Free My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

bedspread with the nautical figures: sailboats, frigates, man-o’-wars, harpoons and anchors); lost in thought Skyler is frowning over one of the Junior Science Series books he has brought home from the school library— Space Shuttle Heroes ?— Adventures of a Microbe Hunter ?— So You Want to Make an A-Bomb : Home Chemistry Fun ?— Our Venomous Friends : Beware ?—except no, none of these admirable titles, instead Skyler is frowning over one of Mummy’s (forbidden) glossy magazines, those glamorous magazines Mummy brings home in her sumptuous Prada handbag; six-year-old Skyler isn’t drawn to the pale, gaunt, eerily young-looking girl-models draped near-naked on the magazine covers, and not by the seductive scents released when you scratch a patch of special paper on a perfume advertisement; Skyler isn’t even drawn by the garish cover headlines HOW TO ENTICE, ENTRAP, AND PLEASURE THE JADED HUBBY: SIX NO-FAIL STEPS—ALONE OR WITH OTHERS? NINETEEN NO-FAIL STEPS TO ORGASM-PLUS—HOT TIPS FROM TOP DIVORCE LAWYERS—BEYOND PROZAC: BOTOX?—CONFESSIONS OF A (HOT) (MALE) PERSONAL TRAINER—IS LIPOSUCTION THE “PERSONAL TRAINER” OF THE FUTURE ?—but by the wish, pathetic in a six-year-old with the halting, fevered reading skills of a budding dyslexic, to understand why Mummy is so unhappy even now that Edna Louise no longer cries through the night and Skyler, Mummy’s little man , has managed to perform so well in the first grade at (exclusive, expensive) Fair Hills Day School that he is being “seriously considered for promotion” into the “highly competitive” H.I.P. track at the school (of which more later, unfortunately); and before Skyler can steel himself, or protect himself, there’s a cuff—playful!—but hard—to Skyler’s head, for a dazed instant Skyler sees tiny suns, meteors of neurological sparks as Daddy snatches the magazine out of Skyler’s sweaty fingers without glancing at it, tosses it aside with a fierceDaddy-chuckle: “Son, enough of ruining your eyes with that ‘print’ crap. We’re going out. There’s a surprise in store. Pear und feese , eh? Veeta! ”
     
    JESUS. MAYBE I CAN’T DO THIS ONE, EITHER. FOR THIS IS TURNING OUT TO be the dread Gold Medal Gym & Health Club Memory I. (Years of psychologists, therapists, grimly “empathetic” adults raking through, with Skyler, the maggoty rotted flesh of Skyler Rampike’s All-American Late-Twentieth-Century Childhood, have reduced my most traumatic memories to such shorthand designations; and the original events themselves, especially horrific in their seeming ordinariness, in the way (as above) they so innocently begin, have been reduced to something resembling stale TV sitcom plots.)
    Pear und feese. What does that mean? From time to time Daddy would utter these words in my direction, with a Daddy-chuckle, and if Mummy was close by Daddy would cast me a sly sidelong wink as of male-conspirators, but what’s it mean? (Mummy had no idea, either. “One of Daddy’s foreign ‘sayings,’” Mummy said vaguely.) Veeta! was uttered only at the conclusion of a statement, and was usually accompanied by finger-snapping, so you got the point to get moving, hustle fast; years later Grandmother Rampike explained that Veeta! was an Italian command, unless it was a French command, favored by my late grandfather Winston Rampike, Daddy’s father, invariably accompanied by an impatient snap of his fingers. Loose translation: “Move your ass!”
    Maybe for now, since I’m not feeling so great about this, I can backtrack a little, away from Gold Medal etcetera to an earlier time. Maybe Daddy from a kiddy-perspective will remind you of your own special Daddy, the Daddy that was just-for-you. Or maybe (lucky you!) if you’ve never had a Daddy like this, you will feel a perverse sting of envy.
    Well! Daddy was big. (Have I said that?) Daddy loomed, Daddy towered. Sometimes, as if playfully (but how could you know for certain?), or