My Sister, My Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “But your mother is a woman, and they are born with these extra chromosomes—‘sensitivity’—‘intuition’—‘nesting instinct.’ The bottom line is, it makes them prone to monogramy, as the male of the species is naturally prone to polygramy, and we have to understand this distinction. ‘In family life as in the palace of the Emperor, sand fraud is the wisest counsel’—that’s the ancient wisdom of Confucius, son. When it comes to hoary wisdom, the ancient Chinese have it all over us barbaric Yanks. We are a damn immature civilization, in North America. But the father-son bond is universal. Your mother says, ‘Skyler has missed you so! More even than Bliss who has her skating, for Skyler has only—us. A boy requires a male role model if he is to mature into a healthy heterosexual man.’”

  Heterosexual! Sexual! Skyler squirmed inside the safety harness like a small trapped rodent.

  There followed then at Daddy’s urging several awkward minutes as Skyler spoke falteringly of his courses at school, his teachers and “activities” in response to which Daddy smilingly grunted Uh-huh! yeh? right on! without further inquiry; when Skyler said he missed a boy who’d been transferred to another school—“Calvin Klaus”—“he was real nice to me”—Daddy made no reply at all, swinging with calculated zest onto a ramp of eastbound I-80. Skyler persisted, “Calvin was my friend. I m-miss him pretty bad, I guess.”

  Was this true? Days in succession Skyler didn’t even think of Calvin Klaus. Yet, now, Skyler missed him badly.

  Daddy asked, “‘Calvin’—who?”

  “Calvin Klaus. Maybe Mummy knows Mrs. Klaus.”

  “Could be.”

  Skyler watched his father closely noting that his father had not betrayed the slightest glimmer of awareness of who Calvin Klaus was, or whose son he might be; not the slightest glimmer of unease, or guilt. You’d never have thought that Bix Rampike had ever heard the name “Klaus.”

  “Sorry you miss your friend, Sky-boy. But—let’s be realistic!—there’s plenty of other boys at your school to be friends with, right?”

  With relief Skyler thought It never was true! Daddy and Mrs. Klaus.

  At the mall Skyler’s father was drawn to electronics stores where he interrogated salesclerks about their highest-priced computers, laser printers, television sets and CD equipment and camcorders. Clearly Daddy enjoyed these zestful exchanges that allowed him to reveal, in a sequence of questions of escalating shrewdness, what an electronics expert he was; and what pride Skyler took in his father when a salesclerk, impressed with Bix Rampike, asked him what his profession was?—computers? electrical engineering? and Daddy laughed saying, “Hell, no. But I read Scientific American.” Often it appeared that Daddy was about to make a purchase, nothing less than the most expensive computer on the floor, abruptly then Daddy would say, “Hey. Great talking with you, Tod. Give me your card, eh?—I’ll get back to you.” Skyler hurried after his father noting the looks of surprise and disappointment in the salesclerks’ faces.

  At the VastValley Mall, emerging from The Whiz one Saturday afternoon with his father, Skyler saw a large shambling figure ahead moving in their direction: a ruddy-faced man with fierce eyebrows and untrimmed whiskers, in a disreputable sheepskin parka and shapeless work-pants and, Skyler winced to see, leather sandals with coarse gray woollen socks.

  “Skyler, hello!” Mr. McDermid smiled warmly and would have stopped to speak with Skyler, and to introduce himself to Skyler’s father, except without missing a beat, as a skilled quarterback passes the ball undetected by confused opponents, Skyler’s father steered Skyler past, with a curt nod to Mr. McDermid.

  “Who’s the kook?”

  Skyler was stricken with chagrin. Skyler could not bear to look back at Mr. McDermid who must have been staring after him in perplexity.

  “One of your mummy’s friends? Looks like a high school math teacher.” Daddy laughed in derision.

  Skyler mumbled he didn’t know, he didn’t think that man was a friend of Mummy’s. For Mummy had not once spoken of the McDermids and surely had not called them since Daddy had returned home.

  Another time, as Skyler and his father were leaving the Fair Hills Sports Injuries Rehabilitation & Physical Therapy Center,* a woman on her way in, stylishly dressed though wearing a foam rubber collar, cried, “Bix!” and advanced upon Skyler’s father to brush her lips against his cheek, and seize both his hands in hers: “I’m so happy for you and Betsey, together again.” It was Mrs. Frass the judge’s wife, unless it was Mrs. Fenn the mega-millionaire developer’s wife; a woman of youthful middle age who was clearly a close friend of the Rampikes, though Bix was smiling quizzically at her saying he didn’t know what she meant: “Betsey and I have never been apart.”

  Seeing a look of disbelief in the woman’s eyes, Daddy amended: “Except I’d been traveling a lot, last year. But now I’m at Univers, that isn’t going to happen. How’s Hayden?”

  Skyler saw: not the slightest glimmer of chagrin, or guilt, in Daddy’s face.

  IN FACT, IT’S TOO DEPRESSING TO RECALL SKYLER’S LAST SEVERAL OUTINGS with his father—Red Alert III at the Cross Tree CineMax (when Daddy excused himself halfway through the “action-packed” movie and was gone for the remainder who knows where, or for what purpose, though waiting outside for Skyler when the movie ended, with a warm-Daddy smile, and smoking a cigarette); hasty drive-through meals at Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, Cap’n Chili, Wendy’s (where Daddy provided, for himself, red wine in small plastic cups); a “golf lesson” at the (indoor) miniature golf range out on Route 33 (where, provided with a child-sized golf club, Skyler flailed away gamely at the silly little white ball until with a warm-Daddy smile, Daddy decreed the lesson fin-it-to and a success); a yet more humiliating “swim lesson” in the (indoor) heated pool of the Fair Hills Country Club (where Daddy swam laps like a large frenzied seal and struck up a conversation with a boy-swimmer of about eleven who moved swift and supple as a fish in the brightly aqua/eye-stinging water, another man’s son of whom Skyler, doggedly “dog-paddling” in the shallow end of the pool, tried not to be jealous)—and end with Skyler’s visit to Daddy’s office at Univers Bio-Tech, Inc.

  On this windy-sunny Sunday in early January, whatever the plan was for Daddy and Skyler that afternoon, Daddy suggested, “How’d you like to see your dad’s ‘place of work,’ Sky-boy?” The lift in Daddy’s voice, Skyler was made to realize how, until now, Daddy had been plain damn bored.

  Secret guy-stuff! For Mummy was not to know.

  So Daddy and Skyler sped along I-80 to exit 14B UNIVERS—“The company has its own exit and its own zip code, Sky-boy: we are ‘incorporated’ like you’ve never seen before”—and immediately there appeared, amid the wintry semi-rural landscape, the vast grounds—“Three hundred acres designated as ‘Green Space’—meaning property tax exemption big-time”—and clustered, connected glass-and-steel buildings—“Our architectural model is the Pentagon, son. The ‘mystic’—‘impregnable’—arch-shape of all geometrical figures as the ancient Greek Pythagoras revealed, centuries before Christ.”

  “Way cool, Dad. This place.” Skyler spoke in the eager-kid squeak of his more popular classmates.

  Though it was Sunday, a number of vehicles were scattered amid parking lots. Must be, daddies became restless over the long family-weekends, and felt the need to “sneak back,” like Bix Rampike, for “just a quick check-in.”

  At the rear of one of the impressive mineral-glinting buildings, Daddy provided Skyler with the numerals to punch them into Project Development. How proud Skyler was, when the massive door clicked open. “Remember not to breathe a word of this to your mother,” Daddy said, with a warm-Daddy chuckle, “she’d be upset if she knew I brought you here. And Bliss would feel left out, see? That’s the bottom line.”

  “Yes, Daddy. I promise.”

  So solemnly Skyler spoke, Daddy ran a playful knuckle across his head and nudged him inside.

  Daddy’s office was on the fifth, top floor of the building: BRUCE RAMPIKE DEPUTY CHIEF O
F RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT. You could see that Bruce Rampike’s office was a very important office because it could be reached only through an outer office and took up an entire corner of the fifth floor, with enormous windows overlooking a picturesque pond and hillside covered in something feathered and ripply—Canada geese? These were plump stuffed-looking waterfowl that looked as if they hadn’t propelled themselves through the air for a long time.

  “Sky-boy! Welcome to the future, for the future is here.”

  Briskly Daddy rubbed his hands together. Stepping into his “workplace” as he called it seemed to have energized Bix Rampike considerably.

  “Daddy? Can I watch what you do?”

  “You’d be bored, Sky-boy. Whyn’t you go play somewhere…”

  Already Daddy was distracted as he sat behind his massive glass-topped desk in a polished swivel chair that creaked comfortingly beneath his weight. Skyler stood irresolutely, watching. In an offhand voice Daddy said: “Remember, son: there are but two sub-species of Homo sapiens: those who act decisively, and those who are acted upon. Those who believe ‘my first act of freedom is to believe in freedom’ and those who are slaves to atavistic instincts, customs and habits of thought that preclude ‘free will.’ Univers, Inc. is about the ‘free will’—‘free enterprise’—shaping of the future, son. And your daddy’s task is to assist our Chief of Research Development in locating the ‘cutting-edge’ science geniuses of our time, hiring them away from wherever the hell they are, and set them to work for us…”

  Daddy’s ebullient words trailed off as Daddy squinted at his computer screen. Skyler knew that Daddy was checking e-mail and would not wish to be disturbed. To Skyler’s surprise, Daddy had put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that gave him a prim frowning look.

  “Daddy? What does ‘Univers’ do?”

  “What does ‘Univers’ do!” Daddy continued to peer at the computer screen, typing and clicking rapidly. As if repeating familiar words Daddy said, “Univers, Inc. is in the service of the future, son. Much of our bio-tech experimentation is ‘classified’ and not to be casually disclosed even to loved ones but, bottom line is, ‘Where the future beckons, Univers goes.’”

  Skyler leafed through a glossy UNIVERS, INC. brochure on a glass-topped coffee table. Columns of print swirled in his eyes and here and there a word or words leapt out genetic modification, DNA molecules, chimera, human genome project, molecular genetics, “enhanced” embryos, posthuman being. “Like ‘cloning,’ Daddy? I know what that is.”

  “Could be, son, you ‘know what that is’—and could be, you don’t ‘know what that is.’ Hell, Daddy doesn’t know what cloning is, just how to profit from it. Whyn’t you go play somewhere until Daddy is ready to leave? There’s a fitness center on the third floor that might be open.”

  Stubborn Skyler thrust out his lower lip and intoned:

  “‘Human beings will devastate this planet within the next fifty years. But an “evolved” Homo sapiens enhanced by genetic engineering may relocate to other planets. That is our only hope.’”

  This got Daddy’s attention. Through the wire-rimmed eyeglasses Bix Rampike’s widened brown eyes blinked.

  “What’s that, Skyler? What you just said?”

  Skyler wasn’t sure. Skyler grinned, stupidly. Truly not knowing whether he should be shyly pleased that Bruce Rampike behind the massive glass-topped desk was staring at him with something resembling—was it startled interest? respect? alarm?—or whether he should be frightened, in repeating the much-maligned Rob Feldman’s words he’d said the wrong thing; and in another moment the furious-Daddy look he so dreaded would come into Daddy’s eyes.

  “How old are you, son?”

  “N-Nine.”

  “Nine! Are you sure? You’ve been nine a hell of a long time.”

  Was this an accusation? Or just a fact? Skyler felt as if he’d been nine for most of his very long life. “I’ll be t-ten on my next birthday, Daddy. In March.”

  “Might be, Skyler, you’re a brainy kid—brainy and neurotic as hell, unlike us Bus. Ad. majors—and you will go into science, and take the ‘high road’ others can only envy. I’m thinking that you might be lacking the Rampike blood-lust, more like you’ll be going for a brainy solution than for the jugular like your daddy. So one day, Univers, Inc. might be seeking you for one of our projects. This I can reveal to you, Skyler: Univers, Inc. is at the very forefront of the technology. Those windowless buildings on the far side of the geese, see?—those are some of our research laboratories. And we have others. And we fund others. For reasons not needing to be divulged, we have research labs in many outposts of the globe, China for instance, where pure science can flourish unfettered by ‘ethical issues’—that is the vision of the future! Mostly our scientists are foreign-born, and even those born here are non-Caucasians: Indians, Koreans. Jews.” Daddy paused as if expecting Skyler to reply but Skyler was stumped how to reply. Was he “Caucasian”?—he thought so.

  “So, now. Whyn’t you go play, Skyler, until Daddy is through here.”

  Daddy returned to his computer. Skyler felt a pang of loneliness. The plan had been, for this Sunday afternoon, that Daddy would take Skyler to the Thomas A. Edison Laboratory Museum in West Orange (“Many original inventions are displayed”) but somehow, Daddy had changed his mind. Now Daddy rose from his swivel chair and disappeared into an adjoining room, must’ve been a lavatory since he left the door ajar and Skyler began to hear the loud-sizzling sound of an adult man urinating, at length. If Mummy was here, Mummy would be offended: Bix damn you shut that door! You are not living with your Ep Phi Pi brothers any longer!

  Impulsively Skyler slipped behind Daddy’s massive desk to peer at his computer screen: nothing but long columns of numbers, symbols. Skyler struck the return key, daringly: yet more columns of numbers, symbols. Rashly then Skyler struck the key that took you backward, as if back in time, several times Skyler struck this key but the screen showed nothing but numbers, symbols, “percentiles” and “projections.” A chill came over him This is Daddy’s true soul, unfathomable. Skyler pulled open a desk drawer: computer printouts. Another drawer—computer printouts. The lowermost drawer—computer printouts.

  Skyler’s sparrow-heart was pounding in his narrow chest: what had he expected to find in that lowermost drawer?

  Rumpled silk scarf. Handcuffs, masks. Chocolate Licker?

  “Skyler! Don’t mess with Daddy’s work.”

  Skyler steeled himself for a quick cuff to the side of the head—not hard! “instructive”—of the kind the Lion King gives to favorite/feisty male cub, but Daddy was only frowning at Skyler as if, in Daddy’s large opulently furnished office, Daddy wasn’t sure who he was.

  “Daddy has said, go play.”

  There was a door in the wall beside Daddy’s desk that led directly out into the corridor and so Skyler wandered about in the corridor limping past the locked doors of offices with frosted-glass windows and nameplates much smaller than the smart brass plate identifying BRUCE RAMPIKE DEPUTY CHIEF OF RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT; with but a vague concern that he might get lost, Skyler descended a flight of stairs, and another flight; carpeted corridors led off in all directions, as in an ant colony; here and there, lounge-areas beckoned to Skyler, flooded with late-afternoon sunshine. Through floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows you could see other buildings on hillsides and a portion of the pond and the flock of stuffed-looking Canada geese visible from Daddy’s office on the higher floor. “‘Daddy has said, go play.’” Skyler paused, smiling strangely. “‘Daddy has said, go kill yourself.’”

  Kids did sometime! Though you could never find out how.

  With the intention of locating the fitness center, so that he could report to Daddy that he had, Skyler found himself limping along a corridor of smaller offices of which one appeared to be occupied for the door was open. A startled-looking young woman came to the doorway: “Excuse me? Little boy? Are you—real?”

  Skyler blushed, and mumbled yes.

&n
bsp; Behind the young woman on a desk much smaller than Daddy’s was a computer. On the screen, what appeared to be columns of numbers, symbols. What a sinking sensation in Skyler’s stomach, to realize that this was the true adult-world, truer than the playful items in Daddy’s underwear drawer at home! Computer screens, columns of numbers, symbols.

  “I thought you were a ghost, little boy. You look almost—well, like a ghost.”

  The young woman laughed. Though the young woman appeared to be nervous. She wore a pullover sweatshirt with faded letters BRANDEIS and rumpled jeans, her dark hair tied back in a scarf. Except she was a few years older, the young woman reminded Skyler of one of Bliss’s girl tutors.

  “Are you lost? What are you doing here? Where are your parents?”

  Skyler mumbled his daddy was in his office working.

  “And who is your daddy?”

  Skyler mumbled his daddy’s name was Rampike.

  “Rampike! Oh.”

  The effect was immediate. A look of wary respect came into the young woman’s face. “Your father is Mr. Rampike? Up on the fifth floor?”

  “Do you know Daddy?”

  The young woman bit at a thumbnail. Her eyes flashed like zinc. She was younger than Skyler’s mother but, Skyler thought, not nearly so pretty as Skyler’s mother, her angular, intelligent face plain without makeup. “I know your ‘daddy’—of course. Mr. Rampike is my supervisor.”

  Skyler was too shy to ask the young woman where the fitness center was and so mumbled ’bye! and turned away. For the length of the corridor he felt the young woman watching him and at last she called after him: “Tell your daddy that ‘Alison’ is here—working hard on Sunday afternoon.”

  There was a tremor in the young woman’s voice which Skyler did not wish to interpret: flirtatious reproach? angry reproach? yearning? hope? He hurried away without glancing back.