The Pinballs Read online

  “Seem?” Carlie said.

  Mrs. Mason came in and stood by the bed. She patted Carlie’s arm. “The first night is always the hardest.”

  Carlie was silent.

  Mrs. Mason sat on the edge of the bed. “And I know how you feel.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever been in a foster home?”

  “I’ve had a lot of kids staying with me—seventeen, not counting you three—and all seventeen told me that the first night was the worst. They all said they just felt sick.” She kept her hand on Carlie’s arm. “I guess ‘homesickness’ is a very real kind of illness, like measles or mumps.”

  “Too bad there’s not a vaccine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Only the people that give money for vaccines, they want to give for heart diseases and polio, stuff their kids might get. Nobody worries about us.”

  “Yes, they do, Carlie.”

  “Anyway the only reason I came was because Russell—that’s my stepfather—threatened to cut off all my hair. And it took me since fourth grade to grow this hair!” She yanked the sheet up higher on her shoulders. “Now I wonder if it was worth it.”

  “Carlie, did you see the pictures of the kids in the living room?”

  “How could I miss?”

  “Well, all of those kids have gone on into the world. Two of them are in college now. They write me letters. One has his own service station. Some are back with their families. It all works out somehow.” She smiled. “Even without a vaccine.”

  She waited for a moment and patted Carlie’s arm again. Then she rose from the bed. “Things’ll be better tomorrow. You’ll see.”

  “They better be,” Carlie answered as Mrs. Mason left the room. She turned her face to the wall. She thought, I can always run away.

  5

  Harvey and Thomas J shared the room across the hall. It had bunk beds. Because of his broken legs Harvey got the bottom bunk. He eased himself down on the mattress and looked up at the springs.

  Thomas J paused beside the bed. Every night at the Bensons’ he had said his prayers like the twins did—on his knees beside the bed, arms out straight as boards, fingers pointed up. He felt shy about praying in front of Harvey.

  “What are you standing there for?” Harvey asked, glancing at him.

  “Nothing.”

  Still Thomas J hesitated. The habit to pray was strong. Harvey was still looking at him, waiting. Abruptly Thomas J climbed up the ladder to his bed.

  “Do you want to know how I broke my legs?” Harvey asked.

  Thomas J was on his knees in the upper bunk. “Yes,” he answered.

  “I was playing football—quarterback—and I got tackled too hard.” He stared down at his casts, at his pink toes. “Everyone was going to autograph my casts—all my friends—but I had to come here before they could.”

  “That’s too bad,” Thomas J said. He was still in praying position, but he eased back onto his heels. “You know, bones break very easily. You can break bones just walking down a path.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Harvey said.

  “Yes, it really can happen.” Thomas J leaned over the edge of the bunk and looked at Harvey. “The Benson twins—that’s who I lived with before I came here—both broke their hips just walking down a path to the house. They slipped.”

  “Oh, well, yeah, sure, if they slipped.”

  “That’s why I had to come here. They’re both in the hospital.”

  “I had to come here because there was no one at home to take care of me.”

  “How about your mother?”

  “My mom doesn’t live with us anymore.”

  “Oh.” Thomas J waited, watching Harvey, but Harvey had no more to say. After a moment Thomas J withdrew to his bunk.

  On the bottom bed, Harvey lay without moving. Harvey had not seen his mother in three years. She had gone to Virginia to live in a commune with nineteen other people and find herself by getting back to nature.

  Harvey could still remember the last terrible quarrel between his parents.

  “I know you cannot understand my having to leave,” his mother had said. Harvey had crouched on the stairs, peering around the corner from time to time at the twisted angry faces. Their faces looked gnarled enough to put on a cathedral. “But I have to find myself. I—”

  “Find yourself! What does that mean? The man who invented the term ‘find yourself’ ought to be locked up in a mental hospital.”

  “It means I don’t know who I am anymore. I have no identity.”

  “You’re my wife, isn’t that identity enough? You’re Harvey’s mother! And remember, you were the one who wanted a kid so much. I said ‘Let’s wait,’ but, oh, no, you—”

  “I want to be me.”

  “Well, be you! Be anything you want to be! Just don’t go running off to some fool place in Virginia where people run around naked.”

  “They don’t run around naked. They’re very caring people. They— Oh, it’s just no use trying to make you understand.” His mother was talking through clenched teeth now. “We cannot communicate. We never could.”

  “I knew this would happen when you started those yoga lessons.”

  “The yoga classes had nothing to do with this. I’m just trying to—”

  “And that Maharishna, or whatever he called himself—I suppose he had nothing to do with it either!”

  “It’s no use talking to you. You could never understand in a million years.”

  Harvey had crept back up the stairs then. He couldn’t understand either. He just hoped that his mother would return in a week or two, having found herself. He imagined her floating in like Mother Nature with daisies in her hair and peace in her heart.

  She had never come back. The only thing he had seen of her was a picture in the New York Times Magazine. She and some of the other people had been pictured on their Virginia farm. His mother had been weaving a hammock with two men. They had looked so much alike, the two men and his mom, that Harvey had had a hard time picking her out.

  His father had thrown the whole New York Times in the fireplace when he saw it and had drunk martinis until he passed out on the sofa.

  On the upper bunk Thomas J finished his prayer. He lay down on the stiff, clean sheet. “Well, good-night,” he called down.

  “Good-night,” Harvey answered.

  6

  It was morning, and Harvey’s legs hurt. He didn’t feel like getting out of bed, and so Mrs. Mason sent Carlie in with a breakfast tray.

  “I wish someone would bring me a tray,” Carlie said as she entered. She set it on his bedside table. She stood staring down at him.

  Harvey looked at the tray.

  “It’s Little Crunchies,” Carlie said. “They’ll make you big and strong.” She looked at him. “Although in your case it’s going to take more than Little Crunchies, if you ask me. I wonder if they make Big Crunchies.”

  Harvey said nothing.

  She put one hand on her hip. “Whoo,” she said, “if someone brought me a breakfast tray I wouldn’t just lie there like a rope.”

  Harvey said nothing.

  “If somebody brought me a breakfast tray I’d drop over dead.”

  She waited.

  Then she said, “You don’t get anything, do you, Harvey? I just gave you the perfect chance to insult me. I just said, “If somebody brought me a breakfast tray, I’d drop over dead.’ Now you should say, ‘Is that a promise?’”

  Carlie waited. Then she said, “I give up. You’re hopeless.”

  She started from the room. “When you get through eating—if you ever do—call and the slave of the world will come back for your tray.”

  Carlie was all the way out the door when he said, “Thank you, Carlie.”

  Carlie stopped. She stood motionless in the hall for a moment. Then she said, “No need to thank slaves.”

  She kept standing there. She felt Harvey had only thanked her to make her feel bad. And he had succeeded. For some reaso
n, insults didn’t hurt her. People could insult her all day long, and she would insult them right back. But let somebody say something polite or nice to her—it made her feel terrible.

  Carlie looked across at the opposite wall. The phone was there, and she walked over slowly. Suddenly she wanted to make a long-distance call. Not to her mother, she decided. She wanted to call somebody like Cher or Rhoda or Mary Tyler Moore.

  “Hi,” she would say, “this is Carlie. Let me tell you the rotten thing that happened to me.”

  She was staring at the phone, wondering how you called a star, when Mrs. Mason appeared in the doorway. “Did you take Harvey his tray?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t eat.”

  Mrs. Mason wiped her hands on her apron. “We’re going to have to be especially nice to Harvey these next few weeks.”

  “To Harvey?”

  “Yes, he’s having a rough time of it.”

  “Well, how about me?” Carlie said. “Why doesn’t anybody ever think of being especially nice to me? What do I have to do to get some attention around here—break both my legs?”

  “Now, Carlie—”

  “Would a wrist be enough?”

  Mrs. Mason put her hand on Carlie’s shoulder. “I just have the feeling you can help Harvey.”

  “Whoo, are you off base.”

  “You’re a very strong girl, Carlie, whether you know it or not.”

  “If Harvey’s depending on me for help, he is going to go down the drain.”

  “Listen, Carlie—”

  “No, you listen. Harvey and me and Thomas J are just like pinballs. Somebody put in a dime and punched a button and out we came, ready or not, and settled in the same groove. That’s all.” She looked at Mrs. Mason. “Now, you don’t see pinballs helping each other, do you?”

  “Carlie—”

  “They can’t. They’re just things. They hit this bumper, they go over here. They hit that light, they go over there.”

  “Carlie—”

  “And soon as they get settled, somebody comes along and puts in another dime and off they go again.” Carlie was standing by the phone. She reached up and dialed zero. “I can’t help Harvey and I can’t help myself.”

  “I think you can,” Mrs. Mason said.

  “Take a good look at a pinball machine sometime,” Carlie said. “You might learn something about life.”

  In his room Harvey lay without moving. He had heard every word of the conversation. He wished his father had heard it too.

  “You kids today got it easy,” his father was always saying. “It was tough when I was a kid—none of this five dollars here and ten dollars there.”

  Harvey, who asked for money only when he needed it for food, always waited in silence.

  His father would rave some more about how easy Harvey had it, and then he would pull some bills from his pocket. He would toss them at Harvey so Harvey would have to pick them up from the floor. Then Harvey’s father always ended with “Later you’ll find out things aren’t so easy, and you’ll find out the hard way, like me.”

  Harvey looked down at his legs. When his father said “the hard way,” Harvey thought, he meant the hard way.

  Slowly, as if his arms were broken instead of his legs, he began to eat his cereal.

  7

  After supper the three of them settled in the living room. Thomas J was writing a letter to the Benson twins. It was addressed to Miss Thomas and Miss Jefferson Benson, Sundale Hospital.

  It started out:

  Hi,

  How are your hips?

  As soon as Harvey had seen Thomas J writing a letter, he had asked for paper too. He was having a hard time getting started on his letter. He didn’t want to write to his father, and he didn’t know his mother’s address in Virginia, but he felt left out not to be writing. Although he had not put down a word, he kept lifting his head and asking things like “How do you spell ‘wonderful’?”

  “I hope you’re not describing yourself,” Carlie said without looking up. She was also writing. The letter was to her mother.

  “I’m not saying what I’m describing,” Harvey said in a superior manner. His eyebrows were raised.

  “Could it be me?” Carlie asked. “Are you by any chance making a list of all the things I am? Wonderful. Exciting. Temptatious. Don’t forget to mention that my hair is good enough for a creme-rinse commercial and my skin is so soft no Brillo soap pad can smooth it.”

  Harvey tried to think of an answer. He couldn’t.

  Carlie broke off. She looked down at her letter. She bent over it.

  Carlie didn’t bother with punctuation when she wrote. Her letter went:

  Please send for me I won’t cause you any trouble I have learned my lesson and anyway it wasn’t me who caused the trouble It was Russell From now on I will just keep out of his way I will keep out of everybodys way All I want is to come home Anyway Russell hit me harder than I hit him Talk to the social worker and tell her everything is all right Make everything all right I want to come home

  Harvey watched Carlie writing her letter. He was jealous that she had so much to say. He still hadn’t written a word. He shifted in his wheelchair. His casts itched and his right leg hurt.

  He thought of writing that to his father, but he didn’t think his father would care whether his legs itched or hurt or whatever. In the hospital his father had seemed very sorry. He had actually cried. Real tears. He had said, “I didn’t know. I thought I was in reverse. I just bought the car, see, and I didn’t know.”

  The tears were not for him, Harvey had sensed. They were for the doctor and the pretty nurse and especially for the police who were charging him with drunken driving. Harvey had lain there and not shed a tear.

  Now suddenly he wished he could cry. Quickly he crumpled his blank paper. “I don’t feel like writing letters.”

  Thomas J hovered over his paper. He had lived with the Benson twins for as long as he could remember, but he couldn’t think of anything to write to them. All he still had was “How are your hips?” He lifted his head. “Can you send off a letter with just one sentence in it?” he asked.

  “No,” Carlie said, “you got to have two. We learned that in English.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can always end by saying ‘There’s a wonderful girl here named Carlie who is just like a sister to me.’” She turned to look at him. “Who’s this letter going to, anyway?”

  “The Benson twins.”

  “Boys?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, wrong sex,” Carlie said, turning back to her letter.

  “They’re eighty-eight.”

  “Wrong age too.”

  “Next year, if they live, they may get to be in the Book of World Records.”

  “Me too,” Carlie said. “If I live I’ll be the most shifted around juvenile in the world.” Carlie finished her letter, ending it with twelve “pleases,” all underlined. She put it in an envelope and sealed it. “Well, that’s that.” She looked around to see whom she could pester.

  Harvey was writing at last. He had given up on a letter, but Carlie had given him an idea when she mentioned a list about herself. Now he was making a list about himself. The list was entitled “Bad Things That Have Happened to Me.”

  Number one was “Appendectomy.”

  “What are you writing?” Carlie asked, sensing it was something secret. She darted over to take a look. She knew that because of his broken legs, he couldn’t get out of the way.

  Harvey put the list against his chest. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Everything I’m interested in is my business.” She snatched the list from his hand. She read it aloud. “Appendectomy.” She looked up. “Hey, have you really had an appendectomy?”

  “Yes.”

  Carlie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How big’s your scar?”

  “About that long.”

  “I knew it!” she cried. “You know what somebody told me one time? He told me tha
t doctors make real tiny slits and then pull all your guts outside and hold them up to the light so they can work better.” She paused. She was delighted. “Which is probably true! And you know how Dr. Welby and all those TV doctors make incisions! The incisions are that long—fourteen, fifteen inches maybe. They ought to talk to this friend of mine.”

  She handed the list back to Harvey. It fluttered to his lap like an old leaf.

  Carlie said, “I’m going to make some lists about myself. Mine’s going to be called ‘Big Events and How I Got Cheated out of Them.’”

  Carlie leaned back on the sofa and began to count off the bad times on her fingers. “Number one—and this really was a cheat—I was going to be a majorette in Junior High. I even went to Majorette Clinic. Cost my mom fifteen dollars, and then I come to find out that you couldn’t even try out if you didn’t have good grades. And what does good grades have to do with twirling a baton—tell me that?” She looked from Harvey to Thomas J, whose mouth was hanging open. “What do two E’s in English and World Studies and one D-minus in Math have to do with twirling a baton?”

  “I don’t know,” Thomas J said. It was the first time he had spoken softly since he had arrived.

  “And then you know what happened? I was all set to try out for Miss Teenaged Lancaster. My talent was baton twirling, which I had already spent fifteen dollars learning in Majorette Clinic.

  “Anyway, to make a rotten story short, the week before tryouts, I got attacked by my stepfather and sent over here. I never even had a chance.” She put her feet up on the plastic footrest. “What else is on your list?” she asked Harvey.

  He and Thomas J both looked startled.

  “What else is on your ‘Bad Things’ list?” she urged.

  “Nothing. I’ve just got the appendectomy so far.”

  “Well, write down two broken legs,” Carlie suggested. “I wouldn’t exactly call them the fun event of the year.” She paused. “If it was me, I’d make that number two and three, wouldn’t you, Thomas J? Number two, right leg. Number three, left.”

  “I’m going to write them down,” Harvey said patiently. “I’m just trying to keep the events in the order they happened.”