“You live here?” Maribeth asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He opened the door, sweeping Maribeth inside with an after-you gesture. She walked into a grand foyer; the light streaming through the stained glass transom colored the dust eddies blue and gold. To the right was a mahogany staircase, to the left a parlor with built-in bookcases and a fireplace with a neat stack of logs next to it.
“Come on through,” he said.
Come on through. Her friends back home might say “come on in” but no one said “come on through” because few abodes were large or deep enough to warrant a “through.” Except perhaps for Elizabeth and Tom’s townhouse, but she had not been there since the Christmas party last year when she was ushered in by a coat checker.
She followed him down a long, narrow hallway, the walls covered with framed photographs, through a dining room, the table piled high with mail and medical journals, and into a bright, open kitchen with top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances and fire-engine red laminate cabinets. It looked like a showroom, pristine, as if the kitchen had never been sullied by the messy act of cooking.
He slid open a pocket door on the far side of the kitchen. Inside was a powder room. “We’ll do the deed here,” he said.
Maribeth raised an eyebrow.
“The lice,” he said, coloring slightly. “Let me fetch some tools.”
He returned, carrying a magnifying headlamp, a towel, a fine-tooth comb, and a bottle of olive oil.
“Are you going to lecture me about the benefits of a Mediterranean diet?” she joked.
“Yes.” He handed her a towel. “It’s best when applied directly to the hair.”
“You’re going to put that on my head?”
“We’ll leave it for an hour. The oil smothers the bugs.” She remembered the Wilsons’ babysitter Joanne putting coconut oil on the twins. Perhaps it wasn’t cheating after all. “Then I’ll pick the nits out.”
“How did you become such an expert?”
“Well, that’s somewhat involved. My daughter, Mallory, hated to get her hair braided. She said it hurt. She wanted to wear her hair down. But her mother, Felicity, insisted she wear it in braids,” he said as he massaged the oil into Maribeth’s hair.
Maribeth was only half-listening now. His touch was having a strange effect on her, at once soothing and exhilarating. Though he had laid hands on her before—he was her doctor, after all—this felt different somehow.
“Mal had these beautiful curls so I told Felicity she should let her wear it down. She called me soft-hearted and said that if I wanted to be in charge of managing the mess, it was on me. So I did. We developed a nice bath-time ritual, Mal and me.”
She pictured him giving a little girl a bath, gently combing her hair. “You sound like a good father.”
“Not particularly. I was gone a lot and we made this special time. And then when she was maybe seven or eight, Mallory came home with her first case of lice. Felicity said if Mal’s hair had been in braids, it wouldn’t have happened. So it was my responsibility to get rid of the lice.” He paused, as if remembering something. “Needless to say, those nitpicking sessions were a little less pleasant.” Then he smiled sadly. “Oh, how she screamed.”
“Yes, I know something about that.” Maribeth stopped, realizing that she’d given another bit of herself away. Because who but a parent would say that? Then again, who but a parent would have such a robust case of lice to begin with?
If this new information registered, Dr. Grant didn’t show it. He continued to massage the oil through her hair and she relaxed back into it.
“The irony is,” he said, “Mallory wears braids all the time now.”
“Does she still live here?” Maribeth asked dopily.
“All grown up and moved out.”
“So you live here alone?”
“I should sell it. It’s too big a house for one person to rattle around in.” He sighed. “But I’ve been here so long. I’m stuck, I’m afraid.”
By the time her hair was saturated, she felt almost liquid. When he announced he was finished, she was a little sad. She would’ve liked this to go on forever. He offered her a cup of tea, which she declined. He said he had to run back down to the office and he’d be back.
Alone in the house, Maribeth went into the hallway to look at the gallery of pictures. There was Dr. Grant in his younger days, his hair more pepper than salt. There he was with Mallory. And there he was with Felicity, dark skinned, angular boned, bright laughing eyes. She was a beautiful woman. Or had been. She must be dead, Dr. Grant a widower. No divorced man would display so many family photos, or speak so affectionately of an ex.
She looked into the kitchen again. It was almost new. And very much a woman’s kitchen. Yes, a widower. And a recent one.
The hour passed quickly. When he returned, she was back in the bathroom. “Options: you can shampoo it out here or I can just comb it with the oil and you can shower later.”
She couldn’t bear the thought of showering here. “I’ll shampoo later,” she said.
“Okay.” He put on his glasses. “Let’s see what we have.” He ran a comb through her hair. When it snagged, she jolted.
“Sorry,” he said. He tried again. The comb snagged again. Maribeth tensed even more. It really hurt. She began to sympathize with Liv.
“Here’s the source of your misery.” He flicked the comb against his thumbnail, and showed her a tiny insect. She inspected it, fascinated. In an odd sort of way, it was like a piece of her children had been traveling with her. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t want to get rid of the lice.