The Fancy Dancer

the “flats” around it, once cattle range, were now peppering themselves with new suburban homes.
    On Stuart Street, I parked the Triumph in the brick driveway of my parents’ house.
    They had talked a lot about leaving the West Side, and moving to a smaller modem house down on the flats. Their idea was that they’d do the apartment number with this towered Victorian brick thing. But they still clung to it. Dad’s salary as First Metals vice president allowed them to keep the place up pretty nice.
    As I got out of the car, I could see that the white trim on the house had had a new coat of paint. In the wide lawn, the beds of Talisman roses planted by my great-grandmother were coming into bloom. Dad had even cleaned some junk out of the gazebo by the huge weeping birch, and set a couple of lawn chairs in it. The same old lace curtains were at the windows. Of all the things I knew in a changing state, my parents’ house had probably changed the least.
    For a moment, thinking of the difference between Vidal’s background and mine, I felt a little ashamed. To me, the confessional grille was a doorway to the world; to him, it was jail bars.
    I cut across the lawn to sniff the copper-pink roses. Then I ran up to the porch.
    The big coffered yellow-oak door opened before I could ring. My mother was standing there, flushed and glowing and out of breath. Anna Meeker was tiny and girlish in a blue sweater dress, her baby-fine white curls fluffed out with excitement.
    “Tom.” She hugged me and kissed me.
    In the wide front hall, that fragrance of a century-old house hit my nostrils. The sameness was eerie— the mirrored umbrella stand, the Oriental rug that I tripped on so badly when I was seven and skinned my knee, the wide stairway with its twisted walnut posts. I used to pretend it was Jacob’s ladder.
    My father was coming out of the parlor, his pale blue eyes lit with their fey smile behind his bifocals. He didn’t seem like a banker at all—with his gentle ways and his impish sense of humor, you might have thought he made his living writing children’s books. He was stooped in his baggy gray suit and his favorite tie clasp with a tiny old gold nugget hanging from it. He was carrying his half-read Wall Street Journal (which the post office always brought to him several days stale).
    “You’re fifteen minutes late,” said my mother. “We were worried.”
    “I stopped at the drugstore to have your present wrapped,” I said. “You know I can’t tie a fancy bow.”
    I put the little box in her hands. She gave a little scream of excitement, as if birthdays came just once in a lifetime.
    “When you were little,” said my father, “we couldn’t teach you to tie your shoelaces either.”
    “I still don’t tie them right,” I said. “But I survived, didn’t I?”
    At exactly one o’clock, we sat down to dinner in the dining room. Ever since I could remember, Sunday dinner had always been at one sharp.
    The table was set with a worn but fine old damask cloth, and Mother’s Medici sterling and Rosenthal china. In the center was a rock-crystal bowl of Talisman roses. Mother pressed the bell in the floor with her foot, a signal for Rosie to bring out the soup. In a day and age when one can hardly hire a domestic in the length and breadth of Montana, Mother had managed to keep Rosie for twenty years.
    “Oh, it’s our boy,” cried Rosie as she came in, managing to keep the tureen steady. She was sixty-six, tinier even than Mother. I got up, and she presented me with her sweet steamy old cheek to kiss.
    When Rosie had ladled the hot beef broth and rice into the wide antique plates and disappeared into the kitchen again, Mother said:
    “Rosie told me the other day that she’s going to retire in three months. She’s going to live with her married daughter in Big Sandy.”
    “She’s lucky,” I said. “A lot of people her age aren’t wanted in the homes of married daughters.”
    “I just don’t know what I’ll do when Rosie goes.”
    ‘That’ll be the time to get out of this white elephant of a house,” said my father.
    “But you know you’ll miss this place/’ said my mother.
    The heavy sterling spoons clinked in the soup plates.
    Rosie brought in the main course, a standing rib roast with pan-browned potatoes and carrots, and creamed onions on the side. My mouth watered. I ate this well only once a month. I reproached myself for caring so much about food.
    My dad carved the roast with