And then my head itched. I tried to avoid scratching it because I didn’t want my wife’s theory proven that instant. The itch grew and grew and grew until it felt as if there were a giant louse perched atop my head, rubbing his greasy exoskeleton all over me. I caved in and scratched my head.
“This is not a lice scratch,” I said. “Just one of my many normal, daily itches.”
My wife handed me a dishrag. “Cover the headrest in your car with this. Otherwise they can embed themselves in the headrest and lay eggs.”
“No, they can’t.”
“Yes, they can. We’re gonna have to vacuum the minivan too. You gotta run now. That doctor is waiting for you.”
I got back into the car and laid the dishrag over my headrest. I felt the itch on my scalp again but tried my best to ignore it. I even turned the radio up because I thought it would help distract me. But the itch was there. It was alive. It was screaming and yelling at me to address it, to give it the recognition it wanted. I can’t have lice. I shower every day. It’s just dandruff. Jussssst dandruff. And if it’s just dandruff, why then I’d be a fool NOT to scratch it! So I did. I scratched the shit out of my head for a solid mile.
I got to the doctor’s house and she greeted me at the door in her nightgown and I did my best to not look directly at her because I felt like I was intruding on sacred ground. She gave me the shampoo and the comb and I thanked her over and over again, as if she had just given me a check for a billion dollars. Oh, thank you, thank you. I can’t believe how nice this was of you. You don’t know how much this means to our family. And I know you have a life and a house of your own and you didn’t even charge me a co-pay for it and that is arguably the greatest thing one person has ever done for another and I AM FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT.
I raced home with the precious lice-killing kit. The next morning, we stripped every sheet, washed every stitch of clothing, and vacuumed every square inch of the house. We even washed the covers of the couch cushions. My wife set our daughter up in a wooden chair with a little smock tied around her neck. She put on dishwasher gloves and applied the shampoo to the girl’s scalp, making sure every strand was lovingly coated in fancy organic poison. Then she took the comb, which looked like two dozen steel sewing needles bunched tightly together, and went through the hair handful by handful, pulling out COLONIES of lice and showing them to our daughter.
“Was that in my hair?” the girl asked.
“Yes,” my wife said.
“COOL!”
“No, not cool. Ew.”
“Ew.”
It was painstaking work, and the girl sat there, miraculously, for nearly two hours without complaint.
“You are being so good,” my wife told her. “After this, you can have anything you want.”
“Even a car?” she asked.
“Not a car, no.”
The whole time I watched my wife disinfect her, all I could think was oh shit, I hope I don’t have it.
“Did you check him?” my wife asked me, pointing to our son.
“Oh, right,” I said. I ran over to the boy and spent exactly half a second running my fingers through his hair. “Nope! Looks good.”
“Drew, you have to look.”
I looked again while the boy twisted and squirmed away from me.
“Deddy, no!” he shouted.
“Lemme just check you.” I parted his hair every which way, peeking through the blond curls and praying that I’d find nothing but white scalp. But there was a nit. And another nit. And then three. There weren’t anywhere near as many as there were in the girl’s hair, but they were there. The little egg capsules were unmistakable.
“Does he have it?” my wife asked me.
“Uh, well, he kinda does. Not all the way like her. Just a few here and there. Maybe that’s okay.”
“I gotta treat his hair too.”
“Crap.”
I sat idly by and watched my wife painstakingly remove the nits from our son’s scalp while he brayed and screamed like a captive animal. When the day of tireless lice eradication was at last all over, the kids went to sleep and it was time for the final examination.
“Who examines who first?” I asked.
“Do me first,” my wife said. “Then I’ll do you.”
“This is sooooooo sexy.”
“Let’s just get it over with.”
She turned around and I teased out small bunches of hair at a time, making a sincere effort to look for the lice, applying a jeweler’s eye to the tens of thousands of roots and follicles. I found nothing. But I didn’t want my wife to think that I was half-assing the search, so I checked her scalp three, four times over.
“I don’t think there’s anything here,” I said. “And I’m not saying that because I’m lazy. I really don’t think you have it.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. I could tell she wanted to believe it.
“There’s nothing here. I think you’re good.”