The Fancy Dancer

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    “Do you think we’ve been a happy family, Mom?” “By and large, I think so. The only big disappointment your father and I had was that you didn’t get married. Of course we’re proud of your accomplishments as a priest, but..
    The moment had come to tell her, too. I realized one doesn’t come out all at once. The Bishop was only the first of many bits and pieces.
    “Mom, even if I hadn’t become a priest. I wouldn’t have gotten married. Or maybe I would have gotten married, and then got divorced in a few years.”
    She was silent for a moment. Then, to my surprise, she said in a low voice, “I know.”
    “What do you mean, you know?” The TV-colored rainbow of hallucination was parting again.
    “Your father and I have always known,” she said simply.
    “How long, for God’s sake?”
    “When you were a teen-ager, and you didn’t show any interest in girls. Your father and I braced ourselves for all the usual problems. We know what young people are like these days. But . . . the problems just didn’t come. We wanted to think it was because you were such a good boy, but we couldn’t. We both knew you were just . . . indifferent, just going through the motions to please us.”
    I had my hand over my eyes.
    “You seemed so normal in every other way. Sports, school activities ... I mean, if you’d had a lisp or a clubfoot, or something, or if you were frail, we could have thought it was just shyness.” My mother was struggling with the stereotypes. “But we couldn’t find any of those things to blame, so it was the first thing that crossed our minds, that you might be . . . that way.”
    ‘You should have told me,” I said.
    “Oh, no,” said my mother, horrified. “You had to find out for yourself. We always wondered when you did, and if you did. And when we saw your young man friend, well...”
    In the warm house, I seemed to be shaking with cold. My head was on fire. When I ran my fingers through my hair to try to ease the burning on the scalp, a lot of blond hairs came out on my fingers. I stared at them, stupefied. My hair was falling out.
    “Of course, he doesn’t seem quite your type,” my mother was saying. “He seems a bit. . . wild, isn’t he? But if you admire him, then he must have some fine qualities we don’t know about . . . Tom, are you all right?”
    “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t felt so good lately,” I said. “I think it’s just tension and overwork.”
    She felt my forehead. “Why, you’re burning up.”
    She went straight into the living room and called Dr. Lasance, the family doctor. He told her it sounded like a problem for a dermatologist, and recommended a Dr. Nugent. My mother called Nugent and made an appointment. An hour later, as if I were a little kid, she hustled me into her car and drove me downtown.
    I sat shivering in the examining room while Dr. Nugent looked at my scalp and my skin.
    “You have a type of eczema that usually results from extreme tension. The skin looks normal, but the nerve endings have become irritated and that produces the burning sensation you feel. The tension also cuts off the circulation in your scalp, and some of the hair follicles are dying. That’s why you’re losing some hair.” I wasn’t supposed to be worldly enough to care about my hair, but I asked mournfully, “Will it all fall out?”
    “No, I don’t think so. It may be thinner. We’ll just have to see how your skin responds to treatment. Have you been using any drugs for tension?”
    “Valium,” I said. “But it’s gotten so even three or four don’t knock me out.”
    “Oh, my, even Valium is dangerous,” said Dr. Nugent. “Let’s try something else that’s less addicting and maybe more effective.”
    He told me to massage my scalp all over for fifteen minutes morning and night, and showed me how to do it. Then he wrote out two prescriptions. One was for drops containing cortisone, to rub into the scalp twice a day. The other was for a muscle relaxant called Atarax, to take four times a day including bedtime.
    Finally he said, “Wash your hair with a shampoo called Sebutone, every day if you feel the need. It’s a special coal-tar shampoo that soothes the scalp. You can get it without a prescription.”
    On the way home, my mother marched me straight into her drugstore and we got everything. I downed a muscle relaxant and washed my hair right away with the icky green-gray Sebutone. A delicious cooling sensation took hold