My son came home with grease under his nails for six days before I finally followed him and found him kneeling beside our neighbor’s sick dog with a screwdriver in his hand.
He tried to hide his fingers in his sleeves the first time.
I was unloading groceries with one arm and holding the electric bill in my teeth when he slipped through the back door, quiet as a thief.
“Jeffrey,” I said, dropping the mail on the counter. “Why are your hands black? My goodness, son.”
He froze by the sink. “Dirt.”
“Dirt doesn’t smell like motor oil.”
“Why are your hands black?”
He turned on the faucet and scrubbed too hard. “I wasn’t doing anything bad, Mom. I promise.”
That was Jeffrey. He could lie about where he’d been, but not about what kind of trouble it was.
My son fixed things.
If a cabinet handle came loose, he found a screwdriver. If the toaster smoked, he unplugged it and said, “Don’t panic. It’s just being dramatic.” He kept screws in an old grape jelly jar and bottle caps in a shoebox under his bed.
“Why do you keep all that junk, boy?” my husband, Thomas, once asked him.
My son fixed things.
Jeffrey looked up from a broken flashlight. “Broken doesn’t mean useless.”
Thomas laughed. “You sound like a little man going through the garbage, Jeff.”
