My Sister, My Love (27 page)

NOT
WILL SOMETHING BAD HAPPEN?
BUT
WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN?
HAD BECOME
fixed inside Skyler’s head like something rattling in the wind.

For so Calvin Klaus
*
had promised. Or someone had promised.

Though the fall of 1996 was a season of surprises and these were mostly good surprises and “More to come!—maybe” as Mummy said mysteriously. Upcoming on Bliss’s skating schedule was the most coveted of northeastern skating competitions for girls, for the winners of the Miss Jersey Ice Challenge—Miss Jersey Ice Princess and Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess—would be awarded with modeling contracts with Junior Elite Skates and Skating Equipment, Inc., which meant glossy advertisements in high-circulation magazines like
Teen People
,
Teen World
,
Teen Life
and on selected cable channels.

“Not that we are skating for money. Or fame.”

So Mummy insisted, and so Mummy seemed to believe.

“But if we begin to make a little money—at last!—to help defray expenses, we can plan for the future: Skate America, Grand Prix America,
U.S. Girls’ Skating Championships, U.S. Olympics. ‘Follow your dream’—is our belief—‘wherever it will lead.’”

Mummy had been speaking to Bliss in the way in which Mummy often spoke to Bliss in a murmurous stream of words as if thinking out loud to which Bliss scarcely seemed to listen, or had no need to listen, while Skyler, if he happened to wander into earshot, couldn’t help asking: “‘Follow your dream’—how, Mummy? Can you see a dream? Is it like a butterfly or something, you can see flying, and you can follow it?”

Such questions were posed by Skyler in utter seriousness though masked by a smart-alecky drawl acquired at Fair Hills Day from gangsta classmates.

(In fall 1996, Skyler was now in fifth grade. Though his tenth birthday would not be until March 1997. And Bliss, not enrolled in any school, and at this time “between tutors,” was six years, ten months old.)

Patiently Mummy said, “A dream is a ‘vision,’ Skyler. A dream is within the soul, where God speaks to us.” Mummy paused. Mummy took care not to betray her irritation at Skyler’s question. Mummy amended, “—to some of us.”

To some of us.
Skyler caught this.

“Will God speak to me, Mummy?”

“Ask Him!”

Gaily Mummy laughed. On the sofa beside Mummy, sleepy from skating practice that afternoon and struggling to read a children’s picture book, Bliss did not glance up.

Bliss’s way of reading involved such physical effort, you could feel the strain as she moved her forefinger beneath lines of type and moved her lips to shape phantom letters.

Cagey Skyler backtracked: “What is ‘defray expenses,’ Mummy?”

A frown line appeared between Mummy’s eyebrows. Carefully Mummy said, “‘Defray’ means to ‘lessen’—‘lessen expenses.’ When we win the Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess title, and Bliss begins to model for Elite Skates, and acquires ‘national exposure,’ we will be able to make money at last, and when we do, your father can’t continue to object.”

Your father.
This was a rare utterance. Not frequently did Mummy speak
such painful words as
your father
and not in months had Mummy spoken the words
Daddy
,
Bix
, or
my husband.

At least, not that Skyler had heard. What Mummy spoke of in private phone conversations, shut away in her private room with the door locked, Skyler had no idea.

“What about Daddy, Mummy? Why does he ‘object’?”

“Ask him.”

This was cruel! How ask
your father
when Skyler hadn’t glimpsed his father in weeks and when Daddy called to speak to “Sky-boy” and “my bestest-best li’l Bliss,” you could not interrupt the tumult of earnest-Daddy words to ask such a question.

“Because Bliss’s skating is expensive?
Is
it expensive? How much does it cost a year? A thousand dollars? A million?”
*

“Your sister’s skating is an investment, Skyler! An investment is something that will pay off in the future and will repay the initial cost many, many times.” Mummy paused, pressing a row of red-polished nails to her breast, for Mummy had begun to speak excitedly as if being interviewed by an unfriendly or obtuse interviewer. “But, as I’ve said—we don’t skate for money, and we don’t skate for fame.”

Quizzically Bliss looked up from
Three Little Bears on Ice Mountain
to say, “My skating doesn’t cost anything, Skyler. It’s what God wants me to do. It isn’t like other things that cost money, Skyler. It’s special.”

Seeing the warning look in Mummy’s warm moist brown eyes, smart-alecky Skyler smartly backed off.

FROM OVERHEAD, SUGARY-DEAFENING TCHAIKOVSKY: “SLEEPING BEAUTY
Waltz.” The large ice rink glitters reflecting myriad shifting lights. It’s the evening of November 30, 1996. The long-awaited Miss Jersey Ice Challenge at the Newark War Memorial rink, Newark, New Jersey.

Déjà vu!
Like a smell of ammonia.

Yet: Skyler is as anxious this time as he’d been the first time. As he is each time his younger sister skates competitively in such arenas, before such crowds. For that is the curse of
déjà vu
: though you’ve lived it before, you can’t remember how it turned out. Not even whether you survived.

“SKYLER? SIT WITH YOUR SISTER, DARLING. MUMMY WILL BE
RIGHT
back.
”

Gaily kissing Skyler on his puppy-dog nose. Leaving the faintest smear of lipstick so (unbeknownst to him) Bliss Rampike’s big brother will resemble a dwarf clown.

This beautiful rink! Dazzling rink! No expense has been spared by ELITE SKATES & SKATING, thriving subsidiary of ELITE SPORTS EQUIPMENT INTERNATIONAL. Festooning the rink are banks of waxy white lilies and bloodred roses intricately folded as female genitals in bud; and, inside the rink, clearly visible across the bluish ice, are posters advertising
ELITE SKATES
&
SKATING ELITE SKATES
&
SKATING ELITE SKATES
&
SKATING
in massive bloodred letters circling the rink like a snake swallowing its own tail.

This long-awaited evening, twenty-two girls aged six to eighteen representing the crème de la crème of girls’ amateur figure skating in New
Jersey will be energetically competing for two titles: Miss Jersey Ice Princess 1996 (the older category), and Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess 1996 (the younger category). Since the competition of older girl-skaters is more eagerly awaited, the younger competition comes first. Such excitement! Anticipation! Tension in the air like the tension before an electrical storm! What would America be, without such breathless moments? Such urgent moments? Such almost-can’t-bear-it moments? Everywhere in the arena the audience is becoming ever more restless, excited. If you had the prurient cast of mind—as Skyler, prepubescent dwarf-clown certainly does not, to detect such undercurrents—you might sense a sexual urgency here in the flushed cheeks of the females, the shifty eyes of the males. Enormous families—“extended” it seems—of swarthy-skinned ethnic identities are sprawled in rows of seats and are occupied in passing refreshments avidly among themselves. The audience appears to be mostly female—all ages, all sizes, all skin-tones—though you might see, scattered about the arena, men of varying ages as well, though predominantly middle-aged. Some of these men are clearly relatives of the girl-skaters, seated with the sprawling families, while others, hoping to be inconspicuous, even as they cradle cameras, camcorders, and binoculars in their laps, appear to be alone. For invariably at such young-innocent-girl skating competitions there are such male spectators.

Is he here? Gunther Ruscha? Has to be here at the Newark ice rink on the evening of November 30
,
1996, but where
?

Don’t expect me to scan the seething crowd like a TV camera, my guts are too twisted. I am too anxious though this “historic” evening is long past and the terrifying sensation of
déjà vu
like a whiff of ammonia shouldn’t incapacitate me now. We can assume, radish-haired pasty-skinned Gunther Ruscha was in the audience that evening, in one of the front-row seats, eager to cheer on his adored Bliss Rampike but if Skyler chanced to see him, Skyler will not remember.

Gripping his sister’s hand. Thinking
Something bad will happen. When?

Maybe Skyler can prevent it. Skyler is Mummy’s
little man
—Bliss’s
big brother
—isn’t he?

Sitting protectively close to Bliss in their second-row seats in the re
served section of the arena where their mother settled them before hurrying off. Noise in the vast arena is increasing exponentially,
*
rebounding from the domed ceiling high overhead. In the crowded aisles vendors are hawking the usual neon-bright beverages and sleek-turd sausages, fuchsia-colored
MISS JERSEY ICE PRINCESS
1996 velour T-shirts, tank tops, and caps, and glossy “picture” programs selling for three dollars. Skyler is holding Bliss’s cold little hand to comfort her but Bliss, lost in unfathomable thought, barely responds. Unlike her rivals, the other girl-skaters, who thrive upon the attention of the crowd, Bliss is stricken with shyness in public places; in a kind of panicked catatonia when not in her skates, and on the ice. Through this long day, Bliss has been quiet. On the drive to Newark in Mummy’s flashy new lipstick-red Renegade XXL minivan, Bliss was very quiet while Mummy spoke to her in a crooning murmur, as Mummy did at such times, assuring her
You will skate perfectly, you will perform perfectly, Jesus has decreed it, Jesus has taken our earthly pain from us and replaced it with His grace.
(And what does Skyler think of these statements of Mummy’s, that seem to have increased exponentially in the weeks/months since Daddy moved out of the house? Is Skyler a Christian boy, does Skyler “believe”? In the Rampike household in which, in times of crisis, such sister-Christians as Mattie Higley are likely to be comforting Mummy, it is difficult not to “believe”—in something. Though canny Skyler has decided that praying is mostly talking to yourself, preferably under your breath, and not expecting God to answer.)

Skyler leafs through the glossy program to page eleven where there’s an eye-catching publicity photo of his sister, above the caption

BLISS RAMPIKE, 6

TOTS-ON-ICE DEBUTANTE 1994–MISS GOLDEN SKATE PRINCESS 1996

Because Bliss would have difficulty reading the bracketed quote attributed to her, Skyler reads it aloud:

Skyler wonders: Is this so? He’s sure he has never heard his sister say anything resembling these words.

Bliss is staring at the glossy publicity photo of
BLISS RAMPIKE
in the program. A shyly/coyly smiling little girl who looks more like four years old than six, with wide dark-blue eyes and thick eyelashes, a rosebud smile, platinum blond hair falling in a wavy cascade to her narrow shoulders. The girl is posing on the ice, in beautiful white kidskin Junior Miss Elite ice skates and in the new strawberry satin-and-sequin skating dress with its perky ballerina tulle skirt, a snug bodice, flesh-colored fishnet stockings and just a peek of white-lace panties beneath. This is the “designer” costume in which Bliss will be skating in just a few minutes, to the sexy-peppy disco beat “Do What Feels Right” (an old favorite of Mummy’s) which she has been practicing for hours every day—day following day—under the rigorous tutelage of her new trainer Anastasia Kovitski and her new exacting choreographer Pytor Skakalov.
Again!
the adults urge.
Again, again! You can do better, you must do better, you must win.
Wistfully Bliss touches the photograph of
BLISS RAMPIKE
and whispers in Skyler’s ear, “Is that meant to be me? It is
not
,” and Skyler says with blustery big-brother authority, as Mummy would wish him to, “Don’t say silly things, that some stranger might hear and repeat.
It’s you.
”

Since early that morning Mummy has been hinting at a “surprise”—“a good surprise”—beyond the victory that Mummy expects this evening and so Skyler has been thinking
Does that mean Daddy is here? Is Daddy here?
though this is a thought so familiar it has acquired a taste as of something rancid and so Skyler doesn’t crane his neck to look back into the arena, at the rows of seats.

Bliss doesn’t look. Bliss never looks. If Bliss is (secretly) thinking
Is Daddy here?
Bliss has become experienced at giving no sign.

“Bliss? Smile for us, honey!”

Photographers hover in the aisle amid flashes of light. A brassy-haired
interviewer for NJN-TV, who has interviewed Mummy and Bliss in the past, cajoles Bliss into smiling. Mummy returns, flush-faced and indignant. In northeast U.S. girls’ amateur skating circles Betsey Rampike has acquired a reputation for being one of the more aggressive mother-managers. Just now she has been protesting Bliss’s placement on the skating roster: Bliss is skating too soon in the “little miss” competition, unless Bliss is skating too late. Mummy is determined that Bliss will win the coveted Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess title this evening—“This is the victory we’ve been working for, for two and a half years.” And: “Miss Jersey Ice Princess will be Bliss Rampike’s ‘springboard’ into the nationals.” Mummy is hugging Bliss, whispering into her ear what must be a hurried prayer, and then again Mummy is on her feet conferring with Bliss’s trainer Anastasia Kovitski and with Bliss’s choreographer Pytor Skakalov as Skyler a few feet away tries not to see how the oily-eyed Uzbekistani with the bushy black mustache and shoulder-length shaggy hair stands disagreeably close to Mummy and brings his mouth close to Mummy’s ear. Worse yet, Skakalov’s hand falls onto Mummy’s shoulder, and does not move away.

Skyler squirms in his seat.
If Daddy is here! If Daddy sees!

Yet: the last Skyler heard from Daddy, Daddy was on his way to a “business summit” meeting somewhere far away: Moscow?

Skyler thinks that his mother has never looked so—intense?—determined?—as she looks tonight. Skyler knows that Mummy has been dieting in recent weeks and has lost weight and Mummy has had “work” done on her face in Dr. Screed’s office—nothing so drastic as a face-lift or liposuction—whatever “liposuction” is, Skyler isn’t sure—but “miracle injections” to smooth away wrinkles in Mummy’s forehead. For this occasion, Mummy had a new dress made for her of shimmery strawberry-colored satin, with a plunging neckline to show the tops of Mummy’s creamy-pale breasts; the dress emulates Bliss’s skating costume, with a flaring skirt. No wonder photographers and TV crews are drawn to Betsey Rampike of all mother-managers in girls’ amateur skating, as they are drawn to “angelic” Bliss Rampike of all girl-skaters.

Oily-eyed Pytor Skakalov must have told Mummy something very encouraging for Mummy impulsively thanks him with a quick kiss grazing an edge of the bushy mustache.

If Daddy sees!

“Hel-lo ladiez ’n’ gentz ’n’ all the rest of you—”

Abruptly in mid-note the high-decibel Tchaikovsky ceases. A mammoth lizard-faced man in a shiny black tuxedo—can this be Jeremiah Jericho?—appears in a spotlight at the edge of the ice. His intimate drawl stirs a chorus of whistles and friendly catcalls: “
Wel
-come!
Wel
-come to New-ark! Jersey’s answer to Athens-of-old! Our largest city and culture-hive bar none! Tonight—” Skyler listens numbed feeling the alarming sensation of
déjà vu
rising in him like nausea. Can there be a nausea of the soul? For Skyler has lived this before as Bliss has lived this before for there is no way out, time is a Möbius strip languidly turning in chill stale air though Master of Ceremonies Jeremiah Jericho does look slightly older and more bloated than he’d looked two years before at the Meadowlands. His genial/jeering face is conspicuously made up with an orangish-tan foundation base and his sleek black hair appears freshly dyed. Skyler feels a stab of revulsion for the man but has to concede, there is something comforting about Jeremiah Jericho.
As if an old stupid thing is more comforting than anything new, you know that you have survived it.

“—and now, ladiez ’n’ gentz letz rise—up on our feet!—for our most sacred of songs—‘national anthem’—go crazy, folks, for ‘O! Say Can You See’—” like a puppet-master misty-eyed Jeremiah Jericho causes the crowd to lurch to its feet, leading them in a fierce-bawling rendition of the anthem followed by deafening self-applause. Then, Jeremiah Jericho gives a hilariously risqué lewd-grandpappy introduction of that “stellar”—“non-puerile”—“kick-ass Jersey girl” Miss Jersey Ice Princess 1995 eighteen-year-old Courtney Studd of Hackensack who skates/undulates to a panting disco version of Ravel’s dogged old classic
Boléro
in a sparkly Vegas-showgirl costume, to deafening applause.

“And now, ladiez ’n’ gentz,” Jeremiah Jericho rubs his meaty hands lewdly together, “—the first competition of the evening—eleven lusz-ous li’l gifted gals competing for the coveted title Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess! These fan-tas-tic li’l dolls are aged six to twelve and the first to skate for us is—”

When Bliss Rampike is announced, the fifth to compete, there is a heartwarming outburst of applause, whistles and cries
We love you, Bliss
!
that makes Skyler uneasy for it might be bad luck, if Bliss is the crowd’s favorite at the moment; for skating crowds are notoriously fickle. “‘Miss Bliss Rampike’—six years old—Fair Hills, New Jersey—here’s our brave li’l gal—1994 Miss Tot-on-Ice Debutante—your own Jeremiah Jericho was m.c. on that momentous occasion. Wel-come, Bliss! Wel-come to Newark! Go crazy, folks, for—” as the arena is filled with the hot thumping rhythms of that disco hit of bygone days “Do What Feels Right.” Skyler watches dry-mouthed and transfixed as Bliss seems to fly out onto the ice, skate blades hissing. And what a sight in her strawberry satin-and-sequin costume with the perky tulle skirt and peek-a-boo panties.
And now she will turn her ankle, she will fall
—but when Skyler opens his tight-shut eyes Bliss has not fallen but is performing a dazzling backward glide, Bliss is spinning on a single skate, Bliss is executing a spiral—a gyre—a “floating butterfly”—a “double toe loop”—as the crowd erupts in spontaneous applause. So small-boned is this blond child, seemingly so much younger than her rivals, and so angelic in demeanor, audiences adore her. For breathtaking minutes Bliss performs flawlessly to the quick-tempo beat of “Do What Feels Right,” small fixed smile on her face, wavy blond hair cascading to her (narrow, bare) shoulders, a final spin, a final “butterfly,” and a gliding bow to the wildly applauding audience as Jeremiah Jericho pants into the microphone: “
Mag
-nifi-co, Blizz!
Fan
-tas-ti-co! Here’s a li’l angel skates like a demon! Where wuz you, li’l sweetheart, when Jerry Jericho was eight years old, and hot to trot! Folks, you heard it straight from the old horsey’s mouth: Blizz Rampick will one day win an Olympic gold medal! One day, Women’s World Figure-Skating Champ! Folks, go crazy for our own Blizz Rampick of Far Hills, New Jersey—”