I could start to live again. It wouldn’t be easy. But I wanted to now. I had to. I suddenly realized I had to give purpose to all those years of anguish. I owed it to myself. I also owed it to Nancy. I had to keep my promise. I could do it. I was tough. I’d made it this far. Somehow I was going to make it the rest of the way. Somehow I was going to survive.
I removed the noose from around my neck, called Paula.
“I just heard the news,” she said. “How do you feel? Relieved?”
“Empty,” I said hoarsely. “I feel empty.”
“You’re off the hook now. You have your privacy back. Your life.”
“I know,” I said. “But I have no life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was thinking about suicide a little while ago,” I said, fingering the noose in my lap.
“Are you still?”
“No.”
“Good. That’s not an answer. That’s quitting.”
“I know. It’s just that, well, like I said. I have no life.”
“You’ve made real progress. I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“You are?”
“Yes. It means you’re coming to grips with the reality of Nancy not being here anymore. You built your old life around Nancy. Everything you did was a response to her. That was your old life. Now you need a new life.”
“You mean, I have to build my life around something else.”
“Exactly.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll find it.”
“I may need help.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Have you found me another mother?”
“Not yet. Still looking.”
I hung up, heard a creak on the stairs. I turned, saw Nancy coming down from her room to model the new ski outfit she’d bought back from Colorado.
The house was haunted. Everywhere I went in it, I still saw Nancy. Everywhere I went outside of it, I saw phantom reporters jumping out from behind bushes. I saw neighbors whispering.
We had to move out. That would be step one of my new life. A fresh start. Rooms that Nancy had never been in. Chairs she’d never sat in.
I wanted to move back to the city. I was born and raised there; it was my home. I wanted out of suburbia—out of Nancy’s house, out of Nancy’s street, out of the markets and stores where people murmured about Nancy when they thought my back was turned.
My mind made up, I went back to the garage and looped the noose around the support I’d planned on using. I left it there for three weeks. I left it because I wanted someone to see it and realize how much pain I was in. And to help me. But nobody noticed it. Not Frank, not Suzy, not David. They were in too much pain themselves.
That night I told Frank I wanted to move. I didn’t tell him that moving was crucial to my survival. But that much he could see.
“If it’s something you feel strongly about,” he said, “then go ahead and take a look.”
Frank’s niece was a realtor in an area I liked called Society Hill. It had quiet, tree-lined blocks of renovated townhouses adjoining an old market square, near the water. I called her immediately and made an appointment to drive around the next day and look at houses. I was determined to find a place that first day, and I did. I asked Frank and David to come and look at it that evening. They were overwhelmed by my urgency, but they agreed. Suzy refused. She saw moving out of our house as a betrayal of Nancy.
“You wanna sell my sister’s house right out from under her,” she snapped.
It particularly bothered her that the house I liked had only three bedrooms, not four. But I didn’t concern myself with Suzy’s feelings, or anyone else’s. I couldn’t see past my own survival.
We bought the house. Our house in Huntingdon Valley—our dream house—was sold in a week. So was the furniture. I wanted everything to be new.
The builder was still putting the finishing touches on our new house. As soon as the paperwork was settled, I drove into town to check out his progress and see how soon we could move in.
It was a sunny winter day. There wasn’t too much traffic on the expressway. The heater was on in the car; my hat and gloves were off. I was feeling a little better, now that I could look forward to being in a new house. My chest still ached, but I felt I could endure it. I was no longer contemplating suicide.
Suddenly I felt something hot on my hands.
I looked down. My hands were drenched with tears. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. Twenty years’ worth. They were finally pouring out on their own. I couldn’t stop them. My vision began to blur. I was afraid I’d lose control of the car. I pulled over to the emergency lane, barely able to see the other cars on the road. When I’d come to a safe stop and turned off the motor, I broke down and sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed uncontrollably. I cried a torrent of tears. Tears of frustration, anger, pain, grief.
I cried for my baby.
Finally, I had time to cry for my baby.
Chapter 26
I encountered a great deal of heel-dragging when the new house was ready for us to move into. Nobody would help me pack up our things. Frank, it turned out, had changed his mind. He said he loved our home and was sorry we were leaving it. David echoed that sentiment.
“So why didn’t you speak up? Why didn’t you stop me from buying the other place?” I demanded of them. “Why didn’t one of you say ‘Don’t do it’?”
Frank shrugged. “I didn’t think I cared one way or the other.”
“Me neither,” said David.
“But now that the time has come,” added Frank, “I guess I do.”
“It’s too late now,” I protested.
“I know,” he replied sullenly.
I packed up our things and arranged for the move itself. It was not considered “our” move. It was “my” move. So be it. My friend Susan came over the day the movers arrived to help me transport the cats and the valuables. Then we got in the car and drove off to the new house. I never looked back at Nancy’s house.
There were no carpets or drapes in the new place yet and, even after the movers had unloaded everything from our old house, very little furniture. I spent part of my first afternoon in the new house hanging sheets over the bare windows so we’d have some privacy after nightfall. Then I walked around the neighborhood a bit. I went in and out of the nearby shops. I bought some groceries. And a bottle of champagne. Nobody recognized me. Nobody knew me. I was starting from scratch and I liked the feeling. It felt right.
I popped open the champagne when Frank got to the new house after work. I thought a small celebration was in order. He didn’t. He drank down one glass of champagne, then declared, “I don’t like it here.”
“Please, Frank,” I pleaded. “Give it time. It’ll be nice. Once we have carpets and drapes.”
He looked around for a place to sit down. There wasn’t one.
“And furniture,” he pointed out.
“And furniture,” I acknowledged.
“Tell you what,” he said, gathering up his coat. “I’m going to the Holiday Inn. Call me when the place is ready to live in.”
I waited for him to crack a grin. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.
I managed to talk him into staying. David arrived. He was very positive. He assured me that the place was nice and he’d be very happy in it. I could tell he hated it. The three of us had a silent dinner at a nearby restaurant, then Frank and I went out to look at furniture.
I’d been looking forward to this. I thought we’d have fun shopping together for pieces for the new house. We had some money—we’d gotten more for the old place than we’d spent on the new one. But Frank was very noncommittal when I pointed out living room furniture that appealed to me. He just shrugged. Then he began to yawn. He took a walk while I looked at furniture.
When he came back he said, “Next time you want to go look at furniture, go without me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have the time.”
“But what should I buy? How will I know if you’ll like it?”
“Just buy whatever you want.”
This was not working out at all. I tried to get Frank to open up, but he wouldn’t. We had nothing to say to each other in bed that night, or the following morning. The doorbell rang about an hour after he and David had gone.
I opened the door to find two police officers.
“Mrs. Spungen?” one of them asked.
I nodded. I was devastated. They’d caught up with us in one day. Surely, the press would be quick to follow. There was no pulling away, no fresh start. They wouldn’t let us live.
“We wondered if we could ask you a few questions,”
“About what?” I asked, hoarsely.
“The murder.”
“I’ve already been over it a hundred times with the NYPD, the DA’s office—”
“This is a local matter, Mrs. Spungen,” said one of the officers, confused.
“What is?” I demanded, equally confused.
“There was a woman murdered in this courtyard last night.”
“There was?”
“Yes. We were wondering if you’d seen or heard anything.”
“N-no. Nothing.”
They asked a few more questions, but I had no information for them. I closed the door. I was relieved that our notoriety hadn’t followed us, but frightened that violence had.
Later I met one of my neighbors, a particularly nice young woman who lived next door with her husband. She invited me over for coffee. When we were inside her house, she disappeared into a bedroom for a second. When she returned she was carrying a three-month-old baby girl.
She cooed at her groggy little baby, tickling and caressing her. I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t stand to look at the baby. I still saw my own baby, my little Nancy, with needle marks on her soft baby hands.
“My goodness, what’s wrong?” asked my new neighbor, alarmed.
Tears were pouring down my face, just as they had in the car. A puddle was forming on this poor woman’s dining room table.
“N-nothing,” I blubbered.
“Did I do something to upset you?”
“No. Nothing. I have to go. I’m … I’m expecting a delivery.”
I took a raincheck on the coffee, left hastily for my own house. She was confused and a bit insulted, I think. Once I was inside my own home, I sobbed and sobbed. I wished I could look at a baby again. Would I ever be able to? Would the wounds heal?
This crying business was starting to become a regular thing. It seemed that now that the floodgates had opened, I couldn’t close them. All those tears I’d shed inwardly were coming out. That afternoon, for instance, there was a story on the local TV news about a seven-year-old girl who would die soon without a kidney transplant. I felt her pain. Tears started to stream down my face again.
I cried on February 27, 1979, the twenty-first birthday Nancy vowed she would never live to see. The four of us visited her at the cemetery. We laid flowers on her grave. All of us cried, then we put our arms around each other for support. Suddenly Suzy broke away from our little circle and moved several steps away. She did not want to be part of us. There was anger in her face.
A wave of incredible sadness washed over me. It saddened me that Suzy could not make peace with Nancy, with herself, or with us. It saddened me that our family seemed to have come apart even more than before. I wondered if we would ever be whole again.
Paula was pleased that I was starting to cry a lot. She said it was a positive sign that I was releasing my grief.
Then I told her the family wasn’t doing very well.
“We’re not talking,” I said. “Frank just sort of grumbles and complains. David isn’t communicating his feelings to me, which isn’t like him. Suzy is turning her back on us.”
“Do you know why?” she asked.
“At first I thought everybody was mad about the move. I don’t think so now. I think it’s more than that.”
She nodded. “You’ve been through a lot of trauma and change. You still have to adjust to it as a family.”
“How?”
“Remember when you first came to me, I suggested you might need family network therapy after each of you had handled your individual grief?”
“Yes, I remember. Do you think it’s time for that?”
“I do. We have to make you a family again. A family of four.”
I was all for it. So was David. Frank groused but went along. Suzy was the hardest to persuade. She agreed to come only with the understanding that she need not speak if she didn’t feel like it.
Her therapist and Paula joined the four of us. We sat around in a circle.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” said Paula.
We all nodded in assent. This was followed by silence. Then more silence. The four of us suddenly seemed very uncomfortable with one another. Throats were cleared. Eyes wandered. We were like strangers.
“Go ahead,” Paula urged.
“What exactly are we supposed to do?” I asked.
“Talk to each other,” she said.
“About what?” asked Frank.
She thought this over. “Perhaps a little direction might be helpful. A starting point. How about if we go around the family, and each one of you gets something off your chest. Why don’t each of you mention something you really regret. Whatever comes to mind.”
Suzy started to speak.
“Other than the fact that you’re here,” Paula said, anticipating Suzy’s comment with a chuckle.
We all laughed. That broke the ice a little.
“Frank, why don’t you start,” said Paula. “What do you regret most?”
“About Nancy?”
“About anything to do with the family.”
Frank thought it over. “Okay,” he said. “I regret … the thing I regret most is that Nancy and I were never able to get together. We were always at each other’s throats. We were never able to just hug each other and say ‘I love you, even if we don’t always see eye-to-eye on things.’ I’m sorry that never happened … and, well, that it never will.”
“Okay,” said Paula. “Comments?”
The rest of us just looked down. We had nothing to say.
“Suzy?” asked Paula.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to share your regret with us?”
“Yeah. I’m pissed that my folks moved out of our house so fast. It’s like, well, it’s like they want to pretend Nancy never existed. I don’t think she’d like that. It was just really hasty. And they didn’t talk it over with us. No explanation, nothing.”
“I did, too,” I protested.
“Did not,” Suzy insisted.
“I did,” I said. “I told David why I needed to move.”
“Excuse me,” said Paula. “Why didn’t you tell Suzy?”
“Because she was upset about it,” I replied.
“Obviously,” said Paula. “So why didn’t you talk to her about it?”
I looked from Frank to David to Suzy. Then I turned to Paula. “I guess I was afraid of her reaction. We all walk on eggs with each other. We always have, because of Nancy. You see, with Nancy, to confront her about something she was angry about, or you were angry about, well, that would pretty much guarantee an explosion. So if I got mad at her I’d tell Frank, and then he’d tell her. Or vice versa.”
Frank nodded.
“By using a go-between,” I went on, “we could limit the size of the explosion. We’ve always used go-betweens for each other in our family. It’s just our way. It’s automatic. I don’t even realize it anymore. It’s not conscious or anything like that. I guess that’s why I told David about why I needed to move, instead of Suzy—figuring she was mad about it, and it would work out better if she heard it from him. She wasn’t mad at him. He could explain it without the explosion.”
“But I still didn’t understand your reasons,” objected David. “
And Suzy and I really haven’t had a chance to talk much lately, anyway.”
Suzy turned to me, scowling. “You could have talked to me about it directly,” she said. “I’m not Nancy, you know.”
Paula suddenly got up, grabbed an empty chair and made room for it in our circle.
“As long as Nancy’s here,” she said, “we may as well pull a chair up for her and ask her to sit down.”
We all stared at the empty chair.
“What I’m saying,” Paula went on, “is that Nancy is not here anymore. She’s loved and she’s missed. But she’s not here. The purpose of these sessions is to get rid of that chair, for you to stop behaving and making decisions around her. You’re a family of four now, not five. What we’ve just been talking about here is a perfect example, this walking-on-eggs business. You seem to have gotten into the habit of talking in triangles with each other instead of talking one to one. Maybe it was necessary before. Whether it was or not isn’t the issue. The main thing is, it isn’t anymore. Nancy’s not here. You can talk to each other. I’m not going to tell you how to talk to each other. All I’m saying is, you’re not.”
The four of us nodded at one another in acknowledgment. She was right. Nancy’s presence was built into the way we interacted as a family. The roles we adopted, the manner in which we thought and communicated, all dated back to the way our house had been during Nancy’s formative years. Without realizing it, we’d stayed in our Nancy-oriented patterns—even after she’d gone off to Darlington, then Colorado, then New York, then London. The patterns were still with us now, even though she was not.
We met several times in family network therapy over the next few weeks and became increasingly aware of how Nancy’s presence was built into how we were with each other. We didn’t just talk in triangles. We also tended to hold on to our personal preferences and opinions about things rather than voice them—this in deference to Nancy, who had always ended up getting her way. After so many years spent giving in to what Nancy wanted to do, we’d all gotten accustomed to just saying “I don’t care” instead of voicing our true feelings. It had been easier that way. But now it served only to keep us apart. We were strangers with one another.
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) Page 44
