My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

by Joyce Carol Oates

  If I fall, will you still love me?

  FOR SOMETIMES, YES SHE FELL. FELL SUDDENLY, AND FELL HARD. NOT (yet) while performing publicly (though that would come, inevitably) but in practice. In practice, falling happens often. For when you practice each day, as many as two hours each day, and when you are attempting new, ever more difficult maneuvers, naturally you will falter sometimes, and you will slip sometimes, and you will fall sometimes, and fall hard. And you will lie unmoving on the freezing-cold ice that is not your friend but your enemy, unyielding as the hardest of concrete floors; and you will feel every pulse in your small body beat in shock and mortification and shame and the terror that when you try to get up, you will not be able to get up; when you try to stand, you will not be able to stand; when you try to skate, the most elementary right-foot-forward glide, you will not be able to skate. And yet the taped music continues, that Mummy has selected, as if in mockery of you, that you have fallen, and are blinking tears from your eyes, biting your lower lip trying not to cry. And they are crouched over you, they are tugging at your arms, Mummy, and Olga Zych who is your trainer, they are frightened, and they are crying into your face Bliss! Bliss are you hurt!—nowhere to hide, for everyone at the rink is staring now, and Bliss is you.

  TAPE THE ANKLE! WE CAN TAPE THE ANKLE! SHE DIDN’T SPRAIN HER ANKLE, you can see it isn’t a sprain, it’s just a little sore where she turned it. Bliss is not hurt! Bliss’s left ankle is her major weakness. We can give her painkillers. Listen to the poor child Mummy I’m not hurt, Mummy I want to skate, Mummy I want to skate! Bliss will be devastated if after all our work we pull out of the competition on Saturday. We have been praying so hard. All of our supporters have been praying so hard. And her daddy is planning to see her skate, this time. Bliss will be devastated if she lets her daddy down. She will be devastated if she lets her Mummy down, and her trainer. We can tape the ankle so she won’t turn it again, and we can give her painkillers. And her left elbow, where she banged it on the ice, that isn’t a sprain or a break, just a bruise and a bump and nothing that can’t be disguised by makeup. It’s this pancake makeup, like putty. Exactly Bliss’s skin-tone. What a brave girl Bliss is, hardly crying! But she didn’t hurt herself really, like the other time. This will heal by Saturday, and a little pancake makeup will hide the bruises on her leg, and on her knees. She’s just a little girl, small children are clumsy, small children fall all the time, and they have less distance to fall than we do, and their bones are so supple. Their bones are like elastic. And after Wilmington, Bliss can rest for a while. After Baltimore, and after the Tri-State Regionals, and after StarSkate Ice Capades, and after Little Miss Royale New Jersey. And after the Lady Champ Juniors. And after Atlantic City. She can rest. She can take pressure off the ankle. We can give her painkillers. Dr. Brea has said, Balmil is perfect for children and is not habit-forming. Balmil—unlike that damned Nixil—that’s been taken off the market, did you hear?—has no side effects. Balmil is state-of-the-art for young athletes. Like Hi-Con Vitamin. Like SuperGrow. Over the holidays, Bliss can rest. Until January, and the Hershey Kisses Festival, when she’ll be good as new.

  …WATCHING BLISS SKATE. WHEN BLISS WAS ALONE, AND NO ONE ELSE was watching. At the practice rink after the other girl-skaters were gone, and their trainers. And Olga Zych was gone. And Mummy was gone somewhere making phone calls. (Mummy is always making phone calls, girlish and excited. Laughing Mummy says how’d we ever exist without the cell phone!) Late afternoon at the Halcyon rink and just Bliss skating, not showily, not straining herself, not risking injury but only just skating, using the entire rink, long slow glides and dreamy turns, in silence. No sound but the sound of the skate blades on the ice. Such days when impulsively Mummy would invite Skyler to come with them to the rink: “Bliss needs you, to watch!” And Skyler felt a pang of gratitude, and anticipation for the peaceful interlude when the other girl-skaters, their sharp-voiced trainers and mothers, had departed. When the music has ceased. When Bliss is free, and alone, while Mummy makes her numerous cell phone calls, and Bliss skates in silence, no adults observing, or judging. Only Skyler watches, at rink-side. Only Skyler who is Bliss’s big brother—eight years old—and Bliss’s friend. Bliss’s only friend. (For somehow it has happened that Bliss no longer sees her little-girl friends/classmates since she no longer goes to school, but is “home-schooled” by tutors, under Mummy’s supervision.)

  “Skyler? Put on skates—skate with me?”

  Lonely Bliss calls to Skyler, waving to him as she glides across the ice, but Skyler quickly shakes his head, no.

  SKYLER LOVES HIS LONELY LITTLE SISTER, SURE. YET SKYLER GLOATS that there are secrets in their family that Skyler knows, that Bliss will not ever know.

  For instance, what Daddy says, sometimes. What Daddy says and what Mummy says in the late-night in Daddy and Mummy’s bedroom with the door shut and only a faint crescent of light showing beneath.

  How the hell much is this costing us, Betsey?—Daddy’s voice just audible through the door, and Mummy laughs as if this is a cheeky interview question she isn’t really expected to answer so Daddy asks, How much, Betsey? And quickly Mummy says as if reciting prepared words, Our daughter is a skating prodigy! Our daughter is a—potential world champion! Bliss could be the next Sonja Henie, Bix! and Daddy persists in firm-Daddy voice, don’t-bullshit-me-Daddy voice, How much, Betsey? And Mummy says, in mild protest, as if still this is a cheeky/flirty interview, Bix! You’ve seen our daughter skate, you’ve heard the applause, at least on video. You know that Bliss has won titles, already! How can you doubt us, Bix, you must know how hard we’ve both been working. And Daddy says, Honey, I know. I know, and I am impressed as hell. My two beautiful gals, in the newspapers! But: how much? and Mummy is hurt-sounding now, and Mummy is trying to argue, and (Skyler seems to know this, through the door) Mummy is backing away from Daddy, or, yet more audaciously, turning away, as if to walk away, which (Skyler knows) Mummy should not do for such an action is “insulting”—“provoking”—to Daddy as, if Skyler is being (mildly, lightly) scolded by Daddy, and yet Skyler squirms, twists, makes one of his pain-faces and tries to shrug out of Daddy’s grip, this is “insulting” and “provoking” to Daddy and not a very good idea for Skyler, for mild-Daddy can shift abruptly to angry-Daddy; yet Mummy continues to edge away from Daddy, evasively Mummy says I don’t know how much, Bix!—not exactly, can’t we talk about this in the morning? And Daddy says, an edge now to Daddy’s voice, Skyler is frightened for Mummy seeming to see through the shut door Daddy’s soulful brown eyes narrowed now and hard-fixed as a pit bull’s eyes on its prey: These bills, these credit card receipts, cancelled checks—did you think I wouldn’t discover them? That lesbo ‘Zych’ and her ‘fee’—fees at the rinks—hotel bills, restaurant bills—fucking doctor bills—more fucking doctor bills—insurance policy premiums—this ‘publicist’ you’ve hired—I’m estimating a minimum sixty thousand for this year, Betsey. And Mummy cries, Sixty thousand! That’s ridiculous, and Daddy says, Are you saying that I am wrong, Betsey?—that I am ridiculous, Betsey?—is that what you are saying, Betsey? and Mummy says quickly, No but I—I don’t think—Bix, I’m sure that— and Daddy says, Sixty thousand this year, and next year will be higher, obviously. If you keep on as you are. I’ve looked into the amateur-skating scene, girls’ figure skating, I understand that Bliss has promise, Bliss is doing very well for such a little girl, she’s won a few trophies and might win more but it will be years before she makes any real money, and if she hurts herself, what then? And Mummy says, Bliss will not hurt herself, Bix! I promise you. And Daddy says, How the hell can you promise me that, Betsey? Can you see into the future? And Mummy says, pleading now, on the other side of the bedroom door where he stands rapt and unmoving Skyler can envision Mummy sinking to her knees in front of Daddy, Mummy in her silky nightgown, a strap slipping off her bare, fleshy shoulder, and Mummy’s hair is in her face, and Mummy’s cheeks are flushed, and Mummy’s warm brown beautiful eyes are damp wit
h tears, Mummy plucks at Daddy’s hands, Mummy is like a blind woman groping at Daddy who looms up before her, Mummy is begging, Trust me, Bix. Darling, have faith in me and trust me, our daughter is our destiny.

  DADDY LOVES YOU BUT DADDY DOESN’T LOVE YOU ALL THAT MUCH. AND maybe Mummy doesn’t, either.

  DESTINY:

  1. Something to which a person or a thing is destined: FORTUNE.

  2. A predetermined course of events often held to be an irresistible power or agency.

  (Sure, Skyler looked up the word in the dictionary. Skyler-with-one-leg-shorter-than-the-other, destined to be nobody’s destiny.)

  “SKY-LER! I LOVE YOU.”

  Sweet little Bliss, lonely little Bliss, so often hugging her big brother around the neck, and kissing him wetly, which was embarrassing to Skyler for what eight-year-old boy wants to be hugged/kissed by his little sister so often? And Bliss’s thin arms are surprisingly strong, tugging at Skyler, making him wince. Skyler knows that boys don’t hug/kiss their little sisters unless forced to, which sometimes happens when photographers are present and Mummy urges her two adorable children to hug/kiss for the camera. And there is Skyler Rampike in a kiddy-tux, clip-on black bow tie, dazzling-white shirt with French cuffs, in his lapel a crimson carnation matching the crimson satin ribbons in Bliss’s plaited-crown hair as Skyler escorts his sister to the edge of the ice rink where a swooping spotlight awaits her provoking the packed arena (where was this? might’ve been Baltimore) to burst into applause; or, in the festive StarSkate Winners’ Circle reception following, Ballroom B of the Marriott, under Mummy’s guidance (“Sweetie, don’t limp! And don’t make faces!”) escorting the newly crowned Tiny Miss StarSkate 1995 in her frothy pink-and-white finery, through a gauntlet of blinding flashbulbs, TV cameras, and gawking well-wishers.*

  INTERESTED IN A FOLLOW-UP TO THE PRECEDING CUTESY SCENE? WHEN Mummy saw the glossy photos of Bliss and Skyler at the StarSkate reception, Mummy almost fainted. For StarSkate Winter Sports, Inc. had intended to use pictures of their several 1995 winners in national advertisements for their skating products, and much had been riding on these photos of the adorable Rampike children, but: “Ohhh my God. Oh what is this. Oh.” For it seemed that, though Bliss was smiling sweetly, if wanly, into the camera, and was looking exquisite as a porcelain doll, little Skyler in his kiddy-tux resembled a child-gargoyle, oddly hunched, his face contorted into a scowl, and his teeth bared in a predatory grin. “Why, this isn’t possible! How is this possible! Skyler was not making faces when these pictures were taken. I saw him. Skyler was smiling, I swear. And he wasn’t hunched! I watched him every second, and he looked absolutely adorable, and everyone said so, nothing like this—freak.” On this relatively rare occasion when Daddy was home with his little family, on a Saturday morning, and making an effort to spend quality time with them, Daddy laughed at Mummy’s alarm saying, “Now darling, you exaggerate. You hyperventilate. Such over-reactions can be contagious for the children, you should know better.” But when Daddy took the glossy photos from Mummy to examine, Daddy whistled through his teeth: “Jez-zuz. Sky-boy, your mummy is right. You look like ‘America’s Most Wanted’ here—what kind of asshole face is that, to make into a camera? At such a time? In public? With your little sister beside you? Is this some kind of joke?”

  Frightened, Skyler protested: “Daddy, I d-didn’t. I didn’t make f-faces…”

  “Don’t try to bullshit me, kid. Here’s the evidence!”

  Skyler stared, astonished. It was as Mummy had said: in the photographs, he was grimacing, making his “pain face” with a look of demented hilarity; it was a look that resembled the expression on Tyler McGreety’s face when, from time to time, wholly by chance, and against each boy’s intention, Skyler and Tyler confronted each other at school, suddenly close up, and face-to-face. (For after their single playdate, the boys did all they could to avoid each other.)

  But Skyler knew that he hadn’t made his “pain face” while being photographed with Bliss at the StarSkate event, as he’d taken care not to limp that evening, either, when so many people were watching him. Damn, he knew.

  Mummy wiped at her eyes, furious: “So—ugly! So nasty! Skyler, how could you betray me, and your sister? In her very hour of triumph! You know that StarSkate is interested in having Bliss endorse their products, if she wins the Miss Jersey Ice Princess title next year—are you trying to sabotage our effort? For shame!”

  Mummy cuffed at Skyler, who continued, indignantly, to protest; as Daddy intervened, “Betsey, maybe Skyler can’t help it. Maybe it’s some sort of prepubescent male hormone. Homo homin lupus. Our Rampike wolf-blood, kicking in.”

  Mummy dealt with the hideous photos by carefully scissoring Skyler out of them so that only beautiful little Bliss remained, looking dazed and dazzled, and very small, in the camera flashes. And though these glossies obviously couldn’t be used in StarSkate’s upcoming advertising campaign, Mummy was assured by a company representative that StarSkate was still “very interested” in Bliss, should she win the coveted Miss Jersey Ice Princess 1996 title.

  (God damn: I remember this utterly baffling and inexplicable incident, and I can assure the skeptical reader that, that evening, in my kiddy-tux, which Mummy insisted upon, as Mummy insisted upon having my hair, then a very ordinary normal-boy fair brown, “moussed” and “blown-dry” at the Fair Hills Beauty Salon, I had not made faces during the photography shoot but had SMILED SMILED SMILED as the damned photographers insisted. “Beau-ti-ful!”—“Ador-able!”—“Now kiss your little sister! Yesss.” I did exactly as I’d been told to do by Mummy yet still—somehow!—the prints turned out ugly; and when I think back to this incident, I can see that it was the beginning of Mummy ceasing to love me, or in any case not-loving me as much as she had; and maybe, it was the onset of what Daddy called the Rampike lupus-blood, kicking in.)

  NOVEMBER 1995. AFTER THE MISS NEW ENGLAND FIGURE SKATING CHALLENGE where Bliss was runner-up for the junior division (to age ten) title having wowed the crowd as a pert little cowgirl with rouged cheeks and flying pigtails beneath a cowgirl hat set at a rakish angle, gliding/leaping/twisting/spinning in a tiny suede fringed skirt with shiny-pearl panties beneath, in a tiny fringed vest glittering with rhinestones, skating to a syncopated rendition of “Streets of Laredo,” there in the rear of Mummy’s Buick Lady Toro she lay waiting for Mummy while inside the arena Mummy was heatedly contesting the judges’ decision, and Skyler, stunned with exhaustion now that the strain of the competition was over, now that it was time to drive to the Sheraton Inn Brunswick to spend the night (where they were, somewhere in the State of Massachusetts or possibly the State of Maine, Skyler had to know since he’d been the navigator with the road map, but now he was too sleepy to remember), Skyler was touched to hear Bliss speaking earnestly to her favorite doll, a battered old Raggedy Ann nearly her size with a soft little smile, shiny button eyes and a soiled gingham pinafore, that Mummy tried numerous times to take from Bliss who had a dozen beautiful, expensive dolls, Skyler heard Bliss addressing this doll in an eerie mimicry of Mummy’s voice: “Next time we will work harder, and we will pray harder, and Jesus will see to it that we are number one.”

  Skyler asked Bliss what was the name of her doll, for no one seemed to know the name of this battered old doll; and Bliss shook her head vehemently saying it was a “sec-ret.” But Skyler, leaning over the backseat of the car, persisted, promising he wouldn’t tell, until at last Bliss admitted, hugging the doll to her flat little chest, “Her name is Edna Louise.”

  SKYLER KEPT BLISS’S SECRET. SKYLER NEVER TOLD.

  * Probably some of you, skeptically inclined, are wondering where such “news” photos appear? Such TV footage of such minor events in the cultural history of our great nation? Frankly, I’m not sure. I do remember Mummy avidly clipping stories from such publications as the Netcong Valley Bee, the Ashbury Park Weekly, East Orange Sentinel, Delaware Valley Beacon and, of course, our own Fair Hills Beacon, which never failed to f
eature, often on its front page, New Jersey’s “newest, youngest” figure-skating prodigy; one day soon there would be a feature on page three of the New York Times New Jersey Sunday section, and a five-page feature in glossy upscale New Jersey Lives; if we were lucky, there might be a fleeting clip of beautiful little blond Bliss Rampike skating and/or smiling shyly into the camera, at the tail-end of a New Jersey Network program. It was Mummy’s belief, strengthened by her energetic new publicist/friend Samantha Sullivan whom she’d hired to “aggressively” promote Bliss’s career, that fame can be, for some, a matter of a steady accumulation of publicity; suddenly there is a “tipping point” and, overnight it seems, everyone knows your name, and your face. “Of course,” as Samantha cautioned, “Bliss does have to win.”

  THE MARRIAGE OF MISS FINCH AND COCK ROBIN

  WE LOVE YOU BLISS!

  YOU ARE OUR DARLING BLISS!

  OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU BLISS!

  GOD BLES YOU BLISS!

  BY DEGREES, THOUGH PERVERSELY ACCELERATING IN THE FINAL WEEKS OF 1995 in the wake of Bliss’s heroic performance at Atlantic City in December,* there began to arrive, at the Rampike house at 93 Ravens Crest Drive, Fair Hills, New Jersey, flower deliveries for MISS BLISS RAMPIKE. (How was our private address “leaked” to the public? Daddy was furious. Mummy insisted she “had no idea.”) Not only fresh-cut flowers of every variety, quantity, and price were brought to our house via florists’ delivery vans, but potted plants of all species from sherbert-colored orchids to blooming cacti and stunted little bonsai trees. So strangely!—after each of Bliss’s performances, whether Bliss placed first, second, merely third or, as at disastrous/triumphant Atlantic City, fifth among contenders in her age division, yet there came cards bearing joyous messages: