My Sister, My Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  * Remember? Skyler doesn’t want to recall how long ago Bix Rampike carelessly promised him he’d take him to visit the Thomas Edison museum here.

  † EDISON has stirred dim sensations of hurt, loss, abandonment; RAHWAY reminds Skyler of Gunther Ruscha who’d served a brief prison sentence in the Sex Offenders’ Unit of Rahway State Prison for Men. (No wonder Skyler will shortly blunder a crucial Turnpike exit.)

  * Tuition, room and board and other fees at Basking Ridge were, at the time of Skyler’s incarceration there, approximately $65,000 for a full academic year. Compare $40,000 to $45,000 at such venerable Ivy League universities as Princeton, Harvard, Yale; and such prestigious liberal arts colleges as Swarthmore, Williams, et al.

  * Folie-à-do: one of those mysterious French phrases that apply so precisely to other people, yet never to oneself. Why?

  * In fact, Skyler is so stricken with a Repressed Memory at this moment, he quickly kisses his girl to disguise his emotion. Nor will he record the incident in this document since, in so eerily mirroring a similar gesture of Bliss Rampike’s years before, Heidi’s gesture might seem, to the more O current literary theorist, too transparently “symbolic” to be convincing. (Not all events that really happen can be made to seem “real” in prose.)

  * The reader may be intrigued, or repelled, to learn that at least one other individual, also a “convicted sex offender” residing in New Jersey, had confessed to killing Bliss Rampike by this time. Who this was, how seriously Fair Hills police took the sicko’s claim, or whether other “intruder” theories were investigated by the police, Skyler did not know, and did not want to know.

  * Exactly like this! Would’ve fallen and cracked my head except kindly Evander Franklin (security guard) caught me. To Nathan Kissler’s chagrin, Franklin carried me back inside the dollhouse-sized peach plantation house, as TV cameras across the street rolled. In a few minutes, I revived. Not wanting to call an ambulance for me, thereby “fanning the flames” of the tabloid jackals, Kissler called Bix Rampike, for the second time that day.

  ENTFREMDUNGSGEFUHL*

  “SON. THERE HAS BEEN A TRAGIC HISTORY BETWEEN US. BUT MAYBE—NOW—that will change.”

  These words! Skyler swallowed hard. Now had to mean now that your mother is dead.

  The men were in a wood-plank booth in the Old Dutch Tavern in the historic old Washington Irving Inn in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where Skyler was spending the night after his mother’s funeral, at Bix’s expense. Since they’d entered the tavern, Bix had been speaking slowly and deliberately with what seemed, to Skyler’s hyper-acute ear, a slight drag to his voice, like the all-but-imperceptible limp an athlete, or an ex-athlete, tries to disguise. To the normal eye, the limp is imperceptible. But Skyler had no more a normal eye, or ear, than he had a normal right leg (femur, fibula, knee).

  The shock of his former wife’s death seemed to have shaken Bix Rampike who seemed, to Skyler, less looming-tall and imposing than Skyler recalled. At the crowded après-funeral hosted by Nathan Kissler at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, Skyler had noticed his father drinking. There was a wounded-shaggy-bison look to the older man, something gray-grizzled in his eyebrows, a baffled fleshiness to the lower part of his face. Must be, Skyler thought, he’d still loved Betsey?

  A man never ceases to love the mother of his children, son. That’s the bottom line.†

  “Son? You’re listening, I hope.”

  Quickly Skyler assured his frowning father, certainly he was listening.

  “‘Maybe—now—that will change.’ You said.”

  As always in this man’s presence, Skyler spoke with boyish optimism. Even in this time of shared mourning, for Skyler to be in close proximity to this man was to feel certain facial muscles, long dormant, stir to life: Smile! And a certain craven eagerness to his shoulders, leaning forward: Yes Daddy?

  Skyler had noticed that Bix had brought into the tavern with him a briefcase of soft dark Italian leather, and now Bix lifted this briefcase onto the table between them, slowly and ceremonially; he seemed about to open it, but did not. How poignantly furrowed Bix Rampike’s forehead was, how his soulful eyes glistened with a kind of brooding regret, yet resolve. Skyler’s heart beat painfully. He thought In there? Is there something for me? He dared not hope.

  Massively, Bix sighed. Lifted his heavy whiskey glass, and drank.

  “Of course, son: it can’t bring her back.”

  Numbly, Skyler agreed.*

  SKYLER HAD BEEN PREPARED TO BE UNMOVED BY SON. TO SHRUG AT SON. BUT when his father uttered son, the ice encasing Skyler’s gnarled-kid heart began to melt.

  And the tenderness of certain of Bix’s gestures, clumsy-warm-Daddy embrace that nearly cracked Skyler’s ribs, rough-Daddy kiss smearing spittle on Skyler’s inflamed cheek, squeeze of Skyler’s hard little biceps, all took Skyler off guard. Heavy-breathing Daddy, tear-brimming eyes: “This is a sad time, son. ‘Requiescat poor Betsey in peace.’”

  Reader, forgive me: this is sentimental as hell. These many pages, Skyler has been bitching about his parents, now you’re expected to be sympathetic with Bix, even with Betsey, and that is asking too God-damned much. And I am not expecting you to oblige. Yet, to be scrupulously honest, as I have tried to be in this document, this is how Skyler felt when Bix Rampike came at once to 9 Magnolia Terrace, Sleepy Hollow, summoned by the distraught Nathan Kissler who had no idea what to do with his deceased partner/fiancée’s nineteen-year-old son who’d not only showed up unexpectedly at the house, less than six hours after Betsey’s death, but fainted just outside the door, on his way out.

  “A SAD TIME, SON. AND YET: WE ARE TOGETHER.”

  (And how long had it been since Skyler had seen his father last? Two years? Two-and-a-half? And then, under awkward circumstances. After Skyler had “walked away” from a drug treatment center in East Orange, New Jersey, and New Jersey State police had been alerted, and Bix had appeared quivering with revulsion: “Skyler! How the fuck could you! Again.”)

  Now, Bix was looking older. And Bix was looking shaken, remorseful. Something hunched and crestfallen in the man’s face as if his ex-wife’s death was a personal blow he had not yet fully grasped. Saying to Skyler: “Son. We’ll get you a place to stay here. And we’ll get you a haircut, and some decent clothes. You will attend your mother’s funeral, son. With me.”

  Feebly Skyler protested. He would attend Betsey’s funeral but—he didn’t want his hair cut, and he didn’t want to wear a suit. And Bix dug his fingers into Skyler’s stiff shoulders, and said, “You will not shame the Rampikes, son. No more than you already have.”

  The place to stay, two nights on Bix Rampike’s credit card, was the quaint-historic old Washington Irving Inn, less than two miles from 9 Magnolia Terrace. The haircut was expensive, and made Skyler look near-normal from certain angles. The clothes, purchased on Bix Rampike’s credit card in a single pragmatic visit to Hugo Boss at the Tarrytown Shopping Mall, were: charcoal gray wool-silk suit, narrow-waisted coat, pencil-thin sharp-creased trousers (adjusted by the resident tailor to accommodate Skyler’s disproportionate frame); a long-sleeved dress shirt of white Egyptian cotton of the kind favored by Bix Rampike, and a dark-striped silk tie. Funeral attire for the grieving son! In a three-way mirror Skyler regarded his Hollywood-transformed self with mirth: “Me? Not.”

  From behind, Bix gripped Skyler’s slouched shoulders forcing them just slightly back, and up: “Stand tall, son. No more of this flaky-kid crap. You’re a Rampike—stand like one.”

  ALSO, BIX PROVIDED SKYLER WITH DARK GLASSES. VERY DARK GLASSES.

  “Stare straight ahead, son. Don’t so much as glance at the jackals. And don’t smile, for Christ’s sake. When they call your name, you don’t hear. When they wave at you, you don’t see. Just walk close beside me, try not to limp and remember you’re a Rampike—deport yourself like one.”

  SKYLER’S FIRST “VIEWING.”

  In his new clothes (trousers tight in the crotch, starched white collar chafi
ng his neck) Skyler made his way like a man in a dream not his own to the white-gold-gleaming casket at the rear of the chilled room, past strangers frankly staring at him, past tubs of lilies, steeling himself for what awaited him and in confusion relieved thinking Not Mummy in the casket! Not Mummy for this woman was no one Skyler knew. Thinking There has been a mistake, I can leave now except wiping moisture from his eyes it seemed to him, yes the female corpse in the casket in layers of pink chiffon, thick ropes of pearls around her neck, clam-shell-sized pearl earrings in her ears, did bear some resemblance to the Betsey Rampike he’d last seen on television in Heidi Harkness’s room. Except the hair did not appear to be real hair, synthetic-glossy maroon-red like a perky Heaven Scent Glamour Wig ($359.95). You would not have believed that the face was that of a woman of forty-four!—unlined forehead, full rouged cheeks, nothing fleshy visible below the chin. Serene-shut eyes expertly made up in several shades of eye shadow (taupe, silvery-green, silvery-blue) and ink-black mascara, Cleopatra style. The fleshy red-lipstick-lips that seemed to be about to smile, Skyler had to concede did look familiar. And if this was Mummy, was Skyler the little man? A sensation of abject fear came over him leaving him weak, light-headed. The horror was, Mummy’s little man must kiss Mummy good-bye! Or was it to wake Mummy from her unnatural sleep, by kissing her on those red-lipstick-lips? As long ago he’d glimpsed his sister Bliss lying in a tangle of awkward limbs on the living room floor of their house, arms flung over her head and wrists bound together, eyes open and small wounded mouth slack and he’d been too frightened, and too cowardly, to run to her to save her: that boy was Skyler. Now to make amends Skyler must lean over the casket with its dazzle of white-gold, Skyler must balance himself carefully so he doesn’t slip, and fall into the casket like a TV cartoon figure which (he knows, he acknowledges) he resembles in sexy new Hugo Boss attire, Skyler must kiss Mummy on those lips now. Yet—so strangely—unable to move as if paralyzed, staring helplessly awaiting the Cleopatra eyes to open and claim him, Skyler’s breath now coming rapidly and shallowly and elsewhere in the lavishly decorated viewing room agitated Nathan Kissler could not think what to do about Skyler Rampike teetering over the casket in which Betsey Rampike lay “as if sleeping”—could not think what to do about his deceased fiancée’s clearly psychotic son, finally daring to approach Betsey’s ex-husband Bix Rampike who was stationed a little to the side of the casket, staring with glum fascination at the voluptuous female figure without coming nearer, and in a lowered voice Kissler said, “Mr. Rampike, your son,” and Bix said, “What about my son,” and Kissler said, “He does not appear well, Mr. Rampike. Please do something about him,” and Bix said, jaw jutting in the way of a former all-American fullback, though in his mid-forties, going soft in the mid-section, still you would not want this six-foot-four/two-hundred-plus Alpha-male Homo sapiens specimen to tackle you, “My son is mourning his God-damned mother, ‘Nathan.’ That’s a problem with you?” and Kissler said, shaken, dapper little man in prim-mannequin-mourning-attire, dark grays, black, shiny-dark-purple silk ascot disguising the wattles beneath his chin, trying neither to threaten nor to plead, “Mr. Rampike please I am asking you, please move your son away from Betsey, he has been standing there teetering for six minutes or more and he doesn’t look well.”

  Must’ve been, Bix relented. Approached Skyler quietly and with gentle/firm Daddy-fingers gripped Skyler’s upper right bicep waking him from the eerie Mummy-trance in which poor Skyler might have committed an act of such unspeakable and irrevocable weirdness, to this very hour it would be posted on Web sites through galaxies charted and uncharted to the last syllable of recorded Time.

  “Son. Come with me.”

  UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT, READER! TRULY I DID NOT FORESEE, ANY MORE than Skyler did, his being so readily “reconciled” with his long-estranged father of whom Skyler knew very little at the present time except: Bix Rampike was remarried, and the “proud new father” of a very young child (sex not known to [ jealous? embittered?] Skyler); Bix Rampike was now CEO (“chief executive officer”—such grandeur deserves full recognition) of the Univers, Inc. subsidiary New Genesis BioTech, Inc., headquarters in New Harmony, New Jersey, one exit beyond Univers, eastward on I-80. (Yet, so far as Skyler could determine, Bix seemed to spend much of his time in New York City.) In a classic work of art that celebrates reconciliation, forgiveness, and a heartwarming reaffirmation of the human spirit greatly tested by adversity, Skyler and his father would be brought together more than merely temporarily by the occasion of Betsey Rampike’s death, and so I will see what I can do to achieve this. For truly, for all my postmodernist cynicism I want this document to turn out “heart-warming”—“truly inspiring!” and not “the longest God-damned suicide note in the history of the English language.”*

  “SON. BEAR UP LIKE A MAN.”

  God damn he was! Skyler felt certain.

  Next, the funeral service. Next morning at 11 A.M.

  And here was the first surprise: Betsey Rampike’s funeral service would not be a staid/solemn/“beautiful-but-boring-as-hell” Episcopal service but a fervent/impassioned/“smiling-through-tears” Assembly of God funeral. For it seemed that Skyler’s mother had cast off the hoary old Episcopal formality she’d taken on when marrying Bix Rampike for the far more exuberant, “outgoing” and “joyous” Christianity celebrated by the Assembly of God worshippers. (Bix remained stolidly Episcopalian of course. Such was his “heritage.” The Episcopal God was not one to interfere in the affairs of mankind as, ideally, Big Government should not interfere in the affairs of business-kind. Disapprovingly Bix commented to Skyler: “How could your mother ‘convert’ to Assembly of God, after the Higleys stood by us, in our hour of need! Damn selfish.”) Skyler had to be impressed, if a little overwhelmed, by the showy mega-church that was several times the size of quaint old Trinity Episcopal in Fair Hills, with an alleged seating capacity of 2,100; beyond Wal-Mart, beyond Home Depot and Big Savings Bonanza at the traffic-clogged intersection of Route 9 and I-87 was a sleekly gleaming modern structure of white concrete smooth as taffy, sparkling glass and steel in a fantastical architectural design combining old-style churchiness with New Age flying-saucer uplift. Said Bix, in grudging approval: “Twelve million, bottom line. That’s ‘Born Again’ for you.”

  Inside, the Assembly of God appeared even larger. The size of a football field, at least—two football fields?—Skyler had but a vague sense of such epic proportions. The altar was enormous as a rock-concert stage and above it, seemingly floating in air, eerily and wonderfully, was an enormous copper cross of about twelve feet in height. Much of Betsey Rampike’s funeral service would be music: electric organ/synthesizer, twin white-robed “tabernacle choirs” singing, with great swoops of emotion, grief-stricken to joyous, dirge-like to pop-rock, the deceased woman’s favorite hymns: “Nearer My God to Thee,” “Christ Our Redeemer Cometh,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” “Beyond the Sunset,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lord,” “Onward, Christian Soldiers!” Unlike the singing in the New Canaan church which tended to be raggedy and off-key, the combined effort of hopeful amateurs, the singing in this dazzling mega-church was syrupy-smooth and accomplished. (In the program it was noted that these hymns were included in a newly issued Heaven Scent CD titled Betsey Rampike’s Most Inspiring Christian Hymns, available for $26.95.)

  Though Betsey’s funeral was a private affair limited to Betsey’s “intimate friends and associates,” most of the seats in the vast interior, including even the soaring balcony, were filled. (Yet no Sckulhornes, Skyler’s father informed him. And of the Rampikes, only Bix and Skyler seated in the front row close by Betsey’s dapper little fiancé Nathan Kissler.) Pastor of Assembly of God was a leonine-haired Reverend Alphonse Sked, a man with a formidable bass voice to rival that of Pastor Bob Fluchaus, and a solemn-breezy manner like a TV actor. Arms tight-folded as a straitjacket across his chest in the expensive Hugo Boss funeral suit, Skyler tried to concentrate on the florid-faced preacher p
raising “my beloved friend Betsey Rampike who departed this world too soon”—“one of the most courageous Christian women of our time”—“triumphing over Evil and ‘secular progressivism’”—“confirming the values of American family and freedom”—and not to stare at the white-gold-gleaming casket, now closed, that had been placed upon the altar like a gigantic jewel box. In a confluence of spotlights, the casket loomed even larger than it had in the viewing room.

  “Son? Stand. Sing.”

  Bix nudged Skyler from his trance. Skyler stood, tried to sing with the others: “Onward, Christian Soldiers!” Skyler’s lips moved numbly. He had no idea if the “much-loved” hymn was painfully silly or a rousingly beautiful song. Thinking how he had not been allowed to attend his sister’s funeral. He had never been taken to visit Bliss’s grave, that had to be in the cemetery behind the Trinity church. Skyler I am so lonely in this place I am so afraid Skyler help me