The Keeper and the Tether

The Keeper and the Tether Genevieve Plunkett (bio) Mom says we moved here because the schools are better, but we know that it's really because Dad fell in love with Allie and Mom can't stand that. She tells me and Sis our new school's director was raised a Quaker, like that will make us understand what all the hype is about, but we are immediately like: Quaker parrot. Quaker OATS. When Sis and I were young, I made her a stick-figure doll from a wooden tongue depressor, chopped out the Quaker Oats guy's head from a cereal box, and glued it on. Made kissy sounds: "Here, Sis. I made you a boyfriend." "I'm serious," says Mom. She tosses a rolled-up hallway runner onto the floor like she's hurling a dead body into a ditch. Ever since the affair—which Mom made into an affair even though Dad's dick had no part in it—she has been ruthless. She threatened to dump our Adventure Time T-shirts into a donation bin because the new school does not allow pop culture in the classroom. The new school is a "Screen Free Zone," which means no iPhones, no tablets, [End Page 599] absolutely no references to what we binged on Netflix last night. They have an organic vegetable garden out back (the word "organic" underlined in the brochure and followed by an exclamation mark, which bothers us, it really bothers us). We ask if the kids at our new school are going to be wearing helmets, and Mom pinches her thumb and forefinger in front of our faces to tell us that we are this close. "Closer than Dad's dick ever got to Allie," says Sis when we are alone. The only good thing about our new room is that the ceiling is peaked and witchy, and the floorboards are uneven, the cracks packed with dust. There is a splintery ladder that leads to a trapdoor with a padlock on it. "Don't even try," Mom said, scowling at the ladder. "It only leads to the roof. That's how you get struck by lightning." The room makes us feel as though ours is a bleak and tragic existence, as if we have been sent away to an orphanage, or at least banished to the attic. We can't wait until Dad gets here and sees the murder closet in the basement. The drained fishpond in the shady, ghost-cold corner of the yard. Dad stayed in Boston to finish up a case, and if Mom thinks that he is not going to use that time to go all the way with Allie (because it will be the last chance that he will ever get), then she is crazier than we thought. In a way, we are rooting for Dad, because what he did for Allie was a beautiful thing. ________ Sis and I explore the yard, shaking the low branches so they rain cold water on us, crawling between the hydrangeas, which are the color of a drowned person's lips. There is a stone property marker out back that we pretend is a grave. When the wind picks up, it feels like a slap of unfairness. Our family's move north feels bigger than it should, in that every small detail about the new town is glaring: the [End Page 600] different-colored license plates, the woman who pushes a four-kid stroller and blows cigarette smoke over her shoulder. Not to mention that the tap water is subpar, and our supermarket chain doesn't even exist up here. This upsets Sis more than it upsets me. She says that the grocery store in the new town looks like a photograph from the 1980s. I have to agree; it is all orangey, like an antique photo's faded image. By Day Three, it is clear to us that the old lady next door is a weirdo. We watch through the fence as she uncovers a two-layer cake on her back patio. She cuts into it slowly with a giant knife and then, balancing the slice on the blade, walks it...