My Sister, My Love (54 page)

Charisma, it was. Big-Daddy Bix Rampike radiated charisma too, like sweat-drops shaken off Big-Daddy’s handsome head.

Pastor Bob laid a hand on Skyler’s shoulder. To comfort, or to restrain.

“‘The wind bloweth where it will.’ All right. But let Miriam tend to you, son. And take a shower before you leave, and change into clean clothes. We can provide you with clean clothes. You can’t go to your mother in her hour
of need looking the way you do, son. You look like death, and you smell. You just can’t do that, son.”

With a show of sudden confidence, though very likely the canny evangelical minister felt a deep distrust of the situation and of his own complicity in it, Pastor Bob pushed the keys to the Dodge station wagon in Skyler’s direction. A phone had been ringing, and Pastor Bob turned to answer it. “Yes? I’m here.” His voice betrayed a mild exasperation tempered by hope. Skyler signaled
Thanks!
Taking up the keys, he had to believe he had earned, though made to grovel and plead like any supplicant son.

Skyler was led away by Nurse Miriam who chided him for having picked at his stitches. It must have been, Skyler and Miriam knew each other: Skyler hadn’t paid much attention to the woman in this scene, as, in recasting the exchange now, I have purposefully omitted others who’d been coming and going in the background, as in a very amateur or very arty film; for always at The Ark, there were people; faces familiar to Skyler, and faces wholly unknown; there was even a nervously barking dog, somewhere at the rear of the house; phones ringing, footsteps on the stairs, cries of, “Pastor Bob? Got a minute?”—so resented by Skyler Rampike, who wanted attention exclusively on himself, they were virtually filtered out, and are vanished from my memory.

Except Miriam. Here was Miriam, one of Pastor Bob’s “inner” family, living at The Ark, as Skyler belonged to the “outer” family. Many times since leaving rehab Skyler had eaten meals prepared by Miriam and others, and Skyler had helped out in the kitchen grateful to be included. For all her authority Miriam had the look of an ex-user, too. That guardedness about the eyes, that eagerness to be wholly
in the moment.
Miriam was younger than Betsey Rampike but had a soft raddled face like Betsey Rampike’s face and a soft-sliding-voluptuous body like Betsey Rampike’s body except Miriam in stained work-trousers, man’s flannel shirt over a T-shirt, a kerchief around her head, was in no way glamorous like sexy-Mummy Betsey Rampike. Yet her eyes fastened on lanky-late-teen Skyler with a chiding-maternal intimacy: “These stitches! Lucky you aren’t infected, the way you’ve been picking at them with dirty fingernails.”

In his psycho-sick-kid career Skyler had come to believe that most ail
ments are psycho-caused: psycho-somatic. What exactly
is
an infection? Something in the blood, like an invasion? Could an infection be fatal?

Shamed Skyler was made to sit at a sink. Deftly Miriam removed the ghastly stitching with a small scissors. A torment of violent itching, he’d have clawed at with his nails except Miriam caught his hands. “No! Just stop.” Miriam washed his face, that throbbed as if with fever, in lukewarm water; Miriam applied
All-Sterile 70% Isopropyl Alcohol First Aid Antiseptic
to his wounds, and covered them with oddly shaped starkly white Band-Aids. In a mirror Skyler gaped at himself, shocked: That was
him
?

“Pray your face will heal without scars. Try to keep your hands
off.
”

Next, Skyler showered. First time in many days, shameful to admit. Without unraveling the rat-tail he managed to shampoo his straggly hair. How good it felt to wash himself, to stand beneath a pelting shower with his eyes shut, faint with gratitude. He loved Pastor Bob, who had treated him with such kindness. Almost, he loved Miriam who had bathed his wounds so tenderly. Of the great archetypes of which our spiritual lives are seemingly comprised, that of Father-Son/Mother-Son is ubiquitous. When Skyler blundered into The Ark that morning with his usual lack of foresight, like a naive swimmer diving into a ten-foot surf, he could not have anticipated a happy ending.

Here is what I have learned, from the effort of composing this document: Not all “symbolic” occasions are contrived. Some spring naturally from “life.”

Awaiting Skyler after his shower were fresh-laundered clothes: baggy cotton T-shirt, boxer shorts, brown trousers that fitted him too loosely at the waist and too short in the legs, a wool flannel shirt of Pastor Bob’s and heavy-duty white wool socks.

In the kitchen, Miriam insisted upon providing Skyler with a light lunch for the trip, since he hadn’t wanted to eat breakfast at The Ark; she pressed upon him a Thermos filled with fresh-squeezed orange juice. As if Skyler were driving a thousand miles and not less than one hundred: Skyler stammered thanks. A sudden urge came over him, to seize the woman’s hand and kiss it.

Miriam didn’t know who he was. Only Pastor Bob knew. Skyler’s secret was safe with Pastor Bob. He believed this.

Love love love you all! Someday, I will know how to show this.

But where was Pastor Bob? Not in his office? Skyler had hoped that the minister would still be around to say good-bye to him and to warn him about driving carefully but Pastor Bob had departed for his morning crisis. Miriam led Skyler through the rectory to a rear door opening into the garage where the battered old 2001 Dodge station wagon was parked. On its sides hand-lettered in bronze paint:
NEW CANAAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF CHRIST RISEN.

“Skyler, we love you. Jesus will be your companion.”

“’I BELIEVE: HELP THOU MY UNBELIEF.’”

He drove. On I-95 he drove. Gripping the steering wheel of the battered old Dodge station wagon he drove. In the right-hand lane of the thunderous Turnpike he drove. He drove at no more than the speed limit as eighteen-wheel trailer-trucks overtook his vehicle and passed him in derisive clouds of toxic exhaust. He drove! He drove bravely gritting his teeth. He drove sitting straight behind the wheel as the driver of a military vehicle loaded with explosives. Yet he drove fearless! He drove with determination and with concentration. He drove into the bright wintry-windy day. He drove into a bright wintry-windy day of a month/year he could not now have named.
Son, today is the twenty-seventh. Son, you don’t want to put yourself in danger, or her.
He drove into wintry sunshine glaring from the chrome of hurtling vehicles. He drove beneath a fantastical sky of high-scudding white clouds beautiful as no clouds he’d ever seen except, as Heidi Harkness giggled and squirmed in Sky’s ropey-muscled boy-arms, on the insides of his eyelids after ingesting a few grainy grains of exotic-named
foxy methoxy
his girl had smuggled back from a Thursday in Manhattan but why think of this now, now it’s too late. Grimly he drove. Undaunted he drove. Not-thinking of Heidi Harkness and not-thinking of Elyot Grubbe required enormous concentration as he drove. At age nineteen years, eleven months and three weeks he drove. He drove in despair that he would live to his twentieth birthday. He drove in despair that he would ever make sense of his life. He drove now hunched slightly forward as if clinging to the steering wheel. He drove gripping the steering wheel of Pastor Bob’s old Dodge station wagon tight in both
big-knuckled hands as if expecting the wheel to twist suddenly and catapult the clumsy rattling station wagon emblazoned
NEW CANAAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF CHRIST RISEN
through the concrete median and into oncoming traffic and fiery oblivion. He drove thinking
It could be so quick.
He drove thinking
With Skyler’s luck, it would not be quick.
He drove hearing Grandmother Rampike’s sharp voice
Going to be a cripple? Going to limp, for life?
He drove with exasperating slowness in the right-hand lane for he was not a confident driver. He drove at less than sixty-five miles-per-hour for beyond that speed the station wagon began to shake and shudder. He drove past the exit for
EDISON
and at once his brain (hippocampus?) began to throw off sparks of Repressed Memory
*
quickly blocked. He drove past
EDISON
, and he drove past
METUCHEN.
He drove past such lyric New Jersey exits as
RAHWAY
^†
—
ELIZABETH—NEWARK—NEWARK AIRPORT—UNION CITY—WEEHAWKEN—HACKENSACK
. He drove with mounting anxiety not knowing why. He drove recalling the first time he’d attended prayer services at the New Canaan Evangelical Church of Christ Risen at Pastor Bob’s invitation and how mesmerized he’d been by the minister’s sermon to the mixed-race, mixed-age congregation on the “eternal good news” of the Gospels. Recalling Pastor Bob’s weirdly scaly burn-scar face and deep-baritone voice he drove. In awe of the man’s shrewd/kindly eyes that seemed to single out each individual in the hall he drove. He drove recalling his conviction
This is it, where I belong.
He drove hearing again the minister’s voice echoing as in the aftermath of a powerful dream: “‘I am come a light into the world that whosoever believeth in me shall not abide in darkness.’” He drove wiping tears from his eyes. He drove without hope and yet—with what hope! Seeing
GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE 2 MI.
he drove beginning to sweat inside his odd-fitting clothes. He drove beginning to think yes, probably it had been a mistake, this journey. To set off without having called his mother first, as Pastor Bob
had suggested. Yet he drove somehow convinced that he would see her, he could not be prevented from seeing her, for she had summoned
him.
Hearing his fumbling voice—“M-Mother: remember me? I am Sk-Sk-Skyler”—he drove. Rehearsing the words he would utter if a stranger greeted him at the door of 9 Magnolia Terrace, Spring Hollow, New York: “I am Sk-Skyler Rampike. I am B-Betsey Rampike’s s-son.” He drove unable to remember when he’d last seen his mother. Not TV-Mummy but in life. Two years ago? Three? In the life of an adolescent three years is a very long time for adolescence itself is infinity. After TV-Mummy and the break-up with Heidi Harkness Skyler could not bear to think of his mother and refused to accept any call from her even when he was summoned to Headmaster Shovell’s office to accept such a call he’d refused
No! no I can’t, not ever I hate her
and now he drove recalling these angry words with shame for had not Pastor Bob warned him
We must forgive those who have wronged us, Skyler lest our hatred turn to poison in our bowels.

Distracted by such thoughts he lost his way. For a confused moment he lost his way. Having glimpsed an exit sign for
GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE
impulsively he exited and discovered belatedly that he’d made a mistake, had no idea what he’d done wrong but it was wrong for now he was headed not for the bridge but for
FORT LEE
, New Jersey. And abruptly now in slow-congested traffic moving with the sluggish peristalsis of a blocked colon his speed was reduced to five miles an hour. Above, the sky was choked with clouds like distended/discolored tumors. Heavy stacked cumulus rain-clouds, shit-clouds shaped like hydrogen-bomb explosions. How had it happened, Skyler who was so anxious to arrive at Spring Hollow, New York, had missed the George Washington Bridge? How is it possible to “miss” so mammoth/magisterial a structure as the George Washington Bridge? Yet neither the “upper level” nor the “lower level” could Skyler approach for he was lost in Fort Lee, New Jersey: a rat’s maze/sinkhole of narrow, one-way, dead-end and under-excavation streets. He would never get to Spring Hollow! He would never arrive at his destination! He began to sob in hoarse guttural sobs like choking. He began to curse—“Fuck! Fuck
fuck
!”—for there was no one to blame except Skyler himself, his own stupidity and ill-luck which is but a form of stupidity and yet: Skyler had no choice but to continue, had he? As the Möbius strip has no choice but to
turn endlessly? In a slow crawl of exhaust-smitten traffic on N. Syke Street in Fort Lee, New Jersey…

POOR SKYLER! THWARTED MIDWAY IN HIS JOURNEY TO SPRING HOLLOW, NEW
York, and for all we know, maybe he never arrives there. While Skyler is lost in
medias race
in Fort Lee, New Jersey, we can use the lull in the narrative to present a miscellany of items too unwieldy to have “worked into” previous chapters.

For instance, throughout this seemingly candid document Skyler has been purposefully reticent about his relations with his parents. The unsuspecting reader would think from “First Love, Farewell!” that Bix and Betsey rarely made any attempt to contact their troubled son, having more or less abandoned him to psychiatric facilities and “high-security” prep schools; the fact is, Betsey did telephone Skyler from time to time at the Academy at Basking Ridge; if not Betsey personally, one of Betsey’s cheery female assistants at Heaven Scent, Inc., leaving messages for Skyler to please call back. (But Skyler never did.) Shortly before Betsey’s appearance on the Randy Riley show, the first step in Betsey Rampike’s twenty-city book tour for her new memoir
From Hell to Heaven
:
11 Steps for the Faithful
, Betsey’s Heaven Scent partner/financial advisor/romantic companion Nathan Kissler placed several urgent calls to Skyler in the hope of introducing himself over the phone to Betsey’s son, of whom he had heard numerous troubling things, but of course Skyler had not returned these calls; Mr. Kissler had sent a lengthy, thoughtfully written e-mail to Skyler explaining his role in Skyler’s mother’s life as her “closest friend and advisor”; this e-mail Skyler had in fact received, jeeringly skimmed and deleted within seconds, as one might delete an obscene advertisement from the computer screen. Poor Mr. Kissler, deeply in love with Betsey Rampike and determined to be a “father, of a kind” to Betsey’s problem-son, sent Skyler the hard copy of this e-mail, via certified U.S. mail; which Skyler accepted, imagining that the envelope might contain a check from Betsey and when it did not, tearing up the heartfelt letter in typical adolescent
pick
.

Reader, what was I to do? Believe me, if I had introduced this distracting material into the melancholy love story of Skyler Rampike and Heidi
Harkness, teen-exiles of Tabloid Hell who had, for a brief enchanted spell, “found each other” at the Academy at Basking Ridge, the result would have been as jarring as, let’s say, a sudden eruption of John Philip Sousa into the ethereal musical meditations of Estonian Arvo Pärt. You would all have hated it, and reviewers would have savagely denounced such a blatant change of tone in all violation of Aristotelian unity.

Another omission from “First Love, Farewell!” is Skyler’s silence on the subject of finances: who is paying for such exorbitantly expensive private schools as the Academy at Basking Ridge,
*
for the sulky Skyler; who is paying for Skyler’s exorbitantly expensive medications, most of which, in defiance of doctors’ orders, he refused to take, or—is the reader shocked?—sold to certain of his Old Claghorne fellow residents, who felt the need to self-medicate at any opportunity. (The reader will be shocked to hear that Skyler dealt the powerful antidepressant Zilich on a regular basis to a boy on his floor so physically and psychically impaired, the diagnosis HSR might have been branded on the boy’s forehead; Skyler took from this “collateral kid”—as the offspring of disgraced public figures were called, by themselves as by others at Basking Ridge—as much as one hundred dollars per week, and felt little guilt, or none, when the boy overdosed, whether deliberately or accidentally, and was hurriedly removed from the school as, a few weeks later, Heidi Harkness would be removed. But not a hint of this shameful episode did you hear from Skyler, right?)

Though Skyler was rarely other than slovenly dressed at Basking Ridge, showered only sporadically and wore the same grungy clothes for days in succession, the reader should know that his parents, especially Betsey, provided him with a generous “clothes and living allowance”; neither Betsey nor Bix ever forgot Skyler’s birthday in March, directing their assistants to acquire appropriate
happy-birthday-son
cards for him, that they signed
with love
, to accompany birthday presents: from Betsey, usually an expensive cable-knit pull-over sweater, and from Bix, a sports-related gift, for in
stance a nifty genuine cowhide catcher’s mitt, or a Canuck Red-Eye hockey stick with Skyler’s initials branded into the wood. At the time of Skyler’s withdrawal from classes at Basking Ridge, as we’ve seen, Bix insisted upon Skyler remaining at school with the hope that Skyler might “snap out of it” and “recover”; when Skyler failed to recover, and may have grown worse, Bix called several times personally to leave messages for Skyler in a grave voice: “Skyler! Headmaster Shovell has been telling me some very upsetting things about your behavior there and I am registering my extreme disappointment that you should let me down another time, son. He claims that you became involved with a girl there—the daughter of Leander Harkness!—and that this ‘seriously disturbed’ girl tried to kill herself—and drugs seem to have been a part of it. Your therapist there says you’ve stopped coming to see her, but I am still being billed. You had better answer this call, Skyler. Maybe you can manipulate your gullible mother, but you can’t play your sick-psycho-kid tricks on your dad, got it?
Quid pro quod
!”

Another omission in Skyler’s account of his Basking Ridge year has to do with the exact nature of his relationship with Elyot Grubbe; or, rather, Elyot’s relationship with Skyler. For it must have become painfully clear as the weeks passed that while Skyler thought condescendingly of Elyot as simply a friend, Elyot thought of Skyler as something more than a friend; only a prig-homophobe could have failed to interpret Elyot’s shy smiles and lovesick manner, which Elyot tried to disguise, not very convincingly, by listening obsessively to music on his headphones. And so it was a crude and cruel gesture for Skyler to bring Heidi Harkness into the picture, as if to flaunt his girlfriend to poor Elyot, and the fact that, unlike Elyot, beneath his weirdness Skyler Rampike was
a normal guy.

Poor Elyot Grubbe, I.Q. 159, destination Harvard Medical School, made to be a hapless observer of those two love-smitten teens Skyler and Heidi so visibly hand-in-hand, whispering together, kissing; the most defiantly unattractive of couples, and both, to Elyot’s chagrin, so tall; in the very throes of what the cool-headed reader with a Gallic flair recognized immediately as a
folie-à-do
!
*
Worse yet, as we’ve seen Elyot seemed to have
fallen in love with Heidi Harkness, too. (Fortunately, a
folie-à-trey
did not develop. Skyler saw to that.) No wonder that, finally, after Heidi’s collapse, Elyot reacted against his self-involved insufferable friend who, though Elyot’s oldest companion from idyllic pre-trauma Fair Hills days, frequently smelled of his body, and his breath; and wrote him a chill little note ending their friendship.

How proud I was of Elyot Grubbe, at that moment! I did not see this coming, but it felt just right. Guilt-wracked Skyler got exactly what he deserved in this succinct riposte.

And all this escaped even the canny reader’s notice, didn’t it? Do you know why?

For instance, not one of you was sharp-eyed enough to have noted how, in a silly-tender moment typical of teens, Heidi Harkness beguiled Skyler Rampike by playfully unlatching a pearly “cap” on her charmingly crooked front teeth: “See? My mother wanted my smile to be ‘perfect’—so is it?”