And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (33 page)

“If you don't let me have the car,” she threatened, “I'm going to take my fists and put them through a window.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way, Nancy,” I said. “And I understand that you're upset.”

“Then I can have the car?”

“No, you cannot.”

“You'll be sorry!” she cried.

She ran upstairs. A door slammed. Then there was a tremendous smash of broken glass and a scream. Frank and I ran up the stairs.

Nancy was in the bathroom. She'd followed through on her threat. She'd rammed both hands through the bathroom window and, since it was winter, the second storm window too. There was blood and broken glass everywhere.

“See what you made me do?” she screamed, holding out her bloodied hands, one finger nearly severed. “See what I had to do?”

Fine. We had done what we were told. We had called her bluff. Look where it got us. Clearly, she was
not
responding to this kind of treatment. Clearly, she was
not
controllable.

What were we going to do with her?

We took her to the hospital. A doctor in the emergency room stitched her up. He said she'd severed the tendon of the dangling finger, which meant she'd have to see a hand surgeon. I took her on Monday. He fitted her with a splint and said she'd need to wear it for two weeks. Surgery might be required if the splint didn't do the trick.

“I want surgery now!” she demanded.

“It might not be necessary. It might heal itself,” he explained.

She began to scream and call him vile names. He began to scream and call her vile names. She stormed out. He refused to see her again. As it happened, she didn't wear the splint and it did heal.

Frank and I related the entire incident to the therapist that week. His eyes widened in shock and horror.

“I didn't realize she was this disturbed,” he said. “She's much more disturbed than I thought. I don't know what she'll do to herself—or to someone else—if we continue on this path.”

“You mean you don't think it's going to work?” Frank asked.

“I can't see you anymore,” he said. “I'm sorry. I can't help you.”

Another door slammed in our face—the last door. This was the last time we sought therapy or professional help for Nancy. We had tried every known form and failed. We had tried committing her and failed. No one would keep her. We had run the gamut, exhausted every possibility. She was our problem, our responsibility. No one else existed who could help us.

We were alone.

Nancy still had her juvenile hearing to face in Philadelphia. The subpoena arrived about a month after the accident. Nancy and I went with our lawyer. The hearing took place in a crowded, open courtroom. I had hoped, perhaps foolishly, for help from the court—possibly some kind of intervention or supervision. Some magic.

This was not to be. The judge, an older man with white hair, lit into
me
with a fifteen-minute tirade about rich suburban parents who gave their children cars of their own and allowed them to do what they pleased, without discipline or supervision.

“What kind of mother are you!” he demanded. “How dare you give your daughter a car and let her drink and stay out until all hours! It's
your
fault!
You
caused this accident!”

Who was he to sit in judgment of me? He was insensitive and uncaring. I got angry. Nancy, however, got
furious
. She tried to protect me.

“Stop yelling at my mom!” she shouted.

“Nancy, keep quiet,” our lawyer hissed.

“You have no fucking right to yell at my mom!” she screamed. “Leave my mom alone!”

“Nancy, ssh,” he repeated, literally clamping his hand over her mouth.

The judge abruptly stopped his tirade.

“Not guilty,” he said. “Next case.”

We were momentarily stunned. Then we got out of there as quickly as possible.

“The facts just weren't there,” our lawyer explained in the corridor. “They had nothing on her.”

“I'll kill that motherfucker with my bare hands,” steamed Nancy. “He had no right to treat you that way, Mom. I'm real sorry.”

I think it was the first time—the only time—Nancy was made to realize that we had to take the brunt of the consequences for her actions.

“I'm just real sorry,” she repeated. “I don't
believe
that motherfucker. Don't worry, he'll die for this! I'll get somebody to kill him.”

At that moment we bumped into a man I knew through Western Union. He was an officer of the traffic court, and I had helped him set up a Mailgram billing system for parking tickets. When he saw how upset Nancy was, he invited us into his office, gave us coffee, and stayed with us until Nancy calmed down. He was very kind.

Nancy never forgot his kindness. Three years later he was being tried for accepting bribes. He asked me to be a character witness, and I agreed to. I mentioned it to Nancy over the phone. She was in New York with Sid. She immediately wanted to rush to the defense of this man who had been so nice to her.

“Hey, if he wants me to be a character witness, I'll be happy to go.”

I pictured her getting on the witness stand with her wild white hair, punk clothes, heroin track marks, and sickly, translucent skin. This was not exactly the sort of character witness he needed.

“I'll tell him, Nancy, but I don't think it'll be necessary.”

“Whatever it takes. I wanna help.”

“I'm sure he'll appreciate it.”

I've never forgotten Nancy's readiness to help someone who had once helped her. I've never forgotten that phone conversation. It was our last. She was dead four days later.

We didn't need a therapist to tell us that Nancy was going to have to find something to do with herself.

She got very upset when I suggested she go back to school somewhere.

“I won't!” she screamed. “You can't make me!”

“It's only a suggestion, Nancy.”

“I won't go! I just won't!” She ran into her room and slammed the door.

That was the last time college was mentioned as a possibility.

A job, then. We were determined she find work—so she would have not only money but some element of structure in her life. She was amenable to the idea. She wanted to have some money. She was qualified to be a salesclerk or a typist. Every morning she scanned the classifieds for jobs. Her geographical options were pretty limited—she was isolated in the suburbs and she wasn't allowed to drive. Her best option was to find something in Philadelphia, which was accessible by commuter train. She made phone calls, but nothing panned out. It was January. The Christmas rush was over. Stores weren't hiring.

One morning when I was going to work I saw a
HELP WANTED
sign in the window of the dress shop that was downstairs in my
building. Nancy rode into town with me the next morning, applied for the job, and got it. She began the next day as a salesgirl. The store was small and sold fashionable, youthful women's clothes. Nancy was excited about the job. She liked the girl she worked with, whose name was Randi. Randi introduced her to another girl, Karen, who worked at the store's other branch a few blocks away. The three of them had lunch together on Nancy's second day.

“Everything's working out,” Nancy enthused when she got home that night.

The manager of the store called early the next morning when Nancy was still in bed. I woke her up so she could take the call. Nancy spoke to the woman for a moment, hung up, and went back to sleep. I roused her a while later.

“You'd better get moving, sweetheart. Time to go to work.”

She said something into her pillow.

“What'd you say?” I asked.

She turned over, glared at the ceiling. “I don't have a job. She fired me.”

“Why?” I cried.

“No reason at all.”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart. We'll find you another job.”

“What's the point? I'll just get fired again.”

I wondered why she had lost the job, but it wasn't my place to intervene and find out. I never did learn the reason.

Nancy rolled over and went back to sleep. She was very discouraged about losing the job. It confirmed her negative self-image. In response, she closed this option off, just as she had school. She refused to look for another job.

She was only interested in two things from this point on—music and drugs. The harder the better.

She'd sleep all day, get up at about the time Suzy and David were coming home from school. After a cigarette and a cup of coffee she'd go up to her room and put a record on—she was big on Lou Reed now—and make plans on the telephone.

If it was a weeknight she'd usually stay home in her room listening to music, reading, and smoking. Sometimes she went over to see Don and Carol, an unmarried couple in their twenties whom she'd gotten friendly with. She often stayed out all night. She was no longer friendly with Linda and the neighborhood kids.

If it was a weekend, she'd take the train into Philadelphia and meet up with the two girls she had gotten to know at the dress shop, Randi and Karen. The store closed at six. The three of them
would go to Randi's apartment (Randi and Karen were older than Nancy, in their early twenties) and fix up their appearances.

Nancy's overall look was beginning to change from flower child to street tough. The workshirts gave way to tight black T-shirts. The patched and faded denim flares yielded to very tight new straight-legged jeans. She wore platform heels, the higher the better. At 5 feet 1 inch, she thought she was too short. She also began to wear a lot of eye makeup and plucked her eyebrows. Her lovely, full chestnut-brown hair was cut to shoulder-length shag and streaked blonde.

The three of them would go to
the
rock club, which in those days was a place called the Hive. It was their hangout. They would drink Black Russians—Nancy easily looked as old as the other girls and had no trouble getting served—and meet guys. When the Hive closed at two a.m., they'd move on to an after-hours club called High Society. It had a dance floor. They'd stay there until about five or six, and Nancy would come home on a morning train. She'd see the guys she met at these places one or two times—never longer. Always, there were drugs. The neighborhood kids, I later learned, were mostly smokers—marijuana and hashish—and LSD users. With her new friends, Quaaludes were the big drug. Karen didn't like to smoke, she recently told me. But what was enough for the other kids wasn't enough for Nancy. She had to get higher. According to Karen, Nancy began to shoot speed when it was available. Karen tried to talk her out of it—she was afraid Nancy would kill herself. That argument, of course, held no water with Nancy. She
wanted
to kill herself.

“She was always reaching for something that wasn't there,” Karen told me recently. “She needed for some guy to come along and set her straight, some nice guy. She'd do whatever a guy told her to.”

Years later Suzy told me that one afternoon when she came home from school Nancy called her into the bathroom. She was shooting up. She ordered Suzy to tie her off with the hose. Suzy, always the dutiful sister, did. Then she watched in horror as Nancy repeatedly punched at herself with the needle until she found a vein.

Years later David told me he answered the phone one Saturday morning. It was Randi. She advised him to check Nancy's room to make sure she was still alive.

“She took ten Ludes last night,” Randi said. “She took enough to kill a horse.”

David checked. Nancy was fast asleep. He tried rousing her, and,
after a moment, was able to get her awake—mumbling and cursing, one eye open. She was alive.

We didn't know this sort of thing was going on at the time. Suzy and David didn't tell us. They were afraid of incurring Nancy's wrath. They were also trying to protect us, I think. We did figure Nancy was getting stoned. We did know her neighborhood friends were troublemakers. But we had no idea how seriously drug-involved she was, or that Suzy and David were being forced to witness her exploits. Had we known at the time what was going on, I suspect we would have sent Suzy and David away from Nancy to boarding school. It would have meant depriving them of a family life, but it would have been our only choice. We couldn't do a thing with Nancy.

Where was she getting money for drugs? She stole some more of my jewelry. I was forced to begin to keep it locked up. Then she intercepted a $300 refund check from the University of Colorado, forged our signatures on it, and cashed it. When we discovered this and angrily confronted her, she made up three or four different stories. She said she'd get the money back from someone she'd given it to. We never saw the money.

We were not totally naive. We suspected even then that she was financing her drug usage by doing some low-level dealing. Three of the guys in the neighborhood were definitely dealers. She was often dropping by their places for a few minutes. Worse, they were often dropping by ours. They'd go up to her room with her, stay thirty seconds, then come downstairs, smirking. Never would they make eye contact with us on their way out. Who knew what they'd brought into our house. The thought terrified me.