The Glass Castle

"Twenty dollars?" I couldn't believe Dad was pushing me this far. "Why twenty?"

"Goddammit, since when do I have to explain myself to my children?" Dad asked. In the next breath, he told me that he had borrowed a friend's car and needed to buy gas so he could drive to Gary for a business meeting. "I need money to make money. I'll pay you back." He looked at me, defying me to disbelieve him.

"I've got bills piling up," I said. I heard my voice growing shrill, but I couldn't control it. "I've got kids to feed."

"Don't you worry about food and bills," Dad said. "That's for me to worry about. Okay?"

I put my hand in my pocket. I didn't know if I was reaching for my money or trying to protect it.

"Have I ever let you down?" Dad asked.

I'd heard that question at least two hundred times, and I'd always answered it the way I knew he wanted me to, because I thought it was my faith in Dad that had kept him going all those years. I was about to tell him the truth for the first time, about to let him know that he'd let us all down plenty, but then I stopped. I couldn't do it. Dad, meanwhile, was saying he was not asking me for the money; he was telling me to give it to him. He needed it. Did I think he was a liar when he said he'd get it back to me?

I gave him the twenty dollars.

*





That Saturday, Dad told me that to pay me back, he had to earn the money first. He wanted me to accompany him on a business trip. He said I needed to wear something nice. He went through my dresses hanging from the pipe in the bedroom and picked out one with blue flowers that buttoned up the front. He had borrowed a car, an old pea-green Plymouth with a broken passenger-side window, and we drove through the mountains to a nearby town, stopping at a roadside bar.

The place was dark and as hazy as a battlefield from the cigarette smoke. Neon signs for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Milwaukee glowed on the walls. Gaunt men with creased cheeks and women with dark red lipstick sat along the bar. A couple of guys wearing steel-toed boots played pool.

Dad and I took seats at the bar. Dad ordered Buds for himself and me, even though I told him I wanted a Sprite. After a while, he got up to play pool, and no sooner had he left his stool than a man came over and sat on it. He had a black mustache that curved around the sides of his mouth and coal grime under his fingernails. He poured salt in his beer, which Dad said some guys did because they liked to make extra foam.

"Name's Robbie," he said. "That your man there?" He gestured toward Dad.

"I'm his daughter," I said.

He took a lick of foam and started asking me about myself, leaning in close as he talked. "How old are you, girl?"

"How old do you think?" I asked.

"About seventeen."

I smiled, putting my hand over my teeth.

"Know how to dance?" he asked. I shook my head. "Sure you do," he said and pulled me off the stool. I looked over at Dad, who grinned and waved.

On the jukebox, Kitty Wells was singing about married men and honky-tonk angels. Robbie held me close, with his hand on the small of my back. We danced to a second song, and when we sat down again on the stools facing the pool table, our backs against the bar, he slid his arm behind me. That arm made me tense but not entirely unhappy. No one had flirted with me since Billy Deel, unless you counted Kenny Hall.

Still, I knew what Robbie was after. I was going to tell him I wasn't that sort of girl, but then I thought he would say I was getting ahead of myself. After all, the only thing he'd done was dance me slow and put his arm around me. I caught Dad's eye. I expected him to come barreling across the room and whock Robbie with a pool cue for getting fresh with his daughter. Instead, he hollered to Robbie, "Do something worthwhile with those damned hands of yours. Get over here and play me a game of pool."

They ordered whiskeys and chalked their cues. Dad held back at first and lost some money to Robbie, then started upping the stakes and beating him. After every game, Robbie wanted to dance with me again. It went on that way for a couple of hours, with Robbie getting sloppy drunk, losing to Dad, and groping me when we danced or sat at the bar between games. All Dad said to me was. "Keep your legs crossed, honey, and keep 'em crossed tight."

After Dad had taken him for about eighty bucks, Robbie started muttering angrily to himself. He snapped down the cue chalk, sending up a puff of blue powder, and missed a final shot. He flung his cue on the table and announced he'd had enough, then sat down next to me. His eyes were bleary. He kept saying he couldn't believe that old fart had beat him out of eighty bucks, as if he couldn't decide whether he was pissed off or impressed.

Then he told me he lived in an apartment over the bar. He had a Roy Acuff record that wasn't on the jukebox, and he wanted us to go upstairs and listen to it. If all he wanted to do was dance some more and maybe kiss a little, I could handle that. But I had the feeling he thought he was entitled to something in return for losing so much money.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Aw, come on," he said and shouted at Dad, "I'm going to take your girl upstairs."

"Sure," Dad said. "Just don't do anything I wouldn't do." He pointed his pool cue at me. "Holler if you need me," he said and winked at me as if to say he knew I could take care of myself, that this was just a part of my job.

So, with Dad's blessing, I went upstairs. Inside the apartment, we pushed through a curtain made from strands of beer-can pull tabs linked together. Two men sat on a couch watching wrestling on television. When they saw me, they grinned wolfishly at Robbie, who put on the Roy Acuff record without turning down the television. He pressed me to him and started dancing again, but I knew this was not going in a direction I wanted, and I resisted him. His hands dropped down. He squeezed my bottom, pushed me onto the bed, and began kissing me. "All right!" one friend said, and the other yelled. "Get it on!"

"I'm not that kind of girl," I said, but he ignored me. When I tried rolling away, he pinned back my arms. Dad had said to holler if I needed him, but I didn't want to scream. I was so angry at Dad that I couldn't bear the idea of him rescuing me. Robbie, meanwhile, was saying something about me being too bony to screw.

"Yeah, most guys don't like me," I said. "Besides being skinny, I got these scars."

"Oh, sure," he said. But he paused.

I rolled off the bed, quickly unbuttoned my dress at the waist, and pulled it open to show him the scar on my right side. For all he knew, my entire torso was one giant mass of scar tissue. Robbie looked uncertainly at his friends. It was like seeing a gap in a fence.

"I think I hear Dad calling," I said, then made for the door.

*





In the car, Dad took out the money he'd won and counted off forty dollars, which he passed to me.

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