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

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Bix Rampike’s face glowered like a rotted pumpkin. In his displeasure with his son he brought the flat of his heavy hand down on Skyler’s outspread fingers, like a mallet.

  STUMBLED AWAY TO THE MEN’S ROOM. CONSIDERED HANGING HIMSELF IN one of the toilet stalls except (1) Skyler’s luck, someone would come whistling into the restroom to piss into a urinal and discover him; and, (2) at Hugo Boss, Skyler had left behind his sexy newly purchased leather belt so he had not the means to hang himself anyway.

  Thinking Having come so far, my epic journey, I can’t give up now. Can I?

  “…WORLD MIGHT’VE THOUGHT, INCLUDING YOU, PRISSY SKY-BOY, HEAD UP your Ivy League ass, that your mother and I were not on the very best terms because of the divorce and the bullshit in the tabloids, but not so!—”

  Badly Skyler wanted to nudge the Italian-leather briefcase toward his ranting father; or, with the childish audacity he’d never had as a child, appropriate it and open it himself.

  “…though it did hurt, have to admit, when Betsey went on those damn TV shows promoting her damn ‘memoirs’ and spoke of me, her ex-, like I’m the woman’s beet-noir…as if our marriage ending was my fault alone. God damn, son, you’re said to be high I.Q., if fucked-up as hell, so you know that things are never that simple. Onan’s Razor—know what that is?—means that things have multiple causes. Like history, like why we fought the Civil War, or World War II, or the difference between asbestos and asbesteosis, it’s ‘over-determined.’ Y’know what Freud means by ‘over-determined’…”

  Impatiently Skyler nodded yes! Yes he knows what S. Freud meant by “over-determined.”

  “…anyway not true. Betsey and I remained in contact till the ghastly end. We had our ‘troubled’ son to deal with—we had joint lawsuits, like the ‘KILL BLISS!’* outrage—we had ‘copyright infringement’ on the name ‘Bliss Rampike’ and her likeness. (The most repulsive, some sneaker company using Bliss’s picture on girls’ damn footwear.) Our lawyers are interbreeding, their kids are marrying! Naturally Betsey contacted me before she went into the hospital last week. ‘Bix, I have written to Skyler again, I have pleaded with Skyler to come see me or at least speak with me but he has not.’ I told your mother not to cry, not to judge you too harshly because there are reasons not to judge you like a normal American kid, or even a normal American fuck-up kid. Anyway, your mother and I were on close terms and nothing like the monsters those jackals and hyenas have painted us in the gutter-press. No one can understand how close we were, joined at the heart—when you have had children together with a woman, and when you have lost a child.”

  Abruptly Bix ceased speaking. A film of perspiration had broken out on his deep-furrowed forehead, Bix wiped on his shirt sleeve. When the waitress brought him his drink, Bix disappointed her by scarcely acknowledging her for he was staring broodingly at Skyler. “This ‘fiancé’—‘Nathan Kissler’—Betsey turned a deaf ear to my investigator, who’d turned up some frank evidence that Kiss-my-ass would’ve been arrested for embezzlement not once not twice but three times, some fund-raising scam he’d had going up in Darien, Connecticut, also a history of forged checks, but it’s been elderly widows he’s romanced, not the kind to ‘press charges.’ Anyway, Betsey contacted me to tell me that a ‘precious document’ was being sent to me by certified mail, which I could read ‘if I so wished,’ but I was not to speak to her about it, would I promise? and so, what the hell, I promised. Betsey said the ‘precious document’ was a letter for Skyler, she had been wanting to write for years. And with the letter there will be a video: ‘Bix, you remember.’”

  Video! Vaguely Skyler recalled a video. Swallowing hard thinking Maybe I don’t want this after all. Maybe I am making a mistake.

  “…y’see, son, this surgery of Betsey’s, she had a ‘premonition.’ Betsey was a woman for ‘premonitions’—most of which never came off—but this time, she was right. She’d had a half-dozen ‘surgerical procedures’ that I knew of, that were kept secret. This famous New York publisher who came to her, after that sex-pervert Roosha killed himself, offering Betsey an ‘undisclosed sum’ to write her memoir, not that Betsey had to ‘write’ it, they hire people to do the actual writing, like speechwriters, the crucial test is can you go on TV, do you pass the TV test, and damn right, Betsey Rampike did. But for TV, and these ‘promotional appearances,’ Betsey needed surgeries, for which the publisher paid the bill.”

  “Surgeries? Like for—cancer?”

  “No, Skyler. Not for cancer.”

  “But it was cancer of the—” Skyler faltered, shy of the word service, “—that’s what Betsey died of, wasn’t it?”

  Bix lifted his glass and drank. For a long bemused moment contemplating his son’s anxious face. Then he said, with the air of one speaking to a very young child, “Sky-boy, no. It wasn’t ‘cancer of the cerxiv’ or cancer of anything. Your mother’s surgeries were all cosmetic. Back in Fair Hills, Betsey began with ‘eyelid tucks.’ Those injections—‘Botox’—‘collagen’—‘laser wrinkle remover.’ Her first face-lift, we were separated then, had to be 1999. The surgery that killed her, son, was the nastiest one: ‘liposuction.’” Bix shuddered, and took another large swallow of whiskey.

  “‘Lip-o-suction’—?”

  “Of course, it was ‘cancer’ that was leaked to the press. Betsey’s PR team is very skilled at ‘leaking’ what is said to be secrets, and the press just gobbles it up. See, if the press gobbles up a wrong factoid, they can ‘correct’ it in the next issue, or on TV. It’s all bullshit, but it’s lucrative bullshit, just between you and me, son, I have invested in some of these ‘gutter-tabloids,’ they do turn a profit and that’s the bottom line. But the tragedy was, Betsey died of ‘liposuction’ and not cancer, and Heaven Scent is frantic to keep that secret. Because Betsey Rampike has been such a ‘role model’ for the Christian-consumer community. Poor Betsey was saying, she could not ‘diet off ’ a roll of fat around her waist, and hips, God knows the poor woman did try, it was hell living with Betsey when she was ‘dieting’…and if she did drop ten, fifteen pounds, it was the Dark Night of the Soul, and then the damn skin hung loose. I felt sorry for her, God damn. Like a part-deflated elephant-balloon, skin hanging loose. Poor woman’s rear, that had used to be so smooth and bouncy, you would not want to have seen, Skyler. Some sights, like fallen-down tits, that’d once been stand-up beauties, you do not want to see, son. Your dad will shield you from such precocious knowledge. Anyway, the surgery went bad. Had to know it was a disaster, Kiss-my-ass called me. This conniving fucker, called me. ‘The liposuction went wrong. Parts of Betsey’s stomach got sucked into the vacuum. And some intestines…’ Poor guy was bawling. Maybe he did love her. Maybe he hadn’t gotten her to change her will yet. ‘Bix, she isn’t going to make it. The doctor says, the stress to her heart…’ She was on life-support for three days. He was saying he was her business partner and fiancé but he didn’t have power of attorney and I said, ‘Look. I am not “next-of-kin” any longer, Betsey and I were divorced years ago.’ Kiss-my-ass was in over his head. Two-bit embezzler, he’d fucked this up and knew it. Makes me sick, thinking of her and him in bed together, so I don’t think of it, and advise that for you, too. See, son…”

  Bix’s voice had thickened. Tears swelled in his eyes and trickled down his flushed cheeks. Skyler was trying to comprehend the fact: his mother had not died of cancer but of “liposuction”—cosmetic surgery. His mother had died, and that was why he was here.

  “Son, this is yours.”

  At last, Skyler’s father opened the briefcase. With surprisingly steady hands he removed a peach-colored envelope, and what appeared to be a battered and water-stained videotape. “This material is yours, Skyler. Your mother prepared it for you ‘in case God calls me’ and it was her wish that you do with it whatever you want and, son, that includes destroying it which is what your dad recommends toot sweet. Betsey entrusted these items to me, she said, as the ‘great love of her life’—or was it ‘the grea
t tragic love of her life.’ You see, your mother and I agreed never to reveal what passed between us. That is, what happened to your sister on that terrible night. Though I was not present, I was responsible, as you will learn. I may be drunk right now and I may be a son of a bitch lacking a soul, but I readily concede an existential fact, that I am responsible for the tragedy of our family, for I believe in truth without flinching. Son, truth is the bedrock of the scientific method. And the scientific method is the bedrock of western civilization. That controversial pioneer of the Unconscious S. Freud has said, the female of the species is not so ‘morally evolved’ as the male and so it is the case, son, we males must take responsibility for female acts, at times. Though your mother and I were divorced and never appeared together in public yet we remained ‘amicable’ through the years—like nations with nuclear weapons poised to kill each other. Now that poor Betsey is gone, I can give you these in the hope that you, Skyler, will be granted a new lie—I mean, a new life—by what you discover here. I did not read every word of the heartfelt letter your mother wrote to you, Skyler: it was too painful. Nor did I watch that damned video again, that I’d seen years ago and that had so misled me about you, son. No need to reopen festering wounds! I hope, Skyler, that after you have examined these documents you will call me, and forgive me, son, for misjudging you, all these years; and I hope that we can be father and son again, as we’d been in Fair Hills, in happier times. I will pay your tuition at any university or college you can get into—if you stay sober!—and you are free to study anything you wish though keeping in mind the challenge of the future—‘Ever evolving’ which is the axion of New Genesis, Inc. How proud your old dad would be, son, if you took a course of study, molecular biology for instance, or gene-splicing, so you could join up with our New Genesis team. And I will buy you a new car: frankly I was shocked to see that piece of shit you’re driving, pulled up into Betsey’s driveway when I got there. My ‘new family’ will welcome you, Skyler, though probably you would not want to live with us which would be an unfair strain on Danielle but you are welcome to visit us often, in the condo on Central Park or at ‘Harmony Farm’ which is our two-hundred-acre country estate over in Jersey. Son?”

  Skyler pushed out of the wood-plank booth. Had to leave! Now he had what he’d come for, both items in hand, he was damn sorry to disappoint his dad, sorry not to be meeting the “new wife,” stammered thanks, thanks Dad, shaking Dad’s iron-grip hand, and when clumsy-drunk-Dad lurched partway out of the booth to hug him, and leave a snail-scum-trail of spittle on his left cheek, Skyler gritted his teeth allowing himself to be kissed, allowed himself to be hugged, one final time: “Son, remember your old dad loves you like hell.”

  “Dad, I know that. And I love you, too.”

  IN THE MURKY PART-TIMBERED LOBBY OF THE WASHINGTON IRVING INN LIMPING at a trot toward a cave of elevators Skyler was distracted by the sight of—was it Mrs. Klaus? Skyler’s best-friend Calvin Klaus’s coldly beautiful blond mother? But a closer look at the woman in the ankle-length sable coat dissuaded him, for Morgan Klaus was Skyler’s mother’s age, in her mid-forties; and this woman was considerably younger. She was on her way into the Old Dutch Tavern and her gaze—steely-blue, opaque—passed through Skyler like a laser ray. In the elevator ascending to his room on the fifth floor clutching the perfumy peach-colored envelope and the water-stained videotape to his chest he thought Must be Danielle.

  * Handy German word for fucking-unreal.

  † Fleeting frisson of child-memory: as, long ago, Skyler was transported by Daddy in the ’97 Rogue Warrior SUV to one or another physical therapy session in Fair Hills. Probably, Daddy was only just musing out loud, with no intention that Skyler reply.

  * But what is Skyler agreeing with? Does Bix mean “her” to be Betsey, or Bliss?

  * “Longest suicide note on record” is Will & Testement [sic] by the minor American poet V. West-gaard (1841–73), an astonishing 999 handwritten pages. Reader, I am not able to match this.

  * Popular video game first issued in 2000. The player is a pretty blond cartoon-Bliss, skating ingeniously/desperately to escape her potential killers who include GUNNAR and GUTHER (sex perverts), MOM, DAD, and SNIVELER (older brother). Bix and Betsey Rampike joined forces to sue for criminal libel and to remove the offensive item from stores, but sales continue on the Internet and are said to be “in the millions.” (No, “Sniveler” has never seen this disgusting item.)

  “YOUR LOVING MOTHER-MUMMY”

  As for the mysterious videotape—battered, badly water-stained, near-ruined: this would turn out to be the “lost” camcorder tape of seventy-two murky seconds Skyler’s mother had taken of him shortly after Bliss’s death, and later played for him, as it would be played for Skyler’s father who would remove it from the Rampike house before police were summoned.

  What a shock to Skyler, to see this old nightmare tape, he’d long assumed had been destroyed by his father! To see again, in sick fascination, the blurred figure of the child—“Skyler”—with his small pale sleep-stunned face, innocent tousled light-brown hair and flannel p.j.’s; to hear again the distraught, accusing, near-inaudible off-camera voice Skyler tell where sister did you as the stricken child-face began to break into particles, as Mummy’s voice was breaking Skyler please tell this house? hide and seek? where is will not be punished Mummy promises and in the grainy underwater tape the guilty child is weeping as if his little demon-heart has been broken.

  THE REVELATION

  NOT GUILTY! IN A STREAM OF GLITTERING HEADLIGHTS CROSSING THE GREAT bridge above the Hudson River deceptively placid, near-invisible in darkness below and into New Jersey wiping hot stinging tears from his eyes. Thinking I was not the one. I was not astonished and stunned as if he’d been struck a blow over the head with a mallet, yet smiling to indicate he was not injured, he was in fact very happy. And he was blessed. Had to be blessed. For his miserable gnarled life had been handed back to him, transformed. Bearing left amid a confusion of traffic into the lane indicating NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE SOUTH. He was driving with more confidence now. Thinking It was not me! I was never the one. Approaching garlands of lights at Newark International Airport staring at aircraft descending out of the sky, unerring in their descent out of the sky and onto invisible runways behind the gigantic terminals and Skyler swallowed hard thinking But it could be otherwise, that plane could crash in an instant. Thinking Any of these planes, at any time. And yet, he’d been spared. So long he had believed himself damned, yet he’d been spared. He had not injured his sister. He had not struck his sister’s head against a concrete wall and left her to die in the darkness of the airless furnace room. Not me! never me smiling, shaking his head as he drove, his night-vision blotched by tears. He’d had to check out of that hotel. Couldn’t bear to remain in that room another minute. Knowing that his drunken father would want to see him, would come knocking at his door. And he could not bear to see Bix Rampike. Nor could he bear to be introduced to the “new” wife/“stepmother” unnervingly like a younger sister of Calvin Klaus’s mother. He could not risk the tremulous flame of his new happiness threatened by the presence of others. For no one could know how powerfully Not guilty! Not my sister’s murderer! pulsed through him.

  In his impatience pressing down hard on the gas pedal. Not heeding that the station wagon was beginning to quake at sixty-six miles an hour for he was desperate to get back to New Brunswick, to his family there. For it was Pastor Bob whom Skyler loved, and not Bix Rampike. It was Pastor Bob whom Skyler trusted, and not Bix Rampike. How could his father have believed, these long years of Skyler’s exile, ten long years banished from the family, that he, Skyler, was a murderer! Of his own sister he’d loved, a murderer! Never would he forgive Bix Rampike. Never would he see Bix Rampike again, if he could avoid him. He had a new family now, the old curse of the Rampikes had lifted. Why had Bix Rampike believed her, and not Skyler? Why’d he have faith in her, and not in Skyler? Such relief Skyler felt as if released from the death-gri
p of the giant serpents rearing out of the Greek sea with nightmare logic to clasp the priest Laocoön and his innocent young sons in their coils O help us, God help us is the terrible cry that breaks from the throat at such times but there is no help, there is no hope for it is by God’s decree that the giant serpents have struck. On the day Skyler had set out on his pilgrimage to Hell he’d prayed aloud; “‘I believe: help thou my unbelief’” and this prayer had been answered. Though Skyler did not believe in a God who answered prayers yet it seemed to him, yes this prayer had been answered. Skyler’s miserable mangled dwarf-life had been handed back to him, whole and transformed. Not-guilty he’d been designated. Not-guilty he’d been all along.

  Now passing ELIZABETH in an eerie miasma of chemical smells pungent as rotted eggs. Outside the station wagon was a nighttime industrial landscape of wild winking lights, smokestacks rimmed in lurid red flames like tongues. Skyler’s nostrils constricted, Skyler felt a tinge of nausea. And at the RAHWAY exit made to think But the “prevert” died, died by her hand and in that instant Skyler nearly lost control of his speeding vehicle, drifting out of the right-hand lane and almost struck from behind by an eighteen-wheeler bearing down upon him, panicked Skyler steered the station wagon back into the right-hand lane, chastened by a jeering horn, swallowing hard thinking But I can’t be cheated of my happiness, I have waited so long. A flash of the weeping child-face in the ruined video, the skinny shoulders, narrow chest and utter helplessness in that body and yet: she had not taken pity on him, had she? She had sacrificed him, to save herself: his mother. A leaden sensation had begun to pass over him. A heavy booted foot on the nape of his neck for the fact was Ten years of my life taken from me, and my sister taken from me.