And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (60 page)

A few days later I was sitting in my office, staring out the window, when the phone rang. It was a secretary in personnel at Western Union where I had worked. She thought I'd want to know that a man who said he was with the FBI had phoned requesting background information on me. Her boss had read my personnel folder to the man over the phone—what I earned, weighed, did. Everything.

I was aghast. I phoned the FBI in Philadelphia. They said there was no reason for them to be involved in the Sid Vicious case. In addition, I was told they would never approach a company for a personnel file over the phone. They'd do it in person.

I called Sullivan in New York. He said he'd look into it and get back to me. He never got back to me.

I went home. David was there, but still I circled the house several times before having the nerve to pull into the driveway. When I finally did dart inside the house, I kept my coat on and my keys in my hand—just in case I had to make a run for it. David was upstairs in his room. I sat down at the dining room table, chest aching beyond belief. I heard a car door slam outside and I panicked. I took off out the back door, jumped in my car, and sped away. I had no destination in mind. Just away.

I ended up at my therapist's office. I burst in. Fortunately she was there.

“You've got to give me something,” I begged. “I have to take something. I can't stand it anymore! I'm losing my mind! Give me a pill!”

“No,” she said simply.

“Please! I've got to get rid of it! I've got to calm down! I can't do it on my own. A pill
please!”

“Sit down, Deb.”

“I'm begging you!”

“Sit down!”

“I don't
want
to sit down!”

“Fine, then stand! You want to know why your chest hurts? Because your daughter is dead. That hurts. You're feeling the pain. You
have
to feel it! And you
have
to stand it! That's the way it is.”

I took several deep breaths, tried to calm myself. I sat down.

“No pills.”

“No pills,” she said. “You have to feel it sooner or later. It may as well be now.”

“Couldn't we put it off? Until after the trial?”

“No.”

“Two months?”

“No.”

“One month?”

“I'm not going to bargain with you.”

“Will you do me one small favor then?” I asked.

“What?”

“Find me another mother whose child was murdered. Find me a woman who has gone through what I'm going through. I'd really like to talk to her. I'd like to find out how she survived.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll try. But offhand I can't think of anyone.”

“That's not very comforting.”

“All I mean is that I've never handled a murder before. I'll find you somebody. I'm sure there's somebody out there who knows what you're going through. You're not alone.”

I didn't contradict her, but I felt certain she was wrong. Nobody else had gone through this. Nobody else had felt my pain.

I went home and made dinner and felt the pain. There was really only one way it would go away, I realized. It would vanish only if I were dead. Then I would be free of pain, at peace.

As I stood in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, I seriously wondered if I'd be better off dead. Then I remembered something Sid had written in his first letter. I found the letter, and the passage:

Thank you, Debbie, for understanding that I have to die. Everyone else just thinks that I'm being weak
.

I
did
understand. I
did
see what he was talking about. The pain
was
too much. Only in death could one be free of it. Just as Nancy was.

Suicide? Me? Never. How would I do it? Stick a pistol in my mouth? Swallow a bottle of Drano? Where would I find the nerve?

No, I couldn't do it. I had to survive the pain, that's all. Suicide was not a practical alternative. Tantalizing, yes; realistic, no. No way.

I resigned from my job right around the holidays. I didn't want to work anymore. I no longer had any desire to succeed in business. It simply wasn't important.

I held on to a slim connection. I was a consultant one day a week. But the rest of the week was my own to do with as I pleased. Most of the time I sat around the house in my coat, keys in hand. I stared at the walls a lot. I was very lethargic, withdrawn into my own suffering. I also felt very isolated from Frank. We didn't talk much now. I didn't talk to my friends at all.

January was a very dreary month. It seemed the sun never came out. Life held no hope for me, no meaning. Only nightmares. Only pain. With each passing day my desire to be alive waned.

I thought about suicide again, though I didn't mention it to Paula. She'd just get mad at me. No, I kept it to myself. And I began to write scenarios in my head. I began to fantasize my own death, just as I had Nancy's. I checked into guns, called some shops I looked up in the Yellow Pages. You had to get a license in order to get a gun. It seemed too time-consuming and complicated. And it would be messy for whoever found me. Pills? There weren't enough in the house. Poison? I carefully read the contents of all of the cleansers and polishes in the house. There were several that could do damage. But would I be able to swallow enough of it?

Then one day one of our neighbors, a man I didn't know, hanged himself. Successfully. He used the metal support for the garage door. If it held his weight it would hold mine. I took this as a message. Somebody was trying to tell me something. Hanging was the way to go.

There was no rope in the house, but I did find a length of heavy, rubber-encased wire. It would serve my purpose nicely. The only question now was when.

Tomorrow. Always, it was tomorrow. A part of me kept saying;
Tomorrow you'll be your old self again; tomorrow you'll find a reason to be alive; tomorrow you'll be ready to start living again
. I lived from day to grim day, cut off from everyone. All I could think about was that I wanted my pain to stop.

On February third, the day of Sid's death, I was at the bottom.

He'd been released on bail again from Riker's Island. Reportedly, he celebrated that night with a party at a friend's Greenwich Village apartment. He had a few beers and was feeling pretty good. At about midnight he decided to shoot up some heroin. It was too much. He died in his sleep later that night. Sid was found in bed, face up. It was ruled an accidental overdose. He was twenty-one years old.

And then the reporters were back on our front porch with their microphones and bright lights and minicams. They were ringing the doorbell over and over and over again, demanding a comment.

And then Sid's mother was on the phone. I wondered how she'd gotten our unlisted number. I didn't ask. She had a question. Could she bury Sid next to Nancy? No, I said. She ended up having him cremated.

And then I was certain it was time for me to hang myself. I was ready now, really ready. I'd had it. This nightmare was never going to end. I couldn't take it anymore. No more. No tomorrows. I went out to the garage, got that piece of wire. I brought it back into the house, tied a noose around my neck, stood in front of the dining room mirror.

And then, as I stared at myself in the mirror, reality sank in. I realized I was not going to kill myself. I didn't need to. It was over now. The odyssey was truly over. Sid was dead. There would be no trial. Nothing else could possibly happen. The press would leave us alone, forget about us.

I could start to live again. It wouldn't be easy. But I wanted to now. I had to. I suddenly realized I had to give purpose to all those years of anguish. I owed it to myself. I also owed it to Nancy. I had to keep my promise. I could do it. I was tough. I'd made it this far. Somehow I was going to make it the rest of the way. Somehow I was going to survive.

I removed the noose from around my neck, called Paula.

“I just heard the news,” she said. “How do you feel? Relieved?”

“Empty,” I said hoarsely. “I feel empty.”

“You're off the hook now. You have your privacy back. Your life.”

“I know,” I said. “But I have no life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking about suicide a little while ago,” I said, fingering the noose in my lap.

“Are you still?”

“No.”

“Good. That's not an answer. That's quitting.”

“I know. It's just that, well, like I said. I have no life.”

“You've made real progress. I'm glad to hear you say that.”

“You are?”

“Yes. It means you're coming to grips with the reality of Nancy not being here anymore. You built your old life around Nancy. Everything you did was a response to her. That was your old life. Now you need a new life.”

“You mean, I have to build my life around something else.”

“Exactly.”

“Like what?”

“You'll find it.”

“I may need help.”

“You've got it.”

“Have you found me another mother?”

“Not yet. Still looking.”

I hung up, heard a creak on the stairs. I turned, saw Nancy coming down from her room to model the new ski outfit she'd bought back from Colorado.

The house was haunted. Everywhere I went in it, I still saw Nancy. Everywhere I went outside of it, I saw phantom reporters jumping out from behind bushes. I saw neighbors whispering.

We had to move out. That would be step one of my new life. A fresh start. Rooms that Nancy had never been in. Chairs she'd never sat in.

I wanted to move back to the city. I was born and raised there; it was my home. I wanted out of suburbia—out of Nancy's house, out of Nancy's street, out of the markets and stores where people murmured about Nancy when they thought my back was turned.

My mind made up, I went back to the garage and looped the noose around the support I'd planned on using. I left it there for three weeks. I left it because I wanted someone to see it and realize how much pain I was in. And to help me. But nobody noticed it. Not Frank, not Suzy, not David. They were in too much pain themselves.

That night I told Frank I wanted to move. I didn't tell him that moving was crucial to my survival. But that much he could see.

“If it's something you feel strongly about,” he said, “then go ahead and take a look.”

Frank's niece was a realtor in an area I liked called Society Hill. It had quiet, tree-lined blocks of renovated townhouses adjoining an old market square, near the water. I called her immediately and made an appointment to drive around the next day and look at houses. I was determined to find a place that first day, and I did. I asked Frank and David to come and look at it that evening. They were overwhelmed by my urgency, but they agreed. Suzy refused. She saw moving out of our house as a betrayal of Nancy.

“You wanna sell my sister's house right out from under her,” she snapped.

It particularly bothered her that the house I liked had only three bedrooms, not four. But I didn't concern myself with Suzy's feelings, or anyone else's. I couldn't see past my own survival.

We bought the house. Our house in Huntingdon Valley—our dream house—was sold in a week. So was the furniture. I wanted everything to be new.

The builder was still putting the finishing touches on our new house. As soon as the paperwork was settled, I drove into town to check out his progress and see how soon we could move in.

It was a sunny winter day. There wasn't too much traffic on the expressway. The heater was on in the car; my hat and gloves were off. I was feeling a little better, now that I could look forward to being in a new house. My chest still ached, but I felt I could endure it. I was no longer contemplating suicide.

Suddenly I felt something hot on my hands.

I looked down. My hands were drenched with tears. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. Twenty years' worth. They were finally pouring out on their own. I couldn't stop them. My vision began to blur. I was afraid I'd lose control of the car. I pulled over to the emergency lane, barely able to see the other cars on the road. When I'd come to a safe stop and turned off the motor, I broke down and sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed uncontrollably. I cried a torrent of tears. Tears of frustration, anger, pain, grief.

I cried for my baby.

Finally, I had time to cry for my baby.

I encountered a great deal of heel-dragging when the new house was ready for us to move into. Nobody would help me pack up our things. Frank, it turned out, had changed his mind. He said he loved our home and was sorry we were leaving it. David echoed that sentiment.