My Sister, My Love (11 page)

The other girls were so encouraging! Trix Chaplin laughed in delight: “Edna Louise is doing so well, Betsey! Are you sure she has never skated before?”

It was during this first skating session, while watching Edna Louise on her borrowed skates, on the ice, now in the company of eleven-year-old June Chaplin who’d taken the little girl by the hand, to give her instructions, that Betsey Rampike was made to realize for the first time
My daughter is special! my daughter is blessed by God! my daughter will be the way God will reward me for my faith in Him and God will elevate my daughter above all rivals.
*

AND SO IT HAPPENED, ALMOST BY CHANCE, THAT, IN THE FALL OF
1994
while Skyler Rampike was still made to endure the rigor/pain of rehab three times a week, his little sister Edna Louise began taking skating lessons at the Halcyon rink, along with the Chaplin girls; and that Betsey Rampike who’d so yearned to be, one day, among those Montessori mothers invited to the Chaplins’ house for their annual Christmas party, was invited that year, with her husband Bix Rampike. Of the girl-skaters who regularly practiced at the Halcyon rink, it was Edna Louise who captivated the attention of onlookers with her diminutive size and her skating talent that seemed so disproportionate to that size. “Why, what a little angel!” began to be heard, by Betsey Rampike whose heart beat hard in anticipation, and in apprehension.

Noted, too, was the fact that while other child-skaters frequently fell on the ice and cried, the “little angel” did not often fall and, when she did,
only just laughed to show that she wasn’t hurt, and quickly scrambled to her feet and continued skating.

So too Edna Louise was likely to be the last child to leave the rink. The last child to unlace her skates.
As if her life depended on skating
more than one observer noted.
As if
,
even so young
,
she could see into the future and understood her destiny.
*

Four-year-old Edna Louise Rampike was one of thirty-plus child-skaters in the annual Halcyon Winter Carnival, a gala event attended mostly by adoring families and relatives, and on the ice that evening, to amplified, antic Tchaikovsky (“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies”), Edna Louise was an appealing, diminutive figure in a pink satin fairy costume with bobbing fairy-wings attached to her small shoulders, matching ribbons in her hair and wide frightened eyes. (Glancing into the audience for Mummy? for Daddy?—but of course, Daddy hadn’t been able to come, Daddy was away on business and “damned sorry.”) Skyler who’d never seen his little sister in such public circumstances, shyly skating with a troupe of small, very novice child-skaters in fairy attire, winced at the sight, steeled himself for the inevitable fall, shut his eyes—and when he opened them, there was Edna Louise completing her brief, somewhat shaky performance, clearly the most skilled of the little troupe, and still on her feet. Applause was immediate and lavish for all the skaters: “Bravo!”—“Terrific!” With other mothers, Mummy hurried to hug her darling little skater, as Skyler remained seated and staring, bewildered. For hadn’t Edna Louise fallen on the ice? Hadn’t Skyler clearly seen her fall? As Skyler himself had fallen on the ice, and from the rings in the gym, and injured himself?

Tears sparkling in her warm brown eyes, Mummy was hugging a dazed-looking Edna Louise. As Skyler limped to them he overheard Mummy’s ecstatic voice, “If only Daddy could have seen you, darling. He’d have been so proud of us both. Next time!”

WAS SKYLER JEALOUS OF HIS LITTLE SISTER, NOOOO SKYLER WAS
NOT.

Did Skyler hope for a mishap on the ice, an injury to his brave little sister, noooo Skyler did
not.

(REALLY, THIS IS SO! I SWEAR.)

AS ALL BLISS-CULTISTS KNOW, IT WASN’T AT THE HALCYON WINTER CARNIVAL
in 1994 that Bliss Rampike made her official debut on the ice but at the “Tots-on-Ice Capades” at the Meadowlands, New Jersey, on Valentine’s Day 1994.

“Tots-on-Ice” was a popular annual New Jersey event open to any aspiring young skater whose parents were willing to pay the $200 entry fee in exchange for the possibility of winning glittery fake-silver tiaras and fake-brass trophies plus a few seconds of local TV news footage and a few photographs in the back pages of newspapers. For ambitious/deluded parents thinking to launch their children into Olympic-team status “Tots-on-Ice” was ideal. As Mary Baker Eddy so famously said
You can’t go broke underestimating the taste of the American people.

Or was it
A sucker is born every minute
the canny seer Mrs. Eddy said. Whichever.

At the Halcyon Hills Rink, where Edna Louise Rampike had become a fond, familiar sight, one of the most dedicated, as she was one of the most talented, of young skaters, it was suggested to Betsey Rampike that she enter her daughter in “Tots-on-Ice” though Edna Louise was very young and inexperienced. (There were just two divisions in Tots-on-Ice for both sexes: skaters to age eight, and skaters to age eleven.) The older Chaplin daughters had both skated in previous “Tots-on-Ice Capades” and the elder, Michelle, had placed second in her age category as a ten-year-old. But Trix Chaplin believed that, at age five, Carrie wasn’t yet ready for the competition; and that it might be “unwise”—“premature”—for Betsey to enter Edna Louise. “She’s obviously
a gifted skater but she hasn’t had experience with such a large, noisy audience. Think how much stronger Edna Louise will be next year.”

Mummy, who’d come to adore Trix Chaplin,
*
even as she was intimidated by Trix Chaplin, and, in a way, resented and disliked Trix Chaplin, felt the sting of the woman’s jealousy.
Unwise! Premature!
For weeks, Mummy had felt the near-palpable jealousy, envy, and covert spite of the other skaters’ mothers at the Halcyon rink, even as Mummy was reminded of the jealousy, envy, and not-so-covert spite of her high school girlfriends in Hagarstown when Betsey Sckulhorne, daughter of a renowned local family, had won beauty competitions and skated in regional challenges.

And there were Fair Hills women who envied Betsey Rampike her attractive, gregarious, frankly sexy husband, murmuring behind her back
What can that man possibly see in her
and, yet more ominously,
There’s a marriage that can’t last.

Politely Mummy explained to Trix Chaplin: “I will do whatever my daughter wishes. And whatever is best for my daughter’s career.”

A DREAM OF SUCH INTENSITY! THREE NIGHTS BEFORE VALENTINE’S DAY.

It was as if my eyes were open, there was blinding light in the room
,
at first I was terrified it must be the Angel Gabriel who comes in blinding light but more wondrous yet it was my own daughter who came to me transfigured in light in the guise of a blond angel touching my face with both her gentle hands saying Mummy I am not Edna Louise
,
you must not call me by that wrongful name I am BLISS
,
I am your daughter BLISS bearing a vision from God that you are blessed as I am blessed
,
with God’s blessing we will realize our destiny on the ice in the face of all our enemies, we will not be defeated.

BIX WAS ASTOUNDED. CHANGE THEIR DAUGHTER’S
NAME?

From
Edna Louise
to—
Bliss
?

“Sweetie, my mother won’t understand. She’ll be damned hurt.”

Betsey murmured she would try to explain. She would write a letter to her mother-in-law. She would argue that the vision had come to her with such clarity, and such power, it could not have been an ordinary dream but a divine message from God.

From God? Divine message? Bix smiled uncertainly. He was one who believed unquestioningly in God—the Christian/biblical/Caucasian God—but he was not one who wished to discuss God for such subjects embarrassed him. As uttering such clinical terms as
sexual intercourse
,
masturbation
, would have terribly embarrassed him, who spoke without hesitation among male companions such words as
fuck
,
screw
,
jack off.
A hot sullen blush came into his face. Only just returned home from Newark Airport, his flight delayed three and a half hours from Frankfurt where he’d been sent on urgent business by his supervisor at Scor Chemicals, Inc., a new job for Bix Rampike and a very well-paying job it was, except it did involve travel, and would involve travel, and a fiercely competitive young assistant-manager of project development requires from his wife and family one primary thing: that they not surprise him.

Surprises in the Rampike household would be Daddy’s, exclusively. That was the bottom line.

Yet Bix was smiling. Though the pupils of his eyes had narrowed to ice pick points.

Yet Bix was caressing his wife’s arm, above the elbow. Though his big thumb and forefinger were squeezing the fleshy-soft muscle.

“You know my mother, Betsey. If her pride is wounded, we’ll be the ones to pay.”

Unspoken between husband and wife was the prospect of the elder Mrs. Rampike punishing them by cutting Bix out of her will. Or, nearly as cruelly, leaving her favorite son Bix only a fraction of what she left Bix’s endlessly conniving/loser siblings.

“Mother doesn’t seem to especially like her little granddaughter as it is, even named ‘Edna Louise.’ D’you think she’s going to like her better, named ‘Bliss’ like some sexpot pop star or some Indian-mystic asshole-charlatan?”

Betsey winced. “Bliss” was a beautiful name!

“Bix, it was ‘Bliss’ herself—our daughter—who appeared to me, in my dream. The room was flooded with light and there came Bliss like an angel to explain to me that we’d wrongly named her, it was her destiny to be named—”

“What’s that damn drug you’re on—‘Elixil’—‘Nixil’? Is that what precipitated your ‘vision’?”

Betsey wrenched away from Bix. In her upper arm there were reddened imprints of a man’s fingers. Her face, like Bix’s, was flushed and warm and there was an excited quaver in her voice. “My vision came from God. You are not going to deprive me of my vision. Always we do things your way, ‘the bottom line’ is Bix’s way, but in this, I know that I am right, and that history will prove me right. Since I’ve started taking Edna Louise—that is, Bliss—to the skating rink, the scales have fallen from my eyes. Our daughter is a born skater, no one else at the rink remotely resembles her, and so young! The instructor Ivana Zuev—an Olympic bronze medal winner—says that our daughter has an ‘old soul’—she has ‘lived many lives before this life’—and has come to ice-skating in this new life with a memory of the old. Don’t look so skeptical, Bix: I am convinced that Ivana is right. Our daughter is fated for—something grand! I am not imagining any of this. In fact, I am taking fewer capsules of Elixil than Dr. Tyde has prescribed. In my dream Bliss came to me to tell me how urgent it was, we rectify our mistake in naming her. Our daughter is ‘Bliss’—not ‘Edna Louise.’”

“Betsey, hey—for Christ’s sake—”

“It is for Christ’s sake, and for ours. Bliss Rampike will be skating under her true name tomorrow evening at the Meadowlands, and ‘Edna Louise’ is no more.”

How fiercely Betsey spoke! Her eyes appeared dilated, glazed. When Bix made a gesture to calm her, or to restrain her, Betsey airily threw off his hand as she’d never dared do in the past and Bix stared at her in astonishment. Was this Bix Rampike’s big-busty gorgeous gal, who stammered when she was excited, and became stricken with shyness at social occasions? Was this
Mummy
? In the shadowy corridor outside the bedroom little Skyler had limped near attracted by his parents’ urgent voices, he’d seen that the door to the room wasn’t completely shut and so he might listen unnoticed, it was the most innocent of childish maneuvers, poor Skyler had taken to listening to his parents’ exchanges when they had no idea anyone else was listening.
Will they talk about me?
is the child’s hope.
What will they say about me?
For Daddy had just returned home from a business trip and had not seen his son in several days and yet: would you have guessed that the Rampikes had any other child, apart from the new, mysterious “Bliss”?

(JESUS! THAT WAS AWKWARD. THESE PRECEDING PAGES. WHAT I OVERHEARD
in my parents’ bedroom was more or less what I’ve recorded here but somehow it doesn’t sound right. (Does it?) I don’t think that I did a very good job of imagining what Bix Rampike was thinking, and feeling; and what Betsey was thinking, and feeling. Not easy! There is something forbidden about such imaginings, where our parents are involved; a taboo, maybe. In deciding to call my parents Bix and Betsey, not Daddy and Mummy, my logic was that much of the time our parents aren’t thinking of themselves as parents per se, not Daddy/Mummy but the distinct individuals they are, apart from us. Yet the paradox is: I can know them only as Daddy, Mummy. I can know them only as
my
parents.)

“’BLISS’! THIS IS YOUR NEW NAME NOW, HONEY. ’EDNA LOUISE’ HAS BEEN
changed to ‘Bliss’—isn’t that wonderful?”

The puzzled little girl smiled at Mummy. Was this good news? Was this a nice surprise? From Mummy’s expression, you would definitely think so. “Your new name ‘Bliss’—how do you pronounce it?”

“‘Bli-zz’?”

“‘Bliss.’ ‘Bliss Rampike.’”

Names were so strange! Why is any name what it is, and why is any name attached to any person, or thing? Little Edna Louise, now little Bliss, smiled uncertainly as if she’d been presented with a gift—as often, when you are a child, you are presented with gifts from beaming adults who have been very good to you and wish to be acknowledged as very good—she didn’t comprehend but understood that it was a very special gift, and she must be grateful for it.

“And so, darling, when people ask your name, especially at the skating rink, you will tell them ‘Bliss.’ Spelled ‘
B-L-I-S-S.
’ It is a vision from God. Do you understand?”

Vehemently Edna Louise nodded.
Yes Mummy!

FOR HADN’T SHE BEEN PRACTICING HER “FIGURES” UNDER THE FROWNING
tutelage of Miss Zuev, whose face, though not old, was crisscrossed with lines of impatience; hadn’t she and Miss Zuev been skating together at the Halcyon rink, days in succession as the buoyant melody “Over the Rainbow”—chosen by Mummy!—was played; and hadn’t everyone at the rink who noticed them lingered to stare, and to praise the remarkable little skater? Now the reason had been revealed: on the ice Edna Louise hadn’t been “Edna Louise” at all but “Bliss.”

Yes Mummy!

BRISKLY MUMMY CAME INTO SKYLER’S ROOM, WHERE MARIA WAS HELPING
him dress for school on this chill February morning. “Skyler? Maria? There will be a change in the Rampike family from now on: ‘Edna Louise’ has a new name, ‘Bliss.’”

Bliss? Skyler scowled. Though it can’t be said that Skyler was exactly surprised.

“From now on, Skyler, Maria—you will call Skyler’s little sister ‘Bliss’ and not ‘Edna Louise.’ Not ever again, ‘Edna Louise.’” Mummy shuddered, and laughed, as if they’d all narrowly escaped something very unpleasant.

Accustomed to Fair Hills
gringa
whims and edicts which were never pronounced in tones other than profound, Maria-from-Ecuador politely murmured
Yes ma’am.
While Skyler in brattish-boy mode, for his broken-in-two-pieces-slow-to-heal leg was hurting like hell, and his knee, too, and his morning Nixil dose hadn’t yet kicked in, had to ask
Why
?

“‘Why’? Because Mummy says so, dear. Mummy has explained: your little sister is no longer ‘Edna Louise’ but ‘Bliss.’ You will call her ‘Bliss’ from now on.”

“‘Bliss.’” Skyler swiped at his runny nose with the edge of his hand as street urchins do, in crude documentary films. Not as Fair Hills boys do just shrugging into their Fair Hills Day School navy-blue blazers embossed with the Fair Hills Day School heraldic shield involving a lion rampant, crossed staves or maces, a sacred book out of which flames sprung, in miniature. “‘Bliss’ is a goofy name, Mummy. People will laugh at ‘Bliss.’” Skyler laughed, not very mirthlessly, as if to demonstrate, but Mummy wasn’t in a mood to be amused by her little man, not right now. “No one will laugh at your sister, Skyler, I assure you. The name change will be legal as soon as our lawyer can file papers at the courthouse and in the meantime just call your sister ‘Bliss’—a much prettier and more special name than ‘Edna Louise.’ And don’t make silly baby faces.”

Silly baby faces! Skyler was shocked, his mother would so insult him in the presence of the nanny.

Skyler saw that Mummy was anxious to leave, yet Skyler plucked at Mummy’s arm to ask: “Do I have a new name, too?” though knowing damned well that he did not; and Mummy laughed and said, “Honey, no. Why would Daddy and I want to change your name?—‘Skyler’ is a beautiful special name, a ‘questing’ name of which you should be proud.”

But shrewd-sullen Skyler knew, there would be nothing of which Skyler should be proud.