Rudely Skyler fled the men’s room and back to his seat.
AT LAST, THE PROGRAM WAS ENDING. IN A BLAZE OF AMPLIFIED MUSIC—not tortured Tchaikovsky but a rock-and-roll rendition of “Adagio from Spartacus”—mammoth Jeremiah Jericho took the spotlight to announce the evening’s winners. As Mummy gripped both Bliss’s and Skyler’s hands tight, her lips moving in a silent prayer, the gratingly intimate voice proclaimed: “Our 1994 Tots-on-Ice Debutante is—none other, and the crowd’s favorite, Miss Bliss Ranpick of Fair Hills, New Jersey! Ladiez ’n’ gents, let’s go crazy for this fan-tas-tic li’l gal on the start of a fan-tas-tic career!” Mummy screamed, and Mummy and Maria hugged, and Mummy led Bliss in a daze of exhaustion, stricken with shyness, fingers jammed into her mouth, out onto the ice another time to accept from the leering master of ceremonies a bouquet of waxy-looking red roses, a lightweight “silver” tiara, a lightweight “silver” trophy and a pink satin sash proclaiming tots-on-ice debutante 1994. Jeremiah Jericho helped Mummy display the glamorous satin sash slantwise across little Bliss’s meager chest, all the while engaging Mummy in jocose banter: “Mrs. Ranpick! Where were you when li’l Jerry Jericho was a gee-whiz champion skater from Jersey City in the bad ol’ days of rock-and-roll?” Mummy blushed in confusion provoking laughter and a roar of approval from the audience that seemed to have decided, seeing how deeply moved Mummy was, how her girlish face glistened with tears, that they liked Fair Hills after all. As Mummy led Bliss back to their seats, photographers swooped upon them aiming their flash-cameras into their faces and the NJN TV crew followed in their wake. “Smile for us, Bliss! Over here, sweetheart! Smile!” Well-wishers crowded about them like old friends, the mood was one of drunken revelry as the dazed-looking little blond girl was asked for her autograph but since she was too young to write even her signature, her laughing mother had to sign it for her: BLISS RAMPIKE. Among the more eagerly aggressive individuals in the crowd were several men with video cameras and most eager of all was a lanky youngish man with loose rubbery lips in a besotted smile and kinky rust-colored hair and an orangish-red silk scarf tied about his neck, who stooped over Mummy and Bliss to record Mummy’s stammered words: “This—is—the happiest day of my life.”
Beautiful Mummy seized Skyler’s hand, too. So hard, the bones felt as if they’d cracked. But it was a happy feeling. Warmth flooded Skyler’s heart: Mummy loves me, too.
POSTSCRIPT
DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS PERSON? LANKY YOUNGISH MAN WITH LOOSE rubbery lips in a besotted smile…In fact, I did not. And probably, Mummy did not. Yet we know from subsequent developments that Gunther Ruscha, at this time thirty-one years old, had to have been at the Meadowlands ice rink that evening, sitting front-row center (alone? or with a like-minded companion?) since videotapes confiscated from Ruscha’s house by Fair Hills police officers would show all of the young girl-skaters on the Tots-on-Ice program that evening, including Bliss Rampike; and, as Mummy half-carried Bliss back to her seat, through a buzzing swarm of well-wishers, Ruscha was holding the camera only a few inches from them. On this blurred and grainy tape, Bliss’s small, pale face had gone slack with exhaustion and her glamorous pink satin sash proclaiming TOTS-ON-ICE DEBUTANTE 1994 was askew across the bodice of her costume, and Mummy’s flushed moon-shaped face gleamed with perspiration. It seems clear from the tape that Gunther Ruscha was speaking to Mummy, and that Mummy was listening; and that Skyler, close by, might well have heard these exact words: “Mrs. Rampike, congratulations! Your daughter is beautiful! A born skater! A born champion! Do you remember me from Horace Slipp Park? That day, you had a beautiful little boy-skater with you, and now—you have a beautiful little girl.”
“WATERY SOULS”
AND WHAT IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, SKYLER?
I’m still waiting.
FIJI ISLANDERS,* AMONG THOSE LUCKY ABORIGINALS FAVORED BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS, speak of very young children as having “watery souls”—meaning that they are undefined, indistinct, incomplete until at a certain age they are drawn into the web of reciprocal human relations. To be human means to be, not “watery” but defined in a kinship system meaning you have duties to perform, you take on responsibilities and you will be punished/rewarded accordingly.
Punished, anyway! For sure.
So I’m wondering: did Bliss, who died so young, ever acquire a human soul? Did Skyler, who died so young—excuse me, who didn’t die so young but “survived”—ever acquire a human soul?
Or, maybe: was Bliss the only one of us, to acquire a human soul?
Make me a little red heart Skyler like yours?
Mummy won’t know
And the realization comes to me: if only Bliss had lost that first competition, at the Meadowlands! If only (as envious Skyler had halfway wished) the darling little four-year-old hadn’t executed her skating routine like a wind-up doll but had slipped and fallen cutely on her little rump! Very likely, my sister would be alive today. She would be approaching her seventeenth birthday. Maybe we’d be together at this very minute. Or maybe we’d be apart, but each alive. Maybe her name would have reverted back to Edna Louise.
* IMPRESSED WITH MY ERUDITION? MAYBE NOT. BUT THIS NUGGET OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION IS IMPRESSIVE TO ME. THE PROPOSITION IS A MIND-BLOWER: APART FROM HUMAN CULTURE THERE IS NO HUMAN NATURE. CAN THIS BE? THAT I, SKYLER RAMPIKE, TO ACQUIRE MORE THAN A MERELY WATERY, UNFORMED SOUL, MUST SOMEHOW RE-CONNECT WITH THE REST OF YOU, OR SOME OF YOU? SOMEHOW?
THE INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES BY THE NOTED ANTHROPOLOGIST CLIFFORD GEERTZ WHICH I WAS READING, WELL TO BE TRUTHFUL SKIMMING, IN A LOCAL BOOKSTORE YESTERDAY; MIGHT AS WELL CONFESS, I’M ONE OF YOU, THE WORST OF YOU, RARELY BUY A BOOK EVEN A PAPERBACK (CAN’T AFFORD IT), SLOUCHED IN THE AISLE OF BOOKSTORES BLOCKING THE WAY OF SERIOUS CUSTOMERS.
BUMPED
“SKYLER, TRY NOT TO LIMP. YOU CAN WALK PERFECTLY NORMALLY, IF YOU make an effort. And please don’t twitch, and squirm, and make those ‘pain faces’—people will only be depressed, and want to avoid you.” Mummy’s manner with Skyler had come to be one of gently chiding, scolding. But always Mummy stooped to kiss Skyler, and give him a quick hug, to show that he was still Mummy’s little man. He was!
Please don’t think that Skyler was neglected by his parents, as his sister’s star so rapidly rose in the frantic years 1994 to 1997. (Do stars rise? Maybe I mean meteors.) Detractors of Betsey Rampike knowing nothing of our family would claim that both she and Daddy ignored me, to concentrate on Bliss, but that wasn’t true, exactly. Let’s just say that Skyler got bumped to second place.
Second of two. How shameful is that?
Though it was true, Mummy no longer took Skyler on their little drives together, for Mummy was busy with Bliss. It was Maria who helped Skyler get ready for school in the mornings and saw that he took his meds and it was Maria who prepared many of Skyler’s meals when no one else seemed to be home; it was Maria who took Skyler to his dreaded therapy sessions at the Fair Hills Rehabilitation Center, held his hand and comforted him insisting in heavily accented English that Yes! Skyler was getting better, soon he would be walking normally again; and gravely Skyler would say, with one of his wizened pain faces, “You must think I’m a really dumb little kid, to believe you,” causing Maria to blush to the roots of her thick dark hair. Mummy now prepared Bliss for school, and drove her there; of course, Mummy oversaw Bliss’s skating lessons (after frowning Ivana Zuev came morbidly cheerful Olga Zych, another Olympic medalist) and Mummy drove Bliss to skating competitions initially in New Jersey though in time, as Bliss’s star continued to rise, farther afield. As high as her wings will bear her, Jesus! In your name, Amen.
Daddy’s complicated new position at Scor Chemicals, Inc. took him away from home (to Tokyo, to São Paulo, to Stuttgart, to Singapore) even more than his old position at Baddaxe Oil, but when Daddy was home in our house on Ravens Crest Drive, as Daddy exclaimed he was home. “Where’s my bestest li’l gal Bliss?—where’s my Big-Boy Sky-Boy? Loveya,
kids!” Daddy’s shaggy-bison head swooped downward for a kiss, Daddy’s soulful eyes brimmed with sentimental tears, Daddy lurched through doorways rubbing his hands briskly together staring at Skyler and Bliss as if trying to recall who we were, and why he loved us. Hurriedly crammed into weekends were Rampike family holidays, and Rampike family outings; if Daddy was in a playful mood there were wild games of hide-and-seek in the maze of the large house vexing Mummy nearly to tears: “Bix, what if Bliss hurts herself playing that silly game? She isn’t just an ordinary girl, our daughter is Bliss Rampike.” Sincerely Daddy regretted he hadn’t yet found time to see Bliss skate, except on videotape, on one of the giant TV screens in the family room; the first time he saw his little girl skating with such unexpected skill, Daddy stared in astonishment, ran his hands through his stiff springy hair, and smiled stupidly: “Jesus. That’s my daughter?” With a sharp smile of rebuke Mummy said: “Our daughter.”
Daddy spent quality time with Skyler, too. Daddy sure did!
Watching TV sports together weekend afternoons though the kid annoyed his dad by never seeming to know what the hell was going on in the game, restless and squirmy; driving the kid to his physical therapy appointment, or to the most recent pediatric-orthopedic surgeon; or to the lavishly appointed law offices of Kruk, Burr, Crampf & Rosenblatt where in a halting mumble exasperating to Bix Rampike his son gave a “deposition” to be whipped up by canny Morris Kruk as the dramatic centerpiece of Bix Rampike’s six-million-dollar lawsuit against the Gold Medal Gym & Health Club and its (former) employee Vassily Andreevich Volokhomsky.* Returning home from Kruk’s office one blustery day Daddy confided in Skyler as if impulsively, let’s have a close-up of Big Daddy Bix warmly confiding in runt-sized Son Skyler strapped in beside him in the passenger’s seat of Daddy’s Jeep Crusher: “Way I see it, Sky-boy, a man can’t start too young knowing the rules of engagement of the playing field. You’re what—nine? ten?—only eight?”—the warm-Daddy eyes muddied for a moment, then cleared, “—still it isn’t too early for us to sit down one of these days, maybe with Mummy, too, with your ‘career strategist’ at that posh school we are sending you to, and see what progress you’re making, this HPI thing or whatever the hell it is: the ‘fast track.’ Mummy has said, ‘Skyler doesn’t seem to like school’—‘Skyler’s teachers say he isn’t living up to his potential’—‘Skyler’s leg doesn’t seem to be healing the way it should be’—‘Skyler doesn’t seem to have many friends’—and I’m not going to dignify all that neurotic-Mummy-angst by asking you point-blank, son, if there’s truth to it, I’m going to assume that Mummy is exaggerating for dramatic effect as Mummy sometimes does. Bottom line is, ‘Tomorrow is the first God-damned day of your new life so don’t fuck it.’ Say you want to follow your dad into the challenging corporate world, or you might wish to strike out on your own in law, or medicine, or biotech pharmaceuticals—you’re going to need a top education for these fields, and a strong network of contacts to help smooth the way. Your generation, man!—you are going to need to be smarter than your parents. Homo homin lupus. My father used to quote, know what it means? Greek for ‘wolf is friend to man.’ Meaning you got to be man enough to harness the wolf, son, the wolf-blood coursing through your ‘civilized’ Rampike veins—” at that tense moment, to Skyler’s relief, interrupted by a ringing car phone.
And, most Sundays, we Rampikes went to church together.
In Englishy-quaint Trinity Episcopal Church, beneath the benevolent smiling gaze of Father Archibald Higley, the Rampikes became, over the course of my sister’s “meteoric” career, a luminous presence in their third-row, near-to-center pew. As I’ve said earlier, Mummy and Daddy were Christians of the most American kind: unquestioning, and adamant. Mummy rarely spoke of her family but of course, Mummy had been raised as a Christian, like Daddy. Worldly success is certainly a sign of divine grace in the eyes of most Christians—no matter what priggish old theologians like Daddy’s Puritan ancestor Joshua Rampike preached—and because Bliss Rampike began to be perceived as special, so the Rampike family was perceived as special; because the Rampikes were members of the Trinity Episcopal congregation, the Trinity Episcopal congregation was perceived as special. Especially Reverend Higley, our spiritual pastor, was perceived as special. God bless all, Amen.
What a mystery! At the age of eight Skyler was made to see the supreme illogic of the adult world: his younger sister had the power to confer “specialness” upon others, even strangers, who came into her orbit though Bliss herself was shy, uncertain, self-doubting and fearful of falling on the ice, like all skaters.
If I fall down, Skyler, no one will love me!
And cruel Skyler said Better not fall then, Bliss.
PAINFUL CLOSE-UP: IN MUMMY’S CAR EXITING THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE at Camden, headed south to Cumberland County and Mummy is speaking on her cell phone in the new-Mummy voice that quavers now not with hesitation, apprehension, dread but with entrepreneurial zest and confidence, and Bliss is seated beside her unmoving as a rag doll in snug-fitting skating costume beneath her winter coat.
Bliss’s newly crimped hair shimmers a startlingly pale blond, and Bliss’s face is made up in artful mimicry of a ceramic doll-face with a small pink “kissable” rosebud mouth. Bliss is staring out the car window at the sepia haze of urban New Jersey passing in a blur of used dreams in rapid and disjointed sequence and Skyler thinks with cruel satisfaction She is frightened now, she knows she will fall tonight and Bliss shudders pressing her forehead against the window as if something in that broken and fading landscape is of crucial meaning, and Skyler (who has been brought along both as brotherly support for little Bliss and as map navigator for Mummy who becomes hopelessly lost on such massive interstate highways as the New Jersey Turnpike) is prompted to ask in a tone of calm to disguise the unease he feels, where are they going? and Mummy who has just completed her cell phone conversation says in the new bright Mummy-voice, “The War Memorial on Fort Street, Pennsauken, that is where tonight’s Garden State Jersey Girls’ Challenge is being held,” and Skyler squinting in the fading light, holding the map close to his watery eyes locates the Fort Street exit, Skyler directs Mummy off the Turnpike in quest of that shimmering crown, or title, or silver-plate trophy: “Little Miss Jersey Girl Skater Debut of the Year”—“Little Royale Miss New Jersey 1994”—“Miss Junior Ice Princess 1994.”
These honors Bliss Rampike would win, in time. And more!
* This personal-injury suit, much contested by legal counsel in the hire of Gold Medal Gym & Health Club, Inc. was to be settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money, in some quarters rumored to be between $350,000 and $1,000,000, of which the “permanently afflicted” minor Skyler, most minor of minors, would not see a penny. (D’you think Daddy Bix set it aside for Skyler’s Ivy League college fund? Nice thought.) And soon afterward the Gold Medal Gym & Health Club vanished from our local mall, to pass into the oblivion of local memory.
ADVENTURES IN PLAYDATES I
Playdate.(n) A date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of “playing.” A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which “neighborhoods” have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of “neighbor children’s” houses or play in “backyards.” In the absence of sidewalks in newer “gated” communities, children cannot “walk” to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A “playdate” is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.
FOR THOSE READERS—POTENTIALLY, MILLIONS!—WITH AN AVID INTEREST in American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you’ve been awaiting. For in one of the upstairs rooms in our house where Mummy had established a “private space” for herself, there was a stylish desk that gleamed with what looked like laminated plastic, lipstick-red, and in a center drawer of this desk was a large sheet of kindergarten-pink construction paper containin
g an elaborately hand-printed pyramid of names, some of them boxed, some distinguished by *, **, or ***, with mysterious codes and crisscrossing arrows, bewildering to the eye at first glance, yet, like any cryptic puzzle, yielding by degrees to the obsessive scrutiny of one, like eight-year-old Skyler Rampike, who focuses his attention on it, as if his life depended upon cracking the code. Out of loneliness/precocious morbid curiosity, Skyler often found himself in Mummy’s colorfully decorated, perfumy room when Mummy was absent, and Skyler had no more shame than to search through Mummy’s things, discovering this document in the center drawer to which Mummy had given the title *FHFF* in tall letters, meaning, maybe, “Fair Hills Future Friends” (?), the poignant significance of which even an eight-year-old lately diagnosed with incipient dyslexia could discern. A meticulously constructed pyramid of names, as in
STEADLEY WHITTAKER WHITTIER McGREETY
KRUK HAMBRUCK FRASS STUBBE DURKEE O’STRYKER
FENN McCONE HOVER GRUBB MARROW KLAUS BURR KLEINHAUS
—and so forth, to the very bottom of the sheet of pink construction paper where names were more plentiful and (you had to think) less distinctive, exalted. I have made no attempt to replicate here the numerous codes attached to these names, for instance CH (church?), BX (Bix? contacts of Bix’s), SK (skating?), HOS (Fair Hills Hospital Auxiliary, one of the more accessible local “service” organizations comprised primarily by well-to-do, somewhat idle Fair Hills matrons), FHCC (Fair Hills Country Club?), PHTAC (Pebble Hill Tennis Club?), SGGC (Sylvan Glen Golf Club?), VWC (Fair Hills Village Women’s Club?), FHD (Fair Hills Day School?). To some of these, notably to the high-ranking McGREETY, the cryptic code PD was affixed: playdate.
My Sister, My Love Page 12