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

lover—British punk rock star Sid Vicious of the defunct Sex Pistols. He was out on $50,000 bail.
    She was twenty years old when she died.
    The reporters kept ringing the bell, shouting my name. The neighbors honked. None of them would go away, ever, it seemed, until I opened the door. So I opened it.
    â€œHe’s dead!” one of them yelled.
    â€œSid’s dead, Mrs. Spungen!”
    â€œOverdose–!”
    â€œMiddle of the night—”
    â€œIn Greenwich Village—”
    â€œCelebrating being out on bail—”
    â€œSome celebration, huh?”
    â€œCare to comment, Mrs. Spungen?”
    â€œHow does it make you feel, Mrs. Spungen?”
    â€œGet what he deserved?”
    â€œHappy?”
    â€œSad?”
    â€œEnd of ordeal?”
    The shutters clicked, the TV cameras rolled. Pens were anxiously poised. I said nothing. I felt nothing. Just my own pain.
    â€œDon’t you want to comment, Mrs. Spungen?”
    â€œHow about the criminal justice system?”
    â€œWhat do you think of it now?”
    I closed the door in their faces.
    â€œWait–!”
    â€œWe need a statement—”
    The reporter nearest the door began to ring the bell again. I leaned against the inside of the door, the ache in my chest making it hard to breathe. The pain had started right after I had learned of Nancy’s death. It would not go away. I’d seen a doctor but he said I was in perfect health. I thought about running from the press. I had my coat on and my keys in my hand. I always did now, so I’d be ready to run. But I knew I’d never get away from them. They’d follow me. They’d find me, wherever I went.
    The repeated ringing brought my seventeen-year-old son, David, downstairs. He hadn’t yet left for school. Not that leaving was anything more than a token gesture. He rarely made it to school. Mostly, he sat in the public library. He had stopped seeing his friends. He had stopped living. We had all stopped living. I had quit my job; Frank went off to work like a zombie and came back that way; Suzy, who was two years older than David, had isolated herself in her apartment in the city. She seldom went to her classes at the Philadelphia College of Art and we saw little of her.
    But the reporters didn’t care about any of us, just as they hadn’t cared about Nancy. All they wanted was another installment in their ongoing freak show, to sell papers, to boost ratings.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” asked David.
    â€œSid OD’ed. He’s dead.”
    David nodded grimly. He wasn’t surprised. He had no more capacity to be surprised. He had grown up with too much anger and pain and tragedy. He had grown up with Nancy.
    â€œI’ll call the police,” he declared, and went off to use the phone. I just stood there in the hallway.
    A patrol car came immediately. The Nancy Spungen–Sid Vicious case was the biggest story Huntingdon Valley, our little Philadelphia suburb, had ever known. Any call from the Spungen residence brought a quick response.
    The officers moved the reporters off our property and sent them on their way. David and I watched from the living room window.
    As soon as the policemen left, two English tabloid-newspaper men returned and began to ring the bell again. When I didn’t answer, they backed up onto the front lawn and began to yell.
    â€œHow dare you call the police!”
    â€œWe’re not bothering you, Mrs. Spungen!”
    â€œWe just want to talk!”
    One of the reporters was particularly abrasive. Three days after Nancy’s funeral he’d shown up with a copy from a page of an English newspaper carrying the banner headline NANCY WAS A WITCH . He told me if I didn’t deny it people would assume it was true. I said “No comment” and closed the door. Somehow he managed to shove the page inside the door before it shut, then told the police I’d stolen it.
    â€œWe