First Couple Chapters & Side Rant

While I am only two chapters into She's Come Undone, I really enjoy it. It reads like a memoir and reminds me a lot of Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle. One thing that has caught my attention so far is just how "human" Dolores is. In the first couple of chapters she is around the age of 10 when her father leaves her and her mother to go live with another woman. Her mother, crippled by these events and a miscarriage that preceded, spirals out of control. When looking to her daughter Dolores for comfort, Dolores doesn't give her "ma" the slightest bit of solace.
Maybe other readers may see Dolores as just flat out being a mean girl. It just seems to me a very human reaction. Dolores is confused. She doesn't know why her father just up and left. He didn't really give any reason as to why he was leaving. One day he was just gone. Dolores and her father seemed to get along very well so I don't feel as though she would would put the blame on herself. So who is the only other person that could have been responsible?
For me, I like that the author doesn't have to spell that out for us. That he doesn't say, "Dolores felt this" and "Ma felt this." He just gives us a snapshot into these peoples lives and lets us deal with the rest.

Anyone agree? or am I totally off the mark?

Side Rant: Have you ever been on a public bus? I ride them several times a week to go to school and I have noticed that most people on there have a severe staring problem. I honestly cannot figure out what they are staring at sometimes. I know for a fact that none of these people (mostly men) are secret agents that are planted on public transit systems in an attempt to thwart terrorism because they are in no way discreet. If there is something slightly out of the norm on the bus, for example a low cut shirt, he will stare it up and down until everyone around around him has become reasonably uncomfortable. I could understand if it was an old man who only had a couple of days left on this earth and feels like he has nothing left to lose, but there seems to be no fixed demographic for these starers. Something about the bus just makes them resist the urge to blink and gives them the desire to let everyone know that their eyes are fixed on something peculiar.