Page 90 of Full Contact

“It works until the middle,” Josh said.

I sat on the carpet. “Show me.”

He climbed onto the arm of the couch and let a marble go. When it reached the bottom of the curve, both towers leaned in, the track kinked, and the marble hopped out and rolled down the hallway. Russ was coming the other way with his coffee. He put his slipper out without looking down and stopped it an inch from the gap under the cabinet.

“Third one this morning,” he said.

On the next run, I watched the base of the near tower. When the marble reached the middle, the cardboard lifted at the back and the whole tower rocked forward.

“The towers are falling inward,” I said.

Josh sat down across from me and folded his arms. “They’re leaning. That’s not falling.”

“The bottoms need to be wider.”

“The design is correct.”

“Mark built a ski lift once,” I said. “When he was about your age. It was for his action figures, and he used his mom’s clothesline.”

Josh unfolded his arms. “How did he keep the chairs from tipping?”

I didn’t know. I’d been in bed with him when he told me, happy and half asleep, and it hadn’t occurred to me to ask. I could text him. A text would get me the answer. What I wanted was Mark on the floor beside us, saying show me the part where it goes wrong.

I picked up my phone.

Trier: How did last night go? Did the mushrooms survive?

Mark: They survived. Dana gave in, and three people asked for the recipe. Felix sent everyone home with containers. I have four. One of them is just gravy.

Trier: Gravy goes with everything. Merry Christmas.

Mark: Merry Christmas. Tell Josh I’m still thinking about the frog.

“Uncle Clare,” Josh said. “Hold the tower again.”

I put the phone down and held it. “What if the bottom was wider?”

He studied the cardboard square for a while, then dug through the wrapping paper and came back with the box his new headphones had come in, flat and wide and much sturdier. A slipper box from Russ went under the far tower. Josh retaped the joints, pressing each strip flat with his thumb.

The marble came down the ramp, crossed the bottom of the curve, and kept going. It rolled up the far side and down the hallway to the kitchen, where it hit the dishwasher with a small, satisfying clink.

Josh jumped in the air, cheering. Kelsey and Russ appeared to check out the cause for the ruckus. “It went across,” Josh told them. “The whole way.”

Before I got off the carpet, he had his new pencil out and was drawing an extension that would carry the marble around the bathroom doorway. He wrote PHASE TWO across the top.

***

Kelsey’s mother arrived at noon, as threatened, with the sweet potatoes. The marshmallows were an inch and a half thick. She looked straight at me as she set them down.

After the meal, Russ disappeared into the garage and came back carrying a long flat box with soft corners and $4 written on the lid in grease pencil.

“Yard sale,” he said. “September.”

It was an old metal slot-hockey game, the rink painted on tin, the players flat figures on rods that ran out to handles at either end. Russ had cleaned it and bent two rods back into shape. Both were on his side. My left winger stopped dead at the blue line.

“So give me your end,” I said.

“No. I’ve already chosen this end.”