My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Skyler’s attorney! Skyler had not given a thought to Crampf in the intervening years. It was a shock to him that Crampf seemed still to be retained by Bix Rampike in the role of “Skyler’s attorney.”

  Before Skyler could ask why Crampf was at Basking Ridge, another man stepped forward to introduce himself to Skyler: “Hal Ransom, Fair Hills PD senior detective.” Mr. Ransom explained that he had recently been assigned to the Bliss Rampike case which was being re-opened another time, and he had a few questions to ask of Skyler that would not keep him very long. Skyler, beginning to be frightened, muttered what sounded like Okay I guess with a glance at Crampf who smiled at him consolingly. Shovell discreetly departed, and Skyler and the two men sat at a polished mahogany table. This was a time in Skyler’s fevered-adolescent life when he was dazzled by Heidi Harkness, his first girl; yet all thoughts of Heidi Harkness vanished from his mind, like water down a drain. Skyler recalled Mummy warning him Do not speak of it ever not ever not to anyone not even Jesus. Do not. The interview would last perhaps forty minutes during which time Ransom asked Skyler a succession of questions (“What do you remember of the night of your sister’s death?”—“When was the last time you saw your sister alive?”—“What was the last thing your sister said to you?”) and as Skyler opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to stutter I d-d-don’t r-really r-r-remember much, canny Mr. Crampf said, “Detective, my client declines to answer.” Several times Skyler felt a sharp urge to speak, like an urge to sneeze, but canny Crampf quickly interceded, with the virtuoso ease of a Ping-Pong player who always outplays his opponent no matter how swift his opponent is, saying: “Detective, my client declines to answer.” A faint flush of indignation came into the detective’s face though he did not appear to be greatly surprised. At the end of forty minutes he handed Skyler his card which, in a gesture that might have seemed rude in a less poised individual, Crampf took from Skyler’s fingers with the comment: “Thank you, Detective. Good-bye.” Though Skyler had barely spoken during the interview yet Skyler could barely push himself up from his seat, he was so exhausted. Like pushing yourself up from the snaky-skinned gym mat where you have fallen, hard. Very hard.

  “Son.” Now in a kindly mode Crampf laid his hand on Skyler’s shoulder. This was a gesture that should have reminded Skyler of his father but the memory went askew and was lost. “…remember: no one can touch you. ‘You have a right to remain silent’—the cornerstone of justice in America.”

  And what does the reader make of this interlude? Is Skyler, at age sixteen, being investigated as a suspect in his sister’s murder? Or is Skyler meant to be an informing witness, one who might name the murderer?

  Whatever. Best remedy is to excise it from memory. By the time he met up with Heidi Harkness that evening at Toll House, he’d forgotten the episode entirely.

  THAT NIGHT THRASHING AND GROANING IN SWEATY/SMELLY/SEMEN-STAINED sheets unchanged for a week Skyler felt his mother’s consoling caress and heard her gentle yet urgent warning like the lyrics of a secret hymn Do not speak of it ever Skyler not ever not to anyone not even Jesus. Do not.

  AND WHERE IS SKYLER? NO LONGER IN FORT LEE, NEW JERSEY BUT— approaching Spring Hollow, New York? Reader, I had not expected this!

  While I was busily preoccupied in providing you with (crucial) background information, my intrepid teen hero seems to have driven out of the foreground of this narrative without my noticing.

  “My n-name is Sk-Skyler Rampike. I’ve come to see my…”

  Somehow, frankly I can’t imagine how, Skyler managed to find his way off N. Syke Street in Fort Lee within a few minutes, capture his way back onto thunderous I-95 and so, on the “upper level,” manage to cross the George Washington Bridge for the first time, as a driver, in his life. (Of which, being an insecure kid, Skyler would be enormously proud except in his state of wound-up nerves, mouth dry as ashes and heart clenched like a fist, pride is beyond him.) (Also, while crossing, in the right-hand lane, he dared not glance to the left or the right and had no more awareness of crossing the great Hudson River than he would have had of crossing a valley of rubble.) Equally unexpectedly, Skyler managed, on the New York side of the river, not to screw up another time and take a wrong exit, as you’d expect, but to negotiate an insidiously tricky lane-change onto the Henry Hudson Parkway North; from there, feeling a small charge of confidence, Skyler had no trouble exiting onto Route 9 North; scarcely needing to consult his hand-drawn map, Skyler drove at a steady speed through the suburban communities of Irvington, Tarrytown, and (quaintly named, redolent of Headless Horseman and demonic pumpkin) Sleepy Hollow; at last turning into Spring Hollow, pop. 2,800 where in a state of mounting excitement, or dry-mouthed panic, he stopped at a gas station to buy twelve dollars’ worth of gas and stumble into the men’s lavatory dazed and his head ringing, trying not to breathe in the foul odors of myriad predecessors telling the sickly-pale face in the splotched mirror above the urinal Hey look: you can still turn back, okay? She doesn’t know you are here. Yet then returning to the borrowed Dodge at the gas pump looking like a junked vehicle newly charged with life, bronze-gleaming letters NEW CANAAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF CHRIST RISEN and so Skyler heard himself ask the gas station attendant for directions to Magnolia Terrace and was told in heavily accented English what sounded like Two lights left, turn by the river.

  MAGNOLIA ESTATES IS A VERY NEW, CLEARLY VERY EXPENSIVE RESIDENTIAL community ostentatiously set off from a neighborhood of older, smaller homes: MAGNOLIA ESTATES 3 & 4 BEDROOM CUSTOM-DESIGNED LUXURY HOMES SOME RIVER LOTS STILL AVAILABLE. Here are narrow curvy lanes—Magnolia Drive, Magnolia Heights, Magnolia Terrace—like those Skyler recalls from Fair Hills, New Jersey; at 9 Magnolia Terrace, an antebellum plantation house with elaborate white wrought iron trim and a columned front portico, peach-colored like a confectioner’s cake. At 11 Magnolia Terrace is a custard-and-cherry Colonial, at 7 Magnolia Terrace is a pistachio-raspberry Greek Revival. The houses of Magnolia Estates are smaller than they appear from the street for their showy two-storey facades disguise one-storey structures; while their lots appear long from the street, most of the property is at the front while at the rear the property is shallow, hardly more than a few yards; as in a cinematic dream-sequence, Skyler has a sense of shrinking dimensions. Trying not to panic. Scratching at his face. Light-headed with hunger but had not had any appetite to eat the lunch Miriam so kindly provided him and fumbling now in his jacket pockets for—what?—stray Zilich pills, one of Heidi’s lint-covered OxyContins. Thinking But I can still turn back! She hasn’t seen me.

  All this while, Skyler has not wanted to acknowledge that something is very wrong in Magnolia Estates. Not just the showy, synthetic houses, a number of which appear to be empty, with LUXURY HOME FOR SALE signs in the front yards, but the fact that he has been seeing too many people, and the wrong kinds of people, for such a setting, in which ordinarily there would be no pedestrians at all, since there are no sidewalks. And there is too much traffic, not the sleek high-quality cars favored by well-to-do suburban matrons but an ominous preponderance of minivans. In the street across from the peach-colored plantation house is a motley, restless crowd of about thirty people: TV camera crews, photographers and reporters, “gawkers.” What has happened? Why are these people staring at him? Calling to him? Panicked Skyler ducks to shield his face. So luridly bandaged, his steely hair in a rat-tail, he can’t be identifiable as Skyler Rampike—can he? Yet photographers are eagerly aiming their cameras at him, a TV camera crew for WSRY-TV is eagerly taping, reporters call excitedly after the Dodge station wagon: “Wait! Are you ‘Skyler’? Are you—the son?” Skyler sees that police barricades have been set up in the street to keep these aggressive individuals from trepassing on the lawn at 9 Magnolia Terrace and rushing up to the peach-colored house. Two uniformed Spring Hollow patrolmen are directing traffic. At the foot of the asphalt driveway two private security guards—both black, with dour expressions—stand beside a barricade with a sign attached PRIVATE INVITATION ON
LY. Several vehicles including a van marked WCBS-TV have been allowed past the guards to park in the driveway; in his most earnest voice Skyler explains to the guards that he is Betsey Rampike’s son, and she is expecting him.

  “You? Miz Ranpick’s son? You are?”

  “Y-Yes. I am. Mz. Ranpick’s son.”

  “You some kind of—what? ‘New C’nan Church’—minister?”

  “No. I mean y-yes. I belong to a—”

  “You comin’ for some service, son?”

  “Yes.” Skyler shows the frowning guards his New Jersey driver’s license. The first time in his life, Skyler is anxious to be identified as Skyler Rampike.

  THE LOOK IN THE WOMAN’S FACE, A DARK-SKINNED MARIA IN A STARCHED white housekeeper’s uniform, Skyler understands that he has come too late.

  “You are who? ‘Skee-ler’—”

  “Where is my mother? Where is Betsey?”

  Skyler has stumbled into a brightly lit foyer of mirrors and wallpaper sparkly and cheery as Christmas tinsel. Quickly the housekeeper backs off from him, her dark eyes veiled with pity. “Excuse me, I will bring Mr. Kissler.”

  Blindly Skyler follows the woman into a living room lavishly furnished in what must be “period” pieces. How long ago, in what a distant and improbable country of Mummy-little man romance, Skyler’s young mother searched for “period pieces”—“antiques”—for the sprawling old Colonial on Ravens Crest Drive. Here, in a smaller but showier setting, like a store-window display, are plush velvet sofas, chintz-covered chairs bright as parrots’ wings, oddly shaped floor lamps, brocaded wall hangings. On the velvet sofas are cushions large enough to smother an elephant. Underfoot is an Oriental rug thick as the snaky-skinned mats in the Gold Medal Gym, garlanded with flesh-colored cabbage roses and mustard-bright trim. How perfumy the air is! Skyler can scarcely catch his breath.

  On the wall above a white marble fireplace, a large portrait of Betsey Rampike in the prime of her youthful beauty and Bliss in the crook of her arm, Bliss at about the age of five, very sweet, very blond and very pretty, with one of her silver tiaras on her curled and crimped blond hair. Though Betsey is a lush dark-eyed brunette, and Bliss is a fair-skinned blue-eyed blond, yet the painter, in the way of a kitsch-glamor-pop Renoir, has made the mother and daughter resemble each other to an uncanny degree.

  Skyler backs off, shielding his eyes. Noooo.

  All he’d been able to ingest that morning, the long heart-straining hours of that morning beginning in the windy dusk before dawn in the third-floor rented room on Pitts Street, so long ago he can barely recall it, has been a few mouthfuls of the fresh-squeezed orange juice kindly Miriam gave him, that had tipped over in the passenger’s seat of the Dodge spilling sticky juice. So Skyler is dazed, and Skyler is not feeling so good.

  Where is Betsey? Must be, by now the Maria-woman has told her that Skyler is here?

  Through an archway of sculpted molding—a stark white frieze of nymphs, swans, girl-skaters—there is another, slightly smaller room in which, beneath blinding bright lights, and overseen by a team of a half-dozen individuals, a television interview seems to be in progress. A sofa has been pulled out at an angle from a wall, and other pieces of furniture artfully arranged as in a TV talk-show set; a glamorously made-up woman with a lilting exclamatory voice, whose face looks familiar to Skyler, is interviewing a middle-aged man with shellacked-looking black hair and a grief-stricken yet floridly tanned face. Seeing Skyler stumbling forward like a drunken boy the man quickly rises to approach him, interrupting the interview.

  “Are you—Skyler? Betsey’s son?”

  “Yes. Where is my mother? I want to see my mother.”

  “Haven’t you been told, son? Your mother—our beloved Betsey—has passed away.”

  “Passed away? Where?”

  Skyler’s voice is young and raw-sounding and edged with contempt. Skyler is concerned that this stranger, a man in his early fifties whom Skyler doesn’t know, is extending both hands to him, and Skyler does not want to be touched.

  “Skyler, I am Nathan Kissler. I think Betsey must have told you about me…” Kissler is Betsey’s partner in Heaven Scent, Inc. Financial advisor, “companion.” From somewhere, some surreptitious and unacknowledged glimpse into Tabloid Hell, Skyler seems to know that Kissler is Betsey Rampike’s fiancé.

  “Skyler? Son? Why don’t you have a seat, here. We’ll get you something to drink, you are looking very pale. Of course this is a terrible shock to you. A terrible, terrible shock for all of us who love—loved—our darling Betsey…”

  “Mister, could you not talk so much. I want to see my mother.”

  Skyler gazes at Nathan Kissler with the derisive-male eyes of Bix Rampike. This dapper little man scarcely five-feet-six, Bix would tower over him, Skyler’s mother’s fiancé? And what does that mean—fiancé? Skyler is appalled at the thought that there might be something sexual between Kissler and his mother, isn’t going to think of anything so obscene. Kissler is wearing a black silk shirt, a black silk ascot, black Armani jeans that fit his narrow waist and hips snug as the jeans on a male model thirty years his junior. Especially offensive to Skyler’s sense of decorum is a black leather belt with a brass medallion buckle. And the man’s face isn’t tanned but has been expertly made up for the television cameras: pancake makeup with an orange base, eyelashes darkened with mascara. Sucking little fish-mouth, reddened.

  Kissler is urging Skyler to sit down, the woman in the starched white uniform has hurried off to get him a glass of ice water, but Skyler eases away, doesn’t want to sit down, too many eyes are greedily fastened upon him. The TV cameraman has turned his camera in Skyler’s direction, little green light on. Kissler is saying gravely, “…passed away, Skyler, only this morning. After complications following surgery. The news has just been released and already there has been a deluge of—”

  “But where is she? I want to see her.”

  Skyler has the idea that, though she has “passed away,” Betsey is also somewhere close by, in another room in this house, preparing for a television interview. There are the bright lights, there are the cameras. Two cameramen. And the female interviewer whose face is familiar to Skyler. Why doen’t one of Betsey’s assistants tell her Skyler is here?

  “…after the surgery, her heart couldn’t bear the strain…She’d wanted the operation to be kept utterly secret…no tabloid ‘leaks’! The funeral will be in two days, here in Spring Hollow.”

  “But I want to see her. I want to see her now. I have a right to see her, I’m her son and she invited me here.”

  Patiently Kissler explains: “Betsey’s ‘remains’ are still at the hospital, Skyler. There will be a private viewing at the funeral home—”

  Skyler interrupts: “She left me something, didn’t she? Where is it?”

  Quickly the TV interviewer intercedes, embracing Skyler warmly. Skyler is too stunned to resist, the woman is big-boned, fleshy, though glamorous she is a motherly sort of woman, with muscles Skyler can feel, and hard spongey breasts the size of hubcaps. Now Skyler recognizes this woman: Zelda Zachiarias of WomenSpeakOut. “Skyler! Please accept my condolences for your loss. What a brave woman your mother was, Skyler! We’re preparing a special tribute to Betsey Rampike to be aired on Friday, and it would mean so much to us, as it would have meant so much to Betsey, if you would join us, Skyler. You see, Betsey spoke of you often. Betsey said, ‘Every hour of my life I pray to God, and to Jesus: Look after my son.’ Betsey believed without a doubt that you and she would be reconciled one day, Skyler. It was her great hope, and she had faith. Oh Skyler!—I can’t believe that Betsey Rampike will never again be on my show, as a model for women—mothers—who have suffered the most grievous loss, and survived. Yes, and triumphed. Not a word did Betsey want uttered of her ordeal—you know what a private—‘stoic’—person Betsey was—not a word of her struggle with—” The throaty voice drops solemnly, as if Zelda were trying to keep from bursting into tears, Skyler has to strain to hear wha
t sounds like cancer of the service.

  Cancer of the service? Skyler shudders.

  Passionately Zelda Zachiarias continues, standing very close to Skyler, “Just before her surgery Betsey said, ‘Pray for me, Zelda. God will do the rest.’ So brave! For our TV audience, Skyler, will you just say a few…”

  Skyler detaches himself from Zelda Zachiarias’s grip. Tries to shield his face from the rapacious TV cameramen advancing upon him. Hateful little green lights on, Skyler knows what that portends: Skyler Rampike is exposed.

  Close by Nathan Kissler has been speaking through a cell phone. He seems wary of Skyler now, not so friendly. The air of paternal warmth has been replaced by a slightly ironic chill. Skyler returns to the subject of what his mother left for him, and Kissler says, with a pained smile, “Skyler, your mother left a will. Certainly, Betsey left a will. In fact, she may have left wills…She was always changing and ‘updating’ her will as new friends came into her life, and older friends invariably dropped out…There will be a formal reading of Betsey Rampike’s will in her lawyer’s office, in time. But in the meantime—”

  Skyler says loudly, “Where is it, what Mummy left me? Is it somewhere here?” and Kissler says, “Skyler, please keep your voice down. The last thing we want is for those hyenas and jackals out on the street to hear us. This is a terrible shock for all of us, not just you. Our big spring launch is coming up in three weeks, and we have more than six million dollars invested in Heaven Scent spring products. If only you’d called first, someone could have prepared you,” and Skyler says, “Where is it? My mother left me something. A letter, or a videotape…That was why she asked me to come here. What did you do with—” and Kissler says, “Skyler, there is no need to shout. We can hear you,” and Skyler says, “You don’t hear me! I’m asking, where is my mother? And where is what she left me? God damn you, I can look for it myself…”

  Skyler tries to push past Nathan Kissler who, though shorter than Skyler by several inches, and older by three decades, is surprisingly agile, and strong; but Skyler manages to free a fist, and swing it, striking the older man on the bridge of his nose, and breaking it; there is a gratifying crunch! and a warm spurt of blood. But one of the private guards has appeared, a large dour-faced black man who calls Skyler “son” and gently but very firmly restrains him. Skyler is being walked somewhere, rapidly. As the guard grips his upper arms, Skyler walks rapidly, with buckling knees, like a cartoon character whose feet barely touch the ground. Now they are outside, in wintry air. Skyler struggles with the guard, but Skyler’s strength is fading; not the black man’s hands but something like a clamp, a vise, closes tight about Skyler’s chest; his lungs open in the cold fresh air as if sliced by a knife but the slit is too narrow, Skyler can’t suck in enough oxygen, overhead the sky is a mass of tumorous clouds, underfoot the frozen ground suddenly opens and Skyler falls through*