Summer mysteries

It's a hundred and seventy thousand degrees in the house. 

All day long the people who live here have gone their separate directions: East, to work; West, to rehearsal; North, to camp, South on errands.

Finally, at home, we continue to go our separate ways, each to our air-cooled rooms.

Dinner is still a possibility, though breakfast cereal seems more likely.

My husband wonders if we put a steak on the flagstone in front of the grill will it cook to a medium rare?

It is too hot to laugh. At least that's what I tell the man when he repeats the punchline, looking for reassurance there is humor in that dad joke of his.

Our bedroom door swung open, and our son walked through it with the grace of a bull in a china shop. The sound of its wood boards thudding against the plaster of the wall behind it echoed through the room adding even more volume to the whirrs from the fans and air conditioning units. 

"Close it, please," I said, and he turned on his heel and shut it with a slam.

"My eyes feel sticky," he said, nonchalantly, as he slipped into our bathroom and slid that door shut soundlessly. Water rushed into the sink basin. 

"Lemme see," I said peeling myself off the bed and away from the cooling, binge-watching lethargy of the television screen. 

He turns his face into the light, and, for the first time, I see his eyes have changed. Their usual deep, round set now appear as two shallow almonds.

I look for redness on his cheeks and eyelids. There is nothing.

Does it hurt? Does it itch? When did you notice this? 

No. Nope. Shoulder shrug.

My Dr. Mom brain swims into the depths of likely possibilities: Random allergy, Pool Chemical imbalance, mild sun poisoning.

I prescribe a School Nurse remedy: "I'll get you some ice."

Of course, it was no better in the morning. No worse, either, which is why I sent the kid back to camp slathered in sunscreen and shielded by brand-name sunglasses of dubious origins.

At noon, when I went to retrieve him, he refused to remove the shades.

Cheeks flushed from exertion, his hair dripping with sweat under a baseball cap.

"I still look like a mutant wild mushroom," he said.

I asked about the puffiness, noticing it had seemed to spread up past the sunglasses.

"What's up with your noggin? Does it feel like the swelling is up in your forehead now?"

"No. That's probably just where I got hit with a baseball. Everything else feels the same. It doesn't hurt."

He gets in the car and slumps into the seat.

“I'm tired of looking like a cartoon boy. Will this ever go away?”

“Of course it will,” I tell him. “It's just difficult to predict when. Not sure what caused it.”

We go back to search his mind for event markers.

It happened after we got out of the pool the last time when the bugs started biting.

Did you get a bug bite yesterday?

“Yeah … right here between the eyes.”