Authors: Deborah Spungen
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (57 page)
“What do I do?”
“We have a program called crisis intervention counseling. We try to help you to restore the normal cycle, let it happen so you can get on with the rest of your life. I want to see you twice a week. I'd suggest individual therapy for the other members of your family, too, but that's up to them. Then, after you've each handled your grief, I'd recommend family network therapy, so you can rebuild as a unit.
“I'm going to get you a prescription for a very light dosage of Valium. It's to help you sleep. It's just enough to break the cycle of wakefulness you're in.”
“What about my chest? It hurts so much.”
“I don't want you to take anything strongâno tranquilizers or painkillers. It'll be best for you in the long run if you feel the pain
now
. It's a rough time, but you have to get through it without the aid of drugs. You can do it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Do you mind if I tell you what I'd do if I were you?”
“No, go right ahead.”
“Get away for the weekend. The four of you. Go to the mountains. Someplace where nobody will bother you. Clear your heads. Get some perspective and some rest. Then try to get back into it on Monday.”
That sounded like an excellent idea. I suggested it to Frank that night. He agreed. Then I told him who the suggestion had come from.
“I just really needed to talk to somebody,” I said. “I'm upset, and we, well, we talked.”
Frank was very supportive. “Do you think she can help you?” he asked.
“Yes. I'm going to see her for a few weeks. She sort of suggested
we all might need some help getting through this.”
He nodded noncommittally. He still harbored a distaste for therapy, one that had in no way been tempered by our track record with Nancy. He was not interested in seeing a therapist. He felt pain, but he also felt he could handle it. And much of his grief had already poured out of him in an uncomplicated torrent of tears. With me, it had stayed inside and was seeping into all of the cracks and crevices. The same thing was quietly happening to Suzy and David.
Frank made reservations for all of us at one of the big resort hotels in the Catskills, where the meals and recreation are all laid out for you. No effort is required on your part. David endorsed the trip heartily. Suzy did not. She refused to come with us. She had withdrawn to her apartment and her paints. “I needed to be away from you,” she recently told me. “I needed to not talk to you.”
I was perplexed by her apparent desire to keep her distance from us, but I respected it. However, I didn't like the idea of her being alone the entire weekend. She agreed to spend the weekend with a cousin.
The three of us were blessedly anonymous in the Catskills. We hiked in the crisp, clean fall air, ice-skated, swam, and put away one giant meal after another. I even slept pretty well. The Valium helped.
The tension did not vanish, though. On Saturday afternoon I got a massage at the health club.
“You ought to relax more, dearie,” the masseuse clucked. “Your neck and shoulder muscles are like granite.”
I tried to relax. We all did. But something always seemed to prevent it. At dinner on Saturday night a photographer approached our table and said, “How'd you like to have your picture taken?”
“No pictures!” I screamed.
“Beat it!” commanded Frank.
We all hid behind our menus like fugitives.
“Wait, folks!” protested the startled photographer. “You're not
obligated
to buy 'em!”
He was an innocent hotel photographer. We'd mistaken him for a member of the press. We declined his offer more calmly, then burst into relieved laughter as he went off to the next table, totally confused.
After dinner Frank and I went to see a movie. David spent the evening with some teenagers he'd met at the hotel. He did not tell
them his last name. They all ended up in one of their rooms watching
Saturday Night Live
. While watching it, David had the misfortune of encountering a cruel sketch about Sid Vicious and Nauseating Nancy. As his friends howled with laughter, David broke down and began to sob. They didn't know why. He told them, then fled from their room and appeared at our door, tears still streaming down his face.
“They were in total shock,” he said. “I had to get out of there.
Had
to.”
I put my arms around him.
“I'm okay now,” he assured me, quickly putting his family protector mask back on. “It's just that it's not
fair
. That's what it is. It's like no matter how hard you try to get away from it, you can't. Are you guys okay?”
“This thing really is going from bad to worse,” muttered Frank “I just don't see how far people will go.”
“I'm going to write them a nasty letter,” I vowed.
(And I did. An NBC vice-president sent me a letter of apology. I also fired off a letter to Johnny Carson a few days later after he continually made crude jokes about Nancy in his monologues. He did not respond to the letter.)
I dreaded our return home. I felt the same intense uneasiness as soon as we turned onto our street. My eyes darted from one parked car to the next, checked the shadows behind bushes, the fluttering curtains in neighbors' windows.
I waited until Frank had gone in the house before I would go in. I was subtle about itâhe never noticed how terrified I was that there might be cameramen in there.
There was quite a lot of mail, much of it condolence notes. One letter was addressed to me personally in large, shaky handwriting with little circles over the
i'
s instead of dots. There was no return address. I feared it was an obscene letter. I took a deep breath and opened it.
It was from Sid.
Dear Debbie,
Thank you for phoning me the other night. It was so comforting to hear your voice. You are the only person who really understands how much Nancy and I love each other. Every day without Nancy gets worse and worse. I just hope that when I die I go the same place as her. Otherwise I will never find peace.
Frank said in the paper that Nancy was born in pain and lived in pain all her life. When I first met her, and for about six months after that, I spent practically the whole time in tears. Her pain was just too much to bear. Because, you see, I felt Nancy's pain as though it were my own, worse even. But she said that I must be strong for her or otherwise she would have to leave me. So I became strong for her, and she began to stop having asthma attacks and seemed to be going through a lot less pain. [Nancy had had asthma since she was a child.]
I realized that she had never known love and was desperately searching for someone to love her. It was the only thing she really needed. I gave her the love that she needed so badly and it comforts me to know that I made her very happy during the time we were together, where she had only known unhappiness before.
Oh Debbie, I love her with such passion. Every day is agony without her. I know now that it is possible to die from a broken heart. Because when you love someone as much as we love each other, they become fundamental to your existence. So I will die soon, even if I don't kill myself. I guess you could say that I'm pining for her. I could live without food or water longer than I'm going to survive without Nancy.
Thank you so much for understanding us, Debbie. It means so much to me, and I know it meant a lot to Nancy. She really loves you, and so do I. How did she know when she was going to die? I always prayed that she was wrong, but deep inside I knew she was right.
Nancy was a very special person, too beautiful for this world. I feel so privileged to have loved her, and been loved by her. Oh Debbie, it was such a beautiful love. I can't go on without it. When we first met, we knew we were made for each other, and fell in love with each other immediately. We were totally inseparable and were never apart. We had certain telepathic abilities, too. I remember about nine months after we met, I left Nancy for a while. After a couple of weeks of being apart, I had a strange feeling that Nancy was dying. I went straight to the place she was staying and when I saw her, I knew it was true. I took her home with me and nursed her back to health, but I knew that if I hadn't bothered she would have died.
Nancy was just a poor baby, desperate for love. It made me so happy to give her love, and believe me, no man ever loved a
woman with such burning passion as I love Nancy. I never even looked at others. No one was as beautiful as my Nancy. Enclosed is a poem I wrote for her. It kind of sums up how much I love her.
If possible, I would love to see you before I die. You are the only one who understood.
Love, Sid XXX
P.S. Thank you, Debbie, for understanding that I have to die. Everyone else just thinks that I'm being weak. All I can say is that they never loved anyone as passionately as I love Nancy. I always felt unworthy to be loved by someone so beautiful as her. Everything we did was beautiful. At the climax of our lovemaking, I just used to break down and cry. It was so beautiful it was almost unbearable. It makes me mad when people say “you must have really loved her.” So they think that I don't still love her? At least when I die, we will be together again. I feel like a lost child, so alone.
The nights are the worst. I used to hold Nancy close to me all night so that she wouldn't have nightmares and I just can't sleep without my beautiful baby in my arms. So warm and gentle and vulnerable. No one should expect me to live without her. She was a part of me. My heart.
Debbie, please come and see me. You are the only person who knows what I'm going through. If you don't want to, could you please phone me again, and write.
I love you.
I was staggered by Sid's letter. The depth of his emotion, his sensitivity and intelligence were far greater than I could have imagined. Here he was, her accused murderer, and he was reaching out to me, professing his love for me. His anguish was my anguish. He was feeling my loss, my painâso much so that he was evidently contemplating suicide. He felt that I would understand that. Why had he said that?
I fought my sympathetic reaction to his letter. I could not respond to it, could not be drawn into his life. He had told the police he had murdered my daughter. Maybe he had loved her. Maybe she had loved him. I couldn't become involved with him. I was in too much pain. I couldn't share his pain. I hadn't enough strength.
I began to stuff the letter back in its envelope when I came upon a separate sheet of paper. I unfolded it. It was the poem he'd written about Nancy.
         Nancy
You were my little baby girl
And I shared all your fears.
Such joy to hold you in my arms
And kiss away your tears.
But now you're gone there's only pain.
And nothing I can do.
And I don't want to live this life
If I can't live for you.
To my beautiful baby girl.
Our love will never die.
I felt my throat tighten. My eyes burned, and I began to weep on the inside. I was so confused. Here, in a few verses, were the last twenty years of my life. I could have written that poem. The feelings, the pain, were mine. But I hadn't written it.
Sid Vicious
had written it, the punk monster, the man who had told the police he was “a dog, a dirty dog.” The man I feared. The man I should have hated, but somehow couldn't.
How was I supposed to react? What was I supposed to do?
The Valium did not help me sleep that night.
Frank put in a full day at the office on Monday. Suzy and David returned to classes. I made my first appearance at work. On Sunday night Suzy and David had mentioned that they were nervous about how people would react to them. I was, too.
They weren't quite looking at me, I realized, as I strode through the main office. But they were extremely aware of me.
I sat down at my desk. The calendar page was still open to October twelfth, on which I'd written “Call White Deer Run re: admission Nancy, Sid.” I turned the page and began to clear off my desk. There were a number of condolence notes and phone messages. As I began to answer them, co-workers gradually came in one at time to offer a few words of sympathy. Several of them inadvertently called me Nancy instead of Debbie. Then they got flustered and I ended up comforting
them
.
I had trouble getting back into my work. I couldn't seem to concentrate on it. Sid's presence was too strong. I kept thinking about his letter and poem. I kept worrying about his trial. I kept trying to figure out what had gone on that night in room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel.
I constantly caught myself staring out the window, wrapped up in these thoughts. I tried to shake myself free of them. “Please go away,” I begged. “Just for five minutes. Let me think of something else.” But I was unable to.
I ran out of steam at about three o'clock. This puzzled me. I usually have tremendous stamina. I decided to go home early. My work had waited for me for a week. It could wait one more day.
When I turned onto our street, I slowed the car down to a crawl so I could look inside each parked car. I checked the neighbors' bushes and windows. I stopped in front of our house, hesitated, kept going. I circled around the block. Maybe the reporters were hiding there.
I found a car with a New York license plate parked on the next block. My eyes searched the windshield and bumpers for some sort of press sticker. None. Seemed innocent enough, but how to know for sure? I returned to our street, got to our house again, idled outside. Someone honked behind me. I jumped, looked in the rearview mirror. It was a neighbor trying to get byâI was blocking the road. I pulled over so the car could pass. I looked our house over for any signs of forced entry. It appeared secure.
But I couldn't get myself to go inside. Not until somebody else was home. I drove to Murray's Delicatessen and had a cup of coffee at the counter. Then I called home. No one was there yet. I had another cup of coffee. I called again. David was back from school. Relieved, I drove home.