My Sister, My Love (26 page)
*
Though all Fair Hills Day School students had to sign a contract binding them to the school’s traditional honor code and to a promise not to enter into “any and all secret societies” at the school, yet there were rumored to be two predominant gangs/fraternities there: the Krippes (secret tattoos made with black ink) and the Bloods (secret tattoos made with red ink). In emulation of black-youth drug-dealing gangsta culture, purveyed to them largely through video games and TV, Skyler’s Caucasian/upper-middle-class classmates sometimes tied nylon rags around their heads as well, when not on school property.
†
Only the most abnormally retentive of readers will recall Billy Durkee of many pages back. This canny, math-minded, manipulative playdate of Skyler’s who’d taught Skyler to play poker, to a degree, so that he could win from the naive kid somewhere in the range of thirty dollars over a period of months. At school, Billy greeted Skyler with a friendly-insincere smile but never invited Skyler to join him and his friends for lunch. Skyler had no idea whether Mummy had “given up on” Mrs. Durkee, who’d ceased answering Mummy’s calls, or whether it was, in fact, Mummy who’d ceased calling Mrs. Durkee. The intense social lives of our parents!—mysterious, snarled, as taboo to contemplate as their sex lives.
*
Wow! Sounds like ten-year-old Calvin Klaus is threatening to blow off Bix Rampike’s head, doesn’t it? And by telling Skyler beforehand, he’s making Skyler complicit in the act; maybe even, in moral terms, a co-conspirator. In a work of fiction, such an utterance would presage violence to come, or at least attempted violence; in this document, though Calvin Klaus blurted out exactly these words, nothing will come of the distraught boy’s threat. Skyler went away shaken, with a premonition that something very bad was to happen to someone in his family, and that it would be his father’s fault; and that there was nothing to be done about it for it lay in the province of “adults”—“adult’ry”—and was beyond his control.
…WOMAN HAS A HOLE BETWEEN HER LEGS, THE MAN’S COCK FITS IN.
So this is what adults
do
?
There was a crude simplicity about it. A kind of geometry.
Yet Skyler brooded, unconvinced.
For
why
?
“WHY, BETSEY RAMPIKE. DARLIN’, HOW ARE
YOU?”
In Fair Hills, New Jersey, as in every upscale American-suburban community, there is a distinctive male type: hearty, bluff, jovial, with cold blue eyes and a bone-crushing handshake. Short-legged, barrel-chested. One of those men whose skin pinkens as their hair—crew cut, to disguise its thinness—whitens. Bix Rampike moved easily with such men with whom he felt some kinship yet knew himself to be superior (taller and better-fit, good-looking, younger) but Betsey Rampike did not for Betsey Rampike was inclined to believe such men when they swooped upon her gallantly at social gatherings to which (bravely, defiantly) she’d come alone in the wake of her husband’s departure, seizing her soft pliable hand, saying, “Betsey. You are looking damn beautiful. Where the hell have you been keeping yourself?”
In the Rampikes’ vast and ever-shifting circle of social acquaintances, it was Tigger Burr who fit this profile. So far as brooding Skyler knew, the burly white-haired Mr. Burr was married and had high-school-age children of whom one was Jimbo Burr, a senior at Fair Hills Day whom younger boys knew to avoid for his playful custom of grinding his knuckles against
their heads, or shoving them into walls, so why was Mr. Burr so frequently “dropping by” the house to see Mummy, why was Mummy eager to go out with Mr. Burr “for drinks”—“maybe an early, light supper” at the Fair Hills Inn; why was Mummy so often on the phone, laughing shrilly as if being tickled: “Tigger, I can’t. Not tonight. I’ve got the children. I’ve been with Bliss all day at the rink and seeing doctors and—there’s Skyler—my son, I’ve told you: Sky-ler—he’s nine and very needy and so I can’t—I shouldn’t—Well, just for a little while, I guess. But I shouldn’t.”
Needy! Skyler was
not.
Skyler made inquiries at school and learned that Jimbo Burr’s dad owned Burr Real Estate & Home Insurance and was in the condition of
being separated
from his wife; which condition resembled Bix Rampike’s so was that the connection? Skyler stayed up late to watch for Mummy returning from her “early evenings” with Mr. Burr ascending the stairs of the mostly darkened house with exacting care, in her stocking feet and carrying her high-heeled shoes, murmuring to herself, laughing under her breath, or making a harsh
tsking!
sound as if in disapproval, pausing to sway at the top of the stairs and press a hand against her forehead as if overcome by a spell of dizziness. “Skyler! What on earth are you doing up? I told Maria to put you to bed by nine and give you your medication and make sure that you stayed in bed.”
“Mummy, are you drunk?”
“Skyler! What! That’s a terrible thing to say to your own mother.”
“Are you?”
Mummy slapped at Skyler, lurched and would have fallen except Skyler bravely took the brunt of his mother’s warmly soft startled weight, and held her upright and tremulous with indignation. It was very late for a weekday night: past midnight. In the nursery Bliss was whimpering in her sleep and downstairs in the cave-like housekeeper’s room off the kitchen Maria had fallen asleep watching the midget TV that came with the room. A sweet pungent scent of Mummy’s breath, Mummy’s special perfume, and Mummy’s special Mummy-smell wafted to Skyler’s nostrils. “Yesss I am drunk. I am drunk with hope, and I am drunk with happiness. I am drunk with the freedom of being a woman, at last.”
Skyler helped Mummy to bed. Mummy leaned heavily on Skyler as
they stumbled along. Skyler was barefoot, and in pajamas. A terrifying thought came to Skyler as Mummy pushed open the door to the bedroom
What if Daddy is back? What if Daddy sees Mummy like this?
but the bedroom was empty.
“Mummy, Mr. Burr is married.”
“And so am I, smarty.”
“You aren’t going to marry Mr. Burr, Mummy, are you?”
“And what if I was? What has Mummy’s ‘love-life’ to do with
you
?”
“’Cause I don’t want to be Jimbo Burr’s twin brother, Mummy. I’ll run away if I have to be.”
Mummy was sitting on the edge of the massive four-poster bed trying to catch her breath. Mummy’s hair was in her face and her lipstick was smeared. Mummy stared at Skyler with a look of commingled guilt and defiance. “‘Jimbo Burr’s twin brother’—? What on earth are you talking about, Skyler?”
“I hate him, Mummy. I hate him so much. Please say you won’t marry Mr. Burr, Mummy,
please.
”
Skyler began to cry, and Mummy’s heart melted, and Mummy allowed her
little man
to sleep with her in the enormous king-sized bed for the first time in a very long time; and ever after this night, Tigger Burr never “dropped by” the Rampikes’ house again.
*
And there was Roddy McDermid.
One of those wonderful bearded fathers other children have, big, blustery and rough but affectionate, like a bear: except not the real kind which would more resemble Bix Rampike, that would tear off your face with his teeth, but the cuddly kind. Mr. McDermid had a bushy beard streaked with gray that looked as if small birds might nest in it, and Mr. McDermid wore leather sandals with wool socks in the coldest weather, and Mr. McDermid was a research ecologist for the State of New Jersey as well as a
member of the Fair Hills Chamber Orchestra whose instrument was the oboe. Mr. McDermid’s daughter Priscilla was in Skyler’s fifth-grade class at Fair Hills Day School and so it was, Mummy and Mr. McDermid met at Open House, and soon thereafter it happened that Mummy arranged for Priscilla McDermid to come to the Rampikes’ house for a playdate with Skyler, soon afterward followed by a reciprocal playdate visit at the McDermids’ house which was a smallish brick residence on an undistinguished street in the Village of Fair Hills where Betsey Rampike knew no one; yet, to Skyler’s surprise, Mummy seemed to like the McDermids, both Mr. McDermid and Mrs. McDermid, who seemed to like Mummy in return; unless the McDermids felt sorry for Mummy who lived in so expensive a house in such a prestigious neighborhood of Fair Hills yet seemed to have no one to call but Mr. McDermid at his office, in a plaintive voice asking could Roddy please drop by the house on his way home from work to check out a “strange beeping thing” in one of the guest rooms: a faulty carbon monoxide detector, its battery dead, emitting a high-pitched squeak like a bat. In September, Mummy took Skyler and Bliss to a performance of the Fair Hills Chamber Orchestra in the public school, to watch Mr. McDermid blow away at his oboe and to talk and laugh with him at the punch-bowl reception afterward. How jealous Skyler was of his classmate Priscilla who seemed unaware that her big bear-like bewhiskered father was so wonderful! Skyler came close to fainting when Mr. McDermid stooped to give him a bear-hug—“Good night, son!”—after the McDermids invited Mummy, Bliss, and Skyler over for a Chinese take-out supper in their kitchen. Next day Skyler said wistfully to Bliss, “Maybe Mr. McDermid could be Mummy’s new husband, and our new daddy,” but Bliss said, not so much as glancing away from the giant wall TV screen where the Ring of Kerry Irish Dance Troupe in their scoop-necked velvet skating dresses and identical glittering tiaras were performing yet another time, “No. Daddy is our daddy forever.”
*
Though not because of this maudlin if heartfelt scene! In a work of fiction, her
little man’s
tearful pleading would have been the precipitating factor in Mummy breaking off her friendship with barrel-chested Tigger Burr; in this case, to Mummy’s disappointment, Tigger Burr seemed simply to lose interest in her, never called her again or returned her calls. (Maybe because, from Tigger Burr’s canny perspective, Bix Rampike’s abandoned wife was too needy.)
…as if a light had shone upon me out of the darkness. And a light is shining within me, where there had been but darkness. And wherever I go whether I am recognized as the mother of Bliss Rampike or whether I am but anonymous, I am bathed in this radiance which is the gift of God. I am redeemed.
—Betsey Rampike, quoted in “Child-Prodigy Figure Ice Skater Bliss Rampike and Mother-Manager,” People, October 14, 1996.
…so grateful! The past several months, as those of you know, who follow my daughter’s career, a shadow lay upon us, for Bliss was stricken with a mysterious ailment, a “phantom pain” that threatened to destroy her career. Since we had to cancel the Little Miss Royale competition last spring, when I realized that Bliss was skating with pain, not a day passed without Bliss pleading with me to allow her back on the ice: “The pain is all gone, Mummy! I promise.” Of course, this brave little girl was not allowed anywhere near the ice, for these months were to be a time of “healing” and now, through the grace of God, the pain has been taken from us, and Bliss has resumed her career. We are so grateful.
—Betsey Rampike, from “Up Close & Personal in New Jersey,” interview, New Jersey Network TV, October 22, 1996.
KNOW WHAT I WISH? THAT
MY SISTER, MY LOVE: THE INTIMATE STORY OF
Skyler Rampike
wasn’t a (linear) document agonizingly comprised of words, but a film, or a film-collage, or a “video installation” so that at this point I could unleash a torrent of images, film clips, TV footage to
speed up the (gut-twisting) narrative.
Something very bad is going to happen to someone in the Rampike family and there is nothing Skyler can do about it.
Which is why the narrative is gut-twisting, and obsessively slow-paced: Skyler (nineteen years old) can’t bear to return to ever-more traumatic scenes in the life of Skyler (nine years old)
and yet he/I must.
In a visual document, all the author has to do is assemble, or reassemble, visual documents: he doesn’t have to create a God-damned thing, except a few captions here and there. Or maybe a voice-over, to be spoken by a professional. As in the (unauthorized/unconscionable) ABC documentary
The Making and Unmaking of a Child Prodigy: The Bliss Rampike Story
of February 1999, ninety-eight percent of the material was taken from pre-existing sources, film clips, photographs etc. in the public domain. In my version, only a few selected—“symbolic”—images would be used, and only a few of the most “revealing” interviews with my mother like those in
People
and on NJN-TV excerpted at the start of this chapter.
The coveted
People
interview finally came through, to Mummy’s delight, after Bliss returned in triumph to competitive skating in October 1996 and won the Tiny Miss Princess title at the Golden Skate Challenge in Hartford, Connecticut. The interview/feature covered nearly four pages in the obscenely popular (millions of readers? billions?) weekly magazine, including breathtaking photos of Bliss skating—in mid-leap, and in mid-spin—and a highly flattering portrait of Mother-Manager Betsey Rampike in a “prayerful mood” at rink-side. When the interview appeared, Mummy received countless telephone calls: “You’d think that ‘Betsey Rampike’ had scarcely existed, before
People.
” Mummy spoke wryly, yet wiped away a tear for Mummy was deeply moved.
Celebrity! Attention! At Fair Hills Day where previously Skyler Rampike moved invisibly amid his more ontologically defined classmates and, in general, passed beneath the radar of genial Headmaster Pearce Hannity III, suddenly Skyler was being singled out for attention: why? Even older boys rumored to belong to (secret, forbidden) “gangs”
who sported (secret, forbidden) inked tattoos on the insides of their wrists singled him out in the corridors: “Yo Rampike! Lookin’ cool.” Even the prettiest, most popular girls sought him out, in the cafeteria for instance: “Skyler? That’s your name, isn’t it?—‘Skyler’? Would you and your sister Bliss like to come over to my house sometime, to visit? Say yes!” Yet more alarmingly, there came Headmaster Hannity swooping at Skyler to shake his startled hand: “Son, you and your parents have a standing invitation to ‘tea with Headmaster’—‘high tea’—‘sherry provided as well’—in my residence on campus—five
P.M.
, Sundays. A small—select!—circle of senior faculty, parents and students, trustees, donors. Our office will send out invitations but in the meantime, son, please inform your parents. ‘Tea with Headmaster’ will celebrate its one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary next Sunday.”
Should be ashamed to admit it, and I am, but the fact is: Skyler felt a glow of pride, so singled out. As he’d felt when he’d struggled on the snaky-skinned gym mat and wiry little Vassily had said with forced enthusiasm Ver-ry good, Skeel-er! Each small step is a step to suc-cess, yes?
Couldn’t wait to tell Mummy his good news and, when Daddy next called, and asked to speak to Sky-boy, to tell Daddy; though knowing that the elder Rampikes were probably too busy for “tea with Headmaster.”
(And where was Daddy living now? No longer in Paramus, for Daddy had accepted the “fantastic” offer from Univers Bio-Tech, Inc., whose lavish sprawling corporate headquarters were in Univers, New Jersey, eleven miles north and east of Fair Hills.)
(And did Daddy want to divorce Mummy, and marry Calvin Klaus, Jr.’s crimped-blond mother, in this way providing Skyler with a slightly older, sexy gangsta-brother?—Skyler had not a clue.)
(For Mummy, taken up with “professional duties” regarding Bliss’s career, away from the house much of the time and, when home, usually on the telephone, refused to discuss the children’s father with them.)
Not long after the
People
interview, Mummy received a call from Sckulhorne relatives in Hagarstown, New York. Skyler overheard
Mummy break off the conversation saying calmly and quietly and with such dignity, Daddy would surely have been impressed: “Visit
us
? But why? My daughter doesn’t know any of you and, after so long, I don’t either.”
And calmly then Mummy replaced the phone receiver, and smiled.
The thrill of revenge! Like an electric current the delicious sensation passed through Skyler, too.
*
SKYLER? WILL DADDY EVER COME BACK TO LIVE WITH US AGAIN?
Maybe. If you start skating again, and win.
MUST’VE BEEN THE PRESCRIPTION ZOMIX, OR THE SUPER GROW/HI-CON
Vit-C/CAGHC shots each Friday morning in Dr. Muddick’s office, unless it was the anti-convulsant Serenex, or the anti-depressant Excelsia, or Bliss’s new psychotherapist Dr. Rapp whose specialty was child-prodigy athletes, or Bliss’s new acupuncturist/nutritionist Kai Kui whom Mummy’s women friends so highly recommended, or maybe it was the prospect of working with her new trainer Anastasia Kovitski (Olympic silver medalist 1992, U.S. Women’s Figure Skating Champion 1992–93) and, for the first time, a choreographer, the Uzbekistan-born Pytor Skakalov, or some magical combination of all of these, for by
September 1996 it seemed that Bliss’s debilitating phantom pain had lifted from her, or nearly; she’d regained the weight she’d lost, through “finicky” eating; and even the frequency of her nighttime “accidents” had lessened.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THAT DAZZLING
COMEBACK SEASON:
• The Great Lakes Girls Skate Festival in Buffalo, New York, where, in October, in a red-sequined, abbreviated skating dress that reflected the spotlight like flame, Bliss Rampike skated to the tempestuous notes of Stravinsky’s
The Firebird
and placed second in the Girls’ Novice Division with a score of 5.6 out of 6.
• The Golden Skate Girls’ Challenge in Hartford, Connecticut, where in late October in a gingham “Gretel” costume with a tight-laced bodice, white milkmaid cap on her plaited blond hair and a peep of white-lace panties flashing beneath, Bliss Rampike skated to the thumping melody of Humperdinck’s
Hansel and Gretel
winning the hearts of the judges as she won the hearts of the audience with her exquisite glides and spins (flying spin/jump spin/traveling spin) to win the coveted title Tiny Miss Golden Skate Princess 1996 with a score of 5.8 out of 6.
• The All-American-Girl Ice Jubilee in Bangor, Maine, in early November where in a “Vegas showgirl” costume of glittering white sequins and filmy white feathers, long tight sleeves with ermine-trimmed wrists, stardust in her “upswept” hair and on her eyelids, and crimson-lace panties teasingly visible beneath, Bliss Rampike ravished both judges and audience with a skate-dance performance of that sultry-tango pop-American classic “Kiss of Fire,”
*
another time placing first in the “Little Miss” Division with a score of 5.9 out of 6.
JESUS THANK YOU!
Thank you Jesus for taking Bliss’s pain from her!
If Bliss’s pain should come again, Jesus give Bliss’s pain to me, to spare Bliss. For I am Bliss Rampike’s mother, and that is my blessing. For all the days of our lives to come AMEN.
*
The thrill of revenge!
Skyler had no idea why his mother who believed herself to be the warmest, most generous and “Christian” of women, and who in interviews spoke of her “devotion to her family,” seemed to be estranged from her “well-to-do”—“socially prominent”—relatives living in remote Hagarstown, New York, on the Canadian border which Skyler imagined as a landscape heaped with snow and essentially uninhabitable. Wouldn’t you think that this allegedly precocious kid might’ve been curious, as a normal kid would have been, why he had only one grandmother (chill-eyed and pike-mouthed) and not two, like other children; and no grandfathers at all; and, on Mummy’s side of the family, no aunts, uncles, cousins. Among the Rampikes, who were Daddy’s family, there were too many relatives to keep track of and for these, Daddy was guarded in his affections: “A family shares DNA. That is a biological fact. But there is ‘sibling rivalry’—you could argue, the greatest force in
Homo sapiens.
As our Muslim brethren say, ‘My brother, my cousin, and me against you—my brother and me against my cousin—and me against my brother.’ That’s the bottom line, son.”
*
“Kiss of Fire”: the meretricious but crowd-pleasing influence of the suave Uzbekistan choreographer whom Mummy hired in the summer of 1996 to work with Bliss’s new trainer Anastasia Kovitski and with whom for a brief while during the longer, so very devasttating period when Daddy was living away from us, Mummy seemed to be “taken with.” In a more lewd, gossipy memoir the obviously jealous/spiteful Skyler would speak of oily Pytor Skakalov in withering terms; there would be at least one painful scene in which Skyler, having glimpsed Mummy and Skakalov together in a private moment, appeals to her: “What if Daddy comes back and sees you with
him?
What if Daddy comes to the ice rink to surprise us, and sees you with
him,
and goes away again? Mum -my!”