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

by Joyce Carol Oates

  By this time it was 2:20 A.M. Skyler would return with Bob Fluchaus to The Ark and in a spare bedroom he would sleep for twelve hours and when he awoke it was to a sensation of great happiness and calm realizing Nothing has been decided. Yet.

  CONDOLENCES

  FORWARDED TO SKYLER AT THE PITTS STREET, NEW BRUNSWICK, ADDRESS came a letter postmarked Cambridge, Massachusetts:

  2 MARCH 2007

  DEAR SKYLER—

  PLEASE ACCEPT MY CONDOLENCES ON THE OCCASION OF YOUR MOTHER’S DEATH. BETSEY RAMPIKE WAS A TERRIBLE PERSON (IN MY OPINION) BUT SHE WAS YOUR MOTHER.

  SINCERELY,

  P.S. I AM NOW A JUNIOR AT HARVARD (MAJORS MUSICOLOGY, MOLECULAR BIOLOGY). MY E-MAIL ADDRESS IS EGRUBBE@HARVARD.EDU

  Epilogue

  HE FORGAVE. NOT FOR BLISS, HE COULD NOT FORGIVE FOR BLISS BUT FOR himself, he forgave them.

  He burnt the letters. And the damn video.

  Eight tissue-thin pages of sweet-perfumy peach-colored stationery he burnt, and the two previous letters she’d sent to him that he had hidden wrapped in newspaper in his closet, he burnt. And the damn video, that was harder to burn and gave off a sickening stink.

  In the scrubby park by the Raritan River he burnt these items. On a wet-glistening gusty morning in March. Sky shimmering like washed glass, sun a smoldering dull-red coal behind shreds of Skyler’s favorite cloud—“Altocumulus.” It gave him pleasure to recognize the cloud type, and to speak it aloud.

  He’d been a promising student at one time. He would return to that life again soon, he believed.

  Your sister is dead. You are alive. And so what next?

  So Pastor Bob said.

  He’d purchased the materials for burning in the neighborhood 7-Eleven store. Where as soon as Skyler entered a wave of déjà vu washed over him leaving him breathless. Not again! Not here! Not me. For a moment he felt stunned, incapable of thought or volition.

  Why was he so frightened? He had vowed to Pastor Bob, he’d made his decision.

  There was the clock above the front entrance. Flat as a disc, glowering. Long black hand at eight, short black hand at eleven. In the digital era, “clock faces” would soon vanish Bix Rampike had predicted. But Skyler knew, this time it was morning.

  Déjà vu! A faint sepia-tinged odor as of burning leaves, that made Skyler’s nostrils pinch and stung his eyes.

  Behind the cashier’s counter stood the Indian clerk. Youngish but not young, courteous, wary. The clerk was just ringing up a customer’s items, Skyler saw his wire-rimmed eyeglasses flash in Skyler’s direction. Skyler paused to smile at him and to greet him with a casual upraised hand for at The Ark you learned to greet others with a smile, an easy upraised hand exposing your palm, outspread fingers. In Skyler the gesture was slightly awkward but well-intentioned.

  “Hello!”

  “Hello, sir.”

  Sir. Was this irony? Or just courtesy? Behind the wire-rimmed glasses the clerk’s eyes were hidden by a glare of reflected light and his smile had tightened into something like a frown.

  This time, Skyler knew exactly which aisle. Which shelf. Just two items: five-ounce container of Hercules Lighter Fluid and a single box of (small-sized) Five Star Kitchen Matches.

  At the cash register deftly the clerk rang up Skyler’s purchases. Hesitating then, like an actor who recalls his lines but has come to doubt them: “Anything else, sir? Cigarettes?”

  Politely Skyler said: “No, thanks.”

  Pools of déjà vu at his feet. Toxic mists, now a flavor of burning rubber. Skyler brushed at his eyes, annoyed. Skyler thanked the Indian clerk more brusquely than he meant, forgetting to smile in his haste to get the hell out.

  Quarter-mile hike to the park. Skyler knew shortcuts: alleys, vacant lots. Must’ve been one of his good days, Skyler was walking without a limp except: any sharp-eyed fellow-limper could discern, there was something wincing in his posture.

  Still, it was one of Skyler’s good days. Rejoice in that. And the other day, he’d received the letter from Elyot Grubbe meaning that Elyot had forgiven him.

  Painful to think of Elyot Grubbe, for Skyler must then think of Heidi Harkness. And Skyler did not want to think of Heidi Harkness, at this time.*

  In eleven days, Skyler Rampike would be twenty years old. At The Ark, this event of dubious significance to Skyler would be celebrated. As Pastor Bob said wryly Celebrate what you have. It might be a while before you have another occasion.

  Skyler was walking now through the park. Headed for the path above the river. I hope I hope I can make it came to him like a scrap of litter lifted in the wind, blown against his face. Or was it a line of music. Hope! hope I can. In this fierce bright March sunshine the Raritan River was choppy and scintillant like a river of small flames. The wind was raw and gusty out of the northwest and so did not smell of toxic-chemical-New Jersey. On the ground ice was melting in shiny rivulets. So flashy, you’d mistake them for cellophane/aluminum-foil litter of which, in the park, there was much. At the edges of things, in the shadowy crevices in the ravine, were coils of dirty snow like entrails slow-melting, shrunken. Skyler recalled from his childhood these early faux-spring days in New Jersey. A balmy taste to the air: the taste of (faux?) hope. There were others in the winter-ravaged park: young mothers pushing baby strollers, shouting children, teenaged boys, vagrants sunning themselves on park benches. And at the remains of the basketball court tall burly black boys in baggy-gangsta pants, T-shirts with ripped-off sleeves, tossing a basketball at one another and at the battered backboard above the lopsided bare rim—“Hey man!”—“Fuck man!” Skyler winced recalling the beating he’d been given, very likely among the exuberant basketball players were boys who’d stomped the white fucker’s face and scarred it, but he couldn’t be sure, and had no intention of making sure. Even Pastor Bob wouldn’t have counseled Skyler to seek his assailants out, and forgive them.

  As Daddy would say Batta!

  Skyler climbed from the concrete walkway up into the shelter of an immense misshapen and graffiti-covered granite boulder. There seeing that no one was close by, no one seemed to be observing him, Skyler squatted and removed from his pocket his mother’s crinkly letters and the videotape and these he placed between two rocks and doused them with lighter fluid and quickly before he had time to reconsider, not only the enormity of what he was about to do but that it was irrevocable, he struck a match, with trembling fingers struck a match, God-damned wooden match failed to light and snapped in his fingers so he tried again and with the second match a bluish-yellow flame leapt up and this match Skyler dropped onto the perfumy peach-colored pages and the videotape and with a small astonished pouf! the letters burst into flame and more grudgingly it seemed the videotape began to burn. Within seconds the tissue-thin stationery had gone up in flame and was reduced to ashes—Your loving Mother—Mummy reduced to feathery ashes; as the videotape burned, more sluggishly, ill-smelling smoke wafted to Skyler’s nostrils, stung his eyes.

  Then came a sudden shout, a loud male voice: “You! What the fuck’re you doing there?”

  Skyler woke from his trance to see a furious young police officer gesturing at him from the farther side of the ravine. Quickly Skyler stammered, “N-Nothing,” and quickly amending, with the preppy instinct to grovel before authority, “N-nothing, sir.” Like a figure in a TV cop show he raised his hands to show that they were empty, weaponless; he was harmless. The police officer could not have been more than five or six years older than Skyler but exuded an air of brusque no-bullshit certainty; his rough blunt face seemed to shine in the wintry air, like a boot. In disgust he told Skyler to put out the fire: “What d’you think this is, a garbage dump?” Skyler quickly obeyed kicking out the flames, holding his breath against the melting-plastic stink that was fouling the air. Skyler’s alacrity in obeying police orders seemed to placate the young police officer for, disgusted, but not in a mood to walk all the way around the ravine to confront Skyler close up, the policeman turned away with a dismissive
wave of his hand of the kind that signals, in any language, Asshole.

  Skyler felt a pang of shame, mortification. How like Skyler Rampike to fuck up the most beautifully “symbolic” gesture of his young life.

  Within a few minutes wind blew most of the feathery ashes away and the remains of the incriminating videotape, Skyler kicked into the ravine to mingle with the detritus of ages. Now no one would know with certainty who had killed his sister. Forever now, the identity of the killer would be unknown. No one would know what it had been, the Rampike family secret that had so bonded them, never to be uttered aloud even to Jesus.

  “Fuck you I ‘forgive’ you. Both of you: ‘Mummy’—‘Daddy.’ But not for Bliss, I don’t forgive you for Bliss, only Bliss can forgive you for her. For Bliss, you can both rot in hell.”

  It came to Skyler then, since moving into The Ark, he had ceased hearing his sister’s plaintive voice in the night Skyler help help me Skyler

  Skyler was not crying. God damn Skyler was not crying.

  Skyler leaned over the railing, above the river. Choppy leaden waves, a smell as of detergent, mysterious chemicals. Pastor Bob had such hopes for Skyler Rampike: seeing in Skyler someone whom Skyler himself could not see, and in which Skyler could not believe. He would return to school, he would resume something of his old, derailed life. He would not accept a penny from Bix Rampike, he would not. If Betsey Rampike had remembered him in her will, as very likely, stricken with guilt, she had, Skyler would not accept a penny of that blood money, God damn he would not.

  He would contact Elyot Grubbe. Drive up to Harvard and visit Elyot in the spring. Resume their friendship for he intended to resume what was most valuable in his old life.

  “M-Mister? Can you come help my mommy?”

  A child of about four years of age was approaching Skyler cautiously, sucking at a forefinger. Her small face glistened with tears and snot. Her pink nylon parka was soiled, her sparrow-colored hair matted and uncombed. Bare-legged, in sneakers and tiny white ankle socks, she was too lightly dressed for the day. Not far away, a young woman who must have been the girl’s mother was slumped on a park bench, looking dazed. When Skyler had first entered the park he’d noticed this young woman swaying on her feet, pulling her small child by one hand; behaving strangely, as if drunk, or drugged. She was shaking a cell phone, perplexed and angry that it didn’t seem to be working; it fell from her fingers, and she kicked at it. She, too, was inappropriately dressed: in a short trim jacket of some fluffy purple material, a twisted skirt of some kind, bright green stockings or tights, red plastic wedge shoes with straps. Her streaked hair blew untidily in the wind. Her swollen lips moved, she was muttering to herself. She might have been in her late twenties or early thirties. Skyler believed that he’d seen her somewhere recently: in Pastor Bob’s congregation, in Second Chance Books where Skyler sometimes hung out, possibly at the rehab clinic. Very likely, at the rehab clinic. There was that post-rehab look to the young woman, Skyler recognized. He had never spoken to her and she had never spoken to him and Skyler doubted that she had ever noticed him and even now, though her daughter was standing before him whimpering and pleading, she had yet to take notice of him. Every impulse in Skyler urged Get the hell out. Run! He guessed that the little girl had approached others in the scrubby park who had turned away. And seeing that Skyler had not, the little girl pleaded, “Mister? My mommy is acting strange, my mommy doesn’t feel right…” Precisely what was wrong with this mommy, Skyler supposed he’d soon find out.

  I hope I hope I can make it

  * Fact is, Skyler has started letters to Heidi Harkness but never got beyond Heidi can you forgive me, I love you before he gave up in dismay and disgust.

  About the Author

  JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is the author of the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde—which was nominated for the National Book Award—and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina, and The Gravedigger’s Daughter. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  NOVELS BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

  The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007)

  Black Girl / White Girl (2006)

  Missing Mom (2005)

  The Falls (2003)

  The Tattooed Girl (2003)

  I’ll Take You There (2002)

  Middle Age: A Romance (2001)

  Blonde (2000)

  Broke Heart Blues (1999)

  My Heart Laid Bare (1998)

  Man Crazy (1997)

  We Were the Mulvaneys (1996)

  What I Lived For (1994)

  Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993)

  Black Water (1992)

  Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1989)

  American Appetites (1989)

  You Must Remember This (1987)

  Marya: A Life (1986)

  Solstice (1985)

  Mysteries of Winterthur (1984)

  A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982)

  Angel of Light (1981)

  Bellefleur (1980)

  Unholy Loves (1979)

  Son of the Morning (1978)

  Childwold (1976)

  The Assassins (1975)

  Do with Me What You Will (1973)

  Wonderland (1971)

  them (1969)

  Expensive People (1968)

  A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967)

  With Shuddering Fall (1964)

  Credits

  Jacket design by Allison Saltzman

  Jacket art: A Buckeye Tale, 2001 © Martin Mull, 2007. Oil on linen.

  Collection of Marg Helgenberger and Alan Rosenberg, Los Angeles.

  Image courtesy Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.

  Copyright

  MY SISTER, MY LOVE. Copyright © 2008 by The Ontario Review, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © MAY 2008 ISBN: 9780061806667

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