And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (56 page)

I said nothing.

“Mrs. Spungen, I wanted you to know that my boy wouldn't do such a thing. He couldn't.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” I said. “There's no point in talking about it.”

“Our Sid and Nancy were very special people. I didn't understand her. I was sorry I didn't. And I'm very sorry for you.”

“Thank you,” I said woodenly.

“I hope we can meet someday. Under better circumstances, of course.”

“Thank you for calling, Mrs. Beverley.”

I put the phone down and began to tremble. Frank held me. When I didn't stop trembling, he held me tighter. I was okay in a few minutes. Then we returned to our mourning.

Our friends stayed late. A couple of them who live far away stayed over. It was one of them who answered the doorbell when it rang the following morning at about ten. Frank and I were still upstairs getting dressed. I was bleary-eyed. It had been another sleepless night for me.

“Who is it?” I called from the top of the stairs.

“A friend who came to see you,” our guest called back.

Frank and I came downstairs to greet the friend.

A total stranger stood there.

“Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Spungen,” he said quickly, handing us his card.

It identified him as a correspondent
of People
magazine.

“I'm working on a story about your daughter. We're running—”

“Look, pal,” snapped Frank angrily. “Why don't you just get the hell out?”

“I'm so sorry!” cried our friend. “He said he
knew
you. He said he was an old friend!”

The man did not deny it. Rather, he said, “I thought you'd want to know: We're running a whole feature on your daughter. If you don't talk to me, it's going to be an unflattering portrait. I'm sure you'll find it very upsetting. If you'd only give me a few minutes, well, I'll say whatever you want me to say. It's in your interest to talk to me. I mean, if I were you I'd want to make sure my daughter's side of the story was told.”

What easy marks we were that day. What a smoothie he was. He was, in effect, saying, “Give me an interview or your daughter gets screwed in print.” But we were so vulnerable, and he was so sympathetic on the surface, that we fell for it. We gave him the interview.
It wasn't until he'd been gone an hour that we realized we'd been coerced into it, fallen for a sleazy journalistic tactic.

We were angry at ourselves. And even angrier than before at the press. A number of them seemingly played by no rules of civilized human conduct. Felt they were above them, I guess. No sooner had we finished breakfast than a taxi-load of British reporters showed up on our front porch. They wanted to know what we thought about Sid's being released on bail that morning. They refused to leave when we told them we had nothing to say. One of them actually began to nose around in the backyard.

“Yeah, there's a pool all right!” he called to one of his buddies.

Frank phoned the Huntingdon Valley police. A patrol car came at once. Two officers escorted the reporters off our property. They got in their cab and drove off, shaking their fists at us.

I began to wonder how this, the first day after Nancy's funeral, could possibly get any worse. It wasn't long before I found out.

The phone rang. At least
it
had been quiet that day—the phone company had finally given us our new unlisted number. I answered it.

It was a special operator. She said she realized our number was now unlisted but she had an urgent message to pass on to us.

“What's the message?” I asked warily.

“Sid Vicious wants to talk to you,” she said. “He says it's very, very important. I have a number you can reach him at.”

I calmly took down the number and hung up. Then I screamed
“Frank!”

He came running.

“It's Sid!” I cried. “He called the operator. He wants to talk to me. What do I do?”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“Of course not. But what if I don't call him? What if he gets angry or something?”

We stood there looking at each other. Neither of us could believe it. I was about to phone the man who was accused of my daughter's murder. I had no choice. I was afraid to do it, but even more afraid not to.

I dialed the number. It was a hotel switchboard. I was put through to Sid's room. It rang.

“Hullo?” said Sid.

“Sid?” I said, my voice cracking. “It's D-Debbie Spungen.”

“Oh, Debbie, thank you. Thank you so much for calling. I wanted you to know, Debbie, how very, very sorry I am I couldn't come to the funeral.”

“That's okay,” I said. I couldn't believe how calm he sounded.

“I wanted to so very much,” he said, “but they wouldn't let me out. They wouldn't let me say good-bye to my Nancy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm sorry she's dead, Debbie. So sorry.”

Suddenly there were so many questions I wanted to ask him. Had he done it? Why? How? But I was afraid to ask them. I remained silent.

“Debbie, I don't seem to … I don't know why I'm alive anymore, now that Nancy is gone.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I knew you would, Debbie. You're the only one who could.”

“Sid, I … I can't talk anymore.”

“May I call again?”

“I … I'll have to think about it.”

“You know, Debbie, you're the only real friend I have left. Thank you for talking to me. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Sid.”

I hung up. Then I caved in. Frank held me again until I'd stopped trembling.

For the first time, it occurred to me that I might not survive this ordeal, that I might lose my mind before it was over, that I might lose it
soon
.

I felt the same way on Wednesday, the day we tried to get back to the rest of our lives.

The four of us had breakfast together. The house was quiet, our friends and relatives gone. A number of lovely condolence notes had arrived in the morning mail. We read them aloud while we ate. When we were through we sat there for a moment, staring at each other.

Then Frank said, “Maybe I'll go to the office for a couple of hours.”

“I'll pack up the folding chairs for the funeral parlor,” said David, “so we can get them out of here.”

“I guess I'll be heading back to the city,” said Suzy.

I didn't seem to have anything to offer. I mumbled something
about how much I was looking forward to putting the kitchen things back where they belonged.

I couldn't believe it. Here I was, falling apart right before their eyes, and
nobody noticed!
I was unable to sleep, barely able to eat. I was frightened. I was in pain. I was inert. I felt cut off from everyone—the outside world, my family, my old self. I wasn't
me
anymore. I was somebody I didn't know, somebody lost and scared, somebody whose life seemed to have no focus. And
nobody noticed! How could they not notice?

The doorbell rang. I answered it.

It was the same group of English reporters. Their cab waited for them on the street. One of them waved a Xerox copy of a London tabloid. On it was the banner headline:
NANCY WAS A WITCH!

“Care to deny it, Mrs. Spungen?” one of them said.

Why was this happening to me?

“N-no comment,” I stammered, starting to close the door.

“People will assume it's fact if you don't deny it,” he warned.

“They'll believe she
was
a witch,” agreed another.

But I was on to this trick now.

“No comment,” I repeated.

I closed the door. Before it shut, the reporter managed to throw the sheet of paper inside the hallway. It lay there on the floor next to my feet, headline shouting at me. I left it there.

Frank left for the office. Suzy went back to the city.

The British reporters returned.

“You took our property!” charged one of them. “We want it back!”

“W-what property?” I asked.

“Our paper! Our piece of paper! You took it! Give it back!”

“Or we'll call the police,” said another.

David appeared behind me. “What is it, Mom?”

“I … I …” I couldn't answer him. I was quivering all over. I couldn't take this, I just couldn't take it.

“What do you guys want?” David demanded.

“Our clipping,” one of them replied. “She has it.”

“I … I … 
don't
have it,” I whimpered.

“Then we're getting the police,” one of them said. “We're calling the police and telling 'em you stole our property.”

“Leave us alone,” David said angrily.

“Of course,” one suggested, “you
could
just give us a statement about—”

“Get off our property!” David ordered.

“Look, sonny—”

David hurled the door open, charged out onto the porch, red-faced. He was taller and huskier than any of them. Their eyes widened.

“You get the hell off our property,”
he screamed,
“or so help me I'll beat the living crap out of you!”

They took off. Then David came back inside, slammed the door shut, and phoned the police. They said that if we could find the clipping they'd come over to pick it up, then deliver it to the reporters, who'd just phoned from their motel.

“Do you know where it is, Mom?” David asked.

I was still standing in the foyer, frozen.

“Mom?”

“Huh?”

“The clipping. Where is it?”

“I … left it. Here, on the floor.”

“I don't see it, Mom.”

I just stared at him.

“Mom?” he said. “I don't see it.”

“Then I don't know where it is,” I said.

David checked the wastebasket to no avail, then called Frank. Frank hadn't seen it. Then David tried Suzy. She had. On her way out she'd taken it outside and thrown it in a garage trash can. David found it, called the police, and handed it to them when they arrived. They took it away.

“Those guys won't come back,” one of the officers promised. “We'll make sure of it.”

But I was sure the reporters were still out there. They were hiding somewhere. Behind the bushes, maybe. I heard a car door slam a few minutes later. My heart began to pound, my chest to ache beyond belief.

As I stood there in the foyer, watching David calmly and efficiently fold up the chairs in the living room, I fell off the high wire. I managed to grab it with my hands and hold on for dear life, but I had to do something fast. I had to talk to somebody, somebody who would listen, somebody who would understand. I could not go on like this for one more second. If I didn't talk to somebody right now I would lose my grip and fall all the way down. I would break into a million little pieces. Nobody would be able to put me back together again.

I made a dash for the kitchen phone and dialed a therapist I knew.

“I have to talk to you!” I cried. “I have to talk to you!”

“Come,” she said. “Come at once.”

I blurted something out to David, got in my car, and sped away. It was a forty-five-minute drive to her office. I opened the window and let the cold air blow on my face. I inhaled it deeply. I turned the radio on full blast.

I looked at the people in the other cars. I couldn't believe they were just going on about their lives—their soft, trivial lives—as if nothing had happened. The world had changed. Nancy was dead! How could no one care?

The therapist, Paula, embraced me warmly when I got there.

“I feel so badly for you,” she said soothingly. “The papers are doing such an awful number on you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, they are.”

I felt calmer already, just being with someone who understood, someone who was on my side.

“Sit down,” she said. “Tell me what's bothering you.”

I told her. I poured it all out in a nonstop forty-five-minute tirade—my anxiety, pain, isolation, nightmares, paranoia. I really don't remember much of what I said. All I remember was that I kept telling her how
afraid
I was.

“I thought it would be over,” I said. “It's not over. It keeps coming at me. And there's going to be a trial. It'll last for months. We might have to actually go. I can't take it. I'm a private person. I need my privacy.”

She nodded sympathetically.

“You also need your family's support at a time like this,” she said, “and you feel like you're not getting enough of it.”

“Everyone's been fine,” I said. “It's just that nobody seems to notice how much trouble I'm having, or to care.”

“Usually, in times of stress, members of a family are there for each other,” she said. “You each count on the other. But in a case like this, when you
most
need to rely on one another, you aren't there for the other. Do you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because
each
of you is in the same kind of pain.
Each
of you feels grief and pain. Your whole family is going through a crisis. One of you isn't there anymore. One of you has been murdered.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, eager for her insights.

“Because of all of the notoriety surrounding Nancy's death, you aren't being allowed to weather the crisis. You aren't being allowed to grieve as you should. The normal grief cycle is being disturbed. This is confusing you and causing you problems. It's probably setting all of you off, in your individual ways.”

“And each of us is used to leaning on the other,” I mused aloud. “But
can't
, because the other's in the same boat.”

“Right. You're all hurting. You're feeling your own pain real bad right now. But I'm sure you're not alone in that. You just feel alone.”