Drill Bits

The bright orange and black drill lay prostrate across the kitchen table. Maggie sipped at her tea, staring at the Black & Decker original. She had never used her father’s hand-me-down but knew enough to know that a tool like that required bits of some sort. Drill bits, she told herself.

Drill bits. She remembered Dan tossing a slim, green-grey container back into the tool shed last month. His grin was a mile long as he bounded into the house, scooping her into his arms. That smile was infectious, all man-boy and playful mischief.

“It’s done,” he told her. “It’s finally done!”

Dan was handy enough, but when he had told her he wanted to build Taylor a treehouse, Maggie’s confidence had dwindled. Hanging pictures and fixing chair legs was one thing, but a treehouse? She knew Taylor would be excited with the finished product, but was it worth a mother’s heart stressing over the structure’s ability to keep her son in one piece?

She continued to nurse her tea, sizing up the drill. Now, with the treehouse built, it was no longer about Dan’s ability. He had clearly figured it out, and over the last six weeks, Taylor had made good enough use of it to see that it was stable.

Taylor was not going to fall through the floor of the house. One-hundred-kilometre-per-hour winds were not going to blast through the neighbourhood and toss the house to the ground. The ladder was not going to collapse under the weight of his small but feisty frame. Instead, Taylor had played, slept and eaten in that treehouse nearly every day of those six weeks. He was proud of the house his father had built him, so how could she deny his request?

Maggie abandoned her cup of tea and walked over to the hall closet. She pushed aside the coats, diving head first towards the dust and the dog hair. The toolbox was there, but the drill bits were nowhere to be seen. As she closed the closet door, her shoulders began to tense up, drifting closer and closer towards her ears.

“Get it together, Maggie,” she scolded herself, taking a deep breath. She gripped the stair railing, making her way up to the second-floor landing. One more deep breath as she took another step. On the left, the door to Taylor’s room was wide open, a museum to preschooler chaos. If tornadoes could spontaneously erupt indoors, this is where they would find their home. Tearing her eyes away from the half-built Lego city and crayoned walls, she turned to the door on the right. Closed. Ignored. Waiting. She let her hand rest on the doorknob for a moment, though it may have been longer. It could have been an hour for all she knew. Whatever it would take to build up the courage. Deep breath. One more.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. There was no other smell like it. Dirty clothes, metal and days old food, all danced an olfactory dance with his scent. That man-boy playful mischief scent. It rushed through her nasal passages and hit her gut hard like a swift punch from the inside. He never wore cologne, but like all men, he had a smell. She loved that smell as much as it irritated her, but now, it only made her feel hollow and stung.

Maggie stepped forward into the room and looked around, taking stock of every book, every corner and every piece of strewn clothing. Though he never left them in their place, Dan had a tendency to leave things out in the open. She was usually pretty good at figuring him out. But this time, she didn’t want to figure him out. She didn’t want to have to. She wanted him there. She wanted to be able to yell at him and share her irritation over the drill bits not being in their place, while he just rolled his eyes at her and wondered why she had to get so hung up on the little things. She just wanted him there.

...

“Mama?” Taylor was home from the complex playground. Their neighborhood babysitter had held true to her promise and brought him back in time for dinner. His little feet hit the stairs hard as she grabbed the grey-green container from the bookshelf, slamming the door behind her.

“Hi sweetie,” she smiled through the tears blurring her vision. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, mama.”

She took his smooth hand, walking him back downstairs and through the kitchen. She grabbed the drill from the kitchen table, along with a framed photograph that she handed to Taylor. He followed her into the backyard, the summertime grass prickly against their bare feet. “Gold is the new green,” say the conservationists. The heat this year has been unbearable, but as good environmental citizens they’ve held off from watering the lawn. And now, well, she was never the one to mow it anyway.

She plugged the drill into the extension cord, watching as Taylor hit the ladder first, swinging himself up gracefully in three seconds flat. Maggie followed, taking her time, juggling the drill and the picture frame while stubbornly wiping away her tears that she tried so hard to keep from flowing.

“Here, Mama, right here!” Taylor could barely contain himself, he was so proud. The spot he had picked—his perfect spot. Dan had left a hole on one side of the treehouse wall. It was positioned at just the right height for Taylor to lie back in his sleeping bag and stare at the moon on its rise. Taylor stood next to the window, pointing at a spot just to the right of the treehouse “window.”

“Next to my moon window, Mama. Right there.” Maggie hesitated.

“Please mama?”

“Of course honey, of course. That’s a great spot.”

Crouching over to the wall, she pulled a screw out of her pocket and placed it on the treehouse floor. She put the green-grey container next to it and opened it up, selecting the right drill bit for the screw she had picked. Placing the bit into the drill, she could feel Taylor’s anticipation. He had wanted this for weeks, but she had put it off in so many ways. She had to work. The kitchen needed cleaning. She was tired. She was busy, always too busy. But it had been long enough, and he had grown impatient.

Eyeballing the centre point of the wall at a height in line with the window, she held the screw in place and stuck the drill bit into its head. The whir of the drill was deafening and made the small tree house feel like it would fall, but it was over quickly. She picked up the framed photograph from the floor and placed it over the screw in the wall. Maggie backed away and lay down next to Taylor in his moon-watching spot. Together they gazed at his face, all man-boy and playful mischief, while the moon began to rise.

“It’s perfect, mama, just perfect.”