Excerpt from the novel
Tethered

My mother insists I ride along with them in = the back of Beth’s van; Laposata’s Restaurant is on the east side= of town, my house in the west end. I tell my mother I’m going to stop by Lorrie’s house, although = we both know this isn’t true. When my mother and the kids are all buckled into their seats I just walk away. Beth calls after= me, then rolls her eyes when I turn and wave at her. There’s no way I can get i= nto that van with them; all the familial activity has me feeling claustrophobic. I don’t understand feeling lonely yet wanting to be alone, but here it is.

This= is how I do it. I just turn and wa= ve goodbye while Beth wags her hands through the air and my mother sits quiet and content in the back of Beth’s van. Give them enough fair warning, u= nlike Iris.

Iris had never even said the word Alaska until a= week before she left. I had alre= ady made an offer on the house, and was in the process of selling my car, when Iris started throwing things in a suitcase and the next thing you know al= l of us are standing on the sidewalk in front of my mother’s house, wavi= ng goodbye to the rusted tailpipe of my little blue car. “She should have gotten a tune-up,” my mother kept saying to Steve. “When was the last time yo= u had a tune-up?” she asked me.

When I finally closed on my house, I was the daughter who left my mother all alone in hers. Not that we hadn’t moved o= ut before. Beth moved away to college, then came back and lived there until she got married. Iris was always in and out of li= ving arrangements with friends, but always staying close to home. And I had lived in the apartment= on Wilson Avenue for almost four years with Jake, my ex-fiancé. He kept the apartment; I kept my ring. It came in handy as p= art of the down payment on my house.

But through all that time there was always o= ne of us girls living in the house with my mother, until I left her alone to mo= ve a couple of blocks away. “It’s silly,” she had said, and Beth agreed. “Why would you want to was= te money like that?” The= y were right, of course. I thought= I was being nice, doing the right thing, keeping myself close by. I stopped short before I venture= d too far, like the dogs who bark at me from the end of their tethers when I wa= lk through the alley behind my house. But then Iris took off for as far away as she could get and never looked back. Now I see I sh= ould have hopped in that old rattle-trap of a car and rode shot-gun all the wa= y to Alaska. Maybe I would have even helped h= er drive. Stranger things have happened.

I’m over the bridge and on Feldspar wh= en the voices in my head finally dim, just about the time I can feel my blood mo= ving its warmth through me. I tr= y not to think, just feel. That&#= 8217;s when the street lights shine more yellow off the road; bricks become more textured. The world looks mottled, more physical yet more surreal.= I become part of it, like I never feel a part of anything else. The sight of a tree limb in the streetlight brings a welling loneliness forward. An ocean of loneliness, only wel= come, somehow welcome.

Washington Street is being dug up for some reason, the yellow hulking machinery parked like menacing guards. I walk around the ‘Road Closed’ sign and the orange barrels staggered at its end, down the middle of the street, joyfully down the middle, wandering back and forth across the yellow lines. I = even skip a step or two, loneliness my companion, my constant, stable companion. This time I smil= e at the kids on the corner.

I ha= ve to get out of here.

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