And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (46 page)

Soon after our unpleasant brush with the press and notoriety, I received one of the two letters I got from Nancy while she was abroad. Actually, what she sent me was a Mother's Day card. It was only March, but the British celebrate Mother's Day earlier in the year than we do. It was a standard Mother's Day card with a couple of standard rhyming verses about how sweet and thoughtful a mom I really, truly was. Underneath and across the back, she scrawled:

Underneath, in his own childlike scrawl, Sid wrote:

Luv from Sid XXXXXXX

And underneath that, Nancy added:

I read the letter over several times in amazement. This was clearly not the letter of a girl who was repudiating her upbringing. Far
from it; this was a girl who hoped her mother was happy that her daughter “had finally found a guy and settled down.” Had I not known the circumstances, I'd have been justified in jumping to the conclusion that her “Sidney” was a nice Jewish dentist.

Something else about the letter amazed me—its tone. It was unfamiliar. After I'd read the letter over again, I realized what it was.

Nancy was genuinely happy—possibly the only time she had been in her entire life.

She stayed that way for a short time. A very short time. The life that she and Sid had together was constructed around drugs and his fleeting fame and wealth. They could stay happy only for as long as they were able to hold on to their health and his money.

She phoned me from Paris that spring, her voice filled with childlike enthusiasm.

“I'm traveling, Mum,” she exclaimed. “Just like I always wanted to. It was so bloody moldy in London and it's so
beautiful
here.”

“It sounds wonderful, sweetheart,” I said.

It did sound wonderful. I'd always dreamed of being able to go to Paris in the spring.

“Oh, it is! My Sid bought me real French underwear.
Black.”
She giggled. “And shoes.
Charles Jourdan
. And we eat every night in this great little restaurant and have wine and they're so bloody
nice
to us. They don't make any kind of big deal over us or anything. They're just
nice.”

I got a postcard from her a few days later. It was a picture postcard of the Eiffel Tower. On the back she wrote:

Now it sounded like she and her dentist were on their honeymoon.

She and Sid spent an idyllic month together in Paris. Inevitably things began to turn sour for them when they got back to London.

First Nancy's health gave out. It was sometime in June, a few weeks after they got back. A hysterical phone call woke me in the middle of the night. A child was screaming and crying.

“My baby! She's my baby! She's in pain! My baby's in pain!”

I finally realized that child was Sid.

“Sid? Is that you?”

“Yes, Debbie,” he sobbed. “Nancy. She's in pain. I don't know what to do. Tell me. Oh, please. Tell me.”

“What is it, Sid?
What's
bothering her?”

“Her insides!”

“Have you called a doctor?”

“A doctor?”

“Can you call a doctor, Sid?” I asked, very slowly.

It was morning there. The doctors would be in their offices.

“Yes,” he replied. “Yes. A doctor.”

“Okay, Sid. Take Nancy to a doctor. And have the doctor call me. Can you do that, Sid? Can you take Nancy to the doctor?”

“Yes, a doctor. I'll do that, Debbie. I'll do that.”

The doctor phoned me a few hours later to say that Nancy was suffering from a severe infection of the fallopian tubes.

“I'm afraid I'll have to hospitalize her, Mrs. Spungen,” he said. “But she'll be fine, I think, in a few days. And there's a very nice young man here who's very worried about her.”

Nancy stayed in the hospital until she was well enough to want out. Sid took her home to their little house in Maida Vale and vowed to be her nursemaid. He also promised to call me every day at the same time to report on her progress. He kept both promises.

“She's already doing better, Debbie,” he said on her first day back. “I fed her yogurt with a spoon and gave her her medicine. I'm taking care of her. I gave her lemonade. Here, she wants to talk to you. Here's Nancy. Here's our little girl.”

Nancy got on the phone.

“Hi, Mum,” she said weakly. “He's so sweet, isn't he? Isn't my Sid sweet?”

“Is everything all right, Nancy?”

“I'll be okay. My Sidney's here. I miss
you
, though. Can't you come over? Can't you be here to take care of me, too?”

“I … I don't know. I'll have to let you know.”

I wanted to see her. I hadn't seen her for fifteen months, and she was ill. But I was afraid. She'd told me about the beatings she and Sid had suffered.

“Would I be safe?” I asked.

“Nobody will touch you, Mum,” she assured me. “I'll watch out for you.”

I wasn't so sure. Hers was an alien life. There was danger in it. I was against going—until I got a letter from her a few days later. This was her second and last letter from abroad. Actually it was a list. She catalogued the twenty-one places she wanted to take me in London, everywhere from Trafalgar Square to Harrods (“the English Bloomingdale's”) to Knightsbridge (“fancy shopping area”) to Oxford Street (“more shopping”). At the bottom of the list she concluded, “Don't forget to bring this list with you. Can't wait to see you. Everything is fine here.”

Now I was thinking I
would
go. She seemed so up and anxious to see me. We could have a good time together. A mother-daughter time.

I was just about to check out the fares to London when Nancy called me with a complete change of plans.

The second problem had arisen to doom Nancy and Sid's little life together: Sid's career. The Sex Pistols had broken up and he was having trouble catching on as a solo act in London—understandable, considering his lack of talent. He'd cut a single called “My Way,” but it failed to take off. His money was running out. Meanwhile, Malcolm McLaren had apparently lost interest in his creation. Clearly, Sid's novelty value had passed. (And genuinely talented performers—from Elvis Costello to Graham Parker to the Clash—had emerged to grab hold of the punk audience.) But Nancy and Sid failed to see it that way. They both thought he was a bona fide rock star, one who was simply in need of fresh, inspired management.

“I'm managing Sid's career now, Mum,” Nancy told me over the phone. “He's gonna be even bigger as a solo.”

In retrospect, here was a pathetic show business fantasy, one akin to Norma Desmond's hopeless dream of a return to screen glory in
Sunset Boulevard
. It wasn't going to happen. In retrospect, here was also rather touching loyalty. If Nancy had simply been a groupie, as some still suggest, this would have been the time to dump Sid—his career, such as it was, had ended—and move on to greener pastures. But she didn't. She stuck by him.

“He'll do better in the States, I figure,” she declared firmly. “So we're comin' back for good. End of August or so. As soon as we get to New York, I'll bring Sid down to meet the whole family. We'll stay for a while. Won't that be great?”

Nancy was coming home.

The prospect stirred bad memories. Not memories of the public Nancy, the punk Nancy, but memories of our private Nancy, the
one we'd grown up with. That experience was far more frightening than anything I'd ever read about the punks.

Nancy was coming home.

I was afraid. I was afraid of my own feelings. I was afraid I'd get hysterical when I saw her, that I'd cry for that sweet-smelling baby, that lost Nancy.

Nancy was coming home.

We could not deny her that right. All we could do was try to control the situation. We decided to put them up at a nearby Holiday Inn rather than have them stay in the house with us. It made practical sense anyway, what with Nancy's room now being Frank's office.

I informed Nancy of this when she called just before she and Sid cleared out of London. She got very upset—she thought I was telling her she couldn't come. I explained that she and Sid were welcome to stay as long as they wanted, but that we'd thought they'd be more comfortable at a hotel.

“Oh, okay, Mum,” she said. “That's all right. Listen, I'll be sending some of our stuff to your house to keep until we get a flat in New York, okay? We'll be staying at the Chelsea when we get in. Our flight is on August the twenty-fourth. That's a Thursday. We'll check in at the hotel, then come down Friday. Doesn't that sound great?”

A knot formed in my stomach as a response.

Everyone in the family grew more and more anxious as the day approached. It so happened that at this time Suzy was in the process of moving into her own small studio apartment in Philadelphia. She was now nineteen. Her year off from school had been good for her confidence. She had applied to and been accepted by several art schools. She'd chosen the Phildelphia College of Art and was all set to start that fall. Since her classes were early in the morning, she'd decided to take an apartment in the city. I kept myself occupied during the days before Nancy's return by helping Suzy furnish it. I helped her pick out a platform bed and table. We bought a shower curtain. We packed up her clothes and things and Frank moved them by the carload.

It was a little sad helping her move. It meant that there was only one child home now. David, who'd spent the summer away as a camp counselor, was about to enter his senior year of high school.

Suzy was about halfway moved into her own apartment the day that Nancy and Sid came to visit in suburbia.

Frank and I were at the Trenton train station on time, but the train from New York was twenty minutes late. I was so agitated I couldn't sit still. Same with Frank. We paced up and down the platform in opposite directions, each of us lost in our thoughts.

“I hope the weather's nice this weekend,” Frank mused aloud at one point when our paths intersected.

“What?” I snapped.

“The weather. Nice.”

“What for?”

“So they can use the pool.”

“Oh, right.”

We resumed pacing.

The train pulled in. Commuters spilled out of the doors and shoved their way across the platform to the escalators. I craned my neck in search of my Nancy. I couldn't spot her.

Then the air was pierced by a loud
“Mum!”