Photograph

A favorite moment captured in time:

Terri's Mom and Dad standing in the Houston backyard sometime after the war, Blackie in his waycool Latino zoot pants with suspenders, aviator sunglasses, looking better than a Mexican George Clooney. And Mary, a spitting image of the daughter I love, in her high-waisted dress, her arm around Blackie's waist, chest out and high, looking proud and beautiful and hot.

What that photograph could not capture was the smell of cut grass or the murmur of cicadas thrumming the humid Gulf coast air. Missing was the way his back felt strong beneath her arm, or the soft allure of Mary's breast against him. You can't smell how her hair must have smelled. I know the aroma of her daughter's hair, and presume it probably took his breath away. Beneath the image is the attraction of lovers.  My intuition tells me that.

I like to think they had just made love, or were going to make love, or at the very least were planning on it before that lost afternoon faded to evening. That would be the right thing to do.