“If it’s not in the house, none of us will be tempted,” she said, running a rueful finger along her rigorously maintained waistline. She herself had resisted temptation ever since she hit puberty, and it was clearly time for Elaine to learn that lesson, too. She spoke to the dietician at the Clymer School, and they worked out special menus for Elaine’s lunches and snacks. To KiKi’s frustration, her daughter’s extra pounds did not melt away, not even with exercises devised by her own personal trainer.
Dad had been grumpy about the new regime. He liked a dish of ice cream at night, but if Elaine couldn’t have ice cream, neither could anyone else, even though Abby had inherited his metabolism.
“Don’t tell KiKi,” he told Abby when they occasionally sneaked out for a hot fudge sundae at Serendipity.
“I won’t,” Abby promised. She had become good at keeping secrets and had never tattled about the stash of jellybeans hidden in Elaine’s dresser.
“Thank God you inherited my brains, too,” Dad said as a storm raged in the next room between Elaine and KiKi over a poor school report. “I can’t afford two sets of tutors.”
As it was, Abby’s grades were so good that she was chosen to help some of the younger students with their reading skills, but no sooner had she settled into a routine with a new child that fall than one of the teachers pulled her aside. “Make sure that Whitney keeps her wooly cap on and that you two don’t touch heads.”
When Abby lifted puzzled eyes, the teacher whispered, “Head lice. You don’t have to worry as long you’re very careful when you sit together and she reads to you.”
There had been a brief outburst of head lice at Clymer the year before. Hoping to squelch fears before parents started looking at Chapin or Spence, the headmistress arranged for a doctor to give a PowerPoint presentation in the great hall to assure everyone that the nits didn’t springboard from head to head without physical contact, and that there was nothing dirty or shameful about the creatures. “As Clymer parents, I hope you will encourage your daughters to be kind to their afflicted classmates,” the headmistress told them. “Lice are no respecters of privilege or wealth.”
Wealth was something that Clymer parents understood, and privilege was a given. Tuition at that exclusive private girls school was higher than at most universities, so when Elaine started scratching her head a week or so later, KiKi was horrified and Dad was outraged. “Dammit, KiKi! Forty-five thousand a year and that school gives her lice?”
He was not the sort of man who ever dealt with spiders in the bathroom or roaches in the kitchen, and Elaine’s condition completely unnerved him. Despite KiKi’s indignant protests, he immediately sent Abby back to the West Side to stay with her aunt Jess until Elaine had been nit free for a full week.
Abby knew there was no danger of her catching the lice as long as she and Elaine didn’t share hairbrushes or head gear, but she was too happy to argue, especially since Dad came to dinner at least twice a week. It was like old times, and when she hugged him goodbye, he seemed wistful about leaving.
Halloween came and went before he let Abby return to what she still called the new apartment. She had heard all about the tedious two-hour comb-outs with a fine-toothed metal comb, the only way to remove nit eggs from a hair shaft short of picking them off one hair at a time.
“Three hundred dollars a session,” Dad grumbled to Aunt Jess. “And her hair’s so long, it took three sessions.”
“Couldn’t KiKi do the comb-outs?” asked Aunt Jess.
“I didn’t want her touching the damn things. What if she got them?” He shuddered at the very thought.
Yet by Thanksgiving, KiKi discovered more lice in Elaine’s hair, even though Elaine swore she hadn’t worn anyone else’s hat, used another’s brush, or touched heads with anyone when she posed for group pictures with the friends who were now forbidden to invite her for sleepovers.
Dad threatened to sue the salon that had treated the first infestation, and they agreed to do another series of comb-outs for free if Elaine’s hair was cut short. This time, Elaine’s tantrums didn’t work and her long, golden, lice-infested tresses were due to meet the hairdresser’s scissors that very afternoon.
“I’m sure you’re glad to be leaving,” KiKi said sourly as Abby zipped up her backpack while Elaine lay on the other bed, scratching her head and sobbing loudly. “Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get to have Christmas there, too.”
Abby didn’t respond. The constant bickering between the two adults wore on all of them. Tempers were frayed. Dad alternated between disgust and indignation because of those insects in Elaine’s hair, but the bills KiKi ran up on their credit cards didn’t help, either. Abby heard him accuse her of marrying him for his money. KiKi was by turns defensive of Elaine and angered by his attitude.
“Your father’s been totally unreasonable about all this. I know you and Elaine have had your differences, but if you’re not afraid of getting them, why should he act like it’s the plague?”
At the door, Abby paused. “I’m sorry, KiKi,” she said and gave her stepmother one of her infrequent hugs before ringing for the elevator.
“I so wish you were both going to be here for Christmas,” Aunt Jess said as Dad finished putting the lights on her tree.