruise on her forehead. Getting out, Nancy teetered a bit on her high heels until she got her balance.
The policeman laughed. “Look how looped she is, Sal,” he said to his partner, who joined in the laughter.
“Has she been checked by a doctor?” I asked the policeman.
“What for? She’s fine,” he replied.
“I’m cold,” my daughter told me. “They made me lay on the floor in a cell.”
He took her inside and we followed. At that time the Youth Study Center was a genuine inner-city house of horror—dingy, overcrowded, understaffed. Kids were reportedly sleeping on bare mattresses in the corridor.
There was an informal hearing with a juvenile aid officer, who informed us that Nancy was being held for reckless driving and driving after midnight on a junior license. Since we lived in a different county, he would not release her to us. She would have to stay at the center until a preliminary hearing, which wouldn’t be held for several days.
“Isn’t there any other course we can take?” our lawyer inquired.
“Just one,” the officer replied. “You can have her committed. Put her in a mental hospital or leave her here. It’s up to you.”
It was quite a choice.
We chose to commit her.
Photo Insert
Frank and Nancy, two weeks old.
Nancy, fourteen months.
Nancy dressing up for Halloween, her favorite holiday.
Nancy, age six, had a fit over this picture. She thought she looked ugly and insisted the photo be reshot.
Frank and David.
Age 10½. School photo.
Age 11½. “The Look.” Nancy left school—7th grade—several days after this was taken. She never went back to public school.
Nancy, age 14. Sent to the family after her funeral by a classmate of Nancy’s at Lakeside Campus. The note said this is the way he remembered Nancy, not the way the newspapers described her.
Susie, Deborah, Nancy and David outside the health food store. Nancy is 15.
Nancy, age 16, and Deborah on graduation day.
Nancy, age 16, after she returned from Colorado. She wore the outfit once and then threw it away.
Age 17 in St. Thomas. Nancy’s favorite photo of herself, she carried it with her until her death.
The Spungens—David, Susie, Deborah and Frank (left to right).
Chapter 13
In my heart, I guess I was still looking for an answer. There had to be a way of helping Nancy, a magic pill. There had to be an end to all of this pain. Nancy seemed totally out of control, dangerous to herself and others. We were afraid of what she would do next if she wasn’t stopped.
Nancy didn’t take the news of her commitment to a hospital well, but she was so shaken and exhausted at that point that she didn’t fight it.
There was still the problem of finding a bed for her in a mental hospital. I phoned Mallory Brooke at Darlington. She concurred with our decision and gave me a list of a few possibilities. Then she wished me luck.
The first hospital I called took teenagers but didn’t have a bed available, not even for an emergency. They referred me to a nearby state hospital, which had a ten-day evaluation program. I spoke to them and they agreed to admit her for evaluation. At the end of ten days they would make a determination as to how to proceed.
The juvenile aid officer was satisfied with this and released Nancy into our custody. He said we would receive a summons for a hearing in about a month.
Nancy dozed in the car on the way to the hospital. Our route happened to take us past the wreck of the Volvo, which sat—totaled—by the side of the road. She woke up when Frank and I gasped at the extent of the damage.
“It can be fixed” was all she said.
We spent several hours at the hospital. Nancy was examined individually by a psychiatrist, then slept on a couch while Frank and I were interviewed by a team of doctors and psychiatrists. Then they asked us to wait while they discussed Nancy’s case. We sat on a sofa across from Nancy and I watched her sleep. Her hair was spread wildly over her face; her makeup was smeared. Her satin skirt was torn and had dried blood on it. But still, asleep, she looked like my little Nancy, my baby.
The psychiatrist joined us. He spoke softly so he wouldn’t wake Nancy up. “We’re against admitting her for the ten-day examination. I’m sorry to drag you over here and put you through all of this, but it’s our feeling that Nancy has simply had herself a real bad week. She’s upset, exhausted. Take her home. Love her.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.
He smiled. “She’s fine.”
“No, she isn’t fine,” I argued. “She is a lot of things. She is disturbed, troubled, unhappy, in pain, miserable. She is not fine!”
“Uh, Mrs. Spungen—!”
“Don’t tell me she’s fine!”
He looked at Frank uncomfortably. “We can’t keep her here.”
We had to place Nancy somewhere. That was the condition of her release.
Suburban Psychiatric Center was the last name on the list Brooke had given me, so I phoned. They had a bed and were willing to evaluate her, possibly admit her. We woke Nancy up and drove over there. She was still very groggy and didn’t fight us.
Suburban Psychiatric was a large, new private hospital. Again, a team of doctors and psychiatrists spoke to us and to Nancy. Then we waited for their verdict. This time Nancy was awake and eating a candy bar.
The doctor who sat with us was young and casually dressed. “We think Nancy should be here,” he said. “We’d like to admit her.”
Nancy’s response was the most shockingly violent I’d ever seen. She hurled her candy bar at the wall and began to scream. She went berserk with rage—all of it directed at me. It spilled out in a nonstop torrent like the verbal tantrums she had had when she was two.
“You motherfucking bitch cunt shithead evil motherfucking bitch cunt! You’ll die for this! You’ll die!”
“Now, there’s no reason to get upset, Nancy,” the doctor said calmly. She ignored him.
“I’ll have you killed! I’m not staying here! I’ll leave! I’ll have you killed. You wanna know how I’ll have you killed, bitch cuntface? I’ll have them tear your fucking head off and gouge out your fucking eyeballs with a fucking icepick and tear off your fucking arms and break off every finger … and you fucking cunt you can’t lock me up here—”
“Now, there’s no reason to get upset,” the doctor repeated, a little less calmly. People had stopped what they were doing all over the hospital, and watched.
“I’m not gonna stay! I’ll kill you myself! With my bare fucking hands! You know how I’ll do it? I’ll stick a knife up your motherfucking cunt and rip you wide open!”
I covered my ears with my hands, horrified. I couldn’t listen anymore.
“That’s how I’ll do it! I’ll cut your cunt and you’ll die! Die! Die like an evil shithead motherfucking cunt!”
She was sobbing now, her voice hoarse from yelling.
“Perhaps,” the doctor said to me, “you and your husband should wait in my office.”
We did. It was down the hall. Though we closed the door, we could still hear her screams and curses.
“… gouge out your fucking eyeballs you fucking cunt!”
I sagged against Frank, my insides melting. My child hated me with such a vengeance. Such venom and ugliness came out of her mouth. I had seen and heard her rages before, but never like this. Never. It broke my heart. All I was trying to do was save her. I loved her. I was doing whatever I could.
I guess they led her away. Her screaming faded and mercifully died out.
“I don’t care what happens,” I said weakly to Frank. “I’m never going through this kind of scene again. Ever.”
He nodded, dazed.
If the law interceded and had her forcibly co
mmitted, fine. But we were agreed: we wouldn’t try it again on our own. We couldn’t. This door was too horrible to go through. We closed it.
The doctor came in a moment later.
“Don’t be concerned,” he said. “We’ll take care of her. We can help her. I’ll call you.”
We went home. It was a Sunday. Suzy and David had been home alone all day. They had made dinner and were waiting for us. We explained everything that had happened. They were upset and saddened.
“Do you think she’ll ever come home again?” Suzy asked.
“She can’t stay at the hospital for more than a month,” Frank said. “Our insurance will run out. So I guess she will. Yes.”
And then what? I couldn’t look ahead. Ahead I saw nothing but pain. I saw a life of trying to get through each day, one at a time. I saw no other priority besides surviving. No hope. No optimism. Ahead, I saw no kind of life. How could we live with this child in our home?
I crawled into bed and slept fitfully. I was still weak and tired in the morning, when the psychiatrist called.
“She’s calmed down quite a bit,” he assured me. “I’m about to have another talk with her. I suggest you not see her for a few days.”
We set up an appointment with him for Friday afternoon, by which time he hoped to be ready to discuss Nancy’s condition in depth. After the appointment we’d be able to see her.
I phoned the clothing store and told the owner that Nancy would not be coming back to work.
Nancy still hadn’t unpacked. One night later that week I decided I’d do it for her. Somehow I thought it would make the transition easier for her. I opened the cartons and suitcases and began to remove the contents.
There were books—her textbooks in English, psychology, and marketing, and a frayed paperback copy of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Tucked into the paperback was a small bundle of notes the other students on her dorm floor had left her when they heard she’d been expelled. I glanced at them. They were nice notes. One of them said, “You’re too smart to fuck up. Get it together and come on back.” There were cosmetics and some bottles of shampoo, several pairs of jeans, some longjohns, turtleneck sweaters, hiking boots. There was a workshirt. When I unfolded it, several syringes, a rubber catheter, and some spoons spilled out onto the bed.
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) Page 22
