REDEEMED!
…as if a light had shone upon me out of the darkness. And a light is shining within me, where there had been but darkness. And wherever I go whether I am recognized as the mother of Bliss Rampike or whether I am but anonymous, I am bathed in this radiance which is the gift of God. I am redeemed.
—Betsey Rampike, quoted in “Child-Prodigy Figure Ice Skater Bliss Rampike and Mother-Manager,” People, October 14, 1996.
…so grateful! The past several months, as those of you know, who follow my daughter’s career, a shadow lay upon us, for Bliss was stricken with a mysterious ailment, a “phantom pain” that threatened to destroy her career. Since we had to cancel the Little Miss Royale competition last spring, when I realized that Bliss was skating with pain, not a day passed without Bliss pleading with me to allow her back on the ice: “The pain is all gone, Mummy! I promise.” Of course, this brave little girl was not allowed anywhere near the ice, for these months were to be a time of “healing” and now, through the grace of God, the pain has been taken from us, and Bliss has resumed her career. We are so grateful.
—Betsey Rampike, from “Up Close & Personal in New Jersey,” interview, New Jersey Network TV, October 22, 1996.
KNOW WHAT I WISH? THAT MY SISTER, MY LOVE: THE INTIMATE STORY OF Skyler Rampike wasn’t a (linear) document agonizingly comprised of words, but a film, or a film-collage, or a “video installation” so that at this point I could unleash a torrent of images, film clips, TV footage to speed up the (gut-twisting) narrative. Something very bad is going to happen to someone in the Rampike family and there is nothing Skyler can do about it.
Which is why the narrative is gut-twisting, and obsessively slow-paced: Skyler (nineteen years old) can’t bear to return to ever-more traumatic scenes in the life of Skyler (nine years old) and yet he/I must.
In a visual document, all the author has to do is assemble, or reassemble, visual documents: he doesn’t have to create a God-damned thing, except a few captions here and there. Or maybe a voice-over, to be spoken by a professional. As in the (unauthorized/unconscionable) ABC documentary The Making and Unmaking of a Child Prodigy: The Bliss Rampike Story of February 1999, ninety-eight percent of the material was taken from pre-existing sources, film clips, photographs etc. in the public domain. In my version, only a few selected—“symbolic”—images would be used, and only a few of the most “revealing” interviews with my mother like those in People and on NJN-TV excerpted at the start of this chapter.
The coveted People interview finally came through, to Mummy’s delight, after Bliss returned in triumph to competitive skating in October 1996 and won the Tiny Miss Princess title at the Golden Skate Challenge in Hartford, Connecticut. The interview/feature covered nearly four pages in the obscenely popular (millions of readers? billions?) weekly magazine, including breathtaking photos of Bliss skating—in mid-leap, and in mid-spin—and a highly flattering portrait of Mother-Manager Betsey Rampike in a “prayerful mood” at rink-side. When the interview appeared, Mummy received countless telephone calls: “You’d think that ‘Betsey Rampike’ had scarcely existed, before People.” Mummy spoke wryly, yet wiped away a tear for Mummy was deeply moved.
Celebrity! Attention! At Fair Hills Day where previously Skyler Rampike moved invisibly amid his more ontologically defined classmates and, in general, passed beneath the radar of genial Headmaster Pearce Hannity III, suddenly Skyler was being singled out for attention: why? Even older boys rumored to belong to (secret, forbidden) “gangs” who sported (secret, forbidden) inked tattoos on the insides of their wrists singled him out in the corridors: “Yo Rampike! Lookin’ cool.” Even the prettiest, most popular girls sought him out, in the cafeteria for instance: “Skyler? That’s your name, isn’t it?—‘Skyler’? Would you and your sister Bliss like to come over to my house sometime, to visit? Say yes!” Yet more alarmingly, there came Headmaster Hannity swooping at Skyler to shake his startled hand: “Son, you and your parents have a standing invitation to ‘tea with Headmaster’—‘high tea’—‘sherry provided as well’—in my residence on campus—five P.M., Sundays. A small—select!—circle of senior faculty, parents and students, trustees, donors. Our office will send out invitations but in the meantime, son, please inform your parents. ‘Tea with Headmaster’ will celebrate its one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary next Sunday.”
Should be ashamed to admit it, and I am, but the fact is: Skyler felt a glow of pride, so singled out. As he’d felt when he’d struggled on the snaky-skinned gym mat and wiry little Vassily had said with forced enthusiasm Ver-ry good, Skeel-er! Each small step is a step to suc-cess, yes?
Couldn’t wait to tell Mummy his good news and, when Daddy next called, and asked to speak to Sky-boy, to tell Daddy; though knowing that the elder Rampikes were probably too busy for “tea with Headmaster.”
(And where was Daddy living now? No longer in Paramus, for Daddy had accepted the “fantastic” offer from Univers Bio-Tech, Inc., whose lavish sprawling corporate headquarters were in Univers, New Jersey, eleven miles north and east of Fair Hills.)
(And did Daddy want to divorce Mummy, and marry Calvin Klaus, Jr.’s crimped-blond mother, in this way providing Skyler with a slightly older, sexy gangsta-brother?—Skyler had not a clue.)
(For Mummy, taken up with “professional duties” regarding Bliss’s career, away from the house much of the time and, when home, usually on the telephone, refused to discuss the children’s father with them.)
Not long after the People interview, Mummy received a call from Sckulhorne relatives in Hagarstown, New York. Skyler overheard Mummy break off the conversation saying calmly and quietly and with such dignity, Daddy would surely have been impressed: “Visit us? But why? My daughter doesn’t know any of you and, after so long, I don’t either.”
And calmly then Mummy replaced the phone receiver, and smiled.
The thrill of revenge! Like an electric current the delicious sensation passed through Skyler, too.*
SKYLER? WILL DADDY EVER COME BACK TO LIVE WITH US AGAIN?
Maybe. If you start skating again, and win.
MUST’VE BEEN THE PRESCRIPTION ZOMIX, OR THE SUPER GROW/HI-CON Vit-C/CAGHC shots each Friday morning in Dr. Muddick’s office, unless it was the anti-convulsant Serenex, or the anti-depressant Excelsia, or Bliss’s new psychotherapist Dr. Rapp whose specialty was child-prodigy athletes, or Bliss’s new acupuncturist/nutritionist Kai Kui whom Mummy’s women friends so highly recommended, or maybe it was the prospect of working with her new trainer Anastasia Kovitski (Olympic silver medalist 1992, U.S. Women’s Figure Skating Champion 1992–93) and, for the first time, a choreographer, the Uzbekistan-born Pytor Skakalov, or some magical combination of all of these, for by September 1996 it seemed that Bliss’s debilitating phantom pain had lifted from her, or nearly; she’d regained the weight she’d lost, through “finicky” eating; and even the frequency of her nighttime “accidents” had lessened.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THAT DAZZLING COMEBACK SEASON:
• The Great Lakes Girls Skate Festival in Buffalo, New York, where, in October, in a red-sequined, abbreviated skating dress that reflected the spotlight like flame, Bliss Rampike skated to the tempestuous notes of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and placed second in the Girls’ Novice Division with a score of 5.6 out of 6.
• The Golden Skate Girls’ Challenge in Hartford, Connecticut, where in late October in a gingham “Gretel” costume with a tight-laced bodice, white milkmaid cap on her plaited blond hair and a peep of white-lace panties flashing beneath, Bliss Rampike skated to the thumping melody of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel winning the hearts of the judges as she won the hearts of the audience with her exquisite glides and spins (flying spin/jump spin/traveling spin) to win the coveted title Tiny Miss Golden Skate Princess 1996 with a score of 5.8 out of 6.
• The All-American-Girl Ice Jubilee in Bangor, Maine, in early November where in a “Vegas showgirl” costume of glittering white sequins and filmy white feathers, long tight sleeves
with ermine-trimmed wrists, stardust in her “upswept” hair and on her eyelids, and crimson-lace panties teasingly visible beneath, Bliss Rampike ravished both judges and audience with a skate-dance performance of that sultry-tango pop-American classic “Kiss of Fire,”* another time placing first in the “Little Miss” Division with a score of 5.9 out of 6.
JESUS THANK YOU!
Thank you Jesus for taking Bliss’s pain from her!
If Bliss’s pain should come again, Jesus give Bliss’s pain to me, to spare Bliss. For I am Bliss Rampike’s mother, and that is my blessing. For all the days of our lives to come AMEN.
* The thrill of revenge! Skyler had no idea why his mother who believed herself to be the warmest, most generous and “Christian” of women, and who in interviews spoke of her “devotion to her family,” seemed to be estranged from her “well-to-do”—“socially prominent”—relatives living in remote Hagarstown, New York, on the Canadian border which Skyler imagined as a landscape heaped with snow and essentially uninhabitable. Wouldn’t you think that this allegedly precocious kid might’ve been curious, as a normal kid would have been, why he had only one grandmother (chill-eyed and pike-mouthed) and not two, like other children; and no grandfathers at all; and, on Mummy’s side of the family, no aunts, uncles, cousins. Among the Rampikes, who were Daddy’s family, there were too many relatives to keep track of and for these, Daddy was guarded in his affections: “A family shares DNA. That is a biological fact. But there is ‘sibling rivalry’—you could argue, the greatest force in Homo sapiens. As our Muslim brethren say, ‘My brother, my cousin, and me against you—my brother and me against my cousin—and me against my brother.’ That’s the bottom line, son.”
* “Kiss of Fire”: the meretricious but crowd-pleasing influence of the suave Uzbekistan choreographer whom Mummy hired in the summer of 1996 to work with Bliss’s new trainer Anastasia Kovitski and with whom for a brief while during the longer, so very devasttating period when Daddy was living away from us, Mummy seemed to be “taken with.” In a more lewd, gossipy memoir the obviously jealous/spiteful Skyler would speak of oily Pytor Skakalov in withering terms; there would be at least one painful scene in which Skyler, having glimpsed Mummy and Skakalov together in a private moment, appeals to her: “What if Daddy comes back and sees you with him? What if Daddy comes to the ice rink to surprise us, and sees you with him, and goes away again? Mum -my!”
ON ICE MOUNTAIN
NOT WILL SOMETHING BAD HAPPEN? BUT WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN? HAD BECOME fixed inside Skyler’s head like something rattling in the wind.
For so Calvin Klaus* had promised. Or someone had promised.
Though the fall of 1996 was a season of surprises and these were mostly good surprises and “More to come!—maybe” as Mummy said mysteriously. Upcoming on Bliss’s skating schedule was the most coveted of northeastern skating competitions for girls, for the winners of the Miss Jersey Ice Challenge—Miss Jersey Ice Princess and Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess—would be awarded with modeling contracts with Junior Elite Skates and Skating Equipment, Inc., which meant glossy advertisements in high-circulation magazines like Teen People, Teen World, Teen Life and on selected cable channels.
“Not that we are skating for money. Or fame.”
So Mummy insisted, and so Mummy seemed to believe.
“But if we begin to make a little money—at last!—to help defray expenses, we can plan for the future: Skate America, Grand Prix America, U.S. Girls’ Skating Championships, U.S. Olympics. ‘Follow your dream’—is our belief—‘wherever it will lead.’”
Mummy had been speaking to Bliss in the way in which Mummy often spoke to Bliss in a murmurous stream of words as if thinking out loud to which Bliss scarcely seemed to listen, or had no need to listen, while Skyler, if he happened to wander into earshot, couldn’t help asking: “‘Follow your dream’—how, Mummy? Can you see a dream? Is it like a butterfly or something, you can see flying, and you can follow it?”
Such questions were posed by Skyler in utter seriousness though masked by a smart-alecky drawl acquired at Fair Hills Day from gangsta classmates.
(In fall 1996, Skyler was now in fifth grade. Though his tenth birthday would not be until March 1997. And Bliss, not enrolled in any school, and at this time “between tutors,” was six years, ten months old.)
Patiently Mummy said, “A dream is a ‘vision,’ Skyler. A dream is within the soul, where God speaks to us.” Mummy paused. Mummy took care not to betray her irritation at Skyler’s question. Mummy amended, “—to some of us.”
To some of us. Skyler caught this.
“Will God speak to me, Mummy?”
“Ask Him!”
Gaily Mummy laughed. On the sofa beside Mummy, sleepy from skating practice that afternoon and struggling to read a children’s picture book, Bliss did not glance up.
Bliss’s way of reading involved such physical effort, you could feel the strain as she moved her forefinger beneath lines of type and moved her lips to shape phantom letters.
Cagey Skyler backtracked: “What is ‘defray expenses,’ Mummy?”
A frown line appeared between Mummy’s eyebrows. Carefully Mummy said, “‘Defray’ means to ‘lessen’—‘lessen expenses.’ When we win the Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess title, and Bliss begins to model for Elite Skates, and acquires ‘national exposure,’ we will be able to make money at last, and when we do, your father can’t continue to object.”
Your father. This was a rare utterance. Not frequently did Mummy speak such painful words as your father and not in months had Mummy spoken the words Daddy, Bix, or my husband.
At least, not that Skyler had heard. What Mummy spoke of in private phone conversations, shut away in her private room with the door locked, Skyler had no idea.
“What about Daddy, Mummy? Why does he ‘object’?”
“Ask him.”
This was cruel! How ask your father when Skyler hadn’t glimpsed his father in weeks and when Daddy called to speak to “Sky-boy” and “my bestest-best li’l Bliss,” you could not interrupt the tumult of earnest-Daddy words to ask such a question.
“Because Bliss’s skating is expensive? Is it expensive? How much does it cost a year? A thousand dollars? A million?”*
“Your sister’s skating is an investment, Skyler! An investment is something that will pay off in the future and will repay the initial cost many, many times.” Mummy paused, pressing a row of red-polished nails to her breast, for Mummy had begun to speak excitedly as if being interviewed by an unfriendly or obtuse interviewer. “But, as I’ve said—we don’t skate for money, and we don’t skate for fame.”
Quizzically Bliss looked up from Three Little Bears on Ice Mountain to say, “My skating doesn’t cost anything, Skyler. It’s what God wants me to do. It isn’t like other things that cost money, Skyler. It’s special.”
Seeing the warning look in Mummy’s warm moist brown eyes, smart-alecky Skyler smartly backed off.
* Calvin Klaus! To this very hour, the name, classy-chic, sexy-haughty, makes me shiver with excitement, apprehension, or—is it dread? In November 1996, at the approximate time of the events transcribed in this chapter, Skyler was (secretly) devastated to learn that his older classmate had been either expelled from Fair Hills Day for being a member of a “secret society” or had been taken out of school by his concerned parents, following an attempt to (1) run away from home, taking one of his father’s handguns with him, or (2) “do injury” to himself with one of his father’s handguns. Abruptly then this troubled brother of Skyler’s disappeared from Skyler’s life as Skyler’s rapt stolen glimpses of the crimped-blond Morgan Klaus disappeared from his life later to reappear, in erotic scenes involving an adult man resembling Bix Rampike, in Skyler’s pubescent dreams.
* And what do you think it might have cost ten years ago to launch a “child-prodigy” athlete into the shark-infested sea of so-called amateur sports? (“Amateur” being a handy euphemism for pre-professional.) By my estimate, con
sidering salaries paid to Bliss’s ever-growing/ever-shifting “staff” (trainer, choreographer, Mummy’s personal assistants and PR persons et al.), the ever-growing/ever-shifting roster of expensive health-care professionals (Muddick, Bohr-Mandrake, Rapp et al.), fees to the Halcyon rink and entry fees to numerous skating competitions, plus expenses for costumes, makeup, hairstyling, travel and hotels, and health insurance and life insurance premiums (by fall/winter 1996, Bliss Rampike was insured for $3 million), the sum is approximately $200,000.
THE GOOD SURPRISE I
FROM OVERHEAD, SUGARY-DEAFENING TCHAIKOVSKY: “SLEEPING BEAUTY Waltz.” The large ice rink glitters reflecting myriad shifting lights. It’s the evening of November 30, 1996. The long-awaited Miss Jersey Ice Challenge at the Newark War Memorial rink, Newark, New Jersey.
Déjà vu! Like a smell of ammonia.
Yet: Skyler is as anxious this time as he’d been the first time. As he is each time his younger sister skates competitively in such arenas, before such crowds. For that is the curse of déjà vu: though you’ve lived it before, you can’t remember how it turned out. Not even whether you survived.
“SKYLER? SIT WITH YOUR SISTER, DARLING. MUMMY WILL BE RIGHT back.”
Gaily kissing Skyler on his puppy-dog nose. Leaving the faintest smear of lipstick so (unbeknownst to him) Bliss Rampike’s big brother will resemble a dwarf clown.
This beautiful rink! Dazzling rink! No expense has been spared by ELITE SKATES & SKATING, thriving subsidiary of ELITE SPORTS EQUIPMENT INTERNATIONAL. Festooning the rink are banks of waxy white lilies and bloodred roses intricately folded as female genitals in bud; and, inside the rink, clearly visible across the bluish ice, are posters advertising ELITE SKATES & SKATING ELITE SKATES & SKATING ELITE SKATES & SKATING in massive bloodred letters circling the rink like a snake swallowing its own tail.
My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike Page 25