My Sister, My Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  PHONE RECORDS? WE KNOW THAT THEY ARE IRREVOCABLE, IRREMEDIABLE. Just as it would be revealed shortly that the mysterious calls to Bix Rampike at the Regency SuperLuxe at 2:12 A.M. and again at 4:06 A.M. had been made, in fact, from the Rampikes’ home number, calls of less than two seconds each, so it would be revealed that, having received an urgent call from that number, i.e. from Mrs. Rampike, Bix Rampike took time to call another Fair Hills number before leaving the hotel and hurrying home. Why?

  …TRANSGRESIONS IN THIS FAMILY BLESSED BY GOD, NOW WE ARE GOD’S wrath to punish for transgresions of the Father of this house.

  WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES HE WAS HOME. WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES OF hanging up the phone in his hotel room for the fourth and final time. He hadn’t checked out of the Regency SuperLuxe. He’d had to get home. Had to get home! Though a part of his mind assured him It’s a trick, poor Betsey the last trick she will play on me. He turned into the blacktop driveway at 93 Ravens Crest Drive. No sign, from the outside, of any disturbance. There were no disturbances on Ravens Crest Drive. A disturbance in all of Fair Hills was rare. The sprawling old white clapboard and aged-brick Colonial was a beautiful house, and an impressive house, but on Bix Rampike’s new salary at Univers, he’d outgrown it. And it bored him, like the small lives within. And yet: all this was his.

  Since he’d bought this property, its worth had tripled in value. Fantastic real estate boom in Fair Hills and vicinity: up, up, up. Bix Rampike, one day to be Chief of Research Development (Domestic) at Univers, Inc., was going up, up, up.

  A man’s possessions, which he has earned with the sweat and blood of his brow, God damn a man will defend to the death.

  “It’s in the species. In the genes. ‘Anatomy is destiny.’”

  Especially, a man’s children: his DNA. His future. Immortality.

  If something should happen to Bliss, Daddy’s bestest-best li’l gal, Daddy could not bear it.

  He did love his daughter! Bawled like a baby, watching her win that title on TV. Astonishing figure skater. His athletic talent, in that small body. Astonishing.

  Bliss he adored, Bliss was his angel.

  Climbing into Daddy’s lap, shy-kissing, shy-hugging Daddy who with big-Daddy fingers hugged/tickled in return.

  Oh Daddy! Oh!—that tickles!

  It would not matter to him, to Daddy, if Bliss ever skated again. Only to her, the mother: Mummy. Only to Mummy did it matter, too much.

  In the divorce, Mrs. Rampike would be awarded the house. Two million, bottom line. There’d be a custody suit. He’d demand joint custody. But not too strenuously.

  The other one, Skyler—“Poor kid!” It was easy to forget him. Daddy loved the little runt but being a pragmatist Daddy wouldn’t have been surprised, whatever befell Skyler: crippled leg, kiddie-cancer, sistic—sistric?—fibrosis, drowning in the shallow end of a swimming pool while other kids are diving, splashing, horsing around: you name it.

  Parked the sexy new car—Jaguar XXL, avocado-green coupe, taupe leather interior—in front of the garage, and entered the house on the run, through the garage and into the back hall beside the kitchen, Bix Rampike’s usual mode of entry into his house, and there came Betsey rushing at him breathless, thrusting something at him—“Bix! She’s been kidnapped! Here is the ransom note”—* stunned and disbelieving taking it from her, his wife’s trembling hand, skimmed the strange hand-printed message, what the hell was this?—“‘Dear Mr Rampik We have takn your dagher & will releese here to you if ’” as Betsey explained where she’d found it, only a minute ago she’d found it, in the front foyer, close by Bliss’s “trophy room,” she had no idea how long it had been on the table there but it must be hours, the kidnappers must have taken Bliss during the night, and all this time—Betsey was speaking almost calmly, biting her lower lip—“Our daughter has been gone, they have taken her,” and Bix said, “Betsey, you wrote this, didn’t you? Is this some kind of joke?” and Betsey stared at him, and for a moment Betsey could not speak, so stricken, so appalled, her adulterer-husband’s ignorance, furious with him denying she’d written it—“How can you say such a thing! Are you crazy! Are you hungover, drunk?”—their daughter’s life was in danger, fanatics had taken her, broken into the house in the night, why hadn’t the security alarm sounded, why hadn’t Bix made certain it was working, Betsey had no idea how to activate it, if only Bix had been home, it had to be one or more of Bliss’s “fans” who’d kidnapped her, some of Bliss’s fans were “crazy-obsessed”—Oh! Betsey had known that something terrible would happen if Bix remained away, if the children had no father in the household, the world can sense weakness, the world will rush in, like vultures, like hyenas, emissaries of Satan; a ringing in Bix’s ears as if, on the football field, in the very arena of a man’s strength, expertise, quidditas, an invisible opponent has flown at him, has tackled and defeated him, a whack! to his skull he’d believed to be thick as concrete, a whack! to his gut, and another whack! to his groin, staggering and stunned Bix was trying to read the ransom note a second time, trying to make sense of whatever it was, what twisted logic, The Eye That “Sees” was demanding, only then thinking to ask—was Skyler safe? Their son Skyler, was he safe?—and Betsey seemed almost to be laughing at him, laughing at such a question, scornful, squeezing Bix’s thick wrist, of course Skyler was safe, why would kidnappers want him? And Bix said, “Betsey, wait: this doesn’t make sense. ‘The Eye That “Sees” ’—isn’t asking for money. Whoever this is, they aren’t asking for money. You told me that Bliss was hiding somewhere—is she? Is this a game? Bliss and Skyler are—hiding somewhere?” Staring at his wife who was crowding uncomfortably close to him, a smell of something sour in her breath, a glisten of something fierce in her eyes, her smile was charged with God’s wrath, Bix Rampike saw and was frightened and his heart clenched, his bowels clenched as not for many years had the conviction come to him, visceral, of the gut, an outmatched athlete’s epiphany in mid-stride, breathing through his mouth running pounding on the field with something throbbing in his ankle, lifts his arms to intercept—what?—as whack! whack! whack! he’s brought down for the final time knowing This, I can’t do. This is beyond me seeing that his wife’s so-familiar face was not so familiar to him now, a girl’s face, a girl’s angry face, a girl’s puffy-pale skin beneath swaths of pancake makeup so haphazardly applied, or in poor light, that the makeup mask ended abruptly at Betsey’s jawline, and her bright cherry-red lipstick was both freshly applied and thick-caked as if smeared without a mirror and now partially eaten away. The dark hair that had been “lightened”—“rinsed”—“permed”—was now shapeless and frizzy as if Betsey had shampooed her hair hastily and had not taken time to “condition” it. Strangest of all, though it was early morning and Betsey had been awake, as she’d said, for most of the night, yet she was wearing a striking outfit suitable for lunch at the Village Women’s Club, a cream-colored cashmere sweater set, the cardigan with a ribbed bodice, sprinkling of seed pearls, had not Bix Rampike’s secretary arranged for the purchase of this high-quality apparel at the VastValley Neiman Marcus, for a price beyond six hundred dollars?—and Betsey was wearing chic new charcoal-gray wool slacks and, around her neck, on a delicate gold chain, a beautiful little gold cross that closely resembled the beautiful little gold cross from Tiffany that Bix had given their daughter for Christmas…“You! You are to blame!” Betsey was accusing, her voice not raised and yet, in Bix’s ears, piercing, deafening, “You should have been here to protect us! You are the father, you have allowed Satan into this household, and our daughter is the sacrifice.” Bix stood rooted to the spot. The final whack! had concussed his brain. He could not think, his brain had gone dead. Only with his eyes could he look again at the ransom note: “‘The Eye That “Sees” ’—where?”

  It did not appear to be a trick. It was not a game. He knew now, it was not hide-and-seek. His daughter was gone. He knew. And yet: The Eye That “Sees” was offering hope. We will return her to you if you repent. If return to
Martial Vows. Until death part. Contact you by phone. Now it was clear: his daughter would be returned to him. He would be given another chance. Whoever had taken her would have mercy on him. Whoever had taken her would not harm a six-year-old child. There was no logic in harming a six-year-old child. These were Christian people, obviously. The Eye That “Sees” was a Christian. Twenty miles away! Bliss was twenty miles away! But they would bring her back. There was the promise. Wasn’t this a promise? His wife’s livid body was in his arms. Pressing into his arms. Almost, there was sex-hunger here, a sudden terrible yearning. Bix was hugging Betsey, burying his heated face in her neck. Betsey was clutching at Bix, as if they were struggling together at the edge of a precipice, she alone could save him. Bix could not see Betsey’s face but he could hear Betsey’s sobs and these were a mother’s true sobs, from the womb. He could not hear what Betsey was saying, her words were unintelligible. O God I am so sorry, Jesus forgive me, I am to blame. And then: a doorbell ringing? But who? In desperate hope thinking Bliss is back, they have brought her back, but when Bix hurried to the front door, on the stoop were Reverend Higley and Mrs. Higley ashen-faced, in the next instant clutching Bix’s hands: “Betsey called us, Betsey has told us this terrible thing that has happened, the kidnappers have called for your ‘pastor’—and I am here.”*

  * As they say in TV documentaries, this is a “re-enactment.”

  Of necessity, most of this chapter is imagined. But when Daddy arrives home, and is handed the ransom note by Mummy, Skyler is in the kitchen close by, and hurries to the door, to overhear.

  * From this point onward, Skyler overheard; and what is reproduced here of the exchange between Bix and Betsey Rampike is verbatim.

  * Surprised at this ending? It happened exactly in this way.

  For a “re-enactment” I hope this isn’t too amateurish. The canny reader has probably sensed how uncomfortable Rampike fils is at attempting to “inhabit” Rampike père. Probably Sigmund Freud has written impenetrably on this taboo. Though we may think that we know our “loved ones” well, if we try to inhabit them to re-enact an actual event, we discover that, bottom line is, it can’t be done.

  MORNING AFTER: AUTHOR WISHES TO RETRACT (?)

  ERASE THE PRECEDING CHAPTER—“POLLUTER”—FROM YOUR MEMORY, READER! If you can.

  I am thinking it was a mistake. I am thinking that, if I can, I should retract it.

  Though it was anguish to compose, and provoked a siege of panic-tachycardia midway (see the offensive paragraph beginning The other one, Skyler—), and in my cringing-minor-footnote way I am actually somewhat proud of it, yet the realization came to me just now, the following morning, with the impact of jet-screeches from Newark Airport passing about forty feet above my bed, that earlier in this document, in the chapter “Popular!”, it was rashly suggested in a footnote that my father Bix Rampike might be responsible for my sister’s death; and that this suggestion—wild, reckless, unsubstantiated, slanderous, weird—may well be true.*

  What a blunder on my part, then, to have so effectively “re-enacted” the preceding scene in which the brute Rampike père seems to be utterly innocent!

  * “Spiteful”—“irresponsible”—“Oedipal ravings”—“plain crazy”: readers, I won’t contest your responses to this theory. (Though I’m disgusted, that the crude asshole Bix Rampike has so many admirers. What have I been doing wrong?) And yet: it would not have required so very much ingenuity for Bix Rampike to have slipped out a rear exit of the Regency SuperLuxe, sometime after 2:12 A.M., when Mummy first called him, and driven to our house, letting himself in, stealthily making his way to my sister’s bedroom, and (for what reason, I don t want to think), bearing her off downstairs and into the furnace room, with terrible results. Daddy then hand-printed the “ransom note” one day to achieve the distinction of being listed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not as the “most frequently reprinted” ransom note in the history of kidnappings and abductions—“The War and Peace of ransom notes,” as a skeptical FBI agent has noted; this, Daddy left on a table in the front foyer; letting himself out of the house to return to the Regency SuperLuxe in time to receive Betsey’s (unidentified) call at 4 A.M.; and again, at 8 A.M. Reader, what about this scenario strikes you as implausible?

  POSTMORTEM I

  DADDY WOULD DISCOVER BLISS IN THE FURNACE ROOM.

  Not Bliss but Bliss’s body. In the furnace room.

  Bliss is gone, Skyler. Jesus has taken Bliss to Heaven. What is left behind is Bliss’s earthly remains.

  Skyler would not attend the funeral. Skyler would not be told when exactly the funeral was.

  Skyler would not see his sister’s body in the furnace room.

  Skyler did not see his sister’s body in the furnace room.

  Never would Skyler so much as glimpse, through his fingers, or through half-shut eyes, his sister’s (stiffened, lifeless) forty-three-pound body with her arms above her head and her wrists bound together by a crimson silk scarf in the shadowy corner of the furnace room where in her desperate search of the house Mummy had several times looked. As Mummy would later lead Reverend and Mrs. Higley on a search of the house and yet no one ventured far enough into the windowless dimly lighted furnace room throbbing with heat like the interior of a lung.

  She’s been taken, kidnapped. She’s been taken from us. She is gone. She isn’t in this house. We have looked, we have looked, we have looked everywhere in this house and she is gone from this house, the kidnappers have taken her.

  When the cry—cries—went up, Skyler was—where?—upstairs in his room.

  At once Skyler had known. The adults’ cries. Downstairs.

  His sister had been found: Skyler knew.

  He ran to the door. Lila clutched at him: “Skyler, no! You must stay up here, with me. Your mother has said…”

  No! Skyler would not! Squirming out of the housekeeper’s fingers that clutched at him as you’d clutch at a reckless child about to fall from a precipice to his death.

  On the floor, the ugly Zap comics* and crude cartoon sketches Skyler had been drawing, in jerky, jagged lines, clumsy cross-hatching figures (Daddy/Mummy/Brother/Sister) which, in the confusion of that morning would never be seen again Such filth! In that innocent child’s heart! We must protect him.

  Briskly Lila had been changing sheets on Skyler’s bed as Lila had changed the (soiled, stained) sheets on Bliss’s bed and taken away the (soiled, stained) mattress cover to be soaked in bleach before being laundered as Mrs. Rampike instructed. That morning Lila would run two full loads of laundry (including Skyler’s pajamas and Mrs. Rampike’s nightgown and terry cloth bathrobe and all the towels from Mrs. Rampike’s bathroom) and the shocking fact was, which Lila would recall through her life and never cease to speak of in wonder, dread, awe, while working in the laundry room (such a familiar room to her) Lila had unknowingly been no more than twenty feet away from the furnace room (a room she’d had little occasion to enter, at any time) in which the Rampikes’ little daughter was lying lifeless, stiffened in death.

  Oh if I had found her! That poor little girl.

  This January weekend was to have been Lila’s weekend off. And yet the call had come early that morning from Mrs. Rampike sounding “excited”—“upset”—summoning Lila to come to the house at once, to “help out”—“take care of Skyler”—in this “terrible” time.

  Always such emotion in the Rampike household! Like lightning flashing, and deafening thunder-claps to follow.

  Yet: the Rampikes were good people. In Fair Hills, you were not likely to have employers superior to the Rampikes with all their problems and special demands.

  Even Mrs. Rampike who was frequently excitable, and exacting, was a good-hearted woman, Lila believed. Sometimes exclaiming to Lila, tears shining in her warm brown eyes, “Lila, you are the only one I trust. God bless you!” (Which was embarrassing, but far better than being scolded, or spoken to sarcastically.) And there was tall good-looking Mr. Rampike like a tornado in the house,
clothes and towels strewn in his wake, making Lila’s cheeks burn with his teasing ways, and habit of secretly pressing twenty- and fifty-dollar bills into Lila’s hand: “Hardship pay, señora, for putting up with Big Betsey and Big Bix. I know we’re gringo pains-in-theass.” Winking at Lila, sometimes pinching her plump upper arm, what a good man Mr. Rampike was in his heart! And there were the Rampike children, Lila had come to love. Not like the children of other employers for whom Lila had worked who were mean, brattish, cruel but sweet little children: the little girl who was so famous and so sad and the little boy with the “ghost eyes” whom at this terrible time Lila must protect.

  Twitchy little Skyler! Lila was surprised to see that, at this early hour, Skyler was wearing one of his white cotton school shirts and over the shirt a cable-knit hunter-green vest sweater and clean corduroy trousers and the newest of his several pairs of sneakers. And Skyler’s fawn-colored hair was flyaway-clean as if it had only just been washed. And Skyler was unusually clean: so far as Lila could see, the smudged little tattoos that so upset and annoyed his mother had been scrubbed away. It wasn’t like Skyler to be so unresponsive to Lila, unsmiling, dazed-looking and seemingly exhausted as if he’d been up through the night. When Lila spoke to him, Skyler only just blinked slowly, and wiped at his pug nose, and twitched in two general ways: shiveringly from the feet up, or tremorously from the head down.

  Skyler’s dry lips moved. Skyler was asking if there was a party downstairs.

  Downstairs was the prayer vigil. Waiting for the kidnapper to call. Lila had been told just the rudiments of the situation. Whoever had taken Bliss away would speak only to the Rampikes’ pastor who was Reverend Higley, an Episcopal priest. Mrs. Higley was there also, and several other ladies Mrs. Rampike knew from church: Mrs. Squires, Mrs. Poindexter, and Mrs. Hind. And there was Dale McKee who was Mrs. Rampike’s assistant and there was Dr. Helene Stadtskruller who was Mrs. Rampike’s therapist with whom Mrs. Rampike had “forged” an intimate bond—“close as sisters!”—and all these individuals, in addition to Mrs. Rampike, and Mr. Rampike (surprising to Lila, how dazed and distracted Mr. Rampike seemed!—not his usual smiling bossy self ), were gathered in the family room, close by a telephone.