Stay Like that A Second

The girl in the white dress had found a loose thread on her sleeve. She wound it around her finger while the grown-ups tried to decide where everyone should stand.

“Come in a little closer,” said the person with the camera.

The boy took half a step. In his opinion, that was plenty. He was holding a coat that wasn’t his, and he’d already been promised they could go look over the wall as soon as the picture was taken. He wanted to see how far down the water was.

The wind caught the edge of the woman’s shawl. She tucked it back under her arm, and the woman beside her leaned over and said something too quiet for anyone else to hear. Whatever it was, it made her smile just as the shutter clicked.

“Can we go now?” the boy asked.

And off they went. The girl let go of her thread. The boy finally got his look over the wall. Somebody took the coat from him and helped him into it, because of course it had been his all along.

I don’t know if any of it happened that way. I know the boy held a coat and the girl was looking down at her hands. I know there was water behind them. And I know that when the pink faded from the restored photo, I kept looking at that smile on the left.

I wanted to hear what made her laugh. I wanted to be the one holding the camera, close enough to catch the joke and say, “Wait. Stay like that a second.”

For years, that picture was a little rectangle in an album. Someone had tucked the bottom edge behind a strip of gold-striped paper, and that’s where it stayed while the kids grew out of their coats and the grown-ups grew older.

Whoever put it there probably just liked the picture. I wish I could tell them what a good thing they did. All these years later, I got to stand by the water with them for a second, too.