My Sister, My Love (36 page)

AND YET: IF THE PLOT OF ONE’S LIFE IS AN “IMPERFECT”—“EPISODIC”—PLOT?
If there is a true dearth of “probability” and “necessity” in one’s life?
Terror incognita
of a kind haughty Aristotle had not a clue.

The ransom note, for instance.

This bizarre document attributed to “The Eye That ‘Sees’” is not, of course, the original, but the author’s typed version of a stiffly hand-printed document; an attempt to reproduce what Skyler saw at the age of nine, under extreme mental duress; though Skyler at the age of nineteen would testify that he recalls the document as vividly as if he’d seen it only yesterday. The original was clumsily hand-printed as if by a young child, on a single long sheet of construction paper; the “sign” of Bliss’s misspelled name has been determined by some handwriting experts to be genuine, but discredited by others who believe that it was forged. Very likely the reader knows that “The Eye That ‘Sees’” was never identified.

According to Betsey Rampike’s sworn statement, this ransom note was discovered by her at approximately 8:10
A.M.
of January 29, 1997, at which time Bliss seemed still to be “missing”; the note had been positioned on a small table in the front foyer of the Rampike house, folded once, like a greeting card, in a way to capture the eye of anyone entering the foyer.

Over the years, this “ransom note” has come to be analyzed more than any ransom note in history. Yet, it was never formally “entered into evidence” in any court trial, nor even in any court hearing, for there were to be no indictments in the case, no arrests and no “defendants.”

Reader, you are shaking your head in disbelief. You, like Aristotle, react with aesthetic displeasure to such an unlikely plot. And yet,
all that I am disclosing here is true.

For it does no good to guess who “The Eye That ‘Sees’” is: in United States criminal law, you must mobilize an argument to prove it.

“BIX! DARLING! GOD HELP US—BLISS IS MISSING.”

The call came shortly after 8
A.M.
, January 29, 1997. Ringing in suite 729 of the Regency SuperLuxe Hotel north of Fair Hills at an exit off I-80 where, for reasons unclear to his children if ominously clear to his wife, Daddy had been staying for the past several days and commuting to Univers, Inc. nine miles to the east. This was a Saturday: Daddy was expected to arrive at the Rampike house at about 10:30
A.M.
to take Bliss with him to New York City to “celebrate—just the two of us” Bliss’s seventh birthday which was the following day. It could not be said that Bix Rampike had “moved out” of the family home on Ravens Crest Drive since clearly he had not, for he’d taken very few clothes and personal items with him to the Regency; it could not be said that Bix was “separated from” his wife of nearly eleven years, Betsey; nor could it be stated that the Rampikes’ marriage was “shaky”—“troubled”—“storm-toss’d”—except by devious sources insisting upon anonymity, presumed (by the indignant Rampikes, who could not bear gossip about them) to be friends/social acquaintances/fellow members of the exclusive clubs to which the Rampikes belonged.

Damned ringing phone Bix only barely managed to hear over the thunderous sound of the shower. Cursing, leaning out of the shower stall to fumble for the wall phone believing he knew who the caller was, and what she would tell him in her throaty smoker’s voice he so yearned to hear, and
how his body, flushed and tingling from the shower, would respond; and so Bix was smiling, in the steamy mirror his teeth flashed white: “Hey.
Hi.
”

Except: who the hell was this? Not the woman he’d expected but—his wife?

Yes it was Betsey, and Betsey was agitated about something, impossible to follow what she was saying, abashed and resentful Bix had to ask her please to slow down, repeat what she’d said. A wave of weariness swept over him, his elation of just a few seconds ago had diminished at once, swirling at his feet in sudsy water down the shower drain, telling himself certainly he loved Betsey, certainly Bix loved his wife of—was it nearly eleven years?
eleven?
—for Betsey was the mother of his children, and you know how Bix Rampike feels about his children: “The most sacred trust a man can be—entrusted with.” Must’ve been crazy for her when he’d married her, a fatal weakness he had for submissive/soft-fleshed females gazing up at him in undisguised adoration. Even when one of them reviled Bix as a selfish prick he found such women irresistible, the
sin qua none
bottom line is such females adored his prick, and him. Sure there’s a downside, such females are hyper-susceptible to hurt feelings, hysteria; susceptible to despair, and to rage; and so very, so very God-damned fucking
needy.
Betsey fixing those limpid brown cow-eyes on him, that pissed him even though (he had to concede, he’s a connoisseur of such matters) the eyes were beautiful; calling him at the office so often, he’d had to instruct his assistant to “keep Mrs. Rampike at bay”—with a wink for the sexy young streaked-blond assistant, Bix Rampike understands adores him. Bix was sure now that whoever had called him in the early hours of this morning, soon after he’d returned to the room (at 2:12
A.M.
), and again waking him from a stuporous sleep (at 4:06
A.M.
) had to have been Betsey; but when he’d answered the phone both times, quickly she hung up without identifying herself. It wasn’t the first time in their marriage of—
eleven years?
—that Betsey, stirred by jealousy, irrational and anxious and convinced (not wrongly, but how’d she know that?) that Bix was “with” another woman, had made such calls to determine if Bix was alone in his hotel room, as if, naively, she believed Bix’s woman friend might pick up the phone and reveal herself. And now, what was Betsey trying to tell him?—her voice fierce
in his ear, yet desperate, like a woman trying to attract the attention of a spouse who is reading a newspaper at breakfast, for instance. “Betsey, slow down: what?”

“—s-searched the h-house! Can’t f-find her. Oh Bix, come home now.”

“Betsey, what? Something about—Bliss?”

“—told you can’t find her: missing from her room oh Bix—”

“‘Missing’? What d’you mean? ‘Missing’ how?”

“M-Missing
gone.
Oh Bix come help us, I am w-worried that—something terrible has h-happened—”

Fumbling, Bix managed to turn off the shower. His large broad-shouldered just-slightly-going-to-fat torso, midriff. Hot-skinned Bix Rampike naked and dripping, glistening. Handsome head sleek as a seal’s, hair flattened, and the thick wiry pelt-hair of his chest, belly, groin glistening with moisture. Had to concede, he’d put on a few extra pounds since the Cornell days, but still Bix looked good, at least frontally. Squinting at himself in a mirror, cocking his head to the side: just so. Women adored him, how was that Bix’s fault? It was like Betsey to call him at such a time. Exactly like Betsey to call him when he was in the shower, and when he was naked. The woman had an instinct for calling him at such times. If she’d been able to call him the previous night when he’d been with of whom Betsey could not possibly know but of whom she had paranoid suspicions, she’d have called him. Now in his ear speaking in a steely-calm-Mummy voice and no longer the hysterical-Betsey voice. This was upsetting. This was worrisome. For when Betsey was emotional, you knew that the emotions were authentic. Now, must’ve been the Nixil kicking in, to revert her to “calm”—“serenity”—some nights, when she’d been drinking, she’d been near-comatose—or maybe it was Percodan?—Excelsia?—since Bliss’s defeat on the ice in where was it, somewhere in Pennsylvania. Poor Betsey! Bix Rampike was so much the master of his moods, as of the moods of others in his vicinity, he had no more need for “mood-elevating”/“mood-stabilizing” medication than he’d have had for testosterone shots in the ass, or steroids. Hard not to feel contempt for such female weakness.

But Betsey didn’t sound weak now so much as grim, determined.

Had to wonder, had he ever heard Betsey speak in such a way?

Fumbling to dry himself with a massive towel Bix said, “‘Can’t find her’—our daughter? Are you serious?” and Betsey retorted, “Of course I’m serious! Would I be calling you like this if I wasn’t?” and Bix asked, trying to maintain control, “Look: are the doors all locked? The windows? All the windows? Could someone have broken in?” and Betsey said, a glimmer of contempt in her voice, “Don’t be ridiculous, Bix: that’s the first thing I checked. The doors, all the doors to the outside. And the windows. The garage door, you never remember to lock,” and Bix felt his face flush, thinking now
Is this a trick, a game she’s cooked up with the kids? To make Daddy feel guilty and to get his ass over there fast
, asking if she’d asked Skyler, Skyler might know if Bliss was hiding somewhere, and Betsey said, in a fusillade of words, “The children play hide-and-seek with Daddy, not Mummy. Big Daddy they adore, not Mummy they take for granted. You know that, Bix. Anyway Bliss has never hidden away in one of her secret places for so long. And I’ve been calling and calling for her and she would never be so willful, not to come out. Last night she was feverish, refused to go to bed at her bedtime, and Lila isn’t here to help, Lila has the weekend off, both the children were very demanding, and exhausting. All Bliss could chatter about was ‘Daddy this’—‘Daddy that’—Daddy coming to take her to New York for her birthday—though Bliss’s actual birthday isn’t until tomorrow, and we are having a real party here. Wouldn’t you think that, after that terrible loss in Pennsylvania, for all the world to see, Bliss would want to hide away for a while, and not run off to New York with her precious Daddy—I know, I would. Bliss was counting the very hours until Daddy came to get her so it makes no sense she’d be playing a prank on us now, does it?” and before Bix could respond, forging on in aggrieved-Mummy voice, “Bliss is a secretive child, nothing at all like her fans imagine her. And Skyler, who has taken to ‘tattooing’ himself with little skulls, daggers—signs of Satan, I told him—wash those ugly things off, I told him—and d’you know, Skyler not only disobeyed me about that, but Skyler drew a little red heart on the palm of Bliss’s hand, too—in
indelible ink.
And so when I woke in the night from a disturbing dream and went to check Bliss’s bed, it was empty; and I know, I just know—she’s hiding from me, and will emerge for her precious Daddy, and the two of you will laugh at Mummy, won’t you! And Skyler is in on it, isn’t he? I woke him this morn
ing—to help me look for Bliss—and there was something so secretive about him, his eyes—” and Bix managed at last to interrupt, “What the hell are you saying, Betsey? Skyler is ‘in on it’—what?” and Betsey said sharply, “You! The children’s father! And you’ve neglected them, and me, for months. You have defiled our marriage bed—you have polluted our sacred marriage vows—I live in dread of what will sweep upon us, what evil, and whatever it is, we don’t dare call the p-police until we know—if—Skyler has—” Betsey broke off as if a hand had been clamped over her mouth; and Bix said, frightened, “Honey, I haven’t ‘polluted’ our marriage, I swear. I love you, and I love our children. I’ll make it up to you, darling. You know that, don’t you—”

The line had gone dead.

PHONE RECORDS? WE KNOW THAT THEY ARE IRREVOCABLE, IRREMEDIABLE.
Just as it would be revealed shortly that the mysterious calls to Bix Rampike at the Regency SuperLuxe at 2:12
A.M.
and again at 4:06
A.M.
had been made, in fact, from the Rampikes’ home number, calls of less than two seconds each, so it would be revealed that, having received an urgent call from that number, i.e. from Mrs. Rampike, Bix Rampike took time to call another Fair Hills number before leaving the hotel and hurrying home. Why?

…TRANSGRESIONS IN THIS FAMILY BLESSED BY GOD, NOW WE ARE GOD’S
wrath to punish for transgresions of the Father of this house.

WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES HE WAS HOME. WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES OF
hanging up the phone in his hotel room for the fourth and final time. He hadn’t checked out of the Regency SuperLuxe. He’d had to get home. Had to get home! Though a part of his mind assured him
It’s a trick, poor Betsey the last trick she will play on me.
He turned into the blacktop driveway at 93 Ravens Crest Drive. No sign, from the outside, of any disturbance. There were no disturbances on Ravens Crest Drive. A disturbance in all of Fair Hills was rare. The sprawling old white clapboard and aged-brick Colonial was a
beautiful house, and an impressive house, but on Bix Rampike’s new salary at Univers, he’d outgrown it. And it bored him, like the small lives within. And yet: all this was his.

Since he’d bought this property, its worth had tripled in value. Fantastic real estate boom in Fair Hills and vicinity: up, up,
up.
Bix Rampike, one day to be Chief of Research Development (Domestic) at Univers, Inc., was going up, up,
up.

A man’s possessions, which he has earned with the sweat and blood of his brow, God damn a man will defend to the death.

“It’s in the species. In the genes. ‘Anatomy is destiny.’”

Especially, a man’s children: his DNA. His future. Immortality.

If something should happen to Bliss, Daddy’s bestest-best li’l gal, Daddy could not bear it.

He did love his daughter! Bawled like a baby, watching her win that title on TV. Astonishing figure skater.
His
athletic talent, in that small body. Astonishing.

Bliss he adored, Bliss was his angel.

Climbing into Daddy’s lap, shy-kissing, shy-hugging Daddy who with big-Daddy fingers hugged/tickled in return.

Oh Daddy! Oh!—that tickles!

It would not matter to him, to Daddy, if Bliss ever skated again. Only to her, the mother: Mummy. Only to Mummy did it matter, too much.

In the divorce, Mrs. Rampike would be awarded the house. Two million, bottom line. There’d be a custody suit. He’d demand joint custody. But not too strenuously.

The other one, Skyler—“Poor kid!” It was easy to forget him. Daddy loved the little runt but being a pragmatist Daddy wouldn’t have been surprised, whatever befell Skyler: crippled leg, kiddie-cancer, sistic—sistric?—fibrosis, drowning in the shallow end of a swimming pool while other kids are diving, splashing, horsing around: you name it.

Parked the sexy new car—Jaguar XXL, avocado-green coupe, taupe leather interior—in front of the garage, and entered the house on the run, through the garage and into the back hall beside the kitchen, Bix Rampike’s usual mode of entry into his house, and there came Betsey rushing at him breathless, thrusting something at him—“Bix! She’s been kidnapped!
Here is the ransom note”—
*
stunned and disbelieving taking it from her, his wife’s trembling hand, skimmed the strange hand-printed message, what the hell was this?—“‘Dear Mr Rampik We have takn your dagher & will releese here to you if ’” as Betsey explained where she’d found it, only a minute ago she’d found it, in the front foyer, close by Bliss’s “trophy room,” she had no idea how long it had been on the table there but it must be hours, the kidnappers must have taken Bliss during the night, and all this time—Betsey was speaking almost calmly, biting her lower lip—“Our daughter has been gone, they have taken her,” and Bix said, “Betsey, you wrote this, didn’t you? Is this some kind of joke?” and Betsey stared at him, and for a moment Betsey could not speak, so stricken, so appalled, her adulterer-husband’s ignorance, furious with him denying she’d written it—“How can you say such a thing! Are you crazy! Are you hungover, drunk?”—their daughter’s life was in danger, fanatics had taken her, broken into the house in the night, why hadn’t the security alarm sounded, why hadn’t Bix made certain it was working, Betsey had no idea how to activate it, if only Bix had been home, it had to be one or more of Bliss’s “fans” who’d kidnapped her, some of Bliss’s fans were “crazy-obsessed”—Oh! Betsey had known that something terrible would happen if Bix remained away, if the children had no father in the household, the world can sense weakness, the world will rush in, like vultures, like hyenas, emissaries of Satan; a ringing in Bix’s ears as if, on the football field, in the very arena of a man’s strength, expertise,
quidditas
, an invisible opponent has flown at him, has tackled and defeated him, a whack! to his skull he’d believed to be thick as concrete, a whack! to his gut, and another whack! to his groin, staggering and stunned Bix was trying to read the ransom note a second time, trying to make sense of whatever it was, what twisted logic, The Eye That “Sees” was demanding, only then thinking to ask—was Skyler safe? Their son Skyler, was
he
safe?—and Betsey seemed almost to be laughing at him, laughing at such a question, scornful, squeezing Bix’s thick wrist, of course Skyler was safe, why would kidnappers want
him
? And Bix said, “Betsey, wait: this doesn’t make sense. ‘The Eye That “Sees” ’—isn’t asking
for money. Whoever this is, they aren’t asking for money. You told me that Bliss was hiding somewhere—is she? Is this a game? Bliss and Skyler are—hiding somewhere?” Staring at his wife who was crowding uncomfortably close to him, a smell of something sour in her breath, a glisten of something fierce in her eyes, her smile was charged with God’s wrath, Bix Rampike saw and was frightened and his heart clenched, his bowels clenched as not for many years had the conviction come to him, visceral, of the gut, an outmatched athlete’s epiphany in mid-stride, breathing through his mouth running pounding on the field with something throbbing in his ankle, lifts his arms to intercept—what?—as
whack! whack! whack!
he’s brought down for the final time knowing
This, I can’t do. This is beyond me
seeing that his wife’s so-familiar face was not so familiar to him now, a girl’s face, a girl’s angry face, a girl’s puffy-pale skin beneath swaths of pancake makeup so haphazardly applied, or in poor light, that the makeup mask ended abruptly at Betsey’s jawline, and her bright cherry-red lipstick was both freshly applied and thick-caked as if smeared without a mirror and now partially eaten away. The dark hair that had been “lightened”—“rinsed”—“permed”—was now shapeless and frizzy as if Betsey had shampooed her hair hastily and had not taken time to “condition” it. Strangest of all, though it was early morning and Betsey had been awake, as she’d said, for most of the night, yet she was wearing a striking outfit suitable for lunch at the Village Women’s Club, a cream-colored cashmere sweater set, the cardigan with a ribbed bodice, sprinkling of seed pearls, had not Bix Rampike’s secretary arranged for the purchase of this high-quality apparel at the VastValley Neiman Marcus, for a price beyond six hundred dollars?—and Betsey was wearing chic new charcoal-gray wool slacks and, around her neck, on a delicate gold chain, a beautiful little gold cross that closely resembled the beautiful little gold cross from Tiffany that Bix had given their daughter for Christmas…“You! You are to blame!” Betsey was accusing, her voice not raised and yet, in Bix’s ears, piercing, deafening, “You should have been here to protect us! You are the father, you have allowed Satan into this household, and our daughter is the sacrifice.” Bix stood rooted to the spot. The final
whack!
had concussed his brain. He could not think, his brain had gone dead. Only with his eyes could he look again at the ransom note: “‘The Eye That “Sees” ’—where?”