The Pinballs

Harvey is the second of the three protagonists. While both he and Carlie have been physically abused, he bears the most extreme outward signs of the abuse. While drunk, his father ran over Harvey with his car and broke both his legs; he claimed the car was in drive when he thought it was in reverse. The accident severely limits Harvey’s mobility, and even in his wheelchair he needs help getting places, like when Carlie wheels him to the library, and Thomas J is placed in the top bunk so he can help Harvey if he needs it. One of Harvey’s breaks is a compound fracture. An infection in that leg leads to his hospitalization.

Harvey’s hospitalization is complicated by an unknown and undefined health condition. Harvey grows increasingly listless and unexpressive as the novel goes on. He answers Carlie’s questions in noncommittal one-word answers. He finally tells her, “I don’t think I can make it—period” (85). She tries to comfort him, but all he will say is “I really don’t think I can” (85). Harvey has fully lost hope and has lost the will to live.

When his right leg grows infected and he is hospitalized, Harvey stops talking and eating and needs to be fed via IV. Mrs. Mason is concerned because even though the infection is severe, “the worst thing is that he doesn’t seem to care” (104). While it can be tempting to diagnose Harvey using modern diagnostic language, readers should take care to be sensitive about these issues and not attribute prescriptive diagnoses to what Harvey experiences. The novel itself never explicitly names what is happening to Harvey. The unnamed nature of these struggles has significance, as young people often do not have the language to identify, name, and make sense of the specific things they are experiencing.

Harvey’s inability to identify and make sense of his experiences shows how confusing The Effects of Parental Abuse on Children can be. He has constructed an unreliable and fanciful mental image of his mother that does not reflect how she behaved in reality. What he claims about her often does not track with his recollections of her actions. Harvey often juxtaposes her with his father. Where his father is unyielding, harsh, and emotionless, he imagines his mother is compassionate, giving, and sympathetic. However, when he reads the article about his mother’s life on the farm and how people would offer themselves up for public criticism, Harvey reveals that he cannot imagine his mother participating because at “home the least thing made her furious” (69). This memory does not fully track with the image of his mother that Harvey constructs and shares with people. Such dissonance reveals Harvey’s unreliable recollection.

Harvey’s image of his mother is a preservation tactic. He uses the constructed image of her to maintain a hope that his situation in life will improve if only he finds her. His father’s destruction of this fantasy prompts Harvey’s downward spiral. For years Harvey believed his mother was writing him and trying to contact him, but his father was destroying the letters. At dinner while visiting Harvey, his father shatters this illusion by claiming that he wrote to Harvey’s mother about Harvey’s illnesses, such as his appendectomy and measles, but his mother never wrote back. Though there is no evidence for or against his father’s assertion, “Harvey knew it was true” (83). Hearing the words said aloud breaks Harvey.

Thomas J is the youngest of the three protagonists. Due to his age and his difficulty expressing his emotions, he plays a smaller role than Carlie and Harvey. While Harvey and Carlie were both emotionally, physically, and mentally abused by their caregivers, Thomas J has been neglected since the Benson twins took him in.

Thomas J struggles with both the desertion of his birth mother and the effects of the Benson twins’ neglect. The elderly Benson twins found him at the age of two, wandering near their house alone in a diaper and a Snoopy T-shirt. He spent the next six years with them, mostly as a garden helper when he was old enough. Thomas J had no socialization beyond the twins, and no government authorities knew of his existence until the twins fell, broke their hips, and had to be admitted to the hospital.

Thomas J tries to find sense in his mother’s desertion. He relates to the story of “Baby Moses being sent out in a basket by his real mother to a better home” (62). He wants such a story of his own desertion and used to imagine “his own mother waiting by the road, hiding in the poplar trees, waiting to see the twins take him in” (62). While Thomas J finds comfort in this fantasy, he knows that it is fiction and that he may never know why his birth mother left him with the twins.

Thomas learns The Importance of Love and Support due to the kindness or Mr. Mason, who uses stories from his own childhood to relate to Thomas J and show him both that he understands and that there’s nothing wrong with how he feels. Mr. Mason’s empathy makes Thomas J feel less alone.

Mrs. Ramona Mason is a key side character and a supportive force in the children’s lives, especially Carlie’s. Because the story focuses on the internal lives of the children, readers do not learn what Mrs. Mason is thinking, but her kindness demonstrates her support and understanding of her three foster children. However, one aspect of her psychology is touched upon when Carlie asks her why she didn’t have biological children. When she reveals to Carlie that she was unable to, Carlie asks her why she didn’t adopt. She explains how she and Mr. Mason were ready to adopt when they were contacted about providing a foster home, which wasn’t an idea she liked initially. She tells Carlie, “I knew I would come to love the child and I knew the child would leave, and I didn’t think I could stand it” (46). She tells Carlie that she wanted “a child of [her] OWN, capital letters, who would never leave. Only nobody has that” (46-47). She realizes that it is unrealistic to reserve love for those who won’t leave because leaving and growing up are a part of life. However, she discovered she could help children whose families were gone or unable to care for them and give them the opportunity to grow and start their own lives. Since it is unrealistic to have a child who stays forever, she decides she will help give these children a fair chance at a stable upbringing.

Mrs. Mason’s main role is to provide support and stability for the children, as well as demonstrate that there are adults who will support and understand children, even with previous evidence to the contrary. Harvey defends Mrs. Mason when Carlie wants to play a trick on her, and even Carlie admits that Mrs. Mason “hasn’t done us in yet” (64). From Carlie, who is prone to intense suspicion and pessimism as a protective measure, this assessment is a large compliment.

Mr. Collin Mason is a key side character in the novel. He is particularly vital for Thomas J’s character growth. Thomas J is the only character the reader sees Mr. Mason interact with. Like Mrs. Mason, his character is unexplored apart from one significant character trait that is used to support Thomas J.

While they are on the way to the hospital for the first Benson twin’s funeral, Mr. Mason shows Thomas J he is genuinely interested in hearing about his worries and emotions. After Thomas J confesses that he doesn’t know what to say to comfort people and ends up remaining silent, Mr. Mason confides in him about something he “never told […] anybody in my life” (89). He tells Thomas J a story from his childhood that parallels Thomas J’s experience: While he assumes his parents loved him, they never showed affection or mentioned the word “love,” so when his mother was dying and it came time for Mr. Mason to tell her he loves her, he couldn’t do it.

Mr. Mason’s story validates Thomas J’s feelings and experiences. Mr. Mason uses his position as a role model and parent figure to empathize with Thomas J and get him talking, as opposed to the twins, who treated Thomas J as an entertaining but silent pet. Mr. Mason’s empathy elicits the “longest and deepest speech Thomas J had ever made” (90), a one-sentence observation that parents should tell their children they love them if they want the children to be able to say it. After he says it, “he looked quickly at Mr. Mason to see what he thought of it” (90). Thomas J quickly grows to see Mr. Mason as a supportive force, and Mr. Mason always acknowledges and validates Thomas J’s opinions. As such, he is the key factor in Thomas J’s finding his voice.