My Sister, My Love (4 page)

SKYLER WAKE UP

Not his sister but his mother is pulling at him, in the confusion of that long-ago morning that was no morning but inky-black night as at the bottom of the sea.

Mummy with disheveled hair, agitated eyes. Mummy in one of her silky nightgowns and Mummy’s large soft swaying breasts straining against the fabric, Skyler has glimpsed through a doorway Daddy gripping and kneading Mummy in playful-Daddy hands and now as then Skyler looks quickly away.

Skyler? where is

Near the floor of the sea such bizarre life-forms all mouth, sharp glittery teeth, fins, spiny backbones. Yet such a sweet-groggy sleep for a child to be wakened from, Skyler understands that something is very wrong for Mummy is not so angry, Mummy is upset and confused and Skyler tries to push Mummy away but Mummy is too strong for him, with a small exasperated-Mummy cry she pulls back the bedsheets where Skyler has been lying hunched in a pretzel-twist on his left side, both hands pressed between his knees and his knees drawn up toward his chest like a creature not yet hatched.

Skyler is she in here hiding in here?

Frantic Mummy checks the foot of Skyler’s bed as if Skyler’s six-year-old sister might be hiding there, somehow. With a sob/grunt Mummy kneels to check beneath the bed, stumbles then to Skyler’s closet, switches on the light and paws through Skyler’s hanging things, kneels and gropes about the floor. Muttering to herself
Where! Where is
and returning
then stumbling like a drunken woman to Skyler standing beside his bed, dazed and frightened in pajamas, shivering barefoot, that look in Mummy’s eyes, the alarm in Mummy’s voice, briskly Mummy pulls Skyler out of the room, across the hall to Bliss’s room, obviously Mummy has already been in Bliss’s room looking for her, Bliss’s bed is empty, Mummy has been tearing at the bedspread and at the sheets and Mummy is murmuring to herself as often when he is alone Skyler murmurs to himself for Mummy’s thoughts are spilling out of Mummy’s head like skittering bats. Skyler wonders: Where is Daddy? Has Daddy taken Bliss away in the night? Is it Bliss’s birthday outing in New York City, where Daddy and Bliss have gone? Skyler is confused, Skyler will remember none of this clearly, the events of this night about which he will be questioned and will question himself though recalling how in Bliss’s room (formerly a nursery with a door in the wall like a magic door opening into Mummy and Daddy’s big bedroom) there is a lamp on Bliss’s bedside table in the shape of Mother Goose which had once been Skyler’s lamp when he’d been a baby, this is Bliss’s special lamp which has to be turned on at night or Bliss can’t sleep or, if she sleeps, she will have nightmares of ugly-shaped things that hide beneath her bed as in the murky penumbra beyond the brightly lit ice rinks where the crowd erupts in spontaneous applause at the mere sight of Miss Tots-on-Ice Debutante, Tiny Miss StarSkate, Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess except it is a different time now, Mummy is not joining in the applause now but gripping Skyler’s arm as if somehow Skyler is to blame as Mummy stares at Bliss’s small bed with its white satin headboard, beautiful frosted-pink satin spread decorated with white ice-skate appliqués, now tangled on the floor with the bedclothes, and Bliss’s pillow looks as if it has been thrown down, hard. And there is the smell.

Bad girl! Not again

On purpose to spite me

Both Mummy and Skyler see the stained mattress, and smell the sharp ammoniac smell of urine, and worse-than-urine, for there are dark mud-colored star-shaped smears on one of the white linen sheets. And Mummy is furious, or is Mummy frightened?—digging her nails into Skyler’s thin shoulders inside his flannel pajama top, Mummy pleads with him
Skyler what have you done to Bliss? Where have you taken your little sister?

IN THE BEGINNING—LONG AGO!—THERE WASN’T BLISS.

There was Skyler, but not Bliss. Not yet Bliss!

No one knows this. No one has recorded this. Of the tens of thousands of Bliss-cultists who have polluted cyberspace with their crazed factoids and perve-rantings not one of them knows this: that in the beginning it was Skyler who’d been meant to be the star. It was Skyler who’d been meant to be the figure-skating prodigy of Fair Hills, New Jersey. Or some sort of prodigy.

“SKYLER! THIS WILL BE OUR SECRET.”

A very cold morning in the second week of December 1991. Mummy was breathless, and Mummy was excited, and Mummy was wearing her long red quilted winter coat lined with goose-feather down so it weighed scarcely anything, and on Mummy’s head, pulled down snug over Mummy’s dark hair, was a knitted cap of vivid rainbow colors, a cap with a floppy eight-inch tassel like something a TV cartoon character or a clown might wear to make you smile. Unless I was mistaken, for Skyler was so frequently mistaken, peering up anxiously at the giant adults who surrounded him looming over him with their cryptic smiles, their frowns, their grimaces, their tics and twitches and mysterious signals you could not ever hope to decode, probably yes, four-year-old Skyler was wrong about Mummy’s new cap, the rainbow-knit cap with the floppy tassel was intended to be
stylish
, recently purchased at The Village Arctic Shoppe on Main Street where in the shoppe’s show window it was displayed on
anorexic-adolescent-girl models with skis or ice-skates slung over their shoulders. Mummy’s new tassel-cap with its rainbow stripes was
serious.

“—our secret, Skyler, which you must never tell Daddy, you know what a cruel tease Daddy can be. Skyler, please?”

Skyler’s eager little head nodded
Yes! Yes Mummy.

“—scolds me for ‘wasting gas’! ‘Never staying home’! Next thing, he’ll be checking the what-is-it on my car—‘odormeter.’ You know, tells how many miles you’ve driven? A little gauge, on the dash?”

Skyler nodded, less certain now. Wasn’t sure he knew what an “odormeter” was but he knew what’s called a “dash.”

“This little drive of ours, with a—destination. Which I think you will like, Skyler!”

This little drive
was a drive we’d begun to take frequently together, Mummy and me, ostensibly into town on errands of Mummy’s but by a leisurely, looping, circuitous route that took us miles into the “scenic” countryside north and east of the Historic Village of Fair Hills, New Jersey (to which we’d come to live only a few months ago, in September) and yes, often there was a destination to which Mummy headed as if helplessly, by these circuitous routes. “Daddy doesn’t need to know, Skyler. ‘What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt us.’” Mummy laughed, with a shivery shudder.

“Skyler! Shove your stubby little arms into these sleeves.”

Damn: I’ve forgotten to “set the scene.”

We were in the garage. We’d “snuck out” into the garage through a back door opening off the kitchen and we were whispering. That is, Mummy was whispering. Often Mummy whispered, it had come to seem natural for Mummy to whisper which meant that you should whisper back or better yet just nod your head
Yes Mummy!
For there was some urgency here. The phone had been ringing much of the morning but not one of the calls was the call Mummy had been waiting for, only just tradesmen, telephone solicitors, Mummy wasn’t answering any more calls but would let the calls be picked up by the answering service which Mummy would check later which would be soon enough for Mummy, who didn’t want to sabotage this special day. In her cheery-jokey mood already zipped up into the quilted red coat that made Mummy look like—well, a bobbing red balloon, and
with her gaily colored tassel flopping over her forehead, Mummy paused to kiss Skyler’s cute-kid snub-nose though the nose was probably leaking, as Daddy complained the poor damn kid seems always to have a cold. “Shhh! Don’t want Maria to hear us.” Hurriedly Mummy was bundling me into a fleece-lined little parka with a hood made tight and snug, almost too tight and too snug, by drawstrings at the neck manipulated by Mummy. And on my stubby four-year-old’s legs warm flannel sweatpants, and on my stubby feet waterproof boots. Both the parka and the sweatpants still had tags attached for they were new purchases from The Village Arctic Kids Shoppe.

“Skyler, do you hear—? Is it—”

Mummy’s eyes widened in an expression of guilty fear. We listened.

Faintly in the distance, maybe: a wan, wailing sound. Could be a siren. Could be an airplane high overhead. Could be the wind in the 150-year-old brick chimney about which Mrs. Cuttlebone the perky/canny real estate agent who’d sold Mr. and Mrs. Rampike the overpriced house had nervously joked: “Ghosts! All our ‘historic’ Fair Hills houses have them.” But the danger passed, no one opened the door behind us. No one stared at Mummy with dark-quizzical eyes and inquired politely in heavily accented English when did Mrs. Rampike think she would be returning?

“—will be all right. Doesn’t need
me.
Nobody needs
me. I need me.
”

In our three-car garage only two vehicles remained that morning. For Daddy was away at Baddaxe Oil “corporate headquarters” and had taken his shiny black Lincoln Continental, that Mummy was not “encouraged” to drive. Left behind was Daddy’s even bigger and heavier steely-gray Land Rover that was so large and so “tricky to maneuver,” only Daddy could be trusted to drive it. But there was Mummy’s lime-green Chevrolet Impala (a ’94 model that Daddy bought for Mummy to “cheer my gal up” when we’d moved from Parsippany to Fair Hills where Mummy had not wanted to move) that Mummy drove into town at least once a day. It was in the backseat of the lime-green Impala that Mummy had placed, with no explanation, a bulky zip-up satchel. Sharp-eyed Skyler asked, “Mummy, what’s in there?”

Was it Baby? Baby Sister? Puny little Edna Louise? That Mummy did not want, or anyway did not want so soon after Skyler? That Mummy is tired of, for
crying all the time, for being colicky and keeping Mummy awake, a fretful baby, a homely baby, a blue-bug-eyed baby, a baldie baby with only a few blond hairs on her head, a silly girl-baby missing a real pee-pee like Skyler’s, an exasperating baby demanding always to be fed (chalky-milk formula prepared by Maria), demanding always to have her diaper changed, needing to be bathed and again fed, nappy-nap time and diaper changed, bath, towel-dry, new diaper, all babies do is sleep pee and poop and shriek like a cat being killed and babies try to win your heart by cooing and “smiling” and reaching their astonishing little baby-fingers at you but babies are SO BORING unable even to say their names or walk upright or go potty in the bathroom using the flush. Not like Skyler who is Mummy’s little man!

Behind the wheel of the ’94 lime-green Chevy Impala, Mummy was humming. Here, you could see that Betsey Rampike was
happy.

“Let’s get buckled in, Skyler. ‘Safety first.’”

Since Skyler was still a little too small to sit comfortably in the passenger’s seat beside Mummy, Mummy had placed a cushion there for him. (Was this legal? The seat belt fit Skyler kind of loosely.) So proud to have graduated from the silly strap-in kiddy-car-seat in the back that, when homely Edna Louise had to be transported, was used now exclusively for
her.

Surreptitiously Skyler glanced into the backseat at the satchel. Was it stirring? Was there a living creature inside?
Was
it Baby?

Skyler asked another time what was in the satchel and Mummy said with a mysterious smile he’d find out, soon.

“Here we go!”

The Chevy Impala emerged out of the garage rear-end-first like an explosion.

THE WINTER AIR WAS BLINDING-BRIGHT. OVERHEAD THE SKY WAS A
painted-looking robin’s-egg blue. On the ground snow lay in sculpted drifts and swirls vivid-white as detergent or Styrofoam. (Hey forgive me: this is how the memory is coming to me in a blinding rush like Dexedrine. And my heart is hammering, too: 260 beats a minute!) You had to conclude that, if there were airborne “toxins” in the idyllic hills of north-
central New Jersey where the wealthy live, said toxins blown by mischievous winds from the “industrial corridor” fifty miles to the east, out of fire-rimmed smokestacks lining the New Jersey Hellpike, these toxins were magically transformed into the most dazzling-white snow. Mummy fumbled to put on stylish oversized gold-plastic-framed dark glasses, and Skyler blinked eager watery eyes. Each little drive with Mummy was an adventure!

Serpentine Ravens Crest Drive! In my fevered brain, where I travel ceaselessly like an astronaut reeling about in space, there’s the dreamlike scroll of neighbors’ houses (“neighbors” who were utter strangers and their houses barely visible from the road) and the curves, turns and twists of the too-narrow drive where the imminent danger was oncoming traffic: distracted Fair Hills wives like Mummy careening in the middle of the road, as Mummy habitually did, in oversized vehicles like the Chevy Impala. It was Mummy’s custom to drive slowly along Pheasant Run, Hawksmoor Lane, Woodsmoke Drive and the Great Road (frequently traveled, in long-ago history books, by General George Washington and his aides in the 1770s), passing roadside mailboxes with such names as “Tyce”—“Hambruck”—“McGreety”—“Stubbe”—“Brugh.” This phase of the
little drive
had become so familiar to me, I had memorized the names and pronounced them, as Mummy did, in a tone of admiration, awe, wonderment—“Frass”—“Durkee”—“Bloomgren”—“Hudd.” Even as a young child I seemed to know that, hidden among this litany of names, were the names of Mummy’s and Daddy’s friends-to-be; as the Fair Hills Golf and Country Club (at Cross Tree Road and the Great Road), the Pebble Hill Tennis Club (on hilly Brookside Drive), the Sylvan Glen Golf Club (on labyrinthine Sylvan Glen Pass, heralded with
PRIVATE ROAD NO WAY OUT
signs which Mummy, gnawing at her lower lip, daringly ignored), and (in the heart of the cramped little “historic quarter” in the Village of Fair Hills, on Idle Place), the Fair Hills Women’s Club in its classy Italianate villa, were destinations-to-come. “The Sylvan Glen Golf Club is much more exclusive than the Fair Hills Golf and Country Club,” Mummy confided in Skyler, who was always interested in Mummy’s insider knowledge. “—Mrs. Cuttlebone assured us, if you are invited to join ‘The Sylvan’ as it’s called, you can join any other Fair Hills club you wish.” Of the
Pebble Hill Tennis Club, Mummy said, “Mrs. Cuttlebone’s son is engaged to the daughter of the president of the club, she has promised to introduce your father and me sometime this holiday season. Daddy does play tennis, just as Daddy plays golf, and squash, and raquetball, but we could take tennis lessons together at the club, Skyler! You and me.”

Have I said that, behind the wheel of the lime-green Impala, Mummy was eager and hopeful as a young girl?—or, for that matter, a young boy? Her mood was adolescent, yearning: you would not want to thwart such yearning.

Have I said that Mummy had beautiful (anxious, glistening-wet, somewhat close-set) brown eyes that, fixed upon me, Skyler, seemed to penetrate me, to the (modest) depths of my child-soul? That I loved Mummy desperately before even there was desperation in our lives?

Those
little drives
! Naturally, you’re a kid, you think
what is
will go on forever. That dreamy spell when Mummy’s “little man” was at last old enough to be a companion to Mummy yet not quite old enough for kindergarten. When Daddy was a “rising” young executive at Baddaxe Oil headquarters a mere fifteen miles away and so returned home for dinner most nights by 8
P.M.
When Skyler’s baby sister was so young—so small—you could pretend she—“it”—did not matter. And Mummy was eager to escape the big white Colonial house in which the phone so often rang and yet:
it was never the call for which Mummy waited.

“Skyler! Tell me one true thing.”

Inside the quilted red coat, Mummy must’ve been perspiring. As Mummy drove the Chevy Impala in choppy waves—pressing down on the gas pedal and then releasing it, again pressing down, again releasing it—so the engine seemed to be hiccuping, or starting to stall. Skyler’s sensitive nostrils picked up a familiar talcumy-briny smell of Mummy’s underarms and the shadowy crevice between Mummy’s breasts that was a dreamy comfort like a smell of baking bread or his own slept-in bedclothes when he pulled them over his head.
*

Sharply Mummy said, “Skyler? Are you listening? Tell me: why don’t people like me?”

Skyler stammered, “Mummy, I l-like you.”

“You? You’re my son. What do you know.”

Mummy laughed to signal this was meant to be funny. But it didn’t seem funny. For already at age four—more precisely, four and a half—Skyler was forced to understand that love from such a source just wasn’t enough.

Mummy said, sighing, “It’s petty, I know. I try to pray each morning
God let me rise above this, Jesus help me for I am not just a sinner but a ridiculous person
and yet: people are crazy for Bix Rampike—why not
me
? I mean, wouldn’t some of it spill onto
me
? Wouldn’t you expect that? I’m Bix’s wife. Of course I don’t mean ‘crazy for me’—nobody has ever been crazy for me except some sex-crazed boy and that isn’t ‘liking’—there’s no dignity to that. (Excuse me for speaking frankly, Skyler, I realize that you are a boy, and I hope that you will be a normal, healthy boy but not a ‘sex-crazed’ boy. Not my Skyler! Not my little man!) What torments me is why don’t women like me. In Parsippany, I had friends. I had a few friends. Your daddy is ‘moving up the corporate ladder’ so damn fast, we never stay in one place long enough to ‘sink down roots’—you can’t count the wives of Bix’s business colleagues, those are
not friends.
Here in Fair Hills, all these women I meet, and I give them my telephone number, and I call them, or try to, why don’t they call me back? Fair Hills is so hateful, these women are so cruel, we’ve been here almost four months, men look at me, at least some men look at me, but the women just look through me. Skyler, why?”