My Sister, My Love (56 page)

THE LOOK IN THE WOMAN’S FACE, A DARK-SKINNED MARIA IN A STARCHED
white housekeeper’s uniform, Skyler understands that he has come too late.

“You are who? ‘Skee-ler’—”

“Where is my mother? Where is Betsey?”

Skyler has stumbled into a brightly lit foyer of mirrors and wallpaper sparkly and cheery as Christmas tinsel. Quickly the housekeeper backs off from him, her dark eyes veiled with pity. “Excuse me, I will bring Mr. Kissler.”

Blindly Skyler follows the woman into a living room lavishly furnished in what must be “period” pieces. How long ago, in what a distant and improbable country of Mummy-
little man
romance, Skyler’s young mother searched for “period pieces”—“antiques”—for the sprawling old Colonial on Ravens Crest Drive. Here, in a smaller but showier setting, like a store-window display, are plush velvet sofas, chintz-covered chairs bright as parrots’ wings, oddly shaped floor lamps, brocaded wall hangings. On the velvet sofas are cushions large enough to smother an elephant. Underfoot is an Oriental rug thick as the snaky-skinned mats in the Gold Medal Gym, garlanded with flesh-colored cabbage roses and mustard-bright trim. How perfumy the air is! Skyler can scarcely catch his breath.

On the wall above a white marble fireplace, a large portrait of Betsey Rampike in the prime of her youthful beauty and Bliss in the crook of her arm, Bliss at about the age of five, very sweet, very blond and very pretty, with one of her silver tiaras on her curled and crimped blond hair. Though Betsey is a lush dark-eyed brunette, and Bliss is a fair-skinned blue-eyed blond, yet the painter, in the way of a kitsch-glamor-pop Renoir, has made the mother and daughter resemble each other to an uncanny degree.

Skyler backs off, shielding his eyes. Noooo.

All he’d been able to ingest that morning, the long heart-straining hours of that morning beginning in the windy dusk before dawn in the third-floor rented room on Pitts Street, so long ago he can barely recall it,
has been a few mouthfuls of the fresh-squeezed orange juice kindly Miriam gave him, that had tipped over in the passenger’s seat of the Dodge spilling sticky juice. So Skyler is dazed, and Skyler is not feeling so good.

Where is Betsey? Must be, by now the Maria-woman has told her that Skyler is here?

Through an archway of sculpted molding—a stark white frieze of nymphs, swans, girl-skaters—there is another, slightly smaller room in which, beneath blinding bright lights, and overseen by a team of a half-dozen individuals, a television interview seems to be in progress. A sofa has been pulled out at an angle from a wall, and other pieces of furniture artfully arranged as in a TV talk-show set; a glamorously made-up woman with a lilting exclamatory voice, whose face looks familiar to Skyler, is interviewing a middle-aged man with shellacked-looking black hair and a grief-stricken yet floridly tanned face. Seeing Skyler stumbling forward like a drunken boy the man quickly rises to approach him, interrupting the interview.

“Are you—Skyler? Betsey’s son?”

“Yes. Where is my mother? I want to see my mother.”

“Haven’t you been told, son? Your mother—our beloved Betsey—has passed away.”

“Passed away? Where?”

Skyler’s voice is young and raw-sounding and edged with contempt. Skyler is concerned that this stranger, a man in his early fifties whom Skyler doesn’t know, is extending both hands to him, and Skyler does not want to be touched.

“Skyler, I am Nathan Kissler. I think Betsey must have told you about me…” Kissler is Betsey’s partner in Heaven Scent, Inc. Financial advisor, “companion.” From somewhere, some surreptitious and unacknowledged glimpse into Tabloid Hell, Skyler seems to know that Kissler is Betsey Rampike’s fiancé.

“Skyler? Son? Why don’t you have a seat, here. We’ll get you something to drink, you are looking very pale. Of course this is a terrible shock to you. A terrible, terrible shock for all of us who love—loved—our darling Betsey…”

“Mister, could you not talk so
much.
I want to see my mother.”

Skyler gazes at Nathan Kissler with the derisive-male eyes of Bix Rampike. This dapper little man scarcely five-feet-six, Bix would tower over him, Skyler’s mother’s fiancé? And what does that mean—fiancé? Skyler is appalled at the thought that there might be something sexual between Kissler and his mother, isn’t going to think of anything so obscene. Kissler is wearing a black silk shirt, a black silk ascot, black Armani jeans that fit his narrow waist and hips snug as the jeans on a male model thirty years his junior. Especially offensive to Skyler’s sense of decorum is a black leather belt with a brass medallion buckle. And the man’s face isn’t tanned but has been expertly made up for the television cameras: pancake makeup with an orange base, eyelashes darkened with mascara. Sucking little fish-mouth, reddened.

Kissler is urging Skyler to sit down, the woman in the starched white uniform has hurried off to get him a glass of ice water, but Skyler eases away, doesn’t want to sit down, too many eyes are greedily fastened upon him. The TV cameraman has turned his camera in Skyler’s direction, little green light
on.
Kissler is saying gravely, “…passed away, Skyler, only this morning. After complications following surgery. The news has just been released and already there has been a deluge of—”

“But where is she? I want to see her.”

Skyler has the idea that, though she has “passed away,” Betsey is also somewhere close by, in another room in this house, preparing for a television interview. There are the bright lights, there are the cameras. Two cameramen. And the female interviewer whose face is familiar to Skyler. Why doen’t one of Betsey’s assistants tell her
Skyler is here
?

“…after the surgery, her heart couldn’t bear the strain…She’d wanted the operation to be kept utterly secret…no tabloid ‘leaks’! The funeral will be in two days, here in Spring Hollow.”

“But I want to see her. I want to see her now. I have a right to see her, I’m her son and she invited me here.”

Patiently Kissler explains: “Betsey’s ‘remains’ are still at the hospital, Skyler. There will be a private viewing at the funeral home—”

Skyler interrupts: “She left me something, didn’t she? Where is it?”

Quickly the TV interviewer intercedes, embracing Skyler warmly. Skyler is too stunned to resist, the woman is big-boned, fleshy, though glam
orous she is a motherly sort of woman, with muscles Skyler can feel, and hard spongey breasts the size of hubcaps. Now Skyler recognizes this woman: Zelda Zachiarias of
WomenSpeakOut.
“Skyler! Please accept my condolences for your loss. What a brave woman your mother was, Skyler! We’re preparing a special tribute to Betsey Rampike to be aired on Friday, and it would mean so much to us, as it would have meant so much to Betsey, if you would join us, Skyler. You see, Betsey spoke of you often. Betsey said, ‘Every hour of my life I pray to God, and to Jesus: Look after my son.’ Betsey believed without a doubt that you and she would be reconciled one day, Skyler. It was her great hope, and she had faith. Oh Skyler!—I can’t believe that Betsey Rampike will never again be on my show, as a model for women—mothers—who have suffered the most grievous loss, and survived. Yes, and triumphed. Not a word did Betsey want uttered of her ordeal—you know what a private—‘stoic’—person Betsey was—not a word of her struggle with—” The throaty voice drops solemnly, as if Zelda were trying to keep from bursting into tears, Skyler has to strain to hear what sounds like
cancer of the service.

Cancer of the service?
Skyler shudders.

Passionately Zelda Zachiarias continues, standing very close to Skyler, “Just before her surgery Betsey said, ‘Pray for me, Zelda. God will do the rest.’ So brave! For our TV audience, Skyler, will you just say a few…”

Skyler detaches himself from Zelda Zachiarias’s grip. Tries to shield his face from the rapacious TV cameramen advancing upon him. Hateful little green lights
on
, Skyler knows what that portends: Skyler Rampike is exposed.

Close by Nathan Kissler has been speaking through a cell phone. He seems wary of Skyler now, not so friendly. The air of paternal warmth has been replaced by a slightly ironic chill. Skyler returns to the subject of what his mother left for him, and Kissler says, with a pained smile, “Skyler, your mother left a will. Certainly, Betsey left a will. In fact, she may have left wills…She was always changing and ‘updating’ her will as new friends came into her life, and older friends invariably dropped out…There will be a formal reading of Betsey Rampike’s will in her lawyer’s office, in time. But in the meantime—”

Skyler says loudly, “Where is it, what Mummy left me? Is it somewhere
here?” and Kissler says, “Skyler, please keep your voice down. The last thing we want is for those hyenas and jackals out on the street to hear us. This is a terrible shock for all of us, not just you. Our big spring launch is coming up in three weeks, and we have more than six million dollars invested in Heaven Scent spring products. If only you’d called first, someone could have prepared you,” and Skyler says, “Where is it? My mother left me something. A letter, or a videotape…That was why she asked me to come here. What did you do with—” and Kissler says, “Skyler, there is no need to shout. We can hear you,” and Skyler says, “You don’t hear me! I’m asking, where is my mother? And where is what she left me? God damn you, I can look for it myself…”

Skyler tries to push past Nathan Kissler who, though shorter than Skyler by several inches, and older by three decades, is surprisingly agile, and strong; but Skyler manages to free a fist, and swing it, striking the older man on the bridge of his nose, and breaking it; there is a gratifying
crunch
! and a warm spurt of blood. But one of the private guards has appeared, a large dour-faced black man who calls Skyler “son” and gently but very firmly restrains him. Skyler is being walked somewhere, rapidly. As the guard grips his upper arms, Skyler walks rapidly, with buckling knees, like a cartoon character whose feet barely touch the ground. Now they are outside, in wintry air. Skyler struggles with the guard, but Skyler’s strength is fading; not the black man’s hands but something like a clamp, a vise, closes tight about Skyler’s chest; his lungs open in the cold fresh air as if sliced by a knife but the slit is too narrow, Skyler can’t suck in enough oxygen, overhead the sky is a mass of tumorous clouds, underfoot the frozen ground suddenly opens and Skyler falls through
*

“SON. THERE HAS BEEN A TRAGIC HISTORY BETWEEN US. BUT MAYBE—NOW
—
that will change.”

These words! Skyler swallowed hard.
Now
had to mean
now that your mother is dead.

The men were in a wood-plank booth in the Old Dutch Tavern in the historic old Washington Irving Inn in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where Skyler was spending the night after his mother’s funeral, at Bix’s expense. Since they’d entered the tavern, Bix had been speaking slowly and deliberately with what seemed, to Skyler’s hyper-acute ear, a slight drag to his voice, like the all-but-imperceptible limp an athlete, or an ex-athlete, tries to disguise. To the normal eye, the limp is imperceptible. But Skyler had no more a normal eye, or ear, than he had a normal right leg (femur, fibula, knee).

The shock of his former wife’s death seemed to have shaken Bix Rampike who seemed, to Skyler, less looming-tall and imposing than Skyler recalled. At the crowded
après-funeral
hosted by Nathan Kissler at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, Skyler had noticed his father drinking. There was a wounded-shaggy-bison look to the older man, something gray-grizzled in his eyebrows, a baffled fleshiness to the lower part of his face. Must be, Skyler thought, he’d still loved Betsey?

A man never ceases to love the mother of his children, son. That’s the bottom line.
^†

“Son? You’re listening, I hope.”

Quickly Skyler assured his frowning father, certainly he was listening.

“‘Maybe—now—that will change.’ You said.”

As always in this man’s presence, Skyler spoke with boyish optimism. Even in this time of shared mourning, for Skyler to be in close proximity to this man was to feel certain facial muscles, long dormant, stir to life:
Smile!
And a certain craven eagerness to his shoulders, leaning forward:
Yes Daddy?

Skyler had noticed that Bix had brought into the tavern with him a briefcase of soft dark Italian leather, and now Bix lifted this briefcase onto the table between them, slowly and ceremonially; he seemed about to open it, but did not. How poignantly furrowed Bix Rampike’s forehead was, how his soulful eyes glistened with a kind of brooding regret, yet resolve. Skyler’s heart beat painfully. He thought
In there? Is there something for me?
He dared not hope.

Massively, Bix sighed. Lifted his heavy whiskey glass, and drank.

“Of course, son: it can’t bring her back.”

Numbly, Skyler agreed.
*

SKYLER HAD BEEN PREPARED TO BE UNMOVED BY
SON.
TO SHRUG AT
SON. BUT
when his father uttered
son
, the ice encasing Skyler’s gnarled-kid heart began to melt.

And the tenderness of certain of Bix’s gestures, clumsy-warm-Daddy embrace that nearly cracked Skyler’s ribs, rough-Daddy kiss smearing spittle on Skyler’s inflamed cheek, squeeze of Skyler’s hard little biceps, all took Skyler off guard. Heavy-breathing Daddy, tear-brimming eyes: “This is a sad time, son. ‘Requiescat poor Betsey in peace.’”

Reader, forgive me: this is sentimental as hell. These many pages, Skyler has been bitching about his parents, now you’re expected to be sympathetic with Bix, even with Betsey, and that is asking too God-damned much. And I am not expecting you to oblige. Yet, to be scrupulously honest,
as I have tried to be in this document, this is how Skyler felt when Bix Rampike came at once to 9 Magnolia Terrace, Sleepy Hollow, summoned by the distraught Nathan Kissler who had no idea what to do with his deceased partner/fiancée’s nineteen-year-old son who’d not only showed up unexpectedly at the house, less than six hours after Betsey’s death, but fainted just outside the door, on his way out.

“A SAD TIME, SON. AND YET: WE ARE TOGETHER.”

(And how long had it been since Skyler had seen his father last? Two years? Two-and-a-half? And then, under awkward circumstances. After Skyler had “walked away” from a drug treatment center in East Orange, New Jersey, and New Jersey State police had been alerted, and Bix had appeared quivering with revulsion: “Skyler! How the fuck could you! Again.”)

Now, Bix was looking older. And Bix was looking shaken, remorseful. Something hunched and crestfallen in the man’s face as if his ex-wife’s death was a personal blow he had not yet fully grasped. Saying to Skyler: “Son. We’ll get you a place to stay here. And we’ll get you a haircut, and some decent clothes. You will attend your mother’s funeral, son. With me.”

Feebly Skyler protested. He would attend Betsey’s funeral but—he didn’t want his hair cut, and he didn’t want to wear a suit. And Bix dug his fingers into Skyler’s stiff shoulders, and said, “You will not shame the Rampikes, son. No more than you already have.”

The place to stay, two nights on Bix Rampike’s credit card, was the quaint-historic old Washington Irving Inn, less than two miles from 9 Magnolia Terrace. The haircut was expensive, and made Skyler look near-normal from certain angles. The clothes, purchased on Bix Rampike’s credit card in a single pragmatic visit to Hugo Boss at the Tarrytown Shopping Mall, were: charcoal gray wool-silk suit, narrow-waisted coat, pencil-thin sharp-creased trousers (adjusted by the resident tailor to accommodate Skyler’s disproportionate frame); a long-sleeved dress shirt of white Egyptian cotton of the kind favored by Bix Rampike, and a dark-striped silk tie. Funeral attire for the grieving son! In a three-way mirror Skyler regarded his Hollywood-transformed self with mirth: “Me? Not.”

From behind, Bix gripped Skyler’s slouched shoulders forcing them just slightly back, and up: “Stand tall, son. No more of this flaky-kid crap. You’re a Rampike—stand like one.”

ALSO, BIX PROVIDED SKYLER WITH DARK GLASSES. VERY DARK GLASSES.

“Stare straight ahead, son. Don’t so much as glance at the jackals. And don’t smile, for Christ’s sake. When they call your name, you don’t hear. When they wave at you, you don’t see. Just walk close beside me, try not to limp and remember you’re a Rampike—deport yourself like one.”

SKYLER’S FIRST “VIEWING.”

In his new clothes (trousers tight in the crotch, starched white collar chafing his neck) Skyler made his way like a man in a dream not his own to the white-gold-gleaming casket at the rear of the chilled room, past strangers frankly staring at him, past tubs of lilies, steeling himself for what awaited him and in confusion relieved thinking
Not Mummy in the casket! Not Mummy
for this woman was no one Skyler knew. Thinking
There has been a mistake, I can leave now
except wiping moisture from his eyes it seemed to him, yes the female corpse in the casket in layers of pink chiffon, thick ropes of pearls around her neck, clam-shell-sized pearl earrings in her ears, did bear some resemblance to the Betsey Rampike he’d last seen on television in Heidi Harkness’s room. Except the hair did not appear to be real hair, synthetic-glossy maroon-red like a perky Heaven Scent Glamour Wig ($359.95). You would not have believed that the face was that of a woman of forty-four!—unlined forehead, full rouged cheeks, nothing fleshy visible below the chin. Serene-shut eyes expertly made up in several shades of eye shadow (taupe, silvery-green, silvery-blue) and ink-black mascara, Cleopatra style. The fleshy red-lipstick-lips that seemed to be about to smile, Skyler had to concede did look familiar. And if this was Mummy, was Skyler the
little man
? A sensation of abject fear came over him leaving him weak, light-headed. The horror was, Mummy’s
little man
must kiss Mummy good-bye! Or was it to wake Mummy from her unnatural sleep, by kissing her on those red-
lipstick-lips? As long ago he’d glimpsed his sister Bliss lying in a tangle of awkward limbs on the living room floor of their house, arms flung over her head and wrists bound together, eyes open and small wounded mouth slack and he’d been too frightened, and too cowardly, to run to her to save her: that boy was Skyler. Now to make amends Skyler must lean over the casket with its dazzle of white-gold, Skyler must balance himself carefully so he doesn’t slip, and fall into the casket like a TV cartoon figure which (he knows, he acknowledges) he resembles in sexy new Hugo Boss attire, Skyler must kiss Mummy on those lips
now.
Yet—so strangely—unable to move as if paralyzed, staring helplessly awaiting the Cleopatra eyes to open and claim him, Skyler’s breath now coming rapidly and shallowly and elsewhere in the lavishly decorated viewing room agitated Nathan Kissler could not think what to do about Skyler Rampike teetering over the casket in which Betsey Rampike lay “as if sleeping”—could not think what to do about his deceased fiancée’s clearly psychotic son, finally daring to approach Betsey’s ex-husband Bix Rampike who was stationed a little to the side of the casket, staring with glum fascination at the voluptuous female figure without coming nearer, and in a lowered voice Kissler said, “Mr. Rampike, your son,” and Bix said, “What about my son,” and Kissler said, “He does not appear well, Mr. Rampike. Please do something about him,” and Bix said, jaw jutting in the way of a former all-American fullback, though in his mid-forties, going soft in the mid-section, still you would not want this six-foot-four/two-hundred-plus Alpha-male
Homo sapiens
specimen to tackle you, “My son is mourning his God-damned mother, ‘Nathan.’ That’s a problem with you?” and Kissler said, shaken, dapper little man in prim-mannequin-mourning-attire, dark grays, black, shiny-dark-purple silk ascot disguising the wattles beneath his chin, trying neither to threaten nor to plead, “Mr. Rampike please I am asking you, please move your son away from Betsey, he has been standing there teetering for six minutes or more and he doesn’t look well.”

Must’ve been, Bix relented. Approached Skyler quietly and with gentle/firm Daddy-fingers gripped Skyler’s upper right bicep waking him from the eerie Mummy-trance in which poor Skyler might have committed an act of such unspeakable and irrevocable weirdness, to this very hour it
would be posted on Web sites through galaxies charted and uncharted to the last syllable of recorded Time.

“Son. Come with me.”

UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT, READER! TRULY I DID NOT FORESEE, ANY MORE
than Skyler did, his being so readily “reconciled” with his long-estranged father of whom Skyler knew very little at the present time except: Bix Rampike was remarried, and the “proud new father” of a very young child (sex not known to [ jealous? embittered?] Skyler); Bix Rampike was now CEO (“chief executive officer”—such grandeur deserves full recognition) of the Univers, Inc. subsidiary New Genesis BioTech, Inc., headquarters in New Harmony, New Jersey, one exit beyond Univers, eastward on I-80. (Yet, so far as Skyler could determine, Bix seemed to spend much of his time in New York City.) In a classic work of art that celebrates reconciliation, forgiveness, and a heartwarming reaffirmation of the human spirit greatly tested by adversity, Skyler and his father would be brought together more than merely temporarily by the occasion of Betsey Rampike’s death, and so I will see what I can do to achieve this. For truly, for all my postmodernist cynicism I want this document to turn out “heart-warming”—“truly inspiring!” and not “the longest God-damned suicide note in the history of the English language.”
*

“SON. BEAR UP LIKE A MAN.”

God damn he was! Skyler felt certain.

Next, the funeral service. Next morning at 11
A.M.

And here was the first surprise: Betsey Rampike’s funeral service would not be a staid/solemn/“beautiful-but-boring-as-hell” Episcopal service but a fervent/impassioned/“smiling-through-tears” Assembly of God funeral. For it seemed that Skyler’s mother had cast off the hoary old Episcopal formality she’d taken on when marrying Bix Rampike for the
far more exuberant, “outgoing” and “joyous” Christianity celebrated by the Assembly of God worshippers. (Bix remained stolidly Episcopalian of course. Such was his “heritage.” The Episcopal God was not one to interfere in the affairs of mankind as, ideally, Big Government should not interfere in the affairs of business-kind. Disapprovingly Bix commented to Skyler: “How could your mother ‘convert’ to Assembly of God, after the Higleys stood by us, in our hour of need! Damn selfish.”) Skyler had to be impressed, if a little overwhelmed, by the showy mega-church that was several times the size of quaint old Trinity Episcopal in Fair Hills, with an alleged seating capacity of 2,100; beyond Wal-Mart, beyond Home Depot and Big Savings Bonanza at the traffic-clogged intersection of Route 9 and I-87 was a sleekly gleaming modern structure of white concrete smooth as taffy, sparkling glass and steel in a fantastical architectural design combining old-style churchiness with New Age flying-saucer uplift. Said Bix, in grudging approval: “Twelve million, bottom line. That’s ‘Born Again’ for you.”

Inside, the Assembly of God appeared even larger. The size of a football field, at least—two football fields?—Skyler had but a vague sense of such epic proportions. The altar was enormous as a rock-concert stage and above it, seemingly floating in air, eerily and wonderfully, was an enormous copper cross of about twelve feet in height. Much of Betsey Rampike’s funeral service would be music: electric organ/synthesizer, twin white-robed “tabernacle choirs” singing, with great swoops of emotion, grief-stricken to joyous, dirge-like to pop-rock, the deceased woman’s favorite hymns: “Nearer My God to Thee,” “Christ Our Redeemer Cometh,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” “Beyond the Sunset,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lord,” “Onward, Christian Soldiers!” Unlike the singing in the New Canaan church which tended to be raggedy and off-key, the combined effort of hopeful amateurs, the singing in this dazzling mega-church was syrupy-smooth and accomplished. (In the program it was noted that these hymns were included in a newly issued Heaven Scent CD titled
Betsey Rampike’s Most Inspiring Christian Hymns
, available for $26.95.)