“But you’ve never been there. How do you know you’ll like it?”
“All the bands are there. It’s cool there.”
She didn’t renew the lease. Instead she rented the apartment on a month-to-month basis and talked continually about moving to London. She began to save up for it.
I asked her if she wanted to come home for Hanukkah/Christmas, but she said she had to stay in New York and work. So the four of us decided to spend the day after Christmas in New York with her, a prospect that delighted her. She was especially excited about buying gifts for all of us. She loved giving and getting gifts. As Christmas neared she called me anxiously for gift suggestions for Frank (she was now actually speaking to Frank occasionally) and for the kids. She was so happy about what she’d bought me that she wanted to tell me what it was right there on the phone. I had to talk her out of it. Then she wanted me to tell her what I’d gotten her. She begged and teased and giggled like a little girl.
I bought her a lot of little gifts. She didn’t care how much you spent on her. It was the idea of getting the gifts—opening the boxes, discovering their contents—that she loved. I knew it would give her pleasure to tear open so many boxes. She was so rarely happy. This would make her happy for a few minutes. What more could I give her?
It was a raw, gray day as we drove to New York, and we had to keep both the car heater and our coats on. We mapped out our day. Suzy and David wanted to go to a museum after we opened the presents. Frank and I agreed that I’d take Nancy to a movie if she didn’t want to go to a museum. Then the five of us would have an early dinner before she had to leave for work.
“Think she’s really going to do this London thing?” Frank wondered aloud.
“It sounds pretty farfetched to me,” I said. “I can see her going over for a vacation. You know, two weeks. But not staying there for good. She may not even like it there.”
“If she wanted to stay,” Suzy asked, “would you let her?”
“Nancy does what Nancy wants,” I answered with a shrug.
“How come we can’t?” Suzy asked.
Frank and I exchanged a quick look, weighed a reply. The kids waited for it. It got very quiet in the car.
“Nancy doesn’t live by the same set of rules the rest of us do,” Frank said. “Not me, not Mom, not any of your friends’ parents. She won’t lead a life like other people. She just won’t. She’s determined to be different, and there isn’t much that Mom and I can do about it anymore.”
“How come?” David asked.
“Because she’s disturbed,” I replied. “Nancy has serious troubles. You know that. You both know that. Her way isn’t the right way. Believe me, it isn’t. Maybe our way isn’t, either. But we think it is. That requires a certain amount of faith on your part. You have to trust us. But you’re not kids anymore. You can look at Nancy. You can see she’s not happy.”
“Are you happy?” Suzy asked.
“Good question,” Frank admitted.
“Are you?” she repeated.
“Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes, we are. Yes.”
We got to Nancy’s apartment at about noon and she greeted each of us with bear hugs. She was in great spirits and the place was spotless.
She absolutely would not open her gifts until we had each received our gifts from her.
I went first. I couldn’t believe what I saw when I opened the little box. It was an Elsa Peretti necklace—a small silver vase that hung from a sterling silver chain. I had long admired Elsa Peretti’s jewelry, but I’d never imagined I’d get to own a piece. It must have cost Nancy $150.
“It’s real, Mom.” Nancy beamed. “The vase, I mean. It holds water. You can wear a fresh flower around your neck every day.”
I was flabbergasted, it was so beautiful.
Underneath it, folded into the cotton, was a note. I opened it.
Dear Mom,
I love you very much and you know why. There is nothing else I can say. Merry Christmas.
Love, Nancy
I looked up at her beaming face. She was so proud. For a moment the source of the necklace—the kind of work she’d done to make the money—crossed my mind. But I let the thought go. I hugged and kissed her and thanked her.
“Do you really like it?” she begged.
“Oh, Nancy. I love it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She asked twenty times. I answered twenty times. The answers never seemed to compute.
Frank went next. His box was from Bloomingdale’s. Inside was a gorgeous dress shirt to wear with his new suit.
“That’s great, Nancy,” he said enthusiastically. “Just great.”
“Does it fit? Does it fit?” she begged.
Unfortunately it was not the right size. Frank hesitated. Obviously, it crossed his mind not to tell her.
“I’ll take it back,” she said, guessing it was the wrong size. “I’ll take it back. Maybe they’re open now.”
“No, no, it’s beautiful, Nancy. I love it. I’ll … I’ll take care of it.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“You like it?”
“Love it.”
“What if they don’t have it in your size? What will you do?”
“I … I’m sure they will.”
“It’s a big chain, Nancy,” I said. “They’ll have Daddy’s size somewhere, at one of their branches.”
“Right,” Frank agreed. “Somewhere.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
Then it was the kids’ turn. From Nancy, Suzy got a monogrammed canvas bag for her art supplies and books. David received several pairs of bikini briefs in assorted colors.
“You’re already gorgeous,” Nancy advised her baby brother. “But now you’ll be sexy, too.”
Now it was time for Nancy to open all of her boxes. She sat down on the floor, legs crossed, and fanned them out around her. Then she tore into them with childlike glee, ripping the paper and ribbons, giggling and gasping.
We gave her a makeup mirror, an ashtray, a cake of perfumed soap, a bottle of toilet water, an address book, stationery, a scarf, and a book about cats.
“So many presents!” she exclaimed. “So many presents! It’s just like Christmas! It is Christmas!”
It was a treat to see her so happy—the best Christmas present I could ask for.
We went out for a nice lunch. As it turned out, Nancy did not want to go to “any lousy museum,” so she and I went to see Voyage of the Damned at a theater on Thirty-fourth Street while Frank took the kids to the museum. She got restless afterward at dinner. She could spend only so many hours with us. She was tired of being pleasant, so she became hostile and argumentative. We drove home to Philadelphia right after dinner.
Gradually, Nancy was weaned off the methadone in January and February. By the time she turned nineteen on February 27, 1977, she was off drugs completely. And on her way to England. The dream had formulated into a plan. She was set to leave the first week of March.
As it happened, she hadn’t been able to save enough money for her plane fare. She’d spent too much on our Christmas presents. However, she, Suzy, and David had each been given a $1,500 savings certificate by their great-grandfather to be cashed when they turned twenty-one. I was the guardian of the certificates. Nancy asked if I would let her have $500 for her plane fare and deduct it from her certificate. I told her I’d have to think about it.
Actually it wasn’t a difficult decision. There was no point in saving money for her. True, she was off drugs at the moment. But for how long? How much time did she really have left? Not much, I believed. Her emotional problems hadn’t gone away. She wanted to travel, to enjoy herself. She wanted to go to England. It was a trip I’d wanted to take when I was nineteen. Still wanted to take. I hadn’t had the chance but I wanted her to have it. So I let her have the money for her plane fare.
After her death I read in a well-known magazine that Nancy had work
ed as a prostitute in order to earn her plane fare to London. Not true. The money came from me. I paid it directly to the travel agent—an open-ended round-trip ticket to Amsterdam, which was the cheapest fare.
She gave up her Chelsea apartment, stored her furniture, gave away her cat. Her treasured record collection was entrusted to her friends Felipe and Babette. (As far as I know, they still have it. They disappeared shortly before Nancy came back from England and she was unable to reclaim it.)
Frank and I made plans to see her in New York a few days before she left for a combination bon voyage and birthday dinner. We bought her some luggage as a present. She looked radiant. Her blond hair was piled neatly on top of her head; her color was good, her complexion clear. Her track marks were completely healed. I told her how fabulous she looked.
“I’m clean, Mom,” she said. “That’s why.”
We had a lovely dinner at the One Fifth Avenue restaurant. Nancy chattered nonstop through the meal, she was so excited.
“… and Debbie’s gonna come over. And Jerry’s there. The whole thing is there. It’s like everybody from here is there now. That’s where it’s all happening. Everybody’s there! You wouldn’t believe it! I’m gonna get a job. Maybe in an office or something.”
“Sounds great,” Frank said.
“It will be.” She beamed. “It really will be.”
Another of Nancy’s fresh starts. Only this time her last.
After dinner we hugged and kissed and said good-bye. She promised to write us from London. She had a reservation in a small hotel for one week. She hoped to get settled quickly.
Actually Frank and I thought she’d be back in two weeks.
She didn’t come back for eighteen months, and when she came she wasn’t alone.
Chapter 18
Nancy had trouble from the minute she got off the plane in Amsterdam. She missed her connecting flight to London and called me from the airport—angry, bewildered, panicking.
“The fucking plane’s gone! I couldn’t find it! Nobody in this fucking place speaks English and I went the wrong fucking way and now it’s gone and I’m stuck here! What am I gonna do?”
“Take the train to London,” I suggested.
“I haven’t got enough money. The plane was paid for. Fucking travel agent. It’s his fucking fault. I want you to sue his—”
“I’ll send you the money, Nancy. To American Express in London. Okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“Nancy?”
“All right,” she said, disgusted.
She phoned the next day to report that she’d made it to London.
“It’s okay here,” she said. “At least they speak English.”
She reported in again two days later. She seemed to need to report in.
“I walked around,” she said. “Found some really great shops. You’d like them, Mom. And I saw Jerry, remember him? The guitarist? He introduced me to some people, and I saw some other people I know.”
When her week at the hotel was up, she phoned again.
“I’m gonna move in with some friends tomorrow. For a while.”
“How is your money holding out?” I asked.
“Okay, for now. I think I actually have a gig lined up.”
“A gig?”
“Yeah. Playing bass fiddle in an all-girl band. They’re goin’ on tour. France, Germany, and Belgium.”
“Nancy, you don’t know how to play the bass fiddle.”
“They’re gonna teach me. They said it’s easy. There’s really a lot goin’ on here, Mom. Music. People. I’m meeting a lot of people. You know who I met at a party last night? You won’t believe it.”
“Who?”
“Sid Vicious.”
“Who?”
“Sid Vicious.”
“Who’s he?”
“A punk rocker. He’s with the Sex Pistols, Mom.”
“Who are the Sex Pistols?”
“They’re the biggest band in England. They’re great. The best.”
“Oh.”
“He’s nice. Really nice. I really like him. I think he likes me, too.”
“What kind of a name is that, Sid Vicious?”
“I met Johnny, too.”
“Johnny?”
“Johnny Rotten. The singer.”
“He’s with the Sex Pistols, too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s very nice.” Needless to say, I felt a little out of it.
“I’ll let you know when I get settled at my friend’s place. Like I said, I may be goin’ on the road right away with this group.”
At dinner that night I asked Suzy and David if they’d ever heard of the Sex Pistols. Suzy rolled her eyes.
“They’re terrible,” she said. “Really sick and bad.”
“What do they play?” asked Frank.
“It’s punk,” David added. “Only, well, to tell you the truth, it’s not even music. It’s one step beyond. It’s nothing you’d like too much. Why do you ask, Mom?”
“Nancy likes one of the fellows in the group.”
“Figures,” said Suzy.
“Never heard of them,” Frank said.
“Are they popular here?” I asked.
“No,” said David.
“But they will be,” said Suzy, “if Nancy’s into them.”
I paid no further attention at that time to the subject of punk music or to the musician Sid Vicious. I assumed he was just another of her fleeting, one-sided attachments. There was no reason then to think otherwise.
Within two weeks Nancy’s projected tour with the all-girl band had fallen through. And she was, it appeared, back on heroin. She denied it, but on the phone her voice was slurred. She was paranoid and didn’t make a lot of sense. And she was out of money.
“I can’t stay with my friends no more, Mom. They don’t like me. Don’t want me there. They hate me.”
“So where are you staying?”
“On the street. In a car. Your Nancy’s sleepin’ in a car. And I got no food. Nothing to eat. No money, Mom.”
“You’re back on.”
“No, it isn’t that.”
“Nancy, don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You told me never to trust a junkie.”
“I’m your daughter.”
“Even my daughter.”
“I’m not on junk. I swear. It’s just that … that nobody likes me. And I’m sleepin’ in a car. No place. No food. I need money, please. The money from my certificate. Send me some of it. There’s a thousand left, isn’t there? Please, Mom. Please.”
“Maybe you should think about coming home.”
“No! I won’t! I’m not ready!”
“But you’re not hacking it over there.”
“I’m okay. I just need money. I just need … I need spring. It’s so cold here. So moldy.”
I told her I’d have to think about it.
I agonized over it. I felt more helpless than ever before. She was so vulnerable, so incapable of taking care of herself. And so far away. If she’d been in New York I could have driven up to see her. I could have brought her food. I could have helped her survive. Now she was several thousand miles away—broke and homeless. A street urchin.
I’d sworn I’d never send her money if she was on drugs. But where was the right and wrong here? Where was the truth? Was she clean? Even if she wasn’t, how could I let her starve?
I sent her a hundred dollars. I knew she might use it on drugs but I felt she was also without the necessities of life. I had to try to provide those for her. I had to try to keep her alive. She was my baby.
Meanwhile, Suzy also needed me.
She was in her senior year of high school and wanted to attend art school after she graduated. Now was the time to apply. The schools asked to see slides of the student’s work as part of the application. Suzy had the slides made, but balked when it came to sending them in. She couldn’t seem to get her finished applications int
o the mail. She’d start crying. She was insecure. She had a confidence problem—springing, doubtless, from all of those formative years spent being belittled and beaten down by Nancy. She’d been through a lot.
Frank and I sat her down. We suggested she work for a year before applying to art school. We wanted to take the pressure off her, give her some time to grow on her own. She liked our idea. She seemed relieved.
Toward the end of April my friend Susan went to London for a vacation. She had known and cared about Nancy since Nancy had been a baby. I gave Susan a hundred dollars and asked her to deliver it to Nancy.
“She’s going to ask you for more money,” I told Susan. “Don’t give it to her, no matter what she says.”
Susan promised she wouldn’t.
She gave me a report when she returned from her vacation.
“Nancy came to my hotel the first day I got there,” Susan said. “I gave her the money and she immediately asked for more, just like you said she would. I told her I didn’t have any. She got really angry. She refused to believe I didn’t have any more money. When I offered to buy her lunch, she stomped off.”
“How did she look?” I asked.
Susan hesitated. “Not well. Her hair was uncombed. She was pale and had dark circles under her eyes. She looked really out of it, Deb.”
No doubt about it now—she was on heroin again. Finding herself in a foreign environment, encountering situations she couldn’t handle, she’d prescribed a painkiller to ease the discomfort.
We didn’t know what to do. The situation seemed hopeless. Frank and I discussed my going over there to bring her back. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle her alone. If Frank went alone, she’d fight him. If we both went, well, we both couldn’t afford to go. We decided to wait and see, try to handle it by phone and by sending her small amounts of money.
She called constantly. As before, she would only speak to me. It seemed as if she always called when I was in transit. When I got home from work, I could always tell if Nancy had called by the tension on Suzy’s and David’s faces. If they’d taken a call and then gone out, the procedure was to leave the note with Nancy’s latest phone number stuck on the refrigerator. Checking the door of the refrigerator when I got home became automatic. So did my physical response while I waited for the overseas operator to place my call. The adrenaline would surge through me. It would take forever, it seemed, for the operator to connect me to Nancy’s latest crisis.
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) Page 30