And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (14 page)

I couldn't blame Nancy, actually. I disliked the group session myself. So did Frank. It didn't help that Frank and I were forbidden to attend the same group session.

Six or eight parents sat around in a circle. A doctor chaired the session. We just sat and stared at each other until someone spoke up. The doctor didn't speak until someone else spoke. One week I spoke up. I said I was upset with my mother because she was smoking excessively against doctor's orders. He yelled at me.

“Who are you to judge other people!” he barked. “In your own way, you know, you're not much better off!”

The doctor put everyone in the group down like that. It reinforced
your tentativeness and feeling of helplessness. You didn't come out feeling cleansed. You came out feeling like garbage. Nevertheless, Frank and I went every week for almost a year.

Frank complained bitterly about his group sessions, mostly because he said they never focused specifically on whatever was supposed to be wrong with our marriage. Actually, Frank didn't believe we had serious problems. He disagreed with the clinic staff that Nancy's difficulties were rooted in her home life. He felt something else was wrong with her. But he didn't have the confidence to disagree with the professionals, either.

In my individual sessions I met with a social worker, who functioned more as a liaison with Nancy's therapist than as a therapist for me. Each week I reported what had gone on at home since we'd last spoken. She passed on what I said to Dr. Blake, then reported Dr. Blake's comments back to me the following week. As the year went on, the events I reported became more painful and bizarre, the comments less and less helpful. Frank and I, meanwhile, grew to feel more and more helpless.

The first major episode I reported was prescription-drug-related. Drugs again. Nancy, who was continually plagued with allergies and respiratory infections, came down with a particularly bad throat infection and high fever shortly after we started at the clinic. Her pediatrician gave her antibiotics for the infection and recommended aspirin for the fever. When the aspirin failed to reduce the fever or the restless hyperactivity it was causing, he told me to fill a prescription for Atarax, a mild sedative, so she could rest. I did, and gave her one.

It was evening. The kids were in their rooms. Frank and I were watching TV downstairs. About forty-five minutes after Nancy had taken the Atarax I heard her screaming from her room. I also heard a loud, rhythmic thumping noise that was strong enough to shake the house. I ran up the stairs to Nancy's room.

She was sitting up in bed, banging her head repeatedly against the wall with tremendous force and pulling her hair out of her head in handfuls. Her eyes were glassy. She was screaming, a guttural, animal yell I'd never heard before.

“Nancy!
” I cried.

She was possessed, demonic. She was hallucinating and she had no idea I was there. I grabbed her by the shoulders, tried to wrestle her down on the bed so she'd stop hurting herself. In response she snarled, whipped around on the bed until she was free of my grasp. Then she sprang across the room to her bureau and began to
smash it with her fists. She pulled the drawers out, hurled them across the room, and kicked a leg out from under the desk, which toppled to the floor.

I yelled for Frank. He came immediately. Nancy didn't recognize him either. He wrestled her kicking and screaming back into bed—barely. She was very strong. She had his square, broad-shouldered build and was getting heavy.

Nancy lay on her back screaming, then abruptly stopped and began to sing random half-phrases of familiar songs like “Happy Birthday,” “I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Then she stopped and started to scream again.

“I'll call the doctor,” I gasped to Frank. “You hold her.”

“I'll try,” he replied.

I turned to find Suzy and David standing wide-eyed in the bedroom doorway in their pajamas.

“What's wrong with Nancy?” Suzy asked.

“She's upset. She's not feeling well,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Please go back to bed. Go to sleep.”

“But she's making so much noise.”

“Try. Please.”

They did. I ran to call the doctor.

“It must be an allergic reaction to the medication,” he said. “I must admit I've never heard of such a reaction to Atarax.”

“What should we do? Take her to the hospital?”

“No, keep her there. You'll just have to wait it out. Try to keep her from hurting herself.”

I was frightened and confused. It seemed to me that Nancy belonged in a hospital. I was genuinely afraid she was going to hurt herself or have severe convulsions or some other physical breakdown we wouldn't be able to handle. But the doctor was adamant. Again, who was I to argue?

I went back to her room and reported the doctor's recommendation to Frank. He had Nancy pinned to the bed. When he turned his head to listen to me, she squirmed free of his grasp and began to punch herself repeatedly in the face. He struggled with her until her arms were again pinned against the bed.

“Who are you?” she screamed. “Who are you people? Why are you doing this to me?
Why
?”

She began to laugh hysterically. Then she began to sing. Then she started to sob.

“Where is she?” she sniffed. “Where is she?”

“Where's who, Nancy?” I begged.

“Her.”

“
Who
?” Frank asked.

“The lady in the red dress. Where's the lady in the red dress. I want her. I want the lady.”

Dr. Blake had worn a red dress at Nancy's first therapy session. I phoned her at home. She agreed with the pediatrician that Nancy was probably suffering an allergic reaction.

“He said we should not take her to the hospital,” I reported.

“I agree,” she said. “Nancy will wake up there and think that she did something very bad. Then you will have to explain to her what happened. If you leave her in her own bedroom she will not remember the episode tomorrow. It will be better.”

Nancy screamed and sang and fought us the entire night. Suzy and David huddled in blankets on the den sofa, trying to sleep, while Frank and I took turns holding her down, wiping her off with cold cloths, making coffee to keep us going. By dawn the ferocity of the episode began to subside—the singing took over from the screaming. Then she began to talk.

“I know you,” she said to me abruptly.

“You do?”

“Yes, you're the nice lady from last night.” She looked over at Frank, who sat at her desk, bleary-eyed and stubbly. “And you're the nice man from last night.”

She began to sing gaily, like a drunk. At around nine o'clock she recognized us.

“Mommy, where were you all night?” she asked me.

“Right here, Nancy.”

“Oh.” She frowned, terribly confused. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Can I watch cartoons in your bed?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes. Please, can I?”

She got unsteadily out of bed and we walked hand in hand to our room. The bed was still made—Frank and I had never used it. I pulled back the covers and she got in, propped herself against the pillows, and began to happily watch Bugs Bunny, singing merrily. I brought her some breakfast and she ate hungrily.

Frank had promised Suzy he would go with her to buy a bicycle that Saturday, her very first two-wheeler. He shaved, showered,
and took Suzy and David out to buy the bike. He wanted to get them out of the house and calm their fears.

I stayed with Nancy. By the afternoon she was totally recovered and had no memory of the episode.

I ran into Dr. Blake in the corridor at the clinic when I went for my individual session that week.

“It was the Atarax,” she repeated. “It was a drug-related psychotic episode.”

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Don't give it to her again,” she snapped, then turned and walked away.

I didn't view this as particularly constructive. But the people at the clinic failed to offer much explanation of what happened in New York City a few weeks later, either.

Frank had a weekend convention there, and his company didn't mind if he took his family along. We got a family room with two double beds and a rollaway at the City Squire Hotel. On Saturday I took the kids shopping and sightseeing while Frank worked. Nancy was excited and happy the whole day. She bought some rock albums. She seemed to like New York. Saturday night I got a baby sitter for the kids while Frank and I went to dinner with some of his business acquaintances. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, the sitter reported. They ordered up from room service and watched TV. Nancy was no trouble. Sunday proved to be a gorgeous April spring day. The blossoms were on the trees; the sun was warm. After breakfast we took the children for a walk in Central Park so they could get some exercise before the drive home.

When we got into the park, we found ourselves amidst a swarm of young people with long hair, thousands and thousands of them. They were all heading for a large, open grassy area called the Sheep Meadow. Policemen were everywhere, setting up barricades, barking instructions to each other through walkie-talkies. Frank finally asked one of them what was going on.

It was a special event. The first anniversary of the musical
Hair
was being commemorated by a free performance of the show that day in Wollman Rink.

Needless to say, Nancy was thrilled at the chance to see her favorite rock album performed live.

“I wanna stay for it,” she said.

“We have to leave, Nancy,” I said. “It'll be too late to head back when it's over.”

“I wanna stay,” she repeated.

“Nancy, we're leaving,” Frank said firmly.

The clinic people had told us to be firm and not get into an argument with her.

We didn't get into an argument. Nancy simply evaporated. One minute she was there; the next minute she was gone into the crowd.

There were about 100,000 people sitting there in the grass in the sunshine. It seemed like all of them had flowing brown hair and wore faded blue jeans like Nancy. It was hopeless to try to find her.

We located a policeman and asked him to help us. He told us that the department had set up a temporary precinct headquarters behind the stage. He offered to take us there to talk to the district commander. Frank and I decided to split up. He took Suzy and David to the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel to wait. I went with the officer.

By the time we got backstage,
Hair
was underway. I reported to the district commander that Nancy was missing. He put out a general notification by walkie-talkie that there was a lost ten-year-old girl named Nancy in the park, with long brown hair, blue jeans, and a green and white T-shirt. Then he told me to wait there.

I did. I was terrified. What if she went off with someone? What if she were attacked? There were so many people out there. So much marijuana smoke. Who knew what could happen? I sat and waited.

At intermission the district commander asked Michael Butler, the show's producer, to make an announcement about Nancy. He went out on stage, went up to a microphone, and said, “We're looking for a lost little girl named Nancy Spungen.”

The immense crowd cheered derisively.

“That's Nancy Spungen,” he repeated. “Age ten. If you're out there, Nancy, come backstage. That's where your mom is. She's waiting for you.”

I waited there for her through the entire second act. She didn't show up. Then the show was over, and the performers and musicians were leaving and the crowd was beginning to disperse. Still there was no Nancy. The district commander kept shaking his head and apologizing to me. There was nothing more that he could do.

About an hour after the show was over, just when the temporary police headquarters was being dismantled, a call came in. A patrolman had found a girl who answered Nancy's description sitting on a park bench. He had asked her if her name was Nancy. She had failed to respond.

Somehow I knew it was her. A patrolman escorted me through
the rapidly emptying park until we met up with another patrolman, who had Nancy by the hand. I was so relieved, so happy to see her, that I ran up to her and hugged her.

She didn't return the hug. Her eyes were glazed. She didn't talk, didn't acknowledge my presence. The patrolman was concerned. He asked if I wanted him to call a doctor. I politely refused, thanked him for his trouble, and led Nancy away. We found Frank and the other kids at the Plaza fountain, where they'd been waiting for hours.

Frank was livid, until he saw That Look on Nancy's face. He said nothing. We were all afraid to say anything to her, for fear she'd start screaming and lose control. So we didn't punish her. We just plain didn't speak the entire way home. Nancy stared out the window. When we got home, she got out of the car, went up to her room, closed the door. She didn't come out or talk or eat for the entire night.

I was both angry and confused. Part of me felt that Nancy was in total command of herself, had run away because we wouldn't let her stay for the concert, didn't give a damn about the grief she'd put the rest of the family through. The glaze was a deliberate, calculated, defensive move to stop us from punishing her. She was simply a rotten kid.

Part of me wasn't so sure. Deep inside I felt that something Nancy had no control over had pulled her, that she wasn't responsible for her actions, that the glaze was a genuine one.

I asked myself if I was ever going to understand what was wrong with my child. I asked myself when this was going to end,
how
this was going to end.

The next day Nancy acted as if nothing had happened. She didn't mention the episode. I honestly couldn't tell if she was pretending not to remember so as to avoid my wrath, or if she really didn't remember. None of us could tell.