And the dancing, as far as I know, my mother never danced again, even after she became a Catholic. Years later, when I was four or five, I caught sight of her through the half-open door of the room she shared with my father. She was trying on a dress she brought home on approval from Graden’s Department Store. It was a white sundress with tiny red dots, a dotted swiss full wide skirt, the kind that depends on a starched ruffled , made to have a petticoat to keep it poofed. But my mother wore it draped close to her body like a ballerina. She hummed and twirled, stepping around the room in gliding strokes. Every now and then she looked up, or over her shoulder, preening, into the mirror that hung above her bureau. In one of those backward glances, she noticed me reflected there too. She smiled and fingered one of the slender straps at her shoulder, "Well, Meggie, do you think it’s too fancy?"
I warmed to her question, "Oh, no, Mama!"
She looked back again, considering, "Well, I don’t know."
While she was looking at herself, I saw something cross her face. She stood, paralyzed for a moment. I watched her pull into herself, grow smaller somehow, and when she shook it off, the flash was gone from her eyes. She crossed her arms at her neck, over the exposed skin at her chest, her fingers kneading the color away from her bare shoulders.
Though it was summertime, and not a breath of air ruffled the curtains, she reached into her closet and pulled on a sweater. She stood there, her reflection still beaming back at her from the mirror, the sweater humbling her little dancing dress.
I thought she had forgotten me until she nodded in my direction, her eyes still fixed on her own image, "Be a good girl now, and go see what Charlie is up to."
On the way down the stairs, I heard the firm click of her door engaging behind me, and I knew she was changing her clothes. She took us for ice cream that afternoon, after we stopped at Graden’s to return the dress.