“So we should forget it?” I asked, not wanting to hear his answer.
“For now, I’m afraid so. I can’t take the responsibility for pulling her out of the Darlington system. It’s the only system I know of that can handle her. There’s certainly nowhere else in this area. It would put you in a terrible position if she couldn’t go back there. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” I said, crushed.
“If they change their minds, let me know.”
Frank and I discussed it that night. Reluctantly, we agreed that there was no way we could risk freezing her out of Darlington. We had no choice. We were forced to abandon the Cott alternative.
We were furious with the Darlington Institute for extinguishing this spark of hope. We simply could not understand Mr. Sylvester’s motive in denying us a chance to help Nancy. We still can’t.
I phoned Froelich and asked him to tell Sylvester we would not be withdrawing Nancy. He said he would. This done, we thought the matter was closed. It wasn’t.
We hadn’t told Nancy about Dr. Cott. We saw no purpose in it, at least not until we knew the treatment was going to come off, at which point we planned to explain it to her as openly as possible. Since it did not come off, we said nothing to her.
Somehow she found out what had happened—I don’t know who told her—and took our intentions the wrong way.
She phoned, screaming.
“You bitch! You’re trying to prove I’m a schizo so you can put me in a fucking hospital! You want me locked away! You never wanted me, and now you’re trying to get rid of me!”
“Now, Nancy, that’s just not so! We weren’t—”
“You tried to hide it from me! You know you did! But I found out! I found out that you wanna put me in a hospital for fucking schizos!”
“We’re trying to help you! We had some conversations with a doctor. He seemed familiar with your problems. That’s all that happened!”
“You’re the one with the problems! Not me! You! You’re the one who’s fucked up!”
My head began to throb just over my left eye. I took several deep breaths. The lid. I had to keep the lid on. “Nancy, how can I make you understand that Daddy and I love you?”
“I hate your fucking guts!”
“Nancy, if you’re going to talk to me—”
“Hear me? I hate your fucking guts!”
“—talk to me like that, I’m going to hang up.”
“Go fuck yourself, you fucking bitch!”
I hung up on her, shaking.
By now, Nancy was in the spring of her second year at Lakeside. Frank and I were called in for a meeting with Mark Meadows, the Lakeside schoolmaster, Mallory Brooke, and Walter Froelich, at which time we found out that they’d pretty much had it with Nancy. They came up with a novel way of ousting her. Meadows informed us that Nancy would be ready to graduate in June.
“We wanted you to know,” he said, “because she should be getting her college applications out.”
Frank and I just sat there staring at him, mouths agape.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I finally said, incredulous.
“Not at all,” Meadows said. “Scholastically, she’s ahead of her age in most areas. She’s a very bright girl.”
“Look,” Frank said, “she may be ready academically to handle college work, but she’s also fifteen years old. Don’t you think you’re rushing her a bit?”
“She’s ready,” Meadows insisted.
“But even a well-adjusted child isn’t emotionally ready for college at fifteen,” I countered. “And Nancy is not well adjusted. She has to stay here for another year. At least another year. She has to.”
They said they would let us know. A few days later Mr. Froelich called to say that Lakeside would keep Nancy for one more year, but that she would definitely be graduated after that, at age sixteen.
“We feel that by then she’ll have caught up emotionally to her scholastic level,” he reported.
I had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just that people have been telling us that since she was four years old.”
Within a few days Nancy had found out that Lakeside had been ready to graduate her until we insisted she be kept there for another year. Her response was to slash the veins in her left forearm with a razor blade.
Brooke took her to the hospital, where the wound was pronounced not serious. Nancy was stitched up and sent back to school.
Two weeks later Nancy tried to kill herself again. This time she almost succeeded.
She had gone up to her room to listen to records. One of the girls found her in there, sitting on the edge of the bed bleeding all over the floor. A razor blade was in her left hand. She’d slashed her right forearm this time. She was just sitting there, staring at the blood.
They rushed her to the hospital in serious condition. The surgeon who treated her reported that she was about five minutes away from bleeding to death. The wound required twenty-one stitches—fifteen on the outside of her arm, six on the inside.
Brooke relayed the story to me over the phone, obviously shaken.
Nancy was not playing games anymore.
For the first time it hit me—the sickening realization that Nancy was going to die before I was. I’d battled so hard for her life. Now she was against me in that fight. She wanted death. She was reaching out to it and I could do nothing to stop her. She was not a little girl anymore, a baby I could hold in my arms, protect. She was fifteen years old. She was making a choice. She was choosing death.
I felt empty inside. There was nothing in me.
I was not going to live to sit around the fire with my Nancy and her husband and their babies. The natural order of the generations was not going to apply to this child. She had a terminal disease. She was going to die. I was going to see her die. I was going to bury her.
She wanted to die. She would die.
I was overwhelmed by dread and horror. Little did I know that within three years I would be praying for her to succeed.
Chapter 12
I sold my store that winter. I was considering going to law school with the profits. The law seemed like an attractive, fulfilling career to me. Then one day I ran into a man I knew who worked at Western Union and who respected my sales skills. The chance encounter led to a job with Western Union as manager of Mailgram sales. It was basically a headquarters job that called for me to work on sales literature and sales training programs, but it did involve some travel, particularly to New York to coordinate projects with ad agencies. I enjoyed the fresh challenge. I thrived.
That winter also marked the death of Frank’s mother. She passed away about a year after his father did. She had lived for almost two years after her stroke had left her unable to talk or function. They were both gone now, and Frank’s ordeal was over. He had already sold their house and business and put the money in the bank. He and his sister divided it. Frank’s share was six thousand dollars. We talked it over and decided to put the money to use in a way the entire family could enjoy. We built a swimming pool as soon as spring came.
Nancy calmed down quite a bit that winter. She saw that her stay at Lakeside was nearing its end, and she turned her sights to getting into college.
We still didn’t think she was ready. Frankly, I was terrified at the idea of Nancy out on her own somewhere, unsupervised. We thought she might need a year at boarding school prior to taking the plunge.
But the folks at Lakeside did not. They set the machinery in motion without our knowledge. Mark Meadows arranged for her to take the SAT tests, to choose several possible schools, and to send out applications. Nancy’s education was spotty in the areas that frustrated her, particularly math and science. Despite this, and despite not yet having reached her sixteenth birthday, she scored 1030 on the SAT tests—good enough to qualify her for many of the mid-range universities. She applied to the University of Colorado because she liked to ski. She got in. We didn’t even k
now she’d applied until she called us with the happy news.
“They accepted me, Mommy!” she cried with joy on the phone. “I’m going to a real college! I don’t have to be with sickies anymore!”
Now we had to decide whether or not to let her go.
All we knew about the place was that it was a big skiing school. When we mentioned the University of Colorado to friends, we found out it also had a reputation as a big party school.
“There are drugs everywhere,” Frank said. “She’ll either find them or she won’t. Here or in Colorado. Going to one school or another won’t make any difference.”
“The question is whether she’s ready to go anywhere,” I mused aloud.
“What will she do instead? Live here? She can’t. She’s too disruptive. She’s a bad influence on Suzy and David.”
“Do you really think it’s okay for her to go off by herself?” I asked.
“No, not necessarily. I have doubts, too, Deb. But she did do well on the tests. And she got in. And, well, she has been on her own since she was eleven.”
“With supervision. She can barely handle herself under those circumstances. What will she be like without any supervision at all?”
“We don’t know. All we know is that being accepted at Colorado is giving Nancy a healthy image of herself. I think it would be counterproductive to tear that down.”
“I know,” I agreed. “Possibly … maybe the Darlington kids were rubbing off on her. Maybe when she gets into a more normal environment she’ll be—” I stopped. I suppose even then I knew it was wishful thinking.
With reluctance and trepidation, we agreed to let Nancy go. The university accepted her with the stipulation that she begin by attending the six-week summer session. Nancy didn’t mind at all. In fact, she was delighted.
The week before Nancy graduated from Lakeside there was a senior prom. Nancy put down the whole idea of a prom—until one of the boys asked her. Then she got very excited. She asked me if she could buy a new dress for the big dance, which was to be held in a private room at a restaurant near the school. I said that she could and gave her a budget. She went into Philadelphia by herself to buy it.
“It’s the most beautiful dress in the whole world!” she jabbered excitedly when she came home, clutching the box.
“So let me see it, sweetheart!” I exclaimed, sharing her excitement.
“Not until I put it on!”
She dashed into the bathroom, closed the door. A minute later she came out in an unbelievably slinky lime-green matte jersey dress with a bare midriff.
“Isn’t it just incredible, Mom?” she cried, anxious for my approval.
I wasn’t about to ruin it for her. “Yes, sweetheart. Very nice. It makes you look very …”
“Mature?” she ventured hopefully.
“Mature. The very word I was groping for.”
“All riiiight!”
It was not your typical prom dress. But Nancy loved it. That’s why we chose to bury her in it. It wasn’t your typical burial dress either, but we thought it was important that she be wearing something she’d picked out herself and had enjoyed. Even if it was slinky and lime-green.
Her graduation ceremony was held on the Lakeside Campus lawn. It was a bright, sunny day. Suzy and David came with us to see Nancy, in her cap and gown, receive her diploma. She looked so pretty and proud. It was a lovely ceremony, a happy, smiling occasion.
When it was over, the kids cried and kissed and vowed to stay in touch. Then we took Nancy out to lunch and gave her one of her graduation presents—a wristwatch.
Her other present was driving lessons, which she took during the three weeks she spent at home before leaving for summer school in Colorado.
Surprisingly, she was a calm, pleasant dream during this stay. She shopped and packed up her belongings with great enthusiasm. Excited about being away from Darlington, she saw this as a fresh start.
“I’m in the real world now, Mom,” she told me. “I’m normal. You’ll see. I won’t let you down this time. You’ll be proud of me.”
“I know I will, sweetheart.”
“Because I’m not a sickie anymore.”
I let a ray of sunlight creep in. I wondered if maybe, just maybe, she was going to be okay.
Nancy took her six driving lessons but she flunked the test for her license. It made her angry. She took it again a few days later and flunked again. This made her furious. Then she took it a third time and flunked a third time. So she stole my car.
I wasn’t home. I had gone to work—with the company car Western Union had given me. My own was in the driveway when Nancy’s driving teacher dropped her off after her third attempt at getting a license. She stormed into the house. Suzy told me Nancy screamed, “Goddamned stupid motherfuckers! I’ll show them!” Then she grabbed my car keys and split.
She was still gone with my car when I got home. I waited out on the driveway, livid, for her to return.
She waved to me as she drove up. Then she parked the car, calmly got out, and said, “Hi, Mom! Did you have a nice day?”
“Goddamn it, Nancy! You cannot drive a car without a license! You cannot just … just go off in somebody’s car—my car—because you feel like it! You are not a certified driver! Do you understand? You have no insurance! None! If something had happened to you we’d be in a lot of trouble!”
“No use in getting upset about it. Nothing happened. Besides, it’s their fault.”
“Whose fault?” I demanded.
“Them. They wouldn’t give me the license.”
God, how frustrating it was to try to deal rationally with someone who wasn’t rational! It was also asinine and meaningless. It accomplished nothing. Still, I had to try. I calmed myself down a bit.
“Nancy, you can’t blame someone else because you failed the test. You just have to try to do better next time.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t hit anything.”
“That’s not the point! Don’t you understand me?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a sickie! I’m in the real world now!”
“Well then, act like it. Living in the real world means you must consider the consequences of your actions! You must learn the meaning of responsibility!”
“Fuck you.”
She went in the house. Two days later she left for college.
Frank and I flew to Denver with her. She was very quiet in the car on the way to the airport. She was clearly tense about going off to college.
I made one attempt to talk to her. I said, “Well, we certainly got a nice day to fly, didn’t we?”
“Go fuck yourself,” she replied.
She wanted to sit by herself on the plane, in the smoking section. We let her. I passed by her on my way to the lavatory once. She was leafing through a magazine, puffing on a cigarette.
“What are you looking at?” she demanded loudly.
The people who were sitting around her looked at her, then at me.
“I’m not looking at you. I’m just going to the bathroom.”
She glared at me. I kept going. On the way back I looked the other way.
“Steer clear of her. If that’s the way she wants it, screw her,” Frank said.
We rented a car in Denver and drove to the university in Boulder. It is a gorgeous modern campus in the foothills of the Rockies. Her dormitory was a two-story building. We helped her unload her suitcases and cartons. Her roommate, a Chicano girl, arrived. Nancy was polite and friendly to her but would not speak to us. Since the dormitory wouldn’t be serving food until the next morning, we offered to take Nancy into town for lunch. She agreed to come. We had Mexican food. She was hostile through the whole meal. Afterward we walked around in Boulder, looked in the shops. She saw a pair of Earth shoes she wanted and asked us to buy them for her. We did. Then she saw a blouse she wanted and asked us to buy it for her. We did. Then she saw a sweater she wanted and asked us to buy it for her. We said no, that was enough. She began to curse at us
on the sidewalk.
“Why don’t you just leave me the fuck alone? Get the fuck out!” she screamed.
We took her back to the dormitory, said good-bye. We had planned to stay another day and went to Rocky Mountain National Park without her, then drove to Denver and caught our flight back to Philadelphia. I wasn’t happy about leaving her like that but it was for the best.
It was a quiet, relaxing six weeks. Suzy and David were in camp; Frank and I spent a lot of time by the pool. We seldom heard from Nancy. When we did, it was positive. She adjusted to her new environment, made friends. She wasn’t there long enough for her usual social problems to arise. She took two courses—journalism and marketing. I don’t know if she did well in them; I never saw a transcript of that summer’s work.
There was a three-week break between the end of the summer session and the beginning of the fall semester. Nancy came home for it. Frank and I picked her up at the airport, and I couldn’t believe what I saw when she got off the plane. Nancy had blossomed. Her face was relaxed and tanned. She looked fabulous. She smiled sweetly when she caught sight of us, waved and hugged and kissed both of us.
Frank went to get the car. Nancy and I walked together to a bench in front of the airline terminal and sat down to wait for him. She was wearing jeans and an orange T-shirt with little silver clouds on it. Her beautiful chestnut-brown hair curled around her face, framing it.
She smiled. “You know what, Mom? I’m happy for the first time in my life. Really happy. I’m not a sickie anymore. For sure.”
My heart soared. We hugged each other.
I had never been so happy. Nancy was healed! The veil had been lifted! I immediately forgot all about her chronic troubled behavior. Past history was erased. The evidence was there—the look on Nancy’s face was enough to convince me she was going to be okay now. I so desperately wanted to believe it that I did. The human mind is pretty amazing that way. In those few moments while we waited for Frank to bring the car, my whole life seemed to turn around. I had waited for sixteen years to see my Nancy find joy in life. That had been my goal. And now, at last, it had been realized. I thought to myself, No matter the cost, the pain, the sacrifice—it has been worth it.
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) Page 20