And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (51 page)

“Your … next-door neighbor told us where to find you,” Lieutenant Hunter said. “We were out at your house …”

“What's this about?” I asked.

“The, uh, New York Police Department would like to speak to you. Something has happened to your daughter Nancy.”

“What happened to her?” I pressed, confused by his vagueness.

He didn't answer me. Instead he gave me the name of a detective and a number to call in New York. Then he was silent.

Suddenly my face felt very hot.

“Lieutenant, please tell me what happened. It's okay. I'm ready for anything. Believe me. But I will not hang up this phone until you tell me what has happened to my daughter.”

“Mrs. Spungen, I'm sorry to tell you that your daughter is dead.”

My first reaction was disbelief. We'd been through so much together over the past twenty years. I had thought I'd somehow
sense
her death. I did not.

But it
was
over, really over. My head seemed to swell up in response as if someone were using a bicycle pump on it. My fantasy was coming true. It must have been a drug overdose. What else could it have been?

Since I shared my office with someone else, I went to look for my boss to ask him if I could call the NYPD from his office. He wasn't in his office. I went out into the main office. There were a hundred or so people working and talking out there. They made no noise. Their world was soundless. I felt like I was floating, my head up somewhere near the ceiling.

I did find a vice-president, talking to someone at a desk. I stood beside him for a minute, but he didn't seem to notice me. I thought about just waiting there until my head exploded all over the place. Then he'd notice me.

I didn't wait. “Nancy's dead!” I shouted. “Can I use Joe's office?”

He turned and stared at me, stunned. Everywhere people looked at me. He nodded.

I went into Joe's office, shut the door, and dialed Detective Brown in New York. My dialing finger shook. I was reacting with a bit more emotion than I'd expected, but I was in control.

“I'm sorry to tell you your daughter has been murdered, Mrs. Spungen,” Detective Brown said in a kind voice.

Murdered
.

My baby. Murdered. It couldn't be. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Besides, Frank and I were supposed to be together. I needed him, but he was on the road, somewhere on his way between Philadelphia and a convention in New York.

“Her boyfriend, Sid Vicious, has been arrested,” Detective Brown said.

He must have beaten her again. He must have gone too far.

“My husband,” I said. “My husband's on his way to New York.”

“Can you get word to him, Mrs. Spungen? Quickly? I'm afraid it's on the news already. I'm sure he'd rather hear it from you than the car radio.”

“Yes, yes, I'll tell him. And then he … he should meet you?”

“No, not today. There's nothing either of you can do here today. We would like to see the two of you tomorrow morning, though. Say, ten o'clock.”

“What for?”

“We have to ask you some questions. Strictly routine. And of course you have to identify the body.”

The body
. Not
her
body.
The
body. Nancy was no longer a person. She was, officially speaking, an “it.”

“There'll be a preliminary hearing and … and, again my condolences. Mrs. Spungen, there is one detail you need to take care of as soon as possible.”

“Yes?”

“Do you have a pencil?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay, I'm going to give you a name and number. It's the medical examiner's office.”

I wrote down the information.

“When you make arrangements with the funeral home, they'll need to phone this number to arrange the pickup.”

“The pickup?”

“Yes, the body, Mrs. Spungen.”

“Why can't she …?” I trailed off. I was about to ask why she couldn't just hop on the train. I swallowed. “Yes, of course.”

“It'll be sometime over the weekend. After the autopsy, of course.”

“Of course. The autopsy,” I repeated woodenly.

He gave me directions to the precinct house.

“So I'll see you tomorrow morning at ten. I'll make sure you're taken everywhere. We'll get it over with just as quickly as possible.”

I hung up the phone. Joe, my boss, appeared in the office doorway. He'd heard the news. He held his arms out. I went to him and buried my face in his chest. It felt good to be held for a moment. He said nothing.

I said, “Thank God it's over.”

Then I called Frank's office. His secretary answered.

“Nancy's dead!” I blurted out. “Please try to find Frank right away!”

She said he was due at the St. Moritz in forty-five minutes.

“You've got to get word to him,” I said.

She said his partner was already there. She'd phone him and tell him to ask Frank to call home right away. He would not give Frank the news. I needed to be the one to do that.

I hung up, noticed I was clutching a piece of paper in my hand. The phone number of the medical examiner's office. Right, I had to contact a funeral home. I had chosen one already in my fantasy. All taken care of. The name. I couldn't remember the name. Why couldn't I remember it?

I looked it up in the Yellow Pages. I had trouble focusing on the print—it kept transforming from written language to meaningless wriggles on a page. But I found it. I called. The director was out; he would call me later at home. I gave the man on the phone the message about the medical examiner's office. He took down the number and said they'd take care of the transportation arrangements.

Okay, I was in control again. I had been thrown, briefly, but now
I was all set to follow through on my fantasy. I phoned Janet.

“Please get to my house right away. Nancy is dead,” I said quickly.

Then I called my friend Susan. Her son said she was out. Good thing I was prepared for that.

“Tell her something has happened,” I said, “and to come over right away.”

I wrote instructions for what needed to be done at work over the next three days. I gave it to my secretary. Now I was ready to go home. David would be there soon from school. Suzy? That would take some doing—she had some late afternoon classes. Frank would call soon. Home. Time to go home.

I gathered up my briefcase and my purse and went out into the main office. There was some kind of catered party going on out there now. Tables were heaped with food. People were standing around eating little meatballs with toothpicks. They stopped chewing and talking when I glided through on a cloud, feeling nothing, hearing nothing.

I found my car in the lot. I started it up and headed home. It took me two days to get there—or so it felt. Time seemed to have stopped. There were no cars or people anywhere. The streets were devoid of life. It was as if everyone had died except me.

“I'm sorry to tell you your daughter has been murdered, Mrs. Spungen.”

It was sunny and bright. I rolled down the window, felt no wind on my face.

“Her boyfriend, Sid Vicious, has been arrested.”

I screamed. No sound came out.

“And, of course, you have to identify the body.”

The car seemed to be driving itself. I thought about taking my hands off the wheel and just letting it. Then I panicked. I realized
I
was driving and I was in no condition to drive. Why hadn't anyone offered to give me a ride home? Or had they, and had I just not heard it?

I was about halfway home. No turning back. I kept going, fighting to hold on to the rational me, the one who knew that Nancy was finally at peace, the one who was taking care of business. There was another me I hadn't anticipated. This was the me who wouldn't accept her death. The me who was breaking down.

Somehow I found our block and then our driveway. Janet was there. I got out of the car. We hugged. She cried. I didn't. I wanted to, but I couldn't. There was too much to do.

Janet made some coffee. Susan arrived a few minutes after that. She cried when she got the news. Again, I did not.

Janet and Susan told me they were available to do anything I asked of them. They were there for me. True friends are.

I called Suzy's college and told the administrative secretary it was urgent I talk to my daughter. The woman checked Suzy's card, found out what room she was in, and sent someone for her. I held the line. The woman got back on a minute later to say she couldn't help. Suzy had not shown up for class that day.

I called her friend Laura. She wasn't home, either.

I was getting unglued. I couldn't find anyone in my family.

The phone rang. Frank! I dove for it.

It wasn't Frank. It was a reporter from the New York
Daily News
. “I'm sorry your daughter was murdered,” be said. “Do you want to make a comment about it?”

I was stunned by the insensitive intrusion. My daugher had been murdered. Her father didn't even know yet.

I snapped, “No comment.” Then I slammed the phone down.

Here was my first inkling that the press would be even more interested in Nancy in death than in life.

Frank called a few minutes later.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “What's up?”

He hadn't heard it on the radio, thank God.

“Nancy's dead. She's been murdered. I love you. Please come home right away.”

“Wha-who?” he stammered.

“Sid's been arrested.”

He was silent for a moment. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I need you.”

“Should I call the police or go over there or what?”

“Tomorrow. Come home.”

At that moment David came home. He looked at Janet and Susan's grief-stricken faces, then at me. He knew immediately that someone had died. He put his books down, put his arm around me protectively.

“Is it Daddy?” he asked softly.

“Daddy's on the phone,” I said. “It's Nancy. She was murdered.”

He turned white. We stood there with our arms around each other, his eyes filling with tears, Frank connected to us by the phone.

“David knows now,” I told Frank.

“I'm on my way home,” he said.

“Try and get someone to drive you,” I urged, remembering my own trip.

He said he would. “I love you,” he said. Then he hung up.

I asked David to try to locate his sister. He began to make some calls. Janet, Susan, and I sat down to make lists of what needed to be done. There are so many details to be taken care of when someone dies. Friends and relatives needed to be notified. A rabbi had to be found for the funeral. We didn't belong to a synagogue at that time, but we remained loyal to the faith and I thought Nancy should have a Jewish funeral. This was a Thursday. We figured on a Sunday funeral. The food had to be ordered for the people who would come by. Deli platters, coffee cake.

I was back in my fantasy again, with one crucial difference. The phone rang repeatedly. Every time it rang, it was a different reporter. Every time I said “No comment,” then hung up, seized by fear. I wasn't sure what I was afraid of. All I knew was that Nancy's death was supposed to be pretty and peaceful. But it wasn't pretty. She'd been murdered—beaten to death, I assumed. Murder was something that happened to other people in other places. Not to us. And it wasn't peaceful or private. Not with the press calling.

After the first few calls Janet and Susan decided to take charge of incoming calls. Our official response: “No comment.”

Then the doorbell began to ring. Again and again. TV reporters were on our front porch trying to get some film for the evening news. Again, Janet and Susan responded with “No comment.”

I peered out the living room window and gasped. At least two dozen reporters and photographers and cameramen were swarming around at the edge of our property—they were cognizant of our legal rights, if not our human ones. Some rang neighbors' doorbells. Others just joked and talked with each other, smoked cigarettes, waited for something to break.

Me, perhaps.

I phoned our neighbors and asked them to please refuse to comment. They had all been misquoted by the press in February. They were happy to oblige. They respected our privacy.

Why couldn't the reporters? How could a human being stick a microphone in another human being's face at a time like this, asking—no,
demanding
—that I help them sell papers, boost their ratings? How could they invade, harass, use? Why was anyone even interested? Why did anyone care? Why couldn't we just be left alone? We had never sought the limelight. We were an ordinary middle-class suburban family. Our daughter wasn't an actress or a singer. She'd never done anything exceptional except take heroin.
Why couldn't they leave us alone to mourn her? Why rob us of our privacy?

I was bewildered and frightened. I had always seen Nancy's death as the end of our odyssey. It wasn't going to be. Sid would doubtless be put on trial. This would go on for weeks, months,
years
. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

An ache formed in the center of my chest. I quickly breathed in and out several times, the pain more than I could bear. It didn't go away. I took aspirin. They didn't help.

I began to call friends and relatives. Some called me. They'd heard the news on the radio. Others just came by. I greeted each one in the foyer. Few words were spoken. Mostly, we embraced. People often say they don't know what to say to someone like me at a time like this. Nothing need be said. The presence of those you care about is comfort enough; a warm embrace communicates far more than words do.

David finally located Laura. She knew where Suzy was—with friends. Laura left her own job, went to Suzy, and told her Nancy was dead. Suzy called at about five o'clock, crying. I asked her to come home. She said she would. Laura offered to make the trip on the train with her.