My Sister, My Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  (NOT ON VIDEO)

  HASTENED SKYLER INTO HER BATHROOM. REMOVED THE DAZED CHILD’S DAMP pajamas and her own silky nightgown. Pulled him into the shower with her murmuring Skyler it will be all right Mummy loves you and Jesus loves you never lose faith we will protect you. Shampooed his hair, and her own. Soaped and scrubbed at his skinny little body on baby-giraffe legs near to collapsing. Soaped and scrubbed at her fleshy Mummy-body that was flushed and heated from the steaming-hot shower. When he slipped, seized his skinny shoulders to bear him upright. And afterward, he was conscious of her gripping his hands, left and then right, with her metal nail file cleaning beneath his fingernails and toenails and roughly then with the fond impatience of a mother bear toweling him dry, and dressed him in clean clothes and dressed herself and by this time it was 7:48 A.M. Now she would call Daddy.

  * Indicates an additional lost block of time. Might’ve been two days, or three. After the preceding chapters. Wiped out.

  HEAVEN SCENT

  SKYLER YOU MUST NEVER NEVER TELL NOT EVER

  Not even Jesus, Skyler He will forgive you anyway

  This is a fact: I’d intended to end the chapter “Black Dirigible” with Skyler bravely opening the mysterious letter and reading it; but, as Skyler stumbled through his unexpected misadventure in the park, and crept on home in defeat, it became evident that the poor kid couldn’t cope with the letter at that time, both his eyes swollen, leaking blood from numerous orifices and cuts, nerves so jangled he felt like something shaken in a tin can. And so hauling himself up the stairs by the railing, wincing and whimpering to himself, once inside his room he collapsed on his bed and so for days* the mailbox in the vestibule went unopened until at last it was so stuffed with junk mail that the irate mailman had to jam advertising flyers into the cracks of the mailbox door and at last someone (fellow tenant? building superintendent?) climbed the stairs to the third floor to strike his fist on the door of 3C loudly inquiring if anybody was inside? alive or dead? and so finally, roused from my stupor, I replied that yes, I was still alive; and shortly afterward made my way downstairs, with shaky hands unlocking the mailbox, having no other choice, removed the letter and stared at it trying to think coherently, must’ve been Swidell’s secretary who had forwarded this letter to SKYLER RAMPIKE at this address though I had asked Swidell not to forward any mail to me, not ever. Yet, here it was.

  Knowing at once who the letter was from and knowing that I would read it though I had vowed several years before not to read any further letters from my mother Betsey Rampike whom I feared as you would fear the cobra’s mother and there was the return address on the envelope:

  HEAVEN SCENT, INC.

  9 Magnolia Terrace

  Spring Hollow, New York 10590

  And inside, on a single sheet of sweetly perfumed pale-apricot stationery, in lavender ink, in the familiar handwriting like a stealthy caress—

  * In fact, Skyler stumbled out of his room during this groggy interlude to check himself into the Livingstone Community Medical Center ER to have his deeper wounds, that wouldn’t stop bleeding, cleaned and stitched up: left eyelid, upper lip and skin-flap beneath his left nostril. What gratitude Skyler feels for the Medical Center where even indigent Caucasian junkies were not turned away for lack of medical insurance! Maybe the stitches were crudely executed and maybe my face is scarred for life, yet, who’s complaining?

  RANSOM!

  Dear Mr Rampik

  We have takn your dagher & will releese here to you if you obey our instrucions. But if you do not you will not see your beatiful daghter again & it will be your blame.

  We are awar of your transgresions in this family blessed by God, now we are Gods wrath to punish for transgresions of the Father of this house. You have not lived a decent life but drifted into Sin. We have taken your daghter for her own good. This is not an idle theat but God has theatened you in the name of His Only Begoten Son. Your daghter will be returned safe to you when your heart is deserving. We do not crave $.

  Where is your daghter Mr Rampik, you are asking. The answer is, not in this house polluted by Sin. Your daghter is a precious gem to be kept in a Safe House approx. 20 miles away. DO NOT CALL POLICE. DO NOT CALL F.B.I. You may summon your pastor. He will serve for you, in this time of trial. You have not lived a good decent family life as Christ has bid us, Mr Rampik this is the price of evill spilling into the world. Your daghter is in danger of Hell. Yet we will return her to you if you repent. If you return to your Martial Vows to have & to hold until death part. DO NOT CALL HELP. DO NOT THROW ON LIGHTS THROU THE HOUSE. DO NOT DIAL 911 this is a Death Sentence to your daghter. Mr Rampik we are watching you

  We will contact you by phone this A.M. We will conssent to speak with your Pastor solely. WE ARE SERIOUS IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER. Here is your daghter to “sign” to you that she is with us & she is praying for you.

  DO NOT CONTACT POLICE MR RAMPIK YOUR BEATIFUL DAGHTER WILL REJOIN THE BOSOM OF JESUS IN HEAVEN, TO ESCAPE THE EVILL OF THIS HOUSHOLD. YOU WILL NEVER SEE HERE AGAIN.

  THE EYE THAT “SEES”*

  * This curious—notorious—document! The key to who killed my sister, and why, would seem to be in this alleged “ransom note”—unless maybe it isn’t.

  “IMPERFECT PLOTS”

  Of imperfect plots and actions the episodic are the worst. By an episodic plot I mean one in which the episodes do not have to each other the relation of either probability or necessity.

  (Aristotle, Poetics, Chap. IX)*

  AND YET: IF THE PLOT OF ONE’S LIFE IS AN “IMPERFECT”—“EPISODIC”—PLOT? If there is a true dearth of “probability” and “necessity” in one’s life? Terror incognita of a kind haughty Aristotle had not a clue.

  The ransom note, for instance.

  This bizarre document attributed to “The Eye That ‘Sees’” is not, of course, the original, but the author’s typed version of a stiffly hand-printed document; an attempt to reproduce what Skyler saw at the age of nine, under extreme mental duress; though Skyler at the age of nineteen would testify that he recalls the document as vividly as if he’d seen it only yesterday. The original was clumsily hand-printed as if by a young child, on a single long sheet of construction paper; the “sign” of Bliss’s misspelled name has been determined by some handwriting experts to be genuine, but discredited by others who believe that it was forged. Very likely the reader knows that “The Eye That ‘Sees’” was never identified.

  According to Betsey Rampike’s sworn statement, this ransom note was discovered by her at approximately 8:10 A.M. of January 29, 1997, at which time Bliss seemed still to be “missing”; the note had been positioned on a small table in the front foyer of the Rampike house, folded once, like a greeting card, in a way to capture the eye of anyone entering the foyer.

  Over the years, this “ransom note” has come to be analyzed more than any ransom note in history. Yet, it was never formally “entered into evidence” in any court trial, nor even in any court hearing, for there were to be no indictments in the case, no arrests and no “defendants.”

  Reader, you are shaking your head in disbelief. You, like Aristotle, react with aesthetic displeasure to such an unlikely plot. And yet, all that I am disclosing here is true.

  For it does no good to guess who “The Eye That ‘Sees’” is: in United States criminal law, you must mobilize an argument to prove it.

  * Yesterday, pilfering through some trash cans behind a rooming house near the Rutgers campus, I discovered a much-thumbed and annotated paperback copy of the Poetics. Truly, it is not to impress the impressionable reader that I am quoting Aristotle here, but to make my plea for understanding: this is a cry of echt angst to reach beyond the sleazy tabloid tragedy of my poor sister’s death, to something approaching Transcendence.

  POLLUTER*

  “BIX! DARLING! GOD HELP US—BLISS IS MISSING.”

  The call came shortly after 8 A.M., January 29, 1997. Ringing in suite 729 of the Regency SuperLuxe Hotel north of Fair Hills
at an exit off I-80 where, for reasons unclear to his children if ominously clear to his wife, Daddy had been staying for the past several days and commuting to Univers, Inc. nine miles to the east. This was a Saturday: Daddy was expected to arrive at the Rampike house at about 10:30 A.M. to take Bliss with him to New York City to “celebrate—just the two of us” Bliss’s seventh birthday which was the following day. It could not be said that Bix Rampike had “moved out” of the family home on Ravens Crest Drive since clearly he had not, for he’d taken very few clothes and personal items with him to the Regency; it could not be said that Bix was “separated from” his wife of nearly eleven years, Betsey; nor could it be stated that the Rampikes’ marriage was “shaky”—“troubled”—“storm-toss’d”—except by devious sources insisting upon anonymity, presumed (by the indignant Rampikes, who could not bear gossip about them) to be friends/social acquaintances/fellow members of the exclusive clubs to which the Rampikes belonged.

  Damned ringing phone Bix only barely managed to hear over the thunderous sound of the shower. Cursing, leaning out of the shower stall to fumble for the wall phone believing he knew who the caller was, and what she would tell him in her throaty smoker’s voice he so yearned to hear, and how his body, flushed and tingling from the shower, would respond; and so Bix was smiling, in the steamy mirror his teeth flashed white: “Hey. Hi.”

  Except: who the hell was this? Not the woman he’d expected but—his wife?

  Yes it was Betsey, and Betsey was agitated about something, impossible to follow what she was saying, abashed and resentful Bix had to ask her please to slow down, repeat what she’d said. A wave of weariness swept over him, his elation of just a few seconds ago had diminished at once, swirling at his feet in sudsy water down the shower drain, telling himself certainly he loved Betsey, certainly Bix loved his wife of—was it nearly eleven years? eleven?—for Betsey was the mother of his children, and you know how Bix Rampike feels about his children: “The most sacred trust a man can be—entrusted with.” Must’ve been crazy for her when he’d married her, a fatal weakness he had for submissive/soft-fleshed females gazing up at him in undisguised adoration. Even when one of them reviled Bix as a selfish prick he found such women irresistible, the sin qua none bottom line is such females adored his prick, and him. Sure there’s a downside, such females are hyper-susceptible to hurt feelings, hysteria; susceptible to despair, and to rage; and so very, so very God-damned fucking needy. Betsey fixing those limpid brown cow-eyes on him, that pissed him even though (he had to concede, he’s a connoisseur of such matters) the eyes were beautiful; calling him at the office so often, he’d had to instruct his assistant to “keep Mrs. Rampike at bay”—with a wink for the sexy young streaked-blond assistant, Bix Rampike understands adores him. Bix was sure now that whoever had called him in the early hours of this morning, soon after he’d returned to the room (at 2:12 A.M.), and again waking him from a stuporous sleep (at 4:06 A.M.) had to have been Betsey; but when he’d answered the phone both times, quickly she hung up without identifying herself. It wasn’t the first time in their marriage of—eleven years?—that Betsey, stirred by jealousy, irrational and anxious and convinced (not wrongly, but how’d she know that?) that Bix was “with” another woman, had made such calls to determine if Bix was alone in his hotel room, as if, naively, she believed Bix’s woman friend might pick up the phone and reveal herself. And now, what was Betsey trying to tell him?—her voice fierce in his ear, yet desperate, like a woman trying to attract the attention of a spouse who is reading a newspaper at breakfast, for instance. “Betsey, slow down: what?”

  “—s-searched the h-house! Can’t f-find her. Oh Bix, come home now.”

  “Betsey, what? Something about—Bliss?”

  “—told you can’t find her: missing from her room oh Bix—”

  “‘Missing’? What d’you mean? ‘Missing’ how?”

  “M-Missing gone. Oh Bix come help us, I am w-worried that—something terrible has h-happened—”

  Fumbling, Bix managed to turn off the shower. His large broad-shouldered just-slightly-going-to-fat torso, midriff. Hot-skinned Bix Rampike naked and dripping, glistening. Handsome head sleek as a seal’s, hair flattened, and the thick wiry pelt-hair of his chest, belly, groin glistening with moisture. Had to concede, he’d put on a few extra pounds since the Cornell days, but still Bix looked good, at least frontally. Squinting at himself in a mirror, cocking his head to the side: just so. Women adored him, how was that Bix’s fault? It was like Betsey to call him at such a time. Exactly like Betsey to call him when he was in the shower, and when he was naked. The woman had an instinct for calling him at such times. If she’d been able to call him the previous night when he’d been with of whom Betsey could not possibly know but of whom she had paranoid suspicions, she’d have called him. Now in his ear speaking in a steely-calm-Mummy voice and no longer the hysterical-Betsey voice. This was upsetting. This was worrisome. For when Betsey was emotional, you knew that the emotions were authentic. Now, must’ve been the Nixil kicking in, to revert her to “calm”—“serenity”—some nights, when she’d been drinking, she’d been near-comatose—or maybe it was Percodan?—Excelsia?—since Bliss’s defeat on the ice in where was it, somewhere in Pennsylvania. Poor Betsey! Bix Rampike was so much the master of his moods, as of the moods of others in his vicinity, he had no more need for “mood-elevating”/“mood-stabilizing” medication than he’d have had for testosterone shots in the ass, or steroids. Hard not to feel contempt for such female weakness.

  But Betsey didn’t sound weak now so much as grim, determined.

  Had to wonder, had he ever heard Betsey speak in such a way?

  Fumbling to dry himself with a massive towel Bix said, “‘Can’t find her’—our daughter? Are you serious?” and Betsey retorted, “Of course I’m serious! Would I be calling you like this if I wasn’t?” and Bix asked, trying to maintain control, “Look: are the doors all locked? The windows? All the windows? Could someone have broken in?” and Betsey said, a glimmer of contempt in her voice, “Don’t be ridiculous, Bix: that’s the first thing I checked. The doors, all the doors to the outside. And the windows. The garage door, you never remember to lock,” and Bix felt his face flush, thinking now Is this a trick, a game she’s cooked up with the kids? To make Daddy feel guilty and to get his ass over there fast, asking if she’d asked Skyler, Skyler might know if Bliss was hiding somewhere, and Betsey said, in a fusillade of words, “The children play hide-and-seek with Daddy, not Mummy. Big Daddy they adore, not Mummy they take for granted. You know that, Bix. Anyway Bliss has never hidden away in one of her secret places for so long. And I’ve been calling and calling for her and she would never be so willful, not to come out. Last night she was feverish, refused to go to bed at her bedtime, and Lila isn’t here to help, Lila has the weekend off, both the children were very demanding, and exhausting. All Bliss could chatter about was ‘Daddy this’—‘Daddy that’—Daddy coming to take her to New York for her birthday—though Bliss’s actual birthday isn’t until tomorrow, and we are having a real party here. Wouldn’t you think that, after that terrible loss in Pennsylvania, for all the world to see, Bliss would want to hide away for a while, and not run off to New York with her precious Daddy—I know, I would. Bliss was counting the very hours until Daddy came to get her so it makes no sense she’d be playing a prank on us now, does it?” and before Bix could respond, forging on in aggrieved-Mummy voice, “Bliss is a secretive child, nothing at all like her fans imagine her. And Skyler, who has taken to ‘tattooing’ himself with little skulls, daggers—signs of Satan, I told him—wash those ugly things off, I told him—and d’you know, Skyler not only disobeyed me about that, but Skyler drew a little red heart on the palm of Bliss’s hand, too—in indelible ink. And so when I woke in the night from a disturbing dream and went to check Bliss’s bed, it was empty; and I know, I just know—she’s hiding from me, and will emerge for her precious Daddy, and the two of you will laugh at Mummy, won’t you! And
Skyler is in on it, isn’t he? I woke him this morning—to help me look for Bliss—and there was something so secretive about him, his eyes—” and Bix managed at last to interrupt, “What the hell are you saying, Betsey? Skyler is ‘in on it’—what?” and Betsey said sharply, “You! The children’s father! And you’ve neglected them, and me, for months. You have defiled our marriage bed—you have polluted our sacred marriage vows—I live in dread of what will sweep upon us, what evil, and whatever it is, we don’t dare call the p-police until we know—if—Skyler has—” Betsey broke off as if a hand had been clamped over her mouth; and Bix said, frightened, “Honey, I haven’t ‘polluted’ our marriage, I swear. I love you, and I love our children. I’ll make it up to you, darling. You know that, don’t you—”

  The line had gone dead.