Dad," I said. "you guys need this money more than I do.""It\'s yours," Dad said. "Since when is it wrong for a father to take care of his little girl?""But I can\'t." I looked at Mom.
She sat down next to me and patted my leg. "I\'ve always believed in the value of a good education," she said.
So, when I enrolled for my final year at Barnard, I paid what I owed on my tuition with Dad\'s wadded, crumpled bills.
54｜【好书推荐】The Glass Castle玻璃城堡（下）
"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?"* * *Mom became even more concerned about my values when my editor offered me a job writing a weekly column about what he called the behind-the-scenes doings of the movers and shakers. Mom thought I should be writing expos閟 about oppressive landlords, social injustice, and the class struggle on the Lower East Side. But I leaped at the job, because it meant I would become one of those people who knew what was really going on. Also, most people in Welch had a pretty good idea how bad off the Walls family was, but the truth was, they all had their problems, too梩hey were just better than we were at covering them up. I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.
"You can borrow from Eric," Mom said again.
"Well, how much?""A million dollars.""What?""A million dollars.""But Uncle Jim\'s land is the same size as your land," I said. I was speaking slowly, because I wanted to make sure I understood the implications of what Mom had just told me. "You each inherited half of Grandpa Smith\'s land.""More or less," Mom said.
"So if Uncle Jim\'s land is worth a million dollars, that means your land is worth a million dollars.""I don\'t know.""What do you mean, you don\'t know? It\'s the same size as his.""I don\'t know how much it\'s worth, because I never had it appraised. I was never going to sell it. My father taught me you never sell land. That\'s why we have to buy Uncle Jim\'s land. We have to keep it in the family.""You mean you own land worth a million dollars?" I was thunderstruck. All those years in Welch with no food, no coal, no plumbing, and Mom had been sitting on land worth a million dollars? Had all those years, as well as Mom and Dad\'s time on the street梟ot to mention their current life in an abandoned tenement梑een a caprice inflicted on us by Mom? Could she have solved our financial problems by selling this land she never even saw? But she avoided my questions, and it became clear that to Mom, holding on to land was not so much an investment strategy as it was an article of faith, a revealed truth as deeply felt and incontestable to her as Catholicism. And for the life of me, I could not get her to tell me how much the land was worth.
"We should drink a toast to Rex," John said.
Mom stared at the ceiling, miming perplexed thought. "I\'ve got it." She held up her glass. "Life with your father was never boring."We raised our glasses. I could almost hear Dad chuckling at Mom\'s comment in the way he always did when he was truly enjoying something. It had grown dark outside. A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.
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