My Sister, My Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The feature ends with a heartbreaking photo of the poodles Yin and Yang peering up at the camera in expressions of doggy bewilderment above the caption Master, no!

  Skyler has to laugh. As in the movements of a compass needle, that indicate, to the alert mind, the presence of a mysterious if invisible and inscrutable Authority beyond the world of mere appearance, so too one can discern, beyond the sludge and sewage of Tabloid Hell, the presence of an invisible, inscrutable, and malevolent Editor.

  Skyler learns in US Spy that Leander Harkness, even while playing major league baseball for the Yankees, had been arrested several times by police in New York City, Oyster Bay, and St. Bart’s; at the time of his wife’s death there was a restraining order against him issued by a Nassau County judge, forbidding him to come within one hundred feet of both his wife and daughter, or to harass them in any way; Harkness had been tried on first-degree murder charges not once but twice in Nassau County: the first trial in late 2002 had ended in a hung jury, the second in spring 2003 had ended in an acquittal. No other suspects in the murders had ever been investigated and it seemed to be generally believed that, despite the jurors’ decisions, Leander Harkness, acting alone, was the individual who had stabbed his wife to death (fourteen wounds to torso, throat, face) in the Harknesses’ five-million-dollar home on the north shore of Long Island; Harkness had also stabbed to death his wife’s alleged lover (eleven wounds, chest, belly, groin); and, in a macho spillage of rage, of the kind frequently exhibited during Harkness’s high-profile baseball career, he stabbed to death the adorable poodles Yin (curly white fur) and Yang (curly black fur). During the murders, which took place in a ground-floor glass-enclosed room overlooking Long Island Sound, the Harknesses’ fifteen-year-old daughter Heidi was upstairs in her room and would claim to have “slept through” the entire episode, though the murders had occurred at approximately 8 P.M. of a July night, scarcely dusk. Heidi Harkness would claim that she had not seen or heard her father in the house, or anywhere in the vicinity of the house; nor had she seen him drive away in what Oyster Bay neighbors described as Harkness’s “distinctive” bronze Rolls-Royce coupe. At neither of her father’s trials had Heidi Harkness testified, for “reasons of health.” For fifteen weeks, Heidi had been an inpatient at the Verhangen Treatment Center in Bleek Springs, New York.

  Shakily Skyler replaces US Spy on the display rack. Blindly Skyler staggers from the store.

  Thinking Poor Heidi! But not Skyler, this time.

  III.

  “LOVE YOU.”

  “Love you.”

  As in twin mirrors reflecting each other to infinity.

  HE WOULD BE PROTECTIVE OF HEIDI HARKNESS, SKYLER VOWED. WHAT he’d discovered in US Spy, Skyler would never reveal to Heidi. Not in their most intimate moments would Skyler suggest You saw your father that night didn’t you you can tell me Heidi I will never tell a living soul for it was Skyler’s responsibility, if he loved Heidi Harkness, to shield her from hurt. He was strong enough, he believed. This time.

  IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON AT THE ACADEMY AT BASKING RIDGE WITH ITS population of variously “challenged” students for hired cars with tinted rear windows to appear on campus, to take away individuals at regular intervals, and to return them; and so each Thursday at 1 P.M. a black Lincoln Town Car turned into the graveled drive of the scenic campus, was flagged through by the uniformed guard at the kiosk, winding its way to the girls’ residence Toll House, notable for its suite-sized private rooms with private bathrooms, and out stumbled Heidi Harkness in oversized dark glasses that hid most of her pale, taut face, a scarf tied in haste around her matted hair, and away to New York City two hours to the east she was borne to her weekly session with a Park Avenue psychopharmacologist whose specialty was, in Heidi’s words, “fucked-up teenaged girls”; and sometimes Heidi would be returned to Basking Ridge by 8 P.M., and Skyler would be waiting for her, but at other, unpredictable times Heidi failed to return remaining in the city overnight and evasive about where she’d been telling Skyler with relatives, family friends, but Skyler believed that Heidi spent the night at her father’s town house on East 86th Street, surely Heidi spent the night with her father if he was in the city; but Heidi never acknowledged these visits with Leander Harkness to Skyler, as Heidi never acknowledged the very existence of Leander Harkness and her connection to him to anyone at Basking Ridge. To Skyler this seemed an act of betrayal for how could Heidi have such secrets from him, if she claimed to love him? Weakly Heidi said, “But you have secrets from me, Skyler. We can’t know everything about each other.”

  Skyler thought You can’t know everything about me. But I need to know everything about you.

  What offended Skyler was: Heidi didn’t distinguish between him, and the others. If she loved him, he had to be special in a way no no one else was.

  Heidi pleaded, “Skyler, don’t. Don’t push me. Just love me.”

  Beginning to cry. Hot tears splotching that pale angular face.

  So Skyler relented, when Heidi cried he felt helpless, stricken with guilt, and the curious pleasure of guilt. Liking how the girl—Leander Harkness’s daughter, who had lied for his sake—pushed her tremulous body against him, slipping her arms around his neck in a gesture of humility, need; yet womanly possessiveness, that excited him. “Hey. Don’t cry. You know I’ll take care of you”—for it was so, Skyler would protect Heidi Harkness from all harm even that inflicted upon her by Skyler Rampike himself.

  WHAT DID YOU HATE MOST ABOUT THAT TIME?

  Never being able to say anything true. And you?

  Never being able to say anything true.

  SHARED DIAGNOSES: DYSLEXIA/ATTENTION-DEFICIT DISORDER/CHRONIC anxiety syndrome/C.A.A.D./ROCD/HSR. (“‘HSR’—what the hell is that, Heidi?” Skyler asked, for he’d never been told; and Heidi shivered, and snuggled in Skyler’s arms, kissing his lower lip so Skyler couldn’t see her eyes, saying, “Gosh. I don’t know either.”)

  Shared I.Q.’s: Skyler’s most recent testing, 139; Heidi’s most recent testing, 141.

  Shared meds: Skyler’s Zilich, Dumix, and (newly prescribed) “junior antidepressant” Upixl, Heidi’s Oxycodones, OxyContins. Shared clothes: Skyler’s pea-jacket with zip-up hood, fingerless leather gloves, Outbound lace-up waterproof boots; Heidi’s L.L. Bean cable-knit mittens, and Heidi’s red cashmere muffler. Shared food: if Skyler peeled an orange slowly and sensuously and ate half of the segments, Heidi might consent to eat (very slowly) the other half. Ditto grapefruit, apples. Skyler’s Hi-Protein Granola Bars. (For each bite Heidi managed to swallow, a big-brother kiss from Skyler.) (Hadn’t Skyler so urged Bliss to eat, years ago? When Mummy wasn’t watching.) (But could Skyler trust Heidi not to sneak away, stick a finger down her throat and vomit up everything she’d eaten at his bequest? As Bliss never had.) Shared joints: Skyler’s grade-C, head-banger marijuana scored from a Basking Ridge senior whose source was a local high school kid with “Newark ties,” Heidi’s classy Acapulco Gold smuggled back to Basking Ridge from her mysterious Thursdays in Manhattan. Shared kisses. (Dreamy-dope-kisses! Love love love you lying coiled together like lazy amorous boa constrictors kissing/whispering/softly laughing/slipping into each other’s dreams/hidden away in Heidi’s room so much larger and more private than Skyler’s room with a private bath.)

  Shared music: Skyler’s heavy-metal punk-rock bands Shank, Whack, Futt, Dream Bone, Heidi’s esoteric “Estonian minimalist” Arvo Pärt. (“‘Estonian minimalist’? You’ve got to be kidding.” Skyler was unpersuaded by Pärt’s music that was so slow, spare, still, almost you couldn’t hear it; Skyler sweated, trying to hear; determined to hear what Heidi found so “beautiful”—“mystical”—in these small frugal notes that reminded Skyler of tiny mouse turds of the kind frequently found in his room at the top of Old Craghorne; if the value of music is its power to drown out demon-voices in your brain, Arvo Pärt was not loud, violent, crazed enough for the task and so Skyler became impatient with his girlfriend’s attempt to turn him on to
minimalist music: imagine Skyler’s chagrin when, one evening amid the cheery cacophonies of Clapp Dining Hall his girl Heidi Harkness and his friend Elyot Grubbe share earphones to listen gravely to Arvo Pärt’s Alina while Skyler sulked, devoured whatever was heaped on his plate without tasting it, at last rising from his chair and walking away without a backward glance.)

  “Skyler, are you angry with me? Skyler, why?”

  And, “Don’t be ridiculous, there is nothing between Elyot and me! You know there is nothing between Elyot and me. He’s sweet, and so sad.”

  And, “Skyler, I won’t do it again. Whatever it was, I won’t. Only just love me…”

  HE WOULD. HE DID. OOZING OUT OF HIM IN SLOW PAINFUL DROPS LIKE blood being squeezed from a wounded finger. I can. I will. I am strong enough for both.

  “…WHAT I HOPE TO DO WITH MY LIFE, I HOPE TO GET A DEGREE IN public health, I hope to work as a volunteer in an AIDS hospital in like Kenya, or Nigeria…I do! I want to redeem my name that has been contaminated, and I will.”

  Skyler was so moved by these words, halting childish words that fluttered like butterflies in the air about their heads, small fragile-winged butterflies of a species that lives for but a day, when Heidi asked Skyler what did he hope to do with his life Skyler could not think how to reply, his mind had gone blank, no idea how to answer except knowing he could not say My life is over, fucked is what I am nor even My life is a Möbius strip, know what that is?—it can never be anything but what it is, and it never comes to any end. In girlish excitement Heidi leaned forward to kiss Skyler on the mouth, one of Heidi’s quick yearning kisses, and asked him again, what did he hope to do with his life, and Skyler heard himself say, “…seminary. Maybe Union Theological, in New York. I want to study in a seminary,” and Heidi said, excited, “Skyler, you do? You want to become a minister, Skyler? I didn’t know that you were religious, but Skyler, that is wonderful.” Quickly Skyler amended, he didn’t want to be a minister, he couldn’t see himself preaching to any congregation or being a model for anyone—“I only want to know why.” For in fact this was true, so simple a fact it might be overlooked: Skyler wanted to know why; as Heidi Harkness wanted to know why, and Elyot Grubbe: why. Heidi said, “We can search for ‘why’ together, Skyler! You can come with me to Africa. You can be a ‘man of God’ in Africa, Skyler. Even if you don’t believe.”

  AND THEN AT THANKSGIVING SHE WENT AWAY, AND LEFT HIM. FIVE days.*

  And when she returned she was edgy and distracted and laughed more frequently, a nervous brittle laugh that irritated Skyler like a fingernail scraped on a blackboard. She was vague about where she’d stayed and where she’d had Thanksgiving dinner—“Skyler, just with relatives, family friends: women trying to make me eat, and me trying to escape them.” And Skyler resented it, that Heidi Harkness who was supposed to be Skyler’s girl was a stranger to him; her deepest loyalty was elsewhere, like a part of her tricky female body he could not reach. Shutting his eyes recalling the fantastical drawing of the female reproductive organs he’d stared at, maybe it had been in his playdate Tyler McGreety’s bedroom, a medical text that opened to this page, body of uterus, ureter, oviduct, ovary, cervical canal, mouth of uterus, mons veneris, hymen looking to a young boy’s eye like a highly detailed drawing of an Extra-Terrestrial with tendril-like oviduct arms. No mere boy-penis could truly penetrate such a maze, Skyler seemed to know beforehand.

  “See what I’ve brought back for you, Skyler? For us.”

  In a Ziploc bag he’d thought must be some classy new type of dope, turned out to be (crushed) OxyContins.

  WHO’D TAUGHT HER TO MELT THE POWDER, WHO’D GIVEN HER THE sparkly glass pipes, Skyler inquired but Skyler was never fully convinced that Heidi told him the truth laughing and kissing him saying, “Oh honey, why’s it matter? It doesn’t.”

  “HEIDI, C’MON PLEASE.”

  Days in succession when Heidi would eat only mashed banana in plain unsweetened yogurt, like baby food. Washed down with cans of caffeine-laced Diet Pepsi leaving her dazed and drunk and bloated—feeling like, she said, being pregnant.

  Skyler was worried about his girl so faint with hunger sometimes she could barely ascend a flight of stairs, pushing him away if he tried to steady her—“Skyler, hands off. I don’t want people staring at us, and inventing ridiculous rumors.” Heidi’s grades were unpredictable because Heidi so often nodded off in class, in the midst of a test, laying her head on her test paper and drooling onto it; apart from the fame/infamy of her identity, Heidi Harkness had quickly acquired a legendary aura, the “brainy girl” who was capable of falling asleep on her feet while giving an oral report in a class, as the instructor looked on astonished. (Heidi quickly woke up, before she fell and cracked her head on the floor.) At mealtimes in Clapp Dining Hall, Skyler hated the way he and Elyot vied with each other trying to cajole Heidi into eating, offering her food from their plates as you might urge food on a willful child. Skyler knew it wasn’t a good idea—“enabling”—yet as Elyot earnestly tempted Heidi with spoonfuls/forkfuls of food which, at times, like a fledgling bird opening its beak, Heidi ate, Skyler felt a rush of jealousy. Here! Eat what I am offering you, God damn you I am your boyfriend not him. In addition to mashed-banana-yogurt baby food, Heidi would (sometimes) consent to eat a few forkfuls of tasteless white rice, mushy tasteless cauliflower and zucchini, a half-glass of skim milk. Naive, boastful, Heidi argued for the purity of white foods: “If we have to eat at all.”

  Skyler laughed. Skyler scowled. Thinking Your shit is the color as everybody’s, stinks the same, can’t purify that. This crude/shrewd Bix-insight Skyler knew better than to share with his friends who would have stared at him in dismay.

  Hey I’m not a nice guy. I’m a guy who killed his baby sister. Maybe raped her. Why so surprised? I am Skyler Rampike.

  Nervously watchful of Skyler, somehow Heidi knew. Heidi knew his moods. Even as Elyot gently chided Heidi in his prim med-school manner (“‘Anorexia nervosa’ is an addictive condition, a compulsion that becomes an illness, injurious to the brain, kidneys, heart, liver, resembles a misguided asceticism in a religion in which there is no God…”) Heidi stared at Skyler who regarded her with a strange detachment, almost hostility, even as he stroked her thin wrist protruding from the loose sleeve of an oversized Basking Ridge sweatshirt. Those golden-hazel eyes like small spinning suns and the pert upper lip, the overlap of her two front teeth like crossed fingers…Skyler felt something clamp against his forehead, like a forceps: who was this girl, and why was she looking at him with such intensity?

  Abruptly Heidi pushed away from the table, fumbled for her backpack that was heavy/bulky like something that might’ve been hauled by a mule, without a backward glance at Skyler or at gaping Elyot exited the dining hall.

  “HOW CAN YOU HURT ME! I NEED YOU TO LOVE ME.”

  “I need you to love me.”

  “…NEED YOU TO TRUST ME.”

  “…need you to trust me.”

  SHE BEGAN LEAVING GIFTS FOR HIM. SOMETHING FRANTIC IN HER wish to surprise him with useless and unwanted little gifts coyly left in Sylvester Rampole’s mailbox at Old Craghorne. “Hey Sly: Heidi was here”—one of Sly’s fellow residents winked at him.

  Sly scowled, not wishing to blush in embarrassment.

  Sure he was touched, it was a sweet gesture on Heidi’s part, but what was Skyler to do with, for instance, a tiny bouquet of tiny flowers that looked as if they’d been fashioned from tissue paper and spit, miniature roses, daisies, lilies they must have been made with a pair of tweezers, Skyler imagined Heidi working late into the night in that haze of obliviousness to the passing of time that is one of the doubtful benefits of OxyContin. And one evening at Skyler’s usual place at the dining table in Clapp Hall there was an envelope with S.R. in elaborate script, and inside a greeting card JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE YOU, cartoon drawings of a figure with long legs, long arms and spiky zinc-colored hair and zinc-eyes made with something glittery like mica, and Skyler was impressed, the
drawings were surprisingly skillful, and professional, in the way of a more benign R. Crumb. (But had Skyler ever told Heidi about his childhood infatuation with R. Crumb? He didn’t think so.) And other love-tokens turned up in unexpected places, in a pocket of Skyler’s jacket (little gold locket with Heidi’s baby picture inside and a lock of hair, frazzled white lace presumably from a pair of Heidi’s panties); in Skyler’s backpack a small blue Tiffany box and inside a pair of expensive-looking silver cuff links engraved S.R. (Cuff links! For a sixteen-year-old who wore shirts that barely had cuffs.) (This useless gift, yet it was flattering, how Skyler would have liked to boast to Bix Rampike See these cuff links, kind of cool aren’t they?—guess whose daughter gave them to me. Retired Yankee pitcher, in the news a lot. Yes you’d know him, he’s about your age.) And one December day in Skyler’s mailbox in his residence was a small jar of colored cut-glass and inside tiny red cinnamon hearts, spilling out onto Skyler’s palm these little red hearts began at once to melt and to stain his skin and something swerved inside Skyler’s head like a clumsily wrapped package containing a wedge-like weight Skyler will you make me a little red heart Skyler? will you make me a little red heart like yours Skyler please So clear this plaintive request, he hadn’t been hearing for months yet standing now staring at the little red hearts staining the palm of his hand with a look that must’ve been more than ordinarily weird for a fellow resident of Old Craghorne was asking him, guardedly, yet not unkindly, if something was wrong? Calling him Sly, as if “Sly” was his actual name, asking had he hurt himself, was his hand bleeding? But “Sly” sprang away like a large panicked bird and fled without a reply not knowing where the hell he was, or why.