The Glass Castle

Mom called in a few weeks and said that although the squat still needed a few finishing touchesa front door, for exampleshe and Dad were officially accepting visitors. I took the subway to Astor Place on a late spring day and headed east. Mom and Dad's apartment was in a six-story walk-up. The mortar was crumbling and bricks had come loose. All the windows on the first floor had been boarded up. I reached to open the building's front door, but where the lock and handle should have been, there was only a hole. Inside, a single naked lightbulb hung from a wire in the hallway. On one wall, chunks of plaster had crumbled away, revealing the wooden ribs and pipes and wiring. On the third floor, I knocked on the door to Mom and Dad's apartment and heard Dad's muffled voice. Instead of the door swinging inward, fingers appeared on both sides, and it was lifted out of the frame altogether. There was Dad, beaming and hugging me while he went on about how he'd yet to install door hinges. As a matter of fact, they'd only just gotten the door itself, which he'd found in the basement of another abandoned building.

Mom came running up behind him, grinning so widely you could see her molars, and gave me a big hug. Dad knocked a cat off a chairthey had already taken in a few straysand offered me a seat. The room was crammed with broken furniture, bundles of clothes, stacks of books, and Mom's art supplies. Four or five electric space heaters blasted away. Mom explained that Dad had hooked up every squat in the building to an insulated cable he'd hot-wired off a utility pole down the block. "We're all getting free juice, thanks to your father," Mom said. "No one in the building could survive without him."

Dad chuckled modestly. He told me how complicated the process had been, because the wiring in the building was so ancient. "Damnedest electrical system I've ever seen," he said. "The manual must have been written in hieroglyphics."

I looked around, and it hit me that if you replaced the electric heaters with a coal stove, this squat on the Lower East Side looked pretty much like the house on Little Hobart Street. I had escaped from Welch once, and now, breathing in those same old smells of turpentine, dog hair, and dirty clothes, of stale beer and cigarette smoke and unrefrigerated food slowly going bad, I had the urge to bolt. But Mom and Dad were clearly proud, and as I listened to them talkinterrupting each other in their excitement to correct points of fact and fill in gaps in the storyabout their fellow squatters and the friends they'd made in the neighborhood and the common fight against the city's housing agency, it became clear they'd stumbled on an entire community of people like themselves, people who lived unruly lives battling authority and who liked it that way. After all those years of roaming, they'd found home.

*





I graduated from Barnard that spring. Brian came to the ceremony, but Lori and Maureen had to work, and Mom said it would just be a lot of boring speeches about the long and winding road of life. I wanted Dad to come, but chances were he'd show up drunk and try to debate the commencement speaker.

"I can't risk it, Dad," I told him.

"Hell," he said. "I don't have to see my Mountain Goat grabbing a sheepskin to know she's got her college degree."

The magazine where I'd been working two days a week had offered me a full-time job. What I needed was a place to live. For several years, I had been dating a man named Eric, a friend of one of Lori's eccentric-genius friends, who came from a wealthy family, ran a small company, and lived alone in the apartment on Park Avenue in which he'd been raised. He was a detached, almost fanatically organized guy who maintained detailed time-management logs and could recite endless baseball statistics. But he was decent and responsible, never gambled or lost his temper, and always paid his bills on time. When he heard that I was looking for a roommate to share an apartment, he suggested I move in with him. I couldn't afford half the rent, I told him, and I wouldn't live there unless I could pay my own way. He suggested that I begin by paying what I could afford, and as my salary went up, I could increase the payment. He made it sound like a business proposition, but a solid one, and after thinking it over, I agreed.

When I told Dad about my plans, he asked if Eric made me happy and treated me well. "Because if he doesn't," Dad said. "I will by God kick his butt so hard, his asshole will be up between his shoulder blades."

"He treats me fine, Dad," I said. What I wanted to say was that I knew Eric would never try to steal my paycheck or throw me out the window, that I'd always been terrified I'd fall for a hard-drinking, hell-raising, charismatic scoundrel like you, Dad, but I'd wound up with a man who was exactly the opposite.

*





All my belongings fit into two plastic milk crates and a garbage bag. I hauled them to the street, hailed a taxi, and took it across town to Eric's building. The doorman, in a blue uniform with gold piping, hurried out from under the awning and insisted on carrying the milk crates into the lobby.

Eric's apartment had crossbeamed ceilings and a fireplace with an art deco mantel. I actually live on Park Avenue, I kept telling myself as I hung my clothes in the closet Eric had cleared out for me. Then I started thinking about Mom and Dad. When they had moved into their squata fifteen-minute subway ride south and about half a dozen worlds awayit seemed as if they had finally found the place where they belonged, and I wondered if I had done the same.



I INVITED MOM and Dad up to the apartment. Dad said he'd feel out of place, and never did come, but Mom visited almost immediately. She turned over dishes to read the manufacturer's name and lifted the corner of the Persian rug to count the knots. She held the china to the light and ran her finger along the antique campaign chest. Then she went to the window and looked out at the brick and limestone apartment buildings across the street. "I don't really like Park Avenue," she said. "The architecture is too monotonous. I prefer the architecture on Central Park West."

I told Mom she was the snootiest squatter I'd ever met, and that made her laugh. We sat down on the living room couch. I had something I wanted to discuss with her. I now had a good job, I said, and was in a position to help her and Dad. I wanted to buy them something that would improve their lives. It could be a small car. It could be the security deposit and a few months' rent on an apartment. It could be the down payment on a house in an inexpensive neighborhood.

"We don't need anything," Mom said. "We're fine." She put down her teacup. "It's you I'm worried about."

"You're worried about me?"

"Yes. Very worried."

"Mom," I said. "I'm doing very well. I'm very, very comfortable."

"That's what I'm worried about," Mom said. "Look at the way you live. You've sold out. Next thing I know, you'll become a Republican." She shook her head. "Where are the values I raised you with?"

*





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