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

by Joyce Carol Oates

  * Surprised? Don’t blame you. This document hasn’t exactly been a laff-riot nor anything like what hebephrenia (literal meaning: “ensnaring thicket of laughter”) might suggest.

  “HSR”

  FOR THE RECORD IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT, AFTER DR. ROLL DISMISSED, IN disgust, Skyler Rampike as a patient, curtly informing his parents that their son was “encrusted in so extreme a state of denial, equivalent to metastasized cancer in all of his bones,” she could not “in all conscience” continue to treat him, the vengeful woman affixed to his medical record, to follow the accursed kid through the remainder of his life, a new, grim Mystery Diagnosis: “HSR.”*

  Dr. Roll’s bill, for less than six sessions, rendered through the venerable Verhangen Treatment Center, came to an astonishing $46,399.†

  * “HSR”? Wonder what this disorder is? Skyler did, too.

  † Of which canny Bix Rampike, by this time chief of (domestic) research development at Univers, Inc. did not pay a penny. Instead, Skyler’s litigious father sued both Hedda Roll and the Verhangen Treatment Center for Doomed Children on grounds of “extreme malpractice” and “character defamation,” for $13 million plus legal fees. (The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court for how much, Skyler was never to know.)

  First Love, Farewell!*

  A Teen Memory of a Lost Love

  * This inspired title I’d believed was original with me but now I’m vaguely recalling a book with this title, a paperback with a lush moist pink cover like a palpitating female organ, must’ve been one of my mother’s romance novels she’d tried to hide from my father who was likely to tease/sneer in smug polymath superiority: “Jesus, Betsey! How can you read such crap?”

  I.

  …love you, I guess.

  Me, too.

  Think I can’t do it?

  Think that I, Skyler Rampike, steeped in irony, ressentiment, and chronic sand fraud like a squid steeped in ink, can’t put aside postmodernist strategies of “storytelling” for the naive, raw, throbbing emotions of mere storytelling? Smugly you’d believed that I would not be capable of presenting the death of my sister nor the confused aftermath of that death but, though severely constrained by my ignorance of all that happened, I did; and so, I think that I can present the “bittersweet”—“poignant”—“fated” story of Skyler’s first love, that came to such an abrupt and melancholy end.

  For what is more challenging to the jaded postmodernist sensibility than love? More challenging still, love between two painfully inexperienced adolescents in a prep-school setting?

  Read on.

  “THERE SHE IS. ’HEIDI HARKNESS.’”

  On the stone steps of Babbitt Hall the boys stood. Their voices were low and sniggering and meant to be overheard by the tall lanky-limbed girl in crumpled-looking clothes who hurried past them, eyes averted. For “Heidi Harkness” was the designated name of a new transfer student at the Academy at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, who was known to be the daughter of a recent celebrity murderer, a former major league baseball player who had been acquitted the previous spring after a lengthy, luridly publicized trial of having murdered his estranged wife, the wife’s alleged lover, and the wife’s beloved poodles Yin and Yang; “Harkness” was not a name that much resembled the original, but “Heidi” was a name not unlike the daughter’s actual name.

  Except, for my purposes in this document, I have made both “Heidi” and “Harkness” wholly fictitious names. As I have changed crucial facts and circumstances relating to Heidi’s notorious father and surname.

  Skyler you won’t write about me will you please?

  Skyler I’m not sure if I can promise I won’t write about you

  Exiting dour Babbitt Hall after ninety dour minutes of chemistry lab, there came Skyler Rampike now grown to a scrawny height of five-feet-ten, sulky-faced slouch-shouldered sixteen-year-old with “weird kinky-metal” hair lifting from his forehead like a mad rooster’s comb, an adolescent Skyler the reader would be startled to behold: not a runt any longer, nor was Skyler’s soul a runt-soul, for Skyler had learned at last the advantages of being a professionally afflicted kid of affluent background; amid the walking wounded of the Academy at Basking Ridge, Skyler held his own with some measure of defiance and dignity; Skyler’s very limp, that used to mortify him, he’d begun to wield in some circumstances like a club, at will: walking heavily, thudding on creaky floors and stairs, lurching and plunging and forcing others to make way for him. And now lurching out of Babbitt Hall into the humid late-September afternoon, Skyler passed provocatively close behind two senior boys, “Beav” and “Butt” we can call this pair for their resemblance to two TV-cartoon cretins whose fame/infamy had peaked and waned within Skyler’s adolescent memory; Skyler heard the sniggering voices and saw the girl being taunted turn away, and walk away; Skyler felt a rush of pure hatred, caught the taller boy Beav with the edge of his backpack as if accidentally and Beav whirled upon him—“Watch out, you”—and both Beav and Butt swung at Skyler, punched and shoved, kicked Skyler halfway down the stone steps causing him to lose his balance and fall hard on his knee (God damn, Skyler’s right knee), Skyler tried not to wince with pain as the boys chortled in triumph above him: “How’s it goin’, ‘Sly’? ‘Ram-pole’—‘Ram-pole’—” Chanting Skyler’s synthetic name as Skyler adjusted his backpack and limped away.

  And where was Heidi Harkness, Skyler had hoped might witness his bold assault upon Beav and Butt for her sake? Nowhere in sight.

  AS CHASTENED/GLOWERING SKYLER LIMPS ACROSS THE “GREEN”—AN expanse of mangled and mutilated and mostly browning grass above which massive oaks loom, bordering Babbitt Hall, Skudd Chapel, McLeer Hall and The Monument—I should freeze the action, such as it is, to explain “Sly Rampole.”

  As “Heidi Harkness” is a fictitious name invented (by me) as a cover for a “real” fictitious name, and that fictitious name a cover for a “real” name of leprous celebrity, so too Skyler’s name at the Academy at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, in fall 2003 when Skyler was enrolled as a new student in tenth grade, was fictitious: “Sylvester Rampole.”

  After the debacle at Hodge Hill School, and Skyler’s expulsion, the elder Rampikes came to the conclusion that some attempt must be made to shield their troubled son from the “unjust, cruel, vindictive and ignorant” notoriety that accrued to the Rampike name: “At least while Skyler is still in school, and in such a fragile mental state.” (Mummy’s words! And Daddy concurred.) For since Bliss’s death, no matter that her murderer, a convicted pedophile, had not only confessed but had killed himself as an expression of guilt and remorse, yet the insatiable news media, a “howling pack” of hyenas, jackals, and vultures, continued to pursue the Rampikes; and had no more shame than to try to approach poor Skyler, and to inveigle anyone associated with him (teachers, classmates, therapists)* into being interviewed about him. The Academy at Basking Ridge, the Rampikes were assured by Headmaster Horace Shovell, had acquired a “national reputation nonparallel” for respecting the privacy of its “very select, very special” students: except by invitation, no members of the “press core” were allowed on campus, and all faculty and staff signed contracts forbidding them to give interviews and/or write about any Basking Ridge student, at any time. (“‘At any time’? What about a statue of limitations?” Bix Rampike asked doubtfully, but Headmaster Shovell assured him, “We haven’t yet been challenged, Mr. Rampike. But if we are, our legal counsel will assure that we will prevail.”)

  Located on forty wooded acres in the idyllic rolling hills north of the Village of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the Academy at Basking Ridge was known for its high academic standards as well as for the high quality of its counseling and psychology staff; unlike most private schools providing educations for “special needs students”—the “mentally, emotionally, and psychologically challenged”—Basking Ridge also provided advanced placement courses in such subjects as Mandarin Chinese, Swahili, and Korean; there were “university-level” introductory courses
in economics, investment finance, the sociology of property development, “bio-ethics and bioengineering”; for minimal extra fees, the school provided intensive workshops to prepare students for SAT exams, as for “Résumé Building: Craft & Art” and “The Art of the College Interview.” The Rampikes were assured that their son, despite his history of “difficult adjustments,” would find a “warmly welcoming home” at Basking Ridge; except for Headmaster Shovell and his immediate staff, no one at the school would know his identity. “The school was originally founded in 1891 as a Presbyterian institution for the ‘wayward sons’ of distinguished New Jerseyans,” Headmaster Shovell said, with an ingratiating chuckle, “and in recent decades, the school has not lost sight of its original mission, to provide a ‘safe haven’ for the sons, and now the daughters, of persons whose names are ‘known’ in a way to cause, in some quarters, distress. Please know that at the present time there are a half-dozen young people enrolled in the school incognito, and happily so.” Headmaster Shovell paused, as if to provide the Rampikes with an opportunity to inquire, in all innocent curiosity, who these young people were: the children of disgraced politicians, financiers, artistes or showbiz folks?—but neither Bix nor Betsey rose to the bait, sensing how their query would be met by a prim shake of the headmaster’s head. Shovell continued, “Skyler should be no exception, Mr. and Mrs. Rampike, provided he doesn’t speak carelessly of himself, for sometimes children in such situations reveal themselves, who knows why? ‘Adolescence is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ This sage remark of our founder, Reverend Elias Dingle, is as apt today as it was more than a century ago. And what is the name you have chosen for your son here at Basking Ridge, Mr. and Mrs. Rampike?”

  Numerous names had been suggested by Skyler’s parents, but Skyler had rejected them all. Confronted with the loss of “Skyler Rampike”—a name Skyler had believed he’d hated—Skyler felt a sick, sinking sensation, as one might feel peering over the edge of an abyss. For how could Bliss locate him, if Skyler were no longer Skyler? That faint mewing plea in the night in the dark in any bed Skyler found himself in dazed, exhausted and sleepless Skyler? help me Skyler where are we, Skyler

  During the interview in the headmaster’s study both Skyler’s parents had avoided looking at each other; they’d arrived at the school in separate vehicles, and would depart in separate vehicles; Skyler had yet to be informed that his parents had “divorced” and yet not wanted to make inquiries.* Now Betsey said, with a reproachful glance at Skyler, and, past Skyler, at her husband who’d been surreptitiously glancing at the regal Rolex on his brawny wrist, with the restrained-restless air of a man yearning to be elsewhere, “‘Sylvester Ram-pole’—isn’t it kind of—showy? Self-conscious?” but Bix said, with beaming-Daddy smile, as if rousing himself from a sleep of several years, “‘Sylvester Rampole.’ It’s got style. It’s got pizzazz. I like it. See, Sky-boy, you retain your initials—‘S.R.’ ‘Rampike’ is echoed in ‘Rampole’ plus ‘Rambo.’ Very clever, kid.”

  So Skyler was stuck with it. The joke-incognito he’d been sure his parents wouldn’t allow him. Headmaster Shovell hadn’t seemed fazed, either. From Bix Rampike he had received a cashier’s check for a full year’s tuition payable in advance and non-refundable.

  IT HAD BEEN MY WRITERLY INTENTION TO “FREEZE” SKYLER IN THE act of limping across the campus green in pursuit of Heidi Harkness but in fact by this time Skyler is almost out of sight, having hobbled past The Monument, past Old Hill Hall, past “historic” cobblestone Founders House, downhill on the soggy-wood-chip path past Yelling West and Yelling East, beyond Craghorne (boys’ dorm), beyond Clapp (dining hall), Clapp Gym, Clapp Stadium; past visitors’ parking and past the heating plant and the “chilled-water” plant; past the tennis courts (occupied, noisy) and the soccer field (shouts, whistles, noisy game-in-progress), through the Great Meadow (visuals called for here: reader is directed to lavish color plates of autumn flowers notably goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace, blue-flowering chicory, toss in a cluster of dark red jack-in-the-pulpit berries, near the marshy edge of the field some cattails and unidentified sere grasses, to be handily located in The Audubon Field Guide to North American Wildflowers) in the direction of The Woods; stubborn and indomitable limping in the wake of the elusive “Heidi Harkness” whose incognito had no more shielded her from the smirks and stares and pitying smiles of strangers than “Sylvester Rampole” had shielded Skyler. They know us. Our enemies. We have only each other.