And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (24 page)

“Will you be searching the girls' luggage when they come back from vacation?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“I think some of them will be bringing drugs back with them
from home. At least that's what Nancy told her sister.”

“In that case,” she said, “I'll be searching the girls' luggage.”

And she did. When we brought Nancy back after the holiday, there was a long line of grumbling girls waiting to get up the stairs with their things. Brooke wouldn't let them up until she had inspected their luggage and purses.

Her search turned up numerous one-ounce bags of marijuana, grams of hash, and bottles of pills. She confiscated the lot.

Nancy's bags were clean. Brooke found no drugs in them. Nor did she find my opal pin or my Danish sterling silver ring. Those two pieces were missing from my jewelry box when we got back home.

I did confront Nancy about my jewelry. When she called a few nights later, I mentioned that several pieces were missing.

Her response was silence.

“My wedding band is gone,” I went on. “So is an opal pin and a silver ring.”

“Yeah, but they were insured, weren't they?” she asked.

“Yes, they were.”

“So you got nothing to worry about. You'll get your bread back.”

“That's not the point.”

“What is?”

“They were dear to me.”

“Oh. Gee, I'm real sorry, Mom. But I don't know anything about it.”

After we hung up I wrote Mr. Sylvester a letter. Lakeside Campus had no drug counseling program at that time. Seemingly, none of the supervisors knew they had a drug problem. I suggested he start a program. He agreed that it would be a good idea. A drug counseling program was started soon after that. I don't know if it helped any of the girls. I hope so. It did not, unfortunately, help Nancy.

The four of us pulled together as a family in Nancy's absence that winter, due to a bit of adversity. Frank took David skiing in the Poconos for a weekend and David broke his leg the first day—a bad compound fracture. He was in a cast for four months.

He was unable to go to school for the first few weeks. All he could do was mope around the house, bored and in pain. Afternoons, he sat with his nose against the living room window, watching the kids in the neighborhood—Suzy included—sled down their
driveways on the new-fallen snow. He was very unhappy.

One afternoon I was surprised to hear him crying from his living room perch. He was twelve and didn't cry much anymore. I went into the living room and found him face down on the floor, sobbing hysterically, kicking with his one good foot.

“I wanna die!” he screamed. “I wanna die! I wanna die!”

This was a Nancy thing to do and I was suddenly seized by terror. Could her behavior be spreading to another child?

I went to him, knelt. “Why are you crying, sweetheart?” I begged, heart pounding.

He put his head in my lap. “My leg hurts and I wanna go out and play.”

“You don't
really
want to die, do you?”

He thought it over. “No, I guess not. I'm just unhappy, Mommy.”

I hugged him tightly and planted kisses all over his face, laughing with relief. “That's right. You're just unhappy. That's right.”

But his Nancy-like behavior surfaced again the next afternoon. I panicked again. This time I phoned our pediatrician and told him about it. He told me not to be concerned.

“The first child tends to set the emotional tone of the household,” he explained, “whether positively or negatively. David is reacting to his unhappiness by doing what his older sister would do in response to pain. It's something he picked up. I wouldn't worry. Just try to make him happy.”

So we did. Frank made a special effort to get home early so the four of us could have dinner together. Then we would gather in the living room and Frank would make a big fire in the fireplace. We'd pop popcorn and play games. One evening Suzy brought her paints down—she was discovering both a love and a talent for art—and painted the foot of David's cast so it looked just like a Philadelphia Flyers skate, with laces and eyelets. Above that she painted a Flyers orange-and-black-striped sock. He was delighted.

Once David was able to go back to school, on crutches, the school bus driver was nice enough to stop in front of our house for him. But it seemed as though it never stopped snowing that winter, and David couldn't negotiate our walkway unless it had been shoveled. Suzy happily went out first thing every morning and shoveled it for him. Then she carefully tied a plastic bag around his foot. She grumbled good-naturedly, but she really enjoyed helping him, and he was grateful. Frank and I were delighted to see their relationship develop this way.

The night David had his cast taken off, the four of us went out
to dinner to celebrate. As it happened, the subject of drugs came up. Frank and I explained that it was important for them to understand that Nancy was troubled, that it was likely she was involved with drugs, and that drugs would do nothing but compound her problems. Suzy and David volunteered to keep us informed, in confidence. Then we advised them that they themselves might soon be exposed to drugs at school, and we wanted them to feel free to discuss the pros and cons with us, not sneak around behind our backs. They agreed. It was a good talk.

The phone was ringing when we got home. It was Brooke. Nancy had cut up her forearm with a pair of scissors.

Frank and I drove over the following morning.

Nancy was sitting on a sofa in the living area, reading a book. Her forearm was bandaged. I sat next to her on the couch and tried to hug her. She wouldn't let me.

“Why did you do that to your arm, Nancy?” I asked.

She looked down, depressed. “It's your fault,” she said softly.

“Our fault? Why, sweetheart?”

“I … I wanted to talk to you. You weren't home.”

“We just went out for a little while,” Frank said. “To eat.”

“If you'd been there, I wouldn't have done it,” she insisted.

“We're here now,” I said. “What did you want to tell us, Nancy?”

“I wanted to die,” she replied.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don't wanna be here.”

“Look, Nancy,” Frank said. “I don't want to go to work every day. I'd much rather sack in, go skiing, go see a movie. But you can't always do what you want. And just because you can't is no reason to end your life.”

“You have to adjust, sweetheart,” I added.

Nancy said nothing, just sat there in misery.

She was so unhappy with this place, with life. We didn't know how to cure her misery. I thought briefly about looking for a different school system to place her in—maybe Darlington
wasn't
the only game in town. But that seemed pointless. She'd be miserable anywhere.

In truth, we were having trouble affording the fee at Lakeside Campus. Frank was making a good living. My store was in the black. But a thousand dollars every month was a lot of money. We applied to the state of Pennsylvania for funding aid and were told that the state would indeed help parents of children the public
school system was unable to serve—provided those children were brain damaged. In those days the state would not aid the parents of socially or emotionally disturbed children who needed a boarding situation. Now they have to.

It was solely because of this ruling that Nancy was finally administered the neurological testing that the clinic director in Philadelphia, as I later learned, had recommended three years before. If a neurologist were to determine that Nancy was brain damaged, then the state would cover about half of her tab at Darlington.

Nancy's allergist recommended a neurologist, whose associate agreed to examine Nancy and give her the necessary EEG at a major teaching hospital in Philadelphia. Brooke agreed to let Nancy leave school for the day. Nancy took the train in by herself from Winfield on a drizzly spring morning. I met her at the station and drove her to the hospital.

The test results were inconclusive. The neurologist found no evidence of a brain tumor. Nor did he find
conclusive
evidence of brain damage caused by Nancy's troubled birth. However, after he had completed his testing and diagnosis, he admitted to me that the testing procedures were not very sophisticated or broad-based. He described Nancy as “living in a gray area.”

I later obtained a copy of his findings. His report to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, dated May 8, 1972, concludes:

Based on this report, the state granted us four thousand dollars in aid toward Nancy's annual fees with the Darlington school system. We were thankful for this.

And so, surprisingly, was Nancy. She wanted to stay now. Her attitude toward Lakeside Campus changed dramatically at this point. She didn't necessarily improve. She just found something else to occupy herself with. She met Jeff.

“I have a boyfriend in the band,” she told me proudly on the phone one day.

“That's nice, Nancy. What band?”

“The dudes in school. They got together with a band. Jeff plays guitar. Rhythm, mostly. Some lead.”

“Jeff is your boyfriend?”

“Uh-huh. Angela and Spring go with two of the other guys. We have a, like, well, it's like
family
. I mean, we hang out together and like kinda watch out for each other, you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Yeah, it's just really nice.”

I didn't know if the rock band was any good. I didn't even know if it had a name. All I knew is that Nancy had found a place for herself, an identity. She was a lady of the band.

We met Jeff when we visited Nancy one Sunday. He was taller than Frank and had a wiry, muscular build, wildly uncombed shoulder-length hair, and a scraggly mustache. He wore torn jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a big star on the chest. He was fifteen, a year older than Nancy.

They held hands.

“Mom and Dad,” she said, “this is my boyfriend, Jeff.”

He gave us a nod and sort of half-wave. Then he began to examine the lawn at our feet. Like the other Lakeside students we'd seen, he seemed sullen and uncommunicative. I don't know why he was there. His mother and father were divorced. He visited his father in Connecticut on vacation breaks.

“Very pleased to meet you, Jeff,” Frank said enthusiastically.

“Yes,” I agreed, “we've heard so much about you.”

He looked away. “Yeah,” he said vaguely.

“I understand you have a rock band,” Frank said.

He nodded, fished a bent pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, and lit one. He cleared his throat.

“Well …” I said, groping for conversation.

“Hey, I gotta split,” Jeff said. He raised an eyebrow mischievously at Nancy. “Gotta jam.”

They kissed—with considerable passion and familiarity. Frank and I looked at each other a bit uncomfortably. They parted. Then he gave us that same half-wave, said “See ya” to us, and was off.

“Nice meeting you, Jeff,” Frank called after him.

“Yes, see you soon!” I added.

Nancy gazed after him lovingly as he slunk off to the boys' house, shoulders slightly hunched, bare feet shuffling on the grass.

“Isn't he just unbelievable?” she said.

“He seems like a very nice boy,” Frank said.

She was so excited. Jeff was her first boyfriend.

I assumed they were having sex. It was unrealistic not to. I didn't condone it, but at the same time I knew there was nothing I could do about it. So I looked on the bright side. She was holding on to a relationship—this was a positive thing. She seemed to have found someone to care about her, other than us. She seemed happier.

Still, I decided I would have a talk with her about sex and love as soon as the opportunity arose.

The relationship with Jeff did improve Nancy's overall outlook. She started getting more involved with the other kids. She became manager of the boys' soccer team—doubtless because Jeff was on it. She also found an interest in photography. She joined the school photography club and learned how to work a 35 millimeter camera and develop pictures in the school darkroom. I still have some of Nancy's black and white photographs. They are all very dark and brooding, interesting in a grotesque way. Perhaps they show what was going on inside her mind better than her words did at the time. One picture, for instance, is of a log smoldering in the middle
of a barren field. Another is of an old bathroom sink that someone had abandoned in a cornfield. I think Nancy had a gift for photography. She might have gotten pretty good at it, if someone hadn't stolen the school's cameras and darkroom equipment.