And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434)

by Spungen, Deborah

  “Meaning what?” I demanded.

  “My friends are gonna wreck it. My Mafia friends. They’ll smash every single piece of furniture. They’ll break every window. They’ll pour paint all over everything. They’ll destroy the whole fucking house! Hear me?”

  I turned to Frank. “Let’s go,” I said quietly.

  The four of us turned and left, Nancy threatening us as we went down the steps and out the door.

  “Go ahead! You’ll see! They’ll dump everything out of the closets and set the fucking place on fire! There won’t be a house left when you get back! Go ahead!”

  We kept going. She stood on the front porch, shouting at us as we got into the car. “You’ll see! Go ahead, you’ll see!”

  We drove away.

  We were silent in the car for several blocks. Finally I broke the silence.

  “Do you think she’ll actually carry out any of those threats?”

  Frank shrugged. “Deb, I honestly don’t know.”

  We picked up my mother and went to the restaurant. It wasn’t much of a coming-home celebration for the kids. We were all very quiet and had little appetite. We didn’t tell my mother about the incident or why we were so quiet, but by now she, of course, knew it had something to do with Nancy.

  I spent the entire meal visualizing our furniture being smashed, our walls being smeared with paint. I wondered if Nancy really would do those things. Certainly, she was capable. I wondered how we could sit there in a restaurant after our eldest child had threatened to murder us and have our house destroyed. I wondered how this could be happening and how we could be so powerless to do anything about it. I wondered, as I did so often, what we had done to deserve this.

  The ride home was interminable. When we rounded the bend in Red Barn Lane, we saw that the house was intact, the lights off. We got out and went inside. Nothing had been touched. The house was fine. Nancy was gone.

  Frank and I sat up the entire night talking. This incident was, for us, the last straw. I don’t know why this one particular episode among a sea of episodes put us over the top, but it did. Possibly because it was our home she wanted to destroy now. All we possessed was our home. She’d already destroyed the people inside it—our lives, our dreams. All she had left us with was the physical structure, the shell. She could not be permitted to destroy that, too. And we did believe she could do it. The house, we felt, would have to be guarded from now on, day and night.

  We had to do something. This could not continue. She was holding us captive. We could not subject Suzy and David to her any longer. Or ourselves. She would have to leave. Have to.

  My promise to her? I’d kept it. I’d done everything in my power to give her a good life. To keep it any longer would be to jeopardize the futures of Suzy and David.

  We had lost her. We could not control her any longer. All we could do was try to save the other two children. We had to get Nancy out for their sakes. And yes, for ours. On this we were in achingly painful agreement.

  The only question was how. We had exhausted the resources of the medical profession. Committing her to a hospital was not an alternative. We had tried that and it hadn’t worked. Besides, her response to it had been such a bottomless pit of rage directed at me that I would not go through it again. Turning her in to the police, as our lawyer said, was not going to accomplish anything. She was almost eighteen and would no longer be made a ward of the court.

  We were out of options. We really had only one choice, and we made it. It was a necessity. Guilt? Guilt is a luxury.

  We cut Nancy loose, to sink or swim on her own. We set her free.

  Chapter 15

  We told her when she finally turned up two days later.

  “Dad and I have a plan,” I said.

  “For what?” she demanded impatiently.

  “For you,” I said. “For what you’re going to do.”

  “Oh, yeah? What am I gonna do?”

  “You’re going to move to New York.”

  She stopped short. “I am?”

  “You’ve been talking about how much is there for you,” Frank explained, “in terms of getting work in the music business. Seems like that’s where the action is. So we think you should give it a shot.”

  Nancy sat down and lit a cigarette, now very interested in what we had to say.

  “You’ll need a place to live, of course,” I said. “You and I could find you an apartment, someplace nice. Nothing fancy—”

  “I wouldn’t need anything fancy.”

  “Right,” I said. “Maybe in the two-hundred-dollar-a-month area. Until you find yourself a job, typing or in the music business or whatever you want, we’ll cover your rent for you.”

  “Six months,” Frank said. “That’s how long it should take you to get on your feet. We’ll give you half that for another six months. After that, we’ll still be here for you financially if you run into trouble. But we don’t think you will. We think you can handle the responsibility of supporting yourself.”

  We never said to Nancy “You can’t live here anymore.” Nor did we explain why we’d come up with this plan. We simply laid it out for her. We wanted her to think of it as a positive step, an opportunity. In truth, we weren’t sure she could handle the responsibility. But there was only one way to find out.

  She didn’t have to think it over for long. “I could do that,” she said. “Yeah, I could do it. It sounds real good. I’ll get a job in the music business. Yeah. Great. Let’s do it!”

  It was the beginning of November. We picked December first as the target date for Nancy’s move.

  I can’t say Suzy and David clapped their hands when they were told that Nancy was moving to New York, but they did seem relieved.

  She and I took the train to New York the following week. She circled apartments in the Times classifieds and we discussed the relative merits of the different neighborhoods. When we got to Penn Station, I left her to start looking while I took care of some business. By the time I met her in the afternoon, she’d found a one-bedroom apartment on West Twenty-third street, in Chelsea, that she liked. It was two hundred dollars a month. She took me there. It was about half a block west of the Chelsea Hotel, a nice bright ground-floor apartment in an elevator building. It was clean and freshly painted. The bathroom and kitchen were new. She was very excited about it. I said okay and gave the landlord a deposit. Then we took the train home.

  Nancy spent the next two weeks earnestly packing and accumulating old furniture and dishes. From our basement she took an old sofa and a round, wrought-iron and glass patio table. She took her bedroom set, bed, bookshelves, and plastic milk crates for her records. We made plans for a few of her friends to rent a U-Haul and help her take it to New York the day after Thanksgiving.

  I felt very sad watching her pack her things, not because she was leaving but because it had come to this. She was going off to live in New York by herself. She was only seventeen. In many ways she seemed so much older. In other ways, so much younger. I held out hope that she would at last find her niche there.

  A few days before she left, Frank and I were driving in the car when he said, “Deb, I … I’ve been thinking. Now that Nancy’s going away …” He trailed off, swallowed. “It seems like we don’t have any life together. I’m unhappy, you’re unhappy. Maybe we should just split up. Start over. I’ll take David. You take Suzy.”

  “I know, I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  We drove along in silence for a moment.

  “So do you want to?” he asked.

  “To tell you the truth, I sort of did until I heard you say it out loud. Now I don’t know, Frank. We’ve been through so much in this past year. So have Suzy and David. Maybe we owe it to them—to us—to try it for a while without Nancy in the house. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe we’ll have the life we wanted. I still want it with you, nobody else.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “
Why don’t we give it a try? Give it six more months?”

  He thought it over, agreed to wait it out. Agreed a bit reluctantly, I think, but it turned out for the best. The question of our splitting up never came up again.

  On the day before Thanksgiving I came home to find a mysterious message for me: “Call Murray’s Delicatessen and tell them when you want your turkey.” I had no idea what this was about. I phoned Frank, but he didn’t either. So I phoned Murray’s Delicatessen. They asked me what time on Thanksgiving Day I wanted to pick up my turkey. I was still very confused until I was able to determine I’d won a fifteen-pound turkey with all the trimmings in a raffle contest. I was delighted, of course. However, I explained, I’d never entered any raffle. They said I had.

  As it turned out, several weeks earlier Nancy had filled out a raffle ticket in a shoe repair shop in the same shopping center as Murray’s. It was she who had won the turkey. She had left me the mysterious message as a surprise.

  It was delicious, and the meal was a special experience. Nancy was so delighted about winning the dinner that she was in high spirits throughout it.

  “I won this dinner for you, Mom,” she beamed.

  We had a lovely, happy time, the five of us together. If someone had looked at us through the window, we’d have seemed like a happy, prosperous, healthy, loving family enjoying being together on the holiday. For those few hours I think even we believed that this was so.

  The next morning her friends came by with the U-Haul. We loaded up her belongings and furniture. Then we said good-bye. Nancy kissed each of us quickly.

  “I can’t wait to get a job,” she said. “You’ll come and visit, okay?”

  We said okay. She drove off.

  Then the four of us went inside the house, closed the door, and looked at each other. After a moment there was a collective sigh of relief.

  My work took me to New York two weeks later. Nancy and I made plans for me to drop by. When I did, I was very pleased. Nancy had made a nice, tidy home for herself in the Chelsea apartment. It was clean, organized, and well equipped. The dishes were done; the bed was made. She looked happy and healthy. She proudly showed me around her place.

  She’d arranged some stools around the glass-topped patio table and thrown an artificial fur rug over our old sofa. Her huge record collection was stored in a wall unit constructed of plastic milk crates. In the bedroom was her dresser from home and a couple of Parsons tables as nightstands. She’d put the double bed on the floor and covered it with a plaid spread. In the bathroom was a litter box. She’d gotten herself a black kitten. I don’t remember what she named it except that it was “fuck you” in a foreign language.

  She opened up the linen cupboard, ran a hand over its contents.

  “See?” she pointed out. “I keep my sheets and towels in here.”

  Then she opened the kitchen cupboards to display the stacks of plates and cups and frying pans.

  “I keep my dishes and cooking shit in here.”

  Then she opened the refrigerator, which was well stocked with fresh produce, milk, eggs, and yogurt.

  “See? I have food. I buy groceries.”

  I thought to myself, What other seventeen-year-old could have moved to New York on her own and gotten completely set up in two weeks? There wasn’t a carton to be found anywhere.

  “You’ve done a lovely job, sweetheart. It’s really nice.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She glowed from my praise. “Thanks, Mom. I was kinda hoping you’d like it. Can I get you anything? A diet soda? I have diet soda.”

  “Please.”

  She opened the cupboard and took out a glass, then pulled an ice tray out of the freezer.

  “I’ll put some ice in it. I have ice.”

  She put several cubes in the glass, then filled it with diet soda and gave it to me. I took a sip from it.

  “Cold enough?” she asked.

  “Perfect.”

  “I mean, ’cause, I have more ice if you—”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “Great.”

  We sat down on the sofa and watched her kitten smack a rolled-up sweatsock around the room.

  “I’m looking for a job,” she said. “I typed up a résumé and I’m gonna hit the music magazines next week to see if I can get something. I’ll do anything they want, you know, file or type or answer the phone or whatever. It’ll happen.”

  “I’m sure it will, sweetheart.”

  “I met a couple of my neighbors. One of them’s a hooker. Oh, and you know who lives upstairs? You won’t believe it. Lance Loud! Remember, from the Loud family, the one that was on the TV series?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I went to Max’s. Max’s Kansas City. And CBGB’s. I mean, there’s really a lot going on here. You wouldn’t believe it. I met some people in bands. Good bands. Not plastic.”

  “Anyone I would know?”

  “Not yet, but you will. Yeah, there’s really a lot happening.”

  I left about an hour later, feeling positive about Nancy’s move. Maybe it would turn out to be good for her. She’d certainly gotten off to a good start.

  At home it seemed like life had gotten back to normal. Suzy, who was sixteen, was concentrating on art as a major subject. She didn’t have a boyfriend, but she had a lot of friends and baby-sat on Saturday nights. David, who was fourteen, played basketball nearly every day and did very well in his classes. He brought his friends home now. Since I seldom got home before six o’clock—especially on the days I was called upon to be in Upper Saddle River—Suzy and David were responsible for preparing dinner. I could count on them. Both of them were blossoming into reliable young adults, not to mention excellent cooks.

  With Nancy out of the house and the atmosphere much calmer, Frank and I became close and strong. We could relax at night, talk, make love, sleep in each other’s arms, knowing that no strangers were under our roof. We could leave the distributor cap on the car, money and keys on the table. It went unsaid, but life was better at home without Nancy.

  It was so pleasant that I wanted to be there more. When Western Union asked me to spend a greater part of the week in New Jersey (it was a promotion), I asked instead for a transfer that would allow me to spend more time with my family. It meant giving up a professional opportunity, but it was worth it to me.

  The first inkling we had that Nancy was having trouble in New York came on Christmas Day, one month after her arrival, two weeks after my visit. The four of us were at my cousin’s house for dinner, and Nancy called me there.

  “Mom … I … I …”

  “What is it, Nancy?”

  “Like … uh …”

  She sounded just like she had when she’d started phoning from Colorado—zonked, morose, her voice slurred.

  “… uh … I ain’t feelin’ so good.”

  “Are you sick?”

  Long pause.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you sick?” I repeated.

  “Oh … I don’t know, I don’t have … have no money. I can’t like, I don’t have no money. Can’t pay my rent. Nothin’ to … nothin’ to eat, Mom. Nothin’ … no food. I can’t get me no job. I ain’t got no … job. Nobody interested. Nobody wants me. Ya gotta send me money, Mom. Money.”

  I knew from her voice that she had found drugs—which kind I don’t know. Certainly, it was something hard. Frank and I had agreed not to send her money if she was on drugs. We would not finance her self-destruction.

  “Mom?”

  “I’ll send the rent money to your landlord.”

  “No, send it to me, Mom. Send it to me.”

  “No, Nancy.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the way it is.”

  “I want it. Send it … send it to me. Don’t you trust me? Don’t you, like, trust me, Mom?”

  “I’ll send it to your landlord.”

  “How’m I gonna eat?”

  “I’ll be up t
o see you tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  I went alone. Frank stayed with Suzy and David, who were on school vacation. I stopped at a market near her apartment and bought two big bags of groceries.

  She looked awful. She was pale and had dark circles under her eyes. She had a bad cough and was unkempt and dirty. This was unusual for Nancy. No matter how outrageous her appearance, she was usually clean. The apartment was a mess—dirty dishes and clothes everywhere. It smelled of overripe kitty litter. I was worried. She seemed really out of it.

  “Are you taking care of yourself?” I asked as I tidied up the kitchen and put the groceries away.

  “Been sick,” she replied weakly. “I been sick. Don’t … still don’t feel so good.”

  “Are you on something?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “If you need to go to a doctor—”

  “I don’t.”

  “If you do, let me know.”

  “Did you bring money?”

  “I bought you groceries,” I said.

  “Oh, right. Yeah … thanks. How ’bout money? Any money?”

  “No. Look, why don’t we get out of here for a bit? Get some fresh air, something to eat?”

  She nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

  She put on a ratty old fur jacket I’d never seen before.

  “Where’d you get that, sweetheart?”

  “Place on Saint Marks … where I work. Old clothes.”

  “You got a job?”

  “Just sort through the stuff. Coupla hours a week. Coupla … coupla bucks.”

  I took her to lunch at Feathers, a restaurant in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, just above Washington Square Park. She chain-smoked through the meal but ate her food ravenously. She showed me the clothing store where she was working—it was a seedy, damp place in a basement. Then we went back to her apartment. She kissed me good-bye woodenly and asked me again for money. I said I had none to give her. I didn’t really—I’d only brought an extra five dollars.

  “Please, Mom. You gotta give me some money. Please.”