My Sister, My Love (48 page)

Pain fade out, love fade in.

They would return to campus late. Missing supper in the dining hall and so obliged to rummage up a meal from vending machines. By this time, it had been revealed to Skyler that, on the insides of his new friend’s slender arms, there was a map of old/healed wounds and new/part-healed wounds, knife-cuts not unlike those knife-cuts in his fingers, like an exquisite Braille Skyler wished to draw his fingers over, to read.

And kiss. A few nights later.

WHY’D SHE WANT TO HURT HERSELF—“CUTTING”—NOT JUST HER
arms but (Skyler would discover) her belly, her breasts and the insides of her thighs—he had to ask though knowing why, for hadn’t Skyler wished to hurt himself, in a fury wishing to hurt himself and in fact Skyler had hurt himself, and would hurt himself again It’s just something that feels right. Feels good.

STAY WITH ME! BUT DON’T TALK.

DON’T LOOK AT ME! I’M UGLY.

I’m
ugly. Not you.

You?—you’re not ugly. You’re beautiful.

That’s ridiculous. You make yourself ridiculous saying ridiculous things, please will you stop.

It isn’t ridiculous to say that you’re beautiful and that I love you.

Well. I love you…I guess.

I HATE IT, THEIR EYES. THE WAY THEY FOLLOW ME WITH THEIR EYES.
Whispering together
That’s her! That’s Leander Harkness’s daughter.

…the way they look at me thinking That’s him! Bliss Rampike’s brother.

Do you want to talk about it?

Do you?

No.

YET ONCE, BURSTING INTO TEARS IN SKYLER’S ARMS, HOT STINGING
tears that spilled onto Skyler, grabbing Skyler’s neck as a drowning swimmer might grab the neck of her rescuer, Heidi spoke in a voice of childish hurt and grievance
He didn’t! What
they are all saying he did, he didn’t! I will never believe he did.

(SO HEIDI HARKNESS BELIEVED THAT HER FATHER WAS INNOCENT!
Skyler felt a pang of envy, he could’ve believed anything of anyone in the Rampike family including Skyler.)

THROUGH THAT AUTUMN AND THAT WINTER OF
2003
AT THE ACADEMY
at Basking Ridge the young couple was observed: “Sylvester Rampole” and “Heidi Harkness” sitting together at mealtimes, with their fellow-exile friend Elyot Grubbe; side by side at school assemblies, programs and films; strolling together as if defiantly oblivious of their surroundings, fingers entwined, hips/elbows/shoulders lightly nudging, frequently kissing, in low urgent voices conferring. Yet it was so, as no one of their observers would have believed, that “Sylvester” and “Heidi” rarely spoke of their family disasters.

Murmuring I love you. A dozen times a day, uttered like an incantation I love you.
*

Skyler was protective of Heidi and would never have upset her by saying the wrong thing. Taboo subjects were many, you could tell by a stiffening of Heidi’s jaw, the twitch like a frantic little pulse in Heidi’s eyelid, the clenching of Heidi’s fists. Nor did Skyler wish to bring up the taboo subject of his own family, the now-notorious Rampikes of Fair Hills, New Jersey. (From vague remarks made by Heidi, Skyler understood that she knew that something disturbing had happened in Skyler’s past, when he’d been a little boy; but she didn’t seem to know about Skyler’s sister, or to remember. Like Skyler himself, Heidi had been only nine at the time of Bliss’s death.) By contrast, the (alleged) murders of Heidi’s mother, her (alleged) lover, and luckless pet poodles Yin and Yang, by Heidi’s father, and the much-publicized trial in Nassau County, Long Island, had taken place just the
previous spring and still what Bix Rampike would call O current in the media.

In fact, Skyler knew very little about the Harkness case. He had not been a boy-baseball-fan, as we know. By the age of eleven he’d acquired the instinct to avoid so much as glancing at newspaper headlines; in stores that sold tabloid newspapers he swiftly looked away, as Heidi had more recently learned to do, from any display of such publications, full-page photos and banner headlines. In dark glasses, face grimly set, there was Mummy pulling at Skyler’s arm Don’t! Don’t look! It is Satan’s revenge upon us.

A few times, he’d looked. This had been years ago. Yes he’d been sorry.

Difficult to think of Skyler Rampike as an “American adolescent”—at least, difficult for me!—but more or less, that’s what he was, and with little interest in that staple of adult conversation: News. Sixteen-year-old Skyler’s awareness of what is called the “Mideast Conflict” was no more than the vague malaise a medieval European peasant might have felt for something called the Black Plague, or the Hundred Years’ War, or a frenzy of witch-persecution rumored to be heading in the direction of his village. “Iraq”—“Iran”—“Israel”—“Madagascar” might’ve been squeezed into the same geographical space in northern Africa, or western Asia, or the steppes of Tibet, for all Skyler knew, or cared. At the schools in which he’d been enrolled, and particularly at Basking Ridge, history instructors discreetly avoided references to contemproary American history, foreign policy, and politicians since relatives of the most affluent students were likely to be involved in government, clandestine or otherwise; among Skyler’s fellow students were sons and daughters of disgraced politicians and lawyers, businessmen, lobbyists, bribe-takers and -givers. Who these young people were Skyler didn’t know and had no interest in knowing as the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand shuns all interest in other ostriches with their heads buried in the sand.

Heidi was both fearful of and fascinated by TV, to which, to Skyler’s disapproval, she seemed to be addicted. Of course, Heidi never watched “live news”: the possibility of seeing a
familiar face, or faces—including Heidi’s own—was too great. She had a weakness for afternoon TV talk shows, with the sound muted; her favorite programs to watch were reruns; such programs as
The Young and the Restless, Only One Life to Live, St. Elsewhere, Sorrows of the Rich and Damned;
unlike Skyler, who avoided TV, especially late-afternoon TV, as one who has become violently ill from eating restaurant food avoids the restaurant in which he’d become ill, Heidi was capable of cutting classes, dreamily bloating herself with Diet Pepsi and watching TV reruns through the day: “Skyler, don’t scold! These were programs my mother watched. And if I was sick, when I was a little girl I could stay home from school, and watch with her, and it was a happy time, and so nice to be sick! And now, so comforting to see how the stories turn out. This time.”

Skyler kissed his girl. Heidi was likely to lift her arms to summon Skyler to her, in a cozy tangle of quilt, pillows, flannel p.j.’s, thick fuzzy socks sturdy as bedroom slippers on her long angular feet, to be kissed; and many times. In his girl’s “down” mode—which alternated with her bright buzzy high-voltage “up” mode—Skyler had to be protective of her, and so he was. Yet not wishing to confide in her that his mother, too, had watched afternoon soaps, in a long-ago time of bliss-before-Bliss when Skyler was Mummy’s own little man and what Daddy didn’t know would not hurt them.

OF THE
TRIO OF EXILES
WHO SHARED MEALS IN A REMOTE CORNER OF
Clapp Dining Hall, it was Elyot Grubbe who’d bravely, or was it brazenly, enrolled at the Academy at Basking Ridge under his own—“real”—name, and not a cover name. Somberly Elyot explained: “‘Grubbe’ isn’t famous enough to disguise. Few people outside Fair Hills know ‘Grubbe’—like they know ‘Rampike’—‘Harkness’.
*
You can see how people look through me here, as they did in Fair Hills when I was in grade school. And anyway, why should I care?”

Only the most obsessively observant of readers, as morbidly anal-retentive as this author, is likely to remember Skyler’s playdate friend whom Skyler had wistfully imagined as a brother. (See the remote chapter “Adventures in Playdates II.”) It had been a considerable shock to Skyler when, on the evening of the first, miserably interminable day he’d arrived at Basking Ridge in disguise as “Sylvester Rampole,” a brisk compact boy with goggle glasses and magnified fish eyes approached him in the dining hall to say, sotto vice, “It’s Skyler—is it? Rampike? Remember me? Elyot Grubbe.”

A shock to Skyler, but a happy one. “Sylvester Rampole” had nearly burst into tears.

Implicit in the first handshake between the two child-casualties of Fair Hills was the promise No one will know who we are, or once were.

It was Elyot’s custom, no doubt an affected-Brit custom, but one Skyler came to find comforting, to shake hands with Skyler when they met at mealtimes. When others were within earshot, Elyot never failed to call Skyler “Sly”; at other times, Elyot called Skyler “Sky”; so that, even if overheard by the sneering others who surrounded them, the privacy of “Sly”/“Sky” might be preserved.

Seven years since Skyler had last seen Elyot Grubbe! Seven years since he’d received the terse but touching letter of condolence from his friend:

The domestic catastrophe that had befallen Elyot five years before was but vaguely known to Skyler who’d been (most likely)
sedated at the time, and no longer living in Fair Hills, but Skyler understood the grim skeleton of the tale: Elyot’s heiress-mother Imogene had been mysteriously murdered, “bludgeoned to death,” in her bedroom in the Grubbes’ mansion on the Great Road; somehow, Elyot’s father had been involved; or maybe, since he’d been acquitted of all charges having to do with the murder, Mr. Grubbe had not been involved…? Certainly, Skyler wasn’t going to ask Elyot where his father was, or what his relations were with his father, any more than Elyot was likely to ask Skyler where his parents were, and what his relations were with them. No one will know who we are, or used to be had been sealed with a handshake.

(Skyler recalls: Mummy had started to tell him about “that awful thing” that had happened to Elyot’s mother Imogene, as if to suggest to the broody brat there is plenty of misery to go around, and we are Christians who should know better than to give in to sorrow, but Skyler pressed his hands over his ears, screamed “Shut up, Mummy!” and ran from the room like a crazed little elephant.)
*

This was Elyot’s second year at Basking Ridge. Like Skyler, Elyot had missed lengthy patches of school and had, Skyler would learn, been “briefly incarcerated” in the Verhangen Treatment Center; still Elyot was a year ahead of Skyler, and appeared settled in, to a degree. In the lapel of his Basking Ridge blazer was a small glittery-silvery snake upright on its tail to signify the honorific APS (“Advanced Placement Senior”); his duo-majors were science (that is, “pre-med”) and music (“antiquarian”). In retrospect, Skyler supposed that, as a child, Elyot Grubbe had been heavily medicated, for he’d invariably seemed drowsy, with a slow drifting manner of speech and a dreamy smile; now, in adolescence, seventeen years old, Elyot was more animated, and certainly spoke more rapidly; the way in which Elyot’s mouth twitched in anticipation of smiling suggested to Skyler the presence of “uppers” in his
bloodstream which Skyler himself had frequently been prescribed, in “bi-polar” mode; at mealtimes, Skyler sometimes saw his eccentric friend surreptitiously swallowing pills, quite a quantity of pills, and though some of the pills looked familiar (Prizzil? Xaxil? Vivil?) Skyler understood that Elyot would not welcome any commentary from Skyler; as, when Skyler rummaged through his pockets for his God-damned meds, cursing to himself when he could locate but used tissues and lint, Elyot pretended not to notice, or, fussily preoccupied with proofing homework, or listening to his Walkman, did not notice. Though the boys sat together in Clapp Dining Hall, frequently they passed entire meals without speaking more than a few murmured words. Hi. H’lo. How are you. Okay, you?

Yet Skyler felt (oblique, undeclared) affection for his old playdate friend. For Skyler had few friends, in fact Skyler had no friends, and certainly no “old” friends. In the intervening years Skyler had grown tall, angular, gangling, lopsided and, no other word, freaky; while Elyot had grown warily, to a height of five-feet-three; though compactly built, with the rigid-posture bearing and smooth cheeks of a boy-mannequin; he looked more like twelve than seventeen, a bright prepubescent with weakly intelligent eyes and a forgettable face like a smudge. How vulnerable Elyot would be to the Beavs and Butts at Basking Ridge, if he had not seemed to intimidate them, by some habit of bearing; and by the fact that, though “Grubbe” seemed not to be a known name at the school, “Grubbe” yet suggested an aura of wealth, family connections, and litigation.