Harry’s distraction galloped through the phone to Ben. How could his father fail to relate to a broken leg’s sense of occasion?

Their family had at one time seemed almost to fetishize the sense of occasion. When Ben’s mom got her master’s degree, they came home after the ceremony and all four of them packed into the kitchen pantry. Teddy slid the pocket door closed behind them. Ben’s dad held a bottle of champagne, and they had to stand close enough together that Ben felt its condensation through his sleeve.

Ben got to pull the foil strip from around the cork. Teddy untwisted the wire cage. From the toolbox Mom had brought the plastic squeeze bottle of chalk, and she applied the funnel tip to the bare cork. Once it had a medium layer of blue chalk, she rubbed it lightly into the top of the cork with her thumb.

Ben’s dad held the bottle for her, and she took hold of the cork, holding it still, and he began to turn the bottle slowly in a way that struck Ben now, as he recalled it, as sensual, almost obscene.

Ben braced himself but still wasn’t prepared, and the cork thunked against the ceiling. His mom stepped up on the little stool and reached up and circled the new mark. In her easy tight letters she wrote “6/2/90—HTW MA.”

Around it spread a constellation of older blue marks, circled and lettered for graduations, sports wins or graceful losses, the births of nieces and nephews, round-number birthdays.

But they hadn’t gone into the pantry when Ben had gotten into St. James, he realized. Or when Teddy got into Kenyon.

His dad expressed his concern about the broken leg again, and said he’d have Mom make lemon squares and start a care package and send it up. She was at a thesis meeting.

“Are you okay up there?”

His father’s voice needed him to say yes.

“Yeah,” said Ben.

“I’ll have Mom call you when she’s back. I love you, kiddo.”

*  *  *

Upper-formers were starting to remember Ben’s name. Suddenly it was a little easier to be generous to Ahmed. They drove to Chapel together a few days a week, Ahmed always wearing Marlboro Racing, and Ben even let him drive once or twice. Now when Ben sat with Hutch and the rest at lunch, he caught more of the inside jokes. A lot of afternoons Ben would take people out to practice, then sit on the sidelines and watch the team do passing drills or throw-ins or Indian Line runs, but soon that was boring. He drove past the club soccer fields, and from far away Ahmed with his buzz cut looked almost tough.