And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (61 page)

“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.

We were wary of showing affection for one another, for fear that Nancy would get jealous. She needed all the love we had. She needed
everything
we had. This, too, was a problem.

So was the fact that Suzy and David now expected us to do the same things for them that Nancy had forced us to do for her—send money, for example. They resented it if we wouldn't or couldn't give them what we'd given Nancy. It was necessary for us to explain to them that Nancy had been the exception to the rule. Then we had to tell them what the rule was.

Our problems as a family were by no means solved overnight. But this was a start.

Unfortunately, in my own case, I found it hard to concentrate totally on the family's problems. I still needed to solve my own. The major one: finding something new to build my life around. Furnishing our new townhouse wasn't enough. Nor was my one day a week of work. I still felt purposeless. I still had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I had no drive.

One morning I just decided to stay in bed. I was feeling a bit under the weather anyway. I turned on the TV set and crawled back under the covers with a cup of coffee. I flicked around, settled on the Phil Donahue show, then into the pillows. Four couples were on. They all belonged to a group called Parents of Murdered Children. As they talked, I sat up abruptly in bed, moved closer and closer to the set until I was no more than a foot away, hanging on their every word.