The Pinballs (8 page)

After a moment he said “I really don't think I can” in a flat quiet voice.

Carlie stared at Harvey. Then she closed her eyes. She said, “You know, when I get my driver's license the first thing I'm going to do is find your father and run over
his
legs. See how
he
likes it.”

She stamped out of the room and into the kitchen. “I never thought I'd say this, Mrs. Mason, but give me something to do.”

“You want to work, Carlie?”

“I've got to take my anger out on something.”

Thomas J
didn't want to go back to the hospital. There was something upsetting about seeing only one twin, because the Benson twins had never been separated before in their lives. Other twins, Thomas J knew, went to different schools and wore different clothes, married different men and moved to different towns. But not the Bensons. They had stayed together and looked alike all their lives. They had never even worn different dresses. People took their picture in town sometimes.

As they drove to the hospital, Mr. Mason said, “I know this is hard for you, Thomas J. I remember my first funeral.”

Thomas J looked up at him.

“It was an old man who worked for my father—Mr. Joe, they called him—and Mr. Joe was laid out in his house.”

“I don't know what ‘laid out' is.”

“Well, it just means he was in his coffin there in his house.”

“Oh.”

“And I remember my daddy picked me up so I could see Mr. Joe in the coffin, and my knee must have hit the coffin and jarred it, and Mr. Joe's mouth came open. I never will forget that. I ran all the way home—seventeen blocks—hid under the bed.”

“Oh.”

“Kids don't do that anymore, hide under the bed, but we were always doing it if we were scared or wanted to cry without anybody seeing us.”

Thomas J was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “It's not really the funeral that I'm worried about. I'm not scared about that.”

“What are you worried about, Thomas J?”

“Well, going to the hospital.”

“Why is that?”

“I don't know. It's something I can't put in words. It's just standing there and just one twin and all and not knowing what to say.”

“Only sometimes you do a person a real favor by standing there, Thomas J. Just the fact that you're there can be a comfort.”

“I don't feel like a comfort,” Thomas J said. He paused. “I want to say something but I can't. One of them's already dead and last time I didn't hardly say anything. I won't be able to say anything today either. I know I won't.”

Mr. Mason looked at him. “I'll tell you something, Thomas J. I never told this to anybody in my life. But when I was your age my mother died. Now she was a good woman, real good, but she was never one to show affection.”

“The twins were like that.”

“I can never remember my mother hugging me or kissing me, not one time.”

“I can't remember the twins doing that to me either. They patted me one time when I found their father's watch, on my head and shoulders, but …”

“The word ‘love' was never mentioned in our house that I can remember.”

“Mine either.”

“So I went to the hospital and I was standing there by the bed, just like you, not able to say anything, and all of a sudden my mother opened her eyes and said ‘Collin?'—that's my first name. She said, ‘Collin, tell me you love me.' Well, I just stood there like a stick. The word love had never been said to me in my whole life.”

“Mine either.”

“I mean, I know she loved me—I guess she did anyway—she took good care of me and I must have loved her, but I'd never said the word in my life.”

“I haven't either.”

“And so I just stood there. The nurse punched me in the back and said ‘
Say
it,' because she knew my mother was dying, and my dad yanked my arm and said ‘
Say
it!' I just stood there. I did love her, I guess, but my throat was as dry as sandpaper and I couldn't say a word.”

“I couldn't have either.”

“Well, finally the nurse—bless her heart—stepped up to the bed and said, ‘He said it, Mrs. Mason! Did you hear him? He said it real soft but he said it. He loves you!' And my mother smiled and closed her eyes and that was the last time I ever saw her alive. To this day I am grateful to that nurse—Miss Brown, her name was—for helping me out.”

“It
was
nice of her.” Thomas J paused and thought. “I guess if mothers want you to tell them you love them, they should start real early, training you to do it.” This was the longest and deepest speech Thomas J had ever made, and he looked quickly at Mr. Mason to see what he thought of it.

Mr. Mason was nodding. “I think you're right, Thomas J.” He kept staring at the road ahead. “You know, I think that was one of the reasons I wanted to marry Ramona.”

“Mrs. Mason?”

“Yes. Because she was always touching people and hugging them and telling them how she felt about them. It seemed to come so natural to her. It appealed to me.”

“It should come natural.”

“Would you believe it took me five years of marriage—
five years
—before I could tell my own wife that I loved her?” Mr. Mason said.

“Yes,” Thomas J replied earnestly. “I can believe it.”

The remaining
Benson twin lay with her eyes closed. Thomas J stood by her hospital bed waiting respectfully for her to open her eyes. It was a good feeling to have Mr. Mason behind him, now that he knew Mr. Mason had once, long ago, stood in front.

There was another woman in Jefferson's bed. She was flipping through a movie magazine, looking for a good article.

Finally Thomas J gave up and said, “Aunt Benson?”

One of her eyes snapped open. The other opened slowly.

“It's me, Thomas J.”

“Thomas J?”

“Yes'm, the boy that lived with you for so long.”

Her eyes focused on him. “Thomas J,” she said, “Sister's gone.” Her voice, which had not been steady since 1945, wavered more than usual. She reached out her hand and he took it.

“I know.”

Mr. Mason leaned over Thomas J's head. He put his hands on Thomas J's shoulders. “I brought him for the funeral, ma'am. He wanted to pay his respects.”

“Sister and me had always planned a double funeral,” she said. “We always said we was born together, we'd die together. When we broke our hips together, I was sure of it.”

“Well,” Mr. Mason said, “it just looks like you're going to have to stick around for a while—get the garden back in shape.”

“Unless,” she said, “I can manage to die before—” She broke off and made a feeble attempt to lift her head. “When's the funeral?”

“Two o'clock, but you—”

“Unless I can manage to die before two o'clock,” she said, lying back on her pillow.

“It's twelve-fifteen now,” the woman in the next bed said, folding her magazine to read an article about Liz Taylor's face-lift.

“Then I won't make it,” the Benson twin said. She closed her eyes.

After the funeral, Mr. Mason remembered to pick up some Kentucky Fried Chicken. “It'll be a nice surprise,” he said. “We forgot last time, remember? I thought they were going to tar and feather us.”

Thomas J nodded. “Harvey'll be pleased.” He moved closer to Mr. Mason on the car seat. He felt Mr. Mason's arm against his. He looked up at Mr. Mason. Suddenly Thomas J felt like somebody out of a book, a fairy tale, who had just stepped into real life and needed to know about it.

He said to Mr. Mason, “Tell me some more about the things that happened to you when you were little.”

Carlie was washing the dishes hard. There were only a few of them so she was giving each her full attention.

Mrs. Mason smiled at her and said, “You don't have to wash off the flowers too.”

“I can't help it,” Carlie said. “Harvey's father makes me so mad. Harvey couldn't even eat his Kentucky Fried Chicken tonight.”

The thought of sitting across the table from him and seeing him stare at his untasted drumstick made her wash the glasses even harder.

“Hey, if you don't want your chicken, I'll take it,” Carlie had said to get a rise out of him. At her house a person would eat anything if he thought someone else wanted it.

But it hadn't worked with Harvey. Mutely he had handed her the drumstick.

She finished rinsing the glasses and dried her hands. “He just looks so sad sitting there staring out his window, and he's not pouting or sulking or anything, he's just sitting there.”

“I know.”

“You know, if they made a target of him—of the way he looks from the back and they set it up on the firing range—well, nobody could shoot it.”

Mrs. Mason took the dishes from the drain and dried them in a slow careful way.

Carlie stared at the sink. “He looks like he's already been shot.”

“Carlie,” Mrs. Mason said, “do you remember me telling you that I thought you could help Harvey—this was about the second day you were here?”

“I remember.”

“Well, you have helped him.”

Carlie glanced at Mrs. Mason in surprise. “How can anybody think he's been helped. He's worse!”

“He's worse now, at this moment, I know that, but you have helped him, Carlie.”

Carlie shook her head. Her hair fell over her face as she turned away.

“It's odd about helping people. When I was your age the only person who could help me when I felt bad was my sister Liz. She could always make me laugh. My other sister, Helen, is like me, more serious. Now, I'm not funny at all. I don't think I've ever said a comical thing in my life, and—”

“You're other things though.”

“Thank you, Carlie.” Mrs. Mason smiled. “Only what I mean is that you are helping Harvey, sometimes by just making him smile or feel better, and I don't want you to give up.”

Carlie turned to Mrs. Mason. “I never give up on anybody I like,” she said.

The next
morning Harvey did not get out of bed. Carlie had come in several times to try and cheer him up, but nothing had worked.

Now she came in again. “Hey,” she said, whispering in an excited way, “there's a big package for you in the hall closet.”

“My birthday's this Friday,” he said, staring at the upper bunk.

“This Friday? You didn't tell me that. Now, I'll have to get you something. What do you want? Name anything under fifteen cents and it's yours.”

He didn't answer.

“Hey, I got an idea. Look, why don't you go ahead and open up your package now. Mrs. Mason won't care, and it'll cheer you up.”

“No.”

“Well, then it might cheer me up. I'm beginning to feel lousy too. Want me to open it for you?”

“No.”

“I don't mean open it all the way, I just mean
peek
at it. I can slip off the paper so carefully you wouldn't even know I had opened it. I do this all the time at Christmas.”

“Go ahead if you want to.”

“You mean it? You wouldn't mind?”

“No.”

“Whoo, I love opening presents. I don't even care whether they're mine or not.” She went to the hall closet and slid out the box. “It's a big one,” she called to Harvey. “The bigger the better, I always say.” She pulled off the ribbon, which was punched into the top of the box. With great care she undid the strips of Scotch tape. She opened the end. When she saw that it was a portable color television set, her breath eased out in one long sigh.

“Oh, wow,” she called to Harvey, “you're going to really like this.”

Carefully she retaped the paper, punched the bow back in the original hole and slid the box back into the closet. Then she went back to Harvey's room and leaned against the bed. “Guess what it is?” she said.

“A TV.”

“What?”

“A TV.”

She was startled. She tried to bluff. “What makes you think it's a TV?”

“I saw my father carrying it in.”

“Well, I'm not saying whether it is or it isn't,” she said. She was disappointed. She loved to make people guess things. She had been looking forward to a long session with Harvey.

He would say, “Is it something useful?”

She would say, “Yes.”

“Is it different colors?”