The Glass Castle

One morning, Jeannette hears a news report about a broken-down van on the New Jersey Turnpike spilling furniture and clothes all over the road and causing a massive traffic jam. She later learns that the van belongs to Mom and Dad, who arrive in New York that day.

First, Mom and Dad live in a boardinghouse near Lori’s apartment, but they are soon evicted for non-payment of rent. They then relocate to a flophouse but are promptly kicked out after Dad accidentally starts a fire. Mom and Dad eventually land in Lori’s new apartment, located in the same building where Brian lives. Soon, Lori’s apartment is overflowing with Mom’s paintings and stacks of street junk. Dad comes home most nights drunk and angry. To alleviate Lori’s stress, Brian invites Dad to stay with him, but when Dad breaks off the hinges of Brian’s locked liquor cabinet and drinks everything inside, Brian insists that he stop drinking. Dad opts to live in his van instead.

More and more, Dad shows up at Lori’s to get into drunken arguments with Mom and the neighbors. Eventually, Lori sees no other option than to kick both Mom and Dad out, a decision Jeannette supports. Mom and Dad live in the van for a few months until the automobile is towed. Jeannette recalls, “That night, they slept on a park bench. They were homeless” (254).

Mom and Dad learn to survive on the streets, frequenting soup kitchens and attending free recitals, outdoor concerts, and movie screenings. When Jeannette appeals to Mom to find some other way to live, Mom replies, “Being homeless is an adventure” (255). When the weather cools in the fall, they spend most of their time in libraries. Mom reads Balzac, while Dad reads physics journals.

During a discussion on homelessness in one of Jeannette’s classes, she suggests that some people may choose to be homeless. When pressed on the issue by her professor, Jeannette relents rather than share the story of her parents.

When the weather turns freezing cold in the winter, Mom’s cheerful disposition begins to crack. She refuses to sleep in shelters, so on nights when all the church pews are full, Dad goes to a shelter and Mom comes to Lori’s, usually in tears and confessing how hard it is to live on the streets. While Jeannette feels guilty about attending a top university while her parents are homeless, Brian reminds her that Mom still owns property in both Phoenix and Texas, yet she refuses Jeannette’s exhortations to sell either property.

Mom and Dad make it through the winter, but in the spring, Dad is hospitalized with tuberculosis. When Jeannette visits him, he is sober. Based on his recent research on chaos theory, he says he now believes chaos and turbulence are part of a divine plan. Of his trembling fingers, he explains, “Lack of liquor or fear of God—don’t know which is causing it. Maybe both” (261).

After a six-week stay in the hospital, Dad is eager to maintain his sobriety by avoiding a return to the streets. Through one of the hospital administrators, Dad lands a maintenance job at a resort upstate with free room and board. Mom refuses to go with him, dismissing Upstate New York as “the sticks.” Dad remains there through the summer until November, when Mom convinces him to return to the city. Almost immediately, he starts drinking again.

Meanwhile, Lori is a comic book illustrator, Brian is a warehouse foreman studying to become a police officer, and Maureen is in high school. That Christmas, the whole family gathers at Lori’s, where Jeannette gives Dad presents of warm clothes for the winter. Angry and ashamed, Dad puts on his thin bomber jacket and walks out into the cold December air.

A month before her last academic year, Jeannette is $1,000 short of her tuition. When Jeannette tells Dad she may have to drop out, he leaves and returns a week later with a brown paper bag full of crumpled bills totaling $950, which he says he earned playing poker.

The following month, Mom and Dad move into an abandoned building on the Lower East Side. When Jeannette visits, she is struck by how much their squalid new domicile resembles the house in Welch. Jeannette moves into a Park Avenue apartment with her boyfriend, Eric, a fastidious and independently wealthy small business owner whom she considers the exact opposite of Dad. Of Mom and Dad, she writes, “It seemed as if they had finally found the place where they belonged, and I wondered if I had done the same” (268).

Much to Mom’s dismay, Jeannette accepts a job writing a weekly column on the lives of New York’s elite. Mom asks, “Where are the values I raised you with?” (269). Jeannette loves writing about people who spend as much on a single meal as her parents spent on the house in Welch.

Four years after moving in with Eric, Jeannette marries him. Shortly thereafter, Mom asks Jeannette to convince Eric to buy her brother’s share of the land they inherited in West Texas, which he plans to sell. She is adamant that the land stay in the family. When Jeannette asks how much the share of land costs, Mom says $1 million and goes on to suggest that her share is worth roughly the same amount.

Jeannette is aghast: “Had all those years, as well as Mom and Dad’s time on the street—not to mention their current life in an abandoned tenement—been a caprice inflicted on us by Mom?” (273). Jeannette insists on knowing how much Mom’s land is worth, but Mom refuses to entertain the notion of having it appraised.

After Maureen graduates, she enrolls in college but eventually drops out and moves in with Mom and Dad. Over time, she retreats into herself, sleeping all day. When Jeannette meets with Maureen to discuss her future, she barely recognizes her younger sister. She suspects she is addicted to drugs.

A few months later, Maureen stabs Mom after an argument over moving out. The police arrest Maureen against Mom’s wishes, and a judge sentences her to a psychiatric hospital. Upon her release a year later, Maureen buys a one-way ticket to California and leaves New York without saying goodbye. Jeannette deeply regrets not looking after her more closely.

Over the next year, the whole family grows apart. Jeannette almost never sees Mom and Dad. Brian, now a police officer, moves to Long Island with his wife and child.

One day, Dad calls Jeannette to say he needs to talk to her in person, requesting that she bring him a bottle of vodka. Though Jeannette assumes this is little more than a liquor run, she picks up the vodka and heads to his squat. There, Dad reveals he is dying. While Jeannette doesn’t believe the absurd yarn he tells about contracting a tropical disease in a fistfight, she believes he is close to death, given the amount of alcohol and cigarettes he consumes. The author writes, “As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had” (278). After reminiscing for a bit about the Glass Castle and other memories, Jeannette gets up to leave. Dad says, “Hey. Have I ever let you down?” and chuckles (279).

Two weeks pass, and Dad suffers a fatal heart attack. A year later, Jeannette divorces Eric. She writes, “He was a good man, but not the right one for me” (280). On clear nights, Jeannette goes out walking and looks for Venus on the horizon.

Five years later, Jeannette and her new husband, John, invite Lori, Brian, and Mom to Thanksgiving dinner at their country farmhouse. Mom still lives in the same tenement, except now she occupies it legally thanks to the city’s decision to sell each unit to its occupant for a dollar apiece. Over dinner, the family shares favorite memories of Dad, including the cheetah incident and the Christmas when he gave the children stars. Mom raises a glass and toasts to the memory of Dad: “Life with your father was never boring” (288), she says.