And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (23 page)

“Fuck you!”

“I said put it out!”

“And I said fuck you!”

I heard two doors slam upstairs. Suzy and David were now hiding in their bedrooms. This had become their standard response when the yelling started.

Frank stopped, made an effort to control himself. He lowered
his voice. “Nancy, you're not going to smoke in this house.”

“I'll do what I want!”

“No you won't!”

“Yes I will!”

Frank crossed the room, yanked the cigarette from her mouth, and threw it in the sink. She immediately lit another.

He turned to me. “I can't deal with this.” He stormed out, stomped up the stairs.

Nancy laughed.

“Nancy, I wanted to tell you before Daddy got home … he's, uh, he's pretty down right now.”

Frank was, in fact, very down. Both of his parents had just suffered crippling strokes. Neither of them was able to talk or function, and he had had to place them in a nursing home. On top of the emotional burden, he now had to face closing down their jewelry store and selling their house. The strain had given him stomach ulcers. And a short fuse.

“He's got a lot on his mind,” I pointed out, “and he's not feeling that well.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Go easy on him.”

“I mean, I liked Grandma and Grandpa, too.”

“I know, sweetheart. But try to go easy on him, okay?”

She shrugged, popped a pickle into her mouth. “He's still an asshole.”

She simply didn't care about Frank's problems, didn't care about anyone but herself. I wished she hadn't come home. As soon as she walked in, the house revolved around her. She ruled us. She also created an immediate rift between Frank and me. I deeply resented it.

He resented it, too. His reponse had been to blow up at her. On the one hand, I was glad he had. I wanted to myself, but I couldn't. Why? Because I was afraid that once I started, once I let the lid off, I'd not be able to stop. I'd shake that meanness out of her; I'd slam her against the wall; I'd beat at her with my fists. I couldn't let that lid off, not only because I was afraid of myself but
for
myself. She had attacked me once with a hammer. Who knew what she was capable of doing if provoked?

It was vital to me to try to keep the emotional level turned down and to urge Frank to do the same. I went upstairs to talk to him. I tapped lightly on the kids' doors to let them know the storm had blown over, then went into our bedroom.

Frank was washing his face, his shirt off. He looked up. “How the hell can you let her just sit there, smoking in your face like that?” he demanded angrily.

“I was
dealing
with it, Frank!” I protested. “I was trying to reason with her about the health hazards and … and …”

“Reason
with her? What good is that going to do?”

“What good did
your
way do?”

“No damned good at all,” he admitted.

“Do me a favor?” I asked Frank quietly.

“What?”

“Try to be more patient with her. She's going to be here for four days. At least things will be quieter.”

He nodded with weary resignation. “Whatever you say.”

There was very little dinner conversation. When Nancy finished eating, she lit a cigarette. Frank and I kept quiet.

“Ugh,” said Suzy, who was still eating. “Why are you smoking?”

“Mind your own fucking business.”

Suzy fastened her eyes on her plate and kept them there. David's were already on his plate.

After dinner Nancy wanted to watch a particular show on TV in the den and sit in the easy chair. Suzy was already sitting in the chair, watching something else. Nancy changed the station.

“Hey!” Suzy protested.

“I don't wanna watch that,” Nancy snapped. “Get up!”

“What for?”

“I wanna sit there!”

“No!”

“Why don't you sit somewhere else, Nancy?” I offered.

She ignored me. “Get the fuck up, you little shithead!”

“No!”

“Get out of that fucking chair you fucking goddamned shithead!”

Frank spoke up. “Don't talk to your sister that way, Nancy.”

“Or what, asshole?”

“Or … or …”

Nancy crossed her arms, glared at him. “Go ahead, hit me, why don't ya?”

The color rose in Frank's face.

“Frank, don't start with her,” I cautioned.

“She
can't
talk to her sister that way!”

“You're rising to her bait! I
asked
you not to! Let it be!”

“You're rising to her bait by letting her get away with her crap!”

“Stop yelling,” begged David. “I'm trying to watch TV.”

“Don't
you
start opening your big fat mouth!” ordered Frank.

“Don't take it out on David!” I cried.

David stormed out, ran upstairs, and slammed his door.

Nancy still stood over Suzy. “I wanna sit in that chair!”

“Suzy, let her sit there,” Frank commanded.

“No,” Suzy said. “I'm sick of doing things just because
she
wants to.”

“Please, Suzy,” I begged. “It'll be easier if you do.”

“But it isn't
fair
, Mommy!” She sniffled.

“Suzy, I order you to get out of that chair at once!” yelled Frank.

She got up, fighting back tears, and angrily left the room. Her door slammed.

Nancy triumphantly sat down.

“You happy now?” Frank demanded of her.

“Shut the fuck up,” she said. “I'm trying to watch the show.”

Nancy still ran the household, just as she had when she was seven. Only now her impact was more pervasive, more insidious. She set us against each other, made us say and do things to each other we later regretted. She was the catalyst. Because of this relatively tiny incident—who gets to sit in a chair—I was angry at Frank, Frank was angry at me, David was angry at Frank, Frank at David, Suzy at both of us. This anger wouldn't just disappear when Nancy left. It would take us weeks to forgive and forget, weeks to erase Nancy's presence in the household. By then she'd be back home for another holiday.

Meanwhile, just as when she was younger, Nancy still delighted in manipulating, bullying, and dividing Suzy and David. She was still older and smarter. They, in turn, looked up to her, feared her, loved her. They played right into her hands.

Suzy was still her favorite victim. Whereas before she'd exclude Suzy from coloring or a game, now she'd deny her admittance to her inner sanctum, her room. Suzy had long ago stopped sleeping there.

When she first came back for Thanksgiving, for example, she flatly refused to let Suzy in her room. “You're fat and ugly,” she said. “I don't want you in here. Only my adorable, sweet baby brother.” Then she invited David in and closed the door on Suzy. David came gladly. It was a treat to hear Nancy's newest records and Lakeside Campus stories.

Just before Nancy went back to school after Thanksgiving weekend, she finally admitted Suzy to her room. Suzy joined her, thrilled. Nancy closed the door, put on a record.

“If I tell you something, you promise you won't tell Mommy?” Nancy asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“You better not, because if she finds out, I'll know where she heard it.”

“I won't,” Suzy insisted. “Tell me.”

“I get stoned all the time and I've taken acid seven times,” she announced triumphantly.

Suzy told me about it that night, wide-eyed with fear. “Don't tell her you know, Mommy, please. Please don't tell her. But I
had
to tell you. I don't want her to get in trouble.”

I assured Suzy I'd keep quiet. Then I sank into a chair, devastated.

I believed it this time.

I had seen and heard the other girls at Lakeside Campus. These were girls who either already used drugs or were prime candidates to be drug users. They were angry and rebellious. They were hurting. They were lonely—most of their parents lived out of state. And, as Brooke had told me, she couldn't watch them all of the time.

For Nancy, drugs were a natural outgrowth of her life. Drugs were a badge of rebellion and, for a thirteen-year-old, of maturity. They offered her a passport to a different, “better” reality. Drugs could take her somewhere else, take her where her beloved hard rock music was. She had continually been on prescription drugs since her infancy—to mask discomfort, restlessness, anger. It was only natural for her to move on to the illegal means to the same end.

I phoned Brooke. She denied that there was a drug problem at Lakeside Campus. Still, I believed it. Frank was ambivalent.

“She
might
experiment with grass,” he said when we were getting into bed that night. “But no way she's a user. She's exaggerating, Deb. To impress her kid sister.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she doesn't act any different. Don't you think we'd notice a change in her behavior if she'd taken LSD seven times? Even
one
time?”

“How would we be able to detect it? She'd start acting weird? She was weird before.”

“Good point.” He mulled it over. “Well, how about money? All she gets is twenty bucks a month, doled out by Brooke. And judging by the way she's going through cigarettes, that'll just about cover her in smokes. She hasn't got any money for drugs. Somebody
might turn her on once, but nobody gives grass and pills away for free.”

Now Frank had a point. Maybe she had only experimented once or twice and had stretched the truth to impress Suzy. We both wanted to believe that. Desperately.

Frank and I had a dinner party to go to a few nights after Nancy had gone back to Lakeside Campus. While I dressed I noticed that Frank was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear, staring at his knees. He was totally down. It hit both of us periodically: we worked hard, tried to be good people, tried to do the right thing, yet life just seemed to be an unending stream of misery. Nothing went right. When you looked around for causes, it was impossible to
always
blame Nancy. It was impossible not to say to yourself, “Maybe it's
me
. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I should go away, let the others flourish.”

I sat down on the bed next to him. “I think about it, too. Leaving.”

He seemed relieved that I knew what was going through his mind. “For somebody else?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“You know what stops me?” I said. “I ask myself how I could leave you to handle Nancy by yourself.”

He nodded. “I know. I couldn't leave you with her.”

“And if I did meet someone else and remarry, could I expect that someone else to understand her? Nobody else could. Just you and me. So even if we did split up, we'd still be together because of her. We'd have to deal with the phone calls, the traumas, the decisions. Nobody else would take that on.
Could
take it on.”

Frank said, “I was thinking the other day, when she was here, that she's like a wedge driving us apart. But you know, sitting here, talking like this, makes me realize that she also holds us together.”

“She sure does,” I agreed. “Like glue.”

“Do you think she knows it?” he asked.

“I don't know. I'm not so sure I've thought of it myself quite that way before.”

He smiled sadly, put his arm around me. “So what do we do?”

“Survive.”

He kissed me, got up, and went into the bathroom to shave. I finished dressing, then opened my jewelry box to discover that the one piece of jewelry I was most attached to was missing. I searched carefully through the box. It wasn't there.

“My diamond wedding band is gone,” I cried out, distraught.

“How do you know?” Frank asked, emerging from our bathroom with lather on his face.

“Because it's not here.”

“So maybe you misplaced it somewhere.”

“I didn't,” I insisted. “I keep very careful track of my jewelry. And I
always
put my wedding band back in the same spot. It's not there.”

“You saying somebody took it?”

“Somebody must have.”

“That's crazy. We haven't had a break-in. Is anything else missing?”

“No.”

“So who would have come in here and taken that one piece? And why? I didn't do it. Suzy wouldn't do it. Nancy wouldn't …” He trailed off.

We looked at each other sadly. Nancy
would
. And
had
. She had stolen my wedding band to buy drugs. She'd found a source of money. There was no doubt.

“I'll get you another one, Deb,” Frank said quietly.

Then he held me. He got lather all over my face and hair. I didn't care. I needed to be held. I felt so helpless.

Nancy came home a few weeks later for Christmas break. This time, Suzy reported to me, Nancy showed her a piece of paper with a man's name and address on it and said, “This guy deals right near campus. Everybody buys from him. I'm gonna buy an ounce of weed and some Ludes from him as soon as I get back.”

Then Nancy shoved the piece of paper into one of her textbooks.

As soon as Nancy went out for a walk, Suzy showed me which book. There was indeed a piece of paper with a man's name and address on it. I copied down the information and returned the paper to where I'd found it. I couldn't let Nancy know I knew. I couldn't confront her—if I did I'd get Suzy in trouble.

I phoned Brooke and gave her the information. She was far less skeptical when confronted with hard evidence. She thanked me and said she would contact the authorities. Later that night she called to say the police had arrested the man for possessing large amounts of marijuana, hashish, Quaaludes, and LSD.